Marcus Hobson > Recent Status Updates

This book is referenced in Fiona Kidman's wonderful "This Mortal Boy" so I thought I would give it a try.

A great New Zealand 'who dunnit' set in the 1960s.

This is wonderful. I love the structure, each chapter no more than two pages long. And the language...so rich and descriptive.

How would eight hundred Japanese prisoners of war behave - in the first Japanese prisoner of war camp anywhere in the world?

This is going to be a slow read - this book is so dense with facts and information it deserves plenty of thinking time.

"In the diplomatic service it isn't as if a mad wife is any kind of professional disadvantage. On the contrary, it almost guarantees promotion."

In the vastness of war, two men sit side by side, their feet cooling in a stream. One is a king, the other a humble cart driver, both are learning from the stories they tell each other.
A simple moment that never got reported in that bigger tale by Homer.

Love this description of Priam, in touch with his kingdom.
"Holding in his head all the roads that lead out to the distant parts of his kingdom, he feels them at times as ribbons tied at the centre of him, for the most part loose but sometimes stretched taut and pulling a little, according to what is occurring out there.."

This is how I feel half way through this book:
Like standing in an unfamiliar place in thick fog as the sun gradually rises and the landscape around you emerges, still dull and blurred around the edge, but you begin to perceive what it might be.

Patricia Grace's first collection of short stories. I'm struck how she keeps switching between male and female narrators to these short tales.