 | Reviews of I Have Kissed Your Lips by Gerard Windsor. |
[This novel has been shortlisted for "The Age" Book of the Year Award.]
There are times when I think I really should change the title of this category. Some of the books featured have not, exactly, gone unnoticed. On the contrary some of them have received quite a swag of notice. And then I come across a book like I Have Kissed Your Lips by Gerard Windsor, and I start to remember why I created this list in the first place.
The major piece on this book was published in the "Australian Book Review" in October 2004. In keeping with the ABR's policy not all reviews are available on the web and their review of this book is one that misses out. Pity. Browyn Rivers is obviously impressed with the book even though she has trouble with parts of it as it "contains one of the few
things still able to generate shock in our culture... This is a forceful novel in ways other than its inflammatory subject matter. Windsor unhesitatingly explores all the emotional darkness inevitable in events he depicts, a practice that can make for exhilarating, if exhausting, reading." A difficult novel whose "idiosyncracies will understandably drive away some readers, but those who perservere will be rewarded."
Peter Craven, in "The Age" certainly doesn't mess about with his judgements, getting his main opinion out in the open right from the off: "Gerard Windsor is a real writer in a country that will often be conned by fool's gold." And concludes that: "He is one of the few contemporary writers who doesn't toy with the idea of fiction as a substitute celluloid. This is a novel of scathing brilliance and the images it conjures up in the vicinity of a terrible mistake come from the precision of the novelist's language." If you've been following Craven's reviews of late you can probably guess who he's referring to as "fool's gold".
There's not much else around on this book but you can read an interview with Windsor from ABC Radio.
