tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21523991752764613522024-02-19T15:28:59.435+11:00This will hurt me...Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.comBlogger4564125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-89640847269967236092021-09-17T06:00:00.011+10:002021-09-17T06:00:00.372+10:00“There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.”<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYAtcRLfQ1YT2QS0b89rc8QQYTEul7zrNLlEmmhG_3XwppoH0WtCeTNXb3ZA88kW1CX57Y0u5kTJps0heZprJwjaR1gRjmmJAJzQLFNd-J6TkzWtBdcOovBNN0tBowxu2WAOjj4hKxlv0/s5472/DSC01059.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="5472" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYAtcRLfQ1YT2QS0b89rc8QQYTEul7zrNLlEmmhG_3XwppoH0WtCeTNXb3ZA88kW1CX57Y0u5kTJps0heZprJwjaR1gRjmmJAJzQLFNd-J6TkzWtBdcOovBNN0tBowxu2WAOjj4hKxlv0/w640-h320/DSC01059.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Dude on half a motorbike, Shag Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">The Humans</span> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">by Matt Haig</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Synthesizing 'clever' and 'funny' is a tough act in a novel. Too often, what is intended as humourous can land as smug or smarmy. Or, perhaps more often, tiresome and dull. Credit to Haig here, as I found </span><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;">The Humans</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;"> both smug AND dull.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">The whole thing was just so obvious, laborious descended into a sickly sweet tweeness that was clearly intended to be sincere and wry. Perhaps it was my mood, as looking at other reviews here, I am clearly swimming against the current.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Not for me.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">⭐ 1/2</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-45801753659994454132021-09-15T06:00:00.015+10:002021-09-15T06:00:00.373+10:00“You cannot lie down behind your badly made decisions and call them fate or determinism or god.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG9M_Btm7pScfVgWVdb0PmvKW0R0hoqXM-JkNiVxe-KGqZyLgzBOKlk7xQKhdg8zxSgGs5Hb07dr7LWyt-FlbIKCKDxI-XmVp71Me3kUhwbYjf7B5948wScMwVITu8_iVnHtN9C6LQY8/s5472/DSC01906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1824" data-original-width="5472" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJG9M_Btm7pScfVgWVdb0PmvKW0R0hoqXM-JkNiVxe-KGqZyLgzBOKlk7xQKhdg8zxSgGs5Hb07dr7LWyt-FlbIKCKDxI-XmVp71Me3kUhwbYjf7B5948wScMwVITu8_iVnHtN9C6LQY8/w640-h214/DSC01906.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Evening clouds, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">Everything Under</span> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">by Daisy Johnson</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">Remix of the classic Oedipal myth? I found it alienating, abstruse and far too tiring to become absorbed in the story. Far too often I scratched my head wondering "Which character is this now? What timeline is this happening again?" only to sigh and keep going because the whole thing is too dreary and confusing to worry too much about it.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">For me, the mix of bleak social realism with a neo-classical retelling of a Greek myth just didn't work. The shifting timeline, fragmented storyline and preposterous plotline were more tiresome than energizing. There is a cold and 'deliberate' artifice that never gave me a sense that the author has just relaxed into the story. What we're left with is a self-conscious and turgid mess.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">⭐ 1/2</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-24665027085945727032021-09-13T06:00:00.002+10:002021-09-13T06:00:00.421+10:00“A hush is a dangerous thing. Silence is solid and dependable, but a hush is expectant, like a pregnant pause; it invites mischief, like a loose thread begging to be pulled.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAq9K8TcKh7TirBBuqWmOc8VitDVWH80_wrCfDh-ueL4vfM_b7I9-SWRhbyNRuHCahOG0YM9Z5aGS78CFABlPadHED8Fpe9COK8IE1zjbZX4Oe24M6q-rRHPiM57LvOX5RHmGg8D8LEg/s5472/DSC01814.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAq9K8TcKh7TirBBuqWmOc8VitDVWH80_wrCfDh-ueL4vfM_b7I9-SWRhbyNRuHCahOG0YM9Z5aGS78CFABlPadHED8Fpe9COK8IE1zjbZX4Oe24M6q-rRHPiM57LvOX5RHmGg8D8LEg/w640-h426/DSC01814.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Light on the hill, Macquarie Street, Hobart. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">The Keeper of Lost Things</span> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">by Ruth Hogan</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">This is not the book for me. I found it cloying, overly sentimental and filled with banal observations and predictable twists. Crikey, I'm bored just thinking back on it.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">If superficiality is your thing, and you won't bristle at the guileless, dated presentation of developmentally disabled characters and lazy anachronisms in the overused flashbacks, you might find this more bearable than I.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">⭐ 1/2</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-90991764078335594902021-09-11T06:00:00.004+10:002021-09-11T06:00:00.336+10:00“Maybe we'd all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNxHJPU4zrzmOtV1ECWuhDkWhWFBBPNwQB9PW25aRuQK-6T7K8VzeuAZHuRSevAfDkWg2nIMz6myEWkx0L054jkNtv365JtjSzuPozKEJ0CwdpBgd-Nu_rBXWleW3SdqbLqu0Rp63gZc/s5241/DSC01626.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3494" data-original-width="5241" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNxHJPU4zrzmOtV1ECWuhDkWhWFBBPNwQB9PW25aRuQK-6T7K8VzeuAZHuRSevAfDkWg2nIMz6myEWkx0L054jkNtv365JtjSzuPozKEJ0CwdpBgd-Nu_rBXWleW3SdqbLqu0Rp63gZc/w640-h426/DSC01626.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>The bins are out, Geilston Bay, August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">Boy Swallows Universe</span> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">by Trent Dalton</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">After delivering a rather scathing critique of Dalton's last book - </span><a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/48814878.All_Our_Shimmering_Skies" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px;" title="All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton">All Our Shimmering Skies</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;"> - I am glad that I succumbed to the badgering of my darling wife to give his much-praised debut a chance. She is correct. This is the infinitely superior book.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">I suspect that this is largely because Dalton is treading more familiar ground. Unlike the new book, there's an authenticity to the place and characters despite the shaggy dog tale that emerges. This is a likeable coming of age tale that will have appeal to anyone with memories of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in 1980s Australia.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">There's a heart to what could have been a bitter and unpleasant tale. Still, Dalton pulls no punches, and there are no shortage of triggers for anyone who grew up in violent, tumultuous households. I appreciated the sophistication that the author has sensitively explored the concept of how young people cope with childhood trauma. I particularly liked Poppy Birkbeck, the high school guidance counsellor, who runs against type in playing a positive role in the boys finding a way forward in life.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">While the final few chapters stretch credulity, I enjoyed the novel very much. Well worth your time!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1e1915; margin: 0px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1915;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-60753366303095272302021-09-09T06:27:00.014+10:002021-09-09T06:27:00.409+10:00“As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJQm0EkN_6y2Lq-vcc3wpDnRNSMlt-GUWJQ6NZLroH2kOLD8Fgs82p8dkX9Rqh2GQVYlgyflikrLmXJq8X4fZtzRuMTXRfuEQIxuxNKqQXf7Hvy2kxHJUtVjwQLuONLr_lXU3qgolD74/s5472/DSC01861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3192" data-original-width="5472" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJQm0EkN_6y2Lq-vcc3wpDnRNSMlt-GUWJQ6NZLroH2kOLD8Fgs82p8dkX9Rqh2GQVYlgyflikrLmXJq8X4fZtzRuMTXRfuEQIxuxNKqQXf7Hvy2kxHJUtVjwQLuONLr_lXU3qgolD74/w640-h374/DSC01861.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Good morning. Federation Dock, Hobart. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>A God in Ruins</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Kate Atkinson</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A "companion piece" rather than a sequel to one of my favourite books that I've read this year (</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Life After Life</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">. Much like the first book, this one is also experimental in form. Timelines skip backwards and forwards but (largely) avoid the 'parallel realities' that marked the earlier work.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The experimentation did not disrupt the experience, and I found that it again afforded Atkinson the power to explore the concept of memory, fiction and imagination. If I didn't quite enjoy it as much as its predecessor, it was due to the presence of the distasteful Viola. Without a doubt, her character is an essential exploration of the intergenerational shift, but I did find her irritating to the point of distraction.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">There is a fine art to the wilful disruption of chronology that goes some way to explaining Viola's attitude. The resolution of the piece - like </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Life After Life</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> - is at once original and devastating. This is indeed a novel that reminds one of the exciting potentials of the form. It is both exhilarating and heartbreaking at once.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Atkinson's writing never feels fake or masturbatory. Indeed, she has presented here another deft and inspiring achievement by a novelist who seems fearless in her confidence in setting about to new and imposing challenges. I am always sceptical about the mythology of the literary canon, but my word, if there is such a thing, one should reserve a seat for Kate Atkinson.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-59241204322790471592021-09-07T06:00:00.025+10:002021-09-07T06:00:00.393+10:00“It takes courage to keep love at the center when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of things! It’s easy to get angry, anyone can do that. It’s making good that’s the hard part, it’s staying hopeful that’s the hard part! It’s staying in love that’s the hard part.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk4Zn21YYrfXCiiREfAxF9KUp2WY962Kwcv2u_xOu74pMLfmYMQLbLmt8XRzmB6lvSaFm24FLFWQJdFx12gF5aa3Q6ItUXLDlqSr2WH3VD7unPHA2K9RmzIifKDUndADVrTad7I0aHJ_s/s5472/DSC01398.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk4Zn21YYrfXCiiREfAxF9KUp2WY962Kwcv2u_xOu74pMLfmYMQLbLmt8XRzmB6lvSaFm24FLFWQJdFx12gF5aa3Q6ItUXLDlqSr2WH3VD7unPHA2K9RmzIifKDUndADVrTad7I0aHJ_s/w640-h426/DSC01398.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sails above. Pier One, Salamanca, Hobart. August 2021.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>The Years of Rice and Salt</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Kim Stanley Robinson</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">This is an immense book in all sorts of ways. Just shy of 800 pages, it is quite unlike anything that I have ever read before. A sprawling, opulent alternative history novel about human civilisation beginning with a twist that eliminates European influence from events post-1400.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">We begin with a small detachment of Mongol soldiers stumbling across the fact that nearly all of Europe has been killed by a plague of such magnitude that it has emptied most cities and towns, leaving on a few survivors to scrabble on. From here, we travel through a series of chronologically spaced sections over the next seven centuries on an alternate Earth in which the societies of varying forms of Islam, the vast Chinese empire and other Buddhist states dominate global affairs in the absence of western Christendom.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The conceit is fabulous, and in embracing a broad approach to reincarnation, we can follow three distinct characters who carry some elements of themselves and their memories (with intervening moments in </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">bardo</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">, the transitional state between death and rebirth.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It's hard on the brain, but Robinson aides the reader by keeping the various reincarnations as characters whose names begin with 'K', 'B' and 'I'. Switching cultures, genders, status and (in one case) species, the literary device grants the book omniscience that at once feels natural and real.</span></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">While it could be trimmed down a bit, and at times,, the characters discuss the finer points of philosophy at tedious lengths, in sum, there is a sardonic and gentle charm that carries through the wonderfully diverse and exotic characters and places.</span></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">One particular quite captures the heart of the piece:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /></span><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"This is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing."</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">There is a sanguine lens to what the World might be like free from European influence. World wars, genocide and exploitation emerge, as does feminism, a class consciousness despite the absence of Marx along with the full gamut of scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The world that emerges is for the most part no better or worse. While distinctive in terms of surface details like fashion and language, it remains much the same at the human level. Species extinction, the nuclear threat and climate change all emerge as the world is both the worst of times with the possibility of becoming the best of times ever-present.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Be warned though, this is a book that tests the intellect. A solid footing in philosophy, world culture and basic scientific principles should see you through, but it will challenge you nonetheless. The book delves deep into the metaphysical weeds of eastern religions, which are then assimilated into a truly unique setting, unlike anything that I have seen previously.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-45986481458427285432021-09-05T06:00:00.015+10:002021-09-05T06:00:00.360+10:00“You know,” George said, “when I look in the mirror in the morning I see a miserable old bastard looking back at me. Yet when I see you, I take great comfort, knowing how much progress I have left to make on that same path.”<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4zQnDArbWmn19FknCetgUovrHL92nrW0Xge6B0B2I8K9Xzf5mU9HVIIbgFyCjQeHYV2N6lORWGugiU6Rn6D6UydE9HBoRPmONvd4GaI2Mv0Y6zp2sbDAGXrCFsUyux8RKPsrulVVjtg/s5472/DSC01362.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2280" data-original-width="5472" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4zQnDArbWmn19FknCetgUovrHL92nrW0Xge6B0B2I8K9Xzf5mU9HVIIbgFyCjQeHYV2N6lORWGugiU6Rn6D6UydE9HBoRPmONvd4GaI2Mv0Y6zp2sbDAGXrCFsUyux8RKPsrulVVjtg/w640-h266/DSC01362.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Sunrise over the Tasman Bridge. Hobart. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>The Sweetness of Water</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Nathan Harris</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A terribly sad and decidedly still novel, this is not at all as I expected. I was pleasantly surprised by the light touch that Harris has applied to what is a brutal tale. Set in the south in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, I understood that the book would tackle issues of race and sexuality.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Before starting, I was prepared for either an affected and anachronistic (but largely 'worthy') book or one that embraced the usual machismo (with a queer twist). This is neither. It weaves twin narratives quite effortlessly in a quiet way. The weak but thoroughly decent George Walker is at the centre, who anchors the novel to allow the natural exploration of themes not usually found in such books.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Reminiscent of Sebastian Barry’s work, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The Sweetness of Water</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> is a lovely, lyrical novel. Moreover, Harris's fine writing achieves the complex interweaving of the grand and the intimate and explores what can be burdensome themes deftly at a personal level.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">An awe-inspiring debut; I look forward to reading more from this author.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-45209734714297394852021-09-03T06:00:00.015+10:002021-09-03T06:00:00.396+10:00"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxLCJhg_IRqSO1j4TkB7l0JM49eViA9yxgtLrilwzFBLtE_n7bUDWmKe6yrJFsxXjmAF9n_M10w3EDXKdy2d0jbKcAw0lZQKyUucphiXEGtDp_AdWDaJvGSJ52lZWP1e0LtbGIM4uHnw/s5434/DSC01148.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3170" data-original-width="5434" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxLCJhg_IRqSO1j4TkB7l0JM49eViA9yxgtLrilwzFBLtE_n7bUDWmKe6yrJFsxXjmAF9n_M10w3EDXKdy2d0jbKcAw0lZQKyUucphiXEGtDp_AdWDaJvGSJ52lZWP1e0LtbGIM4uHnw/w640-h374/DSC01148.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Zinc work, East Risdon Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>That Deadman Dance</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Kim Scott</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A masterpiece. In Bobby Wabalanginy, an intelligent and optimistic soul, Scott conjures up a narrator who will live long in the memory. Bobby, whose real name remains unpronounceable to the invaders throughout the novel, means "all of us playing together", a bitter irony given the course of events.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Bobby is a marvel. Bright and eager for knowledge, he is a natural showman. These capacities allow him to shine in both his indigenous world and the newcomers to his land. Part clown, part shaman, the book does a magnificent job of naturally showing the reader the centrality of songs, music, and dance to the Noongar people of southwestern Western Australia.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Bobby learns to speak, read and write in the white man's language, but a reoccurring motif throughout is the fundamental disconnect in understanding between the two cultures. His native culture is just as complex but more physical, present and elemental. One </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">knows</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> the land because one can feel it under his feet. The feel and smell of the wind, the rhythms of the season, the behaviours of the wildlife. Life is a collective endeavour of sharing bountiful resources.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The new culture arrives and does things quite differently. We know how this story goes...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Oh, but the telling. The telling is lovely. The newcomers are a motley crew, a mix of dreamers, opportunists, wastrels and strays. They are not all bad, but the repercussions of their arrival are profound in ways not immediately apparent.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Few and isolated, the first colonists in the region are profoundly ignorant of local conditions and rely on Indigenous knowledge to survive. In this setting, a range of relationships ensued. While ‘equality’ of Noongar and European was most certainly not on the cards, these relationships are distinguished by forms of genuine exchange. As the story emerges and the visitors grow in strength and confidence, the cultural divergences become grimmer.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The hubris and self-assured ignorance of the Europeans is maddening to Bobby as he struggles between the two worlds. Here, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">That Deadman Dance</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> serves as a fascinating companion piece to Tom Kennealy's </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> from 1972. Unlike Jimmie in that book, Bobby replies in sorrow rather than anger.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /></span></p><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In his author’s note, Scott says</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /></span></p><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"I wanted to build a story from [Noongar] confidence, their inclusiveness and sense of play, and their readiness to appropriate new cultural forms - language and songs, guns and boats - as soon as they became available. Believing themselves manifestations of a spirit of place impossible to conquer, they appreciated reciprocity and the nuances of cross-cultural exchange."</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Scott himself has played a critical part in the attempt to regenerate Noongar speech, and the book itself does a beautiful job in weaving it throughout the text.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Given everything, this book is incredibly generous. Despite everything that happens in the text - and the course of Australian history - it emerges from the point of view of Aboriginal confidence. It rightly serves as a pillar for a new understanding of what has gone and the potential to come.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-30718104534976468262021-09-01T06:00:00.016+10:002021-09-01T06:00:00.441+10:00“I can’t say for certain why the three of us are friends. Sure, who can answer a question like that. I suppose there aren’t many children along our road, so there isn’t much choice, and I don’t give it a lot of thought. We carry on as we are, and there’s plenty of fun to be had. That’s not to say that I couldn’t make nicer or better friends in another place, but how would I ever know the difference.”<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmfhHH-0NhYgS1liFJg0JY9Mgp1JOPS8KoPOdWzduyYcq5Y6jxpRYvPwKB-yLjfuSJY_VHTuhZVpK03hc609JEi4jUlUgEEbFChGBULybMfD3LCUqLKTRiI0LZ288g4gqXJE8x7zNMYqQ/s5200/DSC00877.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3467" data-original-width="5200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmfhHH-0NhYgS1liFJg0JY9Mgp1JOPS8KoPOdWzduyYcq5Y6jxpRYvPwKB-yLjfuSJY_VHTuhZVpK03hc609JEi4jUlUgEEbFChGBULybMfD3LCUqLKTRiI0LZ288g4gqXJE8x7zNMYqQ/w640-h426/DSC00877.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Pole in the sky, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Frances Macken</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> strikes me as a book that is something of a fusion of </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Derry Girls</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> and </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Normal People</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">, with a jarring murder/ disappearance side plot that is left unreconciled. As such, it did not quite hit the mark for me.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In our narrator, the drifting Katie, along with best (!) friends, the toxic Evelyn and meek Maeve, we follow the unlikely trio. as they try to adjust from childhood to life in adulthood. For a story that centres on this cramped friendship, it is striking the extent to which these girls don't really like each other.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I note that some reviewers took issue with the lack of resolution to the Katie and Evelyn dynamic, but the lacklustre death of their relationship seemed a natural course to me. What bothered me more was the seeming abandonment of the disappearance of Pamela Cooney. A number of clues/ red herrings are sprinkled in the direction of a range of characters, but the entire plotline just peters out with little fanfare.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Similarly - and perhaps not unrelated - a fair bit of effort has been made to get readers to look at the decidedly odd Maeve in all manner of ways, but the ending to this arc also felt queerly unsatisfying. To this reader though, unlike the Pamela plotline, this is likely a deliberate literary choice from Macken. One not to my taste though.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">All up, I liked more of the book than not and will keep a keen eye out for what comes next.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-68172023406351323452021-08-31T06:00:00.011+10:002021-08-31T06:00:00.432+10:00“Ol' Bill's bein' all cagey because it's hard for blokes to admit a woman might choose death over putting up with more of their bullshit.”<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEUR2a3R0x4VcqYGEe5cyYsXVzsSg9Z3tKjtzgFHqZo3P5cBFspzjtpElgEKkr8DkIP5JNJxGmD-InuOJGuLrUDvSn0rV3mmtjr2hMBBbXR76X38ZfsRw4-eOg30kE8nBmxawLj9tIYI/s3312/DSC00948.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3312" data-original-width="3312" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIEUR2a3R0x4VcqYGEe5cyYsXVzsSg9Z3tKjtzgFHqZo3P5cBFspzjtpElgEKkr8DkIP5JNJxGmD-InuOJGuLrUDvSn0rV3mmtjr2hMBBbXR76X38ZfsRw4-eOg30kE8nBmxawLj9tIYI/w640-h640/DSC00948.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Samurai, Hobart. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>All Our Shimmering Skies</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Trent Dalton</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I have no problem with a protagonist being a precocious child, but there is a point where precociousness becomes aggravating, and young Molly Hook hit that point for me early on. In part, this is because I did not believe in her. Given the trauma and neglect of her upbringing - told in unyieldingly graphic detail - she is remarkably erudite and thoughtful. There is a difference between "taking a strength-based approach" to building a character and "taking the piss".</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In terms of other characters, Greta and Yukio were fine, albeit thinly sketched. My main issue concerns the construction of Aubrey. Dalton wants to have his cake and eat it when it comes to Molly's cruel uncle. Dalton frames Aubrey as evil personified, making some effort to explain how he came to be this way. We have many (many) pages expended on how the traumatising childhood of young Aubrey has programmed him with hate. Hate is repeatedly cited as his key motivation, yet we are to accept that spurned love triggers his actions that propel the book. Make up your mind! This jarred for me.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Mostly though, I found the treatment of the landscape – and we’re talking the awe-inspiring, gorgeous but deadly Kakadu – slight and incomplete. Given that our protagonists are on foot and alone in far north Australia in late February, they have an effortless time of it. How and where Molly learned so much bushcraft is not entirely explained, and her preternatural gifts did have me rolling my eyes on occasion.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The story's arc is solid, and there are plenty of thrills, near misses to keep you on your toes. Still, the shallow treatment of Yukio and Sam’s respective cultures had me cringing. One might have hoped that the editing phase would have corrected this course.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In summation, if cliched characterisation, anachronistic behaviours and whimsical, trite self-help-isms are your thing, this may well be the book for you. If not, best give it a miss.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-55991339328127089592021-08-29T06:00:00.009+10:002021-08-29T06:00:00.413+10:00"…in Queanbeyan, Helen Kalasoudas couldn’t break even; down in Mildura, Jim Melemenis got himself into trouble with the Italians; Mick Papacostas and his brothers were playing too much dice in Camperdown…"<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjqzbC1V0L6xGgJhSJJ58l9lMrVSNZUyvXsF3WoK8-9TK1LtygZbdJEfvX7kHCcQoC0S3TNcjSxzr36dlKI93m41QbXn5tXdfqbITcBa9lvLoO7m-YQPcbwnGwxoTozuSpLoj2kKMjY0/s5472/DSC00866.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3192" data-original-width="5472" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjqzbC1V0L6xGgJhSJJ58l9lMrVSNZUyvXsF3WoK8-9TK1LtygZbdJEfvX7kHCcQoC0S3TNcjSxzr36dlKI93m41QbXn5tXdfqbITcBa9lvLoO7m-YQPcbwnGwxoTozuSpLoj2kKMjY0/w640-h374/DSC00866.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Setting sun, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="color: #181818;"><b>Lucky's</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Andrew Pippos</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span id="freeTextreview4136650625" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><br />Another book that chooses to advance its story irregularly. Dynamically shifting timelines are so typical these days that I am unsure whether the word irregular fits anymore!<br /><br />We primarily dwell in 2002, where the unmoored Emily leaves her failing marriage in the UK to set about researching and writing a <i>New Yorker</i> article about the rise and fall of a now-defunct Australian chain of family restaurants, one that ended in a mass shooting. Shadowing this journey is the mystery of her long-dead father's interest in what seems to be nothing more than a little bit of trivia on the other side of the world.<br /><br />From here, we jump back first to 1944 for a while, then back twenty years previously as we get our heads around the Greek diaspora. Between zipping back and forth to 2002, we spend a bit of time in the 1940s and 1950s on the emergence of the <i>Lucky's</i> empire and dissolution of a marriage. Moreover, we have the mystery of Emily's father revealed (and reburied).<br /><br />It is odd that the mass shooting felt a little tacked on and somewhat immaterial to the core events of the piece. It feels like it should be more critical to the narrative. While the story's gravitational pull - from both past and present - builds in tension leading to the massacre in the early-1990s, I found it significantly less compelling than the present-day arc involving the titular character's run on <i>Wheel of Fortune</i>.<br /><br />I did enjoy the book's exploration of the lives of migrants (and the milk bar culture of the 50s and 60s) in the immediate post-war period. It would likely make for a colourful and engaging mini-series. Thumbs up, albeit slighter than I expected.<br /><br />⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> </span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-50306827494596953312021-08-27T06:00:00.013+10:002021-08-27T06:00:00.410+10:00“I laugh out loud at how wonderful life is that it takes a hell of a knock like that and it’s just fine, and I find the steadiness in myself...”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJh0BwoHaTZcmjRoC1prBkfV1bbb3R-YjuRqWOmQvMWV-QZc2myANkRD927rGTjJSdWEMzKsiEjJuQgJK39mJQTaIGth0Ec4TmZIP9KfSTr6IyLFx13DIKcVdISHVghJwze4Q370HHtzc/s4882/DSC00279.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3487" data-original-width="4882" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJh0BwoHaTZcmjRoC1prBkfV1bbb3R-YjuRqWOmQvMWV-QZc2myANkRD927rGTjJSdWEMzKsiEjJuQgJK39mJQTaIGth0Ec4TmZIP9KfSTr6IyLFx13DIKcVdISHVghJwze4Q370HHtzc/w640-h458/DSC00279.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Starlings, Lindisfarne. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>All the Birds, Singing</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Evie Wyld</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">As an oddly structured novel, the book features alternating chapters from the perspective of our narrator's present (told in the past tense) and her past (told in the present tense). Those chapters set in the present progress in an even and linear fashion. Those chapters set in the past hop and leap backwards in a disconnected and disjointed way. While this is an innovative way to capture our protagonist's haphazard and traumatic past, the fragmented nature of the telling is confusing at times.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">There is some evocative writing here, with those sections set on the remote sheep station and in the present particularly resonant. Other sections failed to convince, with the strange relationship with the withered Otto and the period of sex work in a port town in the Pilbara striking a bit of a dull note to my ear.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">We know very little about our central character, as Wyld lets the past emerge in fragments and half-light. The one constant is a woman carrying a load, traumatised by something (or someone) and choosing self-isolation as her defence. I appreciated how the relationship emerges with the similarly damaged Lloyd, which emerges in the present in a natural and hopeful fashion. This gives the entire piece some possibility of light and redemption amidst the dark and desolate surroundings.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-68422968227020906872021-08-25T06:00:00.017+10:002021-08-25T06:00:00.417+10:00"...because when you know people all your life you try to understand how it is for them. What you can't understand you just accept."<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuuXwWCH46TakR-f6uFtUpygT9QjetktMxb54VGPyIYOwbF57KECthWyJ7kgLmbND_HNiQBRoV6AdRXT0GknBKkMblMbiVunRlhgUQYnm2PdGYym6q_ttuU9GqTgu1iPScSNB-X-qnrcg/s5396/DSC00277.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1799" data-original-width="5396" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuuXwWCH46TakR-f6uFtUpygT9QjetktMxb54VGPyIYOwbF57KECthWyJ7kgLmbND_HNiQBRoV6AdRXT0GknBKkMblMbiVunRlhgUQYnm2PdGYym6q_ttuU9GqTgu1iPScSNB-X-qnrcg/w640-h214/DSC00277.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Pipes, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><b>The Tie That Binds</b></i> by Kent Haruf</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Despite the arduous and grim lives of the characters within, <i>The Tie That Binds </i>is an extremely gentle novel. There is an ease with which Haruf's prose emerges on the page, a plain-speaking directness that carries significant emotional heft.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Covering 80 years, the novel is a slow burner that starts at the ending, whips back around to the beginning and meanders across a lifetime of (largely) sadness, missed opportunity and resignation to a life suffocated by a hateful and bitter man.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Told in snippets of memories and assumed events, the book bears an elegant sense of time and place rarely seen. The town of Holt, Colorado, is a small but exquisitely realised world. It saddens me to think that Haruf's oeuvre only stretched to six novels, but I am looking forward to reading the four that I haven't read.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-83427684166923277512021-08-23T06:00:00.013+10:002021-08-23T06:00:00.381+10:00""The place where a part connects is specially prepared with a housing, a thread or a flange. One true surface against another. It’s not possible for the parts of the body to fit together like this. There’s skin and there’s the flesh under it. The flesh, the meat of the body, isn’t stable. There are three lines cut into the middle of father man’s belt.<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSYuwMbjz3z3b34WN1ELXBDZ3df8nL6YUps2fxpMqysFziBfpK-feegdAr6TRuQ96V6TLLcy-HfqLTN3TzWECK1dOxDwZQe06KnLGVrO65fDnMTc3zFO6g_wtbc0NfdqQ4Z8XC31EuQpk/s5472/DSC00086.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSYuwMbjz3z3b34WN1ELXBDZ3df8nL6YUps2fxpMqysFziBfpK-feegdAr6TRuQ96V6TLLcy-HfqLTN3TzWECK1dOxDwZQe06KnLGVrO65fDnMTc3zFO6g_wtbc0NfdqQ4Z8XC31EuQpk/w640-h426/DSC00086.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Droplets on a leaf, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><table border="0" cellspacing="1" class="myActivity" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; table-layout: fixed; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="readable reviewText" style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Exploded View</b> </i>by Carrie Tiffany<br /><br />Hmmm. Perhaps the fact that cars are quite possibly the least interesting things that I can imagine explains my coolness to this one. It's a bleak and sombre book, but I never quite believed it. The novel progresses through what is essentially one unbroken stream of consciousness from the mind of a young girl.<br /><br />Our narrator - dealing with significant neglect and abuse - struck me as too uneven to fully accept as authentic. This may well be due to her use of a Holden car manual to process her trauma. Still, there is an incongruity to her singular prescience, acumen and utter lack of agency that struck me as unconvincing.<br /><br />There is an implausibility to the car journey that serves as the centre point of the story, which is not helped by the feeling that the author gave up on it a third of the way through. I found the entire thing uneven and frustrating, which is disappointing as there are moments of great writing.<br /><br />⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-41047552541068082502021-08-21T06:00:00.012+10:002021-08-21T06:00:00.482+10:00“Someone can decide it’s in their best interests to agree to something, but a choice is only really a choice if there’s a genuine alternative. Otherwise it’s manipulation and it’s taking advantage.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWzJ5uqosD6frcFRILYNgfDMWrfZyZffyG2a7ar8JvjzVi1aevYex8EVvhiIdW3owgd1sYtV13wNv51yn86Jp6F_iHPPzdWvlpwBDvGfTTcUmVTDDVpwYctEERDWAhhDXYKUmcGodA6BE/s5472/DSC00249.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWzJ5uqosD6frcFRILYNgfDMWrfZyZffyG2a7ar8JvjzVi1aevYex8EVvhiIdW3owgd1sYtV13wNv51yn86Jp6F_iHPPzdWvlpwBDvGfTTcUmVTDDVpwYctEERDWAhhDXYKUmcGodA6BE/w640-h426/DSC00249.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Blue sky and power lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>The Lost Man</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Jane Harper</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A slow-burn mystery set in the hot and dry southwest of Queensland (the bit that is closer to Adelaide than Brisbane), I enjoyed </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The Lost Man</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> a lot. While it is something of a murder mystery, the story isn't driven by a police investigation. It progresses through the examination of the intergenerational trauma of one dysfunctional farming family.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">More exploration of how brutalised Australian men deal with such trauma than boilerplate mystery, Harper adroitly captures the harsh landscape that centres the whole work. It is a strong addition to her previous books and continues the shift towards a more nuanced understanding of masculinity and loneliness in Australian settings.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Well worth your time.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-69016283552527484672021-08-19T06:00:00.016+10:002021-08-19T06:00:00.446+10:00“Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7BIPf3MI7NmbzsKQaTQYhovX2OX4S_tJ3q65aMbC7WnXEBSSazR3zu559w2IcWibvW-n7daQYeY_lmGhoJVDlUoWu4EJPhLhMpZvDasU6WGa7r1NLsORuDJrizaU3v2cou4bUUopr-k8/s4378/DSC00593.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3127" data-original-width="4378" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7BIPf3MI7NmbzsKQaTQYhovX2OX4S_tJ3q65aMbC7WnXEBSSazR3zu559w2IcWibvW-n7daQYeY_lmGhoJVDlUoWu4EJPhLhMpZvDasU6WGa7r1NLsORuDJrizaU3v2cou4bUUopr-k8/w640-h458/DSC00593.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Self-portrait, Hobart. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>Song of Solomon</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Toni Morrison</span></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A strange mix of genres that touches on the metaphysical without fully entering the world of magical realism. I suspect that I may have missed some of the nuances of the narrative because of my lack of familiarity with African folklore or the oral biblical tradition, so any confusion as to what was going on at times is entirely on me.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Still, it is a deeply moving and affecting work, with a feeling of real sorrow at its heart and a range of fascinating and frustrating characters that will remain vivid long in my mind.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-38923168917236764852021-08-17T06:00:00.002+10:002021-08-17T06:00:00.451+10:00“Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left.”<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb2jX-3_GVDr1L4zDdqZ8_AhTDa0RYxfRJvZQawMUYXMaKwXIAfPrYM50XJFq49EIyrmey-GOqF9M2fdfoXFek0jFsZQmaa2Ar86wSTWo8xhhvldDlxwWk0fn8Rj1EQ_d6CC5O_ZzbyJc/s5262/DSC00790.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3508" data-original-width="5262" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb2jX-3_GVDr1L4zDdqZ8_AhTDa0RYxfRJvZQawMUYXMaKwXIAfPrYM50XJFq49EIyrmey-GOqF9M2fdfoXFek0jFsZQmaa2Ar86wSTWo8xhhvldDlxwWk0fn8Rj1EQ_d6CC5O_ZzbyJc/w640-h426/DSC00790.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Power in the lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>Wanderers</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Chuck Wendig</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">This is a long and intricate book with a huge cast of characters, every one of them annoying and flawed in their own special way. Just like real life! With this, a mysterious illness arises and stalks across the fractured United States in the midst of an election that pits a career politician (who happens to be a capable but cold and aloof woman) against a reckless and obnoxious billionaire with some decidedly nefarious allies.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Yes, the parallels are stark and Wendig is not shy of sharing his thoughts on the matter. The centrepiece of the novel is the emergence of a sleepwalking illness that causes a (seemingly) random group of people to zone out and hit the road, walking with some kind of predetermined destination unknown to all. If you try and stop them, they explode (generally killing anyone nearby). Very messy.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The beginning of the book introduces the sullen and irritable teenager Shana, who wakes up one morning to discover her younger sister is patient zero with the sleeping sickness. Shana's peevishness stems from a detached father and mother who took of mysteriously a few years earlier. I never quite warmed to Shana, but this wasn't enough to put me off the book.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">At 800 pages, I will not waste your time on a detailed outline. Suffice to say that the CDC is called in, a maverick scientist takes up the challenge of solving the puzzle of the sleepwalkers and pretty soon we have an evolved artificial intelligence supercomputer, a weak and vain preacher being manipulated by a powerful group of white supremacists, a raging pandemic destined to kill most of the world's population and an ageing rock god struggling with a secret and desire to find some meaning in the worship that he craves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Sure, it's too long and a little bit "by-the-numbers", but it proceeds with gusto in an engaging style and some of the curveballs thrown in are really fascinating (not to mention cool). There's a bit too much standing around, and while I'm all in favour of flawed, rounded characters, they don't </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">all</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> have to be such pricks.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">There is a general passivity to the whole thing which - while fitting the metaphor of sleepwalking into destruction - belies the importance of saving everybody on the planet. Perhaps the fact that the author's politics aligned well with mine (I won't complain about maligning hypocritical right-wing Christians and racists) kept me going, but all up I'm erring on the generous side.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-73430030893627097182021-08-15T06:00:00.013+10:002021-08-15T06:00:00.466+10:00Auhl sensed a busy, populated landscape even though he’d barely seen or heard anyone yet. He listened, and presently followed a rattly snore to a bedroom midway along the hallway.""<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5HcfHK71yeszeieibU3nCewMlQA24l_fXYJ1Bd3muzMJEHDf0IlTVe-NVgpnb_043M9ulYBEaI-ggW8jlujW_rmDv3diXFVc3-DVNfWWu_7aoXwAdWbcRASZic7-dkoRpFt1ADHcTVQ/s5472/DSC00731.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5HcfHK71yeszeieibU3nCewMlQA24l_fXYJ1Bd3muzMJEHDf0IlTVe-NVgpnb_043M9ulYBEaI-ggW8jlujW_rmDv3diXFVc3-DVNfWWu_7aoXwAdWbcRASZic7-dkoRpFt1ADHcTVQ/w640-h426/DSC00731.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Broken bottles, Geilston Bay. August 2021.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><table border="0" cellspacing="1" class="myActivity" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; table-layout: fixed; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="readable reviewText" style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Under the Cold Bright Lights</i> </b>by Garry Disher<br /><br />This is the first book that I've read by the prolific Australian crime write Garry Disher, and I am confident that it won't be the last. It's an interesting take on the modern police procedural, introducing Detective Alan Auhl, an old-timer back in the job after a few years away.<br /><br />Auhl has been roped into the cold case unit, finding himself surrounded by a younger group who aren't that excited to be sharing an office with an old-timer. He's a likeable chap with a tendency to drift through life, as exhibited by a rather bohemian home life and dissatisfaction with the system failures that lead to too many bad men getting away with crimes against women.<br /><br />We have several puzzling murders to solve against this backdrop, each progressing on multiple fronts and Auhl getting involved in a decidedly irregular fashion. These deviations from the usual tropes keep this one engaging all way through to a satisfying conclusion.<br /><br />⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-13777763733456914002021-08-14T06:00:00.014+10:002021-08-14T06:00:00.442+10:00“The lie was one they - children, doctors, nurses - all encourage. The lie was that postponing death was life. That wicked lie had now imprisoned Francie in a solitude more absolute and perfect and terrifying than any prison cell.”<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGMMOFju4ya1K7qS7j9h0UsnvGqK305u5wI3-mowoamyyY5_gzrahggnYu83_Z4FDNE7d-mYEAk734-OjcvODFVahEOOq6dmy4YWa-64yxjxM0zoEpxEOa3yiaI_uul3ju-R-UTRn3Fk/s4589/DSC00079.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3278" data-original-width="4589" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGMMOFju4ya1K7qS7j9h0UsnvGqK305u5wI3-mowoamyyY5_gzrahggnYu83_Z4FDNE7d-mYEAk734-OjcvODFVahEOOq6dmy4YWa-64yxjxM0zoEpxEOa3yiaI_uul3ju-R-UTRn3Fk/w640-h458/DSC00079.jpg" title="Flower in the rain, Geilston Bay, August 2021." width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><p><i style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Living Sea of Waking Dreams</i><b> by Richard Flanagan</b></p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I have so many questions. What is Richard Flanagan trying to say here? What was with the colossal pivot about halfway through the book? Is it a book about dying? Or is it about Mental illness? Am I taking things more literally than is good for me? Perhaps the biggest question is, is Richard Flanagan okay?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">One of the treats of living at the arse-end of the world and fancying myself as the rugged outdoorsy type (land and sea) is that I occasionally bump into Richard Flanagan. Now, he wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, but I have shared pleasantries on more than one occasion on some matter or another.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It's going to be very hard not to ask him what this book is all about the next time I bump into the bloke.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I recall most vividly the awful Tasmanian bushfires of 2006, 2013, 2016 and the terrible fires in January and October 2019. I also remember the trauma of the seemingly eternal fires blighting the big island above and share the frustration of the political class in this country to take the profound implications of climate change and the ongoing collapse of our ecosystems seriously, so I get it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Yet... I find myself looking for metaphors that perhaps aren't there. I really should be content in my determination that it's a desperate and furious scream into the void and that I needn't fuss over deeper meaning.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">In the damaged siblings denying the reality of the death of their mother, I felt on reasonably sure ground until body parts started disappearing. Not amputations, but 'vanishings', while the story keeps on chugging along (or veers off wildly into the scrub, to mix my metaphors).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Perhaps it's me, not you, Richard. I've always struggled with magical realism (although I loved </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Gould's Book of Fish</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">. As you'd expect from the Booker winner, there's some lovely writing here, but the despair got me down, and the fragmented nature of the telling did not help.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></span><p></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-13473835358544671202021-08-04T06:00:00.015+10:002021-08-04T06:00:00.375+10:00“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhzalQHgQwLP4bQE7_D_oLeyYycYF7Giuf1Hdqg_cyFsqyJSoV6iG9ErXXWkC1eK2N5gIEtDucycyoj_TBRXyIjoIbcLaTCm-4mc6Eb_JPhXwTLBZexbVezRgyF4NEu9nMom3aZR8Uzrs/s5439/DSC09639.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3173" data-original-width="5439" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhzalQHgQwLP4bQE7_D_oLeyYycYF7Giuf1Hdqg_cyFsqyJSoV6iG9ErXXWkC1eK2N5gIEtDucycyoj_TBRXyIjoIbcLaTCm-4mc6Eb_JPhXwTLBZexbVezRgyF4NEu9nMom3aZR8Uzrs/w640-h374/DSC09639.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Jen looks out to sea. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>Catch-22</b> </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">by Joseph Heller</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Catch-22</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> is one of the rare books that I have returned to and re-read several times throughout my life. The first time was as a young and impressionable 17-year-old, and I delighted in the confidence Heller displayed in flourishing his love of language and deployment of marvellous words. After reading the novel, I am sure that I was willing to open up and use the full vocabulary available to me under the English language (and a few others to boot). It was darkly funny, and I took delight in the absurd wordplay and ingenious structure.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The second time I read it, I was in my mid-20s and neck-deep working in a large, bureaucratic institution (a university). The complexities and absurdities that didn't strike me during my first read suddenly had more resonance. I came to appreciate the author's skill and cunning in replaying the same incidents repeatedly and the art beneath the nonsense. It struck me as a more sombre book, and the idiocy of events seemed more clownish than before.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The third time around, I'm in my thirties and have a couple of babies about the house. That might explain why I can't quite recall much about it because I was likely so very, very tired. Still, the violence - particularly the casual and sexual nature to it - hit harder, and I think that I finally could connect the flippancy around rape with the ever-present nearness of death. The fear was more palpable than earlier readings.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">This time around, I am wearied by nearly a decade in a bureaucracy even larger than a university (a state government). I'm also the father of a couple of teenage boys. I still love the book, perhaps even more than before. I am likely more attuned to some of the details than earlier and am a little less inclined towards that ornamentation of language than previously. I have a decade more of reading that I'd like to think has sharpened my tastes. Overwhelming though, the laughs aside, it strikes me as a far more melancholic novel than it did in my youth.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Despite everything that happens, the existential anguish of Yossarian's plight had not struck me with the force it did this time around. I feel the agony of the chaplain, the torment of poor old Major Major Major Major and Chief White Halfoat's sorrow affected me far deeper than previous readings.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Similarly, the innate heroism of Orr stands out in a way that I'd not noticed before. From this vantage point, Doc Daneeka becomes a far darker figure and Cathcart and Corn have faces to them now quite different to I'd experienced prior to my time in Weber's </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">stahlhartes Gehäuse</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Then we have Snowden. Poor Snowden. Snowden was always tragic, but this time around the death of Snowden hit in a profoundly different way that helps me understand Yossarian's dread in a far more intense way than before. Clevinger remains Clevinger, but by golly, this time around, I finally started to feel sorry for the poor bastard!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">All up. I love this book. I don't do "favourites" but if you're holding a gun to my head this is on the shortlist in the rolladex in my head. It is such a funny, dark, mournful, bitter, bleak, optimistic, tender, jagged work in ways so original that it defies easy categorisation.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I can't wait to read it again in my fifties.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ (Six stars you say? That's because of the catch. You know which catch.)</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-86454115568069924212021-08-03T06:00:00.002+10:002021-08-03T06:00:00.366+10:00“Generations of men are frustrated, angry and ashamed that, despite following the rules - and despite sacrificing the tender, emotionally connected boys inside of them - they're not getting what was promised to them.”<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXtaLjmva5tlft2cLovRMuSHv63BPEH4p1jp42HL4G_ANJQCGXTqTe9DFkJkQZuv3qSxo17VL88CWD6ANvGDJBwziEzsS-yyLnTu2gRZGdn-D6mCDHCtuweIVX_QXqr_N6HhyphenhyphenFmPV-kVg/s5472/DSC09610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXtaLjmva5tlft2cLovRMuSHv63BPEH4p1jp42HL4G_ANJQCGXTqTe9DFkJkQZuv3qSxo17VL88CWD6ANvGDJBwziEzsS-yyLnTu2gRZGdn-D6mCDHCtuweIVX_QXqr_N6HhyphenhyphenFmPV-kVg/w640-h426/DSC09610.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ezra up a tree. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.</span></i><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><b>See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence</b></i> by Jess Hill </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span id="freeTextreview4081567865" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">A bleak insight into the history, culture and laws around familial violence in Australia. The book offers a broad sweep of the movement Hill identifies as a "historic shift in power and accountability" in which "the Western world [has] finally started taking men’s violence against women seriously". The full truth of the latter half of this statement remains still to be seen.<br /><br />Unlike the dry government reports and inquiries cited throughout the work, Hill gets behind the simple facts and figures (although there are plenty of these too) to give the reader a real visceral sense of the terror, abuse and personal and institutional failures behind the dreadful data.<br /><br />It's not perfect, and I scratched my head at times in which she defers to various authorities and takes assertions at face value (telling rather than showing), but it largely doesn't detract from the whole. There is a tendency to simplify the very complex forces at work (it seems to posit a unified feminist position on psychoanalytic and psychological approaches to shame in relation to violence), but perhaps this is unavoidable if you're trying to appeal to a broad audience.<br /><br />All up, a worthy addition to the literature and a great primer on the issues.<br /><br />⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> </span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-76473905946790398102021-07-31T06:00:00.001+10:002021-07-31T06:00:00.378+10:00"He licks them, from the toes, along the shoe, and to its heel."<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCe_cT2TCDI6N4qZ7EMdMhdZebNmZt0_V-cZxL9FnhxzaV3Gw4y9-WTzehd7aZ1H2NIPd_VOGb7FMl9cxGP22nzWQ9szjkL5gR9PidWqN4djKq0d0X5IYIDXIYKvW-5YyjC3Cl9Vk6Y3s/s5443/DSC09520.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3629" data-original-width="5443" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCe_cT2TCDI6N4qZ7EMdMhdZebNmZt0_V-cZxL9FnhxzaV3Gw4y9-WTzehd7aZ1H2NIPd_VOGb7FMl9cxGP22nzWQ9szjkL5gR9PidWqN4djKq0d0X5IYIDXIYKvW-5YyjC3Cl9Vk6Y3s/w640-h426/DSC09520.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Tree and sea. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>Pen 33</b></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> by Anders Roslund</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Phew. This book does not scrimp on graphic details regarding the nastier side of child rape, murder and the brutal realities of senseless vengeance. Let me say that if you are a little squeamish about the inner workings of a deranged rapist and murderer, or indeed the intricacies of killing or autopsies, I would recommend skipping this one.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">If not, then this is an effective exploration of concepts like redemption, punishment and justice in modern Sweden. While gratuitous at times and improbable at others, it effectively explores the real complexities of some of these key themes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The novel is something of an endurance test, with very few upbeat scraps thrown to the reader along the way. All up, I think that it has merit as part of the long line of social realism via crime fiction that emerged from the work of Sjöwall and Wahlöö.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-48771406699797641702021-07-30T06:00:00.003+10:002021-07-30T06:00:00.406+10:00"One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk."<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho39b4PMjy5CCKPD3eNsQf3RXLXIEtHabO80lvhyphenhyphenWy6E2b-PSa7Hb23AO_22Q7m10RtAN1-ojdCKeap6QbkAefLbHfX7S-_sdwSxB38G4ShV6vpNNFcoVa9THhhCIjckbPFihBXs83LNo/s5472/DSC09511.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3192" data-original-width="5472" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho39b4PMjy5CCKPD3eNsQf3RXLXIEtHabO80lvhyphenhyphenWy6E2b-PSa7Hb23AO_22Q7m10RtAN1-ojdCKeap6QbkAefLbHfX7S-_sdwSxB38G4ShV6vpNNFcoVa9THhhCIjckbPFihBXs83LNo/w640-h374/DSC09511.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>On the rocks. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.</i></span><p></p><table border="0" cellspacing="1" class="myActivity" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; table-layout: fixed; width: 100%px;"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="readable reviewText" style="line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Ridgeline</b></i> by Michael Punke<br /><br />Richly evocative and deeply effective, <i>Ridgeline</i> offers a sensitive rendering of the destructive mythos of American exceptionalism and the 'settling' of the west. The novel roots itself in real events. In shifting from the perspective of the uneasy Oglala brave Crazy Horse and the lonely isolated wife of an impetuous and capricious cavalry officer, the book resists the tendency of centralising the experience of white male soldiers and settlers.<br /><br />I am not one too concerned with essentialising the gender or ethnicity of an author when it comes to telling stories, and I am certain that there will be some that may choose to question Punke's right to tell these stories. However, this is a well-researched and empathetic rendering. If not able to rectify the great crimes done to the first peoples of North America, it at least recognises the dignity of a people so often reduced to crude caricature.<br /><br />That's not to say that the book is simply a worthy gesture to reconciliation. It's an exciting and masterful tale of suspense, turmoil, survival and destruction all in one. I found the narrative flew by, and although we know how the (broader) tale is going to end - although I knew nothing of the immediate events described in the novel - I was gripped the whole way through.<br /><br />⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-68014756477043585022021-07-28T06:00:00.013+10:002021-07-28T06:00:00.431+10:00‘If we can wash this black off, might be hope for you yet,’ her great-grandmother would say, on every occasion.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6YK3RJf-lmUITKVdRbYeR0aN_6CK4YZL7w0b38jx4o6EsQDLbTxP-n_pU_ntrJ705oA4i0PnylfFwoXScp0wZRy6o5cPKGTZIj9ngL3phXGFBHPJZA4KYfRHR6GtcVWQNWTkEu49BZM/s3999/_7010016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2333" data-original-width="3999" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6YK3RJf-lmUITKVdRbYeR0aN_6CK4YZL7w0b38jx4o6EsQDLbTxP-n_pU_ntrJ705oA4i0PnylfFwoXScp0wZRy6o5cPKGTZIj9ngL3phXGFBHPJZA4KYfRHR6GtcVWQNWTkEu49BZM/w640-h374/_7010016.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i> Jen wades in. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires/ larapuna. July 2021.</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><b><i>Born Into This</i></b> by Adam Thompson</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Published stories from a Tasmanian palawa (Aboriginal) perspective are sadly few and far between, but Adam Thompson's debut collection, I hope, will start something of a correction to that. Startingly authentic and brutally honest - I grew up and continue to know people who are very much these characters - I can't wait to see what will come next.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2</span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2152399175276461352.post-46014662214526785562021-07-27T06:00:00.002+10:002021-07-27T06:00:00.419+10:00“For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.”<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6BREnJ1fio6JIHk-Syl1iaqmdc7b4i4kZNR7e0i286YsB-VG-EYFNSl09hMl0ptkbbXko9j8urWz_p0Gkp_4A9ZOMqXAkMXY_SzYLX-akoKsb30jDrvTbfoKgqH4y6BCeYF3VIPuy0w/s5441/DSC08567.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3174" data-original-width="5441" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj6BREnJ1fio6JIHk-Syl1iaqmdc7b4i4kZNR7e0i286YsB-VG-EYFNSl09hMl0ptkbbXko9j8urWz_p0Gkp_4A9ZOMqXAkMXY_SzYLX-akoKsb30jDrvTbfoKgqH4y6BCeYF3VIPuy0w/w640-h374/DSC08567.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>Ezra and Henry hanging about, Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><b>Fever Pitch</b></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> by Nick Hornby</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">It is always interesting to read a memoir that reflects on the changes and passing of a very different time, written in the immediate afterwards. Much has changed in English, and world football culture since </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Fever Pitch</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> was published.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I wonder what Hornby makes of the consequences of enforced seating, the formation of the Premier League and the fracturing of the working class and subsequent dominance of money and middle-class casual fans. Perhaps in the same way, as the book ends in his own settling down and tempering of his fandom, he welcomed the gentrification of the game (but I doubt it).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Anyway, it was a fine diversion from far heavier works.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Born Into This</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> by Adam Thompson</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Published stories from a Tasmanian palawa (Aboriginal) perspective are sadly few and far between, but Adam Thompson's debut collection, I hope, will start something of a correction to that. Startingly authentic and brutally honest - I grew up and continue to know people who are very much these characters - I can't wait to see what will come next.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐</span></span></p>Kris McCrackenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13789355638389350528noreply@blogger.com0