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214
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| unknown
| 3.94
| 374
| Jan 1997
| Dec 14, 2012
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it was amazing
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5★ “She lived on the seventeenth floor. Sometime after four [a.m.] she went out a high window. She swung out past the sidewalk and landed in the street 5★ “She lived on the seventeenth floor. Sometime after four [a.m.] she went out a high window. She swung out past the sidewalk and landed in the street, a few feet from the curb, touching down between a couple of parked cars.” She’s Paula, a somewhat flaky young waitress in a bar. She’s not a very good waitress, mixes up orders and has a drug habit that shows sometimes, but she always smiles and greets customers by name. “Her greeting always made you feel you’d come home. When that’s all the home you have, you tend to appreciate that sort of thing. And if her career wasn’t perfect for her, well it certainly hadn’t been what she had in mind when she came to New York in the first place. You no more set out to be a waitress in a Ninth Avenue gin mill than you intentionally become an ex-cop, coasting through the months on bourbon and coffee.” Block’s narration of his own story is perfect. Scudder is a wry, world-weary drinker who is surprised to be stirred awake when Paula’s sister approaches him to find out why Paula is dead. She is positive it isn’t suicide. I completely enjoyed the story and the author’s narration. I’m pretty sure I’ll be hearing his voice in my mind when I read something else by him. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 24, 2024
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Jul 24, 2024
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Jul 24, 2024
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Audiobook
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202
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| 0698167902
| 9780698167902
| B01IAUG7CG
| 4.29
| 5,281
| Apr 04, 2017
| Apr 04, 2017
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it was amazing
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5★ “ Monday, 13 September 1813, the hours before dawn The boy hated this part. Hated the eerie way the pale, waxen faces of the dead seemed to glow in t 5★ “ Monday, 13 September 1813, the hours before dawn The boy hated this part. Hated the eerie way the pale, waxen faces of the dead seemed to glow in the faintest moonlight. Hated being left alone with a stiffening body while he dug its grave.” That’s the opening of Chapter One, and I think this is a good place to insert a trigger warning or content warning for child abuse. Anyone who has read Charles Dickens is aware of what life was like in England for many children, although he was born only one year before this story takes place. Judging by the hard times his young characters struggle with, I suspect things hadn’t improved much. The difference is, I don’t recall Dickens being quite so graphic about the sorts of evil that men were doing to small boys and girls who often had nobody who missed them, other than each other. The boy’s digging has been interrupted, and his body has been identified as Benji Thatcher, whose mother was transported to the colonies, leaving him and his little sister alone, crying on the docks. “ ‘Scheduled to hang at first, she was. But the sentence was commuted to seven years’ transportation at the end of the sessions. She begged ’em to let her take the children with her—didn’t have no family hereabouts t’ leave ’em with. But the magistrates wouldn’t do it. Said Benji and Sybil was old enough to fend fer themselves.’ The constable shook his head. ‘Sybil was five at the time. How was she supposed to fend fer herself?’” Because of these small kids, this is a more difficult story to read than most of the previous books in the series. Difficult but excellent. It also crosses over between Sebastian’s campaign against evil men and Hero’s campaign for justice for women and children. Sebastian suffers from nightmares about the bloody war he fought and feels compelled to atone for whatever he did or whatever he thinks he could have prevented. This gives him extra incentive to investigate murders of the innocent who were not casualties of war but who were considered an expendable inconvenience to someone. Now with a baby boy, he feels an even stronger need to protect children from the evil he knows is prowling the streets. He has survived many attacks on his life but has probably never actually realised how hard it has been for Hero and others who love him to know that he will continue to put himself in harm’s way to save others – something he feels he failed to do in the war. Hero has been interviewing street urchins and their families – of those who have a family – in her research for articles she has been writing about the poor in London. In previous stories, we’ve heard how children learn to earn pennies here and there, beg, and steal. But mostly, we know they starve and freeze. Paul Gibson, Sebastian’s one-legged surgeon friend and fellow former soldier, performs autopsies for the police and for himself on stolen bodies – when he’s not completely wiped out by his opium addiction that is. His addiction gets worse as his pain gets worse. When he is lucid and alert, he explains exactly what Benji suffered and what was obviously done to him on purpose. The practices of the Marquis de Sade come into it, and I expect most readers are aware that the word “sadist” comes from his name. Sebastian’s investigations take him to people who fence goods that children steal, places where children hang around, looking for a likely target for a handkerchief or pocket watch, and the whorehouses where men with extreme tastes are likely to visit. One such establishment is owned by dwarf twin sisters, who cater for everyone – almost – they do draw the line and will blackball a client. The bossy sister tells Sebastian of one such man, and then another. “ ‘The second man was blackballed after whipping one of our girls half to death.’ ‘That’s against the rules? I thought that was part of what you offered here.’ ‘It’s not supposed to be taken to such extremes. Sebastian felt it again—that urge to lay violent hands upon this diminutive, evil woman. He suppressed it with difficulty. ‘And his name?’ Her chin lifted, her strange, wintry eyes glittering with a raw, visceral hatred she made no attempt to disguise. ‘I assume you know him, seeing as he’s approximately your age and a Viscount, as well.’” When he thinks he is being followed, probably by someone sent by the Bligh sisters, he checks his surroundings to consider his options. “ Beyond it stretched a labyrinth of foul courts and wretched alleys that twisted between here and the Strand. A rat-infested refuge for whores and beggars, pickpockets and cutthroats, it had been known to simply swallow constables unwise enough to venture in after fleeing suspects. A year ago Sebastian would have charged in there without hesitation. He even took one step, two, toward the beckoning shadows before drawing up short. Then he sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, turned, and went home to his wife and infant son.” Sebastian is just thirty, fit, trained in warfare, and hand-to-hand combat. He never worried about himself before. I found it interesting watching him grow up, come to terms with who he is, his place in the world, and his importance to others. The dynamic with his family is changing. His beautiful, stubborn, delightfully strong-willed niece features in this one. Sebastian loathes his much older, snobbish sister but is great friends with her lively daughter. The usual complex web of characters, so many of whom could be guilty, is as fascinating and absorbing as ever. Their descriptions are so clear that a good casting director would know whom to choose. The other descriptions I love are of the atmosphere, so will quote this bit as a nice example, rather than dwell on the vermin-infested, stench of the muddy slums. “The night sky was white with a drifting mist that deepened as Sebastian left the deserted cobblestoned streets of the city and spurred his neat black Arabian into the low hills beyond Pentonville. He rode through stubbly fields of harvested grain, the earthy odors of ripe elderberries and quince and plums hanging heavy in the moist autumn air. Already the cold-nipped maples and hazels were turning a deep scarlet and gold, with the paler yellow of the birch seeming to glow out of the damp gloom.” Another wonderful terrible story. These should be read in order. My reviews of the previous books: 1. What Angels Fear https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 2. When Gods Die https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 3. Why Mermaids Sing https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 4. Where Serpents Sleep https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 5. What Remains of Heaven https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 6. Where Shadows Dance https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 7. When Maidens Mourn https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 8. What Darkness Brings https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 9. Why Kings Confess https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 10. Who Buries the Dead https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 11. When Falcons Fall https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 12, 2023
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Sep 14, 2023
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Jul 18, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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212
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| 4.40
| 309
| Jun 12, 2024
| Jun 12, 2024
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it was amazing
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5★ “ ‘Douglas—‘ And then he stops, looks up at the men above them, the men who are always watching. The men who are always whispering. His forehead gro 5★ “ ‘Douglas—‘ And then he stops, looks up at the men above them, the men who are always watching. The men who are always whispering. His forehead grows cavernous lines. He says, ‘P-23. Will you come with me?’ ‘Yes,’ Douglas says, because of course he will, and also because the Supervisor called him Douglas.” Oh how I wish this precursor to Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets had been included in the digital copy I read and reviewed a few months ago. I’m glad I’ve read it now. They are separate stories but have the same bittersweet appeal. P-23, Douglas, is being given a leave-pass to visit “the apartment” and have a one-week holiday. “ ‘On your last day, you will return promptly to the factory at nine in the morning. If you do not arrive on or before this time, you will be considered a runner, and—' ‘Why would I run?’ Douglas asks. ‘Where would I go?’ ‘Good. Douglas, this is an important opportunity for you.’’” All I can say is that I hope all future androids will be like Douglas and that future humans will be as generous and welcoming as Jesse, Simon, and the others. Also, that René Descartes continues to be read. You can read the story here: https://reactormag.com/reduce-reuse-r... ...more |
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1
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Jul 04, 2024
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Jul 04, 2024
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Jul 04, 2024
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ebook
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208
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| 110197351X
| 9781101973516
| B01DRXF5Z6
| 4.01
| 116
| unknown
| May 01, 2016
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it was amazing
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4.5~5★ “Years ago, before the trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines, a woman with a high, freckled forehead and a frizz of reddish hair 4.5~5★ “Years ago, before the trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines, a woman with a high, freckled forehead and a frizz of reddish hair came into the railway station and inquired about shipping furniture.” And there we have it. Munro has given us a setting, a character, and the beginning of what we think she has planned. The stationmaster becomes a bit exasperated with her questions and demands for assurance that the furniture will be properly looked after. He remarked to himself later that she reminded him of a nun he’d met. “This nun had smiled once in a while to show that her religion was supposed to make people happy, but most of the time she looked out at her audience as if she believed that other people were mainly in the world for her to boss around.” In fact, Johanna does have a streak of this, but she is a housekeeper, so doesn’t have the freedom to do what she likes. Her previous employer died and she’s now taking care of an older man and his teenaged niece, who is moving out. Johanna wishes she could have that kind of freedom. The niece and her friend laugh at Johanna and get up to some terrible mischief, which leads to her going to the train station. Johanna has a pretty jaundiced view of the world, and to be fair, it’s easy to see why, given her life so far. She inherited her late employer’s good, long coat, but now she needs a new dress. “She opened the door and went inside. Right ahead of her, a full-length mirror showed her in Mrs. Willets’s high-quality but shapeless long coat, with a few inches of lumpy bare legs above the ankle socks. They did that on purpose, of course. They set the mirror there so you could get a proper notion of your deficiencies, right away, and then—they hoped—you would jump to the conclusion that you had to buy something to alter the picture. Such a transparent trick that it would have made her walk out, if she had not come in determined, knowing what she had to get.” Munro puts us into people’s heads better than so many writers. Of course, with stories like this, you have to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself, but really, the whole thing is here. Her books and stories are everywhere (it seems), and you can read many online. Go on – do it! There’s a reason Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. LitHub's list of 25 Alice Munro Stories You can Read Online Right Now ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 19, 2024
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May 19, 2024
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May 19, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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213
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| 1781620075
| 9781781620076
| 1781620075
| 3.91
| 9,094
| Oct 11, 2012
| Oct 11, 2012
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it was amazing
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5★ “He drank out Granddad’s farm years ago. After I have him buried, I’ll burn the cottage down and p*ss on the embers and I’ll sell the two acres.” Bob 5★ “He drank out Granddad’s farm years ago. After I have him buried, I’ll burn the cottage down and p*ss on the embers and I’ll sell the two acres.” Bobby Mahon has been visiting his sick father every day, hoping each day will be the last. As he leaves through the old front gate, he reflects on it needing attention. “There’s a red metal heart in the centre of the low front gate, skewered on a rotating hinge. It’s flaking now; the red is nearly gone. It needs to be scraped and sanded and painted and oiled. It still spins in the wind, though. I can hear it creak, creak, creak as I walk away. A flaking, creaking, spinning heart.” If only it were his father’s heart on the skewer, to pay for the misery he inflicted on Bobby and his mother. Like so many people, especially these Irish men, they never really know how to talk. Bobby does know his father takes great joy in Bobby losing his job. “It gave him an extra six months, I’d say. If he ever finds out how Pokey Burke shafted me, he’ll surely make a full recovery. Pokey could apply to be beatified then, having had a miracle ascribed to him.” Pokey Burke will not be made a saint. Josie Burke, his father, had been a good boss, but when Pokey let the men go, Bobby says there were rumblings. They’d had several years of building cheap houses, borrowing and building, but they went bust. “ I should have known something was up the day last year when Mickey Briars came in asking about his pension. Did ye boys know we’re all meant to be in a proper pension? We didn't, Mickey. Ya, with some crowd called ‘SIFF’. A proper pension like, not just the state one. Tis’ extra.’ Mickey’s left hand was outstretched. It held the invisible weight of what he should have been given but wasn’t. . . . Mickey’s hard old skull splintered that door and it very nearly gave way. Pokey must have sh*t himself inside. I want my f*ckin pension, you little pr*ck, Mickey roared and roared. I want my f*ckin pension and the rest of my stamps. . . . We locked Mickey into the back of Seanie Shaper’s Hiace until he became more philosophical for himself.” This is a town where everyone knows everyone’s secrets, or so they believe. They have theories as to why someone’s business failed and how they could have prevented it, but as the author lets each of the 21 characters speak, we gradually get a more rounded view of things. When two people are seen talking together, rumours begin. The garda are in the street, a stranger is seen outside the shops, a blow-in moves to town (for what reason?) – any of these require a discussion as to what is happening or about to happen. Bobby’s wife, Triona, refers to one group of women as the Teapot Taliban. The language changes with the people. The words are strung together so smoothly that I wasn’t even aware of the lack of quotation marks and such, although I know that’s a deal-breaker for some readers. It’s not for skimming, it’s for listening to the words in your head, the lilt, the Irish inflection, the subtle differences between the outgoing and the quiet, the sly and the simple. Each chapter is headed with the name of its narrator, and many of the names feature in each other’s memories. We see some people, like Bobby and Pokey, in increasingly greater detail. Vasya, “the Russian”, discovers he doesn’t exist. He had come from his home in Siberia, following advice from friends. He was a good worker but had no English. He’s put on as a C2 worker. “ I took from others words and phrases that served me well for a while: off the books, under the table, on the queue tee. One man can learn some trades by watching another closely. Now I work some days for the foreman again. Bobby. He calls me the best of the ‘see too’ boys. I don’t know what this means. I smile and nod.” He learns what ‘see too’ (C2) means when he tries to claim his entitlements when the business closes. “sub-contractors, foreign workers who were only taken on by builders if they registered as self-employed. That way the builder hadn’t to pay the proper rates; stamps, tax, pensions or what have you.” Lily the Bike, as another woman refers to her disparagingly, is a favourite of mine. “There are rakes of men around here that have called to me. I’ve had years of eyes at my door. Eyes that can’t meet mine, full of hunger when they arrive and full of guilt as they leave. . . . I’d never blame a man for calling to me. Men have to do what they have to do. Nature overpowers them. Some of the old farmers were lovely, once you got over the smell. They had a smell you could nearly talk yourself into liking. I even bathed one or two of them — they loved it - like big auld babas, splashing around and grinning up at me...” I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but lately I’ve read a few books by Irish authors who haven’t used quotation marks, and some have used almost no punctuation at all. I often write in fractured phrases rather than full sentences if that’s how I’m thinking, so maybe it makes me more comfortable with this run-on style. This was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013. The many chapters from different viewpoints reminded me of Irish author Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 and If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things, both of which are favourites and were also longlisted for the Booker Prize in earlier years. I love this one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 06, 2024
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Jul 12, 2024
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Apr 19, 2024
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Hardcover
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210
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| B00XUYQV3I
| 4.30
| 11,747
| Mar 04, 2014
| May 12, 2015
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it was amazing
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5★ “ ‘He’s gonna be sick. You know that, don’tcha?’ The old man fixed him with a stern look and pressed the billfold back into the bib of his overalls. 5★ “ ‘He’s gonna be sick. You know that, don’tcha?’ The old man fixed him with a stern look and pressed the billfold back into the bib of his overalls. ‘I seen him sick before.’ ‘Not like this.’ ‘I can deal with it.’ ‘Gonna have to. Don’t expect it to be pretty.’ ‘“Never is. Still, he’s my dad.’ The old man shook his head and bent to retrieve the bucket and when he stood again he looked the kid square. ‘Call him what you like. Just be careful. He lies when he’s sick.’ ‘Lies when he ain’t.’ ” The kid has lived with the old man, known as Bunky, all his life. He has met his father only a handful of times and always been disappointed. His dad is a drunk, and the old man has hated seeing the kid get his hopes up over the years only to have them flattened when the dad doesn’t even remember he’s coming. Wagamese describes young Franklin Starlight. “He was big for his age, raw-boned and angular, and he had a serious look that seemed culled from sullenness, and he was quiet, so that some called him moody, pensive, and deep. He was none of those. Instead, he’d grown comfortable with aloneness and he bore an economy with words that was blunt, direct, more a man’s talk than a kid’s. So that people found his silence odd and they avoided him, the obdurate Indian look of him unnerving even for a sixteen-year-old. The old man had taught him the value of work early and he was content to labour, finding his satisfaction in farm work and his joy in horses and the untrammelled open of the high country. He’d left school as soon as he was legal.” Now he has been summoned to his father’s bedside, such as it is, because Eldon has things he needs to say, to share, to explain, but not here. Not in the hovel he’s living in and not in front of the woman who is currently in his bed. “His father’s face was slack, the skin hanging off the bones like a loose tent, and there were lines and creases deep with shadow. . . . the hand large with long, splayed fingers that told of the size he once owned, gone now to a desiccated boniness. . . . His father slid out of bed and the kid could see the gauntness of him, his buttocks like small lumps of dough and the rest of him all juts and pokes and seams of bone under sallow skin.” Eldon asks his son to take him cross-country, through the mountains to the place he wants to be buried, warrior-style, sitting up, facing East. In spite of the kid’s resistance, he claims he was a warrior once and promises to tell the kid more about their background along the way. Franklin feels obliged, somehow, and the hard trek begins, with Eldon often tied onto the only horse as the kid walks with the pack and does everything that needs doing to camp, hunt, fish, cook, and care for the dying man. As they travel and Eldon is reminded of his past, his stories emerge. The narrative outside of his storytelling reveals more of their origins and how the men crossed paths. Eldon’s childhood was horrific but his young adult life was something like the kid’s - hard work and little money. Eldon and his best pal, Jimmy, worked in the logging camps and rode the logs down the river, dancing atop them and fooling around like the kids they were. The wars – WWII and Korea – affected lives in ways that left men shell-shocked with little or no understanding or help. In Eldon’s case, he had more than a war or two to deal with. On the trek, his father tells Franklin something about what he was taught. “ ‘Our people just followed the work but most places wouldn’t hire a skin or a breed. Not regular, least ways. Get a day here, a day there sometimes, but there was never nothing fixed. So I scavenged wood. It’s all I learned to hunt when I was kid.’ His father shook a smoke out of the pack and lit up and smoked a moment. ‘Your grandparents were both halfbreeds. We weren’t Metis like the French Indians are called. We were just half-breeds. Ojibway. Mixed with Scot. Mcjibs. That’s what they called us. No one wanted us around.’ ” When the kid shows that he has a lot of skills, his father asks if the old man taught him. Yes, says Franklin. Everything Franklin knows, which is considerable, is from the old man. “‘At first he brung me out all the time when I was small. Showed me plants and how to gather them. Everything a guy would need is here if you want it and know how to look for it, he said. You gotta spend time gatherin’ what you need. What you need to keep you strong. He called it a medicine walk.’ ” His dad understands, but he was not taught these things. “ ‘All’s I’m tryin’ to say is that we never had the time for learnin’ about how to get by out here. None of us did. White man things was what we needed to learn if we was gonna eat regular. Indian stuff just kinda got left behind on accounta we were busy gettin’ by in that world.’ ” It’s a long time before Eldon can get the courage to unburden himself of guilt and reveal the real story of who their people are and why the kid has grown up with the old man. This is harsh and unforgiving but tender and poignant. There are no right answers. Just because something is understandable doesn’t make it acceptable. This takes place in the Canadian wilderness of British Columbia, but the essence of this story of heritage lost and somewhat reclaimed is echoed in First Nations around the world. I hope more can be saved. Ojibway author Wagamese died in 2017, too young, but he left a good body of work for me to catch up on. I listened to some - the audio by Tom Stechschulte is excellent. It is a haunting story. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 31, 2024
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Jun 04, 2024
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Mar 09, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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206
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| 147358258X
| 9781473582583
| 147358258X
| 4.51
| 638,005
| May 04, 2021
| Mar 2023
|
it was amazing
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5★ (audio also while reading) “That other hatch in the lab—the one that leads farther up—that must be important. This is like being in a video game. E 5★ (audio also while reading) “That other hatch in the lab—the one that leads farther up—that must be important. This is like being in a video game. Explore the area until you find a locked door, then look for the key. But instead of searching bookshelves and garbage cans, I have to search my mind. Because the ‘key’ is my own name.” So… what seems to be the problem then. His own name? Um, yeah. He doesn’t remember it. Not only that, he woke up in a bed in a craft in goodness-knows-where with two corpses in the other two beds. What the? Our hero (this is a quest, after all, so I can call him a hero) has occasional instinctive flashes of memory, kind of like muscle memory. It’s also like when you can’t think of a word, but then a phrase pops into your mind, and there’s the word. If he knew he was on a spaceship named the Hail Mary, he might have gone on to say “full of grace”, and there it is! His name is Ryland Grace. As he recalls things, Grace takes us back to his time teaching high school science and gradually works forward to the mission and the problems on earth that he seems to have been sent out to solve. It’s quite a while before he (and we) learn the actual circumstances that found him on board, and I think it’s just as well. Grace narrates the story, which I read and simultaneously listened to on audio. The writing is good, of course, but Rob Porter’s narration is outrageously good. I mean really good. He has exactly the right tones of optimism and despair as well as the voices and manner of the other characters on earth, as well as the onboard computer (it speaks sometimes), and another distinctive chiming voice. Grace gets into the control room and is pleased to find that he understands what he’s looking at, by which I mean he can read the many screens and understand what the readings are. What he can’t believe is what they’re telling him. “That’s a little over two days. Over ten times faster than the rotation should be. This star I’m looking at … it’s not the sun. I’m in a different solar system. . . . Okay. I think it’s time I took a long gosh-darned look at these screens! How am I in another solar system?! That doesn’t even make sense! What star is that, anyway?! Oh my God, I am so going to die! I hyperventilate for a while. I remember what I tell my students: If you’re upset, take a deep breath, let it out, and count to ten. It dramatically reduced the number of tantrums in my classroom.” He remembers that some little ‘things’ are attracted by light, eating the sun, and the sun is dimming, destining earth for a dark ending. It seems as if a similar thing is happening a long, long, long way away, but that star, Tau Ceti, seems to be unaffected and scientists on Earth want to find out why, hoping to save our sun and the planet. So Ryland Grace wakes up with only the computer and automated robot arms for company. The food is good (he likes the breakfast burritos), and the medical care is excellent, often taking place while he’s asleep. He wakes up with fresh bandages as needed. He got a burn injury at one point and asked for painkillers. The ‘arms’ hand him two pills and a cup of water. He goes back to work instead of resting, and pays the price. “It’s been less than an hour, but the painkillers aren’t doing the job anymore. ‘Computer! Painkillers!’ ‘Additional dose available in three hours and four minutes.’ I frown. ‘Computer: What is the current time?’ ‘Seven-fifteen P.M., Moscow Standard Time.’ ‘Computer: Set time to eleven P.M. Moscow Standard Time.’ ‘Clock set complete.’ ‘Computer: painkillers.’ The arms hand me a package of pills and a bag of water. I gobble them down. What a stupid system. Astronauts trusted to save the world but not to monitor their painkiller doses? Stupid.” I particularly enjoyed that, because I’ve done the same thing myself to game a system that was going to cause something I had to expire on a certain day, so I changed the date on the computer and went offline for a while. That was a long time ago, though. Not sure it would work now. His arm continues to hurt, but at least he still has it. “I climb down the ladder. My arm hurts. But less than it has. I’ve been changing the bandages every day—or rather, Dr. Lamai’s medical marvel machine has been doing it. There’s definitely scarring all over the skin. I’m going to have an ugly arm and shoulder for the rest of my life. But I think the deeper layers of skin must have survived. If they hadn’t, I probably would have died of gangrene by now. Or Lamai’s machine would have amputated my arm when I wasn’t looking.” I don’t want to give anything else away. Some other readers have shared more than I’m willing to. I was just so happily surprised by how he managed everything he encountered that I seemed to let all the science and engineering wash over me, whether or not I understood it. It was enough that I thought he understood it, more or less – sometimes less, admittedly – and that it worked, usually. The audio really is extra-good, but I do like having the text to follow and quote from. I have yet to figure out how to review the audio without counting it as a separate book. ...more |
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1
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Feb 06, 2024
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Feb 21, 2024
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Feb 23, 2024
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ebook
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200
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| 0063279029
| 9780063279025
| 0063279029
| 3.79
| 135,247
| Mar 29, 2022
| Jan 17, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ “‘Is it now?’ she said. You might think she’s flirting, but at this point I’m not so sure. You won’t hear about us locking lips until Chapter 27, wh 5★ “‘Is it now?’ she said. You might think she’s flirting, but at this point I’m not so sure. You won’t hear about us locking lips until Chapter 27, when I’m naked, if you’re wondering.” I loved this. I quite enjoy it when a player or a character breaks the fourth wall, so to speak, and addresses the audience as an audience. “Dear reader” but done differently. I wouldn’t want to read many of these in a row, but it worked well in this one. The quote above is from quite early in the story, and whatever scene he is referring to seems highly unlikely at this point. Also, when Ernest, the narrator, does this, he is often intentionally deceptive. He doesn’t lie, but he misleads – delightfully, for me. Basically, it’s a family reunion at an Australian ski resort. The weather is appropriately snowy – cars need chains – and there’s every chance of being snowed in. “Altitude adds several stars to a hotel rating, and while this was a two scraping by as a four, it had a cosy charm.” The heavier the snow, the cosier it seems. The reunion is as awkward as expected, with second marriages and reluctant attendees, but the organiser, Aunt Katherine, cannot be crossed. It’s a modern group with modern family and business problems. “ I’ll tell you a little bit about Lucy. Lucy runs an independent online business, by which I mean she loses money on the internet periodically. She is a Small Business Owner in the same way Andy is a Feminist, that she declares it loudly, often, and she’s the only one who believes it. . . . she describes it as a business and tenses up whenever anyone says that specific word. So out of respect, I won’t use it. I’ll just say the Egyptians built them.” It is a proper mystery with flashbacks to childhood (well, it wouldn’t be much of a family reunion without them, would it?), but of course with everyone having killed someone, we’re never quite sure who has made it out of jail or out alive. Ernest’s late father seems to have been a cop then a crook and a drunk. Ernest is one of three boys whose mother used to race around town, keeping them engaged in every activity she could find for them. She has slowed down. “My mother is not old enough to find stairs an obstacle, but old enough to be good friends with the banister” Ernest tells us. A body is found in the snow – murdered – although it’s so cold, death from exposure is a real risk to them all if they get lost or stranded. Nobody skis and few even go outside. “People – husbands mostly, sent on errands – were running to their cars amid the vicious slanted ice that had just started coming down in sheets. I could barely see the car park through the chaos, but they were all doing the same kind of half-hop, half-lurch that comes with shielding your elbow over your brow. The wind was whipping powder up off the ground too, adding a swirling mist below knee height that looked like sea foam on crashing waves. It was level ground, but all of them fought the wind like they were hiking uphill.” I enjoyed the plot, the story, and the tone. It is a real murder mystery, and Ernest enjoys scattering clues, many of which we don’t recognise as clues until later. He very kindly reminds us then by saying something like [I’m making this up here]: “Remember when I said such-and-such and you probably wondered why? Well, this is why.” It is a good read with good twists, right up to the last page. A favourite for me now. I read it as well as listened to the audio, which was excellent. The audio possibly made it even more entertaining, because the narrator captures Ernest’s manner so well, but it’s the writing that sells it. ...more |
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Aug 04, 2023
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Aug 07, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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| 9781004075683
| 4.20
| 9,141
| Jan 2022
| Feb 01, 2022
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it was amazing
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5★ “In a few hours, the cooks will begin frying onions, curry leaves and green chillies for the breakfast omelette, served with idiyappam, sothi and sa 5★ “In a few hours, the cooks will begin frying onions, curry leaves and green chillies for the breakfast omelette, served with idiyappam, sothi and sambal. Omelette on a bed of steamed rice noodles, topped with milk gravy and a side of freshly grated coconut tossed in chopped chilli. It’s something to wake up for.” That’s not my usual breakfast and chances are it isn’t yours either, but that’s the point. In a nursing home, residents are happiest when living with familiar things and eating familiar food. Cinnamon Gardens was named after the wealthy suburb in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), and its owner and many of its residents came from Sri Lanka. Sounds nice, right? Well, the nursing home is, and when the book opens, we’re introduced to the way it’s set out, attempting to accommodate the different backgrounds of the residents in Westgrove, Sydney, Australia. On the second floor, there’s a large, shared shrine room. “The altar in the shrine room was predominately a showcase for Hindu deities. It reflected the main religion of the nursing home, but like any Hindu shrine, it held statues of the Buddha, Jesus Christ and his poor mother Mary. Siddharth, Maya’s son in London, had also sourced a more racially accurate Jesus statue for her, and after some resistance from the Christians and Catholics, of all ethnicities, Brown Jesus (as he became known) had finally been accepted into the fold.” Brown Jesus - about time! Maya is the elderly, widowed owner whose daughter Anjali, “Anji”, now runs the place (with supervision from Amma, of course). Anji was the geriatric psychiatrist at the home before she took over in 2009. In 1981, Maya and her young husband came to Australia to escape the violence in Sri Lanka. Her uncle Cedric, who had no children, had planned to sell the shabby Sydney nursing home he owned, but agreed to let them renovate it and turn it into a welcoming haven. Again, this sounds like a cosy read, perhaps with some jockeying for position in the hierarchy of residents, some jolly power plays, that sort of thing. But there’s so much more. Anji’s best friend since childhood is Nikki, who is now the home’s geriatrician. They and their families have been great pals until now, when Nikki and Gareth are struggling over the loss of a child. Anji’s husband, Nathan, is a counsellor, who has been trying to help them. Gareth has political aspirations, and some suggest his losing a child makes him a sympathetic candidate. Now it sounds like family drama and suburban life, maybe still some kind of light fiction. That’s how the book was designed, the title and the cover. It will attract readers who probably don’t know much about how and why people leave their homelands and end up in other countries. In fact, it’s a powerful punch in the guts of Australia’s supposedly abolished White Australia Policy that just keeps rearing up. Early on, one of the Sri Lankan nursing home staff members is badly beaten, not for the first time, by three young white men. “‘Hey, boong,’ they called. He had googled that one. Ethnically incorrect, but this wasn’t the time for pedantry. ‘Boong! We’re talking to you,’ said a recognisable voice. ‘He’s not a boong,’ said another. ‘He’s a Paki.’ Not even close. Over 2500 kilometres from Pakistan to Sri Lanka, a completely different religion, and many cultures and languages between them. ‘Hey, Paki!’ ‘Osama, we’re talking to you’ . . . He had been beaten by these boys before. He had been given his beating and he had accepted it. He didn’t know what was different about tonight; why he fought back this time. Over a decade ago, the Third Battalion of the Sri Lankan Army had taught him well. He knew what to do.”” The author describes graphically how he deals with these boys, and later there are more scenes of the violence and torture he (and others) lived through (or not) in Sri Lanka. It is not gratuitously violent, like some serial killer stories. It is what it is – a story of the people who flee in a kind of terror I imagine most readers haven’t experienced first-hand. Then there’s the politics. When they get to Australia, what happens to these migrants, even after years of living here and being Australian citizens? When the local council and the state MP liaise with a police representative about the attacks above, the conversation is about how many there are and the increased violence. Politics is tricky. All of these people vote, the attackers, the victims, and their families. “ ‘A public safety announcement? There’s no footage of their faces, so we’d be asking every South Asian in the suburb to be wary of every Australian in the suburb. That’s simply not practical… ’ . . . ‘They’re all Australian, Mike,’ Gareth said. ‘You keep referring to the South Asian Australians as South Asians and the white Australians as Australians. They are all Australian.’” That’s the local conflict in their new homeland. The man who works in the nursing home and who was beaten speaks ten languages and had been a professor in Sri Lanka. He had also suffered far worse abuse there. This takes place in the current day, but the Sri Lankan owner and residents were Tamils caught up in the long civil war that raged from 1983 to 2009. Many tens of thousands of people were disappeared, tortured, slaughtered murdered as the Tamils fought for an independent state. The author takes us back and forth to the war at different times and to the nursing home when it was founded and today. I listened to about half the book and then decided I really wanted to read the text to make sure I understood the names and places and history properly. It’s a terrific piece of work, using the small community of the nursing home as a centrepiece around which several families revolve. I just read (and recommend) the Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida which just won this year’s Booker Prize … so I did have a bit of a head start on the tragic Sri Lankan situation. This one, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (in case you forgot the title because this is sooo long) has just won Australia's prestigious Miles Franklin award, given to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". This is all that and more. The narrator of the audio book is excellent, too. I wasn’t expecting to read two books featuring Sri Lanka, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to add them to my favourites, but what a treat. This is terrific (think I already said that), and if you're interested in the other, here's my review of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida ...more |
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Jul 29, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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Jul 29, 2023
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| B0C6L2WNCN
| 4.41
| 25,916
| Oct 01, 2023
| Oct 01, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ “ ‘Do I have the monster blood in me, Mum?’ I asked. ‘Nah,’ she replied. ‘But he’s my father,’ I said. ‘You said I got my gentle art side from you. Wh 5★ “ ‘Do I have the monster blood in me, Mum?’ I asked. ‘Nah,’ she replied. ‘But he’s my father,’ I said. ‘You said I got my gentle art side from you. What if I got a monster side from him?’ ‘Nah,’ Mum said, ‘you got more Monet blood than monster blood.’ ‘Do you have any monster blood, Mum?’ I asked. ‘Yeah, I think I got some,’ she said. ‘How do you think I did what I did to your father?’” The girl has no name. Mum keeps changes both their names with every move. They are living rough in a scrapped orange van in a scrapyard by the Brisbane river where a few others have made their homes. The pair have been skipping around Australia on the run from the law, because sticking a paring knife in your husband’s throat is unacceptable, no matter how much of a monster he’s been. I must first say that each chapter is introduced with the most wonderful sketches done by ‘the artist’, as the girl likes to think of herself in the imagined art critic reviews of her work hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, maybe in 2100. They are by the talented Paul Heppell and are just perfect. Here’s the illustration of Mum followed by the imagined commentary in 2100 by a stuffy English art critic named E.P. Buckle. She’s imaginative in every aspect of her life. [image] “ 'Mum in the Jumper That Covers Her Scars, Walking Silently by the Brisbane River' February 2023 - Pen and ink on paper A revealing and tender reflection on the most significant day in the artist’s highly complex youth. The artist was two months away from celebrating her eighteenth birthday and experimenting, evidently, with anthropomorphic representations of the ones she loved the most.” The scars are from “dancing the Tyrannosaurus Waltz” with violent men, a dance that often begins with alcohol and drugs and forces many women and children survivors onto the streets. The girl has been protected by Mum, loves the library and spends a lot of time in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Bookshop, reading all of their art books. She’s acquired a unique perspective on art and artists. Her mother is also a teacher, so her general knowledge is a lot better than you might expect. “Mum says walking into a classroom as a relief teacher is like entering a cave of bears in a suit made of salmon skin.” The Lola of the story is a woman the girl sees in an old, cracked Temple and Webster mirror she picked up from a kerbside collection. She’s almost 18 and has outgrown using the side mirrors on the 1987 Toyota Hi-Ace they live in. She’s looking for the monster in herself. Instead, seeing her legs in the half below the crack, she sees a woman in a red dress in the top half, standing in a New York street and taking a drag on a cigarette. She desperately wants to see the woman’s face – but no luck. The next day, she sees her in France, below the Eiffel Tower. [image] “Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what’s my future? What’s my past? … Mirror, mirror, please don’t lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me, who am I?” Mum has changed their names so many times that the girl says it’s tricky if they happen to meet someone from their travelling past, because she doesn’t always remember what name she was known by in Alice Springs, or wherever. I can imagine dealing with this at 17, but how on earth would Mum have protected her as a little girl? [image] “My mum never warns me about boys in cars. My mum only warns me about child protection officers in cars.” There are many characters. It’s crowded out there. There are loyal street comrades and there’s Flo and her fish and chip ‘business’ where Mum works, dealing drugs. Flo is kind to the girl, but her son is another monster. There are alcoholics and drug addicts, and some have formed their own sort of family groups. Her language and thinking move between what she uses for day-to-day relationships and what she has read and learned. She’s certainly not your average 17-year-old street kid. There are long passages printed in italics, the life of 'the artist' as if told in the future. She desperately wants to know who she is and what her real name is, and that quest is an interesting part of the story. Her conversations with her imagined woman in the red dress, whom she dubs “Lola”, and her real life interactions with best mate Charlie, drug-dealing Flo, and others kept me interested. She is quick-witted and fleet-footed, and it’s a good thing she is. There are several absolutely hair-raising chase scenes near the end of the book where I was terrified for her. Her ‘people’ are living a life that is far removed from my own, and I’m ashamed to be part of a society that lets this happen. Dalton doesn’t sugarcoat her reality. He knows these people, has talked to them, cares about them. I liked the artist’s comment near the end. “I take Adelaide Street, where I pass the portable writing desk of a man in a brown hat who spends his days recording the real-life love stories of Brisbane strangers on an old sky-blue Olivetti typewriter. I want to stop and tell him my story, but it isn’t finished yet.” That man would be author Trent Dalton, appearing like Hitchcock as a cameo in his own work, collecting material for his Love Stories (which I haven’t read yet) and which led to this book. Listening to Dalton talk about his work and his people, you immediately understand how much they mean to him. The following is from one interview on the ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/program... Talking about the artwork that accompanies the story, he says “I’ve always admired everyone who can scribble their reality.” About the girl and people who survive and succeed by using what skills they have, he says: “I think I’ll be writing about for as long as I live, this idea that there are things inside of us that can take us out of our present situation. And taking whatever thing you are half good at and making the absolute most of that to drag you out of the situation you’re in.” I’m glad he gave this girl the passion and skills to help herself and got Paul Heppell to do the illustrations. I loved the book, her mirror-mirror talks, and her story. Thanks to #NetGalley and HarperCollins Australia for the copy for review of #LolaintheMirror ...more |
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1
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Oct 02, 2023
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Oct 18, 2023
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Jun 26, 2023
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198
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| 4.22
| 32,350
| Aug 15, 2009
| Aug 15, 2009
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it was amazing
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5★ “You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, m 5★ “You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.” I have been enjoying some stories and novels that feature various afterlives. I have to say that this extremely short (couple of pages) ‘explanation’ by Andy Weir is right up there for imagination and thought-provoking reading. Read or download it free at http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/thee... For more fascinating stories about our destiny, I recommend one of my all-time favourites by neuroscientist and author David Eagleman. My review of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives For a longer read, which explores the subject inside a wild story that just won the 2022 Booker Prize, I recommend this one by Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka. My review of The Seven Moons of Maali Alemeida ...more |
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not set
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not set
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Jun 25, 2023
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197
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| 1761341359
| 9781761341359
| 4.17
| 431
| May 16, 2023
| May 16, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ “‘You’re him! That guy! The one who uncovered that people-smuggling ring a few years back. Irene, you remember. We watched the news, were amazed bec 5★ “‘You’re him! That guy! The one who uncovered that people-smuggling ring a few years back. Irene, you remember. We watched the news, were amazed because we’d only been in Carnarvon the month before.’ Gabe said nothing, but inwardly swore to himself. He should have stayed up at the workers’ quarters. F*king tourists.” Gabe has more reason than most to want to avoid the tourists, especially nosy, talkative ones like Frank. This is book 2 of Wild Dogs, but you don’t need to have read Wild Dogs to enjoy this one. I loved it. I loved the first book as well, because Trant knows his country, the way people live, and the way they talk in rural and outback Australia. The author does an excellent job of filling in any back story to explain why Gabe is as he is and why he’s been trying to lie low and leave no trace. As the man said above, he had been featured in the news for breaking up an operation that was smuggling both drugs and people. A lot of people were killed in a shootout, and the brother of one will be out for blood as soon as he’s out of prison. Gabe is a dogger, hired by landholders to trap and kill wild dogs that are savaging livestock. He uses poisoned baits, traps, and cunning to keep the numbers down. In my experience, he is more careful than many about keeping his gear and clothing far separate from other places and people. When someone mentioned they had once given up smoking, Gabe just nodded. “He’d never bothered to try, always figuring his body was probably already a cocktail of sheep dip, backliner, and only God knows what else, accumulated over a lifetime of working with fairly nasty stuff without much thought of PPE until his official dogging course had wised him up somewhat. But whoever manned the crematorium when his time came was going to need a damn hazmat suit.” Tourists, city folk, just make it harder, and what’s more, they bring their opinions with them. Goldmont is a working cattle station with mickey bulls that got missed during calf-marking and are now big, well-grown beasts that have been brought in for cutting and branding. The tourists are all watching, and the ever-inquisitive Frank asks Gabe more about the smugglers and refugees. Gabe tells him that Amin, his family, and the others are mostly still stuck in detention. “‘Nasty business.’ Frank said. Gabe only grunted at the understatement. Inside the yard, Dalton waved his hat at the mickey who was still refusing to run up the race. Others yelled encouragement from the safety of the top rail, where the best advice always originated. ‘Still,’ the man continued, ‘what can they expect really? Dealing with criminals like that, arriving here illegally.’ Gabe turned to face the couple, choosing his words carefully and spoke very slowly. ‘They were going to be shot by the Taliban.’ ‘Of course,’ Frank said hurriedly. ‘But there are the correct channels to go through aren’t there? A proper process? If everyone starts jumping queues. . .’ A sudden chorus of alarmed cries drew their eyes to the yard. Dalton was sprinting for the rails. The mickey bull only a hair’s breadth behind him. The wiry young jackaroo reached for the top rail, got a boot on the bottom one and vaulted up and over, horns missing his backside by centimetres. A cheer went up from the onlookers again, and he grinned madly at his audience. The bull having bounced off the steel panel, snorted and swung its head from side to side, searching for another target upon which to unleash its frustrations. Frank and Irene had joined in the cheers at Dalton’s escape. Gabe said nothing. ‘Quick fellow, isn’t he?’ Frank said. ‘Another second and that bull would have got him.’ ‘Yep.’ Gabe pointed at the man gate. ‘How well do you reckon he would have fared going through the correct channels?’ Love it! I’ve always said I wished that all young offenders (and not so young) who got into trouble because they just wanted the thrill of an adrenalin rush should come to work in cattle yards, where you may have to leap instantly for the top rail when separating brahma cows and calves. No time to ‘exit’ any other way. But I digress. Gabe is paranoid about being watched, followed, wondering if someone on the station is after him. A relative of someone he killed? Not only that, he’s a Vietnam vet, so the station helicopter triggers bad memories, as do sounds like gunshots. When there is an unexplained death and all forms of communication have shut down, his alarm level rises, so that he (and we) begin to suspect all of the tourists and staff. They are then cut off by sudden flooding rain and the chopper is out of action, creating a ‘locked-room ‘mystery of sorts. It is also atmospheric: “His headlights cut great white beams through the darkness. The air, thick with insects, revelling in the abundant moisture that had lingered after the rain. His windscreen was caked in midges, mosquitoes, and moth guts. The larger creatures, bouncing off the glass, were sharp cracks. A mopoke swooped past, almost sharing the same fate, But Gabe automatically touched the brake and swerved to avoid the bird, even as his mind was elsewhere.” Ric Herbert narrated this so well, that I might have to go back and listen to him read the first book, which I read. I generally prefer to read rather than listen, but a good narrator can really get in your head. Excellent! ...more |
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1
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Jun 10, 2023
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Jun 21, 2023
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Jun 10, 2023
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196
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| 1761440365
| B0C1364F3Q
| 4.52
| 1,587
| May 17, 2023
| May 17, 2023
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it was amazing
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UPDATE: I see my local library has the e-book, and I hope there will be copies in libraries all over the country so everyone has a chance to have a lo
UPDATE: I see my local library has the e-book, and I hope there will be copies in libraries all over the country so everyone has a chance to have a look at it. 5★ “The Uluru Dialogues were regional, covering the entire continent and adjacent islands, and the lands of all Indigenous First Nations.” Before the end of 2024, Australian voters will be asked to vote yes or no on amending the Australian Constitution. I imagine many people are more familiar with the American Constitution and its amendments because of the news broadcasts and films where someone on a witness stand is “pleading the fifth” and refusing to answer a question. That’s the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution which says you don’t have to incriminate yourself. Then there’s the popular Second Amendment “right to bear arms”. I won’t get into the controversy over the interpretation. My point is, Americans bandy around the word “amendment” with ease. Slavery was abolished with the Thirteenth Amendment. If the US government of the day had simply legislated it, that is, passed a law abolishing slavery, a later government could have overturned it. If a law needs a serious change, a constitutional amendment is the way to do it. For those who want a national treaty first, I respectfully suggest the Voice would give the government an official, permanent representative body to negotiate with. Aboriginal parliamentarians represent their parties and their local constituents of all backgrounds, and they aren’t guaranteed a seat. About the proposed Voice to Parliament, this handbook explains everything simply and clearly with additional personal comments from the authors’ own experiences. [image] Thomas Mayo - their book - Kerry O'Brien Thomas Mayo (formerly known as Thomas Mayor) is a Torres Strait Islander man, born on Larrakia country in Darwin, NT. He was part of the Uluru National Constitutional Convention in 2017, and has been carrying the canvas of the Uluru Statement from the Heart around the country, discussing and explaining and answering questions. He seems untiring. His knowledge of the issue seems endless, and he never sounds exasperated, which is amazing to me. If you listen to any of the links I provide below, you will enjoy hearing this quietly spoken, thoughtful man talk about this campaign and its history. When anyone has a question, he seems pleased to have been asked and happy to explain the answer calmly and intelligently. Kerry O’Brien is one of Australia’s most highly regarded journalists with countless awards and a deep interest in indigenous affairs. He has earned the respect of viewers and readers for decades, as he’s covered national and foreign affairs. I have missed seeing and hearing his wise reports. When doing research for this book, he said: “I guess I knew where to look, and I knew what I was looking for, because I’ve lived it… I’ve reported on so much of that history, certainly since the 67 referendum.” I won’t attempt to summarise anything, but I’ll add a few bits to give you an idea of what it’s like. This is from a section by Thomas Mayo. “WHAT IS THE PROPOSED REFERENDUM QUESTION? ‘A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. DO YOU APPROVE THIS PROPOSED ALTERATION?’ This is the proposed question at the time this book went to print. It might change slightly before the referendum.” Each author has written the background and history leading up to this. Mayo covers indigenous issues, and O’Brien discusses the attitudes and politics about Australia’s First Nations Peoples since colonisation. For such a small book, it is surprisingly thorough and eye-opening. For a very long time, assimilation was the aim. In the same way migrants have been encouraged to become “Aussie”, the new Australian government tried to make Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people become “white”. They removed Aboriginal children who had a white parent and sent the girls to white households to be trained as domestic servants and the boys to farms. These were the Stolen Generations, and it was still going on as recently as 1969, when laws were changed, but the effect lingers on, with so many people having no idea where or to whom they belong. In 1971, how were First Nations People being represented? Like this. When [Prime Minister William] McMahon named another enthusiastic assimilationist, Peter Howson, as his new Minister for the Environment, Aborigines (sic) and the Arts, an ungrateful Howson reportedly snarled to a colleague that ‘The little bastard [McMahon] gave me trees, boongs and poofters.’” That was fifty years ago, but plenty of people still think like this and talk like this today. And they vote. And I’m sure some of them are in parliaments around the country. First Nations Peoples are being recognised around the world as exactly that – the first nations who belonged to a place. Not owned. Belonged to. It took until 1967 to amend the constitution to include them as citizens. FROM THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION: “Part V – Powers of the Parliament 51. Legislative powers of the Parliament The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: … (xxvi)[14] the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws;” . . . [Footnote 14]. Section 51 (xxvi) was amended by the ‘Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967,’ and previously read as follows: “(xxvi) the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws;” NOTE: The government can still make laws for people of any race at their discretion. That is known as the Race Power. If someone was going to make a law about you and your family, wouldn’t you want to have a discussion about it? That’s what the Voice is, on a larger scale. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia’s first family. Thomas Mayo writes: “HOW WOULD THE CONSTITUTION CHANGE IF THE REFERENDUM SUCCEEDS? If the referendum succeeds, the words below are expected to be inserted in a new section in the Constitution. This wording may be changed through the parliamentary process and will be available to all Australians before they vote at the referendum. ‘(My explanations in italics. TM)’ Chapter IX: Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 129. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia: I haven’t done this book justice at all. It is so much more than dry facts. It’s a really interesting read, even if you just want to know some Australian history. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in the subject, whether or not you’re a voter, listen to the authors speak and answer questions. They are such good guys! Thomas Mayo: Why Peter Dutton is wrong about the Voice. https://www.theguardian.com/australia... The Voice to Parliament Handbook | Webinar with Thomas Mayo & Kerry O’Brien The Australia Institute presented this webinar, available on their website and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOwIe... To help answer questions, a printable conversation guide is available at: yes23.com.au/resources https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... This is where I copied the excerpts from the Australian Constitution. You can also download it free from Parliament as a PDF document. https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/05_Abo... I haven't yet read O'Brien's memoir, but I will: Kerry O'Brien, A Memoir [image] (great photo of Kerry) ...more |
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May 30, 2023
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Jun 02, 2023
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May 21, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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207
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| 0241512441
| 9780241512449
| 0241512441
| 4.49
| 146,200
| Sep 14, 2023
| Sep 14, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ “The Thursday Murder Club don’t have to wear uniforms, or salute buffoons, or worry about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, do they? They get re 5★ “The Thursday Murder Club don’t have to wear uniforms, or salute buffoons, or worry about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, do they? They get results, and Donna reasons that if she were allowed to plant drugs, point guns, fake deaths and poison suspects, she would probably get results too.” The core group of four seniors who comprise the Thursday Murder Club (so-called because it schedules meetings in one of Cooper Chase Village’s rooms for Thursdays), but the club’s extended family includes cops (like Donna), a Polish strongman, and others. Elizabeth is the acknowledged leader, being a retired spy, while Joyce is the diarist, who takes notes, chatters a lot, dithers, bakes, and shares diary entries with us in chapters of her own. She misses her late husband, and buries herself in daytime TV. She does love a handsome fellow. “Elizabeth more and more is getting the hang of Joyce’s type, and ‘anyone plausibly handsome’ seems to cover it. ‘He looks like a soap-opera villain,’ was Ron’s take, and Elizabeth was happy to accept his word on the matter.” Ron is a retired unionist and political animal. His son is a well-known boxer, and Ron still has a reputation as a fighter. He would know some real villains, and he likes to be prepared for the worst. After all, their old friend Kuldesh had just been murdered. “The journey home from the funeral had been full of theories. Rival drugs gangs, blackmailers. Ron, as always, wondering if the Mafia might be involved.” Ibrahim, the psychiatrist, is an intelligent educated man (who likes everyone to acknowledge that). A new man, Bob, is helping the group try to catch an internet romance scammer, but somehow, Ron has cornered Bob to rant about the evil of computers “‘and that’s even before I get started on Facebook’” Ibrahim eventually steps in, and Ron realises he’s been rabbiting on to a man who looks both frightened and bored. “ ‘Sorry, Bob,’ says Ron. ‘Wear my heart on my sleeve sometimes.’ ‘Not at all,’ says Bob. ‘Plenty of food for thought. And I will certainly pass your feedback on to someone at IBM should that opportunity arise.’ ‘You will learn fairly quickly, Bob, that you don’t need to be polite with Ron,’ says Ibrahim. ‘It took me around a week to figure that out.’ Bob nods. ‘Also, he is easy to distract. If you ever feel that Ron has gone off at a tangent, which on occasion he does, then a simple “Did you see the match?” or “Did you see the fight?” works as a reset button.’ ‘How Chelsea won that one, I’ll never know,’ says Ron, shaking his head. ‘Daylight robbery.’ ‘To work, then, gentlemen,’ says Ibrahim.” Ron has been reset. Ibrahim’s particular role in this is as a conduit to Connie, a Crime Queen he visits in prison for therapy sessions. Hers or his? It isn’t always clear. She runs much of the underworld from her cell, so Ibrahim takes advantage of their sessions to sound her out about their case. An antique box full of a kg of heroin has gone missing after being delivered to Kuldesh, the old antique dealer friend of the Club whose funeral they just attended. They swap information, and as with the previous books in the series, they meet other players who seem to be connected, there are more murders, more people I think may have done it, and meanwhile, the romance scammer case gets interesting. Joyce is coming up with some good schemes in this one, and Elizabeth seems proud of her pal’s rapid progress on becoming a sleuth. Joyce puts her natural cover as a silly, talkative old lady to good use, because who would suspect her capable of subterfuge? It is not all fun and games, though, because our beloved characters are elderly, stiff and sore and becoming weaker. There is great affection and understanding between them all, so when one is having a hard time of things, the others pick up the slack. Osman writes with wonderful sensitivity about these old people, who have already been through so much and have such loss in their lives. He never gets maudlin, but he can certainly tug the heartstrings when he lets us share their sadness. I was so pleased to see at the end that he says he promises to return to the Club one day. I’m sure I’m not alone in looking forward to another visit. I think this is the best yet. The series - I've enjoyed them all. [image] My review of The Thursday Murder Club [image] My review of The Man Who Died Twice (#2) [image] My review of The Bullet That Missed (#3) [image] My review of The Last Devil to Die (#4) ...more |
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it was amazing
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5★ “Ned was thirty. When would the natural competence of other men come to him? He knew he had worth.” This is the only book I’ve read by Tasmanian auth 5★ “Ned was thirty. When would the natural competence of other men come to him? He knew he had worth.” This is the only book I’ve read by Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott, but I’m lining up the rest now. At the moment, he sits with fellow Tasmanian Richard Flanagan and Western Australian Tim Winton in my mental library of authors for their sense of place and character. In this book Arnott takes Ned West from his Tasmanian childhood in the 1940s right through to young adulthood, marriage, and the end days, but the focus is on one particular hot summer. His two older brothers are fighting overseas, his sister, Maggie, has been living in Hobart, and his father has pretty much had the stuffing knocked out of him. They live on “Limberlost”, the family apple orchard, where Ned has been alone with his father. Ned’s mother died not long after he was born, and it’s only through Maggie’s memories that he learns who she was. Maggie has come back to the farm this summer – no reason given – just thank goodness she has returned. Ned has been hunting rabbits. His feelings are mixed between enjoying the skill needed to shoot or trap them, and the actual killing of living creatures. He usually manages ok when he finds them already cold and dead in the traps, but he hates having to finish some of them off. “They were pests. The only true use they had was to serve in death as slouch hats. And yet he felt a huge relief when they ceased shivering under his foot. In these moments he would look away from the rabbit to the sky, the glowing trees, the wakening river, as if the tranquillity of the orchard could remove him from what he’d done.” Arnott doesn’t shy away from the realities of farm life, managing to put the brutal side of death in the same scene with the peacefulness of the landscape. It is what it is. Ned is selling the skins to a dealer in town. “And while Singline—a man made mostly of lint, capillaries and brandy vapour—had haggled and pontificated until the afternoon turned stale, he had paid in cash.” He secretly wants to buy a boat. When he was a little fella, his dad had taken him and his brothers in a boat to the mouth of the river to see the ‘mad whale’ the boys had heard rumours about. Dad couldn’t convince them it was a fisherman’s tale. Although there was no whale to greet them, Ned had been bitten by the river bug and wanted to explore it himself. The continuing river story especially reminds me of Flanagan’s work, while the ocean diving in other parts is reminiscent of Winton territory. While this summer is the heart of the book - hunting rabbits, fishing with his mate Jackbird, and saving up for a boat – what happens with the quoll he finds in one of his traps is what haunts him the rest of his life. Quolls are small, tree-climbing native marsupials, brown or black with attractive white spots. Sounds cute, right? But they are meat-eaters with spiky sharp teeth and can be fierce. Not pets. When Ned finds one caught by its mangled foot in his rabbit trap, he feels confused, terrified (they are scary little creatures), and guilty. “A thick tail, as long as head and body combined, flowed from its hindquarters, carrying more of the spots. Its legs were short, each ending in a clutch of long pink toes and curved claws. Ned took another step. The quoll burst into a snarl, its jaws flying impossibly wide, revealing a mouth of white knives.” He hides it in an apple crate and hopes to heal it. It is not a feral pest, but it was after Maggie’s chickens, a favourite prey. At fifteen, he has a lot to deal with, but it sets him up for his later years. I quoted him earlier where he was wondering at thirty when he’d feel naturally competent. We know others recognised his worth. At twenty-five, he was put in charge of a logging crew, even though he was the youngest. “When they’d put him in charge, Ned’s superiors had given him a simple mission: stay sober enough to make sure chaos didn’t overwhelm the camp. During the working day he was nominally in charge of operations, but the loggers were experienced men, leathered by decades of warring with the trees. They rarely felt the need to speak to each other, not even when they felled the largest of the Knights, lopped off the limbs and hauled the pale-glowing trunks onto their flatbed truck.” The logging left him with the same feelings as the quoll. Lopping off the limbs of “the White Knights—the name they’d given to the pale, towering mannas” sounds exactly like dismembering the enemy in medieval times. They are not Ned's enemy - far from it. “…his time killing the White Knights had left him with a permanent stickiness to his hands and a reddish wound in his soul.” Arnott doesn’t beat us over the head with diatribes about conservation and the natural world, he simply shows us a boy who grows up appreciating what he sees and recognising what is disappearing. “Gazing out his window to the east, he noticed the absence of certain forests that had once crawled over the low mountains. Caught himself missing them, hoping they would return. Recognised the hypocrisy in his wanting: the trees in those vanished forests had been manna gums. White Knights, felled on his watch.” Felled on our watch, too. I loved Ned and the book. Chapters move back and forth but are always clear. Things in his later life may be revealed long before we learn how they took place. By the end, he is a complete man and a wonderful one. Thank you Robbie Arnott, for being another great Australian writer. And kudos for celebrating the natural world. ...more |
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Apr 26, 2023
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| 1742575005
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| Nov 01, 2022
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it was amazing
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5★+ “It was one walkabout time at Mount Saint Vidgeon in the Never-Never Land south of the Roper River that the Medicine Man, the Doctor Blackfellow, t 5★+ “It was one walkabout time at Mount Saint Vidgeon in the Never-Never Land south of the Roper River that the Medicine Man, the Doctor Blackfellow, tried to kill me. I lived to tell the tale. Allabout hear ’im:…” That’s the beginning of chapter one. White journalist and author Douglas Lockwood, who wrote this story in the first person for Waipuldanya, introduced it with this: “This book is dedicated with gratitude and affection to WAIPULDANYA of the Alawa tribe of Australian Aborigines whose story it is. First published in 1962, this is, without doubt, the most fascinating book I’ve ever read. The tone and writing style can be dry and straight-forward sometimes, but the blend of sophisticated sentence structure and the Aboriginal Pidgin English is terrific. I have just read it again and am even more impressed. The details of his history are first-hand from a man who was born on a traditional bed of leaves and paperbark in the sand of a creek bed. He quotes the Pidgin English of other people in his life, and he speaks numerous aboriginal languages. There is no universal tongue, although he says they were all pretty good at “finger language” to get their messages across between groups and tribes. This is not written in strict chronological order and sometimes later incidents hark back to earlier events when Waipuldanya was a boy. When describing the men catching a huge crocodile that was causing trouble, he recalls how strong his childhood memories still are of the girl who almost lost her hand fetching water. School puzzled him. He was called Phillip Roberts, to start with. He wanted to be outdoors, and his mind was full of hunting, fishing, the kinds of fish, the laws he was learning, “that tracks – not books – were for reading. . . . Why should it be necessary for an aboriginal boy to say ‘I believe heavy rain is about to fall, Miss Dove’ rather than ‘Properly big feller rain bin come up, Missus?” At the end of fifth grade, his formal schooling ended. That’s when he says his tribal teachers began his education that was far more difficult than text-book problems, “the primary equation on our own blackboards: Survival = Stealth x Cunning x Expertise.” The apprenticeship under his uncle lasted longer and was more important. If he couldn’t hunt and support his family, of what use would he be? When he was little, he was already being taught hunting skills. “My earliest recollection is of a day soon after I began to walk when my father first wrote a message for me. Didn’t I say he was illiterate? Quite so, but this was a message with a difference.” They sat by the fire, and his father made a shape in the smoothed sand. “‘What is this track?’ he asked. He clenched his fist, and with the thumb uppermost depressed his closed little finger into the sand. Around the apex made by the middle knuckle he touched a finger lightly into the sand four times. ‘Dog.’ I said.” He went on to describe how his father replicated tracks of wallabies, kangaroos, turtles, goannas, emus, crocodiles, porcupines, birds, cattle, and horses and told Waipuldanya to copy them. Because his hand was so small, cattle became calves and horses became foals, but he remembered them forever. He says his hearing and eyesight is hypersensitive, like most aborigines (on the land, I assume), and tracking is simpler than eight times seven. While the daily life is easy to imagine, it’s almost impossible to get one’s head around the intricacies of the skin groups, the totems and dietary restrictions, the laws, the ceremonies, the rituals, and the religious practices. People in modern cultures who wish to convert to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, for example, undergo education and training for a matter of months, a year, or possibly a couple of years. I think the aboriginal training is more like studying to be a rabbi or priest or other religious leader. (My comparison - don’t quote me!) For a young aboriginal man, lessons and training go on for years. Ceremonies go on for days, songs are memorised and repeated. Waipuldanya doesn’t discuss the women’s ceremonies, of course, but they have their own lengthy rituals. The skin groups and totems and moieties are foreign to modern western cultures. They function much like western bans on incest, but they are far more complicated. Not only are there totem animals that you can’t eat, if they are your totem, there are women to whom boys and men can’t speak: their mothers-in-law and other particular women. They are not to look upon their faces. Husbands and wives are designated for each other before birth, although there is some room to manoeuvre. It’s an extremely strict, patriarchal society, and it seems, at least back then, children learned pretty early to do as they were told. Having said that, they did get up to all sorts of mischief, running free and playing tricks. When Waipuldanya became a medical assistant, his community gave him special dispensation to address these women, but he found it terribly difficult. Which brings me to his career in medicine throughout the Territory. Leprosy was rife, including in his own family, so he was taken around by the doctors as an interpreter for the terrified patients who had been separated from their communities. Eventually, he became a key in life-saving treatment and vaccination programs. Meanwhile, he had also become a senior figure in the ancient practices of his own Alawa people of the Roper River. Interestingly, in this culture, no matter where he goes, when he tells them his skin group and where he comes from, he is told where he belongs. Here is his family in their community - this is your father, your mother, your sisters, your uncles - and these are the people you must avoid. Automatic acceptance. Kunapipi is a ceremonial corroboree where Songmen perform thousands of chants accompanied by boomerangs used as beating sticks. “Perhaps hundreds of thousands, for Kunapipi goes on and on, every night and every day often until dawn, for six months. During that time the Songmen, to the clack of the boomerang beat, tell their endless, ageless stories in the chants handed down to us orally by the Generations of Men.” It belongs to many tribes along the Roper from Grootye Eylandt in the Gulf and west to the Kimberleys, down to north-central Australia. “It has penetrated the barriers of language and culture, survived white infiltration, and today is as virile as ever.” This is how knowledge has passed down through the generations, oral history that has been carefully repeated so often that as with prayers and songs, people are still saying the same words. I remember seeing David Attenborough with an Aboriginal elder on a beach in North Queensland. The elder had told him the history of the place and where the edge of the sea used to be and how it had moved. Attenborough was stunned, saying that science has shown the changes took place many generations ago exactly as he described. I don’t recall the exact place or the time span involved. Needless to say, I realised how much is being lost with young aboriginal people missing out on their history training. I don’t know if this is what I’m referring to, but have a look at Attenborough’s sea level rise investigation: https://takvera.blogspot.com/2016/04/... But back to Kunapipi. The missionaries hated it and tried to ban the entire pagan rituals. They were eventually successful in banning only the “ceremonial mating between men and women, which symbolized fecundity and the relationship of intercourse to the reproduction of species.” Waipuldanya is a Kunapipi Headman, a Djungayi. He instructs people’s movements but doesn’t dance himself, and he has many other duties. “The High Djungayi combines the duties of both Judge and Priest within the ritual, punishing people who offend against its strict laws, admitting new members, and baptizing travellers who pass through our southern districts so they may drink at our sacred waterholes. This is done as a Christian child is baptized by sprinkling a drop of water on the head. And we have been doing it for much longer than the twenty centuries since the birth of Christ.” There is so much I haven’t touched on. Medicine men, killings, payback. It’s the second time I’ve read this, and I had to do it bit by bit, to let some of the information sink in before I moved on. I intend to keep it handy. You can read this online at the Open Library, where the edition they have is very clear and easy to read. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38039... ...more |
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Apr 22, 2023
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| 1914391179
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| 1914391179
| 4.06
| 33,188
| Sep 21, 2021
| Mar 17, 2022
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it was amazing
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5★ “It was a long-running joke in Money, Mississippi, that the way to discover who belonged to the Klan was to wait at Russell’s Dry Cleaning and Laund 5★ “It was a long-running joke in Money, Mississippi, that the way to discover who belonged to the Klan was to wait at Russell’s Dry Cleaning and Laundry.” Money, MI, is a real place, but I don’t know if there’s really an area referred to as Small Change and roads named Dime Drive and Nickel Street, or not. But the names of the people are hilarious inventions that sound like good ol’ boys or hillbilly nicknames to me. There’s the reverend Cad Fondle and his wife, Fancel, Hickory Stonewall Spit, Pick L. Dill, Hot Mama Yeller, and more. This is some wild, crazy, funny, grisly black humour that begins in Money, Mississippi, where Sheriff Red Jetty is called to a crime scene that makes no sense. There are two dead bodies, one white, one black, and the white man’s testicles seem to have been torn off and are in the hands of the dead black man. A locked-room mystery like no others – except for the rest that seem to follow. The same black body appears at another crime scene, having disappeared (been stolen?) from the morgue – but how? When? When an old woman gets a look at the black body as it’s being taken from the house, she freaks out. And so she should. She had some serious history to do with the lynching of this person many, many years ago. How is it possible he’s here now? The State gets involved. “ ‘I’m Special Detective Jim Davis and this is Special Detective Ed Morgan. We’re from the MBI.’ ‘Special detectives,’ Jetty repeated. ‘And that’s not just because we’re Black,’ Jim said. ‘Though plenty true because we are.’ ” The Sheriff sends Deputy Sheriff Deloy Digby to keep an eye on them but try not to be seen. “ ‘Why are you calling me?’ Jetty asked. ‘I just seen the subjects exitin’ the house. They just got into their van. They ain’t seen me. I’m parked across the road.’ ‘Are there any other cars parked around you?’ ‘No, but don’t worry,’ Delroy said. ‘Pray tell why not’ ‘They couldn’t see me cause I was makin’ like I was readin’ the newspaper.’ Jetty sighed. ‘Delroy, when’s the last time you actually saw somebody readin’ a newspaper?’ ‘I dunno.’ ‘Just stay with them,’ the sheriff said. ‘Don’t call back.’ ” Meanwhile, the MBI detectives (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation), Ed and Jim, have befriended a waitress, Gertrude Penstock who wears a nametag saying Dixie (Dixies get more tips), who leads them to Mama Z, a mysterious old (102) lady. [Incidentally, "penstock" means a pipe or something that transfers water. A conduit, you might say.] Gertrude went to college with now Professor Damon Nathan Thruff, whom she calls on for help sorting through a lot of historical files. [I found a definition that says “thruff” can mean a long stone connecting both ends of a stone wall. I would love to see a list of all the curious name references, but I digress.] The murders continue, as bloody as ever. “There was blood everywhere. His head was all clobbered in. I mean all caved in like a cantaloupe what you done drove over with a tractor.” And the investigation takes both grim and funny turns. Back to the Deputy Sheriff who, as asked, doesn’t call Sheriff Jetty back, but appears at his house the next morning after his all-night stakeout. “ ‘What is it, Delroy?’ the sheriff finally spoke. ‘I followed them boys to the juke joint in the Bottom. I sat outside for an hour and I fell asleep. When I woke up the place was closed, and this note was on my windshield.’ He handed a piece of paper to Jetty. Jetty read it aloud. ‘We’ll be at the motel if you need us.’ ‘Sorry, Sheriff.’” As similar murders, some on a grander scale, take place around the country, the politicians start roaring, the Ku Klux Klan tries to remember how to build crosses that don’t collapse, and society is disbelieving. I have purposely not quoted the gruesome scenes (well, one), but there are plenty, and the numbers are growing as the book closes. It is awful and awesome, terrifying and terrific, outrageous and outstanding. (I know - nobody really needed me to say that, but I couldn’t resist.) The humour in no way diminishes the significance of the history. The writing, style, story, everything made this a worthy Booker Shortlist nomination in 2022. The trees are those of the song “Strange Fruit”, which TIME Magazine called the Song of the Century in 1999. https://time.com/archive/6737430/the-... You can see Billie Holliday sing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9... Here’s some history of the song. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmast... And here are the lyrics (view spoiler)[ Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Here is fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop (hide spoiler)] A great read. ...more |
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Jun 11, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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Dec 29, 2022
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195
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| 9781609458386
| 4.37
| 25,902
| Aug 18, 2021
| May 16, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ Moscow, April 1919 “Nachman picked up a small pencil and moistened its tip between his lips. His eyes still fixed on his children and grandchildren, 5★ Moscow, April 1919 “Nachman picked up a small pencil and moistened its tip between his lips. His eyes still fixed on his children and grandchildren, he added, ‘Now, I’m going to go around the table. And I want each of you—every one of you, do you hear me?—to give me a destination. I will go and buy steamer tickets for everyone. You must leave the country within the next three months; is that understood? Bella, I’ll begin with you—it’s simple; you’re coming with us. I’ll write it down: Bella, Haifa, Palestine. Ephraïm?’ . . . Before closing the dining room door, Nachman asked them all to think carefully, concluding, ‘You must understand something. One day, they’ll want us all to disappear.’” More than 90 years later, an anonymous postcard is delivered to a woman in Paris. There is no return address, but there is a roughly written list of four names printed on the back. “ Then she read the four names, written in the form of a list. Ephraïm Emma Noémie Jacques They were the names of her maternal grandparents, her aunt, and her uncle. All four had been deported two years before she was born. They died in Auschwitz in 1942. And now, sixty-one years later, they had reappeared in our mailbox. It was Monday, January 6, 2003.” I’m not sure if there’s a genre called fictional biography or not, but that’s what this is. The author is the daughter of the woman who received the postcard, and while she’s curious about it, it’s not until her little girl asks questions many years later that she feels compelled to follow it up. The family story begins early in the book as historical fiction, which I was surprised to find less engaging than I expected. The family moved several times, trying to stay ahead of the growing hounding and victimisation of Jews, who were considered ‘the other’ or outsiders, no matter where they’d been born or how long they’d lived there. If a country or politician needed a scapegoat, Jews were handy and accepted by the rest of the general public. Paris became unsafe, but many in the Jewish community hoped the French would stick by them. It became more interesting to me as the investigation ramped up and the relationship between mother and daughter was featured. Anne has a six-year-old daughter of her own, Clara, whom her mother picks up from school on Mondays so they can spend some time together. “ ‘Grandma, are you Jewish?’ ‘Yes, I’m Jewish.’ ‘And Grandpa, too?’ ‘No, he isn’t Jewish.’ ‘Oh. Is Maman Jewish?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So I am, too?’ ‘Yes, you are, too.’ ‘Okay, that’s what I thought.’ ‘Why are you making that face, sweetheart?’ ‘I really don’t like what you just said.’ ‘But why?’ ‘They don’t like Jews very much at school.’ ” When Lélia calls her daughter later to tell her of the conversation, she struggles to speak. She is a chain-smoker and all of her movements and speech are interrupted and punctuated by lighting of cigarettes, sometimes stalling for time. When she finally manages to tell Anne of Clara’s questions, Anne is beside herself with anxiety. “From that moment onward, I was on the case. I wanted to find the author of the anonymous postcard my mother had received sixteen years earlier, whatever it took. The idea of finding the culprit became an obsession. I had to understand why that card had been sent.” Her mother still has the card. Determined to track down the sender and the reason for the card, Anne leads the hunt, beginning with helping her mother unpack and unpick the childhood memories she has hidden from herself. [image] The postcard, front and back Their detective work is amazing – there is so little to go on. They study every mark on the card, the stamp, the postmark, the shapes of the letters, and they contact everyone they can think of who knew or might have known some member of the Rabinovitch family. They travel in person to visit, to question, to compare Lélia’s memories with what they can see today. Once I was caught up in the story, I was completely hooked. I really thought they were grasping at straws – and whatever other cliché you can think of about a hopeless cause – but never underestimate the power of women like these or a family like theirs. If you’re a recently reformed smoker, you may have trouble with Lélia’s non-stop chimney effect and the frequent references to needing to unfug the car when they’re driving. [My word – seemed apt]. Terrific biography and fiction and history that deserves the accolades it’s getting. Thanks to NetGalley and Europa Editions for the copy for review. Below is the source of the photo I used plus an excellent article and a couple of family photos. https://english.elpais.com/culture/20... The beautiful photo on the cover of the book is of Noémie. ...more |
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Dec 05, 2022
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| 0571332773
| 9780571332779
| 0571332773
| 3.85
| 13,895
| Feb 28, 2023
| Mar 02, 2023
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it was amazing
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5★ “He had not been, he did not wish to go, he was quite content just to gaze out. Just to do that. To him this was the whole point of retirement, of e 5★ “He had not been, he did not wish to go, he was quite content just to gaze out. Just to do that. To him this was the whole point of retirement, of existence – to be stationary, happy and useless.” Retirement – happy and useless. It is raining fiercely outside, and Tom Kettle has been sitting cosy at home in his flat, which faces out to sea, watching the boats, and enjoying his solitude. He is reminiscing about his wife, his daughter, and his son. “It was four in the afternoon and night was creeping in to take everything away till only the weak lights of the lamps on Coliemore Harbour would bounce themselves a few yards out onto the water, speckling the darkling waves.” But someone has begun knocking on his door. Nobody ever knocks on his door, not in the nine months he has been glorying in his privacy. “He was beholden to no man, he had earned that. His pension was his gun, his weapon against work.” The knocking is louder, the doorbell rings, and he can just make out two figures through the glass. He recognises them immediately as the new fellows from his old station. Cups of tea all around and then, finally, they broach the subject. “‘It’s something that’s come up and he thought, the chief thought, it might be useful to hear your thoughts on it,’ said the detective, ‘and, you know.’ ‘Oh yes?’ said Tom, not uninterested, but all the same with a strange surge of reluctance and even dread – deep, deep down. ‘Do you know, lads, the truth is I have no thoughts – I’m trying to have none, anyhow.’ They both laughed.” The talk meanders, discussing the area where Tom lives now, how the two young men grew up and where, and as they exchange these intimacies, Tom’s mind meanders even more, worrying about what’s coming. The men say they have reports for him to read, but he says not now. The weather is far too bad for them to leave, so he offers to make Welsh rabbit. While he potters in the kitchen, we begin to get a sense of what his life has been like and why he may be stalling these men. The next day, he tries to put it out of his mind by walking to the ocean for a swim (which seems more like punishment than respite to me). “Scimitars of blunt wind flashed about everywhere, swiping at his hat, his hair, his heart. . . . A chill rain began, just for his benefit, he thought, oh it would, and soon made free with his coat collar, without a by your leave, and wet the back of his neck, just enough to put him in mortal dread of pneumonia. But by the time he had covered half the distance to the park at the top of the hill, here was the blessed sunlight, suddenly, the rain’s shy sister, not with any heat in it, but a measure of pleasing hope. He thought of those rare summer days when the whole land thereabouts would be oven-baked, every crevice and wide vista crammed with lovely, belligerent heat. Well, he was not there yet.” I imagine I can hear the Irish lilt in the words as they are written. It isn’t enough to say that Barry’s descriptions are evocative – you have to read them yourself. That is the overall tone and manner of the storytelling. Tom’s mind jumps from the happy times with June and the children when they were young, and then it suddenly sinks back into the extremely unhappy childhoods both he and June were trying to overcome. His childhood as an orphan left scars. “Sometimes his head was like a wild horse, without bit or rein. He couldn’t leave it to its own devices. He must be talking to himself, give himself good orders like an officer of a higher rank. A state of mind he had beheld in so many men who had been in orphanages and industrial schools in the army. They had been incarcerated among gradual and impossible torments. Yet oftentimes as a bewildered boy walked out the gates at sixteen, he might shed a different kind of tear, with the new fright of the unknown world before him. Up early, get your grub, obey your commands – the army was something of a tonic, and no war ever seemed to compare with what they had already endured. Nothing again as terrifying as the shadow of a dark-soutaned Brother by your bed, in the deep night, to drag you out either to lather you or f*ck you. No Malayan fighter, magnificent, fearsome and dark, ever as terrifying as the small shopkeeper’s son in his measly garb, given a coward’s power over you by virtue of being at least a grown man. No wonder they released the boys, like knackered greyhounds from the cage, at sixteen, before they gained the muscles and the strength to fell the Brothers with just and merciless blows.” Send them out the door before they’re too big to control, then for Tom, straight to the army to Palestine and later to Malaya. “First you had your dress of sweat, only then your uniform. There was never a soldier didn’t sweat in Malaya, there was no such creature.” The exceptional rifle skills he developed in the army stood him in good stead with the police recruiter, so there he stayed, a loyal policeman, for forty years. He does not want someone knocking on his door. He does not want to read the old police reports. He does not want to remember the bad old days. “In the old days, when wives were bloodied and beaten, you were not to go further than the front door. Ah yes. You could check if a person was still breathing, but no more. A child of the house could be lathered into a state of utter distress – you had to leave that alone too. You learned these rules off the station sergeant, off the tough detectives. The lowliest of men were kings of women.” He couldn’t possibly talk to today’s young police about such things. “Couldn’t say why the contents of those reports assailed him even before he could read them. Couldn’t read them, couldn’t in any sense read them. Under any circumstances read them.” The story of his family unfolds gradually, as Tom’s mind slides between reality, memory, imagination, and dreams. There is darkness and despair, but over all of that, is Tom’s undying love for June and Winnie and Joseph. At some point while reading this, I remembered that I had learned the term “kettle” in a mystery when someone found themselves “kettled” in a dead-end alley. It seems to be used in policing to mean “corral”, when they form a cordon around people for crowd control. I have no idea if the author intended this connection, but it seems apt. Tom Kettle has only ever wanted to cordon off the bad actors and protect people – the innocents – to keep them free from harm. All he wanted was love and justice and being with his family. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview that the author did in 2019 with another great Irish author, John Boyne, who is a favourite of mine. It was this interview that convinced I must read Barry. It’s a delight to listen to them both. https://www.rte.ie/culture/2019/0121/... Many thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber for the copy for review. I’m looking forward to reading more of Barry’s impressive, award-winning body of work. ...more |
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| 1743291248
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it was amazing
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5★ “There is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy. Now you’re goin to die.” Cormac McCarthy’s “Westerns” are like nothing else I’ 5★ “There is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy. Now you’re goin to die.” Cormac McCarthy’s “Westerns” are like nothing else I’ve read, although there must be some followers by now. In this one, Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss is up in the rocks, hunting antelope who are down on the floodplain, and he takes a shot, hitting one in the leg. He is hiking around to find where they’ve all run, when he sees bodies of men, lying on the ground amid trucks and 4WD vehicles. He goes down, discovers one man still barely alive, but he has no water to give him. He can tell it’s probably some kind of drug deal gone wrong. Long story short, he finds a document case full of money, takes it, and knows he is now a target for whichever gang it belongs to. At home that night, he can’t sleep, thinking about the man who might still be alive in the truck, desperate for water. “But it wasnt the money that he woke up about. Are you dead out there? he said. Hell no, you aint dead. She woke while he was getting dressed and turned in the bed to watch him. Llewelyn? Yeah. What are you doin? Gettin dressed. Where are you goin? Out. Where are you goin, baby? Somethin I forgot to do. I’ll be back. What are you goin to do? He opened the drawer and took the .45 out and ejected the clip and checked it and put it back and put the pistol in his belt. He turned and looked at her. I’m fixin to go do somethin dumbern hell but I’m goin anyways. If I dont come back tell Mother I love her. Your mother’s dead Llewelyn. Well I’ll tell her myself then. She sat up in the bed. You’re scarin the hell out of me, Llewelyn. Are you in some kind of trouble? No. Go to sleep. Go to sleep? I’ll be back in a bit. Damn you, Llewelyn. He stepped back into the doorway and looked at her. What if I was to not come back? Is them your last words? She followed him down the hallway to the kitchen pulling on her robe. He took an empty gallon jug from under the sink and stood filling it at the tap. Do you know what time it is? she said. Yeah. I know what time it is. Baby I dont want you to go. Where are you goin? I dont want you to go. Well darlin we’re eye to eye on that cause I dont want to go neither. I’ll be back. Dont wait up on me.” Simple, spare dialogue, very little punctuation, but I can hear it, the accents, the tone, the mood. There is always dark humour and irony, no matter how dire the scene. Descriptive passages are a beautiful, different matter. “He stood there looking out across the desert. So quiet. Low hum of wind in the wires. High bloodweeds along the road. Wiregrass and sacahuista. Beyond in the stone arroyos the tracks of dragons. The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant. That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash. He walked back to the cruiser and got in and pulled away.” The writing is perfect; the story is horrifying. The psychotic killer, Anton Chigurh, appears in a bloody scene in the first few pages, so you get a fair idea of what you’re in for. In a few words: Chigurh is evil; Moss is a good man tempted by money; Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is a good man who takes seriously his oath of office to protect his people, the residents of his Texas county. I recall seeing the film many years ago and had forgotten the actual plot but as I was reading, the scenes I remembered from the Coen Brothers’ film seemed exactly as McCarthy had intended – only my opinion, no idea what the author thought. The womenfolk are side characters, loved and feared for by their men, but there’s no way this would ever pass the Bechdel test (where two women talk to each other about something other than a man, basically). Something I don’t remember from the movie is whether Bell’s internal monologues were shared, although I suspect they were. Written in italics and introducing some chapters, they were his thoughts on life and love, justice, responsibility, truth. Here’s a small example from when he was thinking about his own family’s history, and how much is true. “The stories gets passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. But I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. . . . You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that’s what it is.” There is much other philosophising, including from the soulless Chigurh. It is not an airport horror thriller. Cormac McCarthy is in a category of his own. I have quoted so much because describing his style and the impact of his writing is beyond me. Even re-reading the quotes I’ve chosen makes me want to choose more. I also listened to part of it in audio, narrated by Tom Stechschulte, who did a terrific job. He had just the right grizzled tone, and he handled the back-and-forth dialogue so well that it was easy to follow. ...more |
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206
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200
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193
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189
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191
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182
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it was amazing
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Sep 14, 2022
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Sep 11, 2022
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