Fractured by Dawn Barker – 2012
This is something I would not have picked up under regular circumstances, but sometimes the irregular can be good. Last year I played a lot of poker, and I would almost always be seen at the tables with a book… because where better to read than a casino, right?
James, an acquaintance I regularly play with, mentioned that his daughter writes, and would I like to read something that she had written. I admit, I didn’t take his suggestion all that seriously at first, because plenty of people have approached me over the years with similar requests, and it has turned out to be little more than a few scribbles on some napkins. As it turned out, this was substantially more than a few scribbles.
Fractured is Dawn’s debut novel. It’s an emotional drama about what is probably one of the toughest situations a family – and especially, a mother – can go through, and it was probably the best thing I read in 2016. Sure, it’s primarily aimed at women (and I’m not one of them), and parents (and I’m not one of those either), but the intensity and the psychological aspects of the story can be appreciated by everyone, and any piece of fiction that manages to bring others in has got to be worth the price of admission.
I was all prepared to put my poker face to good use and tell James that his daughter’s novel was pretty good, but it turned out to be an unnecessary bluff as it really is a fine read.
And in a final (non-commissioned) plug, you can check her out over here.
This is a brutal movie, and it doesn’t apologise for it. Nor is there that saccharine sweet ending that you would expect from a Hollywood movie made in the last two decades. It’s a disturbing, intense, psychological thriller, that closes in a darker place than it began.
I have read a couple of Wyndham novels, but fifties classic The Day of the Triffids was my introduction to him. When I was fourteen my English teacher tasked us with reading the book, which turned out to be one of the better literary choices I was given in high school. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that the following year, when I had to write a report on a novel, I chose this one.
It’s very difficult to read stories of this vintage – even those written by a deity of the supernatural genre such as MR James – after spending any length of time with modern authors. It takes a while to acclimatise to the differences in language and the way that the story itself has been put together, but stick with it – it’s a worthwhile excursion.
Cartoons play a large part in the lives of many children, but Rocko’s Modern Life – featuring an impetuous wallaby and his group of often neurotic, anthropomorphic friends – didn’t even begin broadcasting until I was seventeen. In fact, in a sombre kiss with history, I was watching an episode when the news of Princess Diana’s death broke, on the 31st August, 1997, and interrupted the show.
With the exception of one other television show – which I will get to later in this series – Rocko’s Modern Life was the only cartoon that I followed when I was, well… too old to really be following cartoons. The thing that appealed to me about Rocko and his buddies is that their target audience was never children. Sure, it was an original Nickelodeon production, but the crudely drawn characters and rough-around-the-edges animation fed into some adult humour that was often filled with innuendo and suggestion. Unfortunately, because of that, its mainstream success was ultimately limited.
-- Purveyor of Imagination -- 