The House Tibet
4 journalers for this copy...
From Publishers Weekly
"While it was happening I watched the moon," begins this deeply affecting Australian novel about a 13-year-old girl who is raped by her father. Vicky Ferguson is met with denial, reprobation and evasion when she attempts to share her traumatic secret with grown-ups. So she runs away with her autistic, mute younger brother, James (who will later find his voice), taking a train from Adelaide to a place called Surfers' Paradise on Australia's Gold Coast. There this lost duo plunges into a subculture of plucky street kids. Vicky is at first so naive that she thinks the bordello where she finds work as a laundress is an old hotel, but her affair with a Chinese-Australian boy, her encounters with a lethal politician, a conniving journalist and sundry other characters soon expose her to a world in which few men "have evolved past pack behavior." Luckily, a wizened old man nicknamed Xam (Max spelled backwards), fellow-lodger at a boardinghouse named Tibet, aids her emotional healing. Savage's prose is exquisite, her street-hardened characters are achingly real.
"While it was happening I watched the moon," begins this deeply affecting Australian novel about a 13-year-old girl who is raped by her father. Vicky Ferguson is met with denial, reprobation and evasion when she attempts to share her traumatic secret with grown-ups. So she runs away with her autistic, mute younger brother, James (who will later find his voice), taking a train from Adelaide to a place called Surfers' Paradise on Australia's Gold Coast. There this lost duo plunges into a subculture of plucky street kids. Vicky is at first so naive that she thinks the bordello where she finds work as a laundress is an old hotel, but her affair with a Chinese-Australian boy, her encounters with a lethal politician, a conniving journalist and sundry other characters soon expose her to a world in which few men "have evolved past pack behavior." Luckily, a wizened old man nicknamed Xam (Max spelled backwards), fellow-lodger at a boardinghouse named Tibet, aids her emotional healing. Savage's prose is exquisite, her street-hardened characters are achingly real.
Journal Entry 2 by catsalive at Mars Hill Cafe, Church St in Parramatta, New South Wales Australia on Saturday, August 6, 2005
Released 18 yrs ago (8/6/2005 UTC) at Mars Hill Cafe, Church St in Parramatta, New South Wales Australia
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
RELEASE NOTES:
Left on the BCZ bookshelf.
Left on the BCZ bookshelf.
Journal Entry 3 by AnonymousFriend from Wantirna South, Victoria Australia on Monday, February 13, 2006
I like to read Australian authors so will see what this is like.
Couldn't really get started on this one.
Couldn't really get started on this one.
Journal Entry 4 by redape from Ettalong Beach, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, November 2, 2006
Will read and send it on its merry way
Journal Entry 5 by redape from Ettalong Beach, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, February 15, 2007
Really quite a good read. Passed on to Xoddam....enjoy.
I requested this RABCK long ago from redape. It is now finally in my hands. Many thanks for your determination to get it to me! I owe you one.
Thanks so much, redape, this exceeded my expectations.
The House Tibet is a stuningly vivid adventure which makes a hard-edged feminist case from a number of angles. It saddens me that the language dates it so clearly to the optimistic late 1980s.
The sophistication of the writing makes it is hard to believe at times that the protagonist is quite as young as she is supposed to be, though her perfectionist home-tutoring architect father is, I suppose, a reasonable excuse. One other note I found hard to believe was that it was a revelation to Morgan to be close to someone of Chinese background -- realising that Asians blush, etc. Going to an elite private school in inner Melbourne in the 80s I would have thought half her classmates would have been Asians -- I went to a country NSW school, almost an exact contemporary of hers, and while I didn't have *many* Asian classmates they were hardly exotic. Has Australia's population really changed so much in the last 20 years?
The greatest strength of the book is the way it depicts life on the edge for homeless children as being so carefree and so precarious -- the risk of police brutality and the mystery of disappearance -- the ambiguity of Marcelle's death is truly chilling. The story of the stolen newborn is very well told and its recovery by a brave aboriginal feminist activist is a scream.
I've lent this to a friend whom I hope will appreciate it and make a journal entry.
The House Tibet is a stuningly vivid adventure which makes a hard-edged feminist case from a number of angles. It saddens me that the language dates it so clearly to the optimistic late 1980s.
The sophistication of the writing makes it is hard to believe at times that the protagonist is quite as young as she is supposed to be, though her perfectionist home-tutoring architect father is, I suppose, a reasonable excuse. One other note I found hard to believe was that it was a revelation to Morgan to be close to someone of Chinese background -- realising that Asians blush, etc. Going to an elite private school in inner Melbourne in the 80s I would have thought half her classmates would have been Asians -- I went to a country NSW school, almost an exact contemporary of hers, and while I didn't have *many* Asian classmates they were hardly exotic. Has Australia's population really changed so much in the last 20 years?
The greatest strength of the book is the way it depicts life on the edge for homeless children as being so carefree and so precarious -- the risk of police brutality and the mystery of disappearance -- the ambiguity of Marcelle's death is truly chilling. The story of the stolen newborn is very well told and its recovery by a brave aboriginal feminist activist is a scream.
I've lent this to a friend whom I hope will appreciate it and make a journal entry.