Michelle de Kretser, The Life to Come

- 'a professor who would admit to having once read an Australian novel...' cheap shot; cliched. In fact Australian literature seems not to be read by anyone. Which is manifestly untrue.
- more cliched Australianisms: 'Vegemite toast'; Milo;
- 'big juicy kangaroo steaks'. FFS! 
- 'monolingual Australians' 
- page 50 and I'm finding this book exquisitely boring. The characters aren't interesting at all. Nothing is happening.
- elements of quirkiness aren't enough. How about a few deaths? A tragedy? Some violence? An unexpected suicide? Anything to get this thing going. 
- Ash and Cassie become far more interesting but then, without real reason, they split up. Very little emotional depth to their characters. 
- the author seems anti-Australian and pro-Sri Lankan, pro-European. The constant putting down of Australian life and suburbia is so predictable and tired.
- 'It was a wayward sort of Sunday with a trembly blue sky'. (p.112). ?? The constant choice of inappropriate words simply because they sound edgy and poetic.
- so many minor characters introduced to 'paint' a life. But it makes very tedious reading. 
- Bailing on page 112.

Rachel Cusk, Kudos

- Cusk’s style as an objective observer, particularly her ability to render conversations and everyday domestic stuff she hears and sees, is sublime. The stories are interesting and ordinary at the same time, and the prose sparkles. 
- Her method is observation not interpretation, and raises the question as to the extent of any critique that might be going on. The meetings are presented as serendipitous but they are obviously not. This is fiction and the author is in full control. 
- There are no chapters, no parts. It’s one continuous listening and telling, with a fair bit of mansplaining and self-aggrandisement. Many of the stories are personal, about marriages, children and family dramas. I haven't done an exact count, but my sense is that most of the women are sympathetic while most of the men are misogynist.
- the single frustration I have with Cusk’s ‘novels’ is their resemblance to short story collections slung together by a slight and artificial connecting story line. In this novel it’s a weekend away to attend a writers festival. Even the location is not disclosed (possibly Portugal - there are tarts!). That’s not a sufficient enough hook. And most of the characters are obsessives and stunning bores.
- This is a ‘non-novel’. Deliberately so. One character, Sophia, says this about a prize-winning novelist Luis’ subjects:
‘Domesticity, Sophia said very earnestly, and the ordinary life of the suburbs, the ordinary men and women and children who live there. These were things, she reiterated, that most writers would consider to be beneath them, pursuing instead the fantastical or the noteworthy, gathering around themes of public importance in the hope, she didn’t doubt, of increasing their own importance by doing so. Yet Luis had trounced them all with his simplicity, his honesty, his reverence for reality’.
- But in Kudos the ‘realism’ isn’t really real at all. The very articulate and sophisticated tales and confessions of the story tellers are fictional constructions. They don’t reflect real conversations. It’s artifice.
- One male character is a literary critic. His views on the ‘literature of negativity’ and the ‘triumph of the second-rate, the dishonest, the ignorant’ are telling. ‘He had deduced from my work that if I had an imagination I had the sense to keep it well concealed’. This surely is Cusk’s self-assessment. 
- The final image of the huge black bearded naked man urinating into the water near where Faye had entered is classic male arrogance.
- There is a strong dimension of female subjugation throughout. This is Cusk's essential point.

Rick Morton, One Hundred Years of Dirt.

              

- This memoir has got rave reviews all over the place but I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly because it’s both exceptionally good and too often mundane and annoying. 
- The early chapters are a beautifully written, often heartbreaking, story of a dysfunctional family going back generations and living on a huge cattle station in the far southwest of Queensland. His father and grandfather were violent, abusive men. His mother suffered terribly, and his brother nearly died from severe burns and later became hopelessly addicted to drugs.
- But then the focus changes just to him and the story pales into just another coming of age drama, and not a very good one. The chapters on his severe anxiety issues, his depression and one or two rather lame suicide attempts lack power. He comes across as self-preoccupied and indulgent. Sure, it’s honest and raw, but it’s also immature and underdone. 
- His struggle with disclosing his homosexuality to family and friends feels dated. He’s in his late twenties in the mid 2010’s for god sake. It shouldn’t be that hard.
- There’s a hint of self-dramatisation and I found it off-putting. There’s nothing terribly exciting about a young man from a difficult and impoverished family landing a job as a journalist in a country newspaper. 
- The book is fleshed out with constant references to research of one sort or another. It’s massively overdone and seems to be included just to lend weight to a pretty lightweight narrative. He’s not an expert in anything after all. Take this sentence as an example: ‘Read into it what you will, but the proportion of journalists who described their personal politics as ‘left of centre’ rose over the two decades (1992-2013) from 39 per cent to 51 percent’. Wow, who’d have thought.
- On commenting on current political debates in this country Morton shows his loyalties - to his right of centre Newscorp masters. His views reflect their shallow ‘anti elite’ flavour (which he later walks back from) but he’s all over the place. Try to make any sense at all of this sentence: ‘One of the major failings of progressive politics in Australia, indeed around the world, is a preoccupation with the grievances of the middle class. Put another way, this brand of politics prioritises the woe of people who can afford to worry about anything other than paying the bills and feeding themselves’. So conservative parties with their miserable expenditure cutbacks at every turn are pro-poor?
- We’re supposed to sympathise with his financial problems as a young cadet journalist. As a struggling millennial he's hardly unique. He’s using his poor family status as a brand and trading on that. As he continually reminds us, he got his dream job at a young age and he's well paid.
- Yes, there’s the expected swipe against Fairfax and a positive nod to Chris Mitchell, former editor of the Australian. 
- The book is thin. He’s essentially a mummy’s boy. There are far more interesting, enlightening and inspiring personal stories out there that are more worth your time.

Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains.

- This is not an angry voice condemning Australians and their anti boat-people prejudices and policies. It does not descend to that ordinary political level.
- It is a far more profound story of the pain and horror our nation has inflicted on the refugees we’ve imprisoned on Manus Island. It simply records the facts, firstly of the boat journey from Indonesia and then of the realities of life on Manus.
- It’s beautifully written in lyrical and often poetic prose. And Boochani as narrator maintains a distance that enables him to describe the prisoners and their captors, and the reality of life on Manus objectively, insightfully and sympathetically. 
- This book is not propelled by anger, but by a larger vision of captivity and hopelessness, and what that means for humans and their relationships with each other.
- There are long chapters on the kitchens and the food offered, the medical facilities (so-called), the endless queues for basics like cigarettes, the horrific and putrid toilet facilities, the utterly inadequate and crowded sleeping quarters, the constant power outages, the oppressive heat and humidity, the plague of mosquitoes, and more.
- And Boochani is a master at describing the various characters that populate the prison and define it, and how they cope or not (there are many tragic suicides). 
- It reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle and other classic prison narratives. The desiccated bureaucracy of these places, verging on the comic. George Orwell also came to mind. The petty absurdity and cruel minutia of authoritarian systems. 
- I found this book very difficult to read. Manus and Nauru define the ugly dimension of the Australian character. It rubbed my nose in it and made me ashamed. But it’s a book that will undoubtedly become a classic of Australian literature. And how ironic is that - written by an author who can never set foot in the country let alone become a citizen. 

Chris Hammer, Scrublands

- Hooks you from the start. A mass murder by a young priest. Cool.
- Well written - the author is a long time journalist after all. And this is a story of journalism as much as anything else. The moral quandaries good professional journalists often face in attempting to uncover the facts and do justice to the story, while under pressure to meet a deadline. It's also a contest between Fairfax and Channel ten - quality and tabloid.
- Very well paced. As the plot thickens the unsophisticated and provincial town’s inhabitants get much more interesting and intriguing. And the author has, rather appropriately, bestowed on them colourful monikers: Mandalay Blonde, Harley Snouch, Byron Swift, Doug Thunkleton, Codger Harris, D’Arcy Defoe, Winifred Barbicombe and more. It’s straight out of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. 
- There’s a supremely well written bushfire sequence. Absolutely brings home the horror of being caught in the middle of such a ferocious disaster.
- And country NSW is in the middle of a devastating drought. A narrative for our times. 
- By the end it’s become a quite complicated story, with many elements and players interlocking. But the resolution is absolutely right and gratifying. 
- An absorbing read. 

Bernard Keane, The Mess We’re In

- This is simply excellent. The first chapter’s overview is superbly done. A real, substantial vision is very clearly articulated. 
- Keane can write clearly because he always thinks clearly. Easily the best journalist in the country, despite being a ‘confirmed grump’. (He’s currently Crikey’s politics editor). He’s a master in the art of constructing fluid, well balanced sentences that make for easy reading. 
- He is across all sorts of primary sources, and doesn’t recycle other journalists’ tired cliches and mantras.
- The book is packed with stats, facts and global data. It’s a compendium - essential anchoring in these ‘fake news’ times. Better than Bell & Keating’s Fair Share because it’s eminently readable (although Fair Share, despite being a tedious read, was excellent too). 
- It’s decidedly non-partisan. Its analysis is way deeper than the empty, passing skirmishes that dog our current debate. 
- Comprehensive critiques of neo-liberalism, modern global democratic governments, the religious and political revolutions of the reformation and the enlightenment, the profound changes in our society in this internet age, and the increasing surveillance by governments and intrusions on our privacy. Keane’s deep intelligence, erudition and sound judgement shine through.
- The books concludes with ten proposed solutions to our ills, all of which make sense, although in my view they are insufficient and don’t go anywhere near far enough. 
- Of course it’s impossible to absorb every notion, fact and idea in this superb book from one reading. For fans of Keane’s work in Crikey over the last ten years it will be easier. But it’s a critically important book.
- (Like too many non-fiction books published in Australia it doesn’t have an index. That’s a miserable, cost saving policy and should end. Also - and this is far too common - it doesn’t have an author photo).

Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

- This is a stunning, beautifully, even poetically, written novel. It's an astonishing achievement.  
- Eli Bell’s maturity, intelligence and articulateness are way beyond real, especially for a 13 year old. Yet he's hugely likeable, and a superb creation.
- It's a bit Boys Own adventure: eg Eli’s escape from hospital (169ff); his escape from the women’s section of Boggo Road prison (272ff). 
- The prose is electrified by constant pop culture allusions. It’s on fire; it rocks! Colour and vitality define the novel. - Its characters, plot and location; and the vivid writing. It’s often very funny. But in the end it turns out to be a horror story. 
- The dialogue is so realistic and very Australian. Absolutely captures the characters, particularly the constant use of ‘fucking’. 
- The main characters become so attractive and engaging - even the drunks, druggies and crims. They’re bonded by love, loyalty and friendship. Except for the real nasties like Tytus Broz, Iwan Krol, and Teddy.
- There’s cliche here - young innocent heroes, old baddies (‘foreign’ as well - Polish; Vietnamese). It definitely has a YA feel at times but only echoes and suggestions. Not in essence or substance. 
- At the extreme, humans exhibit, need and get love, friendship and loyalty.
- This is not just a debut novel. It is a masterwork from an experienced non-fiction storyteller. It has so much power and drive. It's a real blockbuster, and will undoubtedly be a huge, worldwide seller, and quite probably made into a great movie. 
- Literary? Hard to say. Crime or action novels are rarely deemed ‘literary’. 

Angela Meyer, A Superior Spectre.

- Seems like a fascinating story from the start. 
- It’s a pleasure reading a story set in contemporary, and slightly futuristic times, leavened by the connected secondary historical narrative. 
- Beautifully written, often poetic.
- BUT: it’s not yet clear what meaning is intended by the ghostly intrusion into Leonora’s mind - ‘some inner tyrant’ (188).
- What purpose is this device serving? Page 120 and Jeff's just a sexually confused and exploitative bi from Melbourne. Dying for some reason and now pathetic. The lack of clarity is sort of getting annoying.
- The erotic dimension of the narrative seems an authorial obsession. It’s front and centre but for what purpose? One could be forgiven for concluding that the bi's role is just to spice up the narrative with a fair bit of gratuitous sex. 
- What’s with the two Williams (the robot and the son of the manor lord) who are integral to the two stories? They are parallel 'helpers' to each character. Little meaning here.
- In the end, a surprisingly unresolved narrative. Very unsatisfying. Leonora is never able to overcome the societal barriers (lower class; female) to her progressing into a fulfilling professional career, nor marrying a man worthy of her. So we leave her back on the farm, alone. Her 'madness' is posited as the principal cause. 
- The author was unable to move beyond the literalness of the ghost intrusion into a wider, substantial reflection which would give the book a depth and meaning.  
- Meyer would have been better served focussing entirely on Leonora's story and fleshing it out more, Hannah Kent style.

(This rather shallow review heaps praise on the book from a feminist perspective. The contention that the 'reader is complicit' in the 'pillaging' is meta nonsense:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/a-superior-spectre-by-angela-meyer-female-haunting/news-story/d9d7a00940a10998c06d65113e8221f2 )