Throughout the book, and deftly woven into the narrative structure, Winton poses a number of serious questions. Why are we drawn to the sea, and what is its importance to us? How, in Australia, is the psychological importance of the sea shaped by the predominance of desert? What is our responsibility towards the sea as it changes? How is the sea’s danger to humans—its wild untameability, part of the way we relate to it?
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of A Family Matter by Will Eisner
Will Eisner was still working very much at the top of his game when he wrote and drew this comic, which was originally published in 1998, when he had just turned 80. With a deft, masterly touch he conveys character and compels the story forward too; all at once.
Childhood, Family, School, and Personal Will: David Mitchell’s novel Black Swan Green
In Black Swan Green Jason realizes that he contains different personalities but can, through his choices, through facing the truth and taking a stand, determine what his own fundamental character will be.
A review of What happened to Joseph? by T.A.G. Hungerford
Working through the almost intensely Australia flora and fauna are memory, nostalgia, mateship, war and its aftermath – the civilian life that follows, and hope. There are poems and stories that simultaneously celebrate and mourn the aging process, poems and stories that look at the nature of relationships, love, the kind of hate that leads to war and genocide, loss, and the alienation that sits in all of our hearts – between civilisation and our rough animal natures.
A review of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
My enjoyment of the literary feel of the book and the tension – drew me in and carried me to about a third in, when the plot began to sag with repetition and sameness. It was then I noticed the Atwood literary formula, ie never use one metaphor when two or three will do, in the same paragraph.
A review of The Grease Monkey’s Tale by Paul Burman
There’s no easy solution or happy ending. Instead there are motifs and stories that lead to other stories and characters that are built upon other characters. The ultimate journey here isn’t to a clean truth – there’s no such thing in The Grease Monkey’s Tale. Instead we end up with the strong sense that everything is story – that life itself between the pages or beyond the book is just another story: “the sound of riverbed pebbles chattering and grinding against the hushing of fast water. Hypnotic.”
A review of Mine-Haha, or, On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by Frank Wedekind
Wedekind well knows that extreme emotion represents a danger to its possessor as well as to those around him or her. It can easily be converted into (self) destructive rage. His characters in these two stories are respectively a convict and a prostitute, hence he’s not averse either to embracing the downtrodden and the wretched.
A review of Little Pieces: This Side of Japan by Michael Hoffman
That said and frankly acknowledged as a personal response, Hoffman has style and ingenuity that goes far towards compensating for the ubiquity of ghostly stuff. This book is part of the body of work from a distinguished author who deserves all the rewards of excellence. You will not go wrong to read it.
A review of Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Jasper Jones remains a nobody – the silent, disappearing hero in Charlie’s life, but he is also heroic – the catalyst to change and growth. Although there are dark edges to Jasper Jones, this is a wonderful, beautifully written, positive story of personal transformation which lingers with the reader.
A review of Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott
We all of us choose what we do with our lives from a finite set of alternatives; and for Theo, in his darkest moments at any rate, love is not on the menu: ‘If I could love I would have loved by now.’ Happy Baby is about a person for whom love, as a possibility, has been taken away. It isn’t any kind of answer, it cannot be.