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1) I read the Monkey's Mask back in '98 - my sister was reveiwing it and gave me her freebie copy. I enjoyed it...an interesting piece of process, if nothing else, but strangely did little with the poetic form - just moving from event to event, without the variations in perspective or tone that you might expect from a poetry collection. On the bright side, as a mechanism it elided a lot of the boring stuff one might normally expect in a murder mystery.
I also enjoyed the sense of place it evoked - little bits of Australiana which ring true (one for a Local Book for Local People), like:
She inhales
and takes the smoke
right to the bottom of her lungs
'some fuckwit poet
Mickey reckons
is a big deal.'
I gasp like a groupie
'Who is he?'
she shrugs
'Mickey won't let on'
and pauses
to let in the Western Suburbs with the tidbit
'he's married but.'
But sometimes it seems to be a bit too mirrored and clever - the poet namechecking another poet, then claiming in the voice of her detective characer "I read thrillers myself". It seems a little...feigned at times. |
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