Sorry for haven’t updating my blog frequently. I was flooding with heavy work-load and was needed to go to outstation for some interviews. Despite of my busy working life, I kept on reading whatever book I got my hand on.
I had finished Gail Jones’s Sixty Lights and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores recently.
I had to admit that, I like Jones’s book better. Jones’s writing is subtle and full of imagery. I never knew English could be so beautiful and poetic. When Jones used the right words to describe an image, a scene, a feeling, a memory, it really works out beautifully.
The book spanning through three generations, featuring Lucy Strange, orphaned when she was eight and had to leave her homeland, Australia, for London with her brother Thomas and her uncle Neville to build a new life.
There are two pairs of brother and sister in the book, Lucy and Thomas; Honoria (Lucy’s mother) and Neville; and three generations of orphans who had forced to cope with their new life with their uncle.
This is also a book about seeing. Lucy liked to see everything and anything. She’ll record those images in a notebook called Special Things Seen. She recorded the hands of a group of women who worked in a factory, the young indian who died in a million pieces of broken glass, a degenerated elephant carcase...
I had finished Gail Jones’s Sixty Lights and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores recently.
I had to admit that, I like Jones’s book better. Jones’s writing is subtle and full of imagery. I never knew English could be so beautiful and poetic. When Jones used the right words to describe an image, a scene, a feeling, a memory, it really works out beautifully.
The book spanning through three generations, featuring Lucy Strange, orphaned when she was eight and had to leave her homeland, Australia, for London with her brother Thomas and her uncle Neville to build a new life.
There are two pairs of brother and sister in the book, Lucy and Thomas; Honoria (Lucy’s mother) and Neville; and three generations of orphans who had forced to cope with their new life with their uncle.
This is also a book about seeing. Lucy liked to see everything and anything. She’ll record those images in a notebook called Special Things Seen. She recorded the hands of a group of women who worked in a factory, the young indian who died in a million pieces of broken glass, a degenerated elephant carcase...
She then became a photographer, indulged herself in the art of capturing light. She photographed her daugther, brother's wedding, an old man with gray ashes on his forehead...
The imagery described in this book were the illuminating glare in the dark night. I could see these images with my mind eyes as I read through those words. Jones’s ability to draw out the images with words really impresses me. And when I read the part when Lucy finally met her death at the age of twenty-two, I too felt the pain as her brother Thomas.
I too shared Lucy’s secret thoughts and way of seeing. It was as if I’d gone through a journey with her, and together we had surfed through the illuminating glare of night.
The imagery described in this book were the illuminating glare in the dark night. I could see these images with my mind eyes as I read through those words. Jones’s ability to draw out the images with words really impresses me. And when I read the part when Lucy finally met her death at the age of twenty-two, I too felt the pain as her brother Thomas.
I too shared Lucy’s secret thoughts and way of seeing. It was as if I’d gone through a journey with her, and together we had surfed through the illuminating glare of night.
You can also read her interview and reviews from The Age, Guardian,Indipendent Online Edition.
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