Richard Flanagan, Question 7

 

- This is a fascinating book. It's not just a memoir, it's a highly emotional mixture of passion, anger and reflection. I found it utterly absorbing. We're taken to Hiroshima and the atom bomb, the novels of H.G.Wells, the scientific geniuses Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein, Flanagan's mother and his former Prisoner of War father, and the colonial extermination of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. 

- There are echoes of Flanagan's previous novels throughout, mainly Death of a River Guide and brilliant The Narrow Road to the Deep North. 

- Over the course of his life certain events have become seared in his mind, and his telling of them incites immense anger which the reader can feel and share. 

- Like this one: At 8.15am on 6 August 1945, bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee released a lever 31,000 feet over Hiroshima, said 'Bomb away!, and forty-three seconds later 60,000 people died while eighty miles to the south my father, a near-naked slave labourer in his fourth year of captivity as a prisoner of war, continued with his gruelling work pushing carriages of rock up long dark tunnels that ran under the Inland Sea.

- And this one: a war of extermination, a war the Tasmanian Aboriginal people finally lost... Exiled to slums and an island reserve and silence, renamed and reviled as islanders and abos and boongs and half-castes and troublemakers, they could be called any vile humiliation imaginable but what they were: the original human inhabitants of the island. 

- We're taken back to the origin of nuclear physics and the splitting of the atom. The scientist Leo Szilard was terrified the world could be destroyed. He was inspired by the futuristic novels of H.G.Wells, and it seemed obvious that Nazi Germany would become the first country in the world to develop nuclear weapons. That was horrific. 

- Humanity was likely to be extinguished. 

- And as for bomber Thomas Ferebee, look at the precision aerial bombing of France during the war, and the carpet bombing of Vietnam twenty years later. Many more thousands of people died than in Hiroshima. Ferebee was involved in both. Our American hero. 

- Flanagan takes us to his awakening as a young student in Oxford. The world there was grey… dreary and dispirited… where mediocrity was a virtue called tradition...The English were Martians. ‘Dirty little East End Jew. Go home to the colonies, convict. Women smell of slime, don’t you think? Hey, Paki - oi! Fif-faf-fuddle!' That was the true language of Oxford, its necessary language of hate.

- The final chapter is an exquisite telling of his near drowning in a kayak in the Franklin River. He was only twenty one and came very close to death. But, miraculously, he survived through the help of a courageous friend. He wasn't extinguished. As the world itself has so far survived. 

- And, by the way, his father lived until he was ninety-four. 

- Flanagan has written a thoroughly inspiring work. Brilliant. 

Inga Simpson, The Thinning

 

- It took me a while to comprehend what on earth Inga Simpson was on about in this new novel. There are some very strange and seemingly meaningless elements, and I was tempted to bail. Thankfully, I didn't. I started over again and read it twice. And was captivated. 

- It's set in the future, and the earth has been wrecked by climate change, ecological destruction, authoritarian regimentation, and abusive control of citizens and their lives. 

- A new subspecies of humans has emerged, called the Incompletes. They are infertile, but have higher levels of sensory perception. And they are disliked by other people. 

- The main character is Fin, a young woman whose father was a celebrated astronomer, and whose mother an astrophotographer. They join a small band of colleagues and become outliers, living off the grid. 

- Simpson keeps us in the dark on so many details, which I found frustrating. What year is it? How’s the earth’s population faring? Where did these Incompletes come from? And why? 

- But as the novel progresses in the second half, it gets far more dramatic and interesting, and in fact spellbinding. A full eclipse of the sun looms, and crowds of people gather in parks and ranges, determined to get the best viewing positions. What they don't know is that the astronomer outliers have a plan that will impact planet earth radically. They are determined to liberate humanity, whatever it takes - destroy space junk, power stations, gas wells, destructive mining operations, and reclaim the land by returning it to an inland sea. 

- As Fin reflects prior to the eclipse: What if the thresholds I long to cross are not portals to another dimension, but the capacity to fully inhabit our own? A way of circling back, into ourselves. Our best selves. What if we could see a way to make a new world, where all beings, no matter how fragile, could thrive?

- So take it slowly at first and relish Simpson's beautiful prose and love of the natural world. You will become absorbed. 

Iain Ryan, The Dream

 

- This new novel from Iain Ryan, the second in his promised four part series on Gold Coast corruption in the 1980's, is, unfortunately, a total disaster - unlike the first in the series, The Strip, which was brilliant in every way. 

- It's full of very unlikable characters, known at the time as the 'white shoe brigade'. They were ugly abusive thugs and criminals who dominated business development and the underworld. The police higher-ups were also involved. The Minister overseeing every aspect of it was Russ Hinze, a mover and shaker in the Bjelke-Petersen government. 

- In Ryan's novel they are financing and constructing Fantasyland, a huge theme park (presumably Dreamworld). There is cocaine, weed, and speed everywhere. And porn, whores and constant drinking. 

- Ryan immerses us in this ugliness. The story slowly gets richer and richer but there are so many characters who constantly pop up that you can't help but lose the thread. (A 'Cast of Characters' would have helped). As Bruno, the detective constable investigating the case reflects at one point: ‘Too many grim details circle this case. There’s a lot of blood and bad energy. The chain of events are fucking disastrous: a dead family, dead bank tellers, dirty cops, illicit porn, a motel room beheading. What is this?’.

- The storyline is way too complex. Baddies in every nook and cranny, all linked in mysterious ways. Some are gay, but homosexuality was a crime in the eighties. A few old men have authority over it all but they're obnoxious in the extreme. 

- I was hoping for a resolution that was emotionally satisfying, but it didn't emerge. It just got sillier. Dead bodies everywhere. 

- At least Ryan has documented how vulgar and corrupt the Gold Coast entrepreneurs, the police and the Queensland government were at the time. 

Emma Darragh, Thanks For Having Me

- This novel won this year's Readings Prize for fiction. Frankly, I don't know why. 

- It's about everyday family life in the working class burbs (we're in Wollongong) and has a distinct Young Adult feel, although technically it's not a YA book (there's too much sex). It's a chaotic jumbled up mix of kids, teens, sisters, mothers, fathers, rabbits, parties, sex, pregnancies, cassettes, Walkmans, 70’s pop stars, and dopey commercial TV shows.

- It spans four generations, from the mid-1900s to today. The main focus is on mothers and their daughters, and the mothers have a habit of deserting their husbands and kids when they simply can't take it anymore. 

- Vivian's life as a child, teen and mother is central. She hasn’t spoken to her own mother in years. Her experience of raising her baby, Evie, who won’t sleep, is the best part of the novel in my view. It's a dramatic and credible rendering and so well written. As a young adult Viv was a 'party girl'. A decade later, in an unhappy marriage, she leaves home, just like her own mother, and often considers suicide. 

- We spend a few chapters with the teenage Evie and her sister and school friends as they experience their sexual awakening. It's graphic. They are desperate to see an erect dick. 

- We also spend a lot of time reading about alcohol. On virtually every page. 

- Oddly, the boyfriends and husbands are not central to the tale, but they seem nice and normal and there's not a hint of abuse, sexual or otherwise. 

- All the painful drama belongs to motherhood. 

Samantha Harvey, Orbital

 

- This novel won this year's Booker Prize. It's certainly a worthy winner. It's a breathtaking, visionary, deep view of planet earth and the humans who live on it. 

- Six astronauts from different countries - Roman, Shaun, Chie, Pietro, Nell and Anton - are circling planet earth in a spacecraft. Their job is to tend to all sorts of scientific stuff, which they assiduously do. They also reflect on their families, personal relationships, achievements and ambitions. They are not so special. They are normal human beings. They circle the earth sixteen times a day. They are in awe of its stunning beauty. 

- Samantha Harvey's prose is beautifully poetic, and its written with passion and anger. The astronauts are in awe of their planet and continually reflect on its beauty, geography, colours, and weather systems - 'just a giddy mass of waltzing things'. And its headlong journey to destruction. 

- It's a 137 page short novel, but the small print and dense prose mean it can’t be read quickly. I had to read sentences and paragraphs a few times to let them sink in. It's certainly worth the effort. 

- They see a huge typhoon developing near the Philippines ‘..a charging force closing in on land’. They can see how destructive it will be.

- Harvey confronts us with all sorts of challenges. ..only white American men have gone to the moon - this is what the world is, a playground for men, a laboratory for men; OK, we’re alone, so be it; trying to go where the universe doesn’t want you when there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does; the atom bomb - be afraid my child of what a human can do - you must never forget the price humanity pays for its moments of glory; This thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness…Can humans not find peace with one another? With the earth? Can we not stop tyrannising and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend? Every swirling neon or red algae bloom…every retreating glacier…every mound laid newly bare…every scorched and blazing forest…every shrinking ice sheet. 

- They come to see the politics of want. The politics of growing and getting, a billion extrapolations of the urge for more, that's what they begin to see when they look down. They don't even need to look down since they, too, are part of those extrapolations, they more than anyone - on their rocket whose boosters at lift-off burn the fuel of a millions cars.

The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.

Percival Everett, James

 

- Most reviewers and literary critics highly anticipated this superb novel would win this year's Booker Prize but it didn't. Perhaps because it's not really original but a reworking of Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

- Unlike Twain Everett digs deep into the cruelty of slavery. And his narrator is not Huck but Jim, Huck's black companion and an escaping slave. Huck is the supporting character. James is the lead. It's a highly dramatic story, with action aplenty. 

- James and his slave friends speak to each other in perfect English, but in ‘the correct incorrect grammar’ to their white masters, because the whites need to ‘feel superior’. James gives the children language lessons: Let’s try some situational translations...'And the better they feel, the safer we are’ becomes Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be. He is highly intelligent and literate, having taught himself from reading books in his former owner Judge Thatcher’s extensive library. He dreams of Voltaire and his liberal views on racism and ‘hierarchy’.

- James and Huck are real friends. Huck is running away from his abusive father, and James has to leave his wife and daughter and hide away because Miss Watson, his owner, wants to sell him to a man in New Orleans.

- On their journey down the Mississippi river in various stolen canoes and hastily thrown together rafts they meet plenty of strange and dangerous characters. Crooks and liars posing as the 'King of France' and the 'Duke of Bridgewater'; the 'Virginia Minstrels', a group of singers in blackface; Henderson the repeat rapist of young black girls; a steamer full of white thrill-seekers powered by a starving young black man shovelling coal into the furnace 24/7. 

- The word 'nigger' is common parlance. When Twain's original novel was published in 1884, after the civil war, many critics condemned it for frequently using this horrific word. In fact even today many school libraries refuse to hold it, accusing it, ironically, of racism. What Everett has done in his new version is to openly confront the real ugliness of racism at its core. It's a confronting read, and very powerful indeed.

 

Jock Serong, Cherrywood

 

-A brilliantly written but ultimately tedious novel. While the characters are real and attractive, the dominant story is juvenile and silly. As a minor character observes at some point: it's an Enid Blyton, Jack and the Beanstalk tale. 

- There are two time frames. The first is a century ago, in the early 1900’s. The second is in 1993. An Englishman, Thomas Wrenfether, has inherited a fortune from his wealthy parents, and is persuaded by a business colleague to invest in a newly discovered European timber called cherrywood. He could ship it to Melbourne and build a new type of ship, a paddlesteamer. Once in Melbourne he hires the right builders, carpenters and other crewmen, and fulfils his dream. Until the ship's launch. 

- 1993 in Melbourne we meet Martha, a formidable young lawyer. She's frustrated at work, and yearns for something far more meaningful. One night in Fitzroy she happens upon a small pub called the Cherrywood, and becomes immediately attracted to the young barman. She wants to return but, surprisingly, can't find it. Here's where the Disney-like fantasy element begins. 

- I started to get Serong's point. Successful people in their daily work worlds can be deeply confused, unstable and unsettled, and it frequently doesn't end well. 'The grounded life...doesn't satisfy'. He has also written a love paean to Fitzroy. There are connections to ancient histories and English-named streets, and people to old families. When reality is harsh we create our own haven. Our imaginations and creative sensibilities save us. Like the concept of ‘salvation’.

- ‘How is the irrational alternative world I’m inhabiting any more batshit crazy than Christianity, or Thatcherism, or betting on greyhounds?’ Martha proclaims at one point. 

- As the novel proceeds the history and real identity of the pub becomes clear. Unfortunately it's a magical tale that becomes increasingly silly and meaningless, and goes on and on and on...

- So half good, half bad.