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A review by jane_says
The Ballad of Banjo Crossing by Tess Evans
2.0
I am disappointed with this book. There was not enough feeling to portray what otherwise was a great story. The characters are one dimensional and none of them were relatable.
1. Mardi. She is a widow who struggles with moving on from her deceased husband. There were many scenes in the book with her missing her husband, but none of these scenes got to me. They were lacking the descriptive language and depth of feeling of a grieving widow.
2. Jack: I can’t for the life of me understand why his secret was so difficult to share with a woman he was falling in love with. Once we found out what it was, it was a horrible moment of “what in the world...” for me. I felt cheated. The way Jack and the narrator guarded his secret made it sound so much worse than what it actually was. Ugh. It made me feel like I trudged through a so-so book for the hook that ended up letting me down.
3. The old lady and her daughter. Really? There is so much depth of feeling involved with this type of dynamic (middle aged daughter “trapped” into taking care of elderly mum, who is also in mental decline), but the author did not delve into this AT ALL. I feel like the situation was simply REPORTED to us, but with none of the feeling. There’s a scene where Mardi is present during the preliminary memory test for the lady (also a very unbelievable thing to accept, that a doctor would be willing to do this with a non-family member in attendance). The best that the narrator could do at the heart-breaking results is to say that she felt bad. C’MON!!! It’s incredibly heart breaking to witness an elder acquaintance struggle with their mental faculties, yet somehow all this scene elicits is that Mardi felt bad. Ugh.
Overall I find this book very disappointing in regards to conveying emotion. I feel like I read an overall interesting story with interesting characters, but none of which were elaborated on and I could relate to nothing. I was hooked by the blurb of the book as I have also lived in a town much like Banjo Crossing as an outsider, so I thought at the least I would be able to relate to Jack. But while all of the events and aspects of such a small town portrayed in the book were FAMILIAR to me as things that come along in a small rural Australian town, I simply could not FEEL any connection to it.
1. Mardi. She is a widow who struggles with moving on from her deceased husband. There were many scenes in the book with her missing her husband, but none of these scenes got to me. They were lacking the descriptive language and depth of feeling of a grieving widow.
2. Jack: I can’t for the life of me understand why his secret was so difficult to share with a woman he was falling in love with. Once we found out what it was, it was a horrible moment of “what in the world...” for me. I felt cheated. The way Jack and the narrator guarded his secret made it sound so much worse than what it actually was. Ugh. It made me feel like I trudged through a so-so book for the hook that ended up letting me down.
3. The old lady and her daughter. Really? There is so much depth of feeling involved with this type of dynamic (middle aged daughter “trapped” into taking care of elderly mum, who is also in mental decline), but the author did not delve into this AT ALL. I feel like the situation was simply REPORTED to us, but with none of the feeling. There’s a scene where Mardi is present during the preliminary memory test for the lady (also a very unbelievable thing to accept, that a doctor would be willing to do this with a non-family member in attendance). The best that the narrator could do at the heart-breaking results is to say that she felt bad. C’MON!!! It’s incredibly heart breaking to witness an elder acquaintance struggle with their mental faculties, yet somehow all this scene elicits is that Mardi felt bad. Ugh.
Overall I find this book very disappointing in regards to conveying emotion. I feel like I read an overall interesting story with interesting characters, but none of which were elaborated on and I could relate to nothing. I was hooked by the blurb of the book as I have also lived in a town much like Banjo Crossing as an outsider, so I thought at the least I would be able to relate to Jack. But while all of the events and aspects of such a small town portrayed in the book were FAMILIAR to me as things that come along in a small rural Australian town, I simply could not FEEL any connection to it.