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lqvekanej's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
hanbanshee's review against another edition
5.0
A deeply unsettling read for anyone entangled with the ongoing settler-colonisation of ‘australia’— esp for those, like me, who are of settler-colonial descent. The future-realities laid out by Wright are all too prescient, uncomfortably accurate becomings as read from this point (roughly a decade after it was written); it reminds me of the horror of recognition reading Octavia E Butler’s Parable of the Sower/Talents. While The Swan Book highlights the impacts of foreign colonising worlds and forces on forever-old cultures of the 250+ pre-invasion nations of this land, it also brings the world to a kind of resting place within ‘australia’ in the bodies of swans, an embodiment of at once elegance, poise, composure, awkwardness, desperation and despair, direction, purpose, (divine) guidance, mystery, voicelessness and utterance, gathering masses and individual distinction, good/evil, sweetness, vulnerability, protection, refuge/refugees, displacement, and many more things beyond this scratching the surface. The dichotomy between European and Asian literary references to (white) swans and the red-beak presence of Oblivia’s black swans carries the weight of the relevant-irrelevance of imported cultural values and ideals, stripped of connection to place (such as Big Red’s family’s northern hemisphere christmas-obsessed decorations). My brain is still reeling from the rich complexity of images and references woven into this at once beautiful and unforgiving text, and I think much of this novel will stay with me for a long time indeed as I continue to think-with the histories I am born into, the place in which I still live, and my participation in and complicity with ongoing settler-colonisation, and how I might stand in solidarity and support of anticolonial efforts.
ineffablebooks's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars for the beautiful writing. If I ever come back to this and read it properly without having to analyse it for uni, then it'll probably be a 4-4.5 star. Someone in my class described it as 'discombobulating' to read, and if I could sum this book up in one word other than poetic, it'd be that. I still like it enough to maybe return to it one day though.
socorrobaptista's review against another edition
4.0
Uma narrativa de muitas camadas, às vezes confusa, cheia de mitos e discussões acerca das mudanças climáticas, diferenças culturais e questões étnicas. Intrigante.
raven_morgan's review against another edition
5.0
Every once in a while you pick up a book that you immediately want to buy copies of for half (or all) of your friends. This is one of those books.
"The Swan Book" is set in a future Australia, where much of the world has been devastated by global warming and subsequent climate change. Whole nations have been swallowed by the sea, and entire peoples made refugees. Australian Aboriginals are living underneath the Intervention, essentially locked into camps in the north of the country.
Obilivia Ethyl(ene) lives in one of these camps, a collection of people eking out a life around a polluted lake. Gang-raped by petrol-sniffing youths, she reduces her life to myth. She walks through a strange life surrounded by swans, brolgas and owls, where people are not always people, and her path can just as easily be a poem or a song.
This book may not be for everyone: the prose is often poetic, slipping into colloquialisms and stream-of-consciousness and back again, often within the span of one sentence. If you want your story told in a straightforward manner, then you should look elsewhere. But if you are willing to enter a world where myth walks beside reality, and there can be beauty even in the most horrible of things, then "The Swan Book" is for you.
Absolutely incredible, and I am not surprised at all that this has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize.
"The Swan Book" is set in a future Australia, where much of the world has been devastated by global warming and subsequent climate change. Whole nations have been swallowed by the sea, and entire peoples made refugees. Australian Aboriginals are living underneath the Intervention, essentially locked into camps in the north of the country.
Obilivia Ethyl(ene) lives in one of these camps, a collection of people eking out a life around a polluted lake. Gang-raped by petrol-sniffing youths, she reduces her life to myth. She walks through a strange life surrounded by swans, brolgas and owls, where people are not always people, and her path can just as easily be a poem or a song.
This book may not be for everyone: the prose is often poetic, slipping into colloquialisms and stream-of-consciousness and back again, often within the span of one sentence. If you want your story told in a straightforward manner, then you should look elsewhere. But if you are willing to enter a world where myth walks beside reality, and there can be beauty even in the most horrible of things, then "The Swan Book" is for you.
Absolutely incredible, and I am not surprised at all that this has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize.
cheydaytaysaway's review against another edition
3.0
Reading this book is like reading a fever dream, but I mean that in a good way, I think. I'm glad to have done it.
jckmd's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
sad
medium-paced
2.0
There is a lot of good stuff in this book, mainly in the prose department, but none of it can make up for the grotesque lack of agency afforded to its ableist, misogynist cardboard cutout of a protagonist. Why you would write a book purporting to denounce the misrepresentation and mistreatment of a people and spend its entirety misrepresenting and mistreating an offensive caricature of one of those people is beyond me. I am so sorry, Oblivia, that you were created to be a misery-porn punching bag and nothing else.
lizzzyy718's review against another edition
slow-paced
2.0
I found this hard to follow, I know that’s part of the point but I did not love it