Gail Jones (1) (1955–)
Autor(a) de Five Bells
Para outros autores com o nome Gail Jones, veja a página de desambiguação.
About the Author
Gail Jones was born in 1955 in Harvey, Australia. She was educated at the University of Western Australia. She is Professor of Writing in the Writing and Society Research School at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of two short-story collections, and a critical monograph. Her mostrar mais novels include Black Mirror, Sixty Lights, Dreams of Speaking, Sorry, and A Guide to Berlin, which won the 2016 Colin Roderick Award and the HT Priestley Medal. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Obras de Gail Jones
Associated Works
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 1955-06-17
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- Australia
- Local de nascimento
- Harvey, Western Australia, Australia
- Locais de residência
- Western Australia, Australia
New South Wales, Australia - Educação
- University of Western Australia
- Ocupação
- novelist
professor (Writing)
short-story writer - Organizações
- University of Western Sydney (Writing and Society Research School)
University of Western Australia
Membros
Resenhas
Listas
Booker Prize (1)
Prêmios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 12
- Also by
- 1
- Membros
- 1,061
- Popularidade
- #24,266
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Resenhas
- 66
- ISBNs
- 77
- Idiomas
- 5
- Favorito
- 8
'Intergenerational trauma' is a term that gets bandied about a bit these days, but this novel brings us the story of a man profoundly damaged by his experience as a POW of the Japanese, and how this impacted on his son Noah and thus his grandchildren Martin and Evie. On his postwar return to Australia, Joshua Glass took his family with him to a remote leprosarium in Western Australia where he ministered to the sick in the days when Hansen's disease meant desolate isolation and disfigurement. A doctor missionary working off some undisclosed debt of secret thanksgiving, he believed that faith and antibiotic breakthrough would keep his family beyond all harm.
It didn't protect his son Noah from psychological harm. Noah was traumatised by what he saw and his father's disconnect from his family.
Noah's sole consolation was a book:
Which it does. Noah welcomed escape to a boarding school where he excelled in maths and physics, but took Arts at university and became an art historian. When as a student on a visit to the National Gallery in London, he sees Piero della Francesca's The Nativity and interprets it as having a rare distinction because of the ordinariness and simplicity of its elements, (p.70) it is a catalyst for him to become a scholar of Piero's work, and later, when viewing The Baptism of Christ to formulate his theory about the instability of time in the Tuscan artist's work. (The figure awkwardly undressing on the RHS might be Christ preparing for his baptism.)
Noah is especially fascinated by the Prussian blue of Mary's robe under the infant Jesus, which becomes in turn the catalyst for him to teach his daughter Evie all the gradations of the colour blue. Because categories of things could be apprehended, she recites these into lists as a sort of talisman against the confusion and emotional pain of believing that Martin is the favourite child. For Evie, these lists are a repertoire of consoling images:
(My father, who was a research scientist specialising in surface coatings i.e. paint, more prosaically taught me the names of the colours using house-paint sample cards! That was back in the days when they actually had the names of the colours e.g. cerise or cobalt, not silly names like 'Poor Knights' and 'Big Lagoon'.)
But Evie is wrong about her father's preference for Martin.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/03/11/the-death-of-noah-glass-2018-by-gail-jones/… (mais)