My Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction Books for 2020

 

I normally read about 70 books a year, but this year only managed 60. (However I did half-read another 20 and bailed because they were either tedious or bad).

My top 10 fiction books read in 2020:

Lucy Ellmann, Ducks Newburyport

Jenny Offill, Weather

Sebastian Barry, A Thousand Moons

Gerald Murnane, A Season on Earth

Kate Grenville, A Room Made of Leaves

David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults

Jock Strong, The Burning Island

Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate

Raven Leilani, Luster

Out of these the top 3 are:

                     

My top 10 non-fiction books read in 2020:

Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

Tom Holland, Dominion

Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do

Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won

Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth

Melissa Davey, The Case of George Pell

Martin Amis, Inside Story

Zachary D Carter, The Price of Peace

Malcolm Knox, Truth is Trouble

Felicity Ruby & Peter Cronau (eds), A Secret Australia

Of these the top 3 are:

                                       

Raven Leilani, Luster.

 

- An astute, insightful novel with edgy, fresh prose that has heaps of muscle and grit. Its tone is jazzy and discordant. Reading it is like walking on hot coals, but it's exhilarating. 

- There is a maturity to Leilani's 23 year old narrator, Edie, and she posseses a fierce intelligence. She's African American and due to a difficult upbringing she’s frustrated and needy, and tolerates the physical, sexual violence and seemingly playful asphyxiation by a controlling older white man Eric. Their sexual relationship is a danse macabre.  

- Eric lives with his wife Rebecca in an upper middle class part of Jersey City. Rather strangely Edie is invited to stay in their house for a while to help them navigate the problematic terrain of parenting their adopted daughter Akila, a black, surly, difficult 13 year old. It’s an empty, meaningless lifestyle in the house, and there is little communication. Edie and Eric steal away for frequent, yet unsatisfying sex. Rebecca is aware of it.

- The family have their domestic rhythms, ordinary and vacuous. The newcomer Edie, as it turns out, is a rather enthusiastic painter and amateur photographer. She paints mundane stuff like Rebecca’s boots and her half-eaten Granny Smiths. She is obsessed with self portraits too, which always ‘fail’. One time she secretly photographs Eric and Rebecca’s lovemaking, peering into their bedroom: ‘the soundless rutting of husband and wife’. She plays computer games with Akila. Apart from helping her with her black hairstyles there is not much depth to their relationship.

- They all dress up for the annual Comic Con, like it’s a religious feast day. Contemporary pop culture rituals and music dominate their lives, if lives they genuinely are.

- Towards the end of her stay Edie finally sees Eric for what he is. ’I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list’. And she paints Rebecca, her best effort yet, their relationship having developed into something much more meaningful. 

- Racism is a subterranean hum throughout this novel and it is powerful. It's there in all the interactions.

Felicity Ruby & Peter Cronau (eds), A Secret Australia: Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposes

 

- I love reading books that make me angry. I guess it's a sign that I still possess a conscience, a brain, a strong sense of justice, and a measure of integrity. That's what being alive means.

- This book, published by the wonderful Monash University Publishing, is an exceptionally good and well-informed collection of pieces written by respected contributors who really know what they are talking about - lawyers, academics, journalists, psychologists and former politicians. 

- The fact that Julian Assange is rotting in Belmarsh prison in London and facing extradition to the US for an undoubtedly lengthy incarceration is utterly shameful. 

- Psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson’s contribution is powerful, but so are many of the others.

- As Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking says:

'Exceptional, illuminating, and deeply disturbing. With commanding breadth this superb collection highlights the dangers to democracy of proliferating information control and official secrecy, exploring the powerful transformative work of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in exposing dark secrets as an exemplar of Australian investigative journalism. His persecution is our shame'.

Movies seen in 2020

 

-Little Women: magnificent! Directed by Greta Gerwig at a rather frenetic pace in the first half, and then it slows down and becomes more powerful and less girly in the second. Saoirse Ronan is superb, dominating every scene. A very powerful performance. 

-Joker: Hardly a profound or even terribly interesting film. Typical cinematic cliches (characters run onto the road in Manhattan and get hit by a car, tossed onto the bonnet, fall back onto the road, pick themselves up and run on). The Joker’s absurd laughing irritated me. He meets briefly the kid Bruce Wayne, the future Batman. A typical sad fuck, wronged by the rich, lied to by his mother, gets a gun, kills those who ‘wrong’ him, end of story. No depth. Disappointing. 

-1917: Powerful movie from Sam Mendes. Superbly produced. Haunting music. Represents the horror, randomness, ugliness and meaninglessness of war in its graphic, tense, but simply told story and its bleak landscapes. Celebrates heroism and courage but never overdoes it. What are limbs, flesh wounds after all? English in that way. There is a lovely  scene with a woman and a baby. The reality of life. Very satisfying ending.  A must see. 

-Bombshell: There are a few too many banalities in this, particularly the conversations, and the political and media observations. Very kind to the Murdochs and naive about the putrid ugliness of Fox News in general and how it’s infected the political discourse of the nation. The focus on the celebrities shut down any political critique. A few scenes where these empty right wing numbnuts were riffing with their colleagues and dumping on liberals would have ‘placed’ them. A documentary would have shown their truly ugly ‘views’ and crucified them. The screenplay was littered with the constant ‘fuck/shit’ vulgarities that are so common in American productions.  But it still managed to be reasonably enjoyable. Margot Robbie was excellent, Charlize Theron just beautiful, and Nicole Kidman ordinary. John Lithgow as Roger Ailes nailed it. Captured perfectly the grotesque toad that he was. Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch was pathetic. Terribly miscast, and he got the accent ludicrously wrong - a Pom trying to emulate Rupert’s ugly Australian-American mashup. 

-Knives Out: Easily one of the most tedious and annoying movie experiences I’ve had for many years. An ugly, loud and vulgar American family, played by second rate actors (Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis), gaping plot holes, far too long, cliched political discussions, and more. ‘Donut holes’? Plonking piano notes? This from the ridiculously miscast Daniel Craig whose southern American accent was laughable! Ugh! Agatha Christie movies at least have charm and seasoned British actors. Two stars.

-Seberg: Brilliant movie and Kirsten Stewart was superb. Far less of her usual tics and mannerisms were on display. The role of the FBI was disgusting as they intensely surveilled  her for ‘supporting’ the black liberation/Black Panther/Malcolm X movement, and leaked her private love life to the gossip media. They wrecked her marriage. The senior Agent (Vince Vaughan) was a vicious racist and domestic abuser. Some issues in the story were unresolved - who was Seberg’s daughter’s father (was it the ‘negro’ the tabloid media suggested)? And what happened to the sympathetic FBI agent who stole her file, gave it to her and tried to help her? 

-Parasite: I found it a bit lightweight most of the way through, a pastiche of standard farcical tropes. It changed character towards the end and became more dramatic, but there was never much socially critical depth to it. I expected more. And there were too many silly elements to it: the magic rock, the neighbourhood urinator, the lower class smell, the hidden cavern under the house. Three stars.

-Emma: Absolutely delightful rendering of Jane Austen’s classic. The two principals, Emma and Mr Knightley, played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn, dance around each other with friendly but deepening affection, and the tensions build and all is happily resolved. Superbly done. A visual feast too. Fashion and set design celebrated by the director. The superb score is part composed by Isabelle Waller-Bridge, sister of Phoebe. Emma’s father is played by Bill Nighy who displays all his usual tics but he adds so much joy to the movie. Worth seeing for him alone! 

-The Children Act: Loved it. Emma Thompson was superb. Brought the required authority to the role. The boy was also good, exhibiting the necessary vulnerability. Was also careful not to overly demonise the Jehovah Witnesses’ beliefs. Stayed faithful to Ian McEwan’s novel (he wrote the screenplay). 

-Ford v Ferrari: very enjoyable and well acted, particularly by Christian Bale whose cockney accent is flawless. Won an Oscar for Best Editing. 

-Spenser: Typical Hollywood crime action movie. All cliches and nothing else. Enjoyable and completely unoriginal. 

-Charlie’s Angels: ridiculous, but the women are beautiful. 

-Jo Jo Rabbit: lovely, delightful movie. Enjoyed it immensely. The actors who played the three kids were exceptionally good, as was Scarlet Johansson, but the writer and director Taika Waititi is an embarrassingly bad actor! Music good too. Managed to give a comedic treatment to Nazi Germany without diminishing its seriousness. But, in the end, it’s definitely a YA movie. 

-The Invisible Man: Very enjoyable. Elizabeth Moss was superb. The story line a bit ordinary, including the ending. Not so much a horror movie, more of a thriller. 

-Birds of Prey: The worst excuse for a movie I’ve seen all year. Whatever possessed Margot Robbie to take this Marvel Harley Quinn role is beyond me. Her Brooklyn accent is simply appalling. Trash.

-Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears: Tedious in the extreme. Faux Indiana Jones. Should have stayed In Ballarat. Cliched colonial tropes and English mannerisms. Awful dialogue, bad editing. Bailed half way through. 

-The Gentlemen: typical Guy Ritchie London gangster movie. Very average. I can’t even remember how it ended and I only saw it last night! So dull and cliched. 

-Chappaquiddick: the story of Teddy Kennedy and the accidental drowning of the young female political aide. The direction is just bad. Deliberately makes the movie so slow and meandering that I wondered whether any of the characters, particularly Kennedy himself, was actually alive! 

-Becoming: Michelle Obama’s book tour. Nothing of real substance in it. Just a long, celebratory promo for the book. Rather tedious, sentimental and banal. I was expecting some backroom tensions re hotels, meals, schedules, disagreements with staff and the publishers, etc - the standard stuff of all book tours. But nothing at all. I wonder if the book is as boring! 

-Portrait of a Lady on Fire: wonderful. Beautiful production, marvellous and highly original story, lovely actresses. Hardly any men in the movie at all. They are irrelevant. 

-Trip to Greece: same old, same old and boring. 

-A Hidden Life: Terrence Malick film. Very frustrating on so many levels, particularly that the central character who is a conscientious objector to the Nazi regime when he’s conscripted to the Austrian army is sooo inarticulate. He barely utters a word to explain his position, even to his wife. The editing is also rather amateurish. But the Austrian scenery is magnificent and the photography as well.

-The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Amazing photography of Sweden and Stockholm in winter. But the story is rubbish and the action so cliched. Claire Foy is excellent however. 

-The Assistant: superb, slow and deliberative. Great acting by Julia Garner. Wonderful music. Subtle condemnation of male office dynamics. Harvey Weinstein the boss, never seen. Young sexually attractive women show  up and are invited into his office. The HR Director warns her off registering an official complaint. She either lives with it or leaves. The movie ends.

-Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona: Woody Allen at his best in 2008. Beautiful young actresses Scarlet Johansson, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz star. The story is nuanced, subtle and full of meaning as it examines the dynamics of love and attraction and marriage. The Deus Ex Machina ending is annoying though. 

-Greyhound: Bailed half way through. A  typical Hollywood, American Hero wartime movie. And guess what - Tom Hanks plays the hero captain of the Destroyer on a mission to assist the Allied forces across the Atlantic. And Hanks is always nice. Cliched, formula-driven, mediocre navy action movie we’ve all seen hundreds of times before. 

-Relic: Australian horror movie starring Robyn Nevin as a crazy, dementia suffering, grandma who lives alone in a big old house in the countryside, and is visited for a few days by her daughter and granddaughter. Strange things, like noises (jeez!), start up at night, and shadows of former residents float in and out. Hardly original, and Nevin is horribly miscast. Her strong, loud, dramatic actress voice does not echo the feeble, old, if authoritarian, woman she’s portraying. Nevin is a ‘stern mother’ cliche. Emily Mortimer as her daughter is well cast however. I bailed two thirds in. Maybe it improved, maybe it didn’t. I couldn’t care. 

-A Rainy Day in New York: Woody Allen’s latest and it was classic Woody. Young, attractive people in and out of love and relationships. Elle Fanning was  beautiful and superb. Timothee Chalamet wonderful; Rebecca Hall, mysteriously, had a bit part; the cocktail piano trio music was classic. A simple story but so Woody and delightful. I loved it.

-In Your Hands: very enjoyable French movie about a young boy from the wrong side of the tracks who is a classical piano genius. Sentimental but heartwarming. The music was superb. 

-Mulan: the high production values of this movie make for a hugely enjoyable feast for the eyes. Pretty standard stuff in all other ways. Although the story is rather interesting - pro female. 

-The Personal History of David Copperfield: comic treatment of the writer’s life, and deliberately casts POC in various roles. Pretty boring frankly. 

-On The Rocks: A very disappointing effort from Sophie Coppola this time. Even Bill Murray couldn’t make this enjoyable let alone deep and interesting. Very slight, full of standard cliches about men and marriages, and contains some scenes that add nothing whatsoever to the story. 

-The Burnt Orange Heresy: A very disappointing effort. Boring and meaningless. Elizabeth Debicki was good but the male actors bad. Constant smoking and pill popping was constantly annoying. The ending was confusing. 

-Palm Springs: Pathetic and ridiculous. What was the constant sucking from soda cans all about? Bailed half way through.

-Corpus Christi: A highly lauded movie but difficult to endure. Ugliness all around - the juvenile detention centre, the villagers, the violence. Depicts the sheer ugliness of human society, despite well intended actions by some to improve it. And it’s virtually impossible for individuals to escape it. Corpus Cesspit rather than Corpus Christi. 

-The Child in Time: a rather tepid drama about a four year old girl stolen from her father at a supermarket. The political subplot made no sense whatsoever and the ending was lame. An utterly pointless film based on one of Ian McEwan’s weakest novels. 

-The Translators: French drama about a bestselling author’s third book in a highly popular series. A whodunnit that develops into an extremely satisfactory story. Lots of twists. Excellent. 

-Rebecca: rather lame re-make of the classic novel.    

-Mank: Movies about drunks are always annoying. This is no different. Full of cliches and dramatic scenes that just register as overdone and historically untrue. Could have been a lot better if it focussed more on Orson Welles.

Martin Amis, Inside Story

 

- Amis calls his new book a 'novelised autobiography'. ‘The book is about a life, my own, so it won’t read like a novel - more like a collection of linked short stories, with essayistic detours’. 

- The ‘novel’ nomenclature simply serves to give him licence to roam freely over events and people in his life that meant something to him. Names are changed, people invented, events described that never happened. A constantly appearing girlfriend ‘Phoebe Phelps’, for example, is fiction, but is, as Amis disclosed in an interview earlier this year, based on a series of real relationships in his youth. So like many historical novels it's a mixture of fiction and fact. The central focus is the ideas canvassed, the insights offered, the erudition displayed, and the well-chosen quotes, liberally sprinkled. 

- I've been an enthusiastic fan of Amis for many years and have read all his 18 novels to date. So of course I loved this book. There are so many stories and conversations and endless name-dropping that contribute to a potent mixture all beautifully rendered with a lightness of touch. It’s a very gentle book. It treads lightly but it has weight. 

- You cannot but be impressed with the erudition, the intelligence and the literacy. In many ways it's a book about writers for writers. Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin are central, clearly being Amis's favourites. They were important and influential literary figures through the 20th century and good friends of Amis. Graham Green makes a few appearances, as does John Updike. Religion and belief is a constant question. He indulges in broad, sweeping critiques and writes with with confidence and authority. 

- Amis has always explored antisemitism and fascism is his writings over the years and he does it here. Bellow he lauds as the ‘first Jewish-American novelist’. There are other brief mentions: D.H. Lawrence, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Clive James, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Elmore Leonard. He also offers insights into Islamic terrorism and the rupture of 9/11.

- Dotted throughout is free-flowing miscellaneous advice on writing from a master of the craft. His damning of the frequent use of cliches for example is delightful. Disappointingly, there's no reflections on his own novels or their reviews, given that over the course of his career he’s received plenty of ordinary ones. What were his sales, his bestsellers, even his royalties? We get nothing on the business side of things. This part of the ‘inside story’ is absent. The focus is on personal relationships, wives, girlfriends, families, and the authorial craft. 

- The relationship between Amis (‘Mart’, or ‘little Keith’ as his best friend Christopher Hitchens called him) and the Trotskyist ‘Hitch’ is very affectionate and deep. And his telling of the sad story of Hitchens' slow and agonising death from esophageal cancer is profoundly moving.

- The novel is studded throughout with footnotes which add colourful detail and background to the events being described.

- Despite the fact that the book is supposed to be a 'novel' there is a magnificent index, one of the best you'll see. It's detailed and comprehensive, and provides the structure and storyline of the book. Worth dipping into.

Malcolm Knox, Truth Is Trouble.

 

- This book is a very thoughtful analysis of all the issues associated with Israel Folau’s sacking last year by Rugby Australia in response to his social media post condemning gays to hell unless they repented. 

- Why did a sporting organisation get involved in a private matter like this? Because of corporate pressure from sponsors, particularly Qantas. 

- Knox very skilfully outlines all the issues around the fierce and passionate debate that lasted months. He did an enormous amount of research, and built on his own experience as a former elite private school boy, to get really inside all the class, race, social, sexual and cultural threads of this colourful tapestry. 

- This controversy was about a lot more than Folau and his evangelist faith. It was about freedom of speech, religious freedom, the culture wars, the history of Christianity in Australia and the rise of fundamentalist churches over the last 40 or so years, immigration, and the power of social media. Knox’s reflections are wise and frequently inspiring. 

- He lists lots of examples of free speakers being crucified over the years, and instigating huge and noisy debates which they rarely survived. 
 
- Where is nuance, caution, hesitancy, a sense of uncertainty? 

- I highly recommend this important contribution to our national debate.

Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate

 

- From Steven Conte, the author of the magnificent 2007 prize-winning novel The Zookeeper's War comes this very impressive, long-awaited and hugely enjoyable The Tolstoy Estate.  

- From the opening pages the reader is hooked. The characters are thoroughly engaging and their conversations lively. They are part of a German medical battalion during the Reich's invasion of Russia in 1941. Paul Bauer, a senior surgeon, has a heart; his commanding officer and head surgeon Julius Metz does not.  

- For six weeks they are stationed at the former grand estate of Count Leo Tolstoy, author of the classic War and Peace. It becomes an emergency hospital treating wounded German soldiers. We are not spared the graphic detail of the severely wounded and the intensity of the surgical operations performed in very difficult circumstances. There are frequent and horrific deaths. It's immensely sad. And it is winter with temperatures averaging minus 20 every day. Frostbite is everywhere.

- A central character is the young Russian woman, Katerina, who is acting head custodian of the estate and a Tolstoy expert. She speaks perfect German but she loathes and detests the invading Nazis, and doesn't hold back. She's as sharp as a tack and is delightful. She constantly reminds the Germans of Napoleon's defeat in the winter of 1812, and looks forward to their similar fate.

- Conte's focus is the many dimensions of the human soul amidst the horror of war.  Love, art, literature, friendship, healing, dedication, compassion, intimacy, joy, and pain. And, of course, life-saving surgery. ‘Whatever the fate of individuals might be, Tolstoy seemed to say, the rhythms of life would remain the same’. War and Peace becomes a companion, parallel narrative, like theme music to a movie.

- Sprinkled with embossed snow drops the cover of this novel, designed by Catherine Casalino, is one of the most beautiful and imaginative you're likely to see.

- Give this book as a Christmas present to a loved one. You'll be loved in return. It's that good.

Zachary D Carter, The Price of Peace

 

- This is a magnificent book, utterly absorbing. In intricate detail it portrays the life, ideas and legacy of one of the great minds and most influential thinkers of the 20th century. 

- But it's not just about John Maynard Keynes and his breakthrough economic insights. Its scope is much wider. All the major political events of the last 100 years are covered - World War 1 and the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Fascism and Hitler in the 1930's, World War 2 and its aftermath, subsequent political and economic crises across the globe in the latter half of the 20th century, including Vietnam and Iraq, and lots more.

- The ideas and theories of other highly influential economists, some who supported Keynes and some who absolutely abhorred him, are also outlined in detail, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Friedrich Hayek, Paul Samuelson, Joan Robinson and Milton Friedman. 

- Key politicians in Britain, Europe and the US, and the crises they faced, and how these economists were critically important in framing their policies and decisions, bring the story so much to life. In fact it's riveting.

- Carter has pulled off a major achievement here. He has been able to structure a narrative of theory, politics and biography that reads like a novel. It sucks you in and won't let you go.

- Very highly recommended. 

Jock Serong, The Burning Island.

 

- Jock Serong can tell a story, infusing it with constant drama and tension, and bringing historical characters and narratives vividly to life. This novel is a sequel to his magnificent Preservation, published in 2018. (I reviewed that novel here)

- His prose is beautiful, often poetic, as are his descriptions of the natural world and its rhythms and colours. And he speaks deeply and movingly about the essence of love and the value of rich personal, family and social relationships. 

- In 1830 Mr Srinivas, now a wealthy timber merchant, organises a boat voyage on the Moonbird down to The Furneaux Group of islands to the north of Van Diemen’s Land to look for clues as to how a previous voyage on the Howrah disappeared. The supposition is that Mr Figge, an evil, murderous man featured in Preservation, was responsible. 

- The collection of characters brought together by Srinivas come across at first as a strange and rather tedious lot. Eliza Grayling, a stern teacher; her father Joshua, a hopeless drunk and now rendered blind; the schooner’s master who wears dresses and hair combs; two young twins and deck hands, uneducated and constantly fighting; and a Doctor Gideon, an amateur scientist and a fervent Christian, or so it seems. 

- There are incidents on the way, all seemingly unconnected. This happened, then that happened, then that happened...I began to yearn for some meaning, some overarching vision to bring it all together and enrich it. Preservation was deeply meaningful in contrast, a harsh critique of the early days of the Sydney colony and its savage treatment of the Indigenous inhabitants. 

- However, deep into the story the various elements do come together and start to form a rich brew indeed. New characters emerge, inhabitants of the various small islands in Bass's Straight. For instance the gun-carrying and proud native woman from Penguin Island: As another woman told it ‘She talked to the people, men, women, an she said we gonna take the settlers down. An she meant it. All that bad treatment, all them beatings, she wanted to take it out on the squatters, an the troopers an...she didn’t care who, as long as it was white men.’

- The tension builds. The Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, for example, commands the capture and re-education of all the Aboriginal people on the islands. They are to be rounded up and Christianised, ‘saved’ from their squalor. 

- Serong constructs a very satisfying conclusion indeed, apart from one key thing that's left hanging. There has to be a third in this series, and that will be well worth waiting for.

Suzanne Smith, The Altar Boys.

 

- If you’re not a Catholic you are going to get very angry reading this book. If you are a Catholic you’re going to get even angrier.     

- Six-time Walkley Award-winning journalist Suzanne Smith digs deep into the clerical club and the administration of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese. The hero of the story is Father Glen Walsh, who refused to remain silent, and who suffered for his 'betrayal' his whole life. 

- A nest of ugly, debauched pedophiles were flourishing in the diocese, including the notorious Vince Ryan, and other frequent abusers like John Denham and James Fletcher. It was an absolute disgrace that they were protected from the law for decades by bishops and other priests. This is a story of the wider church’s awakening to the sleazebags in their midst. Particularly the families of the victims. The hierarchy remained ‘belligerent, ignorant and condescending’.      

- The author portrays the pious Catholicism of the parishioners exceptionally well. They were loyal, working class families, virtually all of Irish descent who revered and loved their priests. And the Marist Brothers who taught their boys. Or so they thought.

- Glen Walsh wrote a letter to the head of the Marist Brothers for the Sydney Province, Brother Michael Hill, outlining his own abuse by Brother Coman Sykes. After an ‘independent review’ his allegations were deemed ‘not sustained’. He felt he had been double-crossed. Many years later that decision was reversed after another official and independent examination.

- Walsh reported another case, 'Brendan's', direct to the police in defiance of his bishop, Michael Malone, and is told in no uncertain terms, as in 'fuck off', to leave the diocese. Malone never allowed him to return despite representations from other priests and friends. 

- Smith tells the story of journalist Joanne McCarthy’s investigations for the Newcastle Herald and her passionate advocacy for a Royal Commission. She focussed on concealment. ‘Maitland-Newcastle would become notorious across Australia and the world for being one of the worst epicentres for child sexual abuse’. 

- And the forensic work of Detective Sergeant Kristi Faber, who ‘from 2008 to 2017...went on to convict a large number of priests and brothers with hundreds of charges relating to close to 180 victims.’ 

- Archbishop Philip Wilson... ‘had been in senior leadership roles for two decades while the abuse had occurred’. He was charged with concealment. Glen Walsh was a Crown prosecutor witness against the archbishop. He knew he would again be ostracised and further isolated in the diocese. 

- Walsh’s bishop at the time, and fellow priests, totally deserted him during his serious illness in 2016. His final email to them held nothing back though. He condemned them. Bishop Wright eventually welcomed Glen back to the diocese in February 2017 but in October reversed that decision in light of Glen’s testimony against Archbishop Wilson. ‘He advised me that the presbyterate will never forgive me for exposing them for what they are...’ Glen, already quite sick and frail, took his own life two weeks later. He was 56.

- Smith tells many other stories of abusers and their victims, which are sickening and heartbreaking. She has written a powerful book which I highly recommend.

(Unfortunately this is yet another Australian non-fiction book without an index. Or an author photo. This habit seems to have developed over the last ten years or so, and it's a bad one. Completely unprofessional. What's wrong with Australian publishers that they do this?)  

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults

 

- As a lover of Elena Ferrante's superb Neapolitan Quartet, My Brilliant Friend, I couldn't wait to get into this. And it didn't disappoint. It's vintage Ferrante - family, school, friendships, sexual stresses and strains, a micro drama of a young Italian teenager's transition to adulthood. Ferrante captures the intensity of this process perfectly, and deals with the conflicting emotions with precision. She sucks you in.

- Naples is effectively two cities: the upper classes live in the hills, the lower classes down in the grubby parts. The teenage Giovanna, from an affluent family, is coming of age and is over-sensitive and hyper dramatic. Her educated father Andrea detests his illiterate sister Vittoria who inhabits the lower realm. Giovanna is navigating that relationship and wising up. 

- Andrea is a rather prissy, opinionated intellectual; Vittoria an earthy, vigorous, loud and vulgar character. She's also presented as quite melodramatic and a little comical. Giovanna has to come to terms with '...an incongruous juxtaposition of vulgarity and refinement’. And the smart young woman, who reads books and listens to music, is having to deal with the rough boys of the hood, the 'debased humanity' of lower Naples. 

- Milan features again. As in the quartet, it is presented as an important city for aspiration and culture. Escaping Naples becomes a necessity. Very few authors dissect with such precision the emotional complexity of these constant tensions.

- Unfortunately the novel suffers from very poor copy editing, and it's annoying. Constant run-on sentences, separated by commas instead of full stops, can't be attributed to Ferrante or to the English translator Ann Goldstein. The buck stops with the editor. 

- And although universally lauded for her translation of the quartet, Goldstein falls short in this novel. There's a frequent awkwardness to it. Here are a few examples: 'outside the family accords, secretly’ (‘i accordi’ means 'arrangements', a better word); ‘...the dailiness of my body’ ('quotidian ordinariness' would have been better); ‘...it was my first experience of privation’ (I don't know what that means); ‘street atlas’ (rather than 'maps' or 'directory'). 

- Nevertheless, a hugely enjoyable read.

             

David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue

 

- There are many fans of UK author David Mitchell's novels, and I am one of them. 

- His latest is a magnificent paean to sixties rock. It's absorbing from the start. It captures the character of Soho in the late sixties and its bars, clubs, cafes, music and art venues perfectly, and brings them stunningly alive. Though more than that is going on. There’s a revolution in play - throughout the whole of society and across the world. A new world is emerging. Not just in music and the arts, but in politics and society across the board. Mitchell shoves us into all of it. 

- His trademark vivid prose is rich, colourful, swashbuckling, earthy and real. We are introduced to the new band Utopia Avenue. Four brilliant musicians and songwriters have been carefully selected by an ambitious but talented manager. Elf is on the piano, Griff on the drums, Dean on the bass, and Jasper on the lead guitar. And Elf is a woman, highly unusual in those times.

- These characters are brought stunningly to life in every detail, including their cockney accents. We gradually get their class-based and mostly harsh, ugly backstories. They’re intensely interesting and very likeable. We relate to them - their long hair, Carnaby Street fashion, transient relationships, sexual identities, drugs, constant money problems, and cruel, reactionary, conservative, and angry post-war parents upset by the emerging and disruptive counter-culture and its new consciousness. And unlike in Bone Clocks, Mitchell’s least successful novel in my opinion, their stories are fully integrated into a seamless whole. There are little side trips (Dean’s three days in a filthy cell in Rome; Elf’s nephew’s cot death) but they enrich rather than detract from the larger narrative. And, as is usual for Mitchell, characters in his previous books make brief appearances in this one. 

- The conversations and arguments are electric and brimming with vitality. He writes about the musical structure of the songs like a seasoned critic and brings to life the concerts and performances. He's on stage with the band, utterly blown away by their brilliance. (If only we could be thrust forward 50 years to link to the music and hear the songs. We ache for it).

- As a writer, Mitchell has another dimension. I’ve never been an enthusiastic fan of his off-ramp excursions into otherworldly realms that too frequently complicate and bog down his core narrative. But at least he’s more restrained here. Jasper’s ‘Knock Knock’, an incorporeal spirit hounding him from his centuries old Dutch ancestry and ultimately hijacking his body, thrusts us back to Mitchell's previous, and quite superb novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Here it works.

- Real stars get brief appearances - David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Syd Barrett, Allen Ginsberg, Keith Moon, Brian Jones, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Jackson Browne, Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Frank Zappa, Jerry Garcia. There's endless parties and drugs. But is Mitchell indulging himself here: is this loose, sex and drugs, celebrity lifestyle the ideal and the one he would have preferred for himself? No matter.

- Towards the end of the novel we're forced to reflect on all this sixties stuff and find some deeper meaning. A journalist at a press conference asks the question 'Can songs change the world'? Forgive me for quoting the whole answer:

'Songs do not change the world', declares Jasper. 'People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God and act accordingly. People invent, kill, make babies, start wars'. Jasper lights a Marlboro. 'Which begs a question. "Who or what influences the minds of the people who change the world?" My answer is "Ideas and feelings". Which begs a question. "Where do ideas and feelings originate?" My answer is, "Others. One's heart and mind. The press. The arts. Stories. Last, but not least, songs." Songs. Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they'll land? Or what they'll bring?" Jasper leans into the mic and, without a wisp of self-consciousness, sings a miscellany of single lines form nine or ten songs. Dean recognises, 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)', 'Strange Fruit' and 'The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'. Others, Dean can't identify, but the hard-boiled press pack look on. Nobody laughs, nobody scoffs. Cameras click. 'Where will these song-seeds land? It's the parable of the sower. Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don't take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that is ready. Is fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this. An invitation to slip into somebody else's skin for a little while. If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.'

And later on, Jerry Garcia muses: 

'Every third or fourth generation is a generation of radicals, of revolutionaries. We, my friends, are the bottle-smashers. We release the genies. We run riot, get shot, get infiltrated, get bought off. We die, go bust, sell out to the man. Sure as eggs is eggs. But the genies we let loose stay loose. In the ears of the young the genies whisper what was unsayable. "Hey kids - there's nothing wrong with being gay." Or "What if war isn't a patriotism test, but really fucking dumb?" Or "Why do so few own so goddamn much?" In the short run not a lot seems to change. Those kids are nowhere near the levers of power. Not yet. But in the long run? Those whispers are the blueprints of the future'.

- The final chapter, Elf’s tribute, is simply beautiful. 

- What a magnificent book this is. Extraordinary. 

Melissa Davey, The Case of George Pell.

 

- Melissa Davey, Guardian Australia's Melbourne bureau chief, has written this extremely comprehensive account of the Cardinal George Pell legal saga - the committal hearing, the two trials, the Victorian Supreme Court appeal and the High Court appeal. But what makes this book utterly compelling and exceptional is its broader perspective. It delves into the legal system and its processes and protocols in cases like these, and explains them very clearly and in enlightening detail. 

- I've read just about everything written on the Pell saga, including the excellent David Marr, Louise Milligan and Lucie Morris-Marr books, but this consummate volume by Melissa Davey is the best of the best. (It's a Stella Prize winner for sure, and you heard it here first!)

- In very lucid prose she tells the inside story and conveys a real sense of the unfolding drama. She’s a fly on the wall to every conversation no matter how 'private'. 

- For example we learn a lot about Judge Peter Kidd and how carefully he ran the committal and trial processes. His leadership was impressive, including guiding the minute and detailed discussions about procedure and protocol. He even brought to bear considerable authority over the highly experienced and respected defence barrister Robert Richter. 

- The testimony of every witness, no matter how significant or insignificant, is described in detail, including the numerous choirboys in procession after mass on the Sunday in December 1996 when the first instance of Pell's offending was alleged to have taken place.         

- Prosecutor Mark Gibson’s four-hour closing address to the jury is reported in full, as is Richter’s two-day address. It’s clear that Davey is more sympathetic to the surgical and restrained Gibson than she is to the dramatic, far more colourful, Richter. And she doesn't withhold her enormous respect for Kidd and his frequent and seemingly necessary reprimanding of Richter.

- She tells the story about the second boy who became a drug addict and died in his early-thirties. She interviews his father. It's very sad.  

- She also discloses the stress the Suppression Order put on the eight journalists who attended the trials, particularly after the guilty verdict was handed down. Leaks were happening and the immense pressure to disclose everything before the order was lifted was intense. But they didn't. 

- Davey addresses in full the many rumours circulating on the jury split in the first trial, called 'the mistrial'. No one, not even Judge Kidd, knew the guilty/not guilty numbers. It remains a secret to this day, and it doesn't mean anything.  

- The prosecution and defence arguments to the Victorian Court of Appeal are given in detail, as are the responses to the High Court questions. The issues of ‘possibility’ and ‘reasonable doubt’ were central. 

- She also addresses the controversial question of the High Court’s assessment as to whether it was legally right for the Appeal judges to watch the video of the complainant’s evidence, rather than just reading the transcript. It judged it wasn’t. The judges were apparently exposing themselves to emotion. (This, to me, is legal silliness writ large!)

- It becomes pretty clear towards the end of this magnificent book that Davey doesn’t like Pell: His response to the (Royal Commission’s) findings was the same as ever. Cold. Dismissive. Resolute. Tone-deaf. And, most of all, disingenuous.

What I have learned through covering the royal commission and the Pell case, trawling through research into abuse and violence, and talking to various experts is that people whom society perceive as being 'good', 'admirable', and 'respectable' can and do commit crimes. Accepting this has proven difficult for society, including the media, which has struggled to tell such conflicting narratives about perpetrators in a way that is accurate while also being respectful to victims. Accolades do not justify or excuse abuse, but may explain why abusers went undetected for so long, or if detected, were excused and celebrated regardless.

And it explains why, despite all of his failures to report and act on child sexual abuse, George Pell is living quietly in Sydney, still a priest, and still a cardinal.

Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never.

 

- This is a seemingly sobering book, but it left a nasty taste in my mouth. It attempts to bring facts and statistics to bear on very common yet 'erroneous' beliefs about environmental and energy issues. Yet it has the flavour of traditional denialist rants - selective quotes, ad hominem attacks on experts, cheap abuse of activists and politicians like AOC and Greta Thunberg, and grass roots movements like Extinction Rebellion. They are criticised for a complete lack of perspective. ‘...the religious fanaticism of apocalyptic environmentalism’.

- Shellenberger's overriding theme and the basis of his entire critique is his total support for nuclear power. It has 'zero carbon emissions'. He's also pro natural gas and fracking. 

- He attempts to exposes the 'abject hypocrisy' of co-called clean energy advocates like billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, who benefit enormously from their fossil fuel investments replacing nuclear energy and spiking emissions.      

- He attacks the way current global energy and anti-infrastructure policies are condemning third world countries to continuing poverty: in their view ‘industrialisation was harmful, as was economic development’. In the 1970s the UN’s ‘sustainable development’ model preferred development monies went to charity and not things like infrastructure.       

- He contends that the IPCC’s ‘Summary for Policymakers’, press releases, and authors’ statements betray ideological motivations and do not represent the substance of the detailed reports.

- ‘Environmentalism is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class elite...Its sister religion is vegetarianism...There is more reason for optimism than pessimism’.

- This demolition of Shellenberger's book by Dr Peter H. Gleick is absolutely spot on:  

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-arguments-abound-in-apocalypse-never/

Margaret A. Farley, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics

 

Put simply, this is a magnificent book. It's taken me a long time to get around to reading it. However over the last six months or so I have been determined to educate myself on current Catholic moral theology, just to see whether sensible and intelligent voices were addressing the major issues we all face each and every day in our contemporary personal, social and political lives. 

Each of the half a dozen or so books I've read all referred to Farley's Just Love as a classic in the field.

She is a world renowned and highly respected ethicist and theologian who taught at Yale for many years. This book, published in 2006, is her major and groundbreaking work.

She is a very liberal and progressive voice across the whole spectrum of moral theological issues, and is the polar opposite of the reigning conservative, reactionary, stale, and frustratingly stupid official positions of the Catholic Church hierarchy. So angry were the Vatican officials they condemned the book and banned it from being used as a text or reference in Catholic universities across the world. That of course made it a best seller!

The book explores marriage, divorce and re-marriage, same sex relationships, gay marriage, and other important contemporary issues, and all from a perspective of love, desire, human nature and frailty, and the stresses and strains of living a full life in today's world. 

Her perspective is anthropological and in clear, non-academic prose she digs deep into the debates from four overarching perspectives : scripture, tradition, secular traditions of knowledge (science), and contemporary lived experience. She never references papal encyclicals or hierarchical determinations or documents at all. She is way beyond that, and her thinking is in no way constrained by it. That's so refreshing.

I highly recommend this liberating tome. Every educated Catholic should read it.