I started Alice Pung's new book Her Father's Daughter on Sunday and have been taking every chance I get (between work & other distractions) to open up the covers and get back into the story. It's a quasi autobiography about Alice that basically picks up where her first book Unpolished Gem left off.
Alice is now in her early 20s and gently trying move away, emotionally and out of her parents house so she can experience life for herself. Her father is especially overprotective - a former refugee from Cambodia - he's witnessed and experienced some horrendous violence at the hand of the Black Bandits, part of Pol Pot's killing fields. He only wants what's best for his family but it's hard for him to watch his children grow up and make their own way in the world.
I'm up to a chapter that started off set in contemporary Melbourne but now looks as if it might be headed in a much darker direction. At this point I'm totally enthralled by Pung's restrained and elegant prose. She takes me along with her with every page. It's such a good feeling when you get swept up in a book. Lead on...
Stay and defend
Father-
His daughter is coming home. Well, not exactly home, but back to Australia. It panics him whenever any of his children are far away. She has been gone nearly three months - the first time she has lived outside the country.
