Summer reading

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Tags: summer-2012

With Christmas holidays around the corner, there’s nothing like a new book to enjoy at the beach. We asked three UQ Research Higher Degree students from the School of English, Media Studies and Art History to review some of the latest novels to hit the shelves at UQP.

The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer
Edwina Preston

The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer

Reviewed By Sher Li Teo

Edwina Preston’s The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer follows the eponymous hero, Ivorie, as she discovers that her mysterious past is linked to a series of deaths and disappearances in Canyon and Pitch. This is not CSI—there are no DNA tests or any dusting for prints—instead it is about acumen and observation. Edwina Preston peppers the novel with detail and peculiar characters. The story builds slowly, but the pace picks up as the plot develops. The narrative is told mainly in third person, but, at times, she switches to first and second person. This adds to the suspense, but makes the book more claustrophobic. Despite this, and despite me not being a regular fan of crime fiction, I find myself hooked. A story of love, intrigue, and suspense, The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer is definitely an entertaining read.

Black Mountain
Venero Armanno

Black Mountain

Reviewed by Candice Badinski

Venero Armanno’s Black Mountain tells the life of Sette, later renamed Cesare Montenero, a young slave from the sulphur mines of Sicily who takes us on a physical and emotional journey of discovering oneself in what seems like a senseless and lonely world. His story moves from the hedonistic high-class salons of Paris to the disconcerting world of genetics and eugenics, and Armanno’s research on these lost settings is to the fore. Despite these shifts, he waves a narrative that is both seamless and near impossible to put down. Cleverly utlising the technique of a story within a story, the novel has a symmetry that echoes Cesare’s exceptional life. Armanno gives us glimpses of universal themes and issues that make Black Mountain a world in which the reader can become easily and willingly lost.

Blood
Tony Birch

Blood

Reviewed by Pascale Rocher

Jesse and his younger sister Rachel have had unconventional childhoods travelling from town to town across Australia with no set home. Their single mum, Gwen, cares more about her fading looks and next hook-up than their schooling or their meals. Jesse is desperate to get away from Gwen and take Rachel with him. When he swears to protect his sister one emotional afternoon, he has no idea that he may be putting his own life at risk.
Blood is a novel you set out to read slowly but then finish in an afternoon. I was skeptical at first, thinking that the book would follow a predictable course: broken-child-from-miserable-home-finds-better-life. But this book surprises with its unpredictability and honest characters. Despite being fiction, it comes across as truthfully as any memoir. This touching story about tenuous sibling bond and the fragility of childhood will appeal to most people.

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