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Jump to navigationJump to searchBereft by Chris Womersley (view source)
Revision as of 10:16, 20 February 2018
, 10:16, 20 February 2018no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Bereft
|author=Chris Womersley
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=9780857386540
|pages=272
|publisher=Quercus
|date=January 2012
|website=
|video=
|summary=One of the very best novels of this, or any, year, with a scarred war survivor returning to face many other things that scarred him. Completely memorable events, characters and style make this simply supreme.
|cover=Womersley_Bereft
|aznuk=0857386557
|aznus=0857386549
}}
''A good story is like medicine, in my opinion'', one character says. You will never turn to these pages for the medicine that is laughter, for not only do we have the dark events in Flint then and now, but also the drip, drip flashback to WWI and what Quinn went through. But this is a darkness in sunlight, and as gloomy as the precis could get this is a book of constant variety in pacing and tone, and with a high level of surprise and originality.
The style will probably bring many comparisons out of reviewers. An Australian Cormac McCarthy, perhaps, or [[:Category:Peter Carey|Peter Carey]] returning to his rural, historical roots. The film version that already exists in my head is definitely a Philip Ridley production. It would be easy to make this excellent book a film I would most certainly want to watch, but for now it remains a novel you most certainly should want to read.
The surprise in the end is not that this book, only the author's second, won several awards down under, but that there were awards it ''didn't'' win."
For a very different WWI veteran character with a similar facial wound to Quinn, you would probably enjoy [[The Cocaine Salesman by Conny Braam]]. But ''Bereft'' is now on a par with [[Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel]] for novels of a man quitting a war to return to face something worse.
{{amazontext|amazon=08573865490857386557}} {{waterstonestextamazonUStext|waterstonesamazon=87012410857386549}}
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