Chris Wallace, How to Win an Election

 

- This is a brief but brilliant little gem of a book. Wallace is knowledgeable and persuasive, and her decades of experience writing about Australian politics shines through. She lists the 10 basic things a political party must focus on to win an Australian federal election.  

 - Unfortunately it was written and completed in the first half of 2020 and published in September last year, pre Trump's defeat and Biden's victory, and before the politics of the pandemic really started to dominate national life. So it has a dated feel to it. And, surprisingly, current Labor leader Anthony Albanese does not get a single mention. Ironically, contrary to her own advice, she focuses on the last election in 2019 rather than the next one expected this year, 2021. The publisher would have been wise to delay this book’s release by a few months at least. 

- But it's excellent on why Shorten lost: an unpopular leader with a blizzard of policies in a campaign lacking strategic focus and basic political craft.

- Each of the ten chapters outlining the ten principles is rich in wisdom and insight. I particularly liked number six on Labor and the Greens and why they should at least cooperate in key seats to further the progressive cause. Their decades-long unwillingness to negotiate in any meaningful way remains infuriating and destructive.

- The fable-like introductions to each chapter where the shattered leader (Shorten) licks his wounds in a cave and reflects on his awful, humiliating loss, are exquisite. 

(Ridiculously expensive at $29.99 for a short, small format, 145 page paperback. And typical of so much non-fiction publishing in Australia, no index or author photo).

 

Ashley Audrain, The Push

 

- This debut novel from Canadian author Ashley Audrain is a horror story that's absorbing and extremely intense. From the opening pages it's compelling and hard to put down.

- Brings to mind Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin and Leila Slimani's Lullaby. 

- What is it like when one parent favours one of their two children and the other parent favours the other? What effect, if any, does that have on the children?

- Motherhood is intricately dissected in all its dimensions - emotionally and psychologically. As is the profound suffering and effect of grief which is so well described.

- Blythe suffered from a neglected childhood. Her mother and grandmother were cold and uncaring, woefully inadequate parents. Did they pass this condition down? As a mother herself now Blythe becomes an obnoxious perfectionist at times, demanding and suspicious. Her husband tolerates her until he realises something might be wrong and dangerous. But is he right?

- Warning: don't read the last page of this book before you've read the whole thing. Just don't.

Robert Jones Jr, The Prophets

 

- This book will shake you to your bootstraps, it is so powerful and majestic. In fact it is extraordinary.

- While measured and restrained, with deliberate opacity rather than clarity, Jones powers his prose with the drumbeat of poetry. The style is oblique and mythic, conveying a sense of ritual in the events and movements, no matter how simple and ordinary. 

- But his focus is sure. Set in Mississippi in the mid 19th century before the Civil War he paints the world of slavery, a world of cruelty and oppression. 

- There are constant depictions of the raw ugliness of racism. This is a prime example:

They pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy.They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple.They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love.They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage.They stepped on people's throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn't breathe.

- Young slaves Samuel and Isaiah (given new Judeo-Christian names of course) are at one point chained and forced to pull a wagon while being whipped, after being suspected of having indulged in perverse homosexual acts. Relentless cruelty is an everyday occurrence.

- Jones reaches deep. In the middle of the book he portrays in detail some ancient African tribal rituals that are rich in meaning, community, love, friendship and generosity. King Akusa, a woman, confronts the ignorant Portuguese Brother Gabriel and his refusal to acknowledge the sacred union of two males. It's a critical chapter comparing rich ancient religious/cultural practices and desiccated protestant Christian traditions. He could see bodies, but it was clear he could not see spirits. 

- And these 'niggas' were invaded, plundered, abused, raped, starved and shipped by the white skinless ‘ghost cannibals’ who were weak, inadequate, pompous, self-entitled men. The nigga babies were snatched away, to be forever motherless and fatherless. 

- There is a conflagration at the end, a reckoning. 

- I have no doubt that this novel will be deemed a classic. And Robert Jones Jr will be our generation's James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. 

- A must read.

William Boyd, Trio

 

- Boyd has a wonderful way of bringing English society to life. He's a sharp and insightful observer. 

- Trio is a delicious story of movie making in London in the late sixties. The world is experiencing radical change - assassinations, student-led riots, sexual liberation, gay legalisation. Elfrida Wing is a successful author, Talbot Kydd, a film producer, and Anny Viklund a celebrated young and beautiful actress. They are all connected via the movie.

- There’s a comic dimension to the story. Rather strange names are a feature. Boyd’s surely having fun: Rodrigo Tipton and his children Butterfly and Evergreen; Troy Blaze; Cornell Weekes; Gianluca Mavrocordato; Sylvia Slaye; Ferdie Meares; Janet Headstone; Nigel Farthingly; Yorgos Samsa; Calder McPhail; Maitland Bole. 

- And the film is called Emily Bracegirdle’s Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon. The production is spinning out of control however, as spivs and grifters muscle in to try to exploit the movie for marketing and financial advantage. Preying 'friends' are constantly asking for favours.

- Our trio are feeling the pressure of all this and the changing times in general. They are hardly coping. Meaningless marriages are hiding desperation, despair and hopelessness. Drugs and alcohol are centre stage. In the end they are forced to take radical actions to free themselves.

- There are some lovely, cheeky observations about Englishness dotted throughout, that are classic Boyd: 

Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse....Elfrida actually disliked the novel, with its footling detail and its breathy neurasthenic apprehension of the world, all tingly awareness and high-cheekboned sensitivity. 

They both drank to fill the silence. Both lost in the awkward formality of their personas...chronic social ill-at-easeness being the English middle-class status quo...the banal politesse of their conversation tiresome and awkward.

Charm, she thought: a very illusive English concept, very loaded. To her it meant closed, polite, coldly affable, able to make conversation about nothing.

 

Robert Harris, V2.

 

- As usual, Harris infuses his narrative with real drama and detail. He's a master at constructing fiction from momentous historical events. And he's absolutely reliable, his stories always based on extensive research.

- V2 is set during the final months of Hitler's Nazi regime. The Germans are desperate. Many officers are tired and cynical. The V2 is a powerful, ultra fast, rocket-type bomb launched by the Germans and unleashed on London. According to Harris in his Acknowledgements 'Some 20,000 slave labourers died building the V2. It killed approximately 2,700 people in London, and injured 6,500...Approximately 20,000 houses in Greater London were destroyed and 580,000 damaged'.  

- There's a little too much confected drama, perhaps necessary to flesh out a story weighted towards science and engineering, but the key players, most fictional, are nicely brought to life. 

- One of Harris's insights is the extent and necessity of lies in war - told by both sides to keep spirits up, impress and motivate. But they ultimately don't work. Truth will out. Strategy, power and cleverness will win.

- He's also extremely adept at building tension. 

- A good and enjoyable read once again.

- This positive review in the NYT summarises the book in detail.

Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet

 

- Maggie O'Farrell has written an enormously satisfying and heartbreaking novel, a captivating story of Shakespeare's wife Agnes and her independence and power. It's beautifully written and very sad.

- Hamnet, or Hamlet, is their twin boy who died from the plague at the age of eleven. His twin is Judith. The older first child is Susanna.

- Interestingly Will Shakespeare is never named. He's the ‘husband’ or ‘lad’ or ‘Latin boy’. His father John is a harsh and physically abusive bully, and there are hints of a very difficult childhood.

- The detail O'Farrell provides of domestic and community life in 16th century England brings the village community vividly to life. It's a tight, agricultural economy where there are no secrets. They all know each other and their daily interactions enable the pestilence to spread rapidly. Of course the health and medical practices are primitive, yet they are natural and real. This is very much a domestic drama. The stories that start and take hold in villages, developing into mythologies, become powerful.  

- Agnes’s brother Bartholomew is the exact opposite of her husband - huge in size and a farmer. He is not a fan of the of his brother-in-law. ‘A man needs work...proper work. He is all head, that one...with not much sense’. There is enormous tension in the wider family. Both Agnes and 'the husband' are viewed as strange, unsupportive and anti-family. 

- O’Farrell has an incredible ability to build drama and tension through her masterful control of pace. Agnes's experience of childbirth is powerfully told in intricate and incredible detail. As is the ugly process of death. The indescribable grief is profound and so deeply explored in all its iterations. 

- In fact in these Elizabethan times death is everywhere. It's a close companion. 

- The father, with Agnes's support, realises he must escape to London to pursue his creative passions and ambitions, otherwise he will sink into a severe and disabling depression. His career takes off. He concentrates initially on histories and comedies, but four years after the death of his son he writes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet.