Jennifer DownCritiques

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down is a highly recommended traumatic and heartbreaking story of the life of one Australian woman. Maggie's life has consisted of one appalling, traumatic experience after an other, starting with her childhood, her time in foster/group care homes and continuing with heartbreaking, dreadful events into adulthood. This is the winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

This is not a pleasant novel to read. It is distressing, bleak, and harrowing throughout the entire novel. Yes, the quality of the writing is excellent, but the narrative never gives the reader a true pause from the feeling of a life of futility and hopelessness. There are brief periods where you think she is going to overcome her past experiences and live a fulfilling life, but they are brief as another horrific turn of events will quickly follow. Maggie does keep trying to cope with everything. The first half of the novel is stronger than the last half.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Text Publishing Company via Edelweiss.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2023/07/bodies-of-light.html

this is just trauma porn.
If you want to read about the repeated rape of a child by three different men in the first 48 pages - look no further.

reading about australia in the 80s - great.

paedophillia and the abuse of a child. - - no bro.

Golly! This is SO good. Earlier this year I read "Bodies of Light", Downs second novel, and described her as a "genius". So now I have come to her first book which shows all the hallmarks of prodigious talent.

"Our Magic Hour" lacks the driving power of the well-plotted "Bodies of Light" which qualified as a page-turner. Here we have a more reflective read, a gentler pace, imbued with a sadness that, for me anyway, was infectious. The protagonist, Audrey, is a sad figure and Down writes her ennui so well it generates in the reader empathic tears. And the need for a break and a cup of tea. How many books have had that effect on you?

The book is drenched with pithy observations of setting and mood that cushion the dialogue in suddenly familiar moods or situations. The reader is drawn in. We enter place and hearts. Wondrous.

(8.5)½

No doubt the best book I’ve read in quite a while. Perfectly paced. Deeply touching. It’s fiction, but so real you’d swear it was a life memoir. All this from a writer still young enough to be considered precocious. Jennifer Down is genius.

4.5 stars rounded down because it felt really long towards the end and the themes are pretty depressing. It does end on a good note, however. The writing is sensational. My library recommends books by Australian writers and I try to borrow one each month. This one is Melbournian and most of the book is based in Victoria. It follows the life story of a woman who lost her parents early and went through the child protection foster system and the impact of significant complex trauma in her life. It's a very compelling because of the way she writes. Really worth a read.

I found it difficult to put a rating on this book. I hesitated to begin with as I found that the prose was a bit rigid and simplified for me.
Though after a few chapters, I was so deep in the lives of the characters that my preconceived ideas slipped away and I found myself unable to put it down.

It may seem to some that this is a book about nothing, and it could be taken that way - but it's so much more than that. This is a book about abuse, the process of greif, depression, friendship, family; the complications of, and work it takes to maintain relationship. The characters and places are still lingering in my memory.

I conneted with so many of parts of this book, and I am so impressed that this was written by a young female writer the same age as me.

Jennifer Down has the ability to write from so many different perspectives. Each story in this collection is incredibly compelling in it's own, unique way - I couldn't put it down! Here's one of my favourite moments of the book:

"Wes didn't mind feminists so much. He believed in equal pay, he just didn't know why they needed to be so shrill about everything. Sometimes it seemed to him as if Kirsten saw everything as an attack. He didn't understand all the emancipation. Years ago he'd said to Miranda, I thought it was something she'd get out if her system while she was a teenager. His wife looked at him and laughed. She'd said -That is the system-. Maybe he'd answered with something thick, because he remembered Miranda looking at him with something like pity or patience and staying -Darling, that's the only way for women to survive-. He hadn't thought about it in years. Remembering it now made him ache in a new, hot way; that his wife and daughter had shared it, that he couldn't access it, that it wasn't his to understand."

There are lots of things to like about this book, but more than anything I think what appealed to me most was the verisimilitude of the characters and situations - as far as my experience and memory can confirm, anyway. There's no romantic idealization of youth and relationships. Everyone's flaws are on display and in that sense I found it a rather depressing read. Sure, there's the odd glimpse of hope, but I think we readers all know that everything in the end will finish in tears. Being an Australian resident, the Sydney and Melbourne settings were very familiar to me, so much so that the story may be seen by some as a little too parochial. There are no concessions to an overseas readership and I'm not sure what Americans would make of this (probably the answer is: it won't be published in America - they're even more self centred than we are). I have no idea what triggered me to put this on my "to be read" list (perhaps recommended by Jeniwren??), but having a taste of her work I might seek out Down's other publication ("Pulse Points") if it's in my local library,½