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kimbofo's reviews
1021 reviews
Finding Jasper by Lynne Leonhardt
4.0
Every so often I read a book that makes me homesick because it captures the sights and sounds of Australia so very eloquently that you can practically smell the aroma of eucalyptus wafting off the page and feel the harsh summer sun beating down on you. Lynne Leonhardt's wonderfully self-assured debut novel Finding Jasper is one of those books.
Set in Western Australia between 1945 and 1963, the novel is divided into three parts.
It opens in 1956, when 12-year-old Gin (short for Virginia) is sent to her aunt's remote farm while her English mother returns to London on a three-month holiday. It is Gin's first time away from home and she is upset by the prospect of being abandoned in this manner. But she soon comes to love her stay with Aunt Attie, especially the stories she learns about her father (Attie's brother), who died shortly after she was born.
The second part moves backwards in time to January 1945 and tells the tale of Gin's mother, Valerie, and her first husband, Jasper, an Australian fighter pilot in Bomber Command. The pair meet and marry in England while Jasper is stationed at the (fictional) RAF base Wickerton during the Second World War. When Gin is born, Valerie emigrates to Australia ahead of her husband. But he is killed in action and never returns home.
The third and final part jumps ahead to January 1963 and largely revolves around 19-year-old Gin, whose life is still profoundly affected by the absence of Jasper, the father she never knew. While living at home with her mother, her step-father Noel and her little step-sister, Dottie, a family tragedy changes things forever. Gin must now decide what kind of path she wants to forge for her own life.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
Set in Western Australia between 1945 and 1963, the novel is divided into three parts.
It opens in 1956, when 12-year-old Gin (short for Virginia) is sent to her aunt's remote farm while her English mother returns to London on a three-month holiday. It is Gin's first time away from home and she is upset by the prospect of being abandoned in this manner. But she soon comes to love her stay with Aunt Attie, especially the stories she learns about her father (Attie's brother), who died shortly after she was born.
The second part moves backwards in time to January 1945 and tells the tale of Gin's mother, Valerie, and her first husband, Jasper, an Australian fighter pilot in Bomber Command. The pair meet and marry in England while Jasper is stationed at the (fictional) RAF base Wickerton during the Second World War. When Gin is born, Valerie emigrates to Australia ahead of her husband. But he is killed in action and never returns home.
The third and final part jumps ahead to January 1963 and largely revolves around 19-year-old Gin, whose life is still profoundly affected by the absence of Jasper, the father she never knew. While living at home with her mother, her step-father Noel and her little step-sister, Dottie, a family tragedy changes things forever. Gin must now decide what kind of path she wants to forge for her own life.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
5.0
This may possibly be the most difficult review I've ever had to write. Clearly, given my five-star rating, it's not because the book is bad; on the contrary, it is superb. But to try and write about Michel Faber's Under the Skin without giving away crucial plot spoilers is nigh on impossible.
This is a novel that is cloaked in secrecy — I've yet to come across a review online that gives away the bizarre content or the dramatic ending — and I'm not about to become the first to give it all away. Let me just say that it is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It's intriguing and creepy and defies categorisation and the title is uncannily appropriate, because the story does, indeed, get under the skin...
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
This is a novel that is cloaked in secrecy — I've yet to come across a review online that gives away the bizarre content or the dramatic ending — and I'm not about to become the first to give it all away. Let me just say that it is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It's intriguing and creepy and defies categorisation and the title is uncannily appropriate, because the story does, indeed, get under the skin...
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
3.0
First published in 1970, Robertson Davies' Fifth Business is the first volume of the Deptford Trilogy, but can be read as a standalone novel. The title refers to the idea of a person being neither hero or heroine, confidante nor villain, but still being a vital part of a plot — without them the denouement or resolution would not happen. And that is the perfect description of the role with which our narrator, Dunstan "Dunny" Ramsay, fulfills — he is the "fifth business".
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
Tivington Nott by Alex Miller
5.0
The Tivington Nott, which was first published in 1989, has just been made available to British readers for the first time thanks to a reprint by the publisher Allen & Unwin UK. It is an extraordinarily vivid account of one young man's participation in a stag hunt on the Exmoor borders and is filled with beautiful descriptions of Nature and the countryside — "the last ancient homeland of the wild red deer in England" — as well as depicting the bond between horse and rider like nothing I have ever read before.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.