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What Members Thought
Jul 24, 2014
Mish
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
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favourite,
australian-authors
The Night Guest is an extraordinary and brilliantly crafted debut novel by Fiona McFarlane, which talks about the aging process, loneliness and the deterioration of the mind. But it also highlights how easy it is for those few greedy people in our world who manipulate and take advantage of their vulnerability.
Ruth is an elderly woman who lives alone in an isolated seaside home. When Ruth was first introduced to me, she was asleep in the middle of the night. Hearing strange noises inside her home ...more
Ruth is an elderly woman who lives alone in an isolated seaside home. When Ruth was first introduced to me, she was asleep in the middle of the night. Hearing strange noises inside her home ...more
Feb 18, 2014
Michael Livingston
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
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This is among the best of the books from Stella Prize longlist that I've read so far - it's at times a haunting meditation on aging and loneliness, at times an unbearably tense mystery and at times a depiction of a complicated friendship between two women. I knew nothing about the plot going in and felt the unease develop in the pit of my stomach as the relationship between the two main characters developed - it's really beautifully done, with Ruth's fading memory and Frida's domineering helpful
...more
1.5★ If this hadn’t filled several spots in several challenges I was doing, I think this is one book I’d have tossed aside.
Too literary-fiction-esque for my liking - too much description and not enough happening. And much of the description was like being caught up in the mind of a person with dementia, or someone having a dream, with no rhyme or reason or logic to it.
Too literary-fiction-esque for my liking - too much description and not enough happening. And much of the description was like being caught up in the mind of a person with dementia, or someone having a dream, with no rhyme or reason or logic to it.
Ruth is an elderly widow, living alone on the New South Wales south coast in a house overlooking the ocean. She has two sons who care for her, but only through phone calls from their distant homes in New Zealand and Hong Kong. One night she is awoken by the sounds of a tiger in her lounge room. The next day Frida arrives. Frida is a nurse who has been sent by the Government to care for Ruth for a few hours each day. At first Ruth is suspicious and denies her need for assistance, but as the weeks
...more
I found this predictable and a little too dull for my taste.
Jun 12, 2024
Gaynor
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
aging,
older-characters
