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Carregando... Flyaway (2020)de Kathleen Jennings
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Fairy tale prose, an unreliable narrator, family secrets, and a fully realized, gothic-tinged rural Queensland setting make this debut novella an unmissable work of mythic horror. ( ) Australian gothic, the first I've read. There are moldering villages, remains of a colonial past, supernatural creatures, stories inside stories, with a narrator, Bettina Scott, nineteen and maybe an innocent, all the gothic elements. It was not an easy story for me to get into, so many places and people and plants and animals to know from the very first. I should have taken notes instead of thumbing back and forth trying to keep track of all the mysterious parts. But language and plot kept me reading away until it began to make sense, sense in its own wild, gothic sort of way. This short novel tells more than one story, all of them connected, in well chosen words, making it a work of perfect length. And the cover illustration is done by Jennings herself. She is a writer, and an artist, full of talent. . We tend to associate dark fiction with “literal” darkness – with shadows, haunted houses, twilight apparitions and “things that go bump in the night”. Similarly, the “North”, with its long winter nights and its mythology of fairies, trolls and diverse monsters, seems more attuned to conventional supernatural fiction than the Southern Hemisphere. But just as Ari Aster’s movie Midsommar showed us that there can be dark horror in the unending daylight of a Nordic summer, Kathleen Jennings’ beguiling debut Flyway successfully challenges tradition by transplanting tropes of Gothic, fantasy and supernatural fiction to an Australian context. The novel(la) is set in a small rural settlement in Western Queensland in the recent past – early to mid-nineties, judging by the references to early internet and mobile phones. The main storyline is narrated by nineteen-year-old Bettina Scott, although between each chapter there are short interludes – fairytale-like stories-within-stories – narrated by other characters. Bettina, we learn, was a feisty teenager, but since the sudden disappearance of her father and two brothers a few years back, she has lived a secluded life under the zealous protection of her mother Nerida. One day, she receives a mysterious message which suggests that her brothers might still be alive. With the help of two old friends, Gary and Trish, she sets out on a modern-day quest, to find her brothers and, in the process, discover hidden truths about her family. Admittedly, Flyaway takes some time getting into. Jennings does not spell out things for the reader and the first few chapters of the novel felt somewhat disorienting. However, the narrative is well worth the initial effort and as things start falling into place, it gets increasingly gripping. A small hint… it helps to keep some notes about the different characters and the families they belong to – as in any self-respecting Gothic work, surnames are more than just identifiers… A thrilling blend of Gothic mystery, modern fairytale and folk horror, Kathleen Jennings’ Flyaway proves that a cattle town in Australia can be as atmospheric and uncanny a setting as the magical forests of the North. https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/04/flyaway-by-kathleen-jennings.html We tend to associate dark fiction with “literal” darkness – with shadows, haunted houses, twilight apparitions and “things that go bump in the night”. Similarly, the “North”, with its long winter nights and its mythology of fairies, trolls and diverse monsters, seems more attuned to conventional supernatural fiction than the Southern Hemisphere. But just as Ari Aster’s movie Midsommar showed us that there can be dark horror in the unending daylight of a Nordic summer, Kathleen Jennings’ beguiling debut Flyway successfully challenges tradition by transplanting tropes of Gothic, fantasy and supernatural fiction to an Australian context. The novel(la) is set in a small rural settlement in Western Queensland in the recent past – early to mid-nineties, judging by the references to early internet and mobile phones. The main storyline is narrated by nineteen-year-old Bettina Scott, although between each chapter there are short interludes – fairytale-like stories-within-stories – narrated by other characters. Bettina, we learn, was a feisty teenager, but since the sudden disappearance of her father and two brothers a few years back, she has lived a secluded life under the zealous protection of her mother Nerida. One day, she receives a mysterious message which suggests that her brothers might still be alive. With the help of two old friends, Gary and Trish, she sets out on a modern-day quest, to find her brothers and, in the process, discover hidden truths about her family. Admittedly, Flyaway takes some time getting into. Jennings does not spell out things for the reader and the first few chapters of the novel felt somewhat disorienting. However, the narrative is well worth the initial effort and as things start falling into place, it gets increasingly gripping. A small hint… it helps to keep some notes about the different characters and the families they belong to – as in any self-respecting Gothic work, surnames are more than just identifiers… A thrilling blend of Gothic mystery, modern fairytale and folk horror, Kathleen Jennings’ Flyaway proves that a cattle town in Australia can be as atmospheric and uncanny a setting as the magical forests of the North. https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/04/flyaway-by-kathleen-jennings.html Parts of this book, I quite liked: the atmospheric descriptions; the intermittent fairy tales; the spooky supernatural creatures. Unfortunately, the characters themselves were hard to connect to, especially Bettina, and overall the plot is rather confusing. I think this is one of those books that you either fall in love with, or you just don't get it. Unfortunately I didn't really get it.
Kathleen Jennings’s FLYAWAY reads like a fairy tale, one in which everything is slightly off-kilter. Bettina Scott, who lives with her odd, controlling mother, is at the center of a number of family mysteries in her village of Runagate, a place where you’ll find “roses planted in wire-fenced gardens on the buried corpses of roadside kangaroos.” Jennings’s sentences are startling, requiring one to look close, then step away; just as a Gaudí construction — the Sagrada Família, for example — demands one take in a small accretion of details to best appreciate the vast complexity. It can feel claustrophobic at times, but entering this world is worth the discomfort: Jennings has written an unforgettable tale, as beautiful as it is thorny. Jennings’s wonderful, slim debut pulls readers into an eerie, enchanting fairy tale set in a trio of Australian towns so tiny that they hardly exist. Nineteen-year-old Bettina Scott lives alone with her controlling mother, as her two brothers and father disappeared the same night years before. When Bettina receives a mysterious letter calling her a coward and addressing her by her nickname, “Tink,” a name only her brothers and father called her, she sets off to find them through her district’s small, dilapidated towns, hoping to piece together what really happened to them....In spellbinding, lyrical prose Jennings lulls readers into this rich, dreamlike world. Lovers of contemporary fairy tales and magical realism will find this a masterful work. PrêmiosDistinctions
"In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers-a note that makes her question her memories of their disappearance and her father's departure. A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live-and even thrive-under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles"-- Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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