What is the last book you read, and your rating?
- Pauliny12
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Re: What is the last book you read, and your rating?
- Jaemiskewes88
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- Jeyasivananth
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- Faith Atieno okoth
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- stacie k
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- tonee617
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- pinefamily
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4/5
- Arrigo_Lupori
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- rik17
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Love this thread!
- Redlegs
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But I do wonder about the breadth of its appeal today. Firstly, I can't imagine that many women would enjoy this novel, with its blue-collar male environment set in the front bar of a rough pub where the only women welcome are barmaids and prostitutes.
Secondly, I wonder if anyone but an Australian, or perhaps a British man, could relate to this tale of booze and skiting that is so quintessentially Australian in its character.
And thirdly, I wonder whether anyone born after the 1960s would recognise, or find believable, the hotel environment that Ireland describes, which has now all but disappeared except maybe in a few backstreet pubs in working class suburbs.
None of this is to diminish or any way denigrate the fabulous quality of Ireland's spare, visceral and sinewy prose and the brilliance with which he has captured the ambience, culture and glorious characters of the time and place of which he writes.
Ireland sets his novel in the Southern Cross Hotel in a working class suburb of Sydney. The characters who inhabit this pub, seemingly for many hours a day on most days of the week, are true boozers, who love to travel in their imaginations to places unknown via their glass canoes (beer glasses).
The story is narrated by Meat Man (real name Lance), whose nickname is a none too subtle reference to the alleged size of his manhood. Through a series of very short chapters, Meat Man introduces the reader to the multitude of characters he drinks with and describes some of the crazy escapades and shenanigans they get up to, both inside and outside the bar.
If I had one complaint about the many excesses described in this story, it would be about the female characters. By today's standards, it is probably misogynistic, certainly disrespectful and demeaning. But it can be argued that Ireland captured, fairly accurately, the attitudes of the time (1970s) amongst this class of males.
But the scenes involving sex were generally exaggerated to the point of being comically grotesque, and virtually all women were portrayed as being voracious, kinky and insatiable.
But this is a novel worthy of a major literary award, despite my reservations about the breadth of its relevance in the 21st century.
Ireland sums up beautifully the world these men are content to inhabit, despite any disdain from more genteel elements of society, in the novel's penultimate paragraph.
"I went to the bar to get us some more glass canoes to take us where we wanted to go. I thought of the tribes across Australia, each with its waterhole, its patch of bar, its standing space, its beloved territory. It was a great life."
4 stars, on the cusp of 4.5 stars out of 5.
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
- Riya Chandra
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It's a decent science fiction. Good to read. I give it 4/5 stars
- Bighuey
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- Jmteachmom
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P.S. It may have been hard to get into I am hooked at this point. Want to read book two and three
- blue4t
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It is a tad different than your typical YA novel.