Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains.

- This is not an angry voice condemning Australians and their anti boat-people prejudices and policies. It does not descend to that ordinary political level.
- It is a far more profound story of the pain and horror our nation has inflicted on the refugees we’ve imprisoned on Manus Island. It simply records the facts, firstly of the boat journey from Indonesia and then of the realities of life on Manus.
- It’s beautifully written in lyrical and often poetic prose. And Boochani as narrator maintains a distance that enables him to describe the prisoners and their captors, and the reality of life on Manus objectively, insightfully and sympathetically. 
- This book is not propelled by anger, but by a larger vision of captivity and hopelessness, and what that means for humans and their relationships with each other.
- There are long chapters on the kitchens and the food offered, the medical facilities (so-called), the endless queues for basics like cigarettes, the horrific and putrid toilet facilities, the utterly inadequate and crowded sleeping quarters, the constant power outages, the oppressive heat and humidity, the plague of mosquitoes, and more.
- And Boochani is a master at describing the various characters that populate the prison and define it, and how they cope or not (there are many tragic suicides). 
- It reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle and other classic prison narratives. The desiccated bureaucracy of these places, verging on the comic. George Orwell also came to mind. The petty absurdity and cruel minutia of authoritarian systems. 
- I found this book very difficult to read. Manus and Nauru define the ugly dimension of the Australian character. It rubbed my nose in it and made me ashamed. But it’s a book that will undoubtedly become a classic of Australian literature. And how ironic is that - written by an author who can never set foot in the country let alone become a citizen. 

Chris Hammer, Scrublands

- Hooks you from the start. A mass murder by a young priest. Cool.
- Well written - the author is a long time journalist after all. And this is a story of journalism as much as anything else. The moral quandaries good professional journalists often face in attempting to uncover the facts and do justice to the story, while under pressure to meet a deadline. It's also a contest between Fairfax and Channel ten - quality and tabloid.
- Very well paced. As the plot thickens the unsophisticated and provincial town’s inhabitants get much more interesting and intriguing. And the author has, rather appropriately, bestowed on them colourful monikers: Mandalay Blonde, Harley Snouch, Byron Swift, Doug Thunkleton, Codger Harris, D’Arcy Defoe, Winifred Barbicombe and more. It’s straight out of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. 
- There’s a supremely well written bushfire sequence. Absolutely brings home the horror of being caught in the middle of such a ferocious disaster.
- And country NSW is in the middle of a devastating drought. A narrative for our times. 
- By the end it’s become a quite complicated story, with many elements and players interlocking. But the resolution is absolutely right and gratifying. 
- An absorbing read. 

Bernard Keane, The Mess We’re In

- This is simply excellent. The first chapter’s overview is superbly done. A real, substantial vision is very clearly articulated. 
- Keane can write clearly because he always thinks clearly. Easily the best journalist in the country, despite being a ‘confirmed grump’. (He’s currently Crikey’s politics editor). He’s a master in the art of constructing fluid, well balanced sentences that make for easy reading. 
- He is across all sorts of primary sources, and doesn’t recycle other journalists’ tired cliches and mantras.
- The book is packed with stats, facts and global data. It’s a compendium - essential anchoring in these ‘fake news’ times. Better than Bell & Keating’s Fair Share because it’s eminently readable (although Fair Share, despite being a tedious read, was excellent too). 
- It’s decidedly non-partisan. Its analysis is way deeper than the empty, passing skirmishes that dog our current debate. 
- Comprehensive critiques of neo-liberalism, modern global democratic governments, the religious and political revolutions of the reformation and the enlightenment, the profound changes in our society in this internet age, and the increasing surveillance by governments and intrusions on our privacy. Keane’s deep intelligence, erudition and sound judgement shine through.
- The books concludes with ten proposed solutions to our ills, all of which make sense, although in my view they are insufficient and don’t go anywhere near far enough. 
- Of course it’s impossible to absorb every notion, fact and idea in this superb book from one reading. For fans of Keane’s work in Crikey over the last ten years it will be easier. But it’s a critically important book.
- (Like too many non-fiction books published in Australia it doesn’t have an index. That’s a miserable, cost saving policy and should end. Also - and this is far too common - it doesn’t have an author photo).

Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

- This is a stunning, beautifully, even poetically, written novel. It's an astonishing achievement.  
- Eli Bell’s maturity, intelligence and articulateness are way beyond real, especially for a 13 year old. Yet he's hugely likeable, and a superb creation.
- It's a bit Boys Own adventure: eg Eli’s escape from hospital (169ff); his escape from the women’s section of Boggo Road prison (272ff). 
- The prose is electrified by constant pop culture allusions. It’s on fire; it rocks! Colour and vitality define the novel. - Its characters, plot and location; and the vivid writing. It’s often very funny. But in the end it turns out to be a horror story. 
- The dialogue is so realistic and very Australian. Absolutely captures the characters, particularly the constant use of ‘fucking’. 
- The main characters become so attractive and engaging - even the drunks, druggies and crims. They’re bonded by love, loyalty and friendship. Except for the real nasties like Tytus Broz, Iwan Krol, and Teddy.
- There’s cliche here - young innocent heroes, old baddies (‘foreign’ as well - Polish; Vietnamese). It definitely has a YA feel at times but only echoes and suggestions. Not in essence or substance. 
- At the extreme, humans exhibit, need and get love, friendship and loyalty.
- This is not just a debut novel. It is a masterwork from an experienced non-fiction storyteller. It has so much power and drive. It's a real blockbuster, and will undoubtedly be a huge, worldwide seller, and quite probably made into a great movie. 
- Literary? Hard to say. Crime or action novels are rarely deemed ‘literary’. 

Angela Meyer, A Superior Spectre.

- Seems like a fascinating story from the start. 
- It’s a pleasure reading a story set in contemporary, and slightly futuristic times, leavened by the connected secondary historical narrative. 
- Beautifully written, often poetic.
- BUT: it’s not yet clear what meaning is intended by the ghostly intrusion into Leonora’s mind - ‘some inner tyrant’ (188).
- What purpose is this device serving? Page 120 and Jeff's just a sexually confused and exploitative bi from Melbourne. Dying for some reason and now pathetic. The lack of clarity is sort of getting annoying.
- The erotic dimension of the narrative seems an authorial obsession. It’s front and centre but for what purpose? One could be forgiven for concluding that the bi's role is just to spice up the narrative with a fair bit of gratuitous sex. 
- What’s with the two Williams (the robot and the son of the manor lord) who are integral to the two stories? They are parallel 'helpers' to each character. Little meaning here.
- In the end, a surprisingly unresolved narrative. Very unsatisfying. Leonora is never able to overcome the societal barriers (lower class; female) to her progressing into a fulfilling professional career, nor marrying a man worthy of her. So we leave her back on the farm, alone. Her 'madness' is posited as the principal cause. 
- The author was unable to move beyond the literalness of the ghost intrusion into a wider, substantial reflection which would give the book a depth and meaning.  
- Meyer would have been better served focussing entirely on Leonora's story and fleshing it out more, Hannah Kent style.

(This rather shallow review heaps praise on the book from a feminist perspective. The contention that the 'reader is complicit' in the 'pillaging' is meta nonsense:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/a-superior-spectre-by-angela-meyer-female-haunting/news-story/d9d7a00940a10998c06d65113e8221f2 )

Kevin Peoples, Trapped in a Closed World

This wonderful book is both a personal story and a critique. It's a long overdue demolition of the old Catholic seminary in Springwood in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney and the utter disaster it was. It's also excellent on the child abuse issue and its extent in the priesthood. 

I was a student there from 1963 to 1965, roughly the same time as the author, Kev Peoples. We were good friends although he was 10 years older than me. He tells, with frankness and honesty, his own story of Springwood as a mature-age student. It’s a compelling tale, beautifully written. And his analysis of the culture of the seminary at that time is supremely well done, informed by his personal experiences and doubts, and subsequent familiarity with noted psychological studies of the psychosexual immaturity ingrained in young men by that seminary system. 

Kev's impeccable research into clericalism, the various popes who invented and refined it, their authoritarian prescriptions, the small man Cardinal Norman Gilroy of the Sydney archdiocese, and others, and their views on the purpose of seminaries and the ideal priestly culture, is presented in detail and always with a breath of horror. And his summaries of the contrasting and more modern research, particularly of some major psychological studies into the negative effects of such a priestly life, and catholic culture in general, are very sobering and enlightening. The critique of the church’s misogyny is excellent.

It seems obvious to me now that a major part of Kev’s personal Springwood problem was the fact that he was actually sent there, rather than to a mature age college, none of which existed in Sydney at that time. St Paul's in Kensington was opened in 1968.

I can see how some reviews of this book could be critical: 

 1. The causal link between the old seminary system and priestly child abuse is not clearly established. The great majority (over 90%) of graduate priests did not become abusers. The real culprit surely is mandatory celibacy. 
 2. Kev seems not to possess a cogent reason for wanting to become a priest. At the age of 28 he comes across as a very confused young man. He seems to have absolutely no idea as to what he wants to do with his life. 
 3. He evidently has no priest models that attracted him to such a vocation in the first place, eg, running parishes, youth programs, liturgy, giving homilies, counselling, educating, comforting the grieving, sick and dying. I for one, perhaps as a measure of my immaturity, looked forward to enjoying the ‘status’ a priest had in the community at that time. His to-ing and fro-ing about whether he should stay or go is rather immature. He  either wants to be a priest or he doesn’t, surely. He finally admits ‘At heart I am a layman’ (149). 

Kev also never clarifies what sort of an institution he would regard as a better model for a seminary. Those of us who went to Rome know. We enjoyed Propaganda Fide College. We were liberated, let out of prison, and the Second Vatican Council, just concluded, was inspiring us. We could freely exit the college at any time (apart from at night, a rule many of us ignored) to tour Rome, shop, eat, see movies, etc. We were treated like adults - we could smoke, drink, and celebrate birthdays and national days with our international colleagues. Wine was served at every meal. We could form study groups, social groups, meditation groups, film/music groups or any other type of group. We went to delightful rural holiday hostels in Castelgandolfo and other villages. Or we could travel alone or in groups throughout Europe during the long summer breaks. The collegial spirit was deep and supportive. 

Sure, there were negatives (the ‘superiors’ were absurd, immature men whom we Australians universally pilloried and ignored) but overall it was a University College experience. And many of the professors lecturing us at Urban University were progressive and inspiring in their views (eg, Carlo Molari). I made deep and lasting friendships there, which I still enjoy today. 

Our colleague Bob Donnelly’s letter from Prop to Kevin in October 1966 details a college experience I don't recognise at all. It is plain wrong regarding not being able to eat out ‘without permission’ (most of us never asked for it) and wrong about ‘spying prefects’ and limited contact, debate and conversation between the students. Donnelly, perhaps because he was older, was obviously not comfortable breaking stupid ‘rules’. We younger Australians, especially those of us at the new philosophy college 'Torre Rossa', broke them all the time and there was never any ‘penalty’. As for being confined to our rooms, that was not true, and in any case no negative for me. I was absorbed in my recently purchased books and articles on new, progressive and frequently radical philosophical and theological perspectives. I appreciated the time and space to devour them. Or I was in someone else’s room debating them. We were intellectually alive. Bob Donnelly, liked and admired as he was by us, had never become part of our group, and he was whisked off to Genoa before he could embrace it. Another example perhaps of an older man out of his time and place at a younger man’s college. 

Had Kev been sent to Rome (he had the opportunity apparently) I am convinced he would have also been liberated, his instinctual, far more human, theological beliefs been confirmed and strengthened, and he would very likely have stayed and been ordained (like Lawrie Jennings, also from his older age cohort). His natural charm, friendliness and warmth would have been an enormous asset to college life and the priesthood. He fitted in with the younger cohort. He was a great loss. He’s a perfect example as to why mandatory celibacy is a self-defeating absurdity in today’s world. 

At first I found Kev's deliberate interweaving of two quite separate narratives in the book - his own seminary experience and the church's sexual abuse scandal - questionable. But as the book proceeds I was absolutely captured by the tension between both stories and their links and contrasts. Underneath it all a major, very potent   narrative emerges - a powerful and surely incontestable argument against the church's medieval policy of mandatory celibacy. 

Not for everyone this book, but fascinating all the same.

My top books for 2016: five literary fiction; five non-fiction; four popular fiction.

FICTION

Howard Jacobson: Shylock is my Name

How could I go past another Jacobson. Here he exhibits his usual penetrating insight into the male of the species, especially the anxious, older, Jew. He's always ruminating on Jewishness but his insights are glorious and his writing has a wondrous fluency.

This novel is essentially a dialogue between religious and secular Jews that celebrates both but essentially confirms the religious. And I love his usual vexatious interrogation of Christianity.

Han Kang: The Vegetarian

This superb novel won the International Booker prize earlier this year. It's a subtle and nuanced meditation on men, women and relationships in a conservative society. And a devastating portrayal of severe mental illness and social isolation.

But most importantly it's a savage critique of the provincialism of South Korea and its backward social conventions and laws. Why are arty but otherwise sane people kept in police cells for months awaiting legal processes and enquiries to unfold before they can be rightfully released? What's so new and worrying about being a fucking vegetarian?

We see a constipated society that can't deal with resistance or individuality or art or the deep rhythms of human existence. And shamefully can't deal with depression.

Kang has written a very powerful and mesmerising novel in beautiful, spare, but poetic prose.

Jock Serong: The Rules of Backyard Cricket

I was absolutely bowled over (sorry) by this book. It's an excellent story, beautifully written. Two cricket stars are brothers and have a very tense relationship.

Australian cricket is full of brothers of course: the Chappells (Ian/Greg) and the Waughs (Steve/Mark) being the best known. In this story one is an insufferable, conscientious prig and health freak, the other a gregarious party animal, druggie and gambler. They never connect of course.

They are propelled and ultimately captured by anger, but in opposite ways: controlling it or giving in to it. 

It ends in tragedy and strikes exactly the right note. This is a wonderful and superb achievement.

Graeme Macrae Burnet: His Bloody Project

This was shortlisted for this year's Booker prize. It's a marvellous and gripping story about the awful, hard, and unforgiving lives of the 19th century peasant class in Scotland.

It's presented as a factual account of a brutal murder but it's fiction, superbly and sympathetically rendered.

Two supposed memoirs are presented to the jury. One from the prosecution is an obnoxious piece of ugly, ignorant, insulting, pompous, snobbish, haughty, arrogant, pretentious drivel, demeaning '..the lower tribes of our country'. The other, from the accused, a humble well written account of what happened and why. 

I, accurately of course, predicted this would not win the Booker, being nowhere near deep or meaningful enough, nevertheless it's a superb read. And it will make you angry, and I love books that make one angry.

Emma Donoghue: The Wonder

This is Donoghue's follow up to the highly applauded Room, and it is absolutely fucking brilliant.

It's deliciously anti-Catholic, anti-piety, anti provincial religious nonsense. It's about an eleven year old Irish girl in the 1860's who has seemingly - and that word is important - refused to eat food for four months, but, until the final two weeks, stays alive and well and healthy. The village is celebrating a 'miracle'.

Of course the stupid kid would be force-fed in today's medical world - taken to hospital, drip fed and provided with psychiatric help.

In our Trumpian, post-truth age this story resonates. It's a study of delusion. What people want to believe dictating what reality they 'see'.

It condemns the criminal irresponsibility of the family, carers and authorities (the 'committee men') and the cruel insipidity of their pious religious beliefs.

It's a celebration of truth, fact, rationality and sense. There's a nice love story in there too.

NON-FICTION

Helen Garner: Everywhere I Look

Who doesn't love Helen Garner? Her lovely, translucent prose with the regular stunning phrase or description ('the golf course...and its hoses sprinkling bridal veils of spray..').

This is writing at once plain and vivid, filled with acute insight into human feelings and emotions.

Garner is fascinated as usual by crimes, court processes and outcomes. 'What people find really hard to bear is the suggestion that they themselves might contain their share of human darkness, hidden inside their souls.' 

'Sometimes it seems to me that, in the end, the only thing people have got going for them is imagination. At times of great darkness, everything around us becomes symbolic, poetic, archetypal. Perhaps this is what dreaming, and art, are for'.

Buy it.

Maxine Beneba Clarke: The Hate Race

What a magnificent memoir this is. It immerses the reader in the pain of ugly racism.

A young girl's struggle is so powerfully articulated. We feel for her; we ARE her; we become angry at the vicious, cruel racism perpetrated openly and insidiously.

She suffers emotionally, psychologically and physically at school and as an adult. The racism is always there. 

Clarke's prose is crisp and clean, with a constant drumbeat: 'This is how it changes us. This is how we're altered'; 'This is how it happened. Or else what's a story for'; 'When I gather the threads in my fingers, this is how they weave'; 'This is how it haunts us. This is how it stalks'. (193).

The bullying in High School is particularly ugly: '...there was an unfathomable brokenness somewhere inside of me..' And the teachers called it 'teasing'! 'You'll have to get used to it'.

The blurb on the back cover calls this book 'funny'. Jesus.

Andrew J Bacevich: America's War for the Greater Middle East - A Military History

The US strategy in the Middle East has always been a combination of ignorance, naïveté and Wild West gunslinger swagger - in other words bullshit all the way. Best-selling author Andrew Bacevich, a retired professor of history and international relations at Boston University and former US army military officer, has written a thoroughly researched, fascinating and highly lauded account of the West's strategic and military failures in the Middle East, what he calls 'the pernicious legacy of Western imperialism'. 

It is just riveting. The history and religion of the region has countered for little. From the disaster of Lebanon in '82, the intervention in Libya, the Iraq-Iran war, the Iran/Kuwait failure, the Somalia disaster, the Afghanistan invasion ('an exercise in strategic irrelevance'), the Iraq invasion ('an attempt to change the way they live), Petraeus's absurd 'surge' ('a pseudo-event'), and more - Basevich offers us an unparalleled historical tour de force. 

Volker Ullrich: Hitler, a Biography

This remarkable book, a best-seller in Germany when it was first published in 2013, is a landmark, utterly compelling achievement. Once again, in this age of Trump and ignorant, racist populism, we need to be reminded that 'Hitler was only able to launch his second political career because his adversaries criminally underestimated him'.

The Great Depression hit Germany particularly hard. The people demanded 'a strong man'. 'Few traditional conservatives were...prescient. Most...believed the Nazi leader could be kept in check'.

There is such a strong narrative drive to this book that it's impossible to skip over even the dense historical bits that you'll never remember later.

The assemblage of quotes from observers of events is powerful and telling. And yes, it is so heartening to read the contemporary critics of Hitler and his Nazi initiatives who were so prescient, courageous, and ultimately of course proved right. 

Clementine Ford: Fight Like a Girl

Yes, I read this and absolutely loved it! This is feminism in the trenches. A wonderful, angry, ferocious, inspiring read. Highly recommended.

There are annoying bits: there's a touch of 70's radicalism in the theory: easy, simplistic, absolutist, hardly nuanced; the constant references to 'cisgendered' women is unnecessary and boring; it's poorly edited (the world population is now 7.4 billion, not 'six billion'!); there's no index or author photo (inexcusable); the standard condemnations of patriarchy reflect rather amateur social and sexual analyses and conceptual overreach ('..another tool developed by thousands of years of patriarchy to deflect our attention away from trying to destroy it').

But this all pales as the book proceeds and the vigor of the language takes hold ('the bourdoir holy-pokey'; 'anti-women banana brains'). And the chapter on online abuse ('Hate Male') is superb.

Make no mistake. This is a very worthy best-seller and a must read. 

POPULAR FICTION

Adrian McKinty: Rain Dogs

Inspector Duffy's dealings and conversations with his police colleagues are always a delight. They're witty, often crude, always robust. He detests these anal retentives, and his insults flavour the novels deliciously. This fourth novel in the series doesn't quite have as many juicy ones as the last one but they're all just so satisfying.

And there's Jimmy Saville and the British establishment to boot. Very pleasing.

I love the short sharp sentences and phrases like jotted notes. They give rawness to the style that keeps the pace flowing.

There's great drama at the end, providing a good and satisfying resolution. 

There's a fifth in the series coming early next year. If you haven't got into McKinty yet, get a life.

Mark Lamprell: The Lovers' Guide to Rome

This is a lovely, romantic novel about two couples and two senior ladies in the enchanting city of Rome.

It's beautifully written, with a light touch. Very engaging indeed. We're sucked into the dynamics of love and fidelity - new, stale and old.

And Rome comes alive in all its history, majesty and wonder. 

Nice holiday reading. And better still - IT MAKES YOU WANT TO GO TO ROME!!

Jane Harper: The Dry

This is one of the most intense and absorbing crime narratives I've read in a long time. 

It's set in an Australian country town and is heaps better then Emily Maguire's An isolated Incident, also set in an Australian county town. Why such a common setting? Because they're dark, those places, and scary. I should know - I was brought up in one of them, left at 16 and have never gone back.

L.S.Hilton: Maestra

This is a delightfully anti British upper classes romp. And it's also extremely sexy, verging on the pornographic. 

Hilton knows how to write about sex. Her heroine is sassy, clever, and very sexy. A thrilling tonic for an old white male like me!

It's got an intricate plot involving the art world, the mafia, the seedy night life of Paris and Rome with all the streets, locales, shops, bars and restaurants brought to life. And a driving crime narrative to boot. 

What's not to like?