The Cleanskin Paperback – 17 Sept. 2016

I’m lucky enough to have already read The Cleanskin and it’s my book of the year. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s one of the most accomplished and moving novels about Australia that I have read. It speaks the truth about what trauma can do to people, down through the generations. It’s a book about how the past affects us and lives through us, and what consequences really mean and look like in someone’s life and someone’s family. It tackles the impact of sectarianism in Ireland and the UK, and how that has affected us here in Australia. How that conflict is deeply ingrained in our country’s roots and in many of our own ancestries.It is a big book, and an important book, but it’s also a very human, funny and deeply moving book.Halley is one of the most subtle, well-written and wonderful female protagonists I have ever had the pleasure of reading a novel about. I find some female protagonists too warm and perfect and prim – completely unrealistic and way too heartwarming. I don’t want to receive a pep-talk, I want to read a really good novel. Flawed, intelligent, heroic, passionate, real ¬– Halley is a true original.One of Laura Bloom’s many strengths is that she is able to write about both women and men, and from both points of view, with great skill, subtlety and reach. Like in her last novel, In The Mood, her male characters are just as rich, multi-faceted and human as the women characters she creates. Aidan provides a truly memorable and moving counterpoint to Halley throughout the novel.I thoroughly recommend The Cleanskin – it’s destined to be an Australian classic.