From: Steven Engelfried <sengelfried>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:12:23 -0700 (PDT)

"One Whole and Perfect Day" by Judith Clarke is one of my personal favorites of this year. Like "Criss Cross," it has multiple narrative threads whose stories are all related, some in obvious ways and some that become clear only later. Each of the viewpoints was interesting on its own, but gained power as we learned more. The variety of age spans represented made things especially interesting. It ended with a family gathering which would seem routine to anyone who doesn''t know the characters as well as we readers do by that point. It actually was a suspenseful, suprising, and very satisfying conclusion. As for it's "Australian-ness," the characters were easy to relate to as people, wherever the reader is from, but we did get a feel for the place. And there were elements about Australia that fit naturally into the story, such as the racism experienced by one character's family, which we Americans might not have considered.
   
  - Steven Engelfried, Multnomah County Library (OR)
    sengelfried at yahoo.com
    503-844-5711

       
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Received on Thu 20 Sep 2007 11:12:23 PM CDT