When I read (in my case, listen) to a book, I want a story. I like epic stories, with history mixed in. I'm not a literature major, nor an editor. I don't pick apart an author's use of grammar or prose. If the storyline draws me in, and I feel as though I get to know the character's well, and fi...
I plodded through this book and found it completely unrealistic and unbelievable. Most of Bryce Courtneys books have an element of "as if" to them but this one just seemed to jump from one contrived drama to the next leaving you feeling like Mr Courtney was trying to to hard to pull the emotional...
** donated to CCU 30/10/2014review finally!.Ikey Solomon and his partner in crime, Mary Abacus, make the harsh journey from thriving nineteenth-century London to the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land.In the backstreets and dives of Hobart Town, Mary builds The Potato Factory - a brewery, wh...
Despite the title, this is primarily the story of Billy O’Shannessy - once a prominent lawyer, now an alcoholic derelict sleeping rough - and Ryan, an 11 year old boy who Billy recognises as having a bright mind and showing great potential, but who is cared for by a grandmother in the last stages...
We listened to most of this book as an audio book during a long car trip, and my wife let me finish it at home (her turn is next :) ). Today, I alternated listening to the last two chapters with live coverage of the American Indian Movement tribunal on the genocidal Native American boarding schoo...
I've read "The Power of One", "The Potato Factory" and "Tommo and Hawk". Correction-- I have "listened" to each of these books, because I'm a fan of Humphrey Bower. Mr. Bower is one of my favorite audible narrators of all time, and I thoroughly enjoyed each of these books. I love Humphrey Bower's...
Tommo & Hawk is the second in Courtenay's Potato Factory Trilogy. Courtenay is a master s storyteller, indeed. Per a previous reviewer, I'd say at least as good as Hemmingway. His description of life in 19th Century Colonial Australia & New Zealand is that of"nasty, brutish, and short men", other...
This book is not bad but is too long and rambling. I loved Bryce’s Courtenay’s “The Power of One,” and I enjoyed “Tandia,” but now he has gone off the deep end with a long saga that tries to include too many characters. Also, his propensity to have the goodness of the main characters shine thr...
April Fool’s Day was a book I wasn’t sure that I wanted to read initially for several reasons – I don’t read as much non-fiction as fiction, surely Bryce Courtenay’s talent lay in fiction and it was probably out of print. Enter a Popular Penguin edition and an edict from my mother that I must rea...
When Mary Abacus dies, she leaves her business empire in the hands of the warring Solomon family. Hawk Solomon is determined to bring together both sides of the tribe - but it is the new generation who must fight to change the future.Solomons are pitted against Solomons as the families are locked...
Sort of a Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Decameron for more modern times. Fascinating tale, beginning with the family frying pan tale, and followed by a variety of very diverse tales of each member of a group of travelers fleeing persecution, from different backgrounds, social strata, educational...
Smoky Joe’s Café, by Bryce Courtenay, read by Humphrey Bowers, produced by Bolinda Audio, downloaded from audible.com.I have a whole series of Courtenay books that I haven’t read, so I’m going back to catch up. They’re all read by my favorite Australian narrator, Humphrey Bowers. This one deals w...
Brother Fish is an Australian saga spanning eighty years and four continents. Inspired by real events, Bryce Courtenay's new novel tells the story of three people from vastly differing backgrounds. All they have in common is a tough beginning in life. Jack McKenzie is a harmonica player, soldie...
Tandia sat waiting anxiously for the fight to begin between the man she loved the most in the world and the man she hated the most in the world. Tandia is a child of Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only sixteen when she is first brutalised by the police. Her f...
Soon enough your maidenhood will be taken. You cannot hold on to it forever. Perhaps it is time to be practical? To face life as it is?’ The seventh okami-san (Korin-san) The Nest of the Swallows July 1945 KONOE AKIRA’S DAILY HABITS changed little i...
This was to continue for the next ten days and both Father Hermann and myself were run off our feet. Halfway through this period, the good priest was heard to declare, ‘I cannot keep up with him, Sylvia. He preaches daily, recruiting for his crusade, and each day the children attending increase i...
I had spent the first seven years of my life in Japan, but I had forgotten the experience of day-to-day living, and besides, a great deal had changed since I had left with my father to travel to New Britain in 1935. Paradoxically, although Anna and I spoke the Japanese lan...
Six was the starting age for grade one, but after a few days it was clear that my year spent in a mixed-age class at boarding school had put me well ahead of the rest of the kids. I was pushed up to grade three, where I easily held my own against kids two years older than I. Doing the Judge’s ari...
We's playing it safe even though there was never any warrant for our arrest. From what we've heard the authorities believe that the Maori attacking the prison was seeking revenge for the death of Hori Hura. No doubt we's thought to be well and truly dead! The government troopers wasn't too keen t...