Sarah Winman, Still Life

 

- I finally got around to finishing this rather long novel after being pressured by friends and family. I first started to read it eighteen months ago when it was published, but bailed after 80 pages because of the very chummy, rather claustrophobic and tiresome English village character of it. It was full of homey detail and dialogue. 

- But over Christmas this year I returned to it, and I'm sooo glad I did. I realised it was a critical portrait of English coldness and assumed superiority, in stark contrast to the warmth and rich heritage of Italian culture, art, and wisdom.

- A small group of friends and family, young and old, move to Florence after Ulysses Temper, a former soldier in the second world war who was stationed there, inherits a mansion in the heart of the city. They convert it into a pensione for visitors.

- Winman relishes introducing her characters and readers to the magnificent food and wine, streets, architecture, history, cafes, bars, trattorias, sculptures and paintings, and of course the Italian locals of the community. We're taken on a journey into the heart and soul of Italy. As a lover of all things Italian (I lived there for four years) I was totally sucked in. 

- The visitors, old and young, become enamoured of the Italian lifestyle, some falling in love with each other. In many ways the novel is a celebration of gay relationships in all their passion and intimacy. It's a sympathetic portrayal of tenderness and warmth. 

- Winman introduces us to a full range of characters, mostly English and American, including a young man E.M. Forster and his conservative and controlling mother who stay at the pensione for a few weeks. It's a lovely chapter. 

- The flooding of Florence in 1968 is described in detail. The city was totally under water for weeks and thousands of precious artworks and buildings were destroyed, and lives lost. It was the biggest flood in 600 years. Winman's narration here is just superb. She brings the drama of it fully alive. 

- So read this book over the holiday period if you can. It will lift your spirits.

Iain Ryan, What Living And Dying Is Like.

 - Iain Ryan's last novel, The Spiral (2020), was magnificent, and I raved about it here. His earlier one, The Student (2017) was also a very satisfying read. 'An exciting new voice in Australian crime fiction' had emerged according to Adrian McKinty. The city of Brisbane and its dingy underworld was Ryan's natural terrain. 

- This recently published one is, by comparison, a wholly different beast. It's not a novel but two short stories in a self-published little book. It also features a range of amateurish black and white photos of key items and places referred to in the stories. They add to the atmosphere of intrigue and menace. The stories are set in Nevada, Dallas and Los Angeles, about as far away from Brisbane as you can possibly get. 

- The first story, Rusty, is about an orange guitar Rusty has bought on Ebay, and a clairvoyant who he has contacted to find a clue to its provenance. Layabouts, students, dope addicts - it's Ryan's world and he brings it to life.

- The second and far more traditional crime related story, The Drifter, is more interesting and atmospheric, conveying a fair bit of menace. 

- Ryan's note in the Title Page provides the reader with a bit of context:

Although some of the broader historical events described in this book are drawn from the documented history of Sonic Youth, the events and characters in this book (including, for the avoidance of doubt, named people) are completely fictional and imaginary... 

- Ryan's ability to render the lives and relationships of people living and struggling at the margins, particularly in their conversations, is sublime. He strikes exactly the right note. In these two short pieces not a word is out of place or unnecessary. The prose is spare but powerful. 

 

(Some advice to self publishers: You still need a proofreader. Ryan refers to one of his main characters by the wrong name (Eva instead of Ava), and there are a few missing words in the text). 

Sarah Lamdan, Data Cartels

- This powerful little book is exceptionally well written and thoroughly researched. Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York and a former law librarian in law schools and law firms. 

- She very clearly outlines the problems we have with the enormous power companies like Reed Elsevier LexisNexis (RELX) and Thomson Reuters have gained by turning information gathering into data manipulation and exploiting it for profit. RELX is one of the most profitable companies in the world, closely followed by Thomson Reuters. Their hold over critically important knowledge and information in our digital world is monopolistic and borders on abusive. 

- They operate globally in key knowledge industries such as academic research, legal information, financial information, and news gathering. What should be public and made far more easily available has been totally privatised, locked away and paywalled with minimal exceptions. But importantly the raw data they access has been mined, retooled and bundled into information packages sold at high prices to universities, corporates, syndicates and government instrumentalities. Privacy is breached as a matter of course. 

- So many paragraphs in the book are eminently quotable, so I'll restrict myself to a few to give you an idea of the expertise and passion Lamdan packs into this grenade of a book:

The centuries-old concept of a 'marketplace of ideas' was not meant to be a for-profit business. But RELX and Thomson Reuters run closed information universes where they curate informational resources and decide who can access them. Like Facebook and Amazon, RELX and Thomson Reuters have privatised, and now control, social spaces that used to be public. They are the information landlords that decide who can swim in the ocean of knowledge.

Elsevier's high-priced fees for publicly funded research are digital versions of classic, exploitative rent-seeking behaviours.

Publishers prevent digital lending with prohibitive licensing agreement terms...They even sue online lending repositories like the Internet Archive and people who try to 'free knowledge' by sharing articles online...Academia is being turned into a data industry.

Just as 'The problem with Facebook is Facebook' the problem with data companies is data companies - their business model is based on hoarding, paywalling, and crunching as much information and data as possible. Their very existence is based on data exploitation, surveillance, and informational inequality. 

Changing the legal parameters of data analytics' companies' roles requires a large, orchestrated round of legal changes including copyright reform, reinvigorating antitrust doctrine, closing up constitutional law loopholes, and designating resources for government data infrastructure and access. That type of legal revolution isn't likely to happen any time soon. 

- Major reforms are needed, including in Australia, to free this vital information for public access. 

Yumna Kassab, The Lovers

 

- This is a stunning achievement by Yumna Kassab, as was her previous novel Australiana. 

- In short chapters she digs deep into the quagmire of emotional stresses and strains that overwhelm the loving relationship between Jamila and Amir. No locations are divulged, nor any career or work details, not even their ages. All the paraphernalia of the traditional narrative form is deliberately missing. The focus is entirely on the essence of their personal relationship. And this is why it is so magical. 

- Amir is devoted to Jamila and longs for her to assent to becoming his wife. However he was briefly married before and it was a disaster, so he is wary. 

- Jamila is fiercely independent and feels trapped in expectations of normality. Wives are possessions...religion was prerequisite number one...A woman follows the man, not the other way around.

- We are taken to an unnamed village, probably in Lebanon. Parental controls and religious conservatism dominate, and personal freedom is a mirage. 

- As the novel proceeds we learn that Jamila has migrated to the other side of the world, presumably Australia, and Amir remains in the old country. 

- Kassab's lens is set wide - the Traditional versus the Modern, the Ancient versus the Contemporary, the East versus the West, the Religious versus the Secular. The tensions are central. 

- The lovers' reflections on their feelings are conveyed in letters (mostly unsent). They are rich, soulful, insightful and beautifully written. 

These words I write have a meaning and it is love, though we are separated by the greatest ocean in the world...You are like an eternity to me and I exhaust myself with what I wish to say to you. 

I want to draw you close so you are against my heart.

I want to give you so much pleasure because to me, you are passion and desire, and they are intertwined.

I want to imprint myself upon your life till you know you will never walk alone again. 

I am here for you, I am here, I am here for whatever time fate has given us in this life.

At the very end Amir's friend, Samir, offers him some advice on love and loyalty that is so right. Regret is profound.