Friday's Five II

I really enjoyed looking back on the books I had read when I did my last Friday's Five. So, I visited Steph's Stacks again this week, and thought "I must do another Friday's Five". Here's another list of five must-read books:

The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelley.

I wrote a note to myself after reading The Tea Rose, that it was a very smart book, in the way it combined a couple of historic events into the background of the novel. Ultimately, thought, this is a great love story. The love story spans over the two novels, so don't stop at the first one. The characters are so perfect, and can do no wrong, and seem to go from strength to strength (which can get annoying, and a little Mills and Boon). But who doesn't like a good romance?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows.

Ok, forgive me. Another love story in a historic setting. This book is very unique - written in letter form. It is also quite educational - about the occupation of Guernsey by Germany during WWII (which I knew nothing about). It kept me running to do research online. A worthwhile read.

Eucalyptus by Murray Bail.

An Australian novel. Like a fairytale. It is even more unique in the way it's written, and is a way of the author showcasing a lot of little short stories and fables that he has written. It is a strange love story - maybe because it's not written in a traditional sense, but is expressed very differently. The girl is a beauty, but is kept secluded by her father. Her father advertises that whoever can name all the eucalyptus trees on his property can marry his daughter. She is distraught by this, and eventually falls into a depression ... and only the man she loves can save her!

The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson.

Another Australian novel, this is the latest Vogel prize winner. This is not a love story. This is a story about humanity, about what men are made of, about the best and worst in us. It is about a roving party in early Australian settlement, who are formed to hunt and kill Aboriginals. The main character, though, is an Aboriginal himself, raised by white men. Really interesting character study of him, and how he doesn't fit in to either world, and his torn loyalties and mixed beliefs.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.

This is set in Papua New Guinea during their civil war in 1990. It is about a school of young children whose teacher runs away, and all the school books are destroyed. A local white man (the only white man left on the island, in their view) takes on the role of the teacher and reads Great Expectations to them. The children can escape the atrocities around them by going into their English world which is so different from their reality, and they love Pip.

The Roving Party

It hasn't taken me this long since reading Catch-22 to read my next novel ... I've been really busy studying and working, and taking a quick trip to Brisbane, and then another quick trip to Wangaratta. So, please forgive me for not absorbing books at my usual rate.
   This year's winner of the Vogel Literary Award was 'The Roving Party' by Rohan Wilson. It was a worthy recipient.
   The language is quite simple, the dialogue is limited, and so is the character development. The punctuation is also not what I usually like - I like to know when someone is talking, not have to reread a sentence half-way through when I realise that what I'm reading is someone's voice. The description is not what most modern novels use, yet the images were vivid in my mind.

   The story itself is quite a gruesome theme, though the roving party didn't kill as many aboriginals as I anticipated. The attitude of that error is also quite starkly portrayed on a number of occasions, as it should be to make it shockingly realistic, with statements such as 'you can't murder a black any more than you can murder a cat'.
   I began by wondering why Black Bill was hunting his own kind. There were mentions of justice, but it's not clear what the aboriginal witch/headman did to Bill. Towards the end of the novel, Bill clearly blames his newborn son's malformation and death on a curse of the headman. Although it's not apparent what started Bill's hatred for his kinsman.
   Bill was brought up in a white household, with white ways, but was never fully accepted as a whiteman because of his colour. He seems to have had to work that much harder, and be that much more tough and ruthless to prove himself. By the time we come across him, as a member of the roving party, he has formed himself a formidable reputation. But he is an outcast of both races.
   When I gave up trying to figure Bill out, I took a step back and realised that the story is more about what lengths men will go to. It's about the good and bad in men, and how ugly men can be to each other. Ultimately, Bill and the headman respected each other and understood each. They could have killed each other, but they didn't. Bill could have shot the headman, but he fought him. The headman could have killed Bill, but he saw Bill for the grieving father that he was.
   The end of the novel moved away from the roving party, and Bill took up his own vendetta. We never return to the roving party, and Bill seems to have isolated himself even more from both races by the end of the story. He is further away from the white man, yet he has killed so many aboriginals that they won't accept him.
   He can hopefully find some kind of peace.