Sarah's Library

20/09 - Had to read this for year 12 English and I didn't really understand it and therefore didn't enjoy it.  I find both situations strange as I am usually drawn to Australian war stories, fiction and non-fiction.  Maybe it deserves a re-read with my older, more mature brain...one day.

14/4/16 - New Review due to Reread

20/4 - I think this might be the least enjoyable war story I've read. It took till page 80 (of 138) before we got to anything interesting, before that it was all about Jim and his fascination with the birds. Malouf is reasonably well-known for his poetry and all that work writing poetry was evident in this novel. Large chunks of this book were page-long run-on sentences that seemed to go on forever and he's never met a comma he didn't want to use to death. I can see why I didn't understand or like this 14 years ago and I can also see why my English teacher was doing cartwheels at the chance to get us to 'analyse' this pile of existentialist (she described it thus) waffle (isn't it an English teacher's job to get us to love reading by forcing us to read books assured to make us hate it?, fortunately I was able to become attached to books before English teachers came into my life). I won't be reading any more of Malouf's work and this book is getting donated to a hopefully more appreciative home.

2016 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge Category: A Book Set in Your Home State (Queensland)