Review: Spirits of the Ghan by Judy Nunn

For anyone who has read this novel, there is no denying one simple truth. Judy Nunn is genuinely passionate about the things she writes about--Australian history, people and politics--and she isn't afraid to give readers a genuinely strong female lead. Spirits of the Ghan tells about a small moment in Australian history--the construction of the Adelaide-Darwin Railway line--and brings with it a story of spirituality and a tiny dash of romance. Jess Manning is a young woman of mixed Aboriginal and Irish decent who has been hired as a negotiator to work with the local elders to ensure that all sacred sites are protected. Matt Witherton is a surveyor working on the line. Nunn avoids all the usual tropes and brings the pair together in a very different way--through a shared connection with the land and its people.

The story moves between the past and present to tell the story of a past wrong that Jess and Matt have to work together to put right. At times, the story felt rather fanciful and melodramatic, and there are many parts where the story lacks depth (Matt's relationship with Angie is one classic example, as is the turn of events that ends it.) There is no denying that Nunn re-tells Australian history in a way that makes it accessible to a wider audience. I suspect many who would rather pick up a Mills & Boon than a textbook would be pleasantly surprised by Nunn's writing style.

Overall, an easy read.

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2017

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more