Great reviews for Sea Hearts/Brides!
They've been pouring in, these reviews! Perhaps my favourite is
- this one, which looks at the novel's feminism:
It goes without saying that I want to see defiant, empowered, happy and successful women represented in fiction. But making it all about individuals overcoming society’s sexism can draw attention away from the fact that the system needs to change. This is why I also want scarred Misskaellas and passive sea-wives in my feminist fiction...
- Over at Furious Vaginas, Krissy Kneen calls it "an assured novel told by a writer at the top of her game". :)
- Tracy at a blogload of books says,
The prose is mesmerising and seductive, the plot is gripping, the setting claustrophobic. I cried through much of this novel. ...If I had had this novel when I was thirteen or fourteen, it would be one of those which would have defined and shaped my reading life. With plenty to say about gender, about what it means to be a woman, I hope Sea Hearts finds itself in the hands of many young women.
- I am a Hot Read over at Sugarscape!
- Then there's
- Angela Meyer on her blog ("...addictive...mix of delight, dread and yearning...moments of pure joy...plenty of drama... By the end the reader feels quite haunted")
- Marcus Sedgwick in the Guardian ("writing of the highest order: subtle, powerful, poetic"),
- Amanda Craig for The Times ("fierce, dazzling prose") and
- Jennifer Moran in my own local, the Sydney Morning Herald, adorned with the most spectacular abomination of a selkie ever drawn, by Rocco Fazzari. Well, she's eye-catching, you've got to give her that.
posted by Among Amid While at 9:45 am
3 Comments:
I finished your latest in the early hours of this morning. I loved Tender Morsels, but I think I loved this one even more, so haunting. And Misskaella is I think one of my favourite characters I've met in a book.
Thank you for writing such beautiful tales.
Tam Lin: You're very kind. I'm glad you like Misskaella; she's a bit of a messy old handful, but I like her too.
hi margo, i love your stories. the imaginative place/s they come from seems almost magical - so strange, black at times, hyper real and almost real and then completely unreal. i reckon the short stories only get shelved in young adult on account of the youth of many of your narrating voices and central characters, don't know how you feel about this but i find it frustrating. tender morsels was great, so sad especially at the start, almost hard to read. black juice is probably my favourite short story, certainly the one that sticks most vividly, and typically a twisted tale. i just read sea hearts (on a small island called roydon at the eastern end of bass strait) and it was the perfect book for the place. i've a picture of a real sea heart (actually a tunicate - Herdmania momus) sitting weirdly on the cover (is there some way i can send copy to you?). misskaella's a great character but my favourite aspect of the book was the attempt by the returned son to describe the different sense of the world he experienced as a seal (flying through the water). thanks for all the books, kat (kathopskip@hotmail.com)
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