Janette Turner Hospital

Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital is brilliant. Set in the isolated Australian Outback town of Outer Maroo, the towns inhabitants are struggling to survive a heat wave, drought, and an awful smell that seems to hang over the town. You know something ominous and dreadful has happened but you have to wait while the suspense builds and events are slowly revealed. Many of the residents of the town are just as secretive and, perhaps, delusional as the many young followers of the cult leader who show more calls himself Oyster. There is a cult, an illegal opal trade, some dark secrets and the terrible knowledge that foreigners are not welcome and mysteriously disappear in Outer Maroo.

Hospital carefully and skillfully develops her characters through some incredible prose. The writing is really incredible as you have to carefully piece clues together, sometimes from very dream-like inner thoughts of characters, to start to make sense of what has happened and is happening here. The terror felt by the characters is palatable. Much of the apocalyptic story is told through the thoughts of young teen Mercy Givens, but it isn't told in a linear narrative. The thoughts of other characters add to the chorus trying to tell the complete story.

The plot of Oyster, originally published in 1996, shows influence from a couple cults - Jim Jones and Jonestown in 1978 and especially David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in 1993. Knowledge is powerful and dangerous. The natural and enforced seclusion of the inhabitants of Outer Maroo combined with a suspicion of strangers, and a predisposition to believing in charismatic leaders all combine to make for an explosive story with a moral.

The quality of Janette Turner Hospital's writing is what carries this novel, as much as her brilliant plot.
Very Highly Recommended http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less

Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital focuses on characters that all have one thing in common: they all have some connection to a plane that was hijacked by terrorists thirteen years earlier. When he was sixteen, Lowell's mother was on the flight and killed during the hijacking. Lowell's life is still tormented by her death. Samantha is a survivor. She was a six year old child and allowed off the plane. She is searching declassified documents connected with the hijacking show more and trying to discover the identity of a shadowy agent called Salamander. Additionally, it seems that all those connected with the hijacking are dying mysterious deaths. After Lowell's father dies and leaves him a bag filled with documents and tapes about the hijacking, he and Samantha team up.

This is a psychological thriller that deals with terrorism and espionage. It will play on your emotions as it tells a tale of deceit and deception and how one man's duplicity affects the lives of many. The story switches narrators and points-of-view, drawing out surprising connections between the people involved and offering the reader more insight into the whole terrifying event.
Certainly recent events give Due Preparations for the Plague a poignancy and timelessness that bodes well for the lasting impact it has on the reader. It could be a real story. The paranoia running rampant through the characters could be a legitimate feeling that they should be paying attention to. Today we know there are terrorists, unethical political maneuvers, humans used as collateral, and chemical warfare.

Due Preparations for the Plague also deals with the psychological destruction of personal loss and death. As the overleaf quote, from Daniel Defoe's Due Preparations For the Plague says: "I have often asked myself what I mean by preparations for the plague... and I think that preparations for the plague are preparations for death. But what is it to make preparations for death? or what preparations are proper to be made for death?" Exactly what preparations can you make for your own death that are truly beneficial and not simply reactions to the obvious? What risks must be taken? What must we be willing to leave behind?

Due Preparations For the Plague is a beautifully written literary novel with sharp characterizations. Every little detail is also well researched and woven seamlessly into the plot. The different narrators are fully formed and developed characters; each of them has a distinct and individual voice. While this is a political thriller that requires some effort and concentration to read, in the end you will feel your time was well spent. "To state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise." Albert Camus, The Plague

Very Highly Recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less

A story of childhood friendship, love, secrets, and betrayal, set (mostly) in Australia and spanning two generations. There's a criminal underground (literally underground in this case), lush verbal depictions of photographic art, and all sorts of other goodies that play into the plot here as well.

A surprise hit! Well, not really a surprise. I really like Virago as a publishing house (one of the categories in my 2014 category challenge is completely devoted to Virago books) and the critical show more reviews on this book were glowing, so I figured Hospital would be a good bet for a new author to try.

It was sort of slow going at first. Hospital's prose is dense and dreamy and reflects the confusion of the narrator over the events happening in her life and the lives of her friends. It was such a stark contrast to the blunt prose of The Daylight Gate that I had trouble getting into it initially - plus, I'd sort of thought it was a fantasy novel and it quickly became clear that there are no magicians in this book, not in the traditional sense anyway! Somewhere in the first third of the novel, though, my impatience turned abruptly into excitement and I could not put the book down until it was finished. There are so many little twists and turns in it, so many secrets slowly revealed, that it's as gripping as a good mystery.

The title is not a misnomer - there are definitely fantastic elements in here. The characters and their obsessions are all bigger than life; at the same time particular small details (like a pair of earrings with blue glass beads) reappear in surprising contexts and become potent symbols in the world of the story. There's a wonderful sense of setting in The Last Magician as well - I can remember the places in the novel almost as if I've been there. It really is a world unto itself.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship. show less

This book will give you many moments of pleasure and insight - the prose is completely delicious. I love the structure of this novel, as we read from multiple viewpoints as the story progresses, without the annoyance of too much jumping about in time and place - everything moves forward at an understandable pace and context.
The characters are interesting but deeply flawed. The more I read about them, the more I understood them - and the less I liked them! The neat plot twist at the end, show more which demonstrated a complete misunderstanding at the heart of Edward's unhappiness and self-designated sacrifice, was a surprise to me, and also made me hastily re-evaluate my impression of Elizabeth's character.
Everyone is selfish and self-absorbed. There is a great deal of truth in this novel, and it is not at all as dire as I've made it sound. I was just disappointed in these people - most probably because I had invested in them emotionally. I think this is a book which will benefit from a second reading, and will continue to please me for many years as I ponder the motivations and actions of the Carpenters and their contacts. show less