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doddyaboutbooks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
stanro's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
For this mainly audio reader, my selected first-to-start book for 2024 provides the additional challenge of being a 736-page physical book. How could they have not released an audio version?! But this is Praiseworthy, the latest novel by Alexis Wright, and I am devoted.
The book is a deep, sustained dive into the madness of a place where Australian Aboriginal culture is shattered and malleable whilst eternal, and the Government’s legislation — phrased in caring language though it is — is deeply destructive.
I start the book and am captured immediately by Wright’s writing. The cadences. The way a sentence stops, then flows at length, doubling back on itself as it interrogates its initial proposition, refining and developing it as if it has a life of its own. Yet often, Wright starts a new thought with a brief exclamation like “Well!” or “So!” or “Listen good now!”
The book is a difficult, thoughtful, prod-me-in-the-ribs and punch-me-in-the-face challenge to my understanding and sensitivity.
We are engaged with damaged individuals striving to live in this damaged cultural environment called Praiseworthy, with its perpetually present dust haze — creation of the Anthropocene — multiplying life’s difficulties. There are donkeys and butterflies and places and characters who are somewhat Dickensianly named as objects and concepts (Praiseworrhy itself, of course, and Cause Man Steel (alternatively called Widespread), his wife Dance, their sons Aboriginal Sovreignty and Tommyhawk and Praiseworthy’s mayor, Ice Pick).
There is great sadness and madness in all this. Heartbreaking sadness. Mind-bending madness. And if Australia’s great shame is its denial of the dispossession and genocide of its native people, its other great shame is its treatment by way of de facto criminalisation of the “boat people” — refugees arriving by boat and being incarcerated off-shore. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Wright brings these two shames together.
Wright’s writing rolls over me like a flooding river, endlessly, in large slabs of lengthy sentences punctuated with the flotsam of shorter sentences. Her writing contains vocabulary-stretching words and Latin words and French words and Italian musical notation. I went to a dictionary so many times! And there is occasional dark humour.
Wright’s imagination and use of language and form is arresting and very challenging, expanding my understanding. Here is one I particularly liked.
“When he breathed, it was not to take the air from the atmosphere, but to inhale ancestry, the mighty creation spirits journeying through him, coursing their way in a regular pattern, slowly travelling to his lungs and returning through the moist air released back into the atmosphere.”
For most of this reading journey, I could barely read 10 pages on any day, often less.
Nearing the end, in a section about Ice Pick’s broadcasts to Praiseworthy, I think I detect references to Dylan songs. The dim shadow of his All Along the Watchtower is one that reappears more than once to me in this brief section. And this is possibly intended, as Wright peppers her work with more explicit western cultural references. Though like a good cook, she uses such heady spices sparingly.
Metaphorically battered, bruised, challenged and tired, I got to the end, satisfied with my epic reading journey.
This is a book where I would have appreciated an audio version to let a professional do some of that hard work. Though audio has been available since mid-March, that was well after I’d commenced my physical edition. When I read this again, and I will, it will be in audio.
Despite the difficulties in reading which meant it took me about 4 months, I savoured it and was enveloped within it. And I was enlarged by it. It’s an extraordinary book. Though I’ve not attempted the challenges of Joyce’s Ulysses, the ghost of my unread audio of that preeminent work haunted me as I read this, and I wondered how they compare.
As for Praiseworthy, the most difficult reading experience of a novel I’ve ever had, for all that and perhaps because, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
#areadersjourney
rouge_red's review against another edition
Pretty quick turnaround, but I can't stand books where the narrator talks to the audience the whole time. It's ok if there's an occasional 4th-wall break, but not the whole damn time. And in a sassy way too! Just no.
caitlinmhp's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
laura_reads_'s review against another edition
Amazingly well written and intelligent! My brain just can’t process it at the moment.
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Praiseworthy is an epic novel, one of the more challenging and provocative books I’ve read recently. It often reads like a fable, albeit one heavy with dystopian overtones, but it’s also part satire, part tragedy, part farce, part … well the list goes on. And it’s definitely part good-old-fashioned yarn.
Praiseworthy is set in a small northern Aboriginal community beleaguered by a haze cloud and explores the continuing impacts of colonisation and of the climate crisis. The somewhat convoluted plot revolves around the Steel family. Father Cause is fixated on herds of feral donkeys as the solution to the climate crisis and his community ‘s economic dependence, while mother Dance communes with butterflies and moths and wants to return to her ancestral home in China. Their youngest son Tommyhawk spends too much time online, fears he is no longer safe in his own community thanks to the government and media fixating on paedophilia, and is determined to become white and powerful. It does get a bit messy and confusing at times especially when Tommyhawk unintentionally triggers a crisis in his family and community.
What makes this book so unforgettable is its use of language in ways which are both playful and powerful, plus its heavy use of metaphor and allegory. It’s heavily political and not always subtle. Proof in point is the name of the Steel’s oldest son - Aboriginal Sovereignty. At one stage he is pursued by the government and may want to take his own life. Towards the end there is a line which reads “Aboriginal Sovereignty never dies, for you cannot destroy what was infinitely existing in the law of country that always is, and always will be governing itself.” Like I said political, allegorical and not at all subtle.
This certainly won’t be a book for everyone but I do recommend it to readers who are ready to be challenged by the storytelling and by the story being told, a story which unflinchingly highlights the impacts of colonisation, abuse and neglect on contemporary Aboriginal society but also highlights the varied and unceasing resistance.
Praiseworthy is set in a small northern Aboriginal community beleaguered by a haze cloud and explores the continuing impacts of colonisation and of the climate crisis. The somewhat convoluted plot revolves around the Steel family. Father Cause is fixated on herds of feral donkeys as the solution to the climate crisis and his community ‘s economic dependence, while mother Dance communes with butterflies and moths and wants to return to her ancestral home in China. Their youngest son Tommyhawk spends too much time online, fears he is no longer safe in his own community thanks to the government and media fixating on paedophilia, and is determined to become white and powerful. It does get a bit messy and confusing at times especially when Tommyhawk unintentionally triggers a crisis in his family and community.
What makes this book so unforgettable is its use of language in ways which are both playful and powerful, plus its heavy use of metaphor and allegory. It’s heavily political and not always subtle. Proof in point is the name of the Steel’s oldest son - Aboriginal Sovereignty. At one stage he is pursued by the government and may want to take his own life. Towards the end there is a line which reads “Aboriginal Sovereignty never dies, for you cannot destroy what was infinitely existing in the law of country that always is, and always will be governing itself.” Like I said political, allegorical and not at all subtle.
This certainly won’t be a book for everyone but I do recommend it to readers who are ready to be challenged by the storytelling and by the story being told, a story which unflinchingly highlights the impacts of colonisation, abuse and neglect on contemporary Aboriginal society but also highlights the varied and unceasing resistance.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Suicide, and Death
emziesreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book gave my brain a workout in the best possible way. A deep dive into a family, an Aboriginal community, and the challenges of living as such when faced with the consequences of years of well-meaning, racist government policy. Throw in climate change and the pandemic, this novel is well worth the effort.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Racism, and Suicide
clapton_pond's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
ciarafrances's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0