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Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert

tien's review against another edition

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3.0

This is probably so very superficial but it annoyed the heck out of me! There was a lot of blushing done in this book by many characters but especially by Jeremy Delacy. As he is one of the main characters in the book, I supposed he's in a lot of scenes and innumerable blushes was done by him. Of course, different sort of words are used:

"Colouring and swallowing, Jeremy replied…"
"His [Jeremy] face flamed."
"Jeremy was red again:..."

above examples were taken from consecutive 2-3 pages of Chapter 2

but effectively, he's blushing...

description

I don't get it! He's a middle aged man (this story spans over a decade and he still blushes at the end of it) and supposedly a man's man (he's nicknamed the "Scrub Bull") and then!

Then, all these women were falling all over themselves for HIM! Argh! Okay, I can see the appeal; maybe...? And I don't like any of these female characters: they are either selfish or servile (especially when it comes to Jeremy Delacy, ugh!) or just plain silly (as opposed to being sensible).

description

On the other hand, I managed to finish a whole 1,440 pages :O so that is an absolutely amazing job by the author to have kept me engaged over the past 9 weeks (that's how long the library let me have this book for). I think it gives us a very fair picture of Australia of that time (beginning a few years after WW1 and ending at end of WW2): the oppression & struggle of the Indigenous people, racism (across many races), & the fickleness of politics. But really, I could've done with half the size of this book.
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