Showing all posts tagged: fiction
A review of Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel A Passage North
21 September 2021
Isn’t Bookstagram awesome? Soon after writing about Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel A Passage North, I found this eloquent review of his work written by Aloka.
While sitting in my living room I was transported to a train anywhere in the subcontinent looking out into grassy fields for miles spotted with cattle and small mud huts with thatched roofs paddy fields and streams and stations with hot chai in tiny plastic cups and samosas. Berths with thin white sheets and packed dinners leaking with yellow oil. A recent cross country train ride I did just my older son and I where we spent sometime just staring out of the window each with our own thoughts.
While I’m yet to read A Passage North, it seems to me these words capture something of the novel’s essence.
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Anuk Arudpragasam, fiction, reviews, writing
A Passage North, by Anuk Arudpragasam
21 September 2021
A Passage North, (published by Granta Books, 15 July 2021), is the second novel of Colombo, Sri Lanka, born novelist Anuk Arudpragasam, and was included on the Booker Prize shortlist last week. Set in the wake of the thirty year long civil war that devastated much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, the story follows Krishan, a young Tamil man, as he makes his way from Colombo to the war ravaged north.
The death of Rana, his late grandmother’s former carer precipitates the long train journey. While travelling to Kilinochchi, Krishan contemplates an email from Anjum, his ex-girlfriend whom he met while living in Delhi, India. This message is the first contact with her in four years, after she ended the relationship to prioritise her activist interests.
Arudpragasam’s work is influenced by late Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, and this manifests itself in the long sentences and paragraphs that are replete throughout the novel. Dialogue is non-existent, as is a focus on story and setting, and it is this less than standard approach to writing that sets A Passage North apart from other works of literature.
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Anuk Arudpragasam, Booker Prize, fiction, TBR list, writing
The 100 Most Influential People of 2021, but where are the writers?
20 September 2021
Time Magazine’s list of the Most Influential People of 2021, contains the names of icons, pioneers, titans, leaders, and innovators, but it’s only in drilling down into the artist category, that a single writer comes to light; American author N. K. Jemisin. First and foremost congratulations to Jemisin for being included, but it seems unfortunate more writers aren’t recognised here. How do we remedy this situation?
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The Promise, by Damon Galgut
20 September 2021
An unfulfilled, decades old promise divides an already dysfunctional South African family of five, in The Promise (published by Chatto & Windus/Penguin Random House, 17 June 2021), the ninth book by Cape Town based playwright and novelist Damon Galgut.
In her final days, family matriarch Rachel extracts an undertaking from her husband, Manie, to provide Salome, the well-off family’s long serving housekeeper, her own house on a block of land. Amor, a daughter of the Pretoria based farming family, overhears the conversation, and is determined the commitment be honoured. Her frustration grows though as the years pass, and the family fails to deliver.
The Promise, the third of Galgut’s books to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, switches its storytelling perspective between the troubled family members. The pledge to take care of Salome is an analogy of sorts for a hopeful South Africa emerging from the apartheid years, and the challenges confronting the country in moving away from its past.
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Booker Prize, Damon Galgut, fiction, TBR list, writing
The Fortune Men, by Nadifa Mohamed
17 September 2021
The Fortune Men (published by Viking/Penguin Random House, May 2021) is the third novel by London based author Nadifa Mohamed. The year is 1952, and Mahmood Mattan is a Somali sailor living in Tiger Bay, the docklands area of Cardiff, Wales. Married to Laura, with three children, he is something of a larrikin character and a small time criminal.
When a local shop owner is murdered one evening, and Mattan is named as a suspect, he isn’t too worried at first. He had no part in the atrocity, and is certain he would be cleared by the justice system should charges ever be laid. But when a customer present at the store at the time of the murder changes their statement, Mattan is convicted of the crime.
While later found to be a gross miscarriage of justice, from which he was posthumously exonerated, The Fortune Men is a fictionalised account of Matten’s trial and conviction. In being included in the short list of this year’s Booker Prize, Nadifa Mohamed becomes the first British Somali novelist to achieve the distinction.
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Booker Prize, fiction, Nadifa Mohamed, TBR list, writing
Booker Prize 2021 short list announced
16 September 2021
The work of Nadifa Mohamed, Anuk Arudpragasam, Damon Galgut, Patricia Lockwood, Richard Powers, and Maggie Shipstead, have been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, 3 November 2021.
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The Banksia House Breakout, by James Roxburgh
16 September 2021
It’s a breakout, but not the sort of breakout you’re thinking of. Eighty-something widow Ruth Morris has been moved into Banksia House, a retirement home in Sydney, by her son, Michael. While the name of Ruth’s new abode may sound homely, Ruth instead feels homesick and isolated, as she pines for her past life of independence.
But when Ruth receives word her best friend Gladys is unwell, she hatches an escape plan in The Banksia House Breakout (published by Simon & Schuster, September 2021); the debut novel of Sydney based Australian writer and audiologist James Roxburgh. And with some help from her new found friends at Banksia House, Ruth makes a dash for Queensland.
But the journey is filled with trials and tribulations as Ruth, Beryl, and Keith, head north, hoping they’ll reach Gladys in time. While dealing with all sorts of problems on the road, the trio has to constantly outwit the home, and their families, lest they be stopped. Blending humour with the stark reality of aged care living, here’s another title for your reading list.
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books, fiction, James Roxburgh, literature, novels, TBR list
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World, by Laura Imai Messina
15 September 2021
Imagine there were a way to contact your deceased loved ones. To feel you’d conversed with them, and perhaps found some comfort in the wake of their passing. But what might you say if it were possible? If it were as simple as picking up a phone and talking? If you can make your way to the Japanese city of Otsuchi, you might be able to do that.
In a garden there, is an old, disconnected, telephone box, called the phone of the wind. Those grieving the loss of loved one go there to seek solace, and Japan based Italian author Laura Imai Messina’s new novel, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World (published by Allen & Unwin, July 2020) is based on Otsuchi’s phone of the wind.
Yui lost her mother and daughter in the tsunami of 2011. Despite her grief she does what she can to carry on. After hearing about the phone in Otsuchi, she travels there. But she cannot pick up the phone and speak. But there Yui meets Takeshi, whose young daughter stopped talking when his wife died, and the two begin to form a bond.
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Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, by Emily Austin
14 September 2021
Gilda, a woman in her late twenties, is a person with a few problems. She has a dread of death. She’s depressed. So much so she can’t deal with washing the dishes, showering, or even turning up for work. Unsurprisingly then she finds herself seeking another job, and is inadvertently hired as a receptionist at a Catholic church.
But Gilda is not Catholic, nor is she even religious. She is also gay. In addition though to lying about who she is, and pretending to be familiar with the workings of the Church, she also becomes obsessed with her late predecessor, Grace. Certain her passing was no accident, Gilda commences her own investigation into Grace’s death.
Could then Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, (published by Allen & Unwin, August 2021) possibly have a more apt title? Early reviews for the debut novel of Canadian author Emily Austin look promising. Buzzfeed described it as “the perfect blend of macabre and funny“, while The Skinny found it “funny, dark and harrowing.”
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Redhead by the Side of the Road, by Anne Tyler
13 September 2021
Now I’m judging books by their titles, but as a redhead, how could I go passed the latest novel by American author Anne Tyler: Redhead by the Side of the Road (published by Penguin Books Australia, 2021). The protagonist, forty-something Micah, is a creature of habit; you could set your watch by his routines.
By day he works as a freelance computer technician, and come evening looks after the apartment block he lives in. He has a woman friend, and turns in each night at ten o’clock. But when his better half tells him she’s about to be evicted from her place, and a teenage boy arrives at the door, saying he’s his son, Micah’s ordered life is plunged into turmoil.
From the little I’ve read about the book so far, it seems there’s no actual redhead character in the story, but best I say no more on the count. Coming in at about one hundred and seventy eight pages, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a shorter read though, which sometimes is exactly what you want.
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