Amanda Smith’s best reads
Author: Guest blogger
Amanda Smith, presenter Artworks, ABC Radio National
At the beginning of this year I picked up a stylish old hard-cover edition of Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair. I still haven’t finished it.
It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying it, it’s just that the year got in the way. Nobody writes heavily brocaded sentences like that anymore. And the thing is, they just don’t match the pace of working life. As the summer holidays ended, so did my Twyborn Affair.
Instead I turned to the Stieg Larssen trilogy. Whizzed through it. And as many have already noted, Lisbeth Solander is the coolest outsider to have appeared in print for ages. I kept up the snappy pace with Peter Temple’s Truth. Never before have I loved reading such slabs of incomprehensible dialogue. All that police lingo was, in its mysteriousness, rivetting. The novel I most loved this year though was Cate Kennedy’s The World Beneath. It’s got vividly drawn characters and a ripper plot – in my book, it’s got the lot.
As slow, hot days lying in the shade hopefully approach, I’m back to The Twyborn Affair. Will I finish it this summer?
Tags: ABC Radio National, Patrick White, Reading
Leave a Reply
