Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ambitious and atmospheric, November 22, 2010
Quite an ambitious debut novel for this Australian writer. I like her prose style and her ability to create a sense of atmosphere in the story. Remember that old saying about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children? I think this story shows how the WOUNDS of the fathers are passed down to the sons through the generations. The story is set in Australia. Chapters alternate between Frank and his father Leon, although the story covers three generations, including Leon's father as well. Frank's story takes place in current times. Dumped by his girlfriend and estranged from his father, he goes to live in an old shack near the sea that belonged to his grandfather. He battles his inability to "get his life together" and tries to make some sense of the long-term anger he has directed at his father. The father Leon's story is told from his long-ago boyhood up through his service in Vietnam and the mess his life became upon return from that war. Leon's parents were Dutch Jews and came to Australia when their own country became hostile to them in the 1930's during Hitler's rise to power. Leon's father was proud to serve his adopted country in the Korean War, but he came back utterly broken inside and unable to function in the world. This set Leon up to be essentially alone in the world as a teenager, hurt and lost and confused by his parents' behavior. When he is later conscripted and sent to Vietnam, he comes home broken inside just like his father and is unable to be a proper father to Frank. This is not a fast-paced grabber of a book, but Evie Wyld really captures how old hurts are carried down within a family. She does it quietly and steadily, without a lot of drama or flash. And it's also a nice way to learn a little more about life in Australia and the attitudes of the people there.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brutal Story of Men Filled With Fear, December 27, 2009
This review is from: After the Fire, a Still Small Voice: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This is, by far, one of the best books I have read this year. It is written in a poetic, character driven narrative by an author who appears much wiser than her years. The story is a multi-generational dynamic of men in a family - men who have gone to war, are prone to violence and find it hard to use words to discuss their feelings. Instead of words they use alcohol, violence and avoidance. Leon's father is a baker in Australia who signs on to fight in the Korean War. When he returns he is not the same. His post-traumatic stress disorder creates constant fear and anger in him. He leaves his family and Leon's mother follows after him, leaving Leon alone to run the bakery when he is just nineteen. Leon is shortly thereafter conscripted into the Vietnam War where he sees atrocities and develops a propensity towards violence such that he is closed off from his wife and son, Frank. The novel alternates between two characters and stories 40 years apart - the story of Leon and that of his son Frank. As the novel begins, Frank has just been left by his girlfriend because of his aggression and violence. He goes to live in the country in a small bungalow that belonged to his grandfather, Leon's father. There he finds work and friendship though his life is fraught with fear - fear of what is lurking in the waters and in the cane fields. He is also afraid of the fear that constantly lurks in his heart. He drinks too much and feels the weight of his anxieties at every turn. As the novel opens we also learn about Leon, Frank's father, working in a bakery 40 years before with his father. The family is close and the art of baking is passed on lovingly from father to son until Leon's father goes to war and comes back isolated, frightened, and unable to connect with others. Leon, like his father before him, returns from war a lost soul. His wife dies young and he turns to drink. He finds it nearly impossible to raise his son Frank in any way that requires intimacy or rational planning. He is not even able to pack a lunch for Frank. One lunch pail contained a pair of sardines without an opener and a pair of socks. In the backdrop of Frank's narrative, there is a story of young girls disappearing from the area and being killed. This adds to Frank's fears as he has befriended a neighbor girl, Sal, who is seven years old. He fears for her. I found the early descriptions of Leon and his father working in their bakery to be beautifully wrought. Evie Wyld writes with a loving, perspicacious and brutal tongue. She is a writer to watch and I hope to read more of her work soon.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, masterful writing, September 25, 2009
This review is from: After the Fire, a Still Small Voice: A Novel (Hardcover)
This quiet, utterly compelling story belies the rage and violence lurking under the surface of the two main characters, Frank and his father, Leon. Their interwoven stories, told through a series of flashbacks, make for fine, sometimes disturbing, reading. After an acrimonious split with his girlfriend, Frank retreats to the primitive shack by the ocean where his grandparents spent the last years of their lives and where he and his parents vacationed. It has no electricity and no running water, but its isolation offers a kind of bulwark against his demons, and he makes friends with his neighbors and their strange young daughter, Sal. Interspersed with his story is that of his father, which is inextricably linked to that of his own father, Roman, who went off to the Korean war and returned a broken man. When Leon is conscripted during the Vietnam war, he learns firsthand about the same kinds of forces that destroyed his father, and after he returns, they wreak similar havoc on his life and, by extension, on his son. Like voyeurs, we watch as two earnest, likable young men are transformed beyond recognition by the circumstances they are thrust into, even as they never entirely lose their humanity. It is the wages of war that constitute the underlying theme of the book, and how they continue to reverberate down through the generations. For one character, there is redemption, for the other, the outcome is not so clear. Evie Wyld is an extraordinarily gifted writer, with deep compassion for her characters and the ability to conjure up wonderfully evocative and original imagery while keeping her readers turning pages. More than once I stayed up later than I'd intended while reading this book, savoring the language and eager to see where the narrative was headed. It is a testament to her skill that she never overplays her hand: The subtlety of the narrative acts as a counterpoint to the often unsettling and occasionally horrific events that it recounts. I admit that some of the Australian slang eluded me, and I'd have preferred resolution for a number of unexplained elements. (What, e.g., was scritch-scratching in the cane, or was Frank imagining it, and what is a Creeping Jesus?) But this is a haunting book that will stay with me for a long time. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys literary fiction and isn't afraid to follow along where a masterful writer takes you.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
