What a week of gifts this promises to be with a Booker book on offer worldwide every day. Still time to enter yesterday's prize draw for a copy of The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant which will be drawn this evening, whilst today's draw will be drawn tomorrow evening.Tomorrow's draw will be drawn on Thursday evening and Thursday's and Friday's draws will be drawn on Friday evening...you are keeping up aren't you and there's me saving lives at work and got to pack for France too, oh good grief.
Can it only be a couple of weeks since I read and posted about The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser?
The Booker longlist becomes all-consuming and I'm starting to loose track of the weeks but this one still jangling and chiming around in my mind and I know, if I had the time, I would be really looking forward to a second read because I think this is another book with a great deal to miss first time round.
That's a good test, I only need to look at a book to know whether that task becomes most enticing, sort of do-able, highly undesirable or just plain madness and this is one is definitely the former.
Reading my earlier thoughts has been interesting, I've worked my own persuasiveness on myself in a strange way, reminded myself just what a good read this was for me,
'Layers of significance build and build and I was constantly in awe of Michelle de Kretser's style and skill, the very right words in exactly the right order. Even that point when you might expect a book to take a bit of a yawn as it rests and gathers itself to regroup for that push to the final page, well Michelle de Kretser just pulls out even more stops and stuns all over again, the book dazzled and sparkled for me from start to finish.
'Reality is an effect produced by the accrual of detail. a trickery...'
and Michelle de Kretser utilises her own observation well. A sense of time mediated through historical reference, glancing shots at an event, the Japanese invasion, the Coronation, all cleverly kept me in step with the timing in the early chapters until I was able to settle in.'
Then this,
'The ongoing
search for the dog becomes the pivotal point from which all else seems
to radiate as the story slowly but cleverly takes shape. There are
moments of stunningly precise and incisive insight into life that had
never quite occurred to me before, an exceptional passage as Tom
analyses his reaction to his mother's reversion to childhood in her old
age.
More themes about life and love, memory and nostalgia , images
and pictures, ageing and loss than it's possible to define here and a
book that would certainly reward an even closer second reading.
Years
ago, some say in the olden days, a Booker judge was heard to remark
that reading one author's book had made him/her want to go out and read
all the others, and I certainly now feel this about Michelle de
Kretser.
A way to go yet but thus far The Lost Dog is a short list certainty here.'
Well a lot of reading water under the bridge since then and this book has sustained its shortlisting slot with distinction.
So yes roll up roll up, much as Rocky would prefer any dog of his acquaintance to remain lost for ever he has agreed to assist with the draw for a prize copy of The Lost Dog for one of you lucky readers because he loves you all dearly, and on the condition that Mrs Glosser stops calling him a pretty boy after that Frocky day, which he is regretting.
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