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Indlæser... Burning Downaf Venero Armanno
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Charlie Smoke is living out his early retirement from the boxing ring as a bricklayer. It is the mid-1970s and he believes his best days are behind him. He has lost his wife and his daughter Sissy to his questionable past. When he meets Naomi Banks and her teenage son Ricky, he has the chance to do things differently this time around. As an unlikely friendship develops with Ricky, Charlie is unwittingly pulled back into the gambling underworld he thought he had left behind. In order to make a new future, first he must settle some old scores. Burning Down is a searing new novel from acclaimed storyteller Venero Armanno about family, regret, love and the promise of salvation. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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The novel is set in Brisbane in 1975, i.e. in the days before Brisvegas and gentrification, and also before the Fitzgerald Inquiry. While the mild summary from Wikipedia can’t really convey the way that event reverberated around Australia…
… it does hint at the extent to which corruption was endemic in all sorts of enterprises. Armanno’s novel reminded me of those B&W American gangster movies where all-powerful men ran their operations from derelict warehouses without interference from the police, and where victims going to the police for help or rescue were hopelessly naïve. In the world of Burning Down, only the younger generation consider it, and are soon disabused of their naïveté.
The central character is Charlie Smoke, a.k.a. Carmelo Fumo, a bricklayer with a mediocre boxing career long behind him. His former wife Tracy has died, and he is estranged from his 19-year-old daughter Sistina (Sissy) but he fills his days by taking pride in his work and running a training gym for young aspiring boxers in his rather shabby neighbourhood. One of the elements of this novel that I really like is the way Armanno explores ideas about boys learning masculinity, and we see this when Charlie’s new bricklaying job introduces Ricky, a troubled boy not coping well with warring parents. Charlie is captivated by Ricky’s mother Holly, with her violet eyes and blonde hair and trim body, but he is also intrigued by Ricky. Despite the boy’s flab and the truculence, Charlie sees potential in Ricky, and with his easy way of making conversation, he soon engages Ricky’s interest and yes, he eventually ends up in the gym with the other kids.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/02/25/burning-down-by-venero-armanno-bookreview/ ( )