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Posts from the ‘Aurealis Award Winners (Australia)’ Category

16
Dec

#AWW 2019 Victorian Literary Best YA Novel

  • Author Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina
  • Title: Catching Teller Crow
  • Genre: ghost story (speculative fiction)
  • Reading time:  2 hrs  40 min
  • Published: 2019
  • List of Challenges 2019
  • Monthly plan
  • #AWW2019
  • @AusWomenWriters 
  • Trivia:  2019 Winner Aurealis Award  Best Young Adults Novel
  • Trivia: 2019  Winner Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
  • Best Writing for Young Adults.

 

Introduction:

  1. A ghost girl who is staying with her father while he grieves.
  2. In doing so, she begins to help him with a murder mystery.

 

 Hook:

  1. The hook is the concept  that Officer Teller’s
  2. assistant while investigating a series of murders
  3. …is his daughter’s…ghost!
  4. Another hook is the witness’s statement that
  5. “This thing didn’t start with the fire…It started at sunset” (pg 24)
  6. And who is Tansy Webster and her angels?  Wings flapping? (pg 94)
  7. Now readers are turning pages
  8. ….curious….tension!

 

Themes

  1. Loss of a loved one and the stages of mourning or
  2. …grief are overriding themes.
  3. Injustice towards the Aboriginal people
  4. …is also a strong theme.

 

Parallels: Mike Teller vs Derek Bell

  1. Both Officer Michael Teller (Beth’s Dad) and
  2. Officer Derek Bell grew up in small town and
  3. their fathers were also cops!
  4. Gerry Bell and  Officer Teller sr.

 

Parallels:  Father and daughter –>  epiphany moments (pg 132)

  1. Both Beth (daughter) and  Mike Teller (father) have
  2. epiphany moments:
  3. Beth realizes she does not belong here (with the living). (pg 130)
  4. Mike Teller realizes he is blaming himself
  5. …for an accident he could not prevent.
  6. He feels he failed his daughter.
  7. He was holding on to a burden
  8. …something that was not his to bear. (pg 133)

 

Contrasts:  Father  vs son  (pg 132)

  1. Officer Michael teller does not want to be like his
  2. racist father. He was a police officer who did not do
  3. enough to protect the Aboriginals.
  4. Mike did not want to be one of those
  5. people who didn’t pay attention.
  6. Officer Teller took any injustice
  7. ….personally (wife was Aboriginal)
  8. when Aboriginals  are not treated right.

 

Contrasts:  Beth in “Catching Teller Crow”  vs  Else in “The Endsister”

  1. Narrator Beth is just about the same age as Else in The Endsister
  2. One is dead….one is still alive
  3. …one is cheerful….and one is confused, isolated.
  4. Beth shows no signs of ‘the teenage brain’ as did Else.
  5. It seems once you’ve died…all your problems disappear!
  6. ….mood swings, erratic behavior, ill-tempered….
  7. I will try to find a moment in Beth’s
  8. narration that shows her in a bad mood!
  9. Yes, she does cry….she had to make an important decision
  10. …about the colours.

 

Strong point:  Beth’s ghost is Detective M. Teller’s assistant

  1. This is a great plot device.
  2. Beth can linger in places once
  3. her father has left to eavesdrop
  4. on suspects conversations and actions!
  5. #Clever

 

Strong point:    Role reversal literary device  (pg 11)

  1. “He and I were the reverse of each other:
  2. I couldn’t remember my death;
  3. Dad couldn’t remember my life…” (pg 11)
  4. Another role reversal….
  5. Dad was looking after Beth when his wife died.
  6. That had kept Dad going.
  7. Now Beth was looking after her Dad
  8. ….to keep him going. (pg 13)

 

 

Strong point:  Writing style varies… for certain effects!

  1. Chapters about CATCHING...
  2. Isobel  speaks in staccato sentences.
  3. Staccato sentences are short and often emphatic to
  4. focus the reader or listener on content.
  5. This technique borrowed from poetry intensifies
  6. Catching’s aboriginal storytelling…
  7. with base emotions….earthy!
  8. This conveys certain kinds of emotions in particular,
  9. namely fear, anxiety, anger, confusion and stress.

 

Strong point:     Izzy’s storytelling

  1. These chapters are fun to read.
  2. You can lose yourself in them…
  3. let you imagination soar.
  4. I’m sure YA readers can find something
  5. in these tellings to hold on to.
  6. I enjoyed these next few lines:
  7. — Courage eats fear.
  8. — Joy eats sadness.
  9. — Choose the opposite of grey.

 

#NoWeakPoints !!

 

Conclusion:

  1. This was absolutely a stunning novel!
  2. I’ve never been so entertained reading YA fiction.
  3. I think the storytelling (Aboriginal influences) was spot on.
  4. But  the most important part of the book  for me
  5. ….was how people dealt with grief. (Officer Mike Teller)
  6. They say time is a healer.
  7. But grief is always in the hollow of your heart.
  8. It’s just waiting for something to shake it out.
  9. Beth was there to shake it out of her Dad.
  10. Because loss never really leaves you.
  11. Loss alters you.
  12. #MustRead….worthy winner
  13. Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
  14. Best Young Adults Novel 2019

 

11
Oct

#AUSReadingMonth Aurealis Award Best Horror Novel 2018

 

Introduction:

  1. Once again I am leaving my comfort zone.
  2. Will this book leave me white-kunckled
  3. ….cringing in fear with
  4. …heightened pulse, sweaty palms and a
  5. sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
  6. I am about to find out!

 

Plot:

  1. Imagine the worst criminals in history, not executed for their crimes
  2. but condemned to preservation and imprisonment.
  3. A life sentence, and then some.
  4. Execution or eternal life? Which is worse? Which is better?
  5. Phillipa is a nurses aide in a home
  6. for the elderly (all….dementia patients).
  7. She is leaving for a 1 year internship in The Time Ball Tower.
  8. Phillippa: ” The tower never left me.
  9. I’d dream about it, hallucinate it when I was away.
  10. It calls to the best of us, they say.”

 

  1. Cover: The Time Ball Tower
  2. Symbolism: Ball dropping every day, keeping time
  3. Setting: small town in Australia, Tempuston (tempus; Latin for time)
  4. Motif: camera.…Phillipa is constantly taking photographs!

 

Conclusion:


Strong point:

  1. Chapter 1:   Phillipa Muskett
  2. This must be the longest first chapter
  3. …I ever read! (reading time: 2 hours!)
  4. But Kaaron Warren is setting the scene

 

  1. ...leaving a path ‘hooks, moments of tension’
  2. …that overwhelmed this reader.
  3. …I noted  at least 24 moments of reflection by Phillipa
  4. giving the reader a good impression about
  5. her wants (be famous), fears and hopes for the future.

 

  1. Many characters stop to give her advice before she
  2. leaves for a year in The Time Ball Tower
  3. Burnett (suffers from dementia, was keeper in 1868!)
  4. ….is still patient in elderly home! (time travel?, ghost?)
  5. BFF Renata (grandmother is a witch!)
  6. Phillipa’s Grandmother (Frances Styles, keeper 1938)
  7. Photography teacher
  8. and especially Kate Hoff (keeper 2010)
  9. She gives Philippa the most important advice:.
  10. how to act with the prisoners
  11. because they can
  12. …“Smell of a woman…makes them difficult.”
  13. Kate also give Phillipa all the report files
  14. …written by keepers who have served
  15. in The Tower in the past!
  16. I am sitting on the edge of my seat because
  17. …Philippa is about to read them all!
  18. I expect  a lot of ‘shock and awe” in this book!

 

Weak point:

  1. After an exciting first chapter (18 % of the book)
  2. we read the ‘secret files’ from the Tower keepers.
  3. Quirky, repetitive…but not scary at all! (44 % of the book).
  4. Warren often refers to a personage from history
  5. Hess, Jacob H. Smith, Baron von Sternberg
  6. …and you have to consult Wikipedia to learn more about
  7. some unfamiliar names.
  8. Every file ends in a report that is identical for all keepers
  9. with an exception for Frances Styles, an a few mention that
  10. the prisoner does not need a bath.
  11. This just felt gimmicky.
  12. It does not add to the  horror element of the book.

 

Strong or weak point?

  1. Palpable sexually oriented glaze over many elements
  2. of the story when Phillippa
  3. …is finally the keeper in The Tower. (62 % of the book)
  4. Does this increase the ‘horror element”
  5. …or is it good for book sales?
  6. You decide.
  7. Personally…I wish Warren was
  8. a more creative  writer
  9. …rather than use the pornographic angle.

 

Weak point:

  1. There isn’t very much tension in the last section
  2. Phillipa as keeper.
  3. Prisoners babble on and on…nothing we haven’t
  4. heard before in the book.
  5. I try to keep engaged by noting how Phillipa
  6. is changing from the first day as keep….until her last.
  7. That is the only real interesting part at this point
  8. Where’s the horror? 
  9. I’m not seeing it!
  10. I expected much more from a
  11. an Aurealis Awards prize 
  12. …Best Horror book of 2018!

 

Weak point:

  1. Well, I did not find the shock and awe
  2. …I expected in this book
  3. Warren gives the reader and ‘information dump’ in chapter 1
  4. ….and now you have to try to connect that information with
  5. the individual keepers who have written reports.
  6. This involved flipping back and forth to chapter one.
  7. This is one way to structure a book
  8. …but I found it ruined the flow of the narrative.
  9. It became irritating.

 

Last Thoughts;

  1. Honestly, I enjoyed Warren’s book (2017)
  2. The Grief Hole  much more than this book!
  3. 44% of the book was ‘filling” – keeper’s files.
  4. Plot twists with a bit of tension started
  5. on page 346…..91% of the book!
  6. I was expecting lightning in a bottle
  7. …and only I got static electricity on the rug!
  8. #Disappointment

 

Kaaron Warren