The story of Tom Brennan - JC Burke

The Story of Tom Brennan
JC Burke
Random
Tom Brennan and his family are forced to leave their home in the small town of Mumbilli, and move in with their grandmother in the nearby town of Coghill. Their move follows a tragedy involving Tom’s brother Daniel after a night of celebration. Feeling trapped and claustrophobic Tom is haunted daily by the memory of the tragedy.

Throughout the story each member of the Brennan family struggles to come to terms with their new situation. At the same time Burke slowly reveals the dark side of Daniel’s character that had lead to the tragedy.

The Story of Tom Brennan is both a coming of age book and an illustration of how quickly the trajectory of our lives can change over a single incident. Tom and his family must come to terms with the new course their lives have taken and learn to tap into their inner strength to help them survive it. It is also a meditation on our innate need to belong, to love and find acceptance. It is an ode to the human spirit and its ability to rise under the most trying circumstances

The Ghost at the Wedding - Shirley Walker

The Ghost at the Wedding
Shirley Walker
Viking

Written lyrically and with great tenderness, The Ghost at the Wedding is an imaginative retelling of Jessie Walker’s family truth. In parts where facts fall short or time has eroded, Walker’s imagination has stepped in to fill in the gaps and breathe soul into the characters. Through family photos, letters, anecdotes and Jessie’s paintings in her later life, The Ghost at the Wedding Spans two generations, of the Walker family through two world wars as they survive hardship, disappointments, death, betrayal and sorrow.

Unlike most war books that concentrate on the battles and the soldier’s experiences, The Ghost at the Wedding reflects on the generation of women who saw their brothers and loved ones go off to war in search of adventure whilst the women stayed behind and mourned their absence. Upon the soldier’s return, the women picked up the pieces of their broken bodies and grieved for the ones who never made it back. As their lives continued along its path one generation of men lost to the Great War was soon replaced with another who grew and fought in the next war.

The Ghost at the Wedding is a poignant snapshot of Australian history retold through this beautifully reconstructed memoir that should rightfully be treasured by all Australians.

Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin
Granada

This is the diary of a journalist who for six weeks lived as a black man in New Orleans and Mississippi during the early 1960’s. As part of his experiment Griffin visited various establishments: chemists, cafes, retail outfits first as a white man and later as a black person. He recorded the difference in the attitude of the sales clerks who served him each time he visited these establishments. It confused and bewildered Griffin as to how the same clerks could display such contempt and hatred towards blacks while treating their white counterparts with pleasant and courteous consideration.

‘My revulsion turned to grief that my own people could give the hate stare, could shrivel men’s souls, could deprive humans of rights they unhesitatingly accord their livestock.’

Griffin took care to demonstrate not all whites treated blacks with animosity. However due to the suffocating atmosphere in the South, none except a few brave whites were willing to speak out in empathy with the blacks. Blacks in turn treated the whites with distrust and suppressed contempt, turning their features blank whenever a white person spoke to them.

In my opinion Griffin showed great courage to see his experiment to the end and then showed even greater courage to publish his experiences. There were times as a black man that he felt trapped and unsafe amongst the whites. He s a black, Griffin endured unprovoked 'hate stares' from otherwise ordinarily good, upstanding whites and experienced the raw base human behavior that was almost primal in its treatment of another race.

Black Like Me is a facinating sudy of the internal prejudices we carry and remains as timely today as when it was penned almost 50 years ago.

Came Back to Show You I can Fly - Robin Klein

Came Back To Show You I can Fly
Robin Klein
Puffin

I first read this book as a teenager. It was the summer holidays and feeling bored and hot I picked this book up for lack of something better to do. Fifteen years later when it was chosen for our bookclub, I had only a vague memory of the plot. It has become a habit with our little group to choose youth fiction. Maybe its the ability of YA to probe into dark and serious topics with eloquent subtlety that often make them a favourite with our small group.

Shy, reserved 11-year-old Seymour is dumped by his over controlling mother to spend his summer holidays with a fussy guardian. Seymour finds himself bored, frustrated and confined to his guardian’s house. By chance he meets Angela whom he finds glamorous, beautiful and bubbly. He is flattered by her attentions and her willingness to take him with herself on outings. What Seymour does not realize however, under her happy exterior, Angela is hiding a dark secret.

Came Back to Show You I can Fly delves into the destructive nature of drugs and how it crushes not only the lives of its users but also their families. Trust breaks down, relationships are destroyed and lives are ruined as the addiction takes hold over its victims’ lives. Klein shows great mastery in slowly unfolding Angela’s secret through her interactions with Seymour and with letters placed at the end of chapters like small clues for the reader to piece together.

My Mistress's sparrow is dead - Jeffrey Eugenides

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead
Jeffrey Eugenides
Harper Perennial

The moment I love best about any book, is the moment I start the first sentence. That sense of anticipation when starting something new. It's the moment when I open myself to a whole new discovery of characters, plot and settings. It's also an intimate conversation with the author, a small personal confession perhaps or an admission of values whispered through dialogue between characters.

I don't tend to read anthologies of short stories. I only bought 'My mistress's sparrow is dead' because I accidently spilled coffee over it and felt compelled to purchase it. But what a great find it turned out to be! In this anthology of love stories, Eugenides has brought together an eclectic collection of both well known as well as some lesser known authors.

I cannot think why I had not gravitated towards anthologies before. They are like a beautiful jewelry box that presents you with a new treasure every time you open it. Each story repeated for me the trill of a new begining, a cast of new characters and a whole new backdrop waiting to be discovered. It was like a ten course meal, presented with humility and muted fanfare.

Although I enjoyed most of the stories, some did bore me which is another thing I found wonderful about such anthologies. If the story failed to grab me in the first couple of paragraphs, I just skipped to the next one and started the journey of discovery all over again.

The only disadvantage I can think of with such anthologies is, how can one review a book with 27 stories, each written by a different author? Although Anton Chekhov's story was by far my favourite in both prose and plot, I did enjoy most of the others in the collection as well. My mistress's sparrow is dead, is a great collection to keep by your bedside and open at anytime and at any story. Most are short enough to be finished in around 30 minutes, so you can pick it up in between books or when you are looking for something to read over a cup of coffee. And if the story does not match your mood, then you can let your fingers and eyes roam like a pair of talismen, till they lead you to one that does.

Censoring An Iranian Love Story - Shahriar Mandanipour

Censoring An Iranian Love Story

Shahriar Mandanipour

Little Brown


It's no easy feat writing a love story at the best of times. It is doubly hard if you are an Iranian writer hoping to have your book published in the Islamic Republic. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance take a serious view towards protecting the Iranian people from illicit phrases that may lead their thoughts and imaginations astray. This is the challenge the narrator of the book faces as he weaves the relationship between two young lovers Dara and Sara.


Woven in between the love story and the daily frustrations of the narrator, are subplots that draw the reader into the poetry and stories deeply rooted in the Persion mythology. At times these subplots work, at times they become confusing. This could be the fault of the translation - this book was originally written in Farsi- or it could be because some things lose their original meaning once translated.


Censoring An Iranian Love Story is at times darkly comic, at times disturbing and at times a frustrating read. It's a satirical sketch of the hypocracy the authorities perpetrate to maintain a public image of protecting the Iranians who may otherwise fall prey to impure thoughts. I found the ending disappointingly unsatisfactory but otherwise Censoring an Iranian Love Story, is an interesting meditation of modern life in Iran.

The Year Of The Flood- Margaret Atwood

The Year Of The Flood

Margaret Atwood



Bizarre, nonsensical and totally bohemian. But it works! With The Year Of The Flood just like Oryx And Crake, Atwood has done away with conventional story telling and has decided to instead take the reader on a roller coaster ride into a futuristic world where the ruling power exert their supremacy with questionable ethics.



The book begins at the end, after the Waterless Floods have been unleashed and the human race has become extinct. Amongst those who have survived are Toby, an ex-counter sales clerk at SecretBurger and Ren a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails. At one stage both Toby and Ren were members of The God's Gardeners, a religious group devoted to respecting the commands of the living world. Headed by Adam One, the God's Gardeners are tolerated by the CorpSeCorps (the ruling elite driven by increasing profit share at all cost) because they are not considered a threat. Adam One has long predicted the floods and under his saintly songs and holy teachings, the Gardeners are prepared for its tidal wave. Now barricaded in the Anoo Yoo Spa and locked in the solitary confinement room in Scales and Tails, Toby & Ren reminisce of their days with the Gardeners and contemplate how they are going to survive.



Oryx and Crake was the first Atwood book I had read and it completely blew me away. It still remains as one of my all time favourite books. When I heard there is a sequel, I could not wait to get my hands on it. Maybe I had too high an expectation of this book, and hence was a little disappointed when it did not hit the same high notes as Oryx and Crake. But that should not have really surprised me. Atwood does not seem the type of writer who would mearly imitate the same idea throughout several books. Atwood's imagination, her clever use of words, and the intelligent way she pens her stories continue to keep me in awe of her.



The Year Of The Flood is fun and at times disturbing. It is an eerie reminder of the delicate nature of our ecosystem and how close we are to destroying it.