Bonnie Etherington
Autor von The Earth Cries Out
Werke von Bonnie Etherington
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Wissenswertes
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- New Zealand
- Wohnorte
- West Papua, Indonesia
New Zealand
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My 2018 reading year didn’t start well: I ditched my first two books, one after the other. But my first review of 2018 is a different story: The Earth Cries Out by Bonnie Etherington is a mesmerising, captivating novel that well deserves its nomination for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Awards.
Narrated in a poignant melancholy tone, the novel takes us to a different place and time. Ruth Glass looks back on her childhood in the isolation of a village in the West Papuan highlands as a time of dislocation and intense loss. Her five-year-old sister Julia has died in an horrific accident at home, and everyone feels the guilt and unspoken blame. Her parents are on the verge of divorce at the time of the accident but at her father’s insistence they go as aid workers to West Papua (then in the 1990s known as Irian Jaya). He thinks it is a form of atonement that will heal them. His wife Marian is too broken to defy him. And Ruth is an eight-year-old child made older than her years by this tragic chain of events. She is haunted by the squabbles she had with her sister and confused by the mixed messages she gets about God, atonement and forgiveness. The silence overwhelms her.
Along with Ruth’s letters to her grandfather in Nelson, NZ, these local stories and voices are scattered through the novel. Ruth’s friend Susumina tells her stories of places haunted by death – which is an everyday occurrence in the village. Ruth’s family is not alone in its grief: everyone in Yuvut has lost a loved one, to childbirth, to injury and disease, to malnutrition, AIDS or to the Indonesian regime which suppresses the independence movement with brutal violence.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/04/the-earth-cries-out-by-bonnie-etherington/… (mehr)
Narrated in a poignant melancholy tone, the novel takes us to a different place and time. Ruth Glass looks back on her childhood in the isolation of a village in the West Papuan highlands as a time of dislocation and intense loss. Her five-year-old sister Julia has died in an horrific accident at home, and everyone feels the guilt and unspoken blame. Her parents are on the verge of divorce at the time of the accident but at her father’s insistence they go as aid workers to West Papua (then in the 1990s known as Irian Jaya). He thinks it is a form of atonement that will heal them. His wife Marian is too broken to defy him. And Ruth is an eight-year-old child made older than her years by this tragic chain of events. She is haunted by the squabbles she had with her sister and confused by the mixed messages she gets about God, atonement and forgiveness. The silence overwhelms her.
One day the yellow house held Julia’s voice, and then it did not. One day I was a sister, and then I was not. One day we were in a dream world, where Julia was dead and the space where she once was became large and silent, and then we were in another country altogether – where stories and voices made their way into our house any way they could. They heaved under the floorboards, whispered in the windows. Creaked in the attic like a python grown too big on rats. And I collected them all to fill that silence Julia left. (p.11)
Along with Ruth’s letters to her grandfather in Nelson, NZ, these local stories and voices are scattered through the novel. Ruth’s friend Susumina tells her stories of places haunted by death – which is an everyday occurrence in the village. Ruth’s family is not alone in its grief: everyone in Yuvut has lost a loved one, to childbirth, to injury and disease, to malnutrition, AIDS or to the Indonesian regime which suppresses the independence movement with brutal violence.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/04/the-earth-cries-out-by-bonnie-etherington/… (mehr)
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The narrative voice is Ruth's and through her eyes we view life in this remote undeveloped area. This I found interesting and even her letters home to her grandfather. However she also hears the voices of people from the past and the future and their experiences in this country. I found this
lacked cohesion and it appeared the author was trying to include stories and anecdotes she had heard over the years. I found it interesting reading about Papua New Guinea and it's people and culture as it had the authenticity of personal experience. I think this was her first novel so maybe an author to watch.… (mehr)