I forgot to mention yesterday that Anna's recent favourite Australian novel is People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I spotted it in Myer recently and had to fight hard to resist the urge to buy it, as I'm sure it's in the library. I'd be quickly broke if I forked out $25 for every one of the books on the list. Thank goodness for the library - I'm off there soon, I've reserved a couple of books.
I've zipped through Snail already. It's all written in lower case and is divided into lots of continuous short sections rather than chapters so there was no natural break in the book and I just kept on reading! The landscape of Snail is the inside of some very grotty Melbourne flats. But even the home of one of the mothers in the book was totally dire, especially the kitchen where all the food was rotten, or nearly so. Weevils in everything, even microwaved flies, some still buzzing, in a bowl of rice. That together with a good dose of crabs, head lice and scabies and I needed a good long shower after reading the book! It is the worst nightmare of every parent who has a 20-something living in a dive of a flat or a squat somewhere - drugs galore and serious mental illness. A sad book because I'd bet the author knows all to well of the despair he writes about. But he writes with such humour - there are some very funny, laugh-out-loud passages in the book and clever word play. The lower case writing is referred to late in the book, where the writer observes that the Melbourne constabulary changed POLICE on the side of their cars to lower case - much less intimidating, apparently!
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