Scan barcode
ajlevy01's review
2.0
Simply put, this book went on for too long. It is structured as a collection of 45 stories, each about 5 or 6 pages long about the terrible time living under Bjelke-Petersen's regime, but once you get about halfway through the book, the stories become very repetitive.
The editor, Ms Shaw, tried to give as many contributors a voice in this publication but that makes the book fall flat as none of the stories really develop any depth, and all they have time for is to reiterate the same points made a dozen times before in the same book. There is no sense of narrative cohesion to the book, which I think would have benefitted greatly if the stories were at least arranged chronologically, but even that did not occur.
Initially I was fascinated by the stories told by the authors but once you've read ten you're not going to milk much more out of this book
The writing quality varies greatly between contributors as well, which made it hard to get through.
The one saving grace this book has is the passion with which each author wrote their story, as you could really feel the anger and frustration they had towards the Hillbilly Dictator, then and now. The stories themselves aren't bad at all, but there's only so much one can get through before saying "enough".
The editor, Ms Shaw, tried to give as many contributors a voice in this publication but that makes the book fall flat as none of the stories really develop any depth, and all they have time for is to reiterate the same points made a dozen times before in the same book. There is no sense of narrative cohesion to the book, which I think would have benefitted greatly if the stories were at least arranged chronologically, but even that did not occur.
Initially I was fascinated by the stories told by the authors but once you've read ten you're not going to milk much more out of this book
The writing quality varies greatly between contributors as well, which made it hard to get through.
The one saving grace this book has is the passion with which each author wrote their story, as you could really feel the anger and frustration they had towards the Hillbilly Dictator, then and now. The stories themselves aren't bad at all, but there's only so much one can get through before saying "enough".
More...