peteg's blog - noise - books - 2019 03 22 McGahan WondersOfAGodlessWorld

Andrew McGahan: Wonders of a Godless World.

Fri, Mar 22, 2019./noise/books | Link

Another dead tree from the Georges River Library at Hurstville. This is McGahan's final (adult/literary) novel from 2009; for the next decade he wrote young adult fiction. I might unkindly suggest that he should have started sooner. Here we get some strange happenings in a madhouse/hospital on an island, once again recounted in first person, this time by an orphan. She's mentally underdeveloped but in fine tune with the planet. A devilish though physically inert man arrives and turns her world upside down. Together they embark on some dubious adventures and other unnamed characters cop it in the neck. Much hand wringing ensues before a very tidy ending. Then again, the orphan might be an unreliable narrator! The structure, metaphor and reasoning are cliched and tedious. Most reviews out there suggest there was more structure, metaphor and reasoning that I didn't get, but are very short on specifics.