With a casual and natural curiosity about the mysteries of life, a young Tuvan boy from Mongolia muses about dreams in a quotation from The Blue Sky, clearly illustrating the aspects of this autobiographical novel which make it come alive so vibrantly for those of us who know nothing about his culture and are learning about it for the first time. Set in the 1940s, the novel recreates a time in which the old ways are the only ways for the Tuvan people, an isolated group of nomadic people living in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia on the Russian border. Using the point of view of Dshurukuwaa, the young Tuvan boy, the author tells a coming-of-age story which is clearly his personal story, as he observes the growth of the outside influences which are just beginning to affect his people. The boy is very much a little boy, always acting “in the minute,” reacting to daily events with all the passion of a child, and the author, Galsan Tschinag, is able to communicate the boy’s feelings to a foreign audience in ways which make the Tuvan culture both understandable and unforgettable.
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This week I read A Long Way from Verona, newly released by Europa Editions, having previously read and loved seven other Jane Gardam novels, and I was puzzled as I read this one because it seemed unusual, and while not out of character, a lot less sophisticated in terms of structure than her usual. Though I knew from its description that it was a “coming of age” novel, it was not until I finished both the book and my review that I discovered, to my great surprise, that A Long Way from Verona was also Jane Gardam’s first novel, originally published in 1971. Here, the as-yet-unpublished author examines the growth of a writer from her days as a thirteen-year-old schoolchild in a small British village during World War II to the publication of her first poem, providing insights into the “mania” of writing, what impels it, and the frequent agonies which accompany it, especially when the writer is an enthusiastic adolescent. Like many other debut novels, it is sparkling and insightful, though not perfect, and though it will not completely satisfy every reader, especially those who are fans of her later, more mature and successful novels, it becomes especially significant because one recognizes just how much of the realistic adolescent angst of this novel must be autobiographical. Jessica Vye, the richly described main character, tells her own story, however, filled with the confusions of a thirteen-year-old who is trying to figure out who she is. Throughout the novel, Jane Gardam shows her now well known-wit and her ability to choose exactly the right words and images to covey Jessica’s feelings and her seemingly psychic insights into the people around her. In the later part of the novel, Gardam also creates strong feelings in the reader, many of these feelings related to insights she gives into the creative process.
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Winner of Australia’s highest literary award, The Miles Franklin Award, this dramatic novel is set on the plains of Queensland, Australia. On one level it tells of the long, epic struggle of white farmers to tame a land which has a life of its own—and which sometimes costs farmers their own lives. On another, it is an historical record of the genocide of the native aborigine population by colonizers who do not recognize or care about the aborigines’ centuries-long relationship with the land or any claims they might have to it. On still other levels, it is a mystery story, full of murder and deceit, and the Gothic study of a man who lets his obsession with a particular piece of land and a particular, now-decaying mansion control every aspect of his life. And it is also the coming-of-age story of a young boy who may one day represent a fresh, new spirit—one of respect for the earth, its history, and all the people who have walked it. A Reading Group Guide is available. See note at end of photo credits.
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In this newly reprinted novel from 1938, considered the “first jazz novel” ever written, author Dorothy Baker takes the reader into the mind and heart of a young white boy whose desire to excel as a creative jazz musician is so overwhelming that he lets nothing get in his way – not the fact that he is only a child when he begins to pursue his interest, not the fact that he is an orphan living virtually alone with a young aunt and uncle who are home only once or twice a week, not the fact that he is supposed to be in school, and not the fact that he has no instrument at all that he can play. Born in Georgia, Paul Martin has recently moved to a poor section of Los Angeles where his guardians have found work. Though he is not a good student in his school’s assigned subjects (and cannot remember how much seven times seven is), he has learned to read music and “could memorize like a flash anything that had any swing to it, anything that he could take hold of rhythmically.” Becoming a truant in order to practice piano in a mission church, Rick eventually switches to the trumpet and eventually finds success in jazz clubs in California and New York. The obsession of creative jazz musicians for perfect moments is clearly depicted here, and the author’s ability to bring the reader into the mind of the creative artist is stunning. The obsession of Rick Martin for more and more and more, and his inability to take a rest, as he begins relying on alcohol to keep going, shows the powerful drive of some creative talents such as that of Rick (and for the model for this character, Bix Beiderbecke)
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Through flashbacks, an aging surfer, Brucie Pike (“Pikelet”), relives his coming-of-age on the west coast of Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. A lonely boy leading a solitary life, he finds a companion, if not friend, in Ivan Loon (“Loonie”), with whom he shares his love of extreme surfing. “How strange it was,” Pikelet remarks, “to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw and cared.” But the beauty of surfing quickly yields in importance to its excitement and its increasingly dangerous thrills. “There was never any doubt about the primary thrill of surfing, the huge body-rush we got flying down the line with the wind in our ears. We didn’t know what endorphins were, but we quickly understood how narcotic the feeling was, and how addictive it became; from day one I was stoned from just watching,” Pikelet declares. Eventually, however, Pikelet begins to question the relationship between excitement, thrills, risk, and death and what maturity really means. In spare prose which uses some of the most vivid action verbs ever included in a novel, Winton tells an exciting story which makes the seductive thrills of surfing comprehensible to the non-surfer, while showing how his characters discover what makes men humans and ultimately what makes life worth living.
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