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Neale Lucas
Jan 9, 20213 min read
BEOWULF: A NEW TRANSLATION.
I have not read any of the multitude of translations of this epic poem. My rudimentary knowledge of the narrative comes from the film...
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Neale Lucas
Jan 7, 20213 min read
BREASTS AND EGGS.
When Makiko rings her younger sister, Natsuko, to tell her that she is going to get breast implants. Natsuko is slightly puzzled, but her...
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Neale Lucas
Dec 30, 20203 min read
THE GRANDEST BOOKSHOP IN THE WORLD.
The Grandest Bookshop in the World is a fictional magical realism novel, but it is based on a real bookshop that existed in Melbourne in...
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Neale Lucas
Dec 24, 20202 min read
BLACK SUNDAY.
The novel opens in 1996, Lagos, with twin sisters, Bibike and Ariyike, somehow lost on their way home from school. They are ibeji twins,...
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Neale Lucas
Dec 6, 20203 min read
INFINITE SPLENDOURS.
In the first chapter Lawrence hides from his brother while playing hide and seek by hiding under a bunker door. The Bunker has been...
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Neale Lucas
Dec 3, 20203 min read
OUR SHADOWS.
Nell was born 18 months after her sister Frances. Unfortunately, Mary, their mother died during Nell’s birth. Their father, Jack, not...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 27, 20203 min read
ALL THE YOUNG MEN.
Three nurses draw straws to see who must attend to the patient in the room with the red tarp covering the door. The patient, or whatever...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 19, 20203 min read
LUCKENBOOTH
From the opening page, a darkness hangs over the novel like a pall over a coffin, which is ironic because the protagonist is rowing her...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 16, 20203 min read
I AM AN ISLAND.
Tamsin has been dreaming of moving ever since she found a map of Scotland and pinned it up in the hallway of her tiny flat. Nothing is...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 12, 20203 min read
M IS FOR MAGIC.
The first short story in the collection has a private investigator trying to find out who pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall. Apparently,...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 11, 20203 min read
EXPLODED VIEW.
The entire novel is written in the first person from the protagonist’s perspective. We are never given her name. In fact, almost no names...
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Neale Lucas
Nov 9, 20203 min read
HURRICANE SEASON.
The title of this book refers to the hurricane that has left this town in its dilapidated, debris riddled state. And yet as the reader...
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Neale Lucas
Oct 31, 20204 min read
ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES.
The novel opens with Molly and her mother, Violet, standing next to the headstone of Molly’s grandfather, Tom Berry, and the epitaph...
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Neale Lucas
Oct 25, 20204 min read
JUST LIKE YOU.
The novel opens with Lucy, one of the protagonists, mentally going through the things that she hates in her mind. Try as she might, she...
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Neale Lucas
Oct 13, 20203 min read
REAL LIFE.
This novel feels like Taylor has captured a period of the protagonist’s life and stored it upon one of the slides that Wallace, the...
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Neale Lucas
Oct 12, 20206 min read
THE LUMINARIES
"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton is one of my favourite books of all time. It won the 2013 Booker Prize. I recommended it to my dear,...
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Neale Lucas
Oct 10, 20203 min read
HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD.
The novel opens with a death. Sam and Lucy’s father, Ba, dies in the night. Their Ma is long gone and now it is just the two of them....
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Neale Lucas
Oct 4, 20203 min read
THE SHADOW KING.
Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. The backbone of the narrative is the war that was fought between Ethiopia and Italy when Italy...
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Neale Lucas
Sep 23, 20203 min read
PIRANESI.
“Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” is one of my very favourite books and yet it is a book that divided readers. I know close friends who...
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Neale Lucas
Sep 3, 20203 min read
SHUGGIE BAIN.
Shuggie wants to be a hairdresser. He promised himself that at sixteen he would go to hair dressing college. And yet instead he finds...
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