Анна Фолкнер0.0 '...an acute evocation of postwar Australasia. Faulkner's novel is enlivened by a strong gift for metaphor and the wisdom to use it sparingly.'
When Roberta 'Bertie' Lightfoot is struck down with polio, her world collapses. But Mama doesn't tolerate self-pity, and Bertie is nobody if not her mother's daughter - until she sets her heart on becoming an artist. Through drawing, the gifted and perceptive Bertie gives form and voice to the reality of the people and the world around her. While her father is happy enough to indulge Bertie's driving passion, her mother will not let art get in the way of the future she wishes for her only daughter.
In 1955 the family moves to post-colonial Port Moresby, a sometimes violent frontier town, where Bertie, determined to be the master of her own life canvas, rebels against her mother's strict control. In this tropical landscape, Bertie thrives amid the lush pallette of colours and abundance, secretly learning the techniques of drawing and painting under the tutelage of her mother's arch rival.
But Roberta is not the only one deceiving her family. As secrets come to light, the domestic varnish starts to crack, and jealousy and passion threaten to forever mar the relationship between mother and daughter.
Tender and witty, The Beloved is a moving debut novel which paints a vivid portrait of both the beauty and the burden of unconditional love.
Мишель де Крецер3.0
A novel of dazzling virtuosity and luminous intelligence that explores our urge to leave home, by a writer previously longlisted for both the Man Booker and Orange prizes whose prose can only be described as 'rich, luxuriant, intense, and gorgeous.' (Anita Desai). When Laura inherits money from the aunt who raised her, she sets off to see the world - alone, 'because two makes one a tourist.' When Ravi's family are devastated by a politically motivated atrocity, he seeks asylum in Sydney. The two meet there at a travel-guide publishing firm. She is a staff writer, living with an elderly Italian lover, and he is a website designer who wants only to make a living and forget about his past. Where do these disparate characters truly belong? With her trademark subtlety, Michelle de Kretser shows us that, in the twenty-first century, they belong wherever they're able to be, home or away. She has written a masterful novel for our time replete with dazzling beauty, uncanny common sense, sharp wit, and a deep knowledge of what makes us tick. It is for readers of Zadie Smith's "On Beauty", Jhumpa Lahiri and Sarah Waters.
Лили Чан0.0 Toyo learned to ask nothing, to wait and count the days. But they passed and passed and still the doorway remained empty of his deep voice, calling out her name. Blending the intimacy of memoir with an artist's vision, Toyo is the story of a remarkable woman, a vivid picture of Japan before and after war, and an unpredictable tale of courage and change in today's Australia. Born into the traditional world of pre-war Osaka, Toyo must always protect the secret of her parents' true relationship. Her father lives in China with his wife; her unmarried mother runs a caf . Toyo and her mother are beautiful and polite, keeping themselves in society's good graces. Then comes the rain of American bombs. Toyo's life is uprooted again and again. With each sharp change and painful loss, she becomes more herself and more aware of where she has come from. She finds family and belief, but still clings to her parents' secret. In Toyo, Lily Chan has pieced together the unconventional shape of her grandmother's story. Vibrant and ultimately heart-rending, Toyo is the chronicle of an extraordinary life, infused with a granddaughter's love.
