Tales From the Inner City.

Can you believe it?  I got this book last year as an Early Reviewers book ( I bet you thought I was going to say... "Can you believe it? She's writing!"). 
Yeah... I know.  It has been too long since last I wrote.  But really, I was just so engrossed in my new projects, and in my new library.  It was overwhelming!   I mention all of this because 2019 (Happy New Year!)  is a new start for me.  I have been ultra-focused on reading a lot without putting too much thought into the process, and I have now applied the brakes.  It isn't easy to stop.  I have this compulsive and passionate drive to just read, read, read!  But after I opened this book to it's first story, I realized I couldn't just consume this book. 
 I am no stranger to Shaun Tan.  I have loved his books for years, so getting this one to review was a tremendous gift and an extraordinary privilege.  I paused after every story, even deciding to go back and re-read  Tales From the Outer Suburbs just because I thought it was a set.   Which it is as far as Tales go.  It was like a warm up I suppose for the main event.   Inner City is so much more.   I think that this is the kind of book that you can go back to and get more from than you got the first time around. 
These stories can be put up there with the greatest... Ray Bradbury.  The words paint such intense and abstract pictures in your mind, and, even knowing his art, I was often surprised by his own artistic interpretation of what his words have wrought.  I admit I don't know enough about his process.  Does he paint the pictures first and then write the story or is it the other way around? 
However it is done, I recommend that you do what I did, and resist looking through the book first.  Just take it one story and one picture at a time for a sublimely surreal experience.

That Deadman Dance

Admittedly, this one was a toughie.  Tough because I will always feel guilty over the plight of the Australian Aborigines, though I personally have not done anything either way to hurt them or to help them.  There is just no way that I can feel any sort of affinity to them, I just don't know enough about them.  I have more of an understanding of the First Nations that I live and work with here in Canada.
That Deadman Dance helped me to understand a little bit, and I am grateful for that.  The story is told by a Noongar named 'Bobby' Wabalanginy at various stages of his life, and in the style of his people.  The way he weaves in and out of the narrative with his dreamings of what was and what could or should be was magical and mesmerizing.    It was a powerful way to tell this story (which was about first contact between Europeans and the aborigines), and a perfectly simple and creative way to help us see it from the Noongar's point of view.  I will be seeking out the rest of this author's work, I love his way of telling the story.

Seven Little Australians

This was a part of the little collection of books that I bought in Australia last summer.  The box that I sent my collection home in took the full three months to make it here to Canada, and I nearly cried when I saw it.

It was a pretty humble collection as far as my shopping goes, but I had to restrict myself to the one box, so I was really selective about what to buy and I was really lucky to come across some new Penguin editions of Australian classics.  Seven Little Australians was one of them.

I had not actually read this when I was a kid, so I was pleasantly surprised on beginning to see how easily the story just flowed, kind of like an Aussie Wodehouse.  I loved it, all of it, and at the end I burst in to tears. 
Next time I go home I will be looking for more by Ethel Turner, because I want to know what happens next!
I might have to compile a list.