Although the characters are often interesting, and believable, it is the feeling of being exposed to the actual life of the period that was the best aspect of the book for me. We see all the parlor games that were played on a visit to neighbors. We see how people were cheated by sharp characters at the town market.
Tag: fiction
A review of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Yes, it’s a great Australian novel, full of people and places that are both inherently part of their time and true to that space. Above all though, what elevates this book from a cracking good yarn to something that is great, is the magic. The book is rife with magic, so purely woven into the story you might miss it on a first reading. It’s a magic that comes straight from a love of humanity – a generous, funny magic that picks up on all that is truly beautiful, even amidst our flaws.
A review of If You Go Into the Woods by David Gaughran
If You Go Into the Woods is probably not best suited to readers who prefer their stories neatly boxed with all the answers lined up. But for those readers who, like me, love punchy, entertaining reads with a bit of mental gymnastics thrown in, you can’t go wrong with this one.
A review of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels
What makes this a fun collection to read is the mode of writing in the same style as those early horror tales with formal language and settings built as if they existed in the netherworld. These are stories where everyone seems to whisper and creep, except they aren’t very predictable.
A review of Five Bells by Gail Jones
This is a novel that, like Slessor’s poem, explores time, and the way in which it flows between and across character. When Ellie, James, and their pivotal teacher Miss Morrison learn about the Clepsydra – the Chinese clock that consists of vessels that leak time, Ellie and James are excited. Time is a process “of emptying and filling, a fluent time-passing, not one chopped into pieces.”
A review of According to Luke by Rosanne Dingli
It isn’t just the natural world that is richly described, but also the iconic places that the characters visit, from the Saydnaya convent in Damascus to the Rabat Priory in Malta, along with the many paintings and sculptures, all described with the kind of meticulous detail that helps the reader sympathise with the love that Jana has for the places and work.
A review of How to Survive a Natural Disaster by Margaret Hawkins
How to Survive a Natural Disaster is, in turns, a disturbing and very funny novel of frailty, change, and a kind of survival. Each of the characters makes multiple transformations, both internal and external, that move between appearance and the reality underneath. Artifices come and go and finally disappear by the book’s end.
A review of The End of the World—A Tale of Life, Death and the Space In Between by Andrew Biss
While it’s unlikely anyone could possibly write something new on this subject, what Biss has done with The End of the World is to create characters who express various viewpoints on what I assume Biss sees as the most noteworthy issues affecting our species, and rather than give us the answers—which, of course, he doesn’t have—encourages us to chew on these questions for ourselves. In this he has succeeded.
A review of Buffalo Unbound by Laura Pedersen
Through her nostalgic but realistic lens, readers may find themselves looking at their own hometowns in a new way—one that is not the idyllic memory of childhood, but more true to life, warts and all. It is clear that Pedersen makes no apologies for Buffalo’s hardscrabble past, but instead chooses to celebrate the unique spirit and character of her hometown.
A review of Chung Kuo 1: Son Of Heaven by David Wingrove
This book is brutal and unforgiving. The author is not afraid to graphically depict the consequences of violence, he is not afraid to introduce you to a lovable character and kill them off later in the story, and he is not afraid to let the characters become increasingly unhinged and desperate. He uses gritty dialogue, gritty events and gritty locations to depict a world in the throes of the greatest change it has ever seen. And all these things are just right for a story such as this one.