This is an engaging, character driven read about three sisters dealing with the grief of losing their beloved fourth sister and the trauma of their chThis is an engaging, character driven read about three sisters dealing with the grief of losing their beloved fourth sister and the trauma of their childhood.
While reading Blue Sisters, I really did enjoy it. Mellors really fleshes out her characters with details about their habits/behaviours and inner thoughts, and this was the strength of the novel for me. I felt I knew each sister and side characters pretty well, enough to care what happened to them.
There isn't that much of a plot - it's been a year since their sister died and we basically spend time in each sister's POV as they navigate their relationships and current life 'issues'. There is nothing really new here, and nothing overly surprising happens to make the novel really memorable.
The biggest flaw of the novel for me was just that the characters felt like well drawn caricatures instead of real people. Each sister was too easy to sum up in a sentence - Avery is the uptight older sister with a secret life, Lucky is the youngest sister who loves to party and drink, Bonnie is the quiet, stoic middle child and Nicky is the beautiful, bright perfect one that everyone loved. Is there more to them than this? Yes and no, not enough yes. Having the sweetest, most likeable sister die felt, convenient.
There's no real rawness to the story and no real stakes. But it's an easy read and a good time and will probably strike a chord with those of you with sisters.
It pains me to write this review, because I absolutely loved Song of the Sun God by this author but this novel disappointed me.
The novel attempts to cIt pains me to write this review, because I absolutely loved Song of the Sun God by this author but this novel disappointed me.
The novel attempts to capture the trauma, lawlessness, and just downright unfairness, of Australia's detention process for asylum seekers. This is definitely a subject that needed to be written about, but I fear the people who need to develop some empathy for such people will be nowhere near this book anyway.
Unfortunately, Chandran has married a mild whodunnit/cosy thriller with such a serious and multifaceted issue, and this just didn't work for me. The lacklustre topic of "who killed a guard we never met and didn't care about" just didn't work for me. It becomes the main plot instead of us tackling the much harder topic of unrelenting detention and as a result the book felt really shallow and surface level for me.
Having done such a great job with her characters in Song of the Sun God, I was surprised how one note most of these characters were. We start off with Fina, a nun who has fled the violence of civil war in Sri Lanka, and we get a brief kind of feel of her current 'found family' and life. But before we can even start to care about Fina and her friends, we move to spending the majority of the novel in Lucky's point of view - a government investigator sent to the detention centre to work out why a child and a guard have suicided.
Lucky is okay as a character, but none of them really stand out and the 'extras' associated with the murder/suicide mystery are straight out of every small town cosy mystery you could read. Nothing new, nothing that sticks.
The novel was loosely based on the Sri Lankan family from Biloela and I think it would have served the novel better if the trajectory of the plot had followed more closely to what happened with them, because it would have been far more realistic than it ended up.
I wish we had time with the actual people in the detention centre but instead we had to care about a character's death that we never met and never really knew anyway.
I also found the prose/writing really basic in this one, the dialogue felt unrealistic at times as well.
I hope in the future she reverts back to the quality of her previous works, even if they don't sound as digestable to middle Australia.
This is a truly extraordinary read about domestic violence and human behaviour told from the point of view and narrative voice of an Australian MagpieThis is a truly extraordinary read about domestic violence and human behaviour told from the point of view and narrative voice of an Australian Magpie. The novel takes place in rural New Zealand and we follow the lives of Marnie and Rob, sheep farmers struggling with drought and debt. Through Tama’s eyes we witness the constant tension and fear that a volatile and violent relationship creates, the fragility of the male ego and toxic masculinity and the way we treat animals from both a rural and city standpoint.
This is hands down one of the best novels I’ve read that has used an animal narrator. Tama the magpie is both an outsider to the human world and the bird world after his ‘domestication’ by his human ‘mum’ Marnie. Tama talks to ‘us’ as a narrative voice but also talks out loud by (mostly) mimicking his human family. His ongoing and strained relationship with his ‘bird’ family is used to reveal the arbitrary cruelty we inflict on animals, while also making him really feel like a magpie, not a schlocky device. Chidgey infuses the magpie family storylines with researched observations about magpie behaviour so that we get a humorous and light break from the human storyline that is still richly drawn.
The author researched magpie behaviour and uses that as well as she can to make Tama feel like a legitimate narrator. Magpies for example, can sing two notes at the same time and the author reflected this by using his ‘two’ voices - His internal voice is lyrical and intelligent, his ‘human’ voice is humorous but stilted. Magpies can also see independently out of both eyes, so throughout the novel Tama is often found looking at regular, every day occurrences with his right eye and more emotional, dramatic scenes with his left.
As the farm’s debt grows and undoes Rob’s ego, so does the tension. She does an amazing job of creating an atmosphere of dread, punctuated by violence that we know and understand to be getting worse as we go on. The novel’s title refers to a rural carnival where Rob will participate in the annual woodchopping competition, and you can feel the novel getting taut as we head towards Rob’s potential loss and ego blow, fearing an explosive and devastating reaction.
The book has a mythical, ageless feel to it, while still somehow using very contemporary issues to drive the narrative. The toxicity of online comments, the reductive quality of consumerism (at one point Tama plush toys are sold!) and the effects of over-sharing our lives online all play a part in the novel alongside the more traditional issues like city vs rural. While the novel does cover a lot, it never feels shallow and coupled with such an amazing narrative voice, I could not give it less than 4.5 Stars....more
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