Review of a book Parramatta River Talks

As last calendar year came to a conclusion I read a novel, The Last Ten Seconds, that was full of error. It was a crime novel. The best of the errors had the main character 'whispering determinedly'. That's like saying 'yelling passively' or 'singing silently'.

Then along comes 'Parramatta River Talks' by Ana Calero. The novel is a family saga from early colonisation of Sydney through to 1957. The reader follows the lives of the O'Grady family.

I enjoyed the novel. The novels worth is in its illustration of the importance of the river to the people of Parramatta. The author offers a valuable account of how the river was vital to both white settlers from England and the aboriginal Australians. 

Indeed, the novel is timely to a campaign to make Paramatta River swimmable again. 

Where he crime novel's various errors were largely at the end of the novel, 'Parramatta River Talks' gets off to a good start on the front cover. For the by-line has one too many words:

Error 1; front cover, delete the word 'for': "The rich and involving saga of a river and the O'Grady family over for four generations".    

And, the errors continue: Error 2; page 5, delete 'mean' and substitute in 'man': "The old mean looked at the river ..."

Error 3; page 8, misspelling of 'and': "After Arafura ad Colebee, had seen..." 

Error 4; page 99, misspelling of 'inclined': "not that I am being racist but because of what was taken I am inclines to believe..."

Error 5; page 99, a dog which is firstly referred to as 'he' is then reduced to 'it': "The saw 'Jumper' the dog as he lay still and quietly behind the wall of the barn. As they looked closer, they realised it was not dead".

Error 6; page 99 from within the same text immediately above where "still and quietly" mixes an adjective and an adverb where two adjectives should have been used: "still and quiet".

Error 7 and 8; page 100 where 'guest' should be the plural 'guests' and a comma should follow 'children'. So: "The guest, including the children danced all night long" should be: "The guests, including the children, danced all night long".

I do not wish to list more than eight errors yet there is one sentence that warrants a mention. I'll leave my reader to spot and count the errors, from page 104:

"Without having announced to the family of the death, he just appeared, and without much preamble, told the family in a few words of the Cholera, deaths, asked to have the coffins buried at the family cemetery." 

Shalom,

Ozhamada

#parramatta #book #reading #read #crime #agreatread #books #sydney #aboriginal #Spelling #Correction