Richard Beasley, Dead In The Water

 

- In brilliantly funny and punchy prose Richard Beasley, former Senior Counsel Assisting at the Murray-Darling Royal Commission, absolutely castigates the bureaucrats and politicians who were supposed to manage and ensure sustainable water flows in the Basin. They screwed up big time because of incompetence and political corruption. 

- The book is a hugely enjoyable read, full of personality and cheekiness. It's bracing and utterly delightful and extremely well written. The subtitle is A Very Angry Book. And his views are those of an expert. 

- He demolishes the conventional banalities in government statements and those from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) with surgical precision. There are constant digs at Canberra, the Nationals and One Nation: When it comes to water, don't hold your breath for legality or bravery of political action in this country. There's nothing like Canberra, or the National Party. Too much illegality is never enough.

- As for climate change, the MDBA chose to totally ignore it: Point blank. Despite being told not to. More than once...In short, the CSIRO has stated that if we maintain our current allocations to agriculture in the basin then ecological thresholds may be crossed and the resulting changes may well be largely irreversible. Add climate predictions to this and it gets even starker: unless we allocate a lot less water to agriculture, then 'climate change would be likely to lead to irreversible ecological degradation'. 

- This book is a gem. It's electrifying. Easily one of the best political books I've read in a long time, and I've read a lot of them. I highly recommend it.


(As to be expected, in the current Australian publishing way, there's no index or author photo. The lack of an index in particular is unforgivable)

Steven Carroll, O.

 

- I’m a great fan of Melbourne author Steven Carroll. He writes of love and courage in difficult historical times, and explores the constraints on young women and their passions and challenges.

- This new novel is captivating from the start. We're in occupied France in 1943. 

- As in all his novels Carroll's characters navigate fraught social and political times. Integrity and strength are essential. While loyalty to all sorts of established norms is demanded, conventions are frequently confronted. And in occupied France challenges abound. We think we’re awake...’ she says, voice dreamy, wistful, removed...but are we just sleepwalking?

- Dominique Aury, the adopted name of Anne Desclos, was a real and inspiring historical figure. She was the first female board member of the major French literary publisher Gallimard who carried on a secret lifelong relationship with the well respected publishing director Jean Paulhan. It was a deep, forbidden love. Paulhan was married. She wrote the Story of O, meant just for him. The protagonist 'O' was degraded and humiliated, possessed and brutally defiled..but always with this proud, defiant air of being somehow beyond him and beyond them all.

- Albert Camus was for decades also on the Gallimard board. The directors were fiercely divided on whether the feted company should publish this novel by an unknown novelist 'Pauline Reage'. Camus votes to publish, as does Jean who of course knows the author's real identity, but chairman Gaston Gallimard doesn’t. He considers it ‘smut’? 

- After the book is published in 1954 by a small underground printer Carroll explores the ramifications, some very dangerous. The book becomes a sensation, opinions strong and divided. However there are no dramatic developments. Even the police, who suspect Dominique is the real author, decide not to pursue any charges. Calm comes after the storm. 

- We're taken forward to the 1968 student revolution in Paris, and disappointingly this profound social and political revolution passes Dominique by. A former resistance fighter herself, she's dismissive of it. She just doesn’t get it. That's ironic. 

- Carroll's fictional creation Pauline Reage, a courageous resistance member during the occupation, who was helped by Dominique to escape to London during the occupation, dramatically re-appears years later and meets with Dominique to discuss the book. It's a pivotal moment in the story. Pauline speaks of the book's deeper meaning, the central focus being France’s submission. O for occupation...France the whore who rolls over and surrenders, submits herself willingly to her masters.

- The unpolitical Dominique is shaken as she is persuaded of this truth. Her 'little novel' becomes far more powerful and significant. 

- An impressive and well written novel indeed, and an immensely enjoyable read.

(One question kept bugging me, as a former publisher: did Dominique sign a contract and get royalties? Carroll never mentions it.)

Iain Ryan, The Spiral.

 

- Erma is a young academic angry that her research assistant Jenny, now dead from suicide, had made a formal complaint against her. Erma is a fighter and she wants answers.

- The suburbs and streets of inner city Brisbane are brought vividly to life in this extraordinary new noir thriller from former Brisbane, now Melbourne based, writer Iain Ryan. I became a fan after reading his previous novel, The Student, which was just so damn good. This one, published this month, is even better. 

- Erma haunts the streets, strip clubs, music venues and seedy pubs of the hip but dark and tawdry precincts of Fortitude Valley and New Farm. There are too many missing young students. Too many questions. The atmosphere is electric and Ryan's prose is exquisite. He writes with such a deftness of touch. The action sequences, and there are many, are gripping. 

- Erma's heightened anxiety causes her to be 'thrashed around by nightmares and memory' - ghosts and demons on the one hand, and family trauma on the other. 

- There’s a charming earthiness to her: I...flop down on the couch and stare at the ceiling. I call the cat but the little prick doesn’t come.... Life is wasted on the stupid. 

- The novel ends with a very satisfying resolution. The threads are all brought together. 

- I hope Ryan pens a sequel to this absorbing read. Readers will yearn for more of Erma, and more of inner city Brisbane.

Laura Jean McKay, The Animals In That Country

 

- Talking animals for fuck's sake! I don’t like animals, never have. I couldn't finish this book and bailed at page 106. The fundamental premise is absurd. If it hadn’t won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award I would never have bought it. 

- It really is a silly proposition - a ‘zooflu’ pandemic that enables affected humans to talk to animals and vice versa. I’d rather read a First Nation voice on the land and its vitality. 

- The main character Jean would be at home in Nimbin. She's a lowlife and a drunk. Such a cliche.

- The writing is full of vivid similes: ...her whole voice changes - harder and sweeter at the same time, a boiled lolly; ...like a tourist who doesn't know his face from his bum; The stench of the forest, private as an armpit. Although the narrative circles and circles and circles...

- I was constantly asking where’s the depth?