This is one of last years Booker Nominees which I'm still trying to read through! The novel is a sons account of living with a father who is livig in the shadow of his dead brother. Sounds confusing, huh! Terry Dean became a national hero despite being a serial killer, he took it to himself to rid the sporting world of cheats and was killed whilst in prison.
His brother, Martin, had a pretty strange life, even without the murderous brother, he spent 7 years of his childhood in a coma, travelled the world, fathered and 'looked after' our narrator, rarely worked, ended up being sectioned then tried to make Australia a country of millionaires. And then became Australia's most hated man.
As you can see from above, Martin's son Jasper had a pretty strange background he writes the novel telling his own story within that of his father's.
According to Amazon this is the book they felt should win, I still haven't read White Tiger (It's waiting on a shelf). I loved the first 500 pages, the text was fast paced and amusing but then it started to drag. Last night I decided just to skim read the last 150 pages. I still loved the characters and wated to know what happened, but I didn't need the detail - and things were getting far fetched even for this book.
I'm glad I read it, but I feel the 720 pages could be edited down by a good 200 pages. Anyone else read this? What did you think?
I read it, Katrina, and I quite liked it. I didn't mind the overwriting, for some reason, though I also thought some editing would have been a good idea. Still, now that almost a year has past, I don't feel I took anything away from the experience. It was fun and interesting, but not as substantial as a 700 page book should be.
ReplyDeleteI cheated and here on the Complete Booker site just pushed people to read my review on my review site (you can click on my name to get there).