Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This.

 

                                 
- There is no denying Patricia Lockwood can write. Her prose is studded with sparkling gems. And she peppers her frequently tedious reflections with sharp, wry insights. Her focus is today's social media, mainly Twitter. She refers to it as the 'portal'.

- Her unnamed narrator occupies a space between dystopia and reality, never indulging in damning critique but never shying away from honest and cutting commentary. 

- It’s the Trump era, although he's only referred to as the ‘dictator’. There's nothing really original in her political observations but she occasionally nails it: 

The labored officious breathing of the policeman, which was never the breathing that stopped.

White people, who had the political education of potatoes - lumpy, unseasoned, and biased towards the Irish - were suddenly feeling compelled to speak out about injustice. This happened once every forty years on average, usually after a period when folk music became popular again. When folk music became popular again, it reminded people that they had ancestors, and then, after a considerable delay, that their ancestors had done bad things.

Go not far enough, and find yourself guilty of complacency, complicity, a political slumping into the cushions of your time. Go too far, and find yourself saying that you didn't care that a white child had been eaten by an alligator.   

- Generally I found her descriptions of social media and its obsessions pretty uninspiring. Her brilliant, colourful writing can’t disguise some middling insights. Her odd posts like ‘can a dog be twins’, and her invented words, like spelling sneezing as 'sneazing', are meaningless and tiresome in the extreme.

- In Part Two of the book, however, things change dramatically. Her sister’s baby is diagnosed through ultrasound as seriously brain damaged. If it survived pregnancy it would only live for months. It's an immensely sad and jolting event for her wider family. They address the abortion option but decide not to go down that legally complicated path. They display a commendable and surprising moral depth. This is real life. It's not the empty, indulgent 'portal'. The writing is beautiful and very emotional. 

The doors of bland suburban houses now looked possible, outlined, pulsing - for behind any one of them could be hidden a bright and private glory.

Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library.

 

- This delightful historical novel brings vividly to life the occupation of Paris by the Nazis in 1939, and how the locals coped, particularly the destruction of their work lives and the lack of food and other necessities. Their family, friend and colleague relationships were put under enormous stress. There was outright betrayal, plenty of dobbing, hatred of citizens deemed, often falsely, 'collaborators', and rank antisemitism. Ugly behaviour defined so much of French society during the war years. But on the other hand it also created close friendships and intimacy, and enabled courage and the spirit of resistance to emerge despite the risks.

- There’s something irresistible about a book that so emotionally engages you in the lives of its characters. This book achieves that benchmark in spades.

- We're also taken to the small town of Froid in Montana many years after the war where Odile, the main character from Paris, now lives. The author captures the parochialism of this small American town perfectly. It's 1983 at the height of the Cold War and the enemy is Russia.

- We're provided with rich details of the characters' family lives. Odile’s beautiful, loving relationship with her twin brother Remy, is just one example. The Paris library staff and their regular clients also add to the rich tapestry. 

- Unfortunately the novel drowns a bit in sentimentality, despite toughening up at the end. Personal disagreements are too frequently dissolved in an instant. Such was the fragility of those stressful times.

- Nevertheless this is an exceptionally enjoyable read. 

Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts.

  

- This new novel from Jhumpa Lahiri is simply wonderful. We're offered small, two or three page capsules of everyday life in an unnamed Italian city, quite probably Rome. It builds slowly and powerfully, the narrator defining herself as an immensely likeable, attractive and thoughtful woman. She's never married or been in a long term relationship. She leads a solitary life but she’s very honest and open about disclosing all her small and larger secrets.

- She did not have a happy childhood. She was an only child and her parents were the very opposite of generous, caring and supportive. Her father was a miserable penny pincher who kept to himself, sitting in his armchair all day reading the newspapers. He hated going out apart from to the theatre, his only passion. Her mother was miserly too. ‘I mourn my unhappy origins’ she admits at one point. 

- As a result she’s very sensitive to the lives of husbands and wives, whether neighbours or local shop and cafe owners, and particularly welcoming of their friendly gestures. She's an academic but dislikes her working environment and most of her colleagues. 

- Lahiri originally wrote this novel in Italian then translated it into English. Unfortunately it shows. She drops some strange words at times, quite foreign to the native English speaker - gelid (icy cold), springing (opting), agenda (calendar/personal organiser). 

Linda Jaivin, The Shortest History of China.

 

                                                  
- This brilliant little book deserves to be widely read. From the very beginnings nearly 3000 years ago, through the Ancient Era, the Imperial Era and to the Modern Era, Jaivin gives us a clear and lucid account of the social, political and economic forces, trends and rhythms of this huge and complex nation.

- The three major streams of thought that would inspire society and governance in China for millennia were embedded very early: Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism - together with other different schools and variations, collectively known as the 'One Hundred Schools of Thought', would compete, interact and inspire society and governance in China for millennia. 

- Multiple dynasties ruled right up until the Modern Era beginning in 1912. As inevitable as night follows day, political decay always set in once corruption and favouritism became commonplace, as they always did. What I found striking was the horrendous and vicious cruelty that regimes inflicted, not just on enemies but on ordinary workers and citizens. 

- Jaivin fully describes the ugly colonialism that China was forced to bear from the mid 19th century. It was reluctantly pressured into signing the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 which began a century of China’s humiliation at the hands of various imperialist powers, most notably Britain and Japan. In effect the British stole Hong Kong, the Portuguese stole Macau, and the Japanese stole Taiwan. Thus began a century of humiliation, and we wonder today why China under autocrat Xi Jinping is determined to get them back. 

Just a century earlier, Voltaire and other European philosophers had considered China to represent civilisation at its best. The racialist logic of imperialism, which justified exploitation and colonisation on the basis of supposed white superiority, changed all that...  

- Jaivin tells the story of Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of contemporary Taiwan particularly well. She doesn't hold back on Chiang...a committed anti-Communist with vaunting personal ambitions and underworld connections. His party, the Kuomintang, and their corruption, ineptitude and reluctance to fight the Japanese radicalised a great many intellectuals, artists and filmmakers, rallying them to the Communist cause. After Mao's successful Long March and the installation of his regime Chiang retreated to Taiwan. (Decades later, in 1981, Taiwan refused to negotiate a peaceful reunification with the CCP). 

- Mao gets very little sympathy. In the first decade after 1949 the people suffered appalling hunger and millions died. The Great Leap Forward had been ruinous, as was the cruel, 'cleansing', Cultural Revolution (1966-1969).

- Jaivin places Xi's 'New Era' in context. After the Tiananmen protests, religious and ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, the rise of disaffected cults such as Falungong, Xi emerges as an  autocratic and ruthless rule enforcer who will not brook any protest or dissent. 

- But what seems obvious from everything we're previously encountered in Jaivin's story of this ancient, huge and vital nation, the constant, powerful currents underpinning Chinese regimes will ensure Xi’s is eventually replaced by a more progressive and tolerant one. Everything is just a matter of time.

The publisher Black Inc has done an exceptionally good job here. The editing is superb (there's not one typo as far as I can see), there are hundreds of Chinese characters sprinkled throughout which would have demanded a highly professional typesetting effort, there are heaps of photos, maps, footnotes, a very comprehensive index, and to top it off there's an author photo. Phew! It's a handsome and very well produced little gem. And it retails for only $24.99.

Rachel Cusk, Second Place.

 

- As a great fan of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy I was really looking forward to reading this just published novel.

- Unfortunately I was profoundly disappointed. This effort is tedious and uninspiring. 

- The unidentified 'M' is telling the story of her life and feelings to 'Jeffers', a completely unidentified person or entity.

- She was moved by the paintings of 'L' that she saw at an exhibition in Paris. There are other characters in her story - her husband Tony, her daughter Justine and her boyfriend Kurt, L's companion Brett, and a few others. These are at least named. 

- M reflects on men and their masculine ways throughout. As a woman she feels constrained, almost imprisoned. This is true to Cusk's oeuvre generally. 

- At first she seems wise and insightful, indulging in psychological and philosophical meanderings. But they’re also quite frequently banal. She's completely lacking in self confidence, and is defining herself as profoundly insignificant. Some musings are simply incomprehensible. As a reader it was hard not to scream at her: 'lighten up for god's sake'!

- Her husband Tony is ‘practical’ and as boring as batshit. His car, really an old and decaying truck, is ridiculous. He has never bought any clothes. M is also limited clothes wise. She wears shapeless coverings and restricts the colours to black or white. Neither of them them ever cut their hair. She's indulging in ‘a kind of renunciation of sexuality and beauty’. 

- When L and Brett are invited to stay with them on their rural isolated property, sharp and disruptive contrasts emerge. L and Brett are bright and stylish, and Brett, a young woman, is beautiful, creative and full of life. Obviously she’s quite challenging to M. She and L exhibit a wild, almost pagan passion.

- The novel pivots three quarters of the way through and gave me hope that it would finally come alive. M awakens and seems to be on the way to liberation. She's been desperate for L to recognise her and paint a portrait of her, and he finally does. However it turns out to be a wild, demonic wall mural of the Garden of Eden, with M rendered as the ‘bitch’ Eve. 

- She's profoundly shocked and she quickly reverts to type, the submissive female. A more comfortable place for her. She can't handle the sense of unreality and independence she's made to feel. The novel ends with M and Tony indulging in the wilful act of whitewashing over the mural. Utterly shameful. 

- This is not a pleasant or satisfying read. But I'm left with the thought that perhaps I've missed the whole point of the novel. It may well be a damning critique of pinched, miserable, cold and unlikeable lives in an uninspiring society. But in any case it's still a tepid rendering.

(Cusk includes this note in a postscript:

Second Place owes a debt to Lorenzo in Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan's 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. My version - in which the Lawrence figure is a painter, not a writer - in intended as a tribute to her spirit.

The blurb to Mabel's actual memoir clarifies where the names came from at least: 'M' is Mabel; 'L' is Lawrence; 'Jeffers' is Robinson Jeffers, a celebrated poet at the time; 'Brett' is Dorothy Brett, a friend)

Jessie Tu, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing.

 

- What an extraordinary and absorbing read this award winning novel is. In earthy, short, punchy sentences Tu takes us deep into a life, both professional and personal, lived on the edges. 

 - Jena Lin was a violin prodigy as a kid, an international celebrity, but had a nervous breakdown at the young age of 15. After a few years and now at university, she returns to playing but struggles to achieve maturity as an adult. Her supreme confidence as a professional musician with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra collides with her personal insecurity and sense of isolation and loneliness. She recognises her body is desired and treasured by random men. The hunger for some affirmation that only Mark can provide... He tells me he likes it when it hurts. I enjoy hurting him..writhing with some bottomless need...I want a man to degrade me. Maybe that’s the only way I can become a woman, because haven’t women always been degraded by powerful men? The men have their way with her. She rarely resists.

- Tu explores the social dynamics of the music and art communities in Sydney and New York, and brings vividly to life the stresses and strains on creative young people and their personal issues. Jena's own family circumstances, particularly her difficult relationship with her mother, are central to her own emotional instability.       

- The anxiety of auditioning and performance is so well captured. It's a very competitive and stressful process. An exchange with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra emerges as a possibility, and she’s being pressed to audition. 

- The novel is littered with references to famous composers, performers, artists and writers. A glorious celebration of culture. However Jena recognises that these spheres are dominated by old white men. If your art does not speak to them and their narrow set of experiences it will be lost in the universe of abandoned things, erased from history. 

- Finally, Tu takes us on a fabulous tour of New York - its bars, cafes, restaurants, performance venues, and lively streets: The city is always pulsating, floods of light and people and traffic...The stories are endless, and I never want to stop being inside its wilderness. Its temperament. Its density. Its cruelty.

- Jena's favourite movie is Frances Ha. She watches it over and over again (as do many people, including me!)