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tiger, tiger books old and new

Who doesn't like books? tiger, tiger brings you reviews of a selection of books old and new we think are really worth a read!! First up we've a brand new offering from one of Perth's new literati, Cry Bloxsome and his wild ride of love, lust and longnecks, Living Between Fucks, as well as one of the greatest Australian novels ever written, Voss, by Patrick White.

Living Between Fucks by Cry Bloxsome

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Every so often there comes book that defines a generation; a type of literary fingerprint whose swirls suggest to those that read it what was at the heart of that epoch.

If someone in fifty years time was to crack open a time capsule and read Living Between Fucks, they'll certainly get an interesting insight into how Generation X lived, loved and laughed.

Living Between Fucks is a brand new novel by Perth writer Cry Bloxsome, and tells the tale of a 20-something male who returns to Perth after time in Melbourne, and is offered a deal to write a treatise on love. The protagonist finds this a slippery task between swilling beer, partying hard and, inevitably, falling in love.

Cry Bloxsome, in his debut novel, writes with a deft touch. He is part Truman Capote, part Hunter S. Thompson. Readers familiar with his gritty yet whimsical prose (Cry Bloxsome has featured in street press Vice, and Lucky) will enjoy the rollercoaster ride Cry Bloxsome sends his characters on.

While it could be said that some of the characters Cry Bloxsome peoples Living Between Fucks with are a little one-dimensional, it is a real delight to read of live, longnecks and lust amongst real, recognizable Perth locations.

Voss by Patrick White

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Voss, his 1957 masterpiece, was suggested by the tragic story of explorer Ludwig Leichhart, who died in the Australian desert in 1848.

The plot of this novel is of epic simplicity: in 1845 the German Voss sets out with a small band to cross then Australian continent for the first time. The tragic story of their terrible journey and its inevitable end is told with imaginative understanding. His relationship with Laura Trevelyan, who sees Voss as ‘all stains, and patches of shade, and spots of sunlight' is the central personal theme of the story.

The writing is wholly moving; White's descriptions of the spiritual connection between the two central characters is unmatched in any Australian love story before or since, with the possible exception of Tasmanian Richard Flanagan's mid-1990s classic Death of a Riverguide.

As well, the descriptions of this wondrous, yet brutal new world that unfold before the explorer resound to the reader: All that this man had not lived began to be written down. His failures took shape, but in flowers, in mountains, and in words of love, which he had never before expressed, and which, for that reason, had the truth of innocence.

Voss is a masterpiece; one to live with.