12 August 2013
I've
just finished reading 'After the Fire, a Still Small Voice' by Evie
Wyld (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by David Tredinnick).
This debut novel tells the parallel story of two generations of an
Australian family, with alternating chapters dealing with Frank
Collard – escaping, in the present day, to the remote shack that
had belonged to his grandparents on the North coast of Australia –
and Frank's father Leon, growing up in Sydney several decades
earlier. This is a tale of parallels between fathers and sons: Leon's
own father's life was irreparably damaged by his experience of
fighting in the Korean War and Leon then suffers a similar fate when
he is called up to serve in Vietnam. 'After the Fire, a Still Small
Voice' is a book about loneliness and the plot moves very slowly,
with both main characters spending long stretches of the novel alone.
The writing is beautiful and delicate but it's a sad, gentle tale of
broken relationships.
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