The Tengu: Tales from the Temple of Ordinary Terrors

The Tengu: Tales from the Temple of Ordinary Terrors

$29.95 AUD $15.00 AUD

Availability: in stock at our Melbourne warehouse.

Condition: SECONDHAND

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Trevor Hay

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 342


In 2019 Roy, a retired librarian living alone in dwindling bushland on the outskirts of Melbourne, is lured out of his shell by his neighbours, two migrant Chinese families who run a motel and restaurant. With other neighbours and guests, they get together regularly for Friday Chinese banquets, retiring for after-dinner ghost stories to an old Presbyterian church among the gums behind the restaurant - 'The Temple of Ordinary Terrors'. He records the passage of the year in a journal that includes notes from his intercultural story-telling group. He finds that mortals, and even some part-human, part-goblin beings, like the Japanese tengu, inhabit a zone somewhere between the terrors of the supernatural world, depicted in literature and art, and the 'ordinary' terrors of the natural, 'real' world. In the process Roy finds a special friend and ultimately exorcises the ghost of his own loneliness, which he has been inclined to idealise as solitude.



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Description
NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Trevor Hay

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 342


In 2019 Roy, a retired librarian living alone in dwindling bushland on the outskirts of Melbourne, is lured out of his shell by his neighbours, two migrant Chinese families who run a motel and restaurant. With other neighbours and guests, they get together regularly for Friday Chinese banquets, retiring for after-dinner ghost stories to an old Presbyterian church among the gums behind the restaurant - 'The Temple of Ordinary Terrors'. He records the passage of the year in a journal that includes notes from his intercultural story-telling group. He finds that mortals, and even some part-human, part-goblin beings, like the Japanese tengu, inhabit a zone somewhere between the terrors of the supernatural world, depicted in literature and art, and the 'ordinary' terrors of the natural, 'real' world. In the process Roy finds a special friend and ultimately exorcises the ghost of his own loneliness, which he has been inclined to idealise as solitude.