Read Online A Dutiful Daughter Text Classics edition by Thomas Keneally Geordie Williamson Literature Fiction eBooks

Product details File Size 736 KB Publisher Text Publishing (April 2, 2019) Publication Date April 2, 2019 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B07KPKW9YY

A Dutiful Daughter Text Classics edition by Thomas Keneally Geordie Williamson Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

• I don’t know if Thomas Keneally was indulging in magical realism before its time, but A Dutiful Daughter (1971) is one very weird book, and not just because most of it is related in the very unusual second person voice. As far as I can tell, it is about a brother and sister living in the backcountry of Australia who have a life changing experience when the sister has her first period at age 12 and, ignorant of such things, assumes she is either dying or has received some sort of mark of evil (the parents are very conservative Catholics).
  
  The parents find out and explain the situation but the whole experience leads to the sister becoming the head-of-household while the parents are, apparently, turned into a pair of bovines, or half-bovines (the mother has to be milked from this point on while the father, now a bull, occasionally wanders off to mount whatever cows he can find in the fields).
  
  The brother eventually goes off to college leaving the sister in charge of the farm and the parents. The main story takes place when he comes back on Christmas holiday, just as serious flooding is threatening the area, and just after he’s had a relationship with a fellow student that complicates his relationship with his sister.
  
  This is one of those books in which the interest lies not so much in the characters as in an incredibly bizarre situation, which the reader is challenged to makes head or tails of. The problem is that it’s tough to identify with characters stuck in such a surreal world. On the bright side, the book is fairly short.
• On Goodreads this reviewer 'The Super Moop' gave it 5 stars and wrote;
  
  "This little piece of madness set in a deserted corner of Australia is exactly the sort of book I love most. It's hardly a romp tho' being one of the bleakest things I've ever read. It's hopeless to begin with, set as it is in an infertile, dying patch of land at the end of the world and then Keneally chooses to kick things into a whole new level of brutality by deftly introducing just the right amount of magic into the mix.
  A Dutiful Daughter is a thought experiment into what might happen to the heads of those people who are abandoned on a corner of the earth with nobody but themselves for company, with no hope of escape and every minute bringing them lower, breaking their pride and their sense of compassion a little more. It is all about loneliness and sickness of the mind. It is as frightening as it is deeply sad, pathetic even, and while this is far from my idea of a good time, I'd still swear that it is a great, great book".
  
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  I thoroughly agree. This is a great book. And I really enjoyed reading it (though "enjoyed", of course, is not the right word). It was eloquently written (as all of Thomas Keneally's works are) which made it easy to read, despite the depths of its' subject matter. I love books that venture into the workings of the dark and hidden recesses of the human mind to those places that are often carefully-composed and concealed behind a veneer of polite normality. And particularly being voyeur to the shame, bitterness and resentment usually found lurking amongst the other skeletons in the family closet can be a treat, a privilege or a curse, depending on whether the mind being explored is fictional, someone else's, or your own.
  This story was bizarre, it was very strange (as outlined by other reviews) but it was compelling in a dark and morose kind of way. One of those stories about out of the way places which appear utterly conventional to the casual observer, but turn out to hide the most unconventional characters and hideous secrets.
  I love Thomas Keneally's attention to the mundane; his vivid descriptions (of sounds, smells, rooms, clothing, weather) all create atmosphere, paint mental scenery and bring the whole thing to life. The details of everyday banality and minutiae seem starkly at odds with the mad and malevolent trip the plot later takes down the rabbit hole.
  At heart it's a story of one family's fracture and disintegration (of family dynamics, of relationships, of mind and of body) amidst their own unique challenges ("unique" barely begins to describe this family's challenges. To say any more would give too much away, tho' unfortunately some of the other reviews have already done that).
  Just while on the topic of other reviews, some are a little overblown (not being able to continue reading it because it was so disturbing, incest, bestiality, etc). This is dark satire, a work of fiction, an experiment of sorts. Yes it visits unpleasant territory, but that's the nature of human beings and what makes such studies fascinating. (And whether it's set in the 1970's or the 1770's is neither here nor there).
  This book was such an oddity (but immensely readable). It's a book that's stayed with me; and now some years after reading a borrowed copy, I've purchased a copy of my own. On receiving it, I gave it to my mother to read. She had it finished within two days, found it both strange and amusing in parts, but engrossing and interesting. She certainly wasn't traumatised by it.
  It was a great book, written while Thomas Keneally was still in the early years of his literary career, his creativity in full abundance ( in the days before editors and publishers turned everything to vanilla). Weird doesn't begin to describe it, but weird-in-the-best-way. Some people won't like it but I loved it, and I can see why the author calls this his favourite work. It's a book that would be even better the second time around.
• I'm a huge Tom Keneally fan, but this book was one I regret reading. Not at all sure what point TK was trying to make with this book, but all I took out of it was "that was bizarre" and disappointment at having invested precious time in reading it. Lacks the development of characters, time, place and historical relevance that I love in TK's work. A real miss for me. That said, I still love your work TK - just no more like this please.