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Peter Goldsworthy

Autor(a) de Maestro

29+ Works 902 Membros 19 Críticas 1 Favorited

About the Author

Obras por Peter Goldsworthy

Associated Works

The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories (2005) — Contribuidor — 73 exemplares
The Best Australian Stories 2006 (2006) — Contribuidor — 31 exemplares
The Best Australian Stories 2003 (2003) — Contribuidor — 22 exemplares
The Best Australian Stories 2007 (2007) — Contribuidor — 22 exemplares
The Best Australian Stories 2005 (2005) — Contribuidor — 19 exemplares
The Best Australian Stories 2009 (2009) — Contribuidor — 14 exemplares
Penguin Australian Summer Stories (1999) — Contribuidor — 14 exemplares
The Strength of Tradition (1983) — Contribuidor — 10 exemplares
Seams of Light: Best Antipodean Essays (1998) — Contribuidor — 7 exemplares

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Membros

Críticas

Peter Goldsworthy AM is the acclaimed author of eight novels, including most recently Minotaur, but Maestro is his first. It made quite a splash, with shortlisting in the 1990 Miles Franklin award and went on to be included in the 2003 the Australian Society of Authors list of the top-forty Australian books ever published. (Which was, BTW, a pretty good list, if the 28 which I've read are anything to go by).

Described in the Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature as a classic coming-of-age narrative featuring a gifted and slightly sinister music teacher whose story has dark roots in the Second World War, the novel is a bit of a rarity because it's set in Darwin. There are only nine with Northern Territory settings reviewed on this blog and apart from Jeannie Gunn's We of the Never Never, I can't think of too many more.

The climate is a constant element in the narrative. Here is the schoolboy Paul Crabbe meeting for the first time his enigmatic piano teacher, Herr Eduard Keller.
Outside, the sound of thunder carried to us, distantly: the sound of February, of deepest, darkest Wet. The room was stifling, oppressive, but the louvred wooden slats that formed two opposing walls remained closed, the ceiling fan stilled. Not a whisper of movement stirred in the sticky air.

I sensed that I was undergoing some kind of test.

'Heat,' Keller suddenly pronounced, 'we can withstand. A little discomfort is necessary to maintain alertness. But noise...

He gestured in the direction of the louvred wall that faced onto the balcony—the direction of the beer garden below.

My mother smiled uncertainly and dabbed a handkerchief at her brow. The sweat was beginning to gather, the droplets aggregating into larger drops, heavy as mercury. Newcomers in Darwin, we had moved from the temperate South barely a month before; she found the climate unbearable. (p.5)

Maestro, as he comes to be called behind his back, is a stranger to Darwin too, though no longer a newcomer to a city of booze, blow and blasphemy. Paul's curiosity is aroused from the outset by Keller's missing fifth finger, its absence flaunted by a gold ring on the stump. Graceless and awkward, and determined to remain aloof from the crassness that surrounds him, Keller is a hard taskmaster, never satisfied by Paul's best efforts. He refuses, too, to satisfy the boy's curiosity about his Austrian origins, about the sepia photos on the piano, about the numbers tattooed on his arm although he isn't Jewish.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/05/08/maestro-by-peter-goldsworthy/
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
anzlitlovers | 5 outras críticas | May 7, 2021 |
Terrific title and a cracking story to follow up. I abhore organised religion so the title was appealing.. Everything is unexpected, the narrator is a woman and a medical specialist, feels like genuine perspective of a woman leader in a man's field, the locations are in Australia and still unexpected. I don't want to give anything away. It's a really fresh story - with a smart narrator, an unusual anti-hero, cool plot twists. Now I want to read it again but do get it.
 
Assinalado
Ufacetube | 1 outra crítica | Oct 20, 2020 |
A story about how a working class lad’s promising footy career is cut short by injury. The lad is happy to turn to marriage instead, but his mentor regrets the lost opportunities. Taking the title and the publishing date into mind, the story was probably meant to be about how some men value a football career over marriage. However, looking at it now (in 2015) away from the era of militant feminism, we can see the wider social dimension to the story, and how it shows us that a successful football career can save some men from the social limitations of poverty and lack of educational opportunities.
Review by Irene Hogan
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Readingthegame | Jun 20, 2020 |
Peter Goldsworthy AM (b. 1951) is a versatile author, but Minotaur is, I think, his first venture into writing a thriller. I read most of his novels before I started this blog, so the only reviews here are of his memoir, His Stupid Boyhood (2013), and of target="_top">Everything I Knew (2008) which was shortlisted for the PMs Literary Award in 2009. But I certainly never thought of him as a writer of genre fiction, and I still don't. Minotaur is a thriller, but it's much more interesting than that.

This is the blurb:
Peter Goldsworthy's new novel features a blind detective determined to deliver justice to the man who shot him, even though his failed assassin has broken out of jail and is equally determined to finish the job. Cleverly structured around the five senses, and with the action confined to one week, it’s pacey and taut, with the cat-and-mouse tension leavened by lighter interludes.

Goldsworthy is interested in all that his protagonist cannot see, as he is forced to meet evil, acting on a trust in his senses, and the ineluctable mystery that is memory.

The part-man, part-bull Minotaur of Greek legend was so dangerous that King Minos of Crete had it incarcerated in a maze, until Theseus successfully killed it. The significance of this, in terms of the novel, is that both Theseus and the Minotaur were trapped in the maze, and Theseus only escapes through the love of a woman, i.e. Ariadne, King Minos' daughter. In Goldsworthy's novel, Detective Sergeant Rick Zadow is trapped in his house not just by his blindness but also by a desire for vengeance that is not much different to the vengeful escapee's. I won't share whether he is saved by the love of a woman or not, because that would be a spoiler!

There's a small cast of characters. There is Zadow, blinded by a shot from the man who has now escaped from prison. He has an absent wife called Willow a.k.a. Willowpedia because she's a know-it-all, and there are two psychiatrists who will be combatants in the court case to award him compensation. His former colleague Terry drops by to tell him the good news and to suggest possibilities for getting back to work, and there's Annie, a desirable policewoman who shares the same 'flexible' attitude towards administering the law when it suits.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/08/minotaur-by-peter-goldsworthy/… (mais)
 
Assinalado
anzlitlovers | Sep 8, 2019 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
29
Also by
10
Membros
902
Popularidade
#28,436
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
19
ISBN
82
Línguas
4
Marcado como favorito
1

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