Powerfully written tragic story of alcohol, violence, loss of identity and dysfunctionality in Maori community, 200 years after colonial conquest. Interweaves Maori violence, softness & community I recommend, but keep a box of tissues close. The book 'Requiem for a Dream' is also like that it's like the ongoing ramblings of one broken, hindered family. You just really have to pay attention for the character switches. The only issue I had with the book is that it reads a lot like a long run on sentence and sometimes you don't know that the speaker has changed (no quotations, no 'Grace said' or 'Beth states'), but it wasn't completely necessary.
If you watched the movie, it's not a surprise. She eventually realizes her own self worth, but at a great cost. Beth, the woman who loves/loved him for all the years they married is a descendant of warriors but is always the submissive, trying to keep together a family, her family. The author was very brilliant in that regard. He's unemployed, a wife-beater, and so common that even as the reader that dislikes him, you feel compassion for his struggle anyway. Jake, a descendant of slaves, is in fact enslaved by his own anger, the drink, and wanting to be 'the man' but he's only taking up space.
Jake and Beth Heke, two thirty something year old (36 and 34, if you're really interested) parents to six children (five in the home until the end) who live with no one, but each other their own failed dreams for company. The movie left me crying and shaking the book wasn't any happier. *minor/suggestive spoilers* I watched this movie in college for a Women's Studies course. For people who never get up from the bottom
0 kommentar(er)
