- This is a light read. It's a charming story but with little meaning or depth. It indulges in standard homeless and junkie tropes, but thankfully rises above cliche because of the highly likeable and sympathetic young woman who narrates it.
- I was expecting a lot more given Brandi's first novel, Wimmera, was just so powerful and intense.
- The narrator occasionally hints as to why she's ended up on the street. Her mother died very young and she's been subjected to a series of ‘fosters’ for most of her childhood.
- She’s sensitive, aware and reflective, but also very innocent and naive, much to her detriment. She is abused in every way - sexual, physical, emotional. Food is rarely affordable, and then it’s McDonalds or cold pizza or dump bin leftovers.
- The people who help her along the way are portrayed very sympathetically - the police, the health professionals, the Salvos, even her neighbours in her low rent apartment block. She also has a good friend in Anton and adores her dog Sonny.
- Unfortunately she and Anton end up sharing an apartment with a real low-life, a nasty piece of work, and it doesn't end well for either of them.
- Brandi has a masterful control over the pace of the buildup, and the voice of the narrator. The girl is virtually confiding in you, the reader, and she sucks you in, your compassion building.
- As a story the tension builds, however the resolution is a real letdown. It's as if Brandi has deserted the scene of the crime. Perhaps he was just being too nice.
- Britain's prestigious Costa Book of the Year was awarded in 2018 to this delightful mix of historical narrative and fiction, a story of the horror of the rounding up of Dutch Jews under the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during WW2. It's brought terrifyingly to life through the experiences of a young Jewish girl, Lien, who as a four year old is placed by her parents into the care of a secret resistance organisation and subsequently hidden in the attics and small rooms of various families until the end of the war. Just months after she was given away her parents were murdered in Auschwitz.
- An older man, the author, uncovers the secret history of Lien and the town of Bennekom, the small town of his childhood. It was the centre of a resistance network, a haven for Jews under persecution, because of the courage of so many of its residents whose stories are inspiring.
- But generally the Dutch were very cruel to their Jews, particularly after the war ended. The survivors of the concentration camps were not welcomed back. This reflects ‘...the curious split personality of the Dutch state’: equal rights under the Constitution v a ‘ruthless colonial power’, for example the massacres of innocent people on the island of Celebes in Indonesia after WW2. Over 4000 locals were slaughtered in cold blood.
- Van Es displays a tentativeness and anxiety about writing this book, which gives his story quite an affecting character. He interviews Lien numerous times but he worries that 'her memories are not as clear as I have made them’. His portraits of all the characters and of the Netherlands itself are sensitive and warm. He is a master of writing with a light touch, despite some of the horrific facts and details he uncovers.
- Lien spends months with two families in particular - one she loves, the van Esses (the grandparents of the author) - and one she loathes, the Van Laars, where the uncle continually rapes her.
- Lien's travails as she carries the weight of her childhood years through her adult life are sympathetically told. She has great difficulty in coming to terms with her experiences and fundamental identity. Two unhappy marriages and divorces and an attempted suicide define her, but finally, in her 80's, she finds peace. It's a wonderful, inspiring story.
- I’ve just been so fucking absorbed in this book for the last week! It is simply amazing. It's a personal story by a French investigative journalist as he discovers and uncovers the secret gay culture in the Vatican and the Catholic Church generally.
- Through countless recorded interviews he reports, word for word, what the insiders are saying. This is a political yarn as much as anything. And the enmities amongst the Cardinals, Bishops and priests of the hierarchy are vicious. ‘Now begins an episode of slander, gossip and revenge of a kind unknown since the time of Julius Caesar...’
- He paints wonderful portraits of some extraordinary and fascinating characters, like the conservative, reactionary, but still very powerful 'queen', American Cardinal Raymond Burke.
- He’s put an enormous amount of leg work into this in-depth investigation, interviewing the main characters numerous times. ‘...Rodiles explained when I interviewed him four times at his home in Havana’.
- I wouldn't call this book an easy read, yet like a well-paced crime thriller or police procedural, it's unputdownable. It's 550 pages long and full of names and places and packed with policy, theological and historical detail.
- There are four parts, one for each recent pope: Francis, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. Each pope is subject to a blistering critique, particularly the reactionary John Paul and the manifestly incompetent Benedict (who didn't retire because of illness, by the way, but because he finally realised he just wasn't up to it. He'd lost all control). Francis is far and away the most admirable.
- Martel offers an acute dissection of the styles and obsessions of the popes since Paul VI, and their henchmen. There is so much insider information, and it's delicious! Material is gleaned from constant dinners at excellent Roman restaurants (very gay, ironically). The high camp style of these robed prelates is relentless, but also charming in its own way. Their offices and apartments, or more accurately palaces, within the Vatican and its surrounds are described in arch detail. The Vatican is Gaytown, with the odd sprinkling of celibate heterosexuals!
- Martel does not spare Francis when he fails. He contrasts his frequently inspiring rhetoric with his disappointing actions, and examines what insiders call his ‘Jesuit way’ - one step forward then one step back. Francis is frequently ambiguous, contradictory and lame. But he is undoubtably a progressive and a liberal, confronting constant resistance and antagonism from powerful conservatives in the hierarchy. Thankfully he's a sharp contrast to his recent predecessors. And he's not been afraid to hire and fire. He is assiduously working behind the scenes to clean out the stables. Anti-gay, anti-reform homophobics and misogynists are being shafted left, right and centre. He is also supportive of ‘liberation theology' and its new iteration ‘gay theology’ and ‘queer theology’.
- Benedict is not spared at all. Before he became pope Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation of the Faith, was the grand inquisitor. He blacklisted theological reformers repeatedly, and suspended priests or nuns who dared to distribute condoms in Africa to fight AIDS. He was a dreadful fanatic. Pope Francis had no difficulty in altering or reversing most of his diktats. After eight years as pope, Benedict's resignation was in response to his final realisation that he had comprehensively failed in his papal mission. The Church was ‘full of filth’, he confessed in his memoir. Everywhere, 'it was corrupt'. Clerical pedophilia was emerging as a huge issue and Benedict refused to do anything substantial about it.
- The chapter on contemporary seminarians is enlightening. The majority are gay and use apps such as Grindr to seek sexual liaisons.
- ‘The Church has always been a place where homosexuals felt safe. That’s the key. For a gay, the Church is safe.’ (Martel quotes David Berger, former theologian and Vatican insider, who in a book accused Benedict XVI of being gay himself, though there remains no real evidence of this). ‘A hatred of homosexuals on the outside; homophilia and the double life on the inside. The circus went on’. Benedict's papacy was ‘the gayest pontificate in history’.
- After four years of intensive research into the power structures and influential players in the vast hierarchy of the Church, recording the opinions and confessions of hundreds of Vatican operatives, Martel also shows, quite surprisingly in my view, real theological sophistication in his critiques, insights and conclusions. He confirms the widely held view throughout the liberal Church and within society generally that celibacy is a medieval disgrace, the denial of priesthood to women an essentially immoral, anti-human act, and the opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage a destructive, life-denying aberration.
- The Epilogue about the author's first contact with an inspiring young priest when he was a teenager is quite beautiful. In tracking the priest down decades later he was saddened to learn that he died, alone and rejected, of AIDS.
- I loved this book, released in early 2018. It’s such an accomplished first novel. An absorbing dive into the nitty gritty of life in the Big Apple, and into the ugliness of the Iraq war seen through the lives of Baghdad civilians. Both stories are rich in detail.
- It sets up innumerable and meaningful contrasts - age and youth, city and country, health and sickness, sanity and stupidity (especially in politics), East and West; New York and Baghdad. We traverse the presidencies of Bush and Obama.
- Part One, ‘Folly’, portrays an absolutely delightful and intimate relationship between an ageing and highly regarded literary author, Ezra, and a young assistant editor, Alice. They are both endearing, their relationship full of wit and spark, although Ezra is quite ill in all sorts of ways. (Apparently it's all based on Halliday's real-life affair with Philip Roth).
- The War in Iraq has begun. The times are unsettling.
- Part two of the novel, ‘Madness’, is a far different beast. It focuses on Amar, his brother Sami and their parents who are Iraqi by birth and Muslim by religion. In every way ‘asymmetric’ to the New York story. They are highly educated professionals, now American citizens, but trapped in a zone of suspicion and racism. In 2008 Amar, on his way to visit relatives in Iraq, lands in London and experiences the bizzaro world of immigration detention at the airport. It's not stated, but we know why.
- Part Three: ‘Ezra Blazer’s Desert Island Discs’, a radio interview, is superb for its exposition of music and the love of it. And Ezra’s erudition is inspiring. It’s a remarkable celebration of literacy and civilisation.
- The way the three parts fit together - or even it they do at all - is at first puzzling. On reflection, and a closer reading, it becomes clearer. And it’s immensely sad.
- Fascinating and clearly written history of the UK’s Brexit conundrum by one of the UK and Europe’s top economic historians.
- Takes the long view of Britain’s economic and political relationship with European countries, from long before the formation of the EU.
- Very detailed analysis of all the issues, so I skimmed over parts of the history that delved into the fine print of often contentious arguments and legalities.
- But the positions of prime ministers Thatcher, Major, Blair, Cameron and May are clearly articulated. Britain’s relationship with European countries has always been fraught while mostly being productive, particularly in the 30 year post WW2 period of peace and prosperity. Britain, and later Ireland, benefited enormously from the open economic arrangements of the Single Market and Customs Union.
- The issues like the Irish Backstop are explored in detail, as are Theresa May’s fraught negotiations with the European Commission.
- How will it all end? There are too many complexities and contradictions that are still unresolved at this point so predictions are impossible.
- But whatever happens this drama has quite a few acts to unfold in the years to come.
- This is Carroll’s sixth and final novel in his multi award-winning Glenroy sequence. The novels span sixty tumultuous years of Australian history, from 1917 to 1977. The Year of the Beast focuses on 1917, during the First World War.
- It's the story of Maryanne, a strong, courageous, independent-minded woman standing against ugly social ignorance and cruel provincialism. She becomes pregnant and the miserable father is frightened off. Single mums weren’t a common thing 100 years ago. Most of the babies were put up for adoption under the auspices of an authoritarian Catholic Church. But she'll have none of it. Her spirit is indomitable. She's an inspiration.
- The year is 1917 - ‘The Year of the Beast’. The absurd war is taking its enormous toll on Australia’s young men, the polarising second conscription referendum campaign is underway, there are ugly popular uprisings, the mobs are rampaging in the streets, anti-Hun hatred is dominant. The opportunist Prime Minister Billy Hughes is stirring it all up.
- Carroll is very good at person to person dynamics and relationships. He perfectly captures their emotional intensity. They are the heart of his novels, and yet the politics at the time is also central. The personal and political dramatically merge. It's why I find his novels so riveting and satisfying.
- He has a very idiosyncratic writing style which some readers may find annoying. He repeats phrases and sentences as if on a loop. The effect is a constant pummelling rather than a one punch hit. The blurb correctly describes it as ‘rhythmic, insistent and pulsing’. I don't mind it. Its relentlessness fires up the intensity necessary for the unfolding drama.
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There are minor characters who flesh out the story in a very satisfactory way:
A young footballer, Milhaus, of German extraction, has become the city’s obsession because he refuses to enlist, works in the Swiss embassy and is accused of spying. The 'beast', the abhorrent, ugly, populist passion, springs into action. It's baying for blood;
An inspiring young woman, Vera, is a gifted and articulate peace activist. She’s a future leader. She gives needed hope.
- Carroll also allows the reader a glimpse into the future: we are transported to 1977 as Maryanne’s grandson Michael (the son of Vic, Maryanne’s child from Forever Young set in the 1970’s) arrives in Paris in 1977. Maryanne's spirit is present and physical despite being only vaguely remembered.
- The Year of the Beast is a superb and deeply satisfying conclusion to the author's Glenroy series.
- This novel is raw and gritty - virtually a Sally Rooney on steroids. It is exceptionally well-written and immensely engaging.
- A nameless young woman, an only child brought up by wealthy, cold and distant, recently deceased parents, bullied by an arrogant, self-entitled, sexually abusive, Wall St yuppie boyfriend, but who can’t find it within herself to leave him, is ‘pretty, thin and white’ but, perhaps understandingly, depressed. All she wants to do is watch Hollywood movies and popular TV shows, and sleep, day and night. As for the daily news - politics, crime, disasters - she opts for the off button.
- We are treated to an existential binge on mindless popular culture. In the end she’s reduced to becoming an art installation perpetrated by a modish artist acquaintance. A more accurate title would have been ‘My Year of Stupidity and Degeneration’.
- Her psychiatrist, Dr Tuttle, is, ironically, a nutter. She’s a comic portrait, but also a standing savage critique of the psychiatric profession. It’s all pills, pills, pills, and missing any substantial professional diagnosis of the woman’s condition. And of course the pills counteract each other, especially when combined with the constant intake of coffee and alcohol.
- Her best friend, Reva, is a delightfully whacky portrait of a New York Jewish girl. Addicted to cheap fashion and junk food. But she's sane and a perfect friend.
- The New York setting is telling. Moshfegh captures the shabby character and pulse of the street as well as the ultra-trendy clubs and bars of the rich kids of the hollow ‘art-party’ set. It's the end of the 20th century.
- The story tragically ends on 9/11. Reva was in the twin towers.
Some publishing notes:
1.Outrageously overpriced for a 290pp paperback. It’s $35.00 but should be no more than $29.99. The publisher, Penguin Random House, is obviously using the weakening A$ as an excuse to ratchet up its prices. But ironically the current A$/£ exchange rate (0.55p) is close to its average over the last five years. And the standard pricing formula for an imported title, FX rate x 1.1 (hedge) x 1.1 (GST), makes the price close to $29.99 after rounding.
2. And the binding is the worst! It takes enormous arm strength or a crowbar to hold open because of the excessive glue on the spine, which won’t crack no matter how much pressure you apply.
3. The title is just wrong. Like probably many people, I passed over it when I saw it on the bookshop shelf six months ago, as I quite logically judged it a lame, new-age, self-help book describing a search for emotional equilibrium or something. It's nothing of the sort. It's as sharp as a tack.
