- This novel, based on historical WW2 events, is a superbly written and paced story of inspiring people surviving utterly evil experiences.
- The Jews of Eastern Europe are being rounded up and cruelly crowded into filthy cattle trains to be herded into concentration camps, principally Auschwitz in Poland.
- The central character, Lale, is a good-looking, educated and multi-lingual young man from Slovakia. He is selected by the SS to become the principal tattooist in the Auschwitz camp, burning numbers into the arms of thousands of new arrivals over several years in the early 1940's.
- We know what eventually happened to the prisoners, but Morris, in personalising it, brings it vividly alive. The starvation, the rapes, the constants beatings, the random shootings, Mengele's medical experiments and other evils, lead finally to the mass gassings and ovens. The capriciousness of the Nazis' evil is ugly. Morris, with unsentimental clarity, makes the reader feel it.
- However the main focus is the beautiful love story between Lale and Gita. The power of love in the midst of evil provides a ballast, as do the friendships between the prisoners. Morris handles this tension superbly.
- I have read many fiction and non-fiction books about Nazi Germany and the fate of the Jews, and must say that this novel is one of the best. I can't recommend it highly enough.
The Nickel Boys is the latest novel from Colson Whitehead who won the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award for his magnificent The Underground Railroad in 2017.
Below I've attached the back cover blurb because it describes the book exactly. It's a short, 208 page, powerful gem of a book, brilliantly written in clear, unadorned prose. It's about the power, tragedy and violence of racism, a critically important message for our times.
The surprise ending is just superb. It blew me away.
- This is an extraordinarily powerful novel, full of fascinating indigenous characters, all with personality and depth, and vivid fuck/cunt dialogue. This could really win the Miles Franklin this year. It's that good. It’s on the shortlist.
- It’s a very raw and gritty story of an extended indigenous family and their historical and current travails and traumas, set in the fictional town of Durrongo (get it?) in northern NSW. (Yes, there is plenty of leavening humour, which is sorely needed, as this is not an easy read. It's frequently harsh and merciless).
- The family members, who've been in and out of prison numerous times, full of hatred of the while colonials, are often at each other’s throats, constantly swigging alcohol and screaming abuse. They are full of charm and character one moment, and recalling physical and sexual abuse the next. It's a searing, harsh portrait of an aboriginal mob, and Lucashenko holds nothing back. Her portrayal is utterly unsentimental.
- We spend a lot of time with the youngest daughter Kerry, who is the central character. She’s a feisty, angry, full-on fighter. A wonderful creation. Her older brother Ken, a violent, angry man virtually loathes her. Their animosity literally burns every page.
- There are corrupt local council officials and developers planning to build a prison on sacred aboriginal land. Prior ownership rights are obviously and cynically ignored. The family wants to go to war.
- Unfortunately the ending disappoints. It’s all a bit 'happily ever after', and doesn’t reflect the character of the novel as a whole. There needed to be an element of tragedy and immense sadness. There were opportunities for that but Lucashenko shies away. The death of the family dog just doesn't cut it.
- Nevertheless this is an intense and immensely satisfying read. It's just so damn good, and if it wins the Miles Franklin it will thoroughly deserve it. It should have won this year's Stella Prize by a long shot.
- This novel has been enthusiastically endorsed by top crime writers all over the world - huge names like Stephen King, Don Winslow, Mark Billingham, Dennis Lehane - and other notable reviewers.
- But the book is fundamentally flawed. It's based on a ludicrous and unbelievable premise that all parents whose child has been kidnapped will kidnap and potentially kill other people’s children to save their own. This is absurd. They go to the police, even if the life of their child is threatened. End of fucking story.
- We’re being asked to be fully and unconditionally sympathetic to these killers and potential killers, although their utter contempt for ordinary morality defies belief. It’s a perversity.
- I've always been a great fan of Adrian McKinty's Belfast-based Sean Duffy thrillers. They are superb. But The Chain, a stand alone and set in the US, is just bad. As a society we’ve moved a long way from the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ moral code.
- The behaviour celebrated in this book runs completely counter to how real human beings are naturally driven to act in extreme circumstances. As the main character is asked by her rescued daughter: ‘How could you kidnap someone, mom? How could you do that?’ ‘I don’t know. I had to’ she replies. Total bullshit.
- 50 pages into this ridiculously overlong, self-indulgent, 400 page tome, I’ve decided I don't ever want to read a political book as batshit boring as this.
- It’s a microscopic examination of the backroom manoeuvrings of small, incompetent, lying, out of touch, right wing politicians.
- I would rather spend a week in the fires of hell than persevere with this.
- In these dark times, an age of extreme polarisation, warring factions, Trump stupidity, it's necessary to remind ourselves of the great Western liberal traditions that are the very foundation of our free and caring societies.
- This book is a gem. It's exceptionally well written and argued by long time New Yorker essayist and best selling author Adam Gopnik. Being rich in history, ideas and analysis, it's not an easy read. But, given concentration, it handsomely pays off. I can see myself returning to this book over and over again.
- The right’s critique of liberalism is well known: change risks order. Respect for the military and reverence for religion are uppermost in its ideology. Benjamin Disreali, British Conservative leader, understood that nationalist jingoism trumped economic interest for the working classes.
- Secularism, cosmopolitanism, permissiveness, relativism, on the other hand - these liberal boasts have a catastrophic effect on ordinary people.
- We are living through a revolt by the right against liberal reason. The EU, for example, is deemed a liberal folly. But this view of liberalism is a cartoon.
- ‘Intersectionality’ is currently a dominant political theory that paints a familiar, broad picture of oppression through 'cultural framing and control', usually referred to as 'identity politics'. The sophisticated version identifies types of difference and oppression that are invisible to most eyes.
- The book is full of fabulous proclamations and summations:
- ‘The right wing wants cultural victories and gets nothing but political ones; while the left wing wants political victories and gets only cultural ones’;
- On free speech and its discontents: ‘Unless the speaker is actually about to cut your throat you have to let him work his jaw’. (But hate speech is a different matter, because of its harm to minorities);
- ‘A thousand small sanities are usually wiser than one big idea’;
- The rise of populism: ‘...these problems are permanent...these passions - the desire for simplicity, the hunger for a more closed and clannish society, the sheer anxiety of living with uncertainty - are always ready to explode’;
- 'Liberal institutions and practices are fragile';
- 'Those societies that glorify militarism almost invariably lose wars'.
- ‘We have to believe in passionate policies, passionate in their affirmation of values and principles...the difference between centrists and liberals is that centrists emphasise the difficulty of these choices, while liberals emphasise their simplicity.’
