bookish notes

This book isn't a light read by any means, but it's truly compelling and confronting, and also beautifully written. I'm finally reading Chloe Hooper's much awarded book The Tall Man. The blurb from the Penguin site says this about the book:

"The Tall Man is the story of Palm Island, the tropical paradise where one morning Cameron Doomadgee swore at a policeman and forty minutes later lay dead in a watch-house cell.

It is the story of that policeman, the tall, enigmatic Christopher Hurley who chose to work in some of the toughest and wildest places in Australia, and of the struggle to bring him to trial.

Above all, it is a story in luminous detail of two worlds clashing - and a haunting moral puzzle that no reader will forget."

The Tall Man is confronting for me on many levels because I grew up in North Queensland culture and this is so well described in the book. Reading the first few pages was like a trip back in time on a personal level. And yet the story is a contemporary one - Cameron Doomadgee's death happened in 2004 - giving the reader even more food for thought. The setting is so familiar to me and brings back memories of mango trees, fresh coconuts, and burning sugar cane fields. And yet all of these things and more are so unfamiliar to the average Australian southerner who has possibly never been north of Brisbane. The north and the south are two distinctly different worlds. I'm halfway through the book and can't put it down.

Another bookish thing I have to share is my discovery of The Book Depository who will ship free to 30 countries in the world including Australia! I say no more. I have Isabelle Allende's new novel The Island Beneath the Sea as well as a few other book goodies on their way to me right now.