Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 1, 2018
Dec 1, 2017
Jul 4, 2017
Apr 1, 2017
Nov 8, 2016
Jun 1, 2015
Barracuda - Christos Tsiolkas
Summary: Raised by a hairdresser single mom in a tiny Melbourne flat, Danny is elevated to an elite world by his Olympics-level swimming talent and must consider returning home twenty years later when a family member reaches out for help.
Booklist Reviews
The water was like air to Danny Kelly. Thanks to his swimming ability, the working-class Australian boy earns a scholarship to an expensive school, but the life he was dreaming of is shattered when he performs poorly in his first big championship. His pain at losing is stinging and pervasive, and his struggle to find an identity out of the pool provides the grist for this physical coming-of-age tale. Tsiolkas (The Slap, 2010) perfectly captures the arrogance and agonies of youth, complete with profanity and locker-room mockery, the endless posturing of an all-boys school. So complete is the separation between Danny the swimmer and Dan the adult that Tsiolkas even uses different forms of narration for the two sides of his character as the story bounces back and forth. Stunned and adrift, Dan embarks on a search for meaning, as he slowly tries forgiving himself and his loved ones. His emotions hum mercilessly beneath the surface, and the novel, although slightly bloated, burns with razor-raw insight. His is a ferocious failure, and it translates to engrossing reading—more so, in fact, than most tales of sporting triumph. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Jan 1, 2014
The Rosie project - Graeme Simsion
Summary: Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. Then he meets Rosie, who is everything he's not looking for in a wife, but she ends up his friend as he helps her try and find her biological father.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Genetics professor Don Tillman's ordered, predictable life is thrown into chaos when love enters the equation in this immensely enjoyable novel. Never good with social cues, Don explains his difficulty empathizing with others, which he forthrightly says is a defining symptom of the autism spectrum, as a result of his brain simply being wired differently. Diagnosis is not the issue here, as the reader is rooting for Don as he searches for ways to fit in. With his fortieth birthday approaching, he designs a questionnaire to find a compatible female life partner using his overriding devotion to logic. But he finds his quest competing with the request of a woman to discover the identity of her biological father. The protagonist is passingly similar to that of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), but Simsion's first novel is not as dark, focusing instead on the humor and significance of what makes us human. Don is used to causing amusement or consternation in others, but as his self-awareness and understanding grow, so do his efforts to behave more appropriately. Determined and unintentionally sweet, Don embarks on an optimistic and redemptive journey. Funny, touching, and hard to put down, The Rosie Project is certain to entertain even as readers delve into deep themes. For a book about a logic-based quest for love, it has a lot of heart. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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