Flippin' heck, mate.

I'll admit that I haven't been much of a fan of Carrie Tiffany's previous novels but this is such a tightly-wound piece of literature. Every sentence is note-perfect. Every line is strange and alienating, the kind of words and phrases that would make no sense if removed from their context but are exactly right within it. Never have the seemingly meaningless minutiae of an Australian family road trip been so accurately catalogued, revealed in all their harsh power. This is a brutal novel, be warned. It's short, thank god, because the subject matter is ultimately devastating. But if you have the stomach for an unpleasant narrative of an abuse (primarily in the subtext rather than the text) you will be rewarded with prose that is somehow both restrained and torrential. ( )

What an amazing piece of writing. Carrie Tiffany has found the voice of young teen and written with such purity and credibility. She draws you into the girl's mind--the whole book is a long stream of thoughts. The girl is one moment naïve, the next profound. One moment content, the next morbid.

I had noted good reviews of Tiffany's earlier books. Now I must read them. ( )

I have really, really liked Carrie Tiffany's previous fiction, and was eagerly anticipating reading her new one ... so I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am by her latest book, Exploded View. If it had been written by anybody else I wouldn't have read it at all. I would have abandoned it as soon as I realised, and now I wish I had: it's yet another one about a child damaged by sustained abuse, a topic so done to death I can't believe that contemporary authors and publishers think there is anything new or insightful to say about it.
The book is unrelentingly sombre, and mercifully short.
If you like wallowing in the unpleasantness of grim fiction à la Sophie Laguna and Emma Donoghue you might like it. I loathed it.
Enough said... ( )