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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
serendipitysbooks's review
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
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