Kassia Klinger Reviews Bobish

Klinger Ball LE P&W Feb 2023

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2023

Book review of Magdalena Ball’s Bobish by Kassia Klinger.
Puncher & Wattmann, ISBN: 9781925571601, Paperback, Jan 2023, 154 pages.
Book can be purchased in Australia from the publisher: https://puncherandwattmann.com/product/bobish/
From online bookstores anywhere in the world – Amazon,   Barnes & Noble.


Bobish by Maggie Ball LiveBobish is the epic life story of Rebecca a migrant-girl. Torn from fear-ridden Eastern Europe she is swept along, across mountainous waves to an unknown future in the land of the free.  It could be a rags to riches story… instead it’s a life of horror, pain, neglect and abuse; yet despite dark-forces buffeting this young hopeful’s life, love shines eternal. Below crushing poverty Rebecca’s life is rich in language, memory and culture.

Ball has written a short and not so sweet love-story to her great grandmother. Ball explores the journey from grimy villages filled with anti-semitism in the old country to the bustle and exploitation of the new, York early in the 1900s. It paints her mother’s mother’s mother Rebecca full of beauty, wonder and strength. While sparse of word it is evocative. Bobish plumbs the depth of belonging, dislocation and longing. Ball brings sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touch into focus – sometimes with a thud.

Bobish is brilliant. A short life in six acts, sixty-four poems filling the void and not a single forced rhyme. Bobish is beautiful. A great achievement.


© Kassia Klinger 

Kassia Klinger is an author, advocate and presenter. She is the author of the narrative non-fiction Confessions of ethical investing (2014) and op-ed Red Zone Lives Matter (2018). In recent years Kassia has penned two novels plus two short stories, all based on true stories. Her first novel is set on a hippy commune in 1970s Nimbin and the other during recent times in The Hunter Valley. Visit: https://www.kassiaklinger.com

Magdalena Ball was born in New York City, and has lived in Australia for over three decades. She is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, VP of Flying Island Poetry Community, and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader. Her stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, and runs a podcast of writer interviews called Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more at her website: www.magdalenaball.com

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