Given the subject matter and the praise that has been heaped on this novel, I tried hard to like it. It might be to the author's credit that she was able to create a character who is as hard and cold as her circumstance, but it made the book hard going for me.

Challenging prose is great. This book is such a compositional and emotional viper's nest that it was a chore to get through.

I feel this is a well-written book, but it wasn't for me. The story flowed nicely, and was quite descriptive. I learned a lot from the book, but it was too depressing for me. The main character went through so much unhappiness, and was sexually abused by a neighbor as a young child. Add to that neglectful parents, and it was just a little too harsh of a reality for me. ( )

Fantastic. The story traces the development of a young girl nicknamed Sooky, and the novel is structured around her 4 key male partners. The setting is Brisbane in the 60's and Sooky has a fairly dysfunctional family. She feels very close to her father but he becomes progressively crazy and disinterested in her. Her mother is closed off and cruel. Seeking contact she spends a lot of time with the neighbours, Lionel and Dolly. Lionel has chooks and he encourages Sooky to be his helper. He artfully builds an intimacy between them which leads to sexual abuse. The abuse takes place on the floor of the chook pen and is described in the first chapter. A stunning start – no slow reveal here!

Given the lack of support and warmth in her home situation, combined with the manipulative skill of Lionel, it is quite plausible that Sooky would eventually fall victim. Her response to the abuse is explored in detail. Clearly the abuse harms her at a very deep level – she shuts herself off from the abuse and creates a shell, a façade, with her emotions well concealed. But there’s also ambivalence. She still wants to have Lionel’s attention. It is better than his rejection – it is better than being ‘loved’ by no one.

It is unclear whether Sooky's parents or Lionel's wife have any awareness of what’s going on., but it seems at least possible - and what's more they seem intent on pushing her towards Lionel.

I think the first section of the book is the best. It paints a terrific picture of family life in Brisbane in the 60's.

The novel goes on to describe Sooky's relationship with three other men, her move to UK, and the development of her ability as a painter. Along the road of her life Sooky makes some very bad choices, but we can see why this happens, and it's good to see that she eventually starts to use her real name and develop a stronger sense of self .

Given that she seems to have at last achieved a sense of wholeness and realness the closing line is quite perplexing. Just when she seems to have finally pulled herself together the final line suggest her partner may be another colonizing male…. and she may once again let herself be a victim.

The story emerges from a very deep, intense place – the emotions expressed are visceral and powerful. The focus is on the internal, the state of mind, the feelings, the perceptions of the heroine. The connections, associations seem derived in part from the unconscious. The use of nursery rhymes, dreams, fairy stories also convey primitive sources.

Bringing the skills of a poet to the task McMaster writes lyrically, choosing each detail, image and word with great care and precision. She uses short, clear sentences.

This novel reminded me of another excellent book about sexual abuse of children - 'Choo Woo' by Lloyd Jones (author of 'Mr Pip'). ( )

Feather Man is one of those books that lingers. ("You know, she was very clever the way she used that song," I'd ruminate days after reading it. "I just realised she didn’t ever quote the last two lines." Or: "You know, the final line of the book is much more open-ended than I thought.")

If the book grabs you, and it evidently doesn’t grab everyone, it does so powerfully. It starts with the narrator -- much is made of her name, but I’ll call her Sookie -- being raped as a child, and goes on from there, not so much to a catalogue of subsequent horrors as to a dissection of the emotional neglect and invalidation that made her first accessible and then vulnerable to her attacker, followed by a grim narrative of her adolescence and development into an artist. She manages to be done over pretty badly before the modified optimism of the ending.

There are echoes of any number of books here: The Color Purple, For Love Alone (very strongly), The Vivisector (in the descriptions of Sooky's painting process). I don’t mean to say the book is imitative. On the contrary, it has a very strong sense of being personal. I don’t assume that Rhyll McMaster is telling her own story here, but I’d be surprised to hear that she wasn’t the same age as Sooky, or brought up like her in suburban Brisbane. I happen to have been born in the same year and state as Sooky, and probably Rhyll McMaster: 1947 in Queensland. Though my childhood and adolescence were vastly different from Sooky's, one of the pleasures of the book was the frequent moments of cultural recognition -- in the language, the points of reference, the attitudes (though Sooky's parents are given to us without any of the softening humour and affection that attended the dismissal of children's emotional states in my experience). ( )

Oooh, so far so good!