"Giraffe" by J.M. Ledgard *****

• Audiobook
• Scottish author
• Based on a true story
• Originally published 2006
• Review:  A powerful story....or allegory.....or work of historical fiction....how about all three?  Parallels are drawn between life under Communist rule in Eastern Europe and the lives of giraffes stolen from their natural habitat, trucked to zoo captivity, and then gunned down.  Which is historical and which is fiction?  Tough to say......read this but be prepared to agonize, empathize and hold your breath.  Moving, horrifying, and very well written.

"The Butler: A Witness to History" by Wil Haygood. ****

• Audiobook
• Originally published 2013
• US author
• Non-Fiction
• Review:  Quite good.  Parallel stories of father and son over time as they try to find their place in a world both full of and fighting racism. Based on the life of Cecil Gaines, a boy from a cotton farm who becomes a White House butler to several Presidents.

"Phineas Redux" by Anthony Trollope. ****

• Audiobook
• English author
• Originally published 1874
• Review:   The Palliser series continues in "Phineas Redux", and Phineas Finn continues to try and find his way through the maze of governmental politics.  This installment sees him come within an inch of his life, loved by two women, and revered solely for his legal status.  Trollope makes his ongoing statement regarding the absurdity of politics when Phineas is offerred a significant government position primarily because of his notoriety.  Oh Phineas, Phineas! Such an iconic, yet laughable and lovable character!

"Kangaroo" by D.H. Lawrence ***

• Summer Sub Club Read with Beth
• Originally published 1923
• English author
• Autobiographical
• p.19....It was biding its time with a terrible ageless watchfulness, waiting for a far-off end, watching the myriad intruding white men."....the West Australian Moon
•  p.31..."Why don't you see lovely things?     I do, by contrast.".....
• p.33....."When all is said and done, even money is not much good where there is no genuine culture.  Money is a means to rising to a higher, subtler, fuller state of consciousness or nothing.........It has no real magic in Australia."
• p.40..."There their two personalities met and joined, they were one, and pledged to permanent fidelity.  But that part n each of them which did not belong to the other was free from all inquiry or even from knowledge." - interesting marriage idea
• p.87....."It is so aboriginal, out of our ken, and it hangs back so aloof.......Somers always felt he looked at it through a cleft in the atmosphere; as one looks at one of the ugly-faced, distorted aborigines with his wonderful dark eyes that have such an incomprehensible ancient shine in them, across gulfs of unbridged centuries.......you get a sense of subtle, remote, formless beauty more poignant than anything ever experienced before."...about Australia
• p.107...."I'd rather die in a forlorn hope than drag my days out in a forlorn mope."....Love it!
• p.113...."But then he would come to himself and acknowledge that his marriage was the centre of his life the core, the root, however he like to put it: and this other business was the inevitable excursion into his future, into the unknown, onwards, which man by his nature was condemned to make, even if he lost his life a dozen times in it
• p.140....."Somers said it would reach a point of whiteness where the colours would break up, and she'd go out and find pieces of rainbow on the grass and bushes, instead of towels and shirts."....Harriet loved washing linens.......
• p.146..."The Colonies make for outwardness.  Everything is outward--like hollow stalks of corn.  The life makes this inevitable: all that struggle with bush and water and what-not, all th
  e mad struggle with the material necessities and conveniences--the inside soul just withers and goes into the outside and they're all just lusty robust stalks of people."
• Notes:
• For Somers, a dream was basically a fear's last jab, and it meant that the "danger had passed".
• Kangaroo sees himself as a Savior
• Kangaroo sets up an ant analogy for mankind.....I had trouble clearly understanding it....
• Review:   I would have to say that this is my least favorite D.H. Lawrence to date.  It is really more of a philosophical treatise on man's relationship to man and country than a novel.  Apparently it is strongly autobiographical.  The part I found most interesting was the period when the protagonist/Lawrence was found unfit to serve during WWI, yet was watched and suspected of being a spy making he and his wife feel unwelcome.  Those experiences flavored his time in Australia.  His descriptions of the coast and the outback of the country are lovely.  Clearly Lawrence struggled profoundly regarding the nature of his connection to other individuals and to society.  I am not sure he resolved the issues in the writing of this novel, rather he seemed to clarify the dilemma.