librarytart

Bird, Carmel ~ The White Garden

When I selected this book I thought
I cheated a little because I’ve read this book but wanted to read again to understand more fully the layers of literary and historical references in Bird’s story.

50-word description
Set in 1950s Australia, psychiatrist Ambrose Goddard experiments on female patients to further his landmark studies into the human mind. Patients’ delusions are encouraged, radical therapies experimented with and sexual abuse is rampant. The discovery of a dead woman in the clinic’s grounds helps unveil the true lunatic.

150-word review
Bird masterfully chronicles Goddard’s growing megalomania as his patients’ mental states crumble in the name of providing case studies for his book.

The White Garden is disarming with drugged patients describing abuse in dazed monologues, point of view shifts to the doctor’s and backgrounds of historical figures on whom some patients’ delusions are based. Cross-referencing was required occasionally (by me anyway) to hold the past and present together and understand how cleverly the author has constructed and tied up the story.

The book is an obscure but important piece of Australian literature and a reminder that quality doesn’t always equate with popularity.

carmel bird ~ the white garden

Found in
Home library

Read
Jul 09

Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link – n/a

Rating
Outstanding

This is book 26 of the project.

Auster, Paul ~ Oracle Night

When I selected this book I thought
I didn’t have to think because The Purple Owl made a recommendation and the book was waiting for me on the shelf at the library, as if it was meant to be. I wonder if I’ll now fall into a labyrinth of bizarre events and not be able to escape.

50-word description
Recovering from a serious illness, lapsed writer Sidney Orr happens upon a stationery shop and buys a blue notebook in which to write again. Sidney starts living the stories he creates in the notebook and becomes trapped in a present crashing into his past and layers of fiction destroying the reality of his life.

150-word review
Reading Oracle Night is like being swooped by a magpie during breeding season. You usually stroll serenely along a treed path, but this time feel something stir the air violently at the back of your head. You turn to look for the winged dive bomber but the magpie has darted so cleverly you never see it. Auster is the magpie in full flight.

Sidney’s new blue notebook and the stories he writes in its pages are only the start of a fall into a world where his fiction starts coming true – but only if Auster chooses because he controls Sidney with a firm hand and a blindfold — and events are packaged within other winding narratives. Some characters die, others disappear and return with mysterious intentions and almost all become trapped in stories from which they cannot escape.

After closing the book I didn’t know what had hit me, but in a happily coincidental way as if I had ducked to avoid the next magpie attack and found fifty dollars on the ground. It’s a magical book for readers who aren’t stuck on simple stories and linear narratives.

(Psst, I’m glad my notebooks have black covers; the blue ones have a nasty streak.)

paul auster ~ oracle night

Found in
Fiction A

Read
Mar 09

Links
Paul Auster’s definitive web site
Frankston Library catalogue link

Rating
Stunning

This is book 20 of the project.

Adiga, Aravind ~ The White Tiger

When I selected this book I thought
Hey, it’s on sale for only twenty dollars (Australian, and our currency is worth little at the moment), better snap it up.

50-word description
Born into Indian lower-caste misery and forced to leave school early as part of a family dowry repayment, Balram Halwai fights back and feeds his insatiable hunger for more. He re-invents himself ravenously up society’s ladder into a tea shop worker, driver, guiltless murderer and modern-day entrepreneur.

(More than) 150-word review
The White Tiger looks at me from atop the reading pile on my bedside table. “Review me,” it whispers, “I dare you.” Two more reads and several weeks later I still don’t know exactly what to say, except thinking so much about this book has backed up my reviews like a toilet after a housewarming party.

I’ll start with saying The White Tiger is exciting, thought provoking and clever, oh so clever, in its depiction of an often-likable villain’s searing desire to rise from the bottom of the heap. The narrative structure of Balram penning letters frantically to the premier of China, whose visit to India has been announced, starts self-consciously but supports soundly as Balram’s need builds to tell the visitor how things really are for entrepreneurs in India. The more Balram maniacally paints his view of poverty and corruption over the government’s glossy re-invention of the country, the more his odds of meeting the Chinese premier lengthen to never in this lifetime as his unsent letters confess the murder of his wealthy employer and escape to the bustling anonymity of Bangalore.

This is where I became stuck on the authenticity of the world created by the author. I don’t know if it’s partly cultural naïveté or because I’ve never starved a day in my life, but I could not believe that Balram would murder to get ahead and brush away the consequences to his family left far behind in the rural ‘Darkness’. Is it my job as a reader to know and understand this world with previously accumulated knowledge, or the writer’s role to provide enough background and conviction to make the reader want to believe? Both, no doubt, but weighing more heavily to the creator of the story, and I found Balram a cunning scoundrel but not a scheming murderer.

Few books would fail my bullshit detector and be completed, let alone lauded, but The White Tiger is a grand read regardless of my doubt about its character’s motives.

aravind adiga ~ the white tiger

Found in
Home library A

Read
Dec 08

Author’s link:
Author’s web site

Rating
Stunning

This is book 14 of the project.

Alizadeh, Ali ~ The New Angel

When I selected this book I thought
I riffled through a melded wad of sticky notes in my purse and found the author’s name and book title in faded blue ink. I think the recommendation came from a blog entry at Abbey’s Books and I found a copy in the local bookshop waiting to be read.

50-word description
Born and raised in war-ravaged Iran and living in Australia, Bahram grapples with the turmoil of his present and constant childhood shadows of loss, revolution and war. Bahram has an opportunity to attain freedom through his cousin, a former revolutionary and now successful capitalist who migrated from Iran to Melbourne.

150-word review
Alizadeh unfurls Bahram’s story in a narrative that see-saws between the boy’s first-person perspective in Tehran to observational snapshots set in modern-day Australia. As people and events of the past strengthen their grip on Bahram’s adult life, the styles complement each other masterfully.

On first impression, Bahram’s personal war with his demons and the destruction of his youthful love with Fereshteh strike the loudest. A more thorough second reading allowed a sense of wonder to swell at the amount of ground Alizadeh covers in a compact volume: how upheaval can be negative or beneficial depending on one’s perspective and position; the isolation of not belonging in one’s own country or a new homeland; and the impassioned and blind fervour of the young in pursuit of their ideals.

This perceptive account about the pull of the past on the making – and ultimately breaking – of an individual is portrayed with restrained ferocity and deserves a wide audience.

ali alizadeh ~ the new angel

Found in
Home library A

Borrowed
Bought Oct 08

Author’s link:
Ali Alizadeh’s blog

Rating
Stunning

This is book 6 of the project.