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Cargando... The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972)por Thomas Keneally
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A young aboriginal man is determined to make his own way in pioneering. Australia. He has the advantage of being able to read and marries a white woman, he works hard for wealthy settlers but is repeatedly derided and cheated until one day he commits a terrible crime. Excellent writing and emotive story. ( ) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is the 7th novel by Thomas Keneally. Set around the time of Federation, it tells the story of half-caste Jimmie Blacksmith, initiated into tribal manhood by his aboriginal elders, he was, at the same time, taught by a Methodist minister. Under the minister’s influence, his criteria denoting the value of human existence were home, hearth, wife and land. And a white wife, say a farm girl, would mean his offspring would be quarter-caste, theirs but an eighth. Jimmie works hard to achieve his goals, but fails through no fault of his own, and the situation becomes explosive and violent. Keneally tells a great yarn, and manages to deftly convey the forces that battle inside Jimmie, as well as the attitude of whites to blacks and of blacks to whites at that time in Australian history. The story is told mainly from Jimmie’s perspective, but also from the view of the Methodist minister, the hangman, Jimmie’s maternal uncle Tabidgi and the fiancé of one of Jimmie’s victims. The debate about Federation rumbles in the background. Excellent prose, vivid descriptions, characters of depth and authentic dialogue. It is no wonder this tragic tale has become an Australian classic. Kenneally delivers to the reader a carefully crafted and authentic story which evokes the nature and conditions of living in the Australian Bush before the arrival of the motor car. T he alienated spirit of Jimmy Blacksmith cannot rest. The author gives his characters a humanity that displays empathy and understanding without sugar-coating. Why otherwise good people do bad things and how that effects those involved is insightfully portrayed. James Pope
Published here in 1972, Thomas Keneally's novel is no longer in print; the library copy that I read hadn't been checked out since January 1973- How did this book slip into neglect? Was it because the literary-publicity machine was in its modernist phase, when the most highly honored novels were intricate literary puzzles? Or did the thought "arid," so closely associated with Patrick White, smudge the wrong Australian? I began the novel around one in the morning, intending to read only a few chapters before going to bed. Although it's a short book (just a hundred and seventy-eight pages), I stayed up until five, reading it slowly, because I didn't want to diminish the pleasure by going too fast. The book is like Nat Turner's story as a great lusty ironist—an Irish Nabokov, perhaps might have written it. I didn't want to lose the full shape of the story by interrupting it until the next day; anyway, I had to read it in one sitting, because the rhythms propel you forward. They're oral rhythms—not just in the dialogue but in the prose cadences. The book itself is the chant, and it's inexorable. Pertenece a las series editorialesTiene la adaptación
First title in the launch of Bolinda's Australian Classics series, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is an ongoing Australian literary classic, nominated for the Booker Prize and written by the multi-award-winning author, Thomas Keneally. Jimmie Blacksmith is the son of an Aboriginal mother and a white father. A missionary shows him what it means to be white - already he is only too aware of what it means to be black. Exploited by his white employers and betrayed by his white wife, Jimmie cannot take any more. He must find a way to express his rage. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is based on an actual incident that occurred at the turn of the century. Set against the background of a turbulent Australian history, Thomas Keneally records with clarity the chant of one troubled man. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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