Books: The Axeman's Carnival, Birnham Wood and Mad Honey. Now reading Lessons in Chemistry.
Axeman's Carnival is a damn good read. Set on a struggling South Island farm and narrated by a magpie (a birdie!) it is really about domestic abuse. The talking magpie's repeated phrases are hilarious though - and poignant too. ****
Birnham Wood is an even better read and much weightier covering a huge number of current themes: wokesters' versus billionaires, conservation, kiwi complacency, human ego and self deception ... It's both a literary work and a psychological thriller. Fantastic twist at end. And the title is fab. The well known quote from Macbeth in the title makes us wonder who represents the over ambitious Scottish king who did not get his comeuppence until Birnham Wood came to "high Dunsinane Hill." (Birnam Wood is the name of a gardening collective in the book.)
Mad Honey is pretty damn awful. I was warned. It is about a beekeeper mum whose son is accused of murdering his girlfriend. The mum who left her husband because of terrible domestic abuse worries that her son might have inherited her ex-husband's violent tendencies. To top it all off a main theme is transgenderism. So there is a moral issue thrown in for good measure. Well done and worthy but spoils the integrity of the novel as art. A chick lit book too I'm afraid which is what I feel about all Jodi Picault's books. Readable though. Had to read it to the end. Left out the honey bits because I'm sick of novelists using bees as an analogy to human behaviour.
Films and TV
The Whale was much better than I expected. Brendan Fraser makes a really sympathetic obese English teacher. Even with all those rolls of fake fat his sad brown eyes and beautiful voice make him somehow attractive. Very tight script and setting. All in own room where he sits with dramatic entrances and exits - very like a stage play. Great suppporting actors.
The Last of Us on Neon was the best thing I read or watched lately - well, maybe Birnham Wood was better. It's my first zombie apocalypse TV series and I disliked the zombies and disliked the loving talk about guns. It's just so well made and acted though that it stands head and shoulders above other series on the screen at the moment. The characters walk across America and the scenery and the cinematography are stunning. The post-apocalyptic city landscapes are as moody as they need to be.
The characters and relationships are so well drawn and true to life and well acted that I was willing to turn a blind eye to the brutality and bloodshed. After all, it was the end of the world. Loved the moral ambiguity.
