| Mercy Jodi Picoult, 1996 Massachusetts police chief (and hereditary clan chief) Cameron McDonald, afflicted with an overdeveloped sense of duty, has to contend with a long-lost cousin who announces that he has just killed his terminally-ill wife, and temptation from the path of righteousness in the form of his florist wife Allie's new assistant, the bohemian Mia. The novel never quite lives up to its promise. The plot development ambles sluggishly, the characters are curiously unengaging, and the author flirts with but never quite attacks the "big" themes of euthanasia, loyalty and the nature of love. Few surprises, no chewy bits and little lingering aftertaste from this disappointingly flat novel. |
 |
| What's new under the bed? |
 |
 |
| REVIEWS |
| Legend |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
| Whacko! Straight under the bed |
| Good read on a wet night |
| Okay if there's nothing better |
| Give away to Vinnie's/return to lender |
| Ca-ca. In the bin. |
 |
 |
| The Bone People Keri Hulme, 1983 Booker Prize-winning first novel by NZ writer Keri Hulme. Lyrical, disturbing story of three damaged people who find healing and growth from each other as their complex developing relationship precipitates the inevitable crises of their own deep flaws. Positive but confronting examination of the reality that even insightful and loving parents can brutally abuse their children. Imbued with poetic themes drawn from the spirituality and history of the Maori people, and images of the NZ landscape. I'm still digesting this one, and suspect I will be for some time yet. |
| (Last updated 17 January 2004) |
|
| No Second Chance Harlan Coben, 2003 Formula page-turner, with thoroughly admirable Dr Marc Seidman never giving up the hunt for who shot him, killed his wife and kidnapped his infant daughter, led on all the while by taunts from the unknown villain/s that his daughter may yet be alive. Not a bad read, and suspense is well maintained, but ultimately the expected happy ending and whodunnit resolution. |
|
| Nine Below Zero Kevin Canty, 1999 Acclaimed young US writer Canty contrives a stagey setting for what the jacket blurb describes as "a penetrating exploration of reckless love and loss". Blinded in a car wreck, a rich ageing Senator introduces his rescuer, a Native American former drug addict, to the self-involved grand-daughter who comes to nurse him. The predictable affair commences, and the protagonists pursue and ultimately abandon each other in a bizarrely blatant and frankly irritating exercise in mutual fucked-uppedness. Canty may write beautifully, but his characters are unpleasant, unappealing and ultimately unredeemed. A novel for Leonard Cohen fans. |
| A Cold Heart Jonathan Kellerman, 2003 Another volume for Alex Delaware fans. Kellerman shows signs of recognising that Alex is in desperate need of both fresh horizons and a third dimension to his character. We see some attempts at light and shade in Delaware's personality, but these seem clumsy at times. The cardboard cut-out girlfriend figure, Robin Castagna, is gone but not forgotten, and Alex's new squeeze seems to be being groomed by her creator to be another foil to the curiously blank hero, rather than merely a decorative accessory. The plot is overcontrived and still further adrift from reality than even Kellerman's other recent efforts in the series. It remains to be seen whether his latest release, The Conspiracy Club, can reverse the trend. |
|
| Tin Toys Anson Cameron, 2000 Hunter Carlyon has been black, white, black and white again as he stumbles through his confusing life as the product of a scandalous liaison between a blokey middle-classtruck dealer and disenfranchised Aboriginal mother. Almost by accident, Hunter suddenly becomes a symbol of reconciliation for bleeding heart white apologists when his designis chosen as a finalist in the search for a new Australian flag. But back home in rural western Victoria, he's still eccentric class traitor Charlie Carlyon's troublemaking black kid. Cameron's style is an amusing conversational first-person monologue which captures the flow of contemporary Australian vernacular, but soon becomes rather annoying. Nevertheless, Hunter Carlyon is a believable and engaging personification of the ambiguities of political correctness versus social reality in the attempt to redefine Australia's national identity. |
|
|
 |
|
|