In the book the escape does not feature until chapter 8 out of 9, and the girls only arrive at the camp in chapter 7!
The book is interesting and valuable in that it sets out the events that were replicated across Australia in 1931, written from the Aboriginal point of view. However the escape, told as the writer's mother had told it to her, lacks details of distance and is blurry about some of the events, shrouded as the telling was in the mists of time. The lack of measurements is because these are not used in the Aboriginal tongues so were not available, only some names of settlements and farms are given.
In summary it is a valuable book, but not as enthralling as I had hoped or expected.
The story it tells is compelling, and begins by setting the scene well, establishing the feel of life in those times for a clan living out a precarious existence on an island in the Orkneys, and having to adapt to change with the arrival of a boy who has a bronze axe and a need to explore and travel.
The premise for Skara Brae is very different from my own, and I feel does not account for the sophisticated construction of Maeshowe. However she suggests that the clan is in decline having lost the knowledge of their ancestors, which is a reasonable supposition.
What a shame that the author did not live to see the further finds south of the Skara Brae settlement. However, it is very well written as a story for children of about eight upwards- suggested age is 9+, and certainly would appeal to both boys and girls of top Junior school age (10-11), and should be within their vocabulary range, whilst she does not hesitate to use correct words for things mentioned.
The book contains suspense, adventure, peril, and ends on an optimistic forward-looking note.
There are passages that touch on the reasons for the conflict and the differences between the perceptions of it within China and those that are evident when she is in Tibet and surrounded by Tibetans.
I will certainly look out for other of Xinran's tales of strong Chinese women.
I have found it particularly gruelling wading through the notes of Sacks' conclusions at the end of the book. Whereas the case notes held a fascination in opening a door onto the very varied, and dream/nightmare qualities of the worlds these post-encephalitic patients inhabited, the notes and summaries did not really add anything for me and were couched in psychiatric and medical terms which made them difficult reading.
The book has given me a loathing for footnotes, some of which in this slim volume took up 80 to 90% of five or six pages. They disrupted my reading and were awkward. To my mind it has confirmed the feeling that if it needs saying it should be in the text, if not, omit it altogether. Many of these notes may be due to the revision of the book by him in 1976 (orig. released 1973), but he would have been better just to rewrite it, or to add new chapters after the original book's end.
I wonder if I have been unfair in my judgement of methods and treatments now 41 years plus in the past. However I worked in a huge mental hospital for several months in the early 1960s and I already condemned and spoke up about some of the care and treatment offered there. I am sure my outrage now is merely a product of my character and not of the times we live in.
A sad book about devastated lives merely the tip of an iceberg since thousands were affected.
I found we had the Heron hard cover edition of these two titles and I believe I read the Prisoner of Zenda when I was in my teens. I picked it up to read both parts, partly because I remember my mother telling me that my paternal grandmother was reading this book whilst she was expecting my father and that was how he got his name. I was surprised to find that she had chosen the villain of the piece's name as her favourite. Perhaps the wicked streak goes deep in our family! I did find the whole book very predictable but quite enjoyable nevertheless, despite it being rather over the top in its romanticism. Not the sort of books I will read again however. The nicest thing about it is the tooled cover. |