Black Oxen Book

Part fantasy, part mock-biography, part Latin American magic-realism, Elizabeth Knox's Black Oxen sweeps its characters and its audience up in an unsettling and enthralling journey through time and place. Carme Risk and her "not-quite-human" father contain and connect the action, becoming anchors through 50 years, three countries and numerous lives. Most of the people encountered are from Lequama, a Latin American country that had an inspirational revolution in the 1980s; the young, attractive leaders continue to live life on the edge, through love affairs and government posts, until the 2020s. Carme is in narrative therapy in California in 2022, relating in her own words her experiences in Lequama, about her step-mother, her half-sister, her disappearing father and her friends, who were all touched by the revolution. The breadth of years enables Knox to portray people and events through Carme's adolescent and mature eyes, reporting and reinterpreting violence, confusion, emotion and loss. The list of characters from each of the three locales before the novel has begun gives a hint of the magnitude of Knox's work. While Knox doesn't always engage fully with her characterisation and therefore with the reader, the story and characters are still disturbing and exhilarating enough to intrigue you and keep you reading. --Olivia DickinsonRead More