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    MORDHAU

    MORDHAU

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    MORDHAU is a medieval first & third person multiplayer slasher. Enter a hectic battlefield of up to...

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ClareR (5686 KP) rated The Water Dancer in Books

Feb 9, 2023  
The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates | 2020
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Water Dancer byTa-Nehisi Coates is a book of contradictions: a book beautifully written about a shameful time in history.

Hiram is taken away from his mother as a child when she is sold to another owner. When his feats of memory are recognised by his owner/ father, he is taken in to the big house and educated. As he gets older, all Hiram wants is to be free to choose his own life and to have his own family.

When Hiram runs away, he eventually finds himself involved with the Underground Railway. And that is where he learns to control his ability to “conduct” himself to different places to help people.

I love magical realism and the way it makes us think about the way the world works in reality, as opposed to how we’d all like it to work. Hiram’s ability to conduct himself immediately to another place takes all the risk out of capture, the miles of struggle and needing to stay hidden. Of course, Hiram only gets to this stage after he experiences the trauma and inhumanity of being caught by the slave catchers himself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this - I listened on audiobook, and the narrator Joe Morton was amazing. Especially his singing - his voice just brought the characters to life.

A fabulous novel.
  
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Eilidh G Clark (177 KP) rated Goblin in Books

Jul 2, 2019  
Goblin
Goblin
Ever Dundas | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Everything. This is a top class debut novel (0 more)
Nothing. (0 more)
Brilliant book, well wriiten, original
Winner of the Saltire Society first book of the year award 2017, Goblin, by Ever Dundas is a brilliant and brave first novel. Set in both London during WW2 and in Edinburgh in 2011, the story is told in flashback. For me, the first half of the novel is the best, we meet Goblin as a nine-year-old tomboy with a love for animals and a passion for storytelling - both of which the protagonist collects.
Goblin has a difficult family life; a mother who doesn’t want her, 'Goblin-runt born blue. Nothing can kill you. [...] You're like a cockroach,' (p.5) a father who mends radio’s and barely talks and a brother (David) who spends most of his time in his bedroom. Left to her own devices, the protagonist, her dog Devil, and her two friends Mac and Stevie roam the neighbourhood and hang around in an abandoned worksite. As a collector of stories, Goblin enthusiastically attends the local church with Mac, 'I loved the stories, turning them over in my head, weaving my own.' (p.24) before meeting The Crazy Pigeon Lady who tells her tales of Lizards people from the realm below. The childhood innocence in these chapters, mixed with magic realism, break down the walls of adult reasoning and creates a wonderful suspension of disbelief.
But without giving away the story plot, the suspension of disbelief serves another purpose; to divert the reader (as well as the adult protagonist) from the truth. So, while the adult Goblin searches amongst her tangled past, she takes the reader along for the ride. We meet multiple parents, live life on the road, come alive on the streets and in the circus, explore love, death, desire, and hate – and somewhere in the middle we meet an impressive collection of animals - Goblin has it all. And as far as strong female protagonists go, she’s right up there with Anais Hendricks from Jenni Fagan’s Panopticon, to Janie Ryan in Kerry Hudson’s Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, characters who are so real you might just walk by them on the street.
The only teeny tiny criticism about the novel is that the second half spans over a lengthy period of time and it felt a little rushed. However, there is so much to say about this novel, so many angles to discuss, from Queer Theory to Religion, from Myth to Realism, and as a graduate of English Literature I could have a field day studying this book but for now, as a lover of good books, I’ll give it a big thumbs up and a huge recommendation, it’ll be finding a space on my ‘keep’ book shelve.
Goblin, Ever Dundas (2017) published by Saraband