The Gap by Benjamin Gilmour

During a summer in Sydney, Australia, paramedics Ben and John face daily tragedy while both dealing with personal struggles. "The Gap" of the title of this book is both a scenic outlook in Sydney where suicides occur frequently and a metaphor for being on edge, the story much like a real-life version of Bringing Out the Dead but with a sense of humor. 

I enjoyed Paramédico by Gilmour and was excited when I heard the author had written another book about his experiences as an "ambo". It took me a long time to acquire a copy of The Gap but it was well worth the wait. Funny, moving, at times shocking and sad, the book is a testament to the courage, compassion, frustrations, danger, and other immense challenges paramedics face daily. 

Highly recommended - Stellar writing. I love medical memoirs (especially about emergency medicine, thanks to my early obsession with the TV show Emergency!) and books about such things as emerging diseases, so The Gap was right up my alley. I have, in fact, a collection of EMS books and I think Ben's writing is by far the best I've read. He takes you to the scene without going too far into detail about the gruesome and disgusting side of patient care, focusing instead on the emotion of patients and those that care for them. 

Trigger Warning for frequent descriptions of depression and suicide.

My review of Paramédico

Note: The Gap does not yet have a US publisher and I knew about its release because the author told me about it. It took a while to find it at a price I could afford but if you're interested and you're in the US, I got my copy from Book Depository. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell, and Fiona Wood

In Take Three Girls by Crowley, Howell, and Wood, Ady, Kate, and Clem all attend the same boarding school, St. Hilda's in Melbourne, Australia. But, they each have their own circles of friendship and unique struggles. 

Ady's parents fight constantly. Her father is an alcoholic and drug addict whose addiction has meant that he can no longer find a job. They are struggling to stay afloat. Ady's house is in a pretty posh neighborhood and Kate and Clem are not in her circle of friends. In fact, sometimes Ady's friends go out of their way to snub the others. Ady has a boyfriend who is handsome but she's not even sure she has all that much interest in him. She may even be dating him just because everyone else thinks he's hot. What will happen with Ady's parents? Should she keep dating Rupert or tell him the truth and let him go?

Kate is from the country and her parents are working hard on the farm to pay for her schooling. They expect her to get a scholarship for the remaining two years and eventually go to medical school. But, since Kate saw a celloist perform in a unique way, she has become obsessed with combining her computer and musical skills and her new goal is to win a scholarship to a cello workshop in Iceland. She is cheered on by her platonic friend back home, Ben. But, a boy named Oliver keeps annoying her and trying to tell her how to improve. Meanwhile, she is starting to cut classes and miss tutoring sessions to go to a club where she can hear the music she loves. Should Kate go with her heart and choose the musical path or go for the scholarship to save her parents the hardship?

Clem is a swimmer but she broke her wrist and during her time off from swimming she gained weight. She also has become besotted with Stu, the slightly older (19 to her 16) guy she ran into when she broke her wrist. Now her wrist has healed but she is humiliated by the tightness of her new uniform and has begun skipping swim practice. Clem's fraternal twin sister, Iris, is Kate's roommate. Clem and Iris are not getting along at all since their parents moved to Singapore and Clem chose not to room with Iris. When Stu drops hints that he wants to sleep with Clem, will she go along with it? What if she's decided swimming competitively is no longer for her? What's next? Will she and Iris ever work things out?

All three girls are sophomores who are thrown together for wellness classes after a website called PSST, in which girls are singled out for various attributes in gossipy, embarrassing, misogynistic, and very graphically nasty lists causes the school to come up with wellness class as a plan to help them deal with the gossip mill and its painful effects. And, at some point all become targets of PSST. When Ady, Kate, and Clem are grouped together as a friendship trio by thumb size (seriously) they are expected to spend time together to expand their horizons and break free from their usual social circles. None is interested, at first. But, as they let their guards down and begin hanging out with each other, they find an unexpected bond. 

Recommended - The wellness bits are a little bit odd and I had so much trouble keeping the three girls straight, at first, that I restarted Take Three Girls and took notes, which I never had to refer back to, once written. But, once they did the thumb matching and started hanging out together, it was clear that a connection was going to develop and I absolutely loved seeing their friendship grow. That was one of my favorite things about Take Three Girls. I also loved the realness of it: the things they worried about (boys, school, sex), the temptation to sneak away through the "portal" — a door in the dormitory that wouldn't close all the way — and the way they were learning about their own needs and desires and hopes for the future. It all felt very familiar in a distant way and I think teenage girls will especially relate. There's also a great deal of emphasis on misogyny and how that effects women of all ages, which any female at all can relate to. 

I talked about this book with my youngest son and he noted that the concept of the wellness class sounded like just the kind of lame reaction school administrators would have to a genuine bullying problem. I won't spill how the real problem is solved but they do end up getting something out of the wellness classes. It just isn't the solution to the bullying site. That's taken care of in a way that's very satisfying. 

My thanks to Sterling Teen for the review copy of Take Three Girls!

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Plains by Gerald Murnane

The Plains by Gerald Murnane is an Australian modern classic about a man who goes to the Plains region of Australia for a filmmaking project. But, first, he must get to know the Plainsmen and what makes them tick. He finds a patron, a wealthy landowner willing to pay him to spend time reading diaries and documents on the Plains to research his film.

~~~Warning: This next paragraph may contain spoilers. Skip it if you are planning to read The Plains and want to be surprised, please!~~~ 

The storyline in The Plains is predictable, at least in part, but still managed to surprise and tickle me. It's told in three parts. In the first part, the narrator travels to the Plains and hangs out where the Plainsmen do, hoping to learn about them and understand them enough to create his film. At the end of the first section, he finds his patron. In the second part, the narrator (I don't recall whether or not he was ever named) is living with his patron, admiring the patron's wife, and spending most of his time in the library of the patron's estate. In the final section, years have passed and the narrator realizes he has become a Plainsman, himself. But, I won't tell you what happens to his filmmaking process because it's worth discovering if you're at all interested in reading the book. And, it's quite funny.

It's safe, now. 

I got of whiff of the slyness of the author's sense of humor when the narrator made a comment about not knowing quite when he left Australia. That's like saying you aren't quite sure when you left America as you entered Kansas. But, I think it's likely I would have missed out on a lot of the subtle humor if I hadn't read the introduction, which was written by a writer who was so impressed by The Plains when he first read it that he started corresponding with the author. I highly recommend reading the intro, if you have this copy of the book.

I found the beginning and the last section of The Plains a little difficult until I stopped thinking so hard about what the author was trying to say. Oddly, The Plains made more sense when I put less effort into figuring it out.

Recommended with a note - The Plains is a very Australian book and you have to kind of shift your mindset to get it if you're not Australian. It's best to embrace the quirkiness. It's not often I read a book that's more difficult the harder you try to understand it but this is definitely that kind of book.

Side note: The Plains caught my eye in an Australian bookstore because I grew up on the American Plains and have a fondness for wheat, which would get blown into our yard during storms when I was young; there was a wheat field not far from us at the time (it eventually became a Walmart, ugh). I didn't buy a copy when I was in Australia but my husband went back there on business, after we vacationed Down Under, and I sent him with a list. The Plains was at the top. He tried to read it and found it a little too weird.

Reminder: I've gone to every-other-week Monday Malarkey posts, so there will be a Malarkey post next week.

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Mini reviews - The Lost Man by Jane Harper, The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward, and The Last Light Breaking by Nick Jans

It just occurred to me that I should use as much of the week as possible while I'm trying to quickly crank out reviews to finish up 2019, so I may go ahead and post on the weekends and/or skip Fiona Friday until I've caught up and posted my final list with links to all reviews from 2019. I'm going to wing it, for now. Husband may not let me get away with that, so we'll just have to see if that works out. I've just gotten my phone back from the store where I left it behind, so I will go ahead and post a Fiona Friday image, tomorrow.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper is about three brothers. One has become an outcast and lives on a remote piece of his family's property. One feels like he's being treated like he's stupid and left completely out of the decision-making. The third was considered the responsible, likable one. He was married with two children but his body has just turned up in a very strange place, next to a lone grave and far enough from his car that it appears he may have committed suicide. But, something doesn't feel quite right about his death and the outcast brother decides to find out what really happened.

I don't have the book next to me but I remember the story well, if not the names of the characters. As in her previous two books, Jane Harper's Australian setting is practically a character in and of itself, it's so vivid. When she talks about the dust, the dryness, the heat, the way the fine red soil gets into the creases of one's clothing, it's so well described that the real world feels a little unreal for a moment, when you set the book down. The characterization is every bit as sharp. I am so impressed by Jane Harper.

Highly recommended - I was a little disappointed when I found out Jane Harper's third book wasn't going to star the police officer with a wounded soul but an honorable heart of the first two books but I shouldn't have been. I'm not a mystery fan but Jane Harper's writing absolutely sweeps me away. The Lost Man has a slightly slow beginning as you get to know the characters but once you've been introduced to the cast and the questions about the death have been posed, the story becomes absolutely mesmerizing. I continued guessing all the way to the end of the book and I closed the book thinking it was Harper's best.

My copy of The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward was ordered from Book Depository so just a warning, up front: that's probably the British cover. The publisher is Blackfriars, which sounds very British, but I'm just guessing. If you're American and this story appeals to you, be aware that you probably won't see this cover if you go looking for it.

The Same Sky tells two interconnected stories. One is the tale of a young Honduran girl who lives with her grandmother and twin brothers. Her mother lives in Austin, Texas and sends home money but after things deteriorate, Carla and her brother, Junior, are constantly starving. When he starts sniffing glue to help him forget his hunger, Carla knows it's past time to attempt the harrowing journey North. Will they survive?

In the second storyline, Alice is infertile due to breast cancer treatment in her college years and a baby she and her husband were going to adopt has been reclaimed by his mother. Is it time to give up on ever having a child?

It's pretty obvious how Carla and Alice's stories will intersect (Trigger Warning for rape) and, as is often the case in books with two storylines, I favored one over the other — the favorite being Carla's story. I didn't feel like Alice's story was entirely necessary but that's a personal preference. After I wrote that I was unsure why the author bothered to tell Alice's story, on Instagram, another reader and bookstagrammer told me she liked the story just as it is. I wondered if Ward showed Alice's side for the contrast. Alice and her husband have a successful business but feel their lives are incomplete without a family. Carla's family is scattered and struggling in ways mostly unimaginable to an American, so there definitely is a stark difference between their lives.

Recommended but I had mixed feelings - While I think immigrant stories are especially important at this moment, I felt like The Same Sky was a little too disjointed and that some of the elements should have been glossed over or eliminated entirely. I gave it 3 1/2 ⭐. For those who may be wondering, yes I've heard of American Dirt. In fact, I've pre-ordered a copy. I tried to win one (I don't know how many drawings I signed up for) but failed. Before I did so, I'd already pre-ordered it, anyway. It just means I have to wait till its release. 

There's an interesting story behind how I found The Last Light Breaking by Nick Jans. About 10 years ago, the first time we went to Alaska on vacation, Huzzybuns neglected to book one night's lodging in the middle of our stay. Seriously, he just skipped that night. When he realized he'd messed up, the only place he could find for us to stay was on the opposite side of the Kenai Peninsula from where we were staying the rest of the time, in a former cannery. He booked it because he had no other options and it turned out to be a cool side trip because it was on the drive across the peninsula that we saw the one and only moose we encountered on that trip. 

Our room in the former cannery was frigid (the thermostat set in the 50s) when we arrived but there was a little lobby area with corner seating where we could hang out while the room warmed up and a shelf of books on each wall for the guests to borrow. I flipped through a few before settling down to read The Last Light Breaking. I only read a single chapter (it's a series of essays about the author's life in Alaska with Inupiat Eskimos) but I was so impressed that I wrote down the title and author and put the book on my wish list. It took several years before I got a copy via Paperback Swap and I suppose it's taken me so long to actually read The Last Light Breaking because of all the ARCs I've given priority, over the years, but it finally called out to me during my winter break from blogging and I listened. 

The essays in The Last Light Breaking tell Nick Jans' story (not in exact timeline order, but so well that it didn't feel like that mattered): how and why he ended up traveling to Alaska, his experience as a new guy (and not a native in a predominantly native region) in town, the jobs he's held, many of the trips he's made around the area to camp, hunt, fish, hike, etc., and what he's learned from his neighbors and friends. Nick Jans is an adventurer and a people person, so the book is particularly fun to read if you like reading about adventure, interaction, and what it's like to live with the Inupiat, who are among the few natives who actually are OK with the word "Eskimo".

Speaking of the word "Eskimo" and why it's not always OK . . . my son had a swim coach from Alaska. He was indigenous but Tlingit, from Juneau, not a people for whom the term "Eskimo" is used, so he considers it offensive if you call him an Eskimo.

Highly recommended - Stunning writing that will make you feel like you've been on an adventure with the author and convince you that the land is sacred. I will be looking for more by Jans and I wish I'd read him sooner.

When we were in Alaska, or maybe before, I read up on the native way of life and why they still consider subsistence living (hunting and fishing in the traditional ways for food, fuel, etc.) important so I had no problem with some of the things Jans did with his friends but I would caution the squeamish and anyone who objects to the killing of animals for any reason that there are a few graphic scenes that you might need to skim.

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Time is the Longest Distance by Janet Clare

It grew hotter and we soon peeled off our jackets and worked a solid hour until I thought I would just die right here. Why couldn't she have had an affair in Rome? I would have an Italian father who wore beautiful shoes. 

p. 97

Time is the Longest Distance by Janet Clare is about a middle-aged woman who finds out her deceased father was not her biological father. Instead, she was conceived during a brief affair when her mother traveled to Australia. After she calms down, Lilly contacts her biological father, Cameron, and goes to meet him and her half brother in Australia. He is a taciturn man and Lilly isn't sure it was worth the effort to come meet him. But, then he suggests that she accompany him and her new family on the Canning Stock Route, a dangerous track across the outback.

I'm going to defer to the cover description, here:

Like a moon walker far from her life, LIlly becomes entangled in an unlikely love affair and witness to an unsavory death. The hard days and long nights provide time and space for Lilly to recall the years with her ex-husband, Stephen, artist and all-around drunk -- the greatest love and disappointment in her life -- forcing her to examine her own imperfections as she learns, first-hand, about the power and destruction of secrets, sexual taboos, and the thrill of transgression. 

One of the most fascinating things about Time is the Longest Distance is the publisher. Written by an American, the book is published by an Australian press in Melbourne. If nothing else, that tells you how authentic the descriptions of Australia must be. And, I did find that it matched what I've read by Australian authors when describing the desert region, like John Marsden in Tomorrow When the War Began.

Recommended - I had mixed feelings about Time is the Longest Distance. It has a melancholy tone (which I tend to dislike) and deeply flawed characters (which I'm okay with, although it can be uncomfortable) but the writing is solid. I was particularly awed by Clare's use of the senses, which are visceral. You can feel the heat and rain, smell the sweat. Stephen's daughter Jen is the only really likable character but she does keep the others from becoming intolerable and I loved the outdoor adventure/survival aspect of the book. Note: At 209 pages, Time is the Longest Distance is a quick read but you may feel like you've just traversed the desert and need a bit of a lie-down, after.

I received a copy of Time is the Longest Distance from the author. I don't normally accept books from authors for review unless I know them personally so I have no idea what I was thinking, the day I said "yes" (although I was probably swayed by the setting) but I'm glad I accepted it. However, it's a one-off so if you're an author, please don't ask me to review your book directly -- if you'd like a review, I'd prefer to deal with a publicist. Thanks, Janet!

©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth

From the cover: 

Two brothers are exposed to the brutal realities of life and the seductive cruelty of power in this riveting debut novel -- a story of savagery and race, injustice and honor, set in the untamed frontier of 1880s Australia.

In Only Killers and Thieves, it's 1885 and the McBride family is trying to survive a terrible drought in Queensland, Australia. When the two teenagers in the family, Tommy and Billy, stray onto their neighboring landowner's property, they see something shocking and are threatened by neighbor John Sullivan. Not long after, tragedy strikes and a gun given to a former native hired hand is found on the McBride property.

Tommy and Billy escaped the tragedy and now they're out to find a killer. But, with Sullivan and the chief of the Native Mounted Police, Noone, leading the way, they find that their goal is not at all what they'd intended. One of the boys goes along with the brutality of Sullivan and Noone; the other is threatened and has no choice but to join in the atrocities or risk his own death. What will happen to Billy and Tommy? Will they find the killer they seek or end up going back home without tracking him down? Was their hired hand even the person responsible?

OK, deep breath. There's a lot to this story but I don't want to go into any detail to avoid spoilers. What I will tell you is that it's based on historical events that I wasn't aware of. During the late 1800s, there was a native police force that was involved in the slaughter of fellow Aborigines in Australia. The author paints this as a life or death choice. The white people were killing off the natives so thoroughly that the only way to survive was to join them. As in most cases of native genocide, the ones doing the killing described the Aborigines in demeaning ways. They were only killers and thieves, they ate their children, they were savages, etc.

Throughout Only Killers and Thieves, the boys make an assumption about who is responsible for the tragedy at their home. I had no trouble figuring out whether this was a right or wrong assumption but I didn't know the reasoning behind the answer and that kept me reading. Also, the writing is excellent. However, if you're squeamish about graphic violence or rape scenes are a trigger, you might want to avoid this one. It's brutal. I remember thinking, at some point, that the ending had better be a good one or Only Killers and Thieves was going to get a really low rating. Fortunately, the ending is really quite lovely, so I ended up giving it 4 stars. But, it was definitely the kind of book that can give a person nightmares.

Recommended with warnings for graphic violence including rape - A harsh but beautifully written story about the senseless killings of Aboriginal people in Australia and the men, including natives, who perpetrated mass murder. If you can tolerate the violence, the ending is very satisfying.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

I read Walkabout by James Vance Marshall as an ebook (shockingly, I've actually read two e-books in the past month and am in the middle of another) because my eldest son had just finished it when I put Walkabout on my wish list and he said, "It's very short. I'd advise you to just read the e-book instead of ordering a paper copy."

Walkabout is the story of two children who are the only survivors of a plane crash in the Australian Outback. Brother and sister, Peter and Mary are from Charleston, South Carolina, their destination Adelaide, where they planned to visit their uncle. The book begins just after the plane crash. The two watch the plane burn and then curl up together and fall asleep, although Mary intends to watch for hazards but is overcome by exhaustion.

I finished Walkabout in a single December afternoon and have forgotten some of the details, like how old the children were, but I'm guessing Mary was around 10 and Peter 6. At any rate, they're young enough not to know that it would be best for them to stay close to the wreckage, which is near a creek. Instead, they set out to walk to Adelaide. It's desert dry and they're unfamiliar with the land and its creatures, so they're likely within hours of death when they encounter an Aboriginal boy. They can't communicate but they're able to convince him to help them.

How much of the story is accurate to the life of Aborigines I can't say, but the introductory material in the NYRB version says James Vance Marshall was not the real name of the author but it was, in fact, a real man's name - the name of a man who had spent some time in the Outback and whose notes the author obtained access to, with the permission of his son. So the author did have access to knowledge, if not first-hand experience.

The biggest frustration for me, and probably this is true of most females, was the fact that once the Aboriginal boy (who has gone walkabout as a rite of passage) realizes Mary is female, he treats her like a pack mule or servant rather than a fellow human being. I'm curious if that was true in a particular tribe or just something the author came up with, perhaps a product of the times or an assumption about natives, as the book was originally published in 1959. Walkabout left me with a lot of questions. But, the bottom line is that I enjoyed following the children and their new friend as he helped them learn to forage, follow the shadiest path through the desert, and gave them instructions on how to survive the final leg of their journey.

Recommended - My son drew my attention to some minor anachronisms that I missed and the story is not a perfect one, but I enjoyed Walkabout primarily for the survival aspect. Peter worked to learn the Aboriginal language during their days in the desert; Mary did not. But, the level of communication, while shallow, was enough that even when the Aboriginal boy died (the implication being that he willed himself to death after the girl looked at him in shock and he decided she'd seen death in his future) he was able to let them know where they needed to travel to reach water and, therefore, survival. Fascinating but very brief reading. You can finish this one in an hour or two. It's closer to novella length than novel length.

Notes on the movie by the same name: I have not seen the movie based on Walkabout, which my son says is a bit of a cult classic, but there are some significant differences. I read about the movie and decided it definitely isn't something I want to watch, especially since it's so very different from the book. The movie begins with a man taking his children in the desert to kill them, not with children surviving a plane crash.

Addendum: It wasn't till I posted a link to this review that I remembered a second frustration besides the way Mary was treated by the Aboriginal boy and that was the fact that the children called the boy, "Darkie". I kept hoping they'd try to exchange names but it never happened and they continued calling him "Darkie" or referring to him as "the darkie" throughout the story. It's also worth mentioning that the children didn't particularly sound American. They occasionally used expressions I know to be common in the UK.

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Blast from the Past: The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

Early in my blogging years, there was a wonderful e-zine by the name of Estella's Revenge. I occasionally wrote reviews or articles for Estella's Revenge (now known as The Estella Collective and, I believe, archived but not active) At the time, I didn't cross-post them to Bookfoolery, instead posting a link to the e-zine when it published. I've decided to occasionally move some of those old reviews to Bookfoolery so that I'll have them on my own site for future reference.

One of the books I reviewed for Estella was The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, which I just purchased. I gave away the ARC long, long ago and bought it to reread because it's an Australian title that was discussed in the Australian Lit course I recently took via Coursera. Although I doubt I'll review it a second time when I reread it, I'm looking forward to reading it with notes that will hopefully allow me to read from a fresh perspective.

---------------------------

My review of The Broken Shore, originally published April 1, 2007:

The Broken Shore
Written by Peter Temple
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"Did it cross your mind," Leon said, leaning on the counter, "that our lives are just like stories kids tell you? They get the and-the-and-then right, and then they run out of steam and just stop."
"You've got kids?" It had not occurred to Cashin.
"Two," said Leon.
Cashin felt a sense of unfairness. "Maybe you shouldn't think about your life that way. Maybe you shouldn't think about life at all. Just make the coffee."

Detective Joe Cashin isn't the man he used to be. Since his brush with death, Joe lives with chronic pain and paralyzing guilt. Sent away from the big-city homicide unit to a post in his quiet little hometown on the South Australian coast, Joe walks his dogs and considers rebuilding the ruin of his ancestral home.

When he's called to the scene of a crime, though, Joe's old instincts take over. Wealthy and prominent citizen Charles Burgoyne has been badly beaten in his own home and may not survive. A missing watch that two Aboriginal boys try to sell in a pawn shop in the city convinces police that they've found their suspects; and, the locals are happy to accept that the boys are to blame. Joe is not so easily convinced. When the investigation is botched, it appears the crime may never be solved. Given time off to let the controversy settle down, Cashin becomes even more suspicious and investigates on his own.

The Broken Shore is a pleasingly complex, if gritty, crime novel that appears to thematically state, "Things are not always what they seem." The story unfolds slowly, layer by layer. While it isn't, in the end, completely mysterious - Temple does pretty much throw the answers in your lap - that doesn't matter. What matters is the way he tackles issues like racial prejudice, life as an itinerant worker, guilt, corruption, compassion, and politics.

For the uninitiated North American, there's a glossary of Australian terms in the back. Australian English is a little mind-blowing if you're not accustomed to it. The glossary is immensely helpful; it doesn't cover every strange word, but there are enough definitions to keep the book from pitching into utter incomprehensibility.

Also of note is choppy prose; I don't read a lot of crime novels but that seems to be fairly common, not wasting words. Sentences can be as brief as, "Bobby waited." Often, the clipped dialogue of several characters comes in such a tumble of phrases that reading occasionally feels much like translating code. Yet, it somehow works. Real people don't always speak in sentences; often, in fact, having their own private language.

Joe Cashin is a likeable character: witty, tenacious, haunted by past experiences, hopeful but often overwhelmed by guilt or pain, kind and nonjudgmental. He's worth spending time with. His language and that of those he works with or interviews is at least "R-rated". There was one frequently used term I consider "X-rated" and I found myself repeatedly wondering, "Is this not as bad a word in Australia?" For those who like harsh realism and crusty language, it's an excellent story; others should bear in mind that the language is definitely rough.

The Broken Shore is Peter Temple's eighth crime novel. His books have won numerous awards in Australia. U.S. release date is scheduled for June, 2007.

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Some updated notes:

The British copy of The Broken Shore that I just purchased does not contain a glossary. However, thanks to "Australian Literature: A Rough Guide", I now know there is a convenient online dictionary: the Australian National Dictionary.

Hope you enjoyed this blast from the past!

©2015 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.