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A review by bad_robot
Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay
5.0
I'm not a great fan of Bryce Courtenay, I have started and abandoned a couple of his but this is the most enjoyable book I've read in a long long while. There are very few in my extensive library to equal it. It is quintessentially an Australian book set in a small town revolving around the Maloney family striving to escape their bottom-rung social status. Every character in the family and the small Victorian town is unforgettable.
The language is full of Australian phrases of the immediate post world war II era, now sadly lost under an avalanche of American TV. It delivers a full emotional rage from laugh out loud, to tears, to anger as it explores the four fires, passion, religion, war and fire (as it occurs in the Australian bush) The embedded war story concerns the little known forced marches of POW's in Borneo.
Despite the size it is an easy read, which as a writer myself is damn hard to do.
The language is full of Australian phrases of the immediate post world war II era, now sadly lost under an avalanche of American TV. It delivers a full emotional rage from laugh out loud, to tears, to anger as it explores the four fires, passion, religion, war and fire (as it occurs in the Australian bush) The embedded war story concerns the little known forced marches of POW's in Borneo.
Despite the size it is an easy read, which as a writer myself is damn hard to do.