Daily Archives: 5 March 2015

What days are for

Posted on by

what days are for

What days are for by Robert Dessaix

 

Abstract

One Sunday night in Sydney, Robert Dessaix collapses in a gutter in Darlinghurst, and is helped to his hotel by a kind young man wearing a T-shirt that says F… YOU. What follows are weeks in hospital, tubes and cannulae puncturing his body, as he recovers from the heart attack threatening daily to kill him. While lying in the hospital bed, Robert chances upon Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Days’. What, he muses, have his days been for? What and who has he loved ? and why? This is vintage Robert Dessaix. His often surprisingly funny recollections range over topics as eclectic as intimacy, travel, spirituality, enchantment, language and childhood, all woven through with a heightened sense of mortality.

Comments

Collapsed on a pavement, Robert Dessaix was helped by a young man wearing a t-shirt that says F… YOU and a hotel staff member. He suffered a major heart attack but thanks to those kind people, he was saved. Continue reading →

The Yellow Birds

Posted on by

the-yellow-birds

 

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

 

Abstract

“The war tried to kill us in the spring,” begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. Bound together since basic training when their tough-as-nails Sergeant ordered Bartle to watch over Murphy, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes impossible actions.

Comments

Took a while to get into the book but enjoyed it. Very good portrayal of what it means to go to war and the consequences. Sterling was a very interesting character. Heart of gold but very rough exterior. Continue reading →