He is a doctoral student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father.An Afghan girl, an American boy, and the resilient residents of a small town are thrown together on 9/11. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Near to the Knuckle, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, and Shooter magazine. Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. Max Hastings – Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975Īnthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot SeeĬolson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
#A LONG WAY HOME BOOK REVIEW HOW TO#
Richard Cohen – How to Write Like Tolstoy This wasn’t a page turner for me, but I found that what the book lacked in pace and flurry it compensated for in depth and the ability to provoke introspection. I won’t spoil the central reveal of the story, but Carey finds a unique and inciteful way to explore how a country’s conquerors are treated differently to those who originally inhabited it. What begins as an all-white cast of characters slowly begins to confront the indigenous history of Australia as they travel counterclockwise around the continent. What really brought the novel it’s depth, however, was the exploration of race. I found that lengthy sessions with the prose were necessary to appreciate Carey’s skill in character building. With no traditional heroic protagonist to root for, this was not a book that one could read in snippets. This did have the effect of making the reading of the novel a little slow at times.
Each has weaknesses and foibles, each their own power to disappoint the expectations Carey cultivates for them at the beginning of the book. We are at turns rooting for, frustrated with, and elated on behalf of each person.
They also evolve as the story goes on our feelings towards Willie and his married neighbours are certainly not the same at the end of the race as they are at its beginning.
Irene and Willie take turns to narrate chapters, their voices distinct and compelling. Our three main characters are also extremely well formed. There is no spare writing here, no fat on the bones. Irene, her husband, and their neighbour Willie Bachhuber are allowed space to breath between the sentences. I found it to be clipped, not to the extent of Hemingway, but in a way that expected something from its readers nevertheless. Set in the 1950s, the journey over sun-baked dirt will expose cracks in the Bobs’s marriage and White Australia’s relationship with its colonial past.Ĭarey’s prose is beautiful. The Redex is a continent-circumnavigating car race where the dirt, dust, and heat of Australia should be too much for any automobile. It follows a couple, Irene and ‘Titch’ Bobs, who decide to enter the Redex Trial. Twice winner of the Booker Prize, he is undoubtedly a brilliant writer and I was expecting great things from ‘A Long Way from Home’. The Australian author Peter Carey carries with him a weighty reputation. It polished the tree trunks until they shone.’ ‘I had waited for it, the wet season, through every blistering morning and the heated rocks of afternoon, and still I was not prepared, not for its density, immensity, the roar upon the roof, the obliteration of all distance, the air sucked from my lungs, as if it meant to kill me.
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