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Lädt ... The Custodiansvon Nicholas Jose
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Against the scarred landscape of contemporary Australia, eight childhood friends seek their individual destinies: Alex, ambitious but melancholy; Cleve, snatched by the state from his parents; Danny, his twin brother, who has spent more of his life in custody than free; Elspeth, the heiress seeking enlightenment; Jane, passionately committed to her art; Josie, dedicated to doing good; Wendy, in search of fun; and Ziggy, the brilliant actor. They are the custodians, but of what, and for whom? From the 1950s to the 1980s, from the South Australian outback to Manhattan's art world and the London stage, from tropical Queensland to Mao's China, "The Custodians" has an extraordinary reach. It is at once a startling and often comical novel about friendship, love, and betrayal, and an astounding story of struggle and history--a history which these eight characters must both embrace and transcend if they are to find reconciliation with the land to which they belong, but which does not belong to them. "The Custodians" is a triumph of storytelling, a sharp and moving epic from one of Australia's most acclaimed writers. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Anyway, I found it very satisfying reading over a number of days…
The main characters start life in Adelaide, and leave it for what they think is a more exciting life elsewhere. Jane is a painter in love with the light in Sydney; Wendy is an indolent thrill-seeker with a penchant for dubious company; Elspeth the heiress wants enlightenment but not if it involves parting with her money; and Josie wants to be good and thinks she can be, as a nun.
José fleshes out the characterisation of the men a bit more, especially Alex, clever and ambitious but always wanting to keep his options open. At ANU he studies economics, Australian history and law, and he won’t commit to a relationship with Jane in case something better comes along. (He keeps Josie ‘in reserve’ back in Adelaide until – to his chagrin – she joins the nunnery). Ziggy is a charismatic thespian; and René is an ideologue spouting dialectics and Chinese communism with Alex at ANU. On the fringes of their childhood group are Aboriginal boys from the Stolen Generations: Cleve, a scholarship boy at a Catholic boarding school, and Danny who stumbles from one institution to another, marginalised further by his reticence and his illiteracy.
While the relationships between these characters hold the book together, the themes of The Custodians unfold as Australia comes of age in the 1970s. With the finding of Moorna Woman (an event fictionalised from the discovery of Mungo Woman) Australian history turns out to be much older than first thought, and the emerging empowerment of Aboriginal Australians under a reforming government (based on the Whitlam Years) means that the pastoral land on which the bones are found becomes contested. Chinese investors make an appearance as Australia turns to Asia, and their Australian interpreter, a character loosely based on the communist sympathiser Wilfred Burchett, has to decide where his loyalties lie.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/25/the-custodians-by-nicholas-jose/ ( )