Here is what I had to say about Black Dust Dancing: Ambivalence and loss.
Here is what Pavlov’s Cat had to say: In which Third Cat’s book is launched.
Here is what the Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony had to say: Writing from the right side of the brain.
And here is what The Advertiser had to say:
In an industrial town in South Australia, Crisp unravels the tale of a mother, Heidi, trying to work out what’s wrong with her son, Zac. Meanwhile, the locals go to the hairdresser, to the local park, and work hard for a bit of happiness. The stories of the townsfolk interweave to create the feeling of a real community, but the heard of the story is this mother whose son’s blood is full of lead from nearby industry. Occasionally, the characters seem to represent ideas more than three-dimensional people, but despite this, Crisp has created a work that captures an important and true story about industry’s power over Australia’s small towns.
SA Weekend – 2 May 2009 (not on-line)
One of these things is not like the others.
To be fair to The Advertiser’s reviewer, it’s hard to do justice to a complex book in just 100 or so words. Nevertheless, it seems odd to miss Tracy’s trademark ambiguity, and economy, and her focus on relationships. And very odd indeed to miss the ambiguity about where the black dust comes from. And even more odd to miss the importance of the women, and the relationships between women, and the complexities of their ordinary, everyday lives. And even even odder odder to think that the story is about industrial power.
Maybe the reviewer mistook it for a thriller.
Again, the one in the Age is even worse. That one does single out the domestic/female/detail stuff … as a weakness!
It’s as though a century of feminist literary thought (if you start with Woolf) had never happened. Alcibiades, the hemlock, if you please.
The scourge of chick lit has doomed us all.
I just had a look for it (The Age’s review), but it’s behind the paywall now. That may be a good thing.
Thank goodness I read the book before I read that review. “The locals go to the hairdresser” bit is so well written I wished I could climb into the chair and have someone tell me exactly what I needed to do with my hair. I have always wanted a hairdresser like that, and probably always will. Maybe they only really exist in fiction.