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Hopefully this is a new series that will grow
Book Review
By Derryll White
Brady, John (2006). Poacher’s Road.
This is an interesting, exploratory novel. John Brady made his name with his Matt Minogue novels, thoroughly exploring and documenting the Irish countryside and the politics it contained. The series is strong, successful and inseparably tied to Irish-Canadian Brady.
‘Poacher’s Road’ not only introduces a new character with Inspektor Felix Kimmel – it also explores a whole new countryside, the high mountain areas of Austria. This is the region that gave us Arnold Shwarzenegger the author points out.
This is Europe after the Croatian War of Independence. The dreck of the uncivilized world has been unleashed and is exploiting the old fears and the quiet, rural people. Brady does an excellent job of examining the fall-out and its impacts. Hopefully, this is a new series that will grow and examine that troubled area.
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Excerpts from the novel:
CANADIAN CONTENT – “I did it for a while,” he said. “But you’ve got to hand it to Stronach. Goes to Canada with his arse out of his pants, and now look. Billions. You know his wife’s people still live in town here, the mother and all?’
EXTREMISM – “I will say one thing though. I’m only telling you this because it is advice for the next generation, for when you start your family. That crap has an effect on a family for a long, long time. Just remember that.”
“What does? I don’t get it.”
His grandfather waved his arms about.
“Call it something, I don’t know – this fanaticism. Delusions, fairy-tale rubbish that ended up with, well, war. When you think about it, Christ! Their Germanic this and their Germanic that, and all the legends and crap they came up with. Bogeymen, and Wotan for God’s sake. Superstitious nonsense – and this in a country that does science and music the best in the world? You should empty your head of this stuff. It’s like a snake or something, the more you look at it, the more it…”
LIFE – “Every road in life should have its scenic routes. The autobahn is direct and fast of course, but it is on the byroads up in God’s country that one can savour real life.”
THE CHURCH – “This was only shortly before, well, you know. I think people should get to an age and they look over their shoulder, and they get curious. If you ask me, that’s useless. I am a farmer. I get older, slower, stupider, happier. Then comes “freedom.” I used to worry when I was a kid, about hell and that, but I know different now. God could be a woman. And a fine one too! That fear shit they threw at us, to keep us in line … a crime.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
