The Line

The Line (2010) - Teri Hall


 Away
Crossing
 Labor Pools
The Council
Unified States

 Away
Close the door to problems
Mandatory status
Streamlined dystopia
Unified States

Elizabeth Moore
Matriarch of The Property
Vivian
Single mother
Rachel her daughter
Groomed in controlled beliefs
Apprentice orchid keeper

Away
Pathik
Jab
Kinec

Empathy
Stab
Kinetic

Curious gifts arise from
The bombs of change

 Unified States
Close the door to problems
Away

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Line by Teri Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Line is like the threatening, divisive prohibition of a Berlin Wall without the visibles of boundary and barbed wire. US - Unified States - alienate those trapped in Away due to Holocaustic circumstance. And Rachel, one of the young Regs, decides to connect with Pathik in the Away world, offering help and seeking answers to her own father's disappearance. The setting is intriguing but tends to dominate the novel. Somehow the questions around Ms Moore's The Property on the US side become a little weathered, verging on repetitive and there's a frustrating urge to get on with some action. We spend too long with the orchids in the greenhouse and too long gazing at digims (photos). There is a sequel called Away. Perhaps this long-winded "prologue" may seem more valid in the sequel.

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A Night in Hell

Jacko is a reporter with a
Tainted reputation
Launching into yesterday's news with a
Healthy dob of skepticism
And some 
Churning
Desperation

Meeting the echoes of
Yesterday's war in a
Small 
Village cemetery


Meeting their context of
Gunfire and
Muddy footprints

Unable to leave one of
His own


Meeting the voices

Hearing their tragedy
Their cursed
Blackened windows and
Closed doors


But he did
Inadvertently manage
To unsmear 
Some window 
To open 
Some door

To bring
Some 
Lost voices

Together

GOODREADS REVIEW

A night in hell by Liam Foxx
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The scenario was intriguing! The ingredients of World War I, a cemetery, the Somme village and a reporter seeking to mend a damaged reputation all waited to be ignited into a reality cloaked in mystery. But somehow the war got in the way. Descriptive detail of old action sounded a little too like many war stories! And the reporter paled back into an inhibited observer. Perhaps that was the author's intention. But somehow the drive of the story seems frayed at the edges and the conclusion doesn't really rescue the original purpose. Perhaps the story spiked with war action may suit male readers more than female.

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Birnam Wood

FICTION - BIRNAM WOOD BY T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
in The New Yorker - September 3, 2012
(Notes/quotes in my Webnotes - begin from the bottom up!)


Existing in a chicken coop lifestyle
Plagued by 
Grim
Cold
Rain

Luxuriating at
Birnam Wood
A Tudor house in a
Lakeside setting

There was really no question of preferred choice
If opportunity 
Begged

But the glitter of luxury
Secreted 
A sticky substance
A kind of Macbeth consequence
Specially formulated for those who could lay no rightful claim of ownership to
Anything

Or
Anyone

The Necklace

The Necklace (1884) ~ Guy de Maupassant


Beauty equalises females
From a male point of view

But an attractive woman
Scourged with the shabbiness of poverty
And longing to shine
Aches for a wardrobe
Beyond her reach

Such a woman was Madame Loisel

One night of giddy 
Ecstatic illusion 
Became
Ten years of squalid debt

A debt 
Bound in
Ironic
Reverse
Illusion

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Necklace and Other Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(This review focuses on The Necklace, originally published in the French newspaper Le Gaulois in 1884.)
The beauty of Madame Loisel was born to poverty. Little did she know that for one night, for one cloud of happiness, she would sink deeper into the bowels of poverty. Diamonds betrayed her; ignorance tainted her dreams and mocked her. A short story that could easily recycle into 21st century social column news.

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The Discovery of the High Lama

The Discovery of the High Lama (2009) by Sushma Joshi (ebook on Short Stories)
The spin of apparent circumstance settles into a life purpose for one and a humbling experience for another.


Dead Rose Tigerbalm in the Insight Bar

So far from the studies of Boston

Strumming lop-sided chords on the guitar

A Kathmandu backwater 

So far from marketed fortunes

A potato stuffed mentality
Ripe for
Chopping boards

And remote
Elusive 
Mongolia

Bigyan thought he was on a quest for
Enlightened
Black belt success

But the Enlightened One decided
Other
Wise

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Discovery of the High Lama by Sushma Joshi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Elusive be "the simple science of inner knowledge" for those burdened with bookish academics; for those who have concocted their own template of superiority. While his "friends" travel to Boston or Australia to seek mercenary, intellectual status, Bigyan, with his black belt in kyo-kushin karate, travels from Kathmandu to Mongolia to compete. He wins a silver medal and stumbles into the delighted welcome of monks. A bizarre, but fascinating sequence of circumstantial scenarios give birth to a multi-faceted awakening.

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The Three Strangers

Review on Litfy

I have just read "The Three Strangers" (1883) by Thomas Hardy - one of the stories in the collection Stories by English Authors.

In the pastoral, rain drenched world of night outside Casterbridge unfolds the mysterious connection of three strangers who drop by a shepherd's hut!

A beautiful short story etched with the subtle tensions of questions!

Quotes

Description bristles with substance - Five miles of irregular upland, during the long, inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; 

Atmospheric alliteration - surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod

Always get the feeling with Hardy that a passing comment on Nature has another level of foreshadowing or  "insinuation".
The house was thus exposed to the elements on all sides.

First stranger - light satire - his gait suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, 

Suspicious riddles keep the mystery flowing - The man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, "True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers."

Beautiful imagery - Beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights. 

A reality becomes a legend - In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured.

Imagine singing

By a fire with a hangman

One rainy deep night

GOODREADS REVIEW

  The Three Strangers, and an Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read the short story The Three Strangers (1883).
In the pastoral, rain drenched world of night outside Casterbridge unfolds the mysterious connection between three strangers who drop by a shepherd's hut!
A beautiful short story etched with the subtle tensions of suspicious connections, a wheelwright, a hangman and another all gathered round a fireplace of questions!
Another glorious vignette of Hardy's Wessex!

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The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness Quotes

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness (2008) ~ Colin Thompson - author and illustrator


QUOTES

George lived alone with his grandmother and an empty place where his mother and father should have been.

Most Friday afternoons on his way home from school, in that time before the weekend when lonely people realise just how lonely they are, George visited the dog shelter.

The last cage was where the dogs no one wanted went for a final week before their journey to heaven. George felt at home there. 

In the dark gloom, he found a place where everything seemed lonelier than he was. 


Comment:
On the surface, the quotes paint a gloomy world, yet there is a feeling that this particular place may hold the key to a brighter world for more than George.


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The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness Begins

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness (2008) ~ Colin Thompson is the author and illustrator.
This view is on the inside of the book just before the story begins.


Opening words:

George lived alone with his grandmother and an empty place where his mother and father should have been. 

George’s grandmother was a kind lady, but she was very old and the two of them spent most of their lives on different planets.


Comment:
Clearly from the opening words, the young boy has a very deep, hollow sense of loneliness that needs filling with love quite urgently.


Linking to:
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The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness (2008) - Colin Thompson


George is just a young boy
Without his parents
But blessed with a loving grandmother
A grandmother who means well
But just doesn't quite live on
A young boy's planet 

A young boy needs a friend
Who understands
Who feels
Who relates to
Loneliness

Jeremy
A dog
Cast in the last dark cage
In a dog shelter
Waiting for a heavenly journey
Desperately needs a friend
Who understands
Who feels
Who relates to
Being unloved

 By some wink of circumstance
A dog cursed with just three legs
Links the boy and his grandmother in
A happy
Kind of sadness

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness by Colin Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who could imagine that a 3 legged dog close to heaven, (where those unloved wait for their time according to some humans), would unite a grandmother and a young boy and give the boy his first taste of unconditional love and a glowing sense of being. Sadly, the happy moments seem to become a little overly dramatised right at the end of the book. Perhaps there could have been another journey on the horizon!

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The Red Piano

The Red Piano (2008) - Andre LeBlanc
NOTE: This is based on a true story.
Andre interviewed Zhu Xiao-Mei in April 2007.
She is now a virtuoso pianist.


A camp
Lost between
Inner Mongolia
And China

Music
Playing music
Secretly
The only way to keep a child's senses
Untangled
Unbarbed

Just wired

She secures the notes on
Fragile
Re-used
Paper

Transportable testimony of
Hope

Someday
Far away
She will erase
Five years of
Invisibility
Exile

And play the music of

Freedom...

Someday...

So far away....


PREVIOUS POSTS ON THE RED PIANO
The Red Piano Quotes
The Red Piano Begins

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Red Piano by André LeBlanc
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Manual labour for children during China's Cultural Revolution was a time of abyssmal darkness for creativity. Just how dark and negative that time could be is demonstrated by The Red Piano. Unless of course, that child is Zhu Xiao-Mei, longing to find her voice playing the piano. Quietly she rebelled, determined to let her music be heard. How she rebelled evolves into a mesmerising, humbling story.

My poetic review is on my Songlines on the Winds blog.

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The Red Piano Quotes

Back cover of The Red Piano (2008) ~ Andre LeBlanc

QUOTES

Pianos are criminal. Pianists are criminals. Schools are closed down. The Communist Party is re-educating everyone.

But what possible purpose does music serve? Can it erase five years of exile, a wasted youth, cold, hunger, filth and imprisonment?

Collecting human compost from the latrines and transporting it to the fields, to fertilise the soil; this is what happens to a rebellious artist.


Yesterday's post presents the opening words of this delightful book HERE!


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Quote It Saturday

The Red Piano Begins

The Red Piano ~ Andre LeBlanc. Wilkins Farago. 2008. Australia.
Illustrated by Barroux

To Zhu-Xiao-Mei, the virtuoso pianist who, in April 2007, told me her story and encouraged me to interpret it with 'imagination' for the children of today. - A.L.


Opening words:
Zhangjiake Camp 46-19 on China's border with Inner Mangolia is blighted by an eerie moonlight. 
In the hut, the cramped rooms reek of warm sweat, the foul smell of extinguished coal fires and packed earth. Crammed together, the comrades are already sleeping on the bare ground. Taking small, careful steps, the young girl leaves the communal house.

Comment:
Always love a few brush strokes of history in a tale - especially dark history!

Manual labour
Children re-educated
Cultural madness


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My Girragundji

My Girragundji – Meme McDonald + Boori Pryor. 1998. A Little Ark Book. Allen and Unwin


I may know the kids in my world
But they don't want to know me

I fight them to preserve my identity
But I get into trouble for fighting
I get into trouble for losing

My parents live in my house
But they love their drink
I don't know them when they drink
They don't know me

Being different in a white world can be traumatic
But being uncomfortable in your own black world can be
Soul destroying

Unless
Of course
You find a little spirit
A little tree frog
A girragundji

GOODREADS REVIEW

My Girragundji by Meme McDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tapping in to the spirit of a living thing can be a magical balm for a lonely soul.

p.34 When I look in my gundji’s eyes, she speaks to me.

A touching story of a boy seeking some kind of identity in a world fractured by racial discomforts.
A beautiful idea, but somehow the book weathers the final narrative.

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The Lost Thing

The Lost Thing (2000) - Shaun Tan
The extraordinary website for this book is HERE!


Wandering a beach
Collecting bottle caps

Just an ordinary day
In the life of a child

But then
Appeared
Some unknown
Beautifully odd
Lost
Thing

Together
They take time to connect with
Identity and
Place and
Belonging

And taking time to connect with
Wonder
Rained
Wonder

Can we grow older
And retrieve
The magical miracle
Of a child
Lost in the joy of
Exploring
Questions of

Things?

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A book that dares to explore the fanciful shapes and meanings of the imagination! Beautiful illustrations suggest that this could be a child's picture book! But don't be deceived. The child on a quest could be the inner you! Here is a unique meeting of the child and the adult and the hollow haunting of loss.

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A 15minute, animated short film was created for The Lost Thing.
Here is the trailer.


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The Red Poppy Begins

The Red Poppy (2012) - David Hill
opens with the words:
Jim McLeod wrote to his mother and his sister Edith. He said nothing about the day to come, nor the mud and the rats. He didn't mention the piles of stretchers waiting for the dead and wounded.




Even in war time
Even when the winds are sour
Somewhere is sweetness




I wrote a poetic review of The Red Poppy HERE!

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The Red Poppy

The Red Poppy (2012)  – David Hill – Illustrated by Fifi Colston – pub. Creative New Zealand


Imagine
Thousands of soldiers
Marching through the night to their trenches
In the dark
So the Germans can’t see them

Imagine
Ted a stretcher bearer
And
His friend Matiu

And the messenger dog
Nipper
– like a puppy.

(Soldiers found him in a ruined village.
Soldiers could write messages and tuck them in his little leather bag.)

Imagine
Jim
Wounded
And a German
Wounded
Finding a special connection
With the help of
A little dog
And a field of
Poppies

Imagine finding a book
That takes moments to read
But lingers
A lifetime


 


The Red Poppy by David Hill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A story set in World War I, where the public enemy is not always the private enemy; where red poppies are not always a symbol of death.
And a little dog knows.
Could the ravages of war possibly hold some beautiful moments?
The illustrations by Fifi Colston are a delight!

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Farmer Giles of Ham

p.9 The time was not one of hurry or bustle. But bustle has very little to do with business.

p.22 The warm summer was followed by a hard winter. It was bitter cold in the mountains and food was scarce. The talk got louder.

p.25 He was a hot dragon when he felt in the mood.

p.33 ...if it is your notion to go dragon-hunting jingling and dingling like Canterbury-Bells, it ain't mine.

p.38 I will pay for the funerals of all the people I have killed, especially the parson of Oakley; he shall have a noble cenotaph - though he was rather lean.

p.40 He was a grammarian and could doubtless see further into the future than others.

p.45 You cannot offer excuses to the King as you can to your neighbours.

p.55 ...nothing pleased him more than finding the miller at a loss for a sneer and the blacksmith quite out of countenance.

p.60 ...the man who has a tame dragon is naturally respected.


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The Midnight Zoo Begins

The Midnight Zoo (2010) - Sonya Hartnett
opens with the words:
If the old bell had been hanging in the steeple it would have rung to announce midnight, twelve solemn iron klongs which would have woken the villagers from their sleep and startled any small creature new to the village and unaccustomed to the noise. But the bell had fallen from its height weeks ago, and now lay buried in silence beneath rubble; no small creature foraged in corners, because every scrap had already been carried away in beak and mouth and paw; and no woken villagers lay grumbling, for the people, like their bell, were gone.

In my last post, Poetry of the Midnight Zoo, I wrote a poetic review of this book.
But that opening still haunts me.


The fall of the bell
Like the fall of living souls
Like a parched silence


Linking to:
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Poetry of The Midnight Zoo

Gypsy child
In a world of rumbling 
Extermination 
Machines
12 year old Andrej
Leads 9 year old Tomas
And both share a Mum role for
Baby Wilma

Imagine these shreds of life
In the cloak of midnights
Stumbling into a zoo

Where 
For a star gate of  
Magical time
The animals who sense more than
You will ever know

Try to tell you

And Alice
In her dark
Long
Woollen cloak 
Waits
To lead them all


p.1 ...the tower now stood against the sky like a blunt unfinished question.
p.3 They were younger than Night had ever been, two scraps of life with scanty limbs clad in worn jackets and boots.
p.91 We Rom are closer to the animals than to people like that. Unburdened, unowned and free.
p.155 But there are many kinds of hungers.
p.157 Her muzzle wrinkled, and Andrej saw a glimpse of teeth and pale tongue. 'They smell the same,' the lioness murmured. 'My cubs smelt as she does. Like pollen.'
p.162 These are cages, so there must be keys.

The Midnight Zoo (2010) - Sonya Hartnett

GOODREADS REVIEW

  The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here is a novel about children but hardly for children. It needs an adult audience (touting some historical baggage) who seeks a glimpse of a child's world. Here are the Rom, those gypsy wanderers persecuted alongside the Jews in Hitler's madness. And Andrej, Tomas and Wilma are parentless, Rom children. But don't seek some historical jaunt. Feel the cursed? wandering spirit of a child seeking answers of place and identity. What is freedom? There are many kinds of freedoms and hungers. The animals know.
This novel has the fantasy of a parable and the realism of a holocaust.
Imagine these shreds of life
In the cloak of midnights
Stumbling into a zoo
- Extract from my poetic review on my blog Songlines on the Winds

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N.B. Sparkle and Nightflower (1986) - The first book I read by Sonya Hartnett.
A delicious journey of mother and son through some tawdry, weathered inner and outer landscapes.
I read it aloud - cover to cover - to my wild, "non-reading" bunch of Year 10's at the time, and they loved it!

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The Hamilton Case

Pater loved parties 
Champagne and horses 
A giver to those who craved 
 While Mater was a smasher 
A beauty 
Favouring
The giving of 
 Flying crystal 

 But 
 What Sam remembered most about his parents in 
This monsoon 
 Colonial world of 
 Befuddled Ceylon was 

His parents 
Weren't there 

 A whirlwind of faces and spaces 
Greed and need 
Spin by 

Until 
 The Hamilton Case 
Embroiling white and dark tensions 
Test Sam's legal powers 
But his insights are coloured 
Textured 
Not clear 

And Sam was not married
Yet

 Beyond the Hamilton question 
Life bumbles on 
Cramped with jungle fever and 
Tangled insanities 
Maud his mother 
Ekes out her time in 
The refuse of tattered glamour and
The ghosts of  her son Leo

Until 
Shivanathan
(The one who plods) 
Emerges from Sam's old "Neddy" school world 
And
Like some quasi-spiritual seer
Writes
 Parts 
Imparts 
 Some mysteries for Sam's son 

 So many 
Rich glimpses of 
A colonial 
Monsoon world where a 
Coherent 
Social fabric is 

Not there 



 The Hamilton Case (2003) ~ Michelle de Kretser

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser
If you are seeking an intriguing crime mystery, (implied by the title) warped with a few red herrings along a linear narrative of progress, "The Hamilton Case" does not deliver. Instead, the novel explores colonial worlds of old Ceylon - embedded with character detail, past and present lives, driven by 1st and 3rd person speakers and all in a pendulum motion defying time sequence. A glorious tropical world becomes matted with fevered images, irritatingly vague but always intriguing. Finally the novel unveils the last version of Maud, strung with out of date glamour. Then the multitude of previous detours tumble in, tying up threads, like a cascade of relief. And the Hamilton Case, not mentioned till one third of the way through the novel, (then left swinging), returns, like a re-incarnation, with some answers and new questions. The Hamilton Case becomes a symbol for so many other crimes lurking insidiously beneath the social masks. Ultimately, the novel is a paradox, offering bizarre glimpses of a dysfunctional, colonial society in a sweltering conglomeration of personalities.
I still don't know if I love this novel.
And yet, I still don't know if I don't.
 My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Black Water

 Swan Island near Queenscliff
Near to the bustling conundrum of life
Yet far enough away to be
Different
But not so indifferent to World War I

Far enough away to be different...
A different Farren needs to deal with life
Without a Mum
A different Danny returns from Gallipoli
And the two brothers need to deal with
A different guest
A young girl
From the sea
Souki
From Furneaux Island

And all the while there is
The sadness
Turned to enchantment
Turned to sail boat extraordinaire of
Camille
And
Hoppidy
The rabbit
The weaver of
Happiness

GOODREADS REVIEW

Black Water (2007) by David Mezenthen
Black Water by Metzenthen, David
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A book to delight teenage boys! The main characters, brothers, Farren and Danny, galumph and thrash through the emotional, physical and mental challenges of living on an island near the mainland. Even the female characters have their wild streak; even the young Souki from Furneaux Island. It's amazing what gifts may be hidden on a wind scourged beach of black kelp.
p.91 "...it crossed Farren's mind that although death seemed big, life was even bigger..."

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Raw Music of The Secret River

Thornhill's Point was so far from
Will's own Thames
As far as the convict ship Alexander
Could weather the distance
Without breaking

Untamed Thornhill's Point on
The untamed Hawkesbury was 
His adopted dream
(Once he had his ticket of freedom)
And Sal's interim 5 year dream
Till the real dream of Home
Could return

However
He changed
They changed
Transformed
London became
Another 
Shapeless Story

And to the children
That Home was
Just a word


Confronting those who roamed this land before him
He felt naked
He felt small
Words were just a wall
But she felt...
She simply felt
Connected to 
The beauty of a black woman's
Crude
Bark
Dish

A scorching world in January
Ants 
Mosquitoes
Flies and 
Speckled lizards
But in the cool of the mangroves and
The river oaks
And armed with a hearty pannikin of tea
(Trade
A bit of kangaroo for
A bag of flour)
It could be easy 
To pretend
Here was heaven

But the Secret River funnelled into
A dark season
A fear of spears and 
Ruined corn and
Frozen eyes and
Ragged breathing

Still
Seasons pass
Thornhill's Point faded and
And Cobham Hall 
Brandished a fine stone house with
A fine red velvet armchair

Home
Had sailed
Home

But heaven seemed
Remote


Give a little Take a little
Perhaps
Still
A precious
Mantra


Kate Grenville is an Australian writer from Sydney - The Secret River (2005)

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For some, the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, in the 19th century, was a wild place where only madmen venture. Some find its secret beauty, but only realise that priceless magic when the glittering wealths of life entice them away.

View all my reviews

Goodreads Discussion: I especially love the image of William Thornhill finally locked into his Cobham Hall and viewing his Hawkesbury escapades through a spyglass with a sad yearning! He knew that he came close to real beauty but let it slip through his "social status" fingers. Meanwhile, he saw that the Aboriginal, close to the Earth, really lived with true beauty. A very symbolic, challenging moment!

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Poetic Impressions of The Wind Singer

Aramanth
Land of the Manth people
A giant scarecrow structure 
A special gift
From unknown special people
The wonder of the wind singer

But there emerged scarlet gowned examiners
Who sought to grind the human spirit into
Coloured labels
Maroon for those of valuable obedience
Orange for those with midstream potential and
Grey for those who verged on 
Disposable

Tests 
Ongoing tests
Ensured
The right people were
In the right places

And the key to the windsinger's song was
Invisible
Missing

But there are always those 
Who wish and will
A different world

Bowman and Kestrel
The twins
And the 
Muddle-headed 
Mumpo

They were children
Just children
Cast
Down and
Up into
A labyrinth of journeys

Outer landscapes
Together
Inner landscapes
Alone

Braving the muds of the Underlake
The crumbling parapet above the gorge
Riding wolves and
Soaring in eagles' claws

Seeking the identity of
Their lost souls

The Emperor held 
The map
Aging Queen Num wore
The silver clasp 
The key to
The windsinger's song

And in the shifting shades
Always smile
The old children
Lurking 
Longing
To touch
Their crippling touch
Hoping for some fire to burn them back
To what they should be
~~~~~~

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The Wind Singer (2000)
William Nicholson is a British screenwriter, playwright and novelist.

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Wind Singer by William Nicholson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aramanth
Sounds like some legendary jewel
But the gem
The walled city
Has lost the sparkle of the wind singer
The strangers' tall tower of
Wooden beams and metal pipes
Has lost the voice of
The soul
Extract from my poetic review - an alternative review on my Gemma's Greyscale Territory blog

An extraordinary fantasy that hints of breaths from old legends and becomes a chameleon of reality and dream! And if you feel the spirit deep down, you will feel the smudges of our society lurking.

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Good Reads discussion: For some strange reason, "The Wind Singer" seems to reflect elements of "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. Both represent a world of crushing, stifling perfection and the journey of those who seek a way out. But this time, the travellers are children.

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