July 2003 Archives
A fantasitc modern Australian novel, which starts in a town north or Perth, and then sets off along the sparsely populated coast of Western Australia, heading into the poisonous hinterland around the mining town of Wittenoom en route to Broome and the Kimberley, and thence onwards to the northern coastline between there and Kununurra. Placenames which will be all the more meaningful if you've been to this part of the world, and could inspire you to visit if you have not.
The landscapes Tim Winton crafts en route is simply a backdrop to the lives of the characters living their lives in these remote parts, where life is more like the Wild West than Home and Away. And all the better for that.
One of the best novels I've read this year.
Buy it: Amazon link
Loaned to me by Lucy, with high praise, this autobiography of Alexandra Fuller's childhood in Africa has sat by my bedside gathering dust for a few months, on the twin grounds that I'd heard bits of it on Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, and I wasn't sure of the appeal of An African Childhood.
Having picked it up on my return from Bristol last night, I'm glad I didn't send it back to Paris unread, for it is proving a fascinating book, not least of all because 'Bobo' is just a little over a year older than I am. It is in the observing differences between our childhoods that whetted my appetite, but what makes this book all the more fascinating is that added to the tales of daily life are the influences of the political history of Zambia, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and southern Africa, from the perspective of a white girl/woman who 'could have been me', and yet whose life seems to come from another era.
Buy it: Amazon link
Not raring to get my teeth into this one to be honest - it's a bit too similar to his Samurai William book - late Elizabethan/early Jacobean period, male mariners-explorers-merchants, establishing trade with the East... Not difficult to read, just a bit too dry / familiar in terms of subject matter, especially after Allison Pearson!
Basically it's the history of the spice trade, the East India Company and mapping of modern day South East Asia, in particular Indonesia and the Phillipines, and draws upon diaries and documents of the time.
I've started to I'll finish. I just hope Battersea Library re-opens soon so that I can get some more varied books out on loan....
...21 July.... FInished it on the train back from Bristol!
Another of Giles Milton's history tales, but again with a slightly misleading title. This narrative contains only one chapter on Nathaniel Courthope, and what little there is reads awkwardly, the facts not living up to the hype of the book's title and Giles Milton's interpretation. With analysis and fact coming from much of the same material as was used in Samurai William, the resulting parallels in the defects of both books shouldn't surprise. However they do disappoint; and I can't see myself buying or borrowing Big Chief Elizabeth.
Buy it: Amazon link