From the Bookshelf of The Read Around The World Book Club…

The Strays

Emily Bitto

Start date: April 1, 2019

Finish date: April 30, 2019

Discussion: April 2019 - Australia

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Showing 2 of 3 topics — 41 comments total

April 2019 - Australia

How is it going?
By Melanie · 14 posts · 34 views

last updated May 03, 2019 04:30PM

Which book are you reading for this prompt?
By Melanie · 16 posts · 51 views

last updated Apr 25, 2019 06:37AM

What Members Thought

Apr 07, 2019 Melanie rated it really liked it

I loved this book a lot. Set in 1930ies Melbourne, young Lily meets Eva at school, the daughter of a modernist painter and gets sucked into the family’s eccentric lifestyle. Told in retrospect, I thought this was an excellent debut novel, even if I thought the last third to be a bit weaker than the book overall.

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Apr 30, 2019 Kristin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 5000-2019, 2017-books, literary-fiction, prize-nominee-winner, aussieapril

I read this book as part of Aussie April. It certainly wasn't what I expected. I thought it would mostly be about the relationship between Lily and Eva. Actually it is about all the strays that come to live in Eva's home, most of them invited by Eva's parents, Evan and Helena, to join their artists' commune in Australia during the 1930's. Lily and even Eva and her two sisters, Beatrice and Heloise are also treated as strays in this free-wheeling lifestyle, where Beatrice, as Evan comments, is mo ...more

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Apr 29, 2019 My Reading Days rated it liked it

Well this book disappointed me. As a Stella Prize winner I expected depth and intrigue and great passages of words that left me sitting there thinking. Especially after I saw the others that were on the Stella Prize longlist in 2015.
Instead I got just a shallow, easy to read book.

The characters were cliche, their interactions with each other were cliche, their interactions with the world outside their artist commune were unbelievably easy for people who were supposed to be breaking every societa ...more

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May 08, 2019 Ginny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

*4.5 stars* A great read for #AussieApril and a debut by this author!

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Aug 03, 2017 Lia rated it really liked it

Shelves: available-cnl, australian, female-authors

IT took me two goes to get into this story. Once I did, I'm hooked.
The characters are all so compelling and well drawn. I found my allegiances changing over the course of the novel which was an indication a great study of the family dynamics.
The descriptions of Melbourne at the time and the differences between the working (traditional) family compared to the bourgeois artsy family were wonderfully clever.

Really good Australian writing.
...more

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