#Stella Prize 2019 shortlist Jamie M. Lau

1. Well, this ends my reading shortlist #StellaPrize 2019.
2. I’ve done my best!
3. Unfortunately I cannot purchase
4. Little Gods or The Erratics in The Netherlands.
5. You can read my review os Axiomatic on Goodreads.

Shortlisted books: 4/6  

• Author: Jamie Marina Lau (1997)
• Title: Pink Mountain on Locust Island
• Published: 2018
• Trivia: shortlisted  2019 Stella Prize ($ 50.000 prize!)
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly plan
• #StellaPrize
• #AWW2019
• @AusWomenWriters

Quickscan:

1. The novel centers around Monk (15 yr girl)
2. Monk lives in Chinatown with her failed-artist-father
3. She introduces her new found
4. …friend the mysterious Santa Coy to her dad.
5. Her father adopts Santa Coy as his artistic disciple.
6. The chapters are fragmented
7. …and reveal situations Monk observes.
8. These vivid and intense vignettes move from
9. Chinatown, casinos, music, tv-static, love, hunger and violence.
10. Title:  chapter ‘Everybody’s Dying in the Summer””
11. …pink rock that two amateur pushers gave you isn’t a mountain,
12. …it’s a crater.”

Strong point:  poetic technique

1. Style: poetic
2. Clear, concise, and uncluttered style
3. … and with a confident voice.
4. Lau uses bullet points, snippets of a letter,
5. shopping lists, menus, chats and repetitions.
6. She gives us an objective description of her world,
7. clear straightforward words
8. …ending with a simple statements of feeling.

Strong point:  dialogue

1. Dialogue:  without quotation marks
2. I noticed  how “clean” the text  looks without quotes
3. and is somehow more immediate.
4. Cormac McCarthy once said:
5. “…the intent of dialogue without quotations
6. ….is to make the reading easier, not harder.
7. If you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”

Strong point:  this book introduced me to new music!

1. I listened to
2. Japanese Jazz Fusion
3. Pianist Hiromi Uehara (1979)  LISTEN
4. Her joy is infectious! She certainly got rhythm!
5. You won’t believe your ears!
6. Blues with a Latin beat
7. Pianist Horace Silver (1928-2014) American jazz pianist LISTEN
8. Silver’s break came in 1950, when his trio backed saxophonist Stan Getz.

Strong point:  urban vocabulary

1. Some expressions  absolutely stumped me!
2. “Sitting like Ls, our backs against the bed…”  = sitting like losers? lost souls??
3. Have you ever watched a
4. …video of digitized acid trip on internet?
5. I have…after reading this book! Eye-opener!
   
6. Unplug: forgetting one’s problems in a Gen Z  digitized world
7. ” I pack my computer, my xanax.”

Strong point:  captures a precise moment of thought.

1. Lau writes some profound closing sentences:
2. Ch  “Aunty Linda”:
3. She says: “Would you look away if somebody was
4. forcing you to look at their emotions?
5. He says: I’m here now aren’t I?”
6. Ch “Home Run Ballad”:
7. “I try praying for Sadie….
8. I ask Aunt Linda how you know it’s working.
9. She tells me that nobody knows…
10. ..and that’s the best part.”

Conclusion:

1. Do you want to meet tomorrow’s literary star today?
2. Read  this bold and adventurous work
3. …by Jamie Marina Lau!
4. This book falls under the Gen Z label.
   
5. Monk’s character is a
6. reflection of a crazy access to visual information.
   
7. Monk’s age perspective is 15 yr.
8. She  is not defining herself by what she knows.
9. She’s just observing.
10. Gen Z’ers reading and writing
11. …talents  are being transformed
12. …due to their familiarity with
13. …digital devices, platforms and texts.
14. Pink Mountain on Locust Island reflects
15. ..this transformation by it’s experimental form!
    
16. If you put the ‘out-there’, wierd, brash, disjointed aside
17. and read the book to find a few gems of real thought
18. then you have done justice to this new rising literary
19. star of the Gen Z generation.
20. It is not conventional….it may not appeal to everyone
21. ….but Jamie Marina Lau impressed this Baby Boomer!

Last thoughts:

1. Perhaps people of Gen Z
2. will find the book more appealing than others.
   
3. Gen Z’ers  are being taught to consume information
4. …in the way Jamie Marina Lau describes it in her book.
5. I had no idea how to approach the book.
6. Before reading ….I researched  all 106 chapter titles!
7. Some of the titles made sense after reading the book
8. …most did not!
9. There are many allusions to food, music and the bible!
10. Can it win the Stella Prize?
11.  Is it too experimental?
12. I wonder what #Stella will decide!

#Stella Prize 2019 shortlist Enza Gandolfo

• Well, here is my next shortlist: Stella Prize 2019
• I won’t have much time to read them all because
• the prize will be announced on 09 April 2019.
• But I will give it ‘the old college try’
• …is it only to make an informed decision
• …as to which book I THINK should win!

Shortlisted books: 1/6   

• Author: Enza Gandolfo  (1973)
• Title: The Bridge
  
• Published: 2018
• Trivia: shortlisted  2019 Stella Prize ($ 50.000 prize!)
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly plan
• #StellaPrize
• #AWW2019 
• @AusWomenWriters

Quickscan:

1. Backdrop: On October 15, 1970, while it was under construction
2. …the West Gate Bridge collapsed, killing 35 workers.
3. It was Victoria’s worst ever workplace accident.
4. Main plot is driven by Jo Nielson (19 yr)
5. She is racked with guilt after the car she drove
6. crashed against the basr of the bridge.
7. Her BFF Ashleigh was killed.
8. Subplot: Nello (bridge rigger) Ash’s grandfather
9. …is suffering PTSS
10. He survived the bridge collpase and his friends died.
11. Now he is haunted…the bridge takes another victim.
12. Nello’s  world and Jo’s world
13. …come crashing down on them.

Timeline:

1. 1970 – Ch 1-3  Dramatic description of bridge collapse.
2. 39 yrs later…
3. 2009  – Ch 4-23  Friendship Jo and Ashleigh, car accident, funeral, Jo’s depression
4. 2010  – Ch 24-30  Jo’s day in court.

Conclusion:

Weak point:  too many  narratives to follow

1. This weakens the drive of the story.
2. I felt the novel never came alive
3. …it just dragged on and on.
4. The large cast of characters
5. ..gives the book that TV soap opera feel.
6. I don’t mean that as a criticism.
7. But there is just too much in a book of 384 pages!
8. It is a maze of…
9. teenagers – parents, teachers,
10. grandparents, great-grandparents,
11. lawyer – lawyer’s best friend Ada
12. …in-laws , ex-husbands
13. old friends who worked on the bridge,
14. …their wives, children or miscarriages!
15. A series of connected stories
16. …that revolve around the collapsed bridge.
17. The death of Ashleigh (major character) feels like
18. ..another one of the stories going on, rather than the main plot.

Weak point: too much backstory:

1. We all want to know about a character’s past.
2. Gandolfo should decide whose story she’s telling.
3. You can’t tell everything.
4. I’m overwhelmed byall the flashbacks
5. dream sequences and the
6. …memories that keep surging and spilling
7. every time Jo (main character) touches the fabric of a dress,
8. …hears a song
9. or opens a pink ballerina journal.

Weak point:  book needs editing!

1. The author is often the one least able to see what need to be removed!
2. Ask a reader!  Ask an editor!
3. Gandolfo needs someone to tell her
4. …which scenes are unnecessary or should be shortened.
   
5. Here are a few things that I noticed:
6. Bridge collapse:
7. I did not need…
8. technical specifics about the bridge.
9. Ch 1-3
10. felt like Wikipedia with some dialogue,
11. moaning of iron girders, crashing slabs of concrete
12. ..bolts snapping and explosions.
13. This information could have been concise
14. …and compact in one short exposition chapter.
15. Sarah the lawyer:
16. I did not need…
17. to know her weight problems and
18. the haunting death of her BFF Ada (jumped from the bridge).
19. I think the lawyer’s backstory was ‘filling’ to evoke emotions.
20. Ch 17 Funeral
21. I did not need…
22. to know every detail of funeral service
23. …..who attended, style of  the mourning clothes on family members,
24. the color of coffin and flowers and
25. rosary beads wound around gandmother’s fingers.
26. I think this could have been written in a few sentences
27. Establish somber mood with a description of the weather. (rain?)
28. Remember the service while riding home from church.
29. Cherish the tearful hug given by parents or friends. Done!
    

Weak point:  dialogue.

1. Feels static, heavy and does not  shines off the page.

Weak point:  Gandolfo is killing her novel with details!

1. Pages of details that slow the pace and aren’t interesting or relevant.
2. Example ch 15 – Ash’s journal is found and Jo places in Grandpa’s safe.
3. Wonderful!
4. But don’t go on to tell me the history of the safe
5. …that is was a bargain and
6. …grandma’s precious pearls that are kept there.
7. I don’t care!
8. Often what you don’t say is just as important as what you do.
9. Few things will turn readers off
10. ..quicker than pages of trivia!

Last thoughts:

1. Unfortunately I could not find any strong points
2. …about this book.  Believe me, I tried.
3. It is  impossible to grasp fully that this book
4. would be considered for the Stella Prize.
5. Where is the jury’s report?
6. I’d like to read it!
7. Did you read this book?
8. #HonestOpinion