Tag: violence

1985 – book review

1985, by Dominic Hoey

I guess Dominic Hoey sets his street cred early on in this story by throwing in a couple of ‘cunts’, just in case readers mistake him for an IIML grad. That would be a mistake. You can’t study to write authenticity like this.

Hoey’s previous story, descriptively called Poor People With Money is about youngsters on the edge in Auckland, making bad choices and rocking the consequences on a wild ride to a village so small. It’s on my list of classics of the decade. Can he do it again?

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American Dirt – book review

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

The book opens with a mass-shooting at a family gathering in Acapulco, Mexico. Luca, eight years old, is in the toilet. His mother, who has been waiting in the corridor, bundles him into the shower enclosure and “is clinched around him like a tortoise shell”.

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Damascus. Sex, violence & empathy

Damascus, by Christos Tsiolkas

This isn’t a book review as such because, a) I only review books I love, and, b) it is full of gratuitous violence which I abhor. The gratuitous violence, however, is the point of this post. And on a more positive note, in the real world we have progressed from the days when such violence was accepted without heed. Time to move on with our books?

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Birds without wings – book review

Birds without wings by Louis de Bernières

God, this is horrific. If you’re looking for a sweet but deep sequel to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is what the bloke in our book club thought he was giving us, this is way out of your depth.

This is Turkey before, during and after WWI, the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. I don’t voluntarily read war stories, but this was for book club and having been brought up on the glorious allies, I was interested to read the perspective of the other side’s glorious allies. But I was sickened by the brutality and inhumanity in this story. De Bernières writes with such clarity and perception there are images painted in my head I will never wipe clean. Continue reading “Birds without wings – book review”