Scan barcode
abbeydehnert's review
2.75
Moderate: Suicide
dominique_wilson's review
5.0
In sensuous, evocative language, Sulway's Dying in the First Person tells the story of twin brothers – Morgan and Samuel – who, as children, developed both the language of Nahum and its accompanying imaginary world. As adults, Morgan wanders the world, and his only communication with Samuel is the stories he sends, and which Samuel then translates into English for publication. When Morgan dies unexpectedly, Ana – a woman who may or may not have been his lover – brings his body, and the last Nahum story, back to Australia.
Although this is a realist novel, still there is an element of magic realism to Sulway's prose, reminiscent of García Márquez's writing. It is a multifaceted book in which Sulway unmasks, with delicate nuance, the complex relationships and contradictory feelings we experience through loss, love and hate – the way we see ourselves and the way we interpret our relationships, the way one truth can have multiple versions of meaning, how silences are in fact anything but silent, and how we are inescapable connected to landscape. It is both a meditation on grief, and an exploration of identity – on our sense of self and on how and where we belong.
Nike Sulway's Dying in the First Person is not a book you just read – it is one that you experience, one exquisite sentence at the time.
wtb_michael's review
4.0