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thefictionaddictionblog's review
5.0
This family saga begins when the son of a no-longer-wealthy British family arrives at a distant post in the Outback, and falls in love with an Aboriginal woman. (Well, there’s also a lot about the family members back home in England, and how they relate to their new Australian grandchild, and what’s really happened to all their wealth, but the Australian family begins here. Good family sagas sometimes have no real beginning and no ending, just like real families.) I didn’t know all that much about native Australians going in, besides a vague concept of walkabouts, and this novel described both daily aboriginal life and how terribly the original inhabitants were treated by colonists, and then by the Australian government. The story shows this on an individual level, as well as on a national scale.
The descriptions of Outback life were very matter-of-fact, whether it was a description of food found in the bush or of aboriginal religion. I liked that it wasn’t overly exoticized, since the author manages to avoid portraying native Australians as “other” even while explaining customs and activities that were entirely new to me.
You can read my full review of this book over on my blog.
I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own, as always, because even free books can’t restrain my snark.
The descriptions of Outback life were very matter-of-fact, whether it was a description of food found in the bush or of aboriginal religion. I liked that it wasn’t overly exoticized, since the author manages to avoid portraying native Australians as “other” even while explaining customs and activities that were entirely new to me.
You can read my full review of this book over on my blog.
I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own, as always, because even free books can’t restrain my snark.
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