“The Red Tree began an experimental narrative more than anything else: the idea of a book without a story. I’ve always loved Chris Van Allsburg’s classic picture book ‘The Mysteries of Harris Burdick’ (1984) which is a great example of word-picture enigmas, exhibiting partial fragments of unknown stories and leaving the reader to use their imagination. It has no sequential narrative, which is something a picture book is ideal for – you can open it at any page, go backwards or forwards, and spend as much time as you wish with each image.” ~ Shaun Tan’s comment on The Red Tree

I was intrigued when he mentioned Chris Van Allsburg. Never heard of him before. A quick browse of his name showed that not only he’s a very successful author and illustrator, of books that have been made into films like Jumanji and Polar Express, but also how close his artwork style is to Tan’s. It’s easy to see where Tan got his inspirations from. The images reminded me distinctly of The Arrival. I’ll be sure to look out for his books in near future!

Going back to The Red Tree, it contains ones of the strongest images that I have seen several times featured by other bloggers. And the book is as good as everyone raves it to be. It’s really hard to imagine The Red Tree to be read by little children, fairly dark and depressing as it is, even though it ends with a hopeful note. (In case you missed it–I did, there’s a small almost unnoticed red leaf at every page, symbolizing hope)

“nobody understands”

“sometimes you just don’t know what you are supposed to do”

“or who you are meant to be”

The Red Tree is such a beautiful book. Every page could stand on its own as a surreal painting. I love having it in my Shaun Tan personal library.

2001, 32pp

The Red Tree as puppet-based theatre production (Queensland, 2004) — with some spectacular images

Also reviewed by
su[shu] | things mean a lot | mental foodie

Oscar Live @ Fox Studios

This afternoon we had the 83rd Academy Awards shown live at Fox Studios Australia. Simple lunch was provided, along with drinks, tables, chairs, couches, and picnic rugs. My colleagues and I strolled along and spent extended lunch watching the show.

Imagine my delight when I heard Shaun Tan has won the Best Animated Short Film! There was definitely some shouting and throwing hands in the air! You might have followed when I mentioned his short film for the first time, when I reviewed the picture book, and again when it was nominated for 2011 Oscar. Ooh how I love it when I get to love something/someone far before everybody makes fuss.

“Our film is about a creature that doesn’t get any attention so this is quite ironic.” Tan said on stage.

This is an interesting article from ABC about the inception of The Lost Thing.

Apart from that, The King’s Speech won Best Picture and Best Direction, Colin Firth for Best Actor (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman for Best Actress (Black Swan). Both supporting actor and actress were for The Fighter which I haven’t watched (Christian Bale and Melissa Leo). Best Original Screenplay: The King’s Speech, Best Adapted Screenplay: Social Network. Best Art Direction and Best Costume: Alice in Wonderland. Best Animated Feature Film: Toy Story 3. Best VFX and Sound: Inception. Just the ones on top of my head.

A rather predictable, but quite satisfying year!

You know how I have a thing for Shaun Tan. So you can imagine how happy I am to find that The Lost Thing (which I posted about mid last year) has been nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 83rd Academy Awards! Granted it is competing with Pixar’s Day & Night (if you saw Toy Story 3 in the cinema, the short would’ve been screened just before) which I think might be one of the best short animated ever, so it’s a toughie. But I’m happy nonetheless!

Moving on to my favorite category: Best Animated Feature Film. Pixar movies have been nominated, and more often won, every single year since the award category was started in 2001, so it’s no surprise that Toy Story 3 is there. In fact, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t win. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were out prior to 2001, so they never had a chance to win an Oscar. The series deserve to get one, don’t you think? Also Toy Story 3 is nominated for Best Picture this year, one of only three animated movies ever to be nominated for Best Picture (first was Beauty and the Beast in 1991 and Up in 2009). The Illusionist (French, from the guys who brought you The Triplets of Belleville) is a nice inclusion. How To Train Your Dragon is said to be the best DreamWorks to date, so that’s no surprise too (no Shrek 4!).

On a side note, I watched Tangled yesterday and enjoyed it immensely. It has everything you want or expect from a Disney movie: the songs, the happy ending. With Disney you know it’s going to be safe, everybody is gonna be happy at the end, which is not a bad thing! I do wish they go back to making awesome 2D style films like they used to. With the highly acclaimed Tangled, does it mean Disney is making a comeback? I surely hope so. The omission at the award kinda bugged me a bit.

Now on to Best Picture. There are ten nominees:

• Black Swan
• The Fighter
• Inception
• The Kids Are All Right
• The King’s Speech
• 127 Hours
• The Social Network
• Toy Story 3
• True Grit
• Winter’s Bone

What a great list. Just watched Black Swan last weekend so it’s super fresh in my mind. A disturbing psychological thriller with ballet as center stage. What a great combination. Go Natalie Portman. Watched the advanced screening of The Kids Are All Right on free tickets many moons ago, before all the critics’ acclaims and the buzz. The film was nice. I love it when you go with no expectation at all and be pleasantly surprised. Because of some bad timing I missed Inception and The Social Network at the cinema, but I’m dying to see those. The King’s Speech was just out in Australia, so I haven’t got a chance to catch that. Would really like to see 127 Hours too after seeing the awesome trailer and knowing James Franco is playing (not yet out in Australia).

For Best Actor and Actress in Leading and Supporting Role, Michelle Williams nomination for Blue Valentine made me desperate to see the film. Saw the trailer and bits and I’m curious, especially that she’s playing with co-star Ryan Gosling. Love those two folks, can’t wait to see them together.

Another one I should note is Jacki Weaver for her role in Animal Kingdom, a true blue Aussie movie. Jacki’s nomination signifies the first time in 14 years that an Australian actor has been nominated for playing an Australian character in an Australian film that’s set in Australia. (Last time it was Geoffrey Rush, who won the Oscar for his work in Shine.) (from popsugar) So that’s a biggie. Animal Kingdom received very high acclaims here. I don’t however have urgent need to see it as it deals with Australian underground life. Not exactly my type of movie. Can you blame me? For mafia movies, I just make exception for Godfather.

The Academy Awards will take place on Sunday 27 February with Anne Hathaway and James Franco (nominated as Best Actor himself for 127 Hours) as youngest Oscar hosts. Take a deep breath everyone.

Having lived in Indonesia and Malaysia for more than 18 years, Islamic rules and society are not new to me. However, there are always questions in my mind about how things came to be this way and that, about why Islam is often identified with oppression of women, about all the violence done in the name of Islam, about polygamy, and so on and so forth. Nine Parts of Desire did not answer all of them, but it definitely satisfied some and sparked things I would never have thought before. What I loved is that it specifically talks about women issues and Brooks has done her research first hand extensively, spending a decade talking and befriending many Muslim women in Middle East countries, poor and rich, ex-foreigners, converts, royal family. I applaud her for being so brave. Being a woman and a Jew at that really put her at disadvantaged position in that area. In many ways she’s everything I hope I could be.

There are 12 chapters in total, each discussing a different issue: veil, marriage, polygamy, jihad, about women in education, politics, army, business, art or entertainment. It covers many countries in Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and more. One of my favorites is the chapter on women soldiers in UAE, the obstacles they need to break to become fully trained and qualified soldiers, fighting along with the men, even supervising them. In any country, women soldiers seem to be rare breeds, but this is even done in extreme Muslim country, who is used to having women at home and in complete obedience. The idea is so out of the way it seems absurd! Cool is the word to describe them!

In Indonesia polygamy is something that is quite real. Men from range of classes are known to take more than one wife, beknownst to one’s wife or otherwise. Influential clerics do the same, using Islam as reasoning base, and caused an uproar. Polygamy seems to be against the society’s conscience in this age, but for some people there’s always Islamic rules to fall back to. Here’s what the book says:

“In the Koran, polygamy is presented as an option for men, not as a requirement. In seventh-century Arabian society, there had been no restriction on how many wives a man could take. The Koran, in stipulating four as a maximum, was setting limits, not giving license. A close reading of the text suggest that monogamy is preferred.

The issue of polygamy is analogous to that of slavery, which was gradually banned in Islamic countries. As with polygamy, the wording of the Koran permits, but discourages, slavery. Muhammad’s sunnah included the freeing of many of his war-captive slaves. Because freeing slaves is extolled as the act of a good Muslim, most Muslims now accept that conditions have changed enough since the seventh century to allow them to legislate against a practice that the prophet probably would have chosen to ban outright, if his own times had allowed, Polygamy is already on the decline throughout the Islamic world, and many Muslim scholars see no religious obstacle to a legal ban on the practice.” ~ p186

On the issue of inheritance, the Koran states that daughter should receive only half of the son’s inheritance. Interesting point is that the Koran was actually advanced in its time when it was first out.

“The Koran sets out the formula for inheritance as an instruction which all believers must follow. In seventh-century Arabia the Koran’s formula was a giant leap forward for women, who up until then had usually been considered as chattels to be inherited, rather than as heirs and property owners in the own right. Most European women had to wait another twelve centuries to catch up to the rights the Koran granted Muslim women. In England it wasn’t until 1870 that the Married Women’s Property Acts finally abolished the rule that put all a woman’s wealth under her husband’s control on marriage.” ~ p186

It reminded me of the time last year when I read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. For the life of me I couldn’t make sense of why the Bennett sisters and their mother get nothing if their father dies–the estate would instead go to a distant male cousin. Now that seems backwards in comparison with the Koran, doesn’t it?

In the face of politic, in 1994 women led three Muslim countries: Tansu Ciller for Turkey, Bagum Khaleda Zia for Bangladesh, and Benazir Bhutto for Pakistan. If you think about it, USA has never had a female president. Australia just appointed a female Prime Minister last year (2010). Why is that? It’s a wonder that I have no answer to. These Muslim women get death threats (and Bhutto was assassinated in 2007) for being female in authority position. You’d wonder how they got to the top in the first place.

There are a lot more aspects discussed in the book. Though at times Brooks cried disagreement, her objectivity is more prevalent throughout the book. What I concluded at the end was that Islam seems to be religion of contradictions and therefore it’s quite easy for some groups of people to twist the text to their own interpretation. Added to the mix is the conservative Arab culture where Islam is easily absorbed and takes root.

Nine Parts of Desire was published in 1994, so some things have obviously changed since then (just knew that Queen Noor of Jordan has become a widow in 1999). But to my understanding the progression of Muslim women’s lives and roles goes at snail’s pace, so I believe the book is still as relevant today. Check out the afterword written post 9/11 at Geraldine Brooks’ website. Love the last paragraph. Brooks writes so beautifully that I’m sure I’m going to check her other books including the fictions.

It could be very depressing to read about the unfairness and the inequality towards female gender in that part of the world, but above all Brooks looked into the women who succeed in their own small or big ways, who prevail against all odds. In many ways, it’s celebration of the strength of women, of the choices they make in their lives, whether we agree to or not.

“I have my own young sons now, and it is unlikely that I will go adventuring again into lives so far removed from my own.  Somehow, moving house between London and Sydney, Virginia and Massachusetts, I lost the chador in which so many of my memories were wrapped.  Yet they are with me, always; memories of women who trusted me across the chasm of faith and culture. When I think of them, I think of laughter and kindness, warmth and hospitality.  I think of the things that united us rather than those things on which we disagreed.  They wanted to live, to see their children live.  That, at least, we had in common.  That, at least, is a place to start.” ~ Nine Parts of Desire, New Afterword

1994, 255 pp

Nine Parts of Desire at Geraldine Brooks website

More Memorable Quotes

“Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.” ~ Ali ibn Abu Taleb, husband of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima and founder of the Shiite sect of Islam

“”Rose,” I said, incredulous, “are you telling me you’ve ruled him out because he had dirty fingernails? For goodness’ sake! You can always clean his fingernails.” She raised her head and gazed at me sadly with her huge dark eyes. “Geraldine, you don’t understand. You married for love. What’s a dirty fingernail on someone you love? But if you are going to marry somebody you don’t love, everything, everything, has to be perfect.”" ~ p65

“Few women’s colleges have their own libraries, and libraries shared with men’s schools are either entirely off limits to women or open to them only one day per week. Most of the time women can’t browse for books but have to specify the titles they want and have them brought out to them.

But women and men sit the same degree examinations. Professors quietly acknowledge that women’s scores routinely outstrip the men’s. “It’s no surprise,” said one woman professor. “look at their lives. The boys have their cars, they can spend the evenings cruising the streets with their friends, sitting in cafes, buying black-market alcohol and drinking all night. What do the girls have? Four walls and their books. For them, education is everything.”” ~ p150

Challenges/Projects
Middle East Challenge, Aussie Author Challenge, Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Books in the City | Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? | Muse Book Reviews

Describing Shaun Tan’s books as picture books for adults can’t be more true than in the case of The Lost Thing. I’m not sure how it far it could resonate with kids. For me it shook my soul a little bit, as his books always do.

Storyline is simple. From Shaun Tan’s description at his website:

The Lost Thing is a humorous story about a boy who discovers a bizarre-looking creature while out collecting bottle-tops at a beach. Having guessed that it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but the problem is met with indifference by everyone else, who barely notice it’s presence. Each is unhelpful in their own way; strangers, friends, parents are all unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to day-to-day life. In spite of his better judgement, the boy feels sorry for this hapless creature, and attempts to find out where it belongs.

The Lost Thing itself I always knew would be red and big, so very noticeable, which makes us wonder why nobody really notices it (this is the key question of the story, for which there is no single answer).

The Lost Thing likes to eat Christmas decorations

Apparently there could be different interpretations of what the Lost Thing actually represents. While reading it though it seemed very clear to me that the Lost Thing is a thing that is important to us, so huge, so noticeable. It’s taking our entire world and yet you wonder why people just don’t see it the same way. That they just don’t care. Don’t you have things like that in your life? I do. Especially, perhaps, back when I was younger. Back when lots of things were important, to me, and people kept saying that they didn’t matter, not after you’ve grown older and learned more about the world. Annoying, but for most things, are sadly true.

In essence, The Lost Thing comments on the sense of being lost, of not belonging, which seems to be the recurrent theme I found in his works. Probably caused by experience as an Asian growing up in Australia many years ago?

The illustrations are stunning. There is no empty space within the pages. Even the gaps between panels that are usually white for normal comics are full of doodles and collages. The book is an absolute keeper. Love.

1999, 32pp

The Lost Thing @ shauntan.net

So on Saturday night, hubby and I went to an orchestra based on The Arrival, Shaun’s wordless graphic novel (since I’ve met him, can we be on first name basis now?). The orchestra complemented the slides of illustrations from the book nicely. It was lovely.

But the real highlight for me, of course, to meet Shaun Tan in person! Gosh talking about nervous! Heart beating fast.. sweaty hands.. incoherent speech.. fangirl mode on. Luckily I managed to force myself to blurb out something like I’m the biggest fan of your work. He was being really nice, and replied back in a very normal way, so we actually had a nice conversation for a couple of minutes. I haven’t been to many authors’ signings, but I thought Shaun was extra nice. He actually talked to me like a completely normal person without fame vibe whatsoever and it didn’t feel like he was rushing so he could get on to the next person behind me, if you know what I mean. He actually spent some time talking to me even though there’s a long line for him!

When I said I loved The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia, he said that his favorite book is probably Tales from Outer Suburbia. It was the one he enjoyed doing the most, and the type of book he likes to read as well, short stories and illustrations. Then I mentioned about seeing trailer of The Lost Thing and how awesome it looked. He thanked me and said it took them nine years to do the 15-minute short film (wow!). Said it’s gonna be out on DVD soon and that he thought I would love it. (obviously!) I also found out that The Arrival took him four years to complete (with one year of thinking and not exactly knowing what to do). Each page took about a week long. When asked how he came up with such beautiful illustrations, I overheard, he smiled and answered, just lots of practice really.

It was the best author night ever. I left with a huge huge smile on my face for the entire night :)

What’s that he wrote under the cute pet? (which he drew on the spot!) I was too nervous to pay attention at the time to ask!

Afternoon the next day I went to a panel titled The Evolution of an Idea, with Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman, and Eddie Campbell. The length I went through to get the ticket to this event! I thought when and where else would Shaun Tan be in the same room as Neil Gaiman?! I just had to go to see them both!

Look at them side by side!

Lucky I managed to secure myself a spot! It was an awesome 90 minutes panel about evolution of ideas. Obviously Neil Gaiman was the most famous out of the lot (though I beg to see differently as Shaun is my star), so lots of questions were thrown at him. He struck me as being a shy guy for some reason, and impressed me for being very articulate and well-spoken. Shaun too, to my surprise. I guess I have preconceived notions that authors are generally articulate on paper, but not in person. Well they both defied the myth. To be honest Eddie Campbell wasn’t on my radar much. I heard of From Hell but that’s probably it, and I didn’t find him as interesting as the other two on the panel.

A couple of things I gathered from Shaun (which seems to be a misspelled Shawn or Sean, because that’s how you pronounce his name):

He started as an illustrator but always wanted to be a writer as well, because he wasn’t satisfied with just illustrating other people’s lines. On The Rabbits for example, he received a half-page fax with 16 lines from John Marsden for the script of The Rabbits. It took him a year to illustrate the book, while both of them later got the royalties, which probably didn’t feel fair to him. The idea of course is important, but the actual labour of writing is minimal compared to illustrating. Good for him to make the book his own at the end with his outstanding illustrations! Were the script given to a lesser illustrator, it would just be a bunch of indistinguishable rabbits and the book would be lost in the sea of the ordinaries. (Since then Shaun has gone to have his fully own written book: Tales from Outer Suburbia.)

A thread of conversation led Neil Gaiman to mention that he thought who you are as an author is shaped by things you digest before you’re twenty. Shaun quickly agreed. Said he used to really get into reruns of The Twilight Zone the tv series when he was about 11. He then went to the library and asked the librarians what genre The Twilight Zone was. It was science-fiction apparently and he was given a list of sci-fi authors, arranged alphabetically. He came upon Ray Bradbury and never got pass that. (funny!) Shaun read all Bradbury’s books and was completely immersed. (Note to self: read one of Bradbury’s books!) Another book he remembered was Animal Farm by George Orwell. (Note to self: read that one too!) His parents thought it was a children book and gave it for him to read. But just so you know he totally got it and could see who the pigs were on the school playground.

When talking about adaptation of his books, Shaun said he generally doesn’t have a lot of actions in his books and his characters are often nameless. He has always preferred “static images that linger.. like an echo of what happened”. Which doesn’t make it easy to adapt his books to other medium. In one case, The Arrival was adapted to a stage play in Canberra and they added a strong landlady character to create conflict with the main character. Gracious and humble he said if he had seen the adaptation before finishing the book, he would probably make it that way. It’s scary how in the process of creating a book, it could go a thousand different ways. Which path should I take? Which path is right? At the end you have to go with what you feel strongest for. Neil expressed his agreement.

What I gathered from Neil Gaiman:

That he never starts to write a script before he knows who the illustrator will be. It’s crucial to collaborate with the illustrator and adjust his writing in accordance with the strengths and weaknesses of the illustrator.

In his early writing career he wrote biography for Duran Duran..

There are about 60 people altogether working on The Sandman series.

One of the most interesting thing was probably the part where he told the story behind MirrorMask (note to self: watch the movie). Whereas any normal movie project starts with an idea, MirrorMask started with a budget. Dave McKean was given 4 million dollars to make a movie and he accepted, asking Neil to work together. The rest of the details were quite hilarious, I wish I could record everything. Oh he also talked about Stardust the movie (which I also haven’t watched. I do have the book on my tbr.)

It was a great afternoon. But have to say I was really disappointed that they almost literally ran out of the room as soon as the event ended. I brought Stardust with me (my American Gods didn’t arrive on time from Book Depo) and was kinda hoping that there would be signing at the end. They didn’t say there would be, but still I had my hope. Well, Neil disappointed me in that regards. What, is he too famous to do signing in Sydney? :(

I’ve made up my mind. If I could have ANY three authors for dinner, alive or dead, one would definitely be Shaun Tan. My admiration for him keeps going TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!

Don’t know how I missed this, but I was so excited to find out about this short a few minutes ago! The short is part of Sydney Film Festival last month and will take part in Melbourne International Film Festival later this year. It is based on Shaun Tan’s book The Lost Thing (1999). He’s been working with a Melbourne-based small team from 2002 to 2010 for this 15 minutes short. It’s 3D with 2D hand-painted textures. Like all Shaun Tan’s I think it’s amazing! Love! I haven’t read the book, but I will surely do so now, and also look for the film!

Find out more about the film from Shaun Tan’s website (many images from the book, concept arts, and the film)

The official website www.thelostthing.com (A very pretty site!)

Tender Morsels started from a rough point. Liga is a teenage girl who is sexually abused by her father after the death of her mother. After a couple of forced abortions, she is determined to keep the last one. Coincidentally her father dies before he gets to kill her last unborn baby. Her peace lasts very short while before another unfortunate, evil event befalls her once more, which pushes her to the end of hopelessness. Magical things happen. Liga is transferred to a place of her heart’s desire where people are always nice and safe, and that’s where she raises her two daughters, Branza and Urdda.

There are some obvious dark themes, and while it is never explicit, the incest and the rapes were very hard to read. Here’s where I think Margo Lanagan shows her skills. She is very good at writing around something without actually saying the words. The book is very well written, though I did have problem with the dialect style at times.

Tender Morsels has received so many raving over-the-top reviews from the book blogging community, so I feel a bit out of the loop to say that it didn’t blow me away as much as I expected. I thought it was skilfully written and it flowed nicely from beginning to end, BUT I felt very little connection with any of the characters. Liga’s parts are told with third-person point of view, while the bears are told with first person. I never understood why and it just bothered me. In my view Liga was the main character and her stories with her daughters were the most interesting. I was annoyed with the change of perspectives to the bears, who I thought were less interesting less important characters. I just couldn’t shake my annoyance off for the entire book for some reason. The third-person view of Liga made her felt very distant.

[Minor spoilers ahead] I also had some qualms about how the story turned at certain points. For one, I’m not sure if this is the book to read for how it deals with rape. Getting sent to one’s heaven is so far from being realistic, and I’m not talking about the magical aspect of it. Who in the real world would ever be able to conveniently run away from everything and come back to successfully take revenge? Isn’t that a misleading illusion to how the real world works? It felt a bit self-indulgent. I don’t mind magical world and humans transforming to bears, but the way the problems get resolved kept reminding me that this was a work of fiction, so I was unable to be completely immersed in it. The problems were too serious and realistic for a fantasy, yet the resolutions were too unrealistic. The balance just wasn’t right for me to be believable.

Having said all these, I think Tender Morsels is great as fantasy or adventure book. I loved how it ended for Liga, which wasn’t exactly happy-ever-after so it had that realistic edge. The book has a couple of fantastic female characters who I loved dearly. I realized that I got a bit critical over this book, perhaps I entered it expecting… something else.

2008, 380 pp

The basis of the bear ritual: Fete de l’Ours

First line
There are plenty would call her a slut for it.

Awards
2009 World Fantasy Award (Novel)
2009 Honor Book: Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

Challenges
Aussie Author (book #3), Once Upon a Time IV (book #4), Book Awards IV (book #10), Women Unbound (fiction #8)

Also reviewed by

Loved it unconditionally!
things mean a lot | my fluttering heart | A Striped Armchair | Stuff As Dreams Are Made On | The Zen Leaf | YA Fabulous! | Sarah Miller

Liked it with some reservations (like me). Regular Rumination | Farm Lane Books Blog | Dolce Bellezza

Thought it too flawed. Nonsuch Book

If you have been a reader of my blog for .. oh.. about 5 minutes, you’d know that I luurrvv Shaun Tan. After the amazing Tales from Outer Suburbia and The Arrival, I have intended to go through all his back catalogue, even if that means I need to venture into the children’s section of my library, towering like a gigantic being among the little young uns’.

Shaun Tan’s books are classified as Picture Books, though according to him:

They are best described as ‘picture books for older readers’ rather than young children, as they deal with relatively complex visual styles and themes, including colonial imperialism, social apathy, the nature of memory and depression.

The Rabbits, written by John Marsden, is partly allegorical fable about colonisation, told from the viewpoint of the colonised. It features the weirdest looking rabbits I have ever seen. Like always, Tan’s illustrations left me breathless.

I’ll let you soak in the glory of Shaun Tan’s world.

1998, 32 pp

Shaun Tan’s The Rabbits

First line
The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

Awards
1999 Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year
1999 Spectrum Gold Award for Book Illustration
1999 Aurealis Conveners’ Award for Excellence

Challenges
Aussie Author (book #2), Book Awards IV (book #6), Once Upon a Time IV (book #1)

Also reviewed by
Beth Fish Reads

The Slap starts with a barbeque party at suburban Melbourne. The explosion breaks when a man slaps a child who is not his own. The ripples affect everyone there: the family where the barbeque takes place, the family of man who slaps, the family of the child who is slapped, and all their family and friends.

The book won Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Overall Best Book and it was/is huge in Australia, reserving the number one place for many weeks. I was then quite surprised to find the quantity of swearing in it. At one point, it was so overwhelming I wondered if I should give up (and I’m not even the type who’s sensitive to coarse language). Not only that, I found the beginning was very slow, and it only started to pick up the pace a third way through.

The book is written in third person close view of eight different characters in chronological order. Interestingly, and unfortunately, the first four characters are easily the least interesting of them all. It doesn’t help that the first two men whose heads you are “privileged” to get into are so hard to read. It’s like getting into a very male head, whose thoughts are completely unfiltered, and an angry male at that. There are excessive swearing, drugs, sex, racial slurs, you name it. There’s just so much anger.

But if you succeed to pass through the first four characters, I would say that the last four would make up for the former. My favorite would be the mother of the slapped child. I don’t agree with many of her opinions, but it’s amusing to get into her head. My second favorite would be the old Greek immigrant who is the uncle of the slapper. Melbourne has the biggest Greek community outside of Greece. So it was fun to know their side of the story.

The setting was a big enticement for me. I lived in Melbourne for 6 years before studying and working, and love the place dearly. I recognized many of the place references and lifestyle that I had fun reminiscing. I also loved how multicultural the book is. It’s not Australia the white man country. It’s Australia that I know. Australia the country of immigrants and multicultural pot. In this book we meet Greeks, Indians, Vietnamese, Jews, white Aussies, and Aborigines. The boldness of racial slurs and how each race is portrayed, again, sent jolts to my system. The Slap is a very brave book in many aspects to show the contemporary Australian life. The slap itself is often just a noise in the background amidst the loudness of everything else.

Despite wincing at many points, I found myself noted down quotes with strong opinions from the book:

On racism:

“Her own parents’ racism had been casual, was certainly never expressed violently or aggressively. Her mother pitied the blacks and her father had no respect for them; but beyond that they prided themselves on tolerance.” ~ p245

On the young generation:

“These kids, they’re unbelievable. It’s like the world owes them everything. They’ve been spoilt by their parents and by their teachers and by the fucking media to believe that they have all these rights but no responsibilities so they have no decency, no moral values whatsoever.” ~ p270

On love:

“This, finally, was love. This was its shape and essence, once the lust and ecstasy and danger and adventure had gone. Love, at its core, was negotiation, the surrender of two individuals to the messy, banal, domestic realities of sharing a life together.” ~ p406

On aging:

“But age did silence dreams, did mellow desires, even the most ferocious lusts and fantasies.” ~ p295

“He believed he had glimpsed a truth, a possibility: equanimity, acceptance, a certain peace–in old age, all men were equal. Not in work, not in God, not in politics, only in age.” ~ p324

On women:

“Not for the first time, he sighed inwardly a the innate conservatism of women. It was as if being a mother, the agony of birth, rooted them eternally to the world, made them complicit in the foibles and errors and rank stupidity of men. Women were incapable of camaraderie, their own children would always come first.” ~ p325

On the future:

“… it slowly began to dawn on him that the future was not a straight linear path but a matrix of permutations and possibilities, offshoots from offshoots. The map of the future was three-dimensional.” ~ p439

2009, 485 pp

First line
His eyes still shut, a dream dissolving and already impossible to recall, Hector’s hand sluggishly reached across the bed.

Awards
2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Overall Best Book
2009 ABIA (Australian Book Industry Awards) Book of the Year

Challenges
Book Awards IV (book #4), Aussie Author (book #1)

Also reviewed by Liked it! — Farm Lane Books Blog | Mad Bibliophile | Reading Matters

First Tuesday Book Club – May 2009 episode (with 11:35 mins video)