Miranda France, in "The Telegraph", is quite taken with Sorry, the new novel by Gail Jones, but implies that a tighter editorial hand might have resulted in a better book: "Any novelist who takes risks with language deserves to be celebrated. Jones has the nerve to use constructions that feel both arcane and new. There is no doubting her descriptive powers. However, in some passages, words grow so luxuriantly over the story that linguistic secateurs would have come in handy...This is Gail Jones's 'sorry' to her aboriginal compatriots. I admire her for it, but for all her sincerity, her afterword elucidating the word in the context of Australian politics strikes a pious note. [The novel's protagonist] is a powerfully drawn character, sympathetic and convincing enough to speak for herself. There was no need for the author to step in."
I might well have done three years of German at high school, but that was so long ago it might as well have been another lifetime. So, other than the fact that I can tell that this is a review of Peter Temple's The Broken Shore on the German weblog "Krimi-Couch", I have no idea of what it's trying to say.
Amy Freeman, an Australian author of young adult novels, has released a new book titled Mister Doppelganger, which is given a short, but appreciative review on the eMediaWire website. Hadn't heard of this one - looks good.
Jules, on the "Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast" weblog, nominates Steven Herrick's verse novel for young adults, By the River, as the blog's Wicked Cool Overlooked Book entry for the month.
What is it about Australian novelists/poets and verse novels? Not that I'm complaining, I juts find it weird that we seem to produce so many.
