Julian Barnes, Departure(s)

 

- Another great book from celebrated English novelist Julian Barnes. It's not a novel but a biography with some minor fictional elements. Mostly it's fascinating and wise. He's ageing, now on the verge of turning eighty, and he's saying goodbye. So it's part story of the people in his life and part reflections on the richness of it. 

- It's thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading. I've loved his novels over the years so his honesty and wisdom in this bio are stimulating. Especially if you’re an old man like me! (We're the same age).  

- Each chapter addresses a different perspective. The first on involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM) is unfortunately somewhat boring. He indulges in his love of Marcel Proust and other classic French writers. It's literary name dropping and there's heaps of that throughout the book. 

- The second chapter introduces two central characters, Stephen and Jean (with names changed to protect them). They met at Oxford as students in the mid-sixties, had a relationship but split. As Barnes did with his girlfriend at the time, Priscilla. 

- In Chapter 3 he focuses on his blood cancer, manageable by daily medication, his numerous times in hospital, his relationships with his doctors, his treatments, and his reflections in his diaries. 

- In Chapter 4, after four decades he meets up with Stephen again who wants him to find and tell Jean he’d like to see her. They do meet up, and rather surprisingly, they marry. 

- They separately confide in him and are honest about how the relationship is going. And the sex. His reflections and literary references here are glorious. 

- But really, Stephen and Jean’s love life is rather problematic. She thinks he’s ‘too much’ in love with her: 'would you kindly love me a little less and it’ll all be fine'. 'Love, in reality, Mr Novelist, isn’t how you and your breed depict it’. Julian disagrees. 'But I think the great novelists understand love, and most aspects of human behaviour, better than, say, psychiatrists, or scientists, or philosophers or priests or lonely-hearts columnists'. 

- Unfortunately, Stephen and Jean separate for a second time. 

- In Chapter 5 Barnes indulges in total name-dropping once again. The French poets Mallarme, Baudelaire, Proust, Rimbaud, Flaubert, George Sand. And Philip Larkin: ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day’. Updike, Kerouac, Gautier, T.S.Eliot. It's all enriching and stimulating though. And there are plenty of quotes about ageing: 'From my wife Pat, who was six years my senior: 'As you get older, you get hardened in your least acceptable characteristics...From my partner R, who is eighteen years younger than me: 'You're allowed to be old, but you're not allowed to behave like an old person'. 

- He often thinks about Stephen and Jean now, the ‘rekindlers’. Jean got cancer and died. ‘I’m only interested in living, not in merely existing’ she'd said. His reflections on death are rich and meaningful. He tells the stories of friends and writers like Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens. 

- And of cause he is now forgetting things, mainly names. 'It's just the body wearing out...And you can hardly blame it, given that humanity's increasing longevity is now forcing it to work overtime - and for no extra pay'. 

- So it's a delightful book, full of richness and wisdom. But there is one dimension missing: he has no kids or grandkids. Therefore no reflections on these blessings. 

Andrew Hussey, Fractured France

 

- Andrew Hussey is a native of Liverpool who now lives in Paris. He is a historian of French culture and society who appears regularly on TV and radio, and is the author of Paris: The Secret History and The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs. 

- In his new book he portrays what he calls 'new France', and he digs deep into its current social, political, cultural and economic fragmentation. France is in a moment of crisis. Working class resentment fuelled mainly by immigration over the last few decades is causing violent riots and clashes with the police and counter-demonstrators in all the major cities, particularly Paris and Marseille. President Macron is also hated for his economic reforms including higher taxes and his attempt to raise the age of retirement in 2017. The 'yellow jackets' caused havoc and violence on the streets, and still do today. 

- Hussey interviews a range of writers and commentators to get their take on what on earth is happening. Will France soon emerge from this chaos or will things get worse? Will Marine Le Pen's populist right wing party finally succeed in ousting Emmanuel Macron's liberals in the next election? Have France's democratic processes failed? 

- Let me quote the blurb: 'The French have always loved to protest, to take to the streets in rebellion against the state or the status quo. But in recent years, the nature and level of anger have changed. The voices of hostility are not only from political radicals, but from ordinary French people who feel excluded from the closed circles of wealth and privilege within the prospering cities, and disenfranchised by politics. This is an era in which the old ideals that formed the French Republic identity have crumbled; in their place is a battleground of competing ideologies and cultures.'

- We're taken from north to south, to the cities and towns of Roubaix, Paris, Reims, Dijon, Lyon, Manosque and Marseille. And what I particularly loved was his warmth and affection for the cafes, restaurants and bars where he meets his guests. 'One of the aspects of French life that I have always cherished is the high quality of everyday life - and here it is in the city with cafes, bakers, a butcher's, greengrocers, a bookshop, and arthouse cinema, a jazz club, pharmacies, restaurants, all within a few minutes stroll of each other'. 

- Reading this absorbing book made we desperately want to travel to France again for three months as I did in 2011. Sigh! 

Iain Ryan, The Casino

 

- This new novel from Iain Ryan is the third in his series on the crime-riddled Gold Coast in the 1980's. 

- The first one in the series, The Strip, was magnificent. The second one, The Dream, was ordinary.

- This one, The Casino, is even worse unfortunately. Ryan's habit of littering his stories with so many characters, most incidental, means readers cannot help but be totally confused, and ultimately bored. 

- Of course he can write. His short clipped sentences move things along quickly. We're immersed in police corruption and criminal ugliness, but there are too many standard cliches. And there is minimal immersion in the main players and their lives. I was crying out for enrichment but it never came. 

- I was tempted to bail a number of times but persisted, just to see how things would come together and resolve. Clarity does eventually come in the final 50 pages or so, but the resolution is unsatisfactory, unrealistic and rather silly.

- Read The Strip though. It's well worth it. 

Garry Disher, Mischance Creek

 

- It's holiday season so time to indulge in some popular fiction. Crime writer Garry Disher is always a reliable bloke to go to. I've particularly loved his Constable Hirsch novels over the years. They're set in rural Australia, and the picture he paints of the harsh outback is so accurate and convincing. And the characters are real. I should know - I grew up there. 

- In this new novel he immerses us in the poor economic circumstances of the rural community. There's an air of hopelessness everywhere. Small towns, farms and stations are coping with drought, meaningless council regulations, the closure and merger of schools, increasing interest rates, and struggling retailers. The inhabitants, most of them in the older age bracket, are angry at what they perceive is the unfairness of it all. 

- Constable Paul Hirschhausen (Hirsch) is a local cop and his workload is huge. He spends much of his time travelling on deserted roads to towns and local properties. Disher provides plenty of fascinating details on his investigations, meetings, interviews, and his relationships with other police in the region. ‘Hirsch was a patient, listening kind of cop, not a lazy, violent kind…informing a parent, partner or close friend that a loved one had been killed…through meth, booze, speeding, hooning…’. 

- The background context of the novel is the local Council and how corrupt it is. There is racism everywhere. The self-important female mayor is constantly clamping down on Indigenous groups and activism. And there's a group of right wing agitators called ‘My Place’ who are anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination and freedom of movement obsessed. They believed Councils were ‘corporate entities set in undermining property rights. Therefore council rates, taxes and fines were invalid’. The mayor's wealthy landowning husband is as crooked as they come. 

- And when the remains of a dead father and a missing mother from 6 years ago are found by their daughter, Hirsch is sucked in and it's dangerous terrain. The tension builds as all the threads in the story start coming together.

- One thing I've always loved about Garry Disher's crime writing is that his police characters are fully drawn and vividly brought to life. They have complex, often dangerous, jobs and duties but also rich personal lives.