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A friend of mine gave me back the stack of books I’d lent him. Holding up volume 1 of Takehiko Inoue’s Real (wheelchair basketball manga, brilliant, am trying to find v2): “Genius”. Holding up Terry Pratchett’s Nation: “Genius.” Holding up Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (still on my waiting for write-up list): “Absolute genius”. Holding up volume 7 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service: “You know, this was very good, but…” This is the disadvantage of lending people all your really good books/manga, in that one that’s merely excellent suffers by comparison.
And Terry Pratchett’s Nation is indeed genius, and one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s set in a slightly different version of our world (something nasty seems to have happened to Australia on the map), and involves a meeting between Mau, a member of a small pacific-island (the Nation) dwelling tribe, and Daphne, a well-brought up English girl who gets shipwrecked. It’s funny, heart-breaking and unpredictable in all the right ways, and it made me cry very early on (I’d just ordered lunch, and when the waitress brought it to me she was terribly apologetic about its lateness, which was non-existent but was probably easier for her to assume as a possible cause). It is scientific (I love the bit where Daphne is talking about checking the efficacy of sacrifices to gods by leaving different amounts of fish on the altars) and spiritual, and things go wrong even when people have the best of intentions. I will write more about it including vastly extensive spoilers in my end-of-year post (which is going to be a mid-January thing anyway), but if you’re hesitating over last minute Christmas reading for yourself and others this would be a great place to start.
And Terry Pratchett’s Nation is indeed genius, and one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s set in a slightly different version of our world (something nasty seems to have happened to Australia on the map), and involves a meeting between Mau, a member of a small pacific-island (the Nation) dwelling tribe, and Daphne, a well-brought up English girl who gets shipwrecked. It’s funny, heart-breaking and unpredictable in all the right ways, and it made me cry very early on (I’d just ordered lunch, and when the waitress brought it to me she was terribly apologetic about its lateness, which was non-existent but was probably easier for her to assume as a possible cause). It is scientific (I love the bit where Daphne is talking about checking the efficacy of sacrifices to gods by leaving different amounts of fish on the altars) and spiritual, and things go wrong even when people have the best of intentions. I will write more about it including vastly extensive spoilers in my end-of-year post (which is going to be a mid-January thing anyway), but if you’re hesitating over last minute Christmas reading for yourself and others this would be a great place to start.
