Tracker

• Author: Alexis Wright
• Title: Tracker
• Published: 2017
• Trivia: Shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2018
  
• Trivia: #AWW2018 
• #NonFicReads18   Doing Dewey (Katie)

Conclusion:

1. Before starting this book….I read NO reviews about it.
2. I wanted to  begin it with a clean slate.
3. I read the introduction and the prologue in the
4. …hope it would prepare me for an interesting book.
5. This is a collection of short personal narratives.
6. Wright fails to create an interesting situation.
7. Excessive description:
8. long winded, no powerful prose to ‘hook’ the reader.
9. Irrelevant information:
10. The first few lines of your story are crucial
11. Wright gave me trivial information…nothing I could sink my teeth in!
12. The writing  in this chapter is at elementary level.
13. I hope Wright changes her  writing style
14. …otherwise I may  not last 650 pages of this.
15. 4 chapters are written in first person point of view.
16. Each chapter had more than 7 changes of voice.
17. Chapter 1 and 3  had a whopping
18. …16 different changes of perspective.
19. This is not the way to ‘grab’ a readers attention!
20. There is certainly nothing  wrong
21. …with multiple first-person narrators.
22. We  avoid getting only one person’s  view of the action.
23. But it should be done well!
24. There are pages of nothing but
25. …I  did this, I did that, I was thinking, So I said to him…
26. I made it through part 1, 20% of the book.
27. Time to look forward…
28. there were pages and pages
29. …of the same waiting for me.
30. This is an exhaustive form of
31. experimental  ‘collective’ memoir.
32. I think A. Wright decided to write her book in
33. this style because she wanted not to refer to emotion but
34. …to re-create it in the first person narrative.
35. I just could not manage 650 pages of it.
36. Narrative sounds like the flow of casual talk
37. …campfire yarns…and in my opinion no great craft.
38. You may like it….I did not.
39. #DNF

Last Thoughts:

1. If you are interested in the power of contemporary Aboriginal storytelling
2. …then I suggest you read My Place by Sally Morgan.