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A review by katiealex72
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
So here is my very late contender for BOTY, narrowly but definitively beating Demon Copperhead.
This book feels like an honour to read, which sounds dull but it’s absolutely the opposite of dull; Lucashenko makes sure of that. I don’t know if there is any Australian writer who is doing dialogue better than this at the moment. The voices are all so distinct and so clever, including the “code switching” between dialects and languages employed by most of the characters.
It’s like Too Much Lip but on another level.
The story takes place both in current day Brisbane, with Granny Eddie, ”Queensland’s oldest Aboriginal”, and her feisty granddaughter Winona; and in 1850s Brisbane/Manandjin, with some of their Ancestors. Lucashenko weaves a fiction story around the scaffolding of people who existed and events that actually happened, and the result is compelling. It tells a tale of how some of the many Aboriginal peoples in the Sourh East Qld area lived with and near the European and Asian settlers, about thirty years after the first invasion. There are horrors, and injustice so extreme it will make you cry, but the intelligence and generosity of the indigenous landowners shines through so strongly. It makes you really feel how much we all lost by stealing everything from the First People instead of learning from and living with them, as would have been entirely possible.
5 stars, full marks, hard recommend. We are so lucky that someone as talented and funny and brilliant as Melissa Lucashenko exists
This book feels like an honour to read, which sounds dull but it’s absolutely the opposite of dull; Lucashenko makes sure of that. I don’t know if there is any Australian writer who is doing dialogue better than this at the moment. The voices are all so distinct and so clever, including the “code switching” between dialects and languages employed by most of the characters.
It’s like Too Much Lip but on another level.
The story takes place both in current day Brisbane, with Granny Eddie, ”Queensland’s oldest Aboriginal”, and her feisty granddaughter Winona; and in 1850s Brisbane/Manandjin, with some of their Ancestors. Lucashenko weaves a fiction story around the scaffolding of people who existed and events that actually happened, and the result is compelling. It tells a tale of how some of the many Aboriginal peoples in the Sourh East Qld area lived with and near the European and Asian settlers, about thirty years after the first invasion. There are horrors, and injustice so extreme it will make you cry, but the intelligence and generosity of the indigenous landowners shines through so strongly. It makes you really feel how much we all lost by stealing everything from the First People instead of learning from and living with them, as would have been entirely possible.
5 stars, full marks, hard recommend. We are so lucky that someone as talented and funny and brilliant as Melissa Lucashenko exists