Dark of night book cover3/2/2024 While it’s clear that the author writes from her own experience with being biracial, the discrimination against the protagonist doesn’t have a clear reason that makes sense within this fantasy world. Why are Reapers only white people? Why is having black hair only associated with Asians? Why does it seem like the main character is the *only* mixed Reaper to ever exist in this book, considering that Reapers live for centuries of years and would have surely reproduced with different races by now? And why is being mixed looked down upon in this society? (There was a throwaway line about how Reapers are more archaic *because* they have lived for so long, but this still feels like a stretch.) The world-building feels incomplete and not fully thought out, especially when it deals with race. I was eager to rate this 4 stars, but as I kept reading, I found too many issues that dropped it down to 3. Seeing the different yokai that the protagonist has to face throughout the book was fun as well! And though the stories read as tinged with sadness, as one of his protagonists, Little Red, says in the story from which the collection takes its title: ‘What’s wrong with sad stories? The world is always sad’.Really enjoyed the descriptive writing, dark atmosphere, and concept of Reapers, especially with how they can "manipulate" time and all the imagery that comes with using those powers. We are invited to feel what the characters in these stories do. Whenever we are taken to a dark place, Birch’s protagonists find support in each other, their families, their neighbourhoods. What brings these disparate characters and stories together is the focus on the role of community and family in our lives. Here are a few that resonated with me: In ‘Starman’ we follow two teenagers and their clumsy first attempts at courtship, and see how it doesn’t take much more than a shared interest in music to establish a strong connection in ‘Bobby Moses’ we witness an Aboriginal man returning to his people’s Country, and the suspicion with which he and the colonial residents of the land regard each other in ‘Afterlife’ we join a brother and a sister in clearing out their deceased older brother’s flat, while learning of his importance to his community. The stories in this collection inhabit many different lives. At the end of the day, these stories teach us that despite where we are, the present needn’t determine the future.Īt the end of the day, these stories teach us that despite where we are, the present needn’t determine the future. And for every downtrodden, beaten down protagonist, Birch offers some measure of hope. They present abuse and violence for what they are, but in equal measure, they also show that the solution to these things require human connection and care. And to be fair, the stories don’t shy away from ugly topics. Birch shows precisely the depth and poetry in the lives of the downtrodden that Pekar wanted to write about.īirch’s version of realism gives voice to those who don’t have much and shows beauty where an outside observer might find it lacking. The stories in Dark as Last Night are those of people often invisible to mainstream eyes. I’m not sure if Birch ever read Pekar, but I feel he would agree with Pekar’s literary motto. Normal people’s lives, Pekar says, are as full of beauty, poetry, passion, and life as those of heroes. Reading this set of stories prompted me to remember the American writer Harvey Pekar, who in one of his semi-autobiographical American Splendor comic books confesses to a friend that he wishes to tell everyday people’s stories. Tony Birch’s latest book, Dark as Last Night, is a wide-ranging collection of short stories set across Australian neighbourhoods, the outback, and inside homes both welcoming and tragic.
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