Orpheus Lost
Finished Janette Turner Hospital's latest novel, Orpheus Lost, on Saturday, and am still thinking about it two days later. It's a great read - an imaginative reworking of the Orpheus myth against a backdrop of current-day terrorism. It has lovely quirky characters, beautiful but highly readable prose, and a story that is told from multiple points of view, but manages to stay coherent and whole.
And like her earlier Due Preparations for the Plague, rather than slowing down towards the end, Orpheus Lost seems to actually accelerate, finishing with an emotional punch that left me satisfied but also slightly shell-shocked. So it's a compelling read, but it's not light material, with happiness and tragedy portrayed as flipsides of the same love, particularly in a complicated and neurotic world. Orpheus was a tragedy, after all.
Highly recommended.
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