The Pacifist by Mehreen Ahmed
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This story covers a lot of interesting events within the Australia of the 19th century, such as the search for gold, subsistence farming and abusive behaviour towards children confined by the boundaries of an orphanage. While I found many of the historical facts interesting, even distressing at times, I had problems with the telling of the tale and the author’s style of writing. There were too many scattered superlatives to describe some rather mundane situations and many long passages that told the reader of incidents or described events and scenes when the introduction of their effect on the characters would have made the moments more interesting or intriguing. In other words: too much telling and not enough showing.

I could not relate to any of the main protagonists, despite their frequent appearances and some of the horrifying details of abuse, because of the poor characterisation. They seemed to lack the required depth. The author was obviously and creditably intent on providing the reader with historical detail that reflected some fine background research but her characters lacked emotion and failed to encourage sympathy. I found some of the metaphors quite vivid and curious but often inappropriate and unnecessary.

For me the complexities of past events that befell Rose, Peter and Farmer Brown were wasted. Any mystery surrounding them, doubtless intriguing enough to encourage readers to keep turning the pages remained, in general, disappointingly unsolved and leaves too many questions annoyingly unanswered. A glossary or occasional footnote would have helped readers who were not Australian understand some of the terms used, as words like “damper” for example mean something quite different elsewhere. I think the essence of the story is that riches often do not bring happiness to human lives, not without the accompaniment of some misery along the way. But the historical context did not make up for the lack of obvious emotion within the characters.


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Middlemarch by George Eliot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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The Reencounter: A Spiritual Journey by Angelos Ioannis
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I did not like this book at all for many reasons. Technically it requires editing because I suspect that it was a translation from another language into English since there were many words used that did not have the correct meaning for the context in which they were used; and it did not make sense semantically. The way that dialogue was presented was frustratingly clumsy and was remarkable by the almost complete absence of speech marks – using either the conventional speech marks like double “…” or single ‘…’ floating apostrophes or even, maybe, italics. I had too much difficulty deciding who was speaking or thinking to take much notice of what was being said. There was far too much telling of the story in first person singular and very little of the, very desirable, showing of it, so much so, that it became like sitting in a lecture theatre listening to a speechifying person deliver a boring succession of platitudinous nonsense.

Set in the early 18th century the central character, Mikhaela, a young and very naïve girl, has her head and emotions turned away from her husband, Elias, towards Allessio. He came across to me as a very conceited and opinionated man who would not last a day in today’s world of social networks, “me too” campaigns and gender equality. There were many statements expressed by Allessio as though they were undisputable facts and when I read that “Faith is Truth” in the book (rather than simply belief) I lost all patience with the general tenets of the tale. This book may appeal to readers who are confirmed believers of one religion or another, or maybe to those who are searching for some kind of comforting reassurance in their lives. However, it is too simplistic and sometimes fatuously insulting for an atheistic scientist like this reader to enjoy.


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