The Taste of Apple

by James Laidler, Don Stewart

Overview

Winner, IP Picks Best First Book, 2010

Pedro Jones is lost. Abandoned by his father and forced into commission housing with his Filipino immigrant mother, the future seems bleak.

But when Pedro meets the 'mad' street busker, Johnny Lazzaro, and gets involved with the East Timor freedom movement, life takes an unexpected detour through the uncharted backblocks of the human heart.

James Laidler deftly crafts a cast of vivid characters
in this gritty story of self discovery, justice and belonging.

The taste of apple comes as a physical book and as an enhanced multimedia CD, with a complete eBook of the novel, linking to brilliant music and spoken word tracks, or it can play on portable CD/DVD players like a regular music CD. It's now available for digital download as an eBook and by track or album for the audio elements of the work.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014735735
Publisher:	IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
Publication date:	06/21/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

James Laidler is an emerging writer, poet and spoken word performer from country Victoria. In 2009, James made the Victorian State finals of the Australian Poetry Slam Competition. James' work has been featured on Writer's Radio, ABC Radio National and Melbourne's RRR. Selections of his writings have also been published in the literary journals: Going Down Swinging, Cordite, Poetica Christi, Poetry Matters and Peril.

In 2010, James' poetry monologue, "Before the Fall", was sponsored by The Australian Poetry Centre and performed on stage at the Melbourne Writer's Festival.

In terms of literary success, James has won the TNT Mail Scholarships Award in both 2001 & 2002, placed second in the 2009 FAW Shoalhaven Literary Awards, was been highly commended in the 2009 CJ Dennis Literary and Poetica Christi Awards, and was shortlisted for 2009 Olvar Woods Fellowship Award.

James lives in Warrnambool, Victoria, where he divides his time between writing his second novel, teaching and being a loving father to his two beautiful boys.

Don Stewart is a musician, composer, producer and recording engineer from country Victoria. With his two bands Dalriada and Aniar, Don has performed at many of Australia's major music festivals and been a finalist in the Lawson-Patterson song writing award at the Port Fairy Folk Festival. Don lives in Warrnambool, Victoria with his family. Don worked closely with James in composing and producing the music for this hybrid work.

Editorial Reviews

This is a polished vision, a story of heart told through a language rich for the senses. Accompanied by lush audio tracks, Laidler emerges as both a talented writer and spoken word artist. An impressive debut that is ripe for the picking.

Nathan Curnow

A fresh representation of a lost teen who finds a sense of identity and belonging in a world of concrete, steel and broken relationships. Laidler's debut novel, The Taste of Apple, is a vivid and powerful verse-narrative that captures the raw emotions of two adolescents who are mired in a world of social injustice and experiences of paternal abandonment.

The novel explores hugely controversial issues within Australia: the plight of the East Timorese Asylum Seekers in the late 1990s...

Emma Willis

The Taste of Apple is more than domestic drama. It scrutinises questions of identity, the pain of abandonment, and the search for belonging, and follows Pedro's involvement with the East Timor Freedom Movement.

Deb Matthews-Zott

t all comes together and works superbly. While there are many poems in this novel that could confidently stand alone in an anthology and that are worth spending longer with (independent of what's happening to Pedro Jones), the intent of a verse novel is that the poems create a unity in the telling of a bigger story – that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – and this, ultimately, is the success of The Taste of Apple.

Paul Burman