The Brush-Off

And now, to The Brush-Off!

The Drowner

I have just finished reading this fabulous, quite lovely book by Robert Drewe. As Drewe remarks in his Author's Notes at the back of the book, this is a romance that touches on various elemental fancies in which he presents a stylised Wiltshire and environs (where the main character Will learns the art of "drowning" the land), East Africa and Western Australia. Here's "The Age" on the book: The romance of bringing water to the desert is at the heart of this amibtious and kaleidoscopic novel, beautifully written in prose as slippery and sensuous as the life-giving liquid itself.

Putting Ada on Hold

There were three books waiting for me at the library today. So despite the fact that I am enjoying A Marked Man, I'd better get on with the library books. I was going to start with The Drowner but better just check in case The Messenger is due back earlier. It's written by the same author who wrote The Book Thief. Karien and Kim both urged me to read the book as they loved it but I said no, not realising it was on the FAN poll list. Silly me. The Messenger was written earlier so I thought I'd read that first.

Ada's Marked Man

I finished Looking for Alibrandi last night. That was a good book. Funny and moving. Now to Ada Cambridge's book, my copy with its "plain pack" cover and reproduction-style print. I hope the book isn't as serious as Ada looks but then, she lived and wrote around the turn of the century. I think she lived quite a fascinating life!

Bleak

I have just finished The Long Prospect, a terribly bleak book by Elizabeth Harrower which has been described as "an elegant evocation of the oppressive and damaging life in Australian suburbia during the 1950s" (Open Learning Radio National programme on Australian literature since 1950). All hope of a happy family life for Emily seemed to be dashed by the end in this book; dreadful.

Now to Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi "now a major film" and from the YF (youth fiction?) section of the library. Let's hope it's a bit of fun as the cover suggests; please?

Bad Seed

I finished Nick Cave's book a couple of nights ago. Pretty hard going. Just as well it was well written. I can't put it any better than this review from The Modern Word.

I've pick up The Long Prospect again and enjoying it now that I'm past the clumsy and confusing opening.