“The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.”

Facing the waves, Binalong Bay, Tasmania January 2021.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The novel's opening is an opaque and intricate introduction to both a large cast of characters and Nigerian social and political complexities. Once the domestic world starts to settle down (in conjunction with the heightening political tensions), the story positively rockets along.
Adichie constructs a rich and vibrant sense of time and place and draws the reader along with horror and excitement at the formation and eventual destruction of the Biafran state. The indifference of the outside world and the wilful culpability of the (former) British colonial masters bristles off the page.

Deftly shifting backwards and forwards in time, this is a beautifully constructed book. There is an adroitness in handling such weighty themes, and the righteous anger forms naturally as only high art manages. While there is a danger that such a topic can drift into a polemic of backstory, events, dates and atrocities, Half of a Yellow Sun never feels like a lecture.

Indeed, the world always feels real and consequential. The fate of the central characters – the crimes done to and by them – will resonate long after you’ve finished. While not flawless, the writing occasionally comes across as pedestrian and drifts into the melodramatic; on the whole, this is a beautiful novel.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

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Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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