A really interesting book, set in Sydney, and I think Adiga has us pegged.
I found there were some similarities2021 Miles Franklin Short List 4.5 stars
A really interesting book, set in Sydney, and I think Adiga has us pegged.
I found there were some similarities to the author's Booker winner, The White Tiger. This novel also features a man who's an under-dog, faced with a moral question, and we follow him right through the novel to find out what his decision will be.
The novel takes place in a time-stamped single day, with added flashbacks.
There is a bit of repetition in the text which adds a little something more to the confused feeling of the protagonist, but also felt a bit like padding and frustrated me a little.
But Adiga is an observant writer and I felt like he knew Sydney and the people of Sydney really well. He also has many of the social issues of Australia really down pat. Particularly, the people who outstay their visas, the multi-cultural nature of Sydney, seedy Kings Cross and a number of other inner suburbs, not to mention the nature of the gambling addict and the infernal pokies.
It's going to be a strong contender for the 2021 Miles Franklin win.
I can see why this book is being talked about! The second part really packs a punch.
It starts off fairly flippantly and with some off-handed humour wiI can see why this book is being talked about! The second part really packs a punch.
It starts off fairly flippantly and with some off-handed humour with some acute observations about contemporary human behaviour that develops toward a sense of disquiet. Told from the point of view of a fairly ordinary woman who's posts on social media have made her an internet sensation. But she is questioning it all...
Why were we all writing like this now? Because a new kind of connection had to be made, a blink, a synapse, little spaces between was the only way to make it. Or because, and this was more frightening, it was the way the portal wrote.
And then something unexpected happens that breaks your heart and the world becomes all too real and defies the limits of "the portal".
Told in short sharp stream of conscious paragraphs that reminded me of Weather by Jenny Offill and a shorter form of Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. Brilliant, it has to go back to the library but it's one I really could just pick up and start all over again as soon as I finished. I suspect I'll be thinking about this one for a while....more
52 USA State Challenge - Mississippi Pride Month Challenge
This book has widely seemed to go under the raider and it's brilliantly written about di52 USA State Challenge - Mississippi Pride Month Challenge
This book has widely seemed to go under the raider and it's brilliantly written about difficult subjects. Any book that is set on a slave plantation somewhere in Mississippi, is going to be a difficult read. But reading about two young men in love in the middle of that horror is something that you just know they are going to suffer from at some stage in the book and you hope the author is going to look after your heart a bit. I think he does it successfully and there is something about the vengeance in the book that is satisfying. I don't think I've quite read anything like it. Exceptionally well done. ...more
A brilliantly narrated audiobook. Told by two different narrators, in two different timelines. The African Indian's experience in Uganda at the time oA brilliantly narrated audiobook. Told by two different narrators, in two different timelines. The African Indian's experience in Uganda at the time of the upheaval before and during the Idi Amin's reign of terror juxtaposed with a modern day narrative of the first narrator's successful Grandson in London. There's quite a few interesting turns in the story and the different impacts of racism in both their lives. Impacts that might be a surprise to those that don't know about the long history of Indians in Africa. It doesn't seem like it's a perspective that's been written about very much in previous literature. I wonder if this will make it to the 2021 Booker longlist, I suspect it might be a possibility. ...more
2021 Miles Franklin Shortlist At the Edge of the Solid World is the best novel I’ve read this year. Intense, compelling and epic at times in it’s scope2021 Miles Franklin Shortlist At the Edge of the Solid World is the best novel I’ve read this year. Intense, compelling and epic at times in it’s scope. So much to think about. My top pick so far for the win and it should be included on the Booker list, it's just that good....more
This is another short experimental work of Max Porter's, this time about the modernist 1900s English/Irish painter Francis Bacon. This is almost biogrThis is another short experimental work of Max Porter's, this time about the modernist 1900s English/Irish painter Francis Bacon. This is almost biographical of Bacon's life. Like Bacon's expression was with a paint brush, Porter's expression is with a pen. A picture may tell a thousand words but Porter attempts to tell about Bacon's life in 7 chapters, illustrating 7 paintings with simple dabs of words to convey a life time or an end of a life time. The more that you find out about Bacon's abstract modernist art and his life the more this piece of Porter's makes sense. I read the illustrated biography This is Bacon by Kitty Hauser which gave me a good introduction to make that assessment. I still want to know more. This is a short book that I could read again and again and find something more in that pen stroke of Porter's. I've bought a copy for my home library, so that I can do just that. ...more
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