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Jump to navigationJump to searchBereft by Chris Womersley (view source)
Revision as of 14:03, 20 January 2012
, 14:03, 20 January 2012no edit summary
''A good story is like medicine, in my opinion'', one character says. You will never turn to these pages for the medicine that is laughter, for not only do we have the dark events in Flint then and now, but also the drip, drip flashback to WWI and what Quinn went through. But this is a darkness in sunlight, and as gloomy as the precis could get this is a book of constant variety in pacing and tone, and with a high level of surprise and originality.
The style will probably bring many comparisons out of reviewers. An Australian Cormac McCarthy, perhaps, or [[:Category:Peter Carey|Peter Carey]] returning to his rural, historical roots. The film version that already exists in my head is definitely a Philip Ridley production. It would be easy to make this excellent book a film I would most certainly want to watch, but for now it remains a novel you most certainly should want to read.
The surprise in the end is not that this book, only the author's second, won several awards down under, but that there were awards it ''didn't'' win."
