Teaser Tuesday: February 14th

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.

• Let the book fall open to a random page.

• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

This weeks teasers is from The Warmth Of Other Suns:

She jumps out and heads into the field.  She hasn't picked cotton in sixty years.

-page: 517

Battle of the Prizes: American Version

I have signed up for another challenge.  I know that I really should stop but I couldn't resist.  Of this challenge I only have to add one additional book to my 2012 reading list.

Detail (Courtesy of Rose City Reader)

DETAILS
Chose three books that you have not read before:

1. One that won both the Pulitzer and the National

1. One that won the Pulitzer but not the National

1. One that won the National but not the Pulitzer

OFFICIAL RULES

1. The challenge runs for 13 months (I like having an extra month to finish up). Read all books between January 1, 2012 and January 31, 2013. Signing up now is the most fun, but signing up any time before the end is permitted. 

My List:

1. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Won both the Pulitzer and the National)
2. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Pulitzer but not the National)
3. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (National but not the Pulitzer)

Review: That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott

Rating: 3.5 Stars
Pages: 368
Genre: Fiction (Historical)
Series/Standalone: Stabdalone
Expected publication: February 28th 2012
Source: NetGalley eARC


Synopsis (Barnes and Noble):

Set in Western Australia in the first decades of the nineteenth century, That Deadman Dance is a vast, gorgeous novel about the first contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the new European settlers.

Bobby Wabalanginy is a young Noongar man, smart, resourceful, and eager to please. He befriends the European arrivals, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family, and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine. But slowly-by design and by hazard-things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is progressing. Livestock mysteriously start to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever-stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind, and Bobby is forced to take sides, inexorably drawn into a series of events that will forever change the future of his country.

That Deadman Dance is inevitably tragic, as most stories of European and native contact are. But through Bobby's life, Kim Scott exuberantly explores a moment in time when things could have been different, when black and white lived together in amazement rather than fear of the other, and when the world seemed suddenly twice as large and twice as promising. At once celebratory and heartbreaking, this novel is a unique and important contribution to the literature of native experience.

Review:

Very hard review for me to do.

I received That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott as an ARC copy from NetGalley.  The first thing that attracted me was the cover.  I love the cover.  Then the synopsis.  I like history fiction and I can honestly say that I don't ever remember reading a book about early Australia and colonization.  I was instantly hooked and curious.

The plot of That Deadman Dance is about the encounters between early colonizers and the Noongar people.    I don't think it is necessary to really go into the details.  Most people know the story of what happened when Europeans started colonizing other nations and the effect it had on the indigenous population.  This is a very similar story.

While Scott is a gifted storyteller, I wasn't able to connect with his characters.  The characters all felt sort of superfical to me, like they had no depth.  This was mainly because there are so many characters and Scott spends a little time telling the background of each one of them.  They all had unique and interesting stories but I just didn't feel any connection with any of them.   And I love a good character based story.

The main character in the story is Bobby, a Noongar boy, whom the story follows through old age.  I was hoping that Scott would give more substance to Bobby, but I found that he was more of the archetype for The Fool character (his was a gifted performer in the story).  There were times when I felt that Bobby character was starting to grow and deviate from The Fool character, only to fail.  Even to the end, Bobby never really seemed to grasp the reality that increase number of European settlers and the rules they were imposing would mean to him and his people.

Now, the writing in That Deadman Dance is beautiful.  Scott is a very gifted writer.  In fact, the writing is what saved this story for me.  But I will caution that it is not an easy read.  This is literary fiction at its finest.  I had to read this in bits and pieces and really take my time.  While I did not like Scott's characters I  did like his descriptions of the scenery.  Even though he did not go into great details, he did give me enough information to envision the scenery in my mind.  The whale hunting scenes were awesome.

Pros: Plot, Writing
Cons: Characters

Overall Recommendation:

I would recommend this with caution.  That Deadman Dance is an interesting novel, but I don't think it's for people that aren't really literary fiction fans.  If you like literary fiction I would recommend giving it a try.