Iain Ryan, The Strip.

- I very much enjoyed Iain Ryan's previous novels, The Student, and The Spiral, but this one is a cut above. It's brilliant. How on earth does a crime writer who is not, and never has been, a cop, write a novel as intricate and informed as this? It's so real, and the characters so believable. There are none of your tired and empty cliches. 

- The setting is the Gold Coast in the early 80’s - the criminal underclass, the corrupt police, and the deadening conservative culture and society more generally. We're a decade or two prior to the reforms introduced by the Wayne Goss and Peter Beattie governments. As the key criminal player says at one point: One day, everything I do here on the coast will be legal. The fucking, the gambling, abortions, drugs. The lot.

- A serial killer is on the loose. Detective Constable Lana Cohen from Sydney has been sent up north to work with a bunch of detectives investigating the deaths of eight victims of a serial killer. But the police on the Gold Coast are incompetent, lazy and stupidly blokey. Beer and prostitutes is all they care about. The place is known as a ‘punishment posting’. It is where the Force sends its weakest officers. ‘They’re dogs, each and all’.

- Ryan thickens the story with a lot of characters and twists, so the reader is challenged to stay with it. But that pays off in spades. He builds an extremely satisfying resolution with some stunning reveals.

- This is a masterful piece of work. It is easily one of the best crime novels I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. 

- Here are some reviews from authors who know what they're talking about: 

Steeped in the bitter lore of old-school policing and backlit by the gaudy neon of the Gold Coast streets, The Strip is hands done one the the finest Australian crime novels you'll ever read. (David Whish-Wilson)

Tense and compelling. (Garry Disher)

Iain Ryan's The Strip is an eye popping, nightmarish miasma that sets a new bar for Australian crime. Drenched in sweat, despair and corruption, think David Fincher's Seven, set on the Gold Coast in the 1980's. Except weirder and with more tension. A total triumph in every respect. (Chris Flynn)

The Strip is bingeworthy reading - a gritty crime thriller reeking of corruption, murder and sex. If you like your heroines flawed and kick-ass and your cops dirty as hell, you'll love Iain Ryan's gripping foray into the underworld of the Gold Coast. Hardly took a breath from first page to last. (Kate Mildenhall)

If David Peace wrote a novel set in Queensland's Gold Coast in the 1980's, the result would be The Strip. Fast paced, gritty, sharply observed noir that goes hard into the sleaze and corruption of the moonlight state. (Andrew Nette)

Paul Dalgarno, A Country of Eternal Light.

 

- A brilliant and exhilarating novel that creates magic out of the mundane. One of the best novels I’ve read this year, and easily the best Australian one. 

- Dalgarno submerges us deep into the ordinary lives of a working class family in Scotland. There's nothing that distinguishes them other than their deep love for one another despite occasional tensions. Margaret and Henry live in a council flat and have two twin daughters Rachel and Eva. 

- We span the decades from after World War II to 2021, and although the 'Living Margaret' dies in 2014, the 'Dead Margaret' revisits key events over that period and reflects on them. It doesn't take long as a reader to get used to that authorial device, in fact to love it, as her voice has a gentle touch, and she's a charming and sensitive woman. Like Dante, she reflects, ‘I’m on a divine mission’. (She ain't that divine however - in 2021, during Covid, she doesn’t know why people are wearing masks or social distancing!).

- We're told the daughters grow up and have relationships and children of their own. Rachel moves to Australia and Eva to Spain. I use the words 'we're told' deliberately. Dalgarno provides a shocking reveal at the end that throws a whole new light on everything that comes before. I reread chapter after chapter and was, once again, utterly transfixed by his genius. 

- Read this and revel in the delicious prose and storytelling. 

Tony Birch, Women and Children

- I was not a great fan of Tony Birch's previous novel The White Girl but this one is simply superb. It's an absorbing and fascinating story with multiple layers of richness.  

- Joe Cluny is an eleven year old boy who attends a local Catholic school in a working class suburb of Melbourne in the mid-sixties. He's not too bright and is always getting into trouble. His thirteen year old sister Ruby on the other hand is dux of her class and well liked. Sister Mary Josephine and Father Edmond run the school and force all the kids to swallow the very traditional and silly Catholic beliefs and practices. It's profound ignorance dressed up as piety. It's also dangerous and abusive. The cane is always at hand. 

- Marion is Joe and Ruby's mother, and Charlie is their grandfather. Charlie's shed is full of stuff that fascinates Joe, and his friend Ranji is a scrap metal dealer. They are mature and kindly men that epitomise what real men should be. They also tell stories and read books, which Joe and Ruby find inspiring. 

- Oona is Marion’s younger sister. Oona is in a relationship with Ray, a local electric goods shopowner. He is a vicious abuser, as are so many of the shysters that are dotted throughout the community. But she keeps returning to him, believing her abuse won't happen again, and perhaps she was to blame anyway. 

- The local priest has an opinion: ‘If she was a married woman, this would not have happened’.

- Of course the beatings continue, and get more vicious. 

- The way Birch brings all the threads together at the end is immensely satisfying. There were a number of ways things could have gone, but he keeps the story grounded. 

- Well worth a read. 

Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

- This novel was shortlisted for this year's Booker, and was predicted to win by a number of critics. 

- It didn't win but it certainly deserved its place on the shortlist. It's absolutely brilliant. (Paul Lynch's Prophet Song actually won).

- Early in the novel our unnamed narrator lands at an airport in an unnamed country, walks towards the automatic exit doors, but 'the sensors did not at first register my movement, however exaggerated, so I had to wait until another recently deplaned passenger passed though the doors...' This says everything about the novel's essential meaning. She is a young woman (negative number one) and, as is slowly and subtly revealed, Jewish (negative number two).  

-She goes to her older brother’s mansion in the north of this unnamed country to be his 'retainer' (really a domestic slave). There's a ‘surface placidity...a kind of idiot impenetrability’ to him. He’s a very successful businessman, recently divorced, insufferable and self-entitled, and politically on the right. She's not bothered. She loves him, as she does all her siblings. 

- Previously she had been a journalist and an audio typist for a legal firm. She doesn't speak the language of this 'northern country' and the inhabitants of the town she now lives in don't speak English (or don't bother too).

- The fact that the country is not named is frustrating at first. But as the novel progresses that lack of specificity amplifies the universality of the treatment she receives - the abject prejudice.

- Interestingly, and because of the antisemitism she experienced at school, she doesn't like identifying as Jewish. She ‘gave the impression of being clean and without history, like gentiles, like people unstained by ancestral shame...I steadfastly refused to say the bracha over our classroom Sabbath ceremonies’. 

- Bernstein broadens her focus to the subtle savagery of majorities in regard to minorities, whether Jews, Indigenous, or ‘foreigners’. They’re forced to shrink and hide. She depicts victimhood so well. In the local cafe for example the racist vibe is ugly. 

- Strange things happen in the town to various animals, all pretty normal, but the residents feel her presence among them is the cause. 

- Bernstein provides an interesting twist at the end which is very satisfying and apt. There is no horror or victory or evil but there is peace.  'I know they will not come because they do not need too'. 

- I read this novel twice, luxuriating in the delicious prose and subtlety. It's so good. 

Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

 

- Today this novel was announced as the winner of the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction, and deservedly so. It's brilliantly written and powerful. In idiosyncratic and multilayered prose, often clotted but always poetic, Lynch is merciless in plunging us deep into the ugliness of war and social conflict. It demands to be ready slowly. 

- An autocratic, fascist regime, dangerous right-wing nationalists, has gained power in Ireland, and it hasn't taken them long to unleash terror on who and what they perceive as enemies of the state. 

- Eilish and Larry, and their kids Mark, Bailey, Molly, and their baby Ben are the central focus. Larry is the deputy general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, so he's a target. 

- They are a happy family, but the pressure is building on them. The union is planning a protest march of 15,000 people. Larry is concerned and decides it would be safer not to go, but Eilish says the march must proceed. It does but the police violently arrest many, including Larry. 

- 'What she sees before her is an idea of order coming undone, the world slewing into a dark and foreign sea'. This is how societies splinter, and trust eroded. Her father, friends and work colleagues are being ‘visited’ too, and bureaucrats are pressuring her. 

- Her oldest son Mark is called up for national service, as are many young men barely out of school. There are protests on the streets but the police are watching them. Mark joined the protest but is now missing. 

- Schools are closed, as are offices. A curfew is in place. Eilish's house and car are attacked by thugs. The splintering of the community is increasing. Retailers, neighbours, and old friends are taking sides. It's ugly. The government blocks the internet and all foreign media, and electricity is frequently down. The sound of war is there all day and night. Citizens are imprisoned in their home. Food and water are hard to find. The regime insists it is bombing terrorists. 

- The rebel forces are gaining ground, but it's still chaos. Supermarkets are closed, and roadblocks are everywhere. The tension between Eilish and her kids is increasing, which is inevitable. Tragedy confronts them when their house is bombed.

-The way this novel is brought to an end by Lynch is just perfect. It's enormously sad and dispiriting and makes the reader profoundly angry. But is the author offering a glimmer of hope? Given today's awful world, that is debatable.

- A profound and original piece of 'fiction' for our times. 

Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day

- Another beautiful little book from the marvellous Irish author Claire Keegan. I so loved Foster and Small Things Like These. This one is smaller, at only 47 pages, yet it too packs a powerful punch.

- Cathal is a young office bound man in a boring admin job. He meets Sabine, a young attractive woman working in an art gallery. After a while he proposes, she accepts, and brings her clothes and furniture to his house.

- But he senses she's an intrusion on his daily routines. He’s upset. ‘Maybe it’s just too much reality’. And as for that engagement ring that cost him 128 euros plus VAT to get it resized for her finger! 'Do you think I'm made of money?' he'd said - and immediately felt the long shadow of his father's language crossing over his life...

- One night she talks to him about misogyny: ‘It’s simply about not giving...to some of you we are just cunts'. She will not tolerate being treated as subservient. She walks, prior to the wedding day.

- It's a simple story. He’s a pathetic inadequate. A little boy who, like his father and brother, calls women ‘cunts’. Once again he just sits in his arm chair, staring at the TV, and that's his life. 

- The End. 

Banana Yoshimoto, The Premonition

 

- Short Japanese novels have become a thing now in the English speaking world. Over the last few years Emi Yagi's Diary of a Void, Mieko Kawakami's two novels All the Lovers in the Night and Heaven, and of course Toshikazu Kawaguchi's bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series have really made their mark.

- Perhaps this is why Banana Yoshimoto's The Premonition, first published in Japan in 1988 has just been re-released in English by Faber. And I thank god for that. This is a Japanese classic, a fascinating, strange, and absorbing story, and exceptionally well translated by Asa Yoneda. And it's only 133 pages long so can be read in one sitting.  

- A young girl, Yayoi, visits her aunt Yukino aged 30, who lives alone in a neglected, untidy house a short train trip from Tokyo. Yukino taught music at a private high school and has become quite an eccentric. 

- Yayoi’s parents are upper middle class. Her dad’s a doctor, her mother a nurse. She loves her younger brother Tetsuo. They’ve just moved back into their renovated house and bought a dog. Tokyo's vibrancy with its trains, stations, bars, restaurants and parks is on show.  

- So that's the setting - sort of normal people leading normal lives. Except, as it turns out, that's far from the case.

- The young girl dreams, and has visions of people that appear in a strange way to be familiar. She is very sensitive to the darkness, the stars, the wind, and the trees, as if nature has messages. 

- One night her brother gets a phone call and leaves the house. Worried, she found him and walked home with him. The next night she herself runs away from home and goes to her aunt's house, where she stays for a long time.

- That's when she learns the truth about all sort of things, which of course I can't disclose. 

- The aunt becomes the central character from that point. …the dark feminine magic that was her nature…she harboured something vast, lost, and familiar, and it was like a siren call to those of us who were missing parts of our childhoods...She had the habit of looking away from things she feared, or found distasteful, or thought might hurt her.

- Also central to the story is Yayoi's and her brother Tetsuo's relationship. 

- A wonderful reflection about how life's vicissitudes whack us however good as humans we are. 

Clementine Ford, I Don’t

 

- I've long been a fan of Clementine Ford. Her two previous books, Fight Like a Girl and Boys Will Be Boys were just superb. In her new one, I Don't, she delivers once again. Indeed, she surpasses herself. She's passionate, inspirational and very persuasive, a writer of exceptional talent, and thus a real joy to read. 

- Her prose is lively and punchy, and with a delicious comic edge, but what shines through is the depth and detail that supports her argument. 

- Right from the start she serves up a radical proposition that I initially I found shocking. Yes, her target in the book is patriarchy, misogyny and sexism, but are we to condemn ancient wisdom expressed, for example, in the Book of Genesis and the story of Lilith, and the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Darwin? But as she carefully dissects the legacies of these beliefs and their power, and the way marriage evolved as a business arrangement to grow a family's wealth, her arguments become increasingly persuasive. 

- She explores the domestic role of women and its history: the male breadwinner/female homemaker, ‘traditional family values’ mindset - The fantasy men have of their Stone Age selves as ripped dudes tearing the flesh of an animal apart with their bare hands is ludicrous. You’re an accountant Jeff. Are you going to bore the wildebeest to death?

- She references some powerful women from history: poet Emilia Bassano who was a strong influence on Shakespeare; pioneering feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft; Olympe de Gouges, an outspoken opponent of the French colonial slave trade who wrote Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen; Emmeline Pankhurst, political activist.

- At the other end there's ‘the human-sized lizard known as Piers Morgan' and the Murdoch ‘hate-filled chorus of lunatics'. 

- Ford leaves nothing untouched. She castigates the whole marriage industry: the cliches of engagements and rings, the boring sameness of banal wedding ceremonies and their dumb speeches, the bridal gown (it must be white) cliches, wives taking their husband’s surname. Why? She asks, is there any real meaning to any of this popular culture, TV sitcom, junk? 

- We seem to respect the legal obligations of marriage, the 'contract', the oversight of the state that provides institutional protection such as child support. But is that necessary any more when de facto partnerships are also included? 

- Towards the end of the book Ford becomes more personal. She becomes angrier, providing a description of abuse on every level, destroying the myth of male protection. ‘And I don’t need or want men to provide for me. What I want is the right to provide for myself’. 

- She describes in excruciating detail the incredibly difficult birth of her son, and the painful ordeal of giving birth in general. The final chapter called ‘Motherfucker' is a searing account of the frequent sexual abuse of young mothers, because men can't wait. 

- My one criticism of the book is Ford's refusal to countenance the existence, which is obvious to all of us who've lived long enough, of marriages that are successful on just about every level. There are good men, sensitive and caring and committed to their partners and children. Their love is genuine and they are loved and treasured in return. 

- However, despite this, Ford has written a powerful book that deserves to be widely read. 

You know, people spit the accusation man hater at me like there aren't five billion fucking reasons why I and any other woman with a brain have no choice but to hate them. But it's not really accurate to say that I'm a man hater. Saying I hate men gives them too much power. What I think I really am is a man seer. I see men in the way we're not supposed to see them, in the endless ways they contradict the myths of their morality and greatness and the ways in which they enforce their hatred of women over and over again. 

I see men for who they are, and I know too many of the secrets they want to keep hidden. It's not why I hate them. It's why they hate me. 

Tracey Lien, All That’s Left Unsaid

 

- This is an extraordinarily good novel by Australian author Tracey Lien. It has just been awarded the 2023 Readings Prize for fiction. It's a superbly wrought immigrant Vietnamese family drama, set in the outer Western suburb of Cabramatta in Sydney. It starts simply, with a slight YA tone, but builds gradually into a rich and complex story of Western/Asian cultural contrasts, mother/daughter tensions, the power of Asian parents and the obligations the children are made to feel. It becomes a very earthy, gritty and real, narrative. 

- Lien has the ability to delve deeply into the lives of each of her characters, as she does for the whole suburb of Cabramatta. They are brought vividly to life. Cabramatta proved that a town could be gorgeous and sick, comforting and dangerous, imperfect but home. 

- Her focus is on a Vietnamese family living in Cabramatta. The parents, who barely speak English, escaped Communist rule in Vietnam after the war and managed to get to Australia. The mother at first seems a nasty piece of work, and she's a superstitious Buddhist adherent. But as is slowly revealed there's a lot more to her than that. Her daughter Ky (pronounced 'Key') is an excellent, top of the class school student, who finds her parents frustrating and unlovable. Her school friend Minnie is a cherished soulmate, a bright spunky delight, and she becomes the key player in the unfolding drama that takes place five years later.  

- The central element in the story is that Denny, Ky's academically brilliant younger brother, has been murdered. Was he caught up in the ugly drug gang warfare in Cabramatta? Ky is desperate to find out. So we're sucked into a personal investigation and ugly details emerge - of relationships, families, abuse and neglect. 

- But there is also love. And a very satisfying resolution.  

- In today's ugly world it's good to be reminded of that. 

Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave

 

- This is an extraordinarily good book. It delves deep into AI, its revolutionary promise, but also the huge dangers and challenges it presents to society. 

- Suleyman, an AI expert and founding father, has written a powerful, must read treatise on an invention that will radically change all human lives and communities in the very near future. The book is full of detail and for that reason not an easy read at times, yet it is absolutely enthralling. 

- The first few chapters present a comprehensive historical picture about previous technological revolutions - agricultural, transport, electricity, digitalisation - and how thoroughly our lives, economies and societies changed. Suleyman's premise is that the AI wave will be far more rapid and profound.  

- The back cover blurb says it all:

We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.

Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise our lives, operate our businesses and run core government services. We will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability. 

We are not prepared.

Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution, one poised to become the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. Driven by overwhelming political and commercial incentives, these tools will help address our global challenges and create vast wealth - but also upheaval on a once unimaginable scale. 

In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces threaten the grand bargain of the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harm arising from unchecked openness on one side, the threat of over-bearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? 

This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes 'the containment problem' - the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies - as the essential challenge of our age. 

Sebastian Faulks, The Seventh Son

- I really loved Sebastian Faulks's two previous novels Paris Echo and Snow Country. Faulks's gift is to write love stories set in fractious times, and to bring the personal, political and social brilliantly alive. 

- In The Seventh Son, his new novel, he attempts the same portrayal, but unfortunately fails dismally. 

- Talissa is a young post-grad seeking a permanent academic position. She needs money and seizes an opportunity to be a surrogate mother. A clinic owned by a billionaire philanthropist swaps the donor's semen for a manufactured one with genes harnessed from a neanderthal specimen.  

- The baby Seth is born. He grows up a pretty strange kid with some intellectual limitations and some unusual talents. He's a homo sapiens and homo neanderthal hybrid. But as a person he's nothing extraordinary. 

- Faulks is asking whether human limitations can be overcome or are we stuck with them. As his main character in Snow Country reflects We are obsessive. We appear to have bigger brains than other creatures, but we behave in a way that's contrary to our own interests. These harmful passions that drive us mad with love or with the need to slaughter one another. We don't seem very well...evolved. Can we rise to a higher level of humanity, and one without dementia, schizophrenia, depression, and other mental ailments for example? 

- Obviously this is an intriguing premise, but is it realistic, or just a fantasy? At one point a bunch of scientists are debating these issues in very scientific jargon. As ordinary readers we simply don't know whether they are talking real science. What we do know is that Faulks is enjoying the conversation and teasing and challenging us. 

- I was way more attracted to the group of friends caught up in this evolutionary drama. They are loving, affectionate, intelligent, kind and passionate humans, with worthwhile jobs. Humanity’s best. What’s to improve? 

- So I found the main plot line boring and pointless. 

Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional.

 

- She's an unnamed woman, an atheist, separated from her husband, and fleeing to ‘the high, dry Monaro plains, far from anywhere’. Her destination is a small convent. Her parents died. She's alone.

- Welcome to the world of Charlotte Wood: a group of women dealing with their plight in a challenging, often male dominated, world. The convent, which welcomes her as a visitor, has half a dozen Catholic nuns who adhere to a daily ritual of Vespers, Lauds, and the Middle Hour. The wife of her old school friend Richard who is the convent's gardener and handyman …thinks there’s something…sick about it. Something unnatural about the way you all live here. 

- Wood's two previous novels The Natural Way of Things (2015) and The Weekend (2019) also focused on small groups of women, their group dynamics and individual personalities, quirks and obsessions. 

- What is intriguing about this new novel is the wider scope of Wood's exploration. Her narrator recalls all sorts of incidents and people that were in some way important to her as a child, a young woman, and an adult. Slowly and surely a common thread emerges. The people that matter to her are not the tepid nuns and their meaningless lives, but the strong individuals she's encountered who go against the grain confidently and fearlessly. Yet she's spent four years as a permanent resident in the convent. She just…didn’t go home. She thinks of the mass graves in which nuns…had buried babies they called illegitimate…the savagery of the Catholic Church…Yet here I am. Wrestle. Wrestle...Choosing disappearance...I had a need, an animal need, to find a place I had never been but which was still, in some undeniable way, my home. 

- Sister Jenny and Sister Andrea left the convent a few years previously to go to Thailand where they set up a shelter for abandoned women. Jenny was attacked by an abusive American priest and never seen again, but her bones have now been found. They will arrive at the convent in eight days, brought by Sister Helen Parry. Helen was a classmate St Ursula's High School and rebellious. She was bullied but is now a charismatic, formidable woman, a fighter and a global 'celebrity nun', leading a life of protest for justice around the world. 

- Her mother was an inspiration. She was kind and an independent thinker, as was her father. They welcomed the Vietnamese immigrants. We're confronted with the extremes of being alive, of quiet servitude at one end, and of fulfilling, challenging immersion at the other. Wood plunges us into the intricacies, and the ideas and reflections they prompt. It's an intriguing exploration.

- There are many memories of people our narrator's known in her life. Cleo for example, the beautiful young vegetarian. Everyone in the town hated her. She didn’t mind. All the rebels are attractive, free spirited, charismatic leaders. Following the social rules are foreign to them. There’s a toughness about them. A loathing of shallow genuflecting. It’s been my observation over many years that those who most powerfully resist convention quite peaceably accept the state of being reviled. 

- The novel prompts so many reflections it's a joy to read. Perhaps the best Wood has written so far. 

Matt Johnson, How Hitchens Can Save The Left.

 

- I've long been a fan of the esteemed Christopher Hitchens who passed away in 2011. I've read most of  his books and was inspired by many of his essays, interviews and YouTube clips over the years. This new book by Matt Johnson, an American writer and editor, is a brilliant exploration of Hitchens’s thoughts and beliefs. He was nothing if not controversial, and made many enemies particularly over his support for the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. 

- The book is superbly written and edited and very comprehensive. It also includes a detailed analysis of current events such as Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the re-emergence of the Taliban's ugly primitivism in Afghanistan. Hitchens's theses become highly relevant and enlightening. 

-  I highly recommend this book and can do no better than quote this summary from the back cover: 

  'Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout - a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks.

In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important.

Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies  are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. 

Hitchens's case for universal Enlightenment principles won't just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.' 

Chris Womersley, Ordinary Gods and Monsters.

- Only a year ago Chris Womersley published his last novel The Diplomat. It was extraordinarily good. Very inner city Brunswick, very gritty, very adult. Drugs were central. But the goodness of people prevailed. 

- His latest novel, Ordinary Gods and Monsters, seems to have been written by an entirely different author. It's set in the outer suburbs of Sydney, and it's about teens and their estranged parents and siblings. Drugs are still central, but what makes it very different is its Young Adult tone. It's a bit Famous Five - a neighbourhood mystery being investigated by young people. That doesn't preclude violence or vulgarity. 

- Nick and Marion, both seventeen, live next door to each other and are best friends. They've just completed their HSC. Marion's father has recently been killed in a hit-and-run accident. The story develops from there. And it's entrancing, with intricacies that are slowly revealed, and in prose that is beautiful and captivating in Womersley's inimitable style. I marvelled at his magical similes. 

- There are strange characters sprinkled about, but they add color and movement to the story. One in particular, 'Stretch', an ugly, thuggish, dumb as dog shit, drug dealer, becomes central to the plot as it unfolds. Nick, Marion, and Nick's grumpy older sister Alison, are delightful though. As are their mums. 

- Womersley's suburbia is the ‘the kingdom of ordinary gods and monsters’. We meet and love the gods, but the monsters are part and parcel. Survival is the challenge. 

- As in The Diplomat, the goodness prevails in the end. 

- Although not your typical Womersley, this novel is a highly enjoyable read.

Keyu Jin, The New China Playbook

- On all levels this new book is so refreshing. It moves totally away from your standard anti-China, anti-communist cliches. And Jin's prose is lucid and highly readable. 

- It addresses issues that are only vaguely familiar to even intelligent people, and the comprehensive detail provided is so revelatory. For example the infamous One Child policy. Where is it now and did it work? Yes, but in a very different way than just limiting unaffordable population growth. It's had a huge and positive influence on the education of two generations of young people due to the massive overspending by parents on their single child. Higher education is now the norm. It was rare before. 

- Chinese society is now characterised by the coexistence of generations with radically different characteristics. The current generation, for example, is the first to seek happiness rather than wealth.

- Jin delves deeply into the micro economy of the new China. The rapid growth in private versus government owned firms for example, and the way young entrepreneurs have benefited enormously from the financial and administrative support by local regional authorities' commitment to growth and investment.

- Corruption is being tackled, as is poverty, inequality and pollution. Social media allows free speech and criticism of the underfunding of services such as health and education. The new middle class is becoming increasingly intolerant of poor and unresponsive governments, local and national.

- Economic and financial management is central to Jin's analysis: China’s structure, with its centralised powers, financial muscle, and administrative capacity for policy implementation, has made it robust…but its growth model is reliable but not flexible. To keep it going credit needs to be pumped constantly into the economy...Whether measured by breadth or depth, China’s financial system is underdeveloped…Government intervention affects every segment...In the financial system in particular, as in the broader economy in general, China scores high on stability but low on efficiency.

- The chapter on the global technology race is just brilliant. China is a master of leading-edge technology. It's constantly leap-frogging the US. Chinese e-commerce companies are now the most innovative in the world. But the gap with the West in creating the fundamental breakthroughs (‘zero to one’ as it is called) is still sizeable. For example, in the field of microchips China still cannot make its own highest grade chips. Its weak point is talent, which has led to a dearth of basic research because of its emphasis on quantity not quality. However its new generation of well educated millennials is the real hope for the future.

- In the realm of global trade in goods and services China has leapfrogged from cheap low-end products to higher quality goods. It has moved to the centre of the global supply chain, becoming by 2017 the largest node. Protectionism, which is now on the rise globally, particularly during the Trump era, is decidedly the wrong strategy. The numbers convincingly show this. It's technology that is continuing to spur global trade (eg, online purchasing).

- In the future, China will strive to be a bigger and more forward looking Germany, with an unparalleled industrial capacity powered by disruptive technologies.

- (Jin is an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics. She was born and raised in Beijing before moving to the US and completing a PhD in economics from Harvard University. Because of her focus on the economy she doesn’t address controversial non-economic issues such as free speech; the quality of social services like health and aged care; the imprisonment of journalists without trial; non-independent legal processes; human rights abuses; substantial military buildup; foreign policy issues such as regional expansion in the South China Sea; Taiwan; etc.) 

Jane Harrison, The Visitors

 

- The story of the arrival of the First Fleet has never been told historically from an Indigenous perspective. It can only be imagined. Jane Harrison, in this novelisation of her highly regarded play, has done that brilliantly.

- The Indigenous people have Anglo-Saxon names - Lawrence, Raymond, Miranda, Elizabeth, Howard, Gary, Gwendolyn, Gordon, Adam, Delilah, Joseph, Nathaniel, Lola, Walter, Helen, Albert, Margaret and others. The familiarity is the point - let no othering occur, no strange and unpronounceable names confirming the white colonial prejudice.

- Harrison ensures we warmly relate to her characters and their family and tribal status. She brings alive their deep connection to country, their sensitivity to nature's ways, and the trees, bushes, grasses, fish, animals, birds and insects that are an intimate part of their daily lives. 

-  'Aliens' in big boats have suddenly turned up in the bay around which the different tribes live. Their leaders must meet and determine how to react. Seven men, old and young, meet, talk and argue for a day. We're immersed in it - their personalities, biases, strengths and weaknesses. We could be in a pub watching any bunch of opinionated blokes argue it out! One is philosophical, one creative, one mathematical, one cheeky, one a healer, one a hunting expert, one an astronomer familiar with the stars and planets. They wear shirts and trousers, and some wear suits and ties or cravats! It could be any corporate board meeting.

- They remember the last time the aliens visited eighteen summers ago. They didn't stay. Will this much larger group of big boats, eleven in all, full of men, women and unknown animals, visit for a few days also, or stay? ‘…something about the novelty of this situation is discombobulating’ one of them thinks. The concept that these ‘visitors’ could stay forever is foreign to them.

- They find it hard to agree on how to respond. Gordon, one of the Elders, is firm in his belief that they are dangerous. 'They have weapons….Thundersticks. Bang’. 

- Their debate as the day proceeds reflects the novel's theatrical origin, its earlier reiteration. The conversations are often stilted, unrealistic and circular. Yet those elements afford it considerable weight. 

- A day or so earlier Lawrence, the youngest of the group, had paddled his canoe, unseen, right up to the alien boat. He heard foreign animal sounds (they were pigs, sheep and horses). He pulls a fallen rabbit out of the water. A sailor, smoking a pipe on the deck above him sneezes and the spray lands on Lawrence. He is now feverish and within a few days dies. 

- They see the aliens hang a young boy on the boat's deck. The brutality astonishes them. Gordon asks ‘Why can’t you see the truth about these creatures…can’t you see that they are plain primitive?’ 

- The invaders set foot on shore and begin to construct the township. An infliction called ‘whooping cough’ sweeps through the mob, killing so many men, women and infants. Before long native animals become scarce, and the landscape a desolate eyesore. Nathaniel, one of the leaders, is killed and his head sent off to England. Others are afflicted by the pox which wipes out most of the population.

- ‘We once lived in Paradise’ reflects a survivor. And this amazingly good and gratifying novel ends. 

- Vote Yes. 

Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface.

 

- Rebecca F Kuang has written an absorbing, fast paced story about the inner workings of the publishing industry. It's soaked in detail and is forensic in its exploration of everything good and everything bad about blockbuster publishing and the dramas involving agents, authors, executives, editors, marketing and publicity staff, royalty advances, and reviewers. 

- Kuang is very familiar with this universe, and it shows, over and over again. 

- June (Juniper Song Hayward) steals Athena Lui’s manuscript from her study before Athena dies, polishes it and submits it as her own. It's titled The Last Front, and is about Chinese workers who were sent by the British army to labour camps on the front line during World War 1. Their stories were mostly tragic. Notice that June is a white woman and Athena Asian. That is a critical element in the unfolding drama. 

- The novel is particularly excellent on the editorial and publicity aspects. The long production process is outlined in exquisite and accurate detail - the texts, emails, the late night phone calls, etc. It's high drama all the way.  

- Candice, a young, woefully underpaid of course, editorial assistant, who is Asian, raises the question in a meeting as to whether June is writing ‘outside her lane', particularly when she resists a ‘sensitivity read’. She also doubts whether June is the genuine author. Candice is ignored, and eventually let go. 

- The novel is published, receives mostly excellent reviews, and becomes an international bestseller. 

- It doesn't take long however for highly critical reviews in non-mainstream and social media, mainly Twitter, to emerge. Kuang thrusts us into the whole, very emotional ‘white saviour’ debate, and the labelling of June as a racist. Former bestsellers like The Help and American Dirt are referenced. Their authors, Kathryn Stockett and Jeanine Cummins, were attacked remorselessly for abject racism. 

- Contrary to her publisher's fears, the negative press doesn't effect the book's sales. In fact they increase because right wing commentators, particularly on Fox news, rail against June's ‘cancellation'. 

- The novel brings all the threads together at the end in a surprising but very satisfactory way. 

- Well worth a read. 

Pip Adam, Audition

 

- New Zealand author Pip Adam's new novel just blew me away. It's an often confusing, meandering tale of three prison escapees who are captured, sent to a 'classroom', and then launched into space on a spaceship called Audition, and god knows where they are going. They certainly don't. ‘It is better to be stupid and it is better to not try and work out things' says the main character Alba at one point.

- Adam sucks us into a profound metaphysical parable. Alba, Drew and Stanley are 'growing giants', not just physically but also intellectually, morally and spiritually. Their conversations are mostly inconsequential, but they are also becoming increasingly aware and questioning. 

- On the spaceship if they talk it keeps moving; if they don’t they keep growing. Their sexual identities are confusing at first but become clear as the story unfolds. Adam's prose is clean but often deliberately unclear. Passages require frequent re-reading. The ship shakes and makes loud grinding noises. The Carpenters' song ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft' is heard. They feel good and safe, after lives of abuse and violence. 

- As giants the three eventually escape from the ship and land on a new planet. They are welcomed by the friendly locals despite being considered 'aliens'. They begin work in a factory where it's all harmony and kindness. Or so it seems. They realise 'they don’t belong where they have come from and they don’t belong here'. 

- Suddenly they are submerged in a world of water, followed by a new strange land with trees that walk with them, oceans that move sideways, and a natural world where everything is alive and not at risk by human presence. It's like the Garden of Eden.

- Alba still feels alone however. Stanley, her former lover, whom she offended, ignores her and is attracted to Drew. ‘She looks at Stanley and Drew again. They can’t trust her’. 

- But in this new harmonious world love, peace and sexual intimacy prevail and personal relationships are healed. As we travel on this journey with Alba, Drew and Stanley, we deeply bond with them and celebrate their eventual salvation. 

- We also come to appreciate the uniqueness and depth of Adam's vision. Audition is a novel of absolute originality and brilliance. 

Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist.

 

- Patrick deWitt has the ability to dissect the personal and social lives of ordinary people and bring them vividly to life. There are no big heroes or villains or any characters outside the ordinary. This is what enriches his novels and makes them utterly enthralling. 

- In the just released The Librarianist we're taken to two time periods: 2005-2006 and 1942-1960.  

- Bob Comet has been an avid reader since his childhood days. We spend time with him as a young boy who's run away from home, and as an old retiree looking for involvement and meaning. His marriage didn't last and he has no children. But he is a kind, intelligent man whom neighbours notice and love. His career was as a librarian. 

- We meet the people he gets to know through the different stages of his life and they are of course delightful. DeWitt adopts a style of prose which is deliberately old-fashioned. It's a stiff and formal, proper English idiom which heightens the delightfulness of the characters' exchanges and humour. Many of them are sensitive to all sorts of things, even moody and peevish, and prejudiced, but essentially they're kind and supportive. 

- We are celebrating the simplicity of joy. I loved this novel and highly recommend it, especially to those of you starting to experience the fragility of old age!