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yrioona's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Wow. This is a massive, spiralling, fractal of a book. I found it difficult and disorienting, sometimes frustrating, but also totally captivating. Often funny in a sly and cutting way, equally often funny in a broad and silly way, always dense with grief and loss, and rich with detail about people and country. Wright circles hypnotically around plot points without always spelling them out or nailing them down, returning here and there to add a layer to an event introduced earlier. Sometimes the layer is just finer detail, sometimes a revelatory piece of context, sometimes an alternate (even seemingly contradictory) narrative or outcome, sometimes just relentless repetition. Virtuosic, code-switching sentences run on for half a page or more, dancing through wordplay and poetic riffs from comedy to tragedy and back. The narration zooms in, out, and around the warped, looping, subjectivities of traumatized characters (including Country itself), shifting its voice to match the POV without ever losing its unique style. I found myself reading pages at a time aloud to savor the flow of the words (or just to slow down and figure out what the heck was happening!). This is well worth the effort and like nothing else I've ever read.
"They had all copied the same message written in simple white-people language...instead of unpacking the interconnected intricacies of the time immemorial language of high culture. Such an undertaking would be like turning the life of your mind into a quarry, and jackhammering your soul into a million little pieces. You would have to sort out into which pile of incomprehension you would categorise your infinity, before you could pick a single box out of time immemorial to be translated into common English."
"The donkey, built like a thousand battleships, asked if pretend gods would be exposed by the real gods of the Earth Government, which was the Earth itself? ...What happens when ancestors re-create? How do you become trained to imagine the powerfulness of other living beings, and to read the many depths of history in the ancestral stories? These were the many questions that the platinum donkey had to ask Planet, before dignifying its glossy platinum-ness as the ultimate mask-head of a global warming era conglomerate transport industry."
"The donkey, built like a thousand battleships, asked if pretend gods would be exposed by the real gods of the Earth Government, which was the Earth itself? ...What happens when ancestors re-create? How do you become trained to imagine the powerfulness of other living beings, and to read the many depths of history in the ancestral stories? These were the many questions that the platinum donkey had to ask Planet, before dignifying its glossy platinum-ness as the ultimate mask-head of a global warming era conglomerate transport industry."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Colonisation, and Racism
Moderate: Suicide, Child abuse, and Animal cruelty
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
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