Tim Dean, How We Became Human

 

- This is a very enlightening and fascinating book. Dean's ability to bring anthropological, sociological, psychological, historical, cultural, as well as philosophical insights to the age old drama of human morality and its development, and to do so in such lucid prose, is simply breathtaking. 

- (My first degree as a young man was in Catholic Theology from the Universita Urbiana in Rome in the late 1960's. I was studying for the priesthood. The Second Vatican Council had just finished and there were revolutions in every sphere - but one. Our professors were inspired by the reformist thinking upending every dimension of their particular fields - doctrinal, scriptural, liturgical, sacramental. Except for one. That was moral theology. It was stuck in medieval mud, and amazingly still is sixty years later. Not one dimension of the church's thinking and teaching on morality has changed. I live in hope that over the next few decades such a profound revolution will be unleashed)

- As Dean claims: One of the core themes of this book is that morality ought to adapt to the world we live in. His argument is wide-ranging with explorations of race, empathy, anger, ostracism, social media, outrage, cancel culture, mob incitement, sex, political divides, and other contemporary tensions.

- His chapter on religion is exceptionally good. Religious belief can be good and bad. From ancient times there were small gods that evolved into Big Gods. There is atheism, and our current secular democratic societies with their substantial social services have enabled inevitable religious decline. 

- The chapter on sex through the ages is insightful and comprehensive; today's fierce debates are sympathetically explored, such as biological determinism and the spectrum. He lashes Victorian Sexual Morality and provides a nice summary of contraception and the pill and how sexual lives have been liberated.            

- Political and social morality is a field rarely covered in any depth, particularly in Christian theology, but Dean does it superbly and sympathetically. What has brought about the swerve to the populist right in recent politics? Why did 2016 happen - Brexit and Trump? He explores ethnonationalism, and the sociological divide of 'Anywheres' and 'Somewheres'. 

- The final chapter on moral customs throughout history is well worth quoting:

 

Amanda Lohrey, The Labyrinth.

 

- Lohrey's narrator Erica Marsden has had an interesting life as a young woman and mother in inner Sydney but now comes across as quite alone, uninteresting and boring in middle age.

- She moves to an isolated coastal hamlet south of Sydney to be close to where her son Daniel is imprisoned for arson and murder, and interacts with the usual inhabitants, some friendly, some cold. Typically there are village idiots in the mix, one her neighbour Ray. But thankfully he emerges as a helpful blokey type at the end, assisting with the construction of her prized labyrinth. 

- Assorted stories of families and estrangement are the novel's central focus. Daniel is a painter yet mentally quite unstable. (Her visitations to him are rendered in italics for some peculiar reason). She hasn’t spoken to her brother Axel 'since he married a woman who judged me'. A neighbour's young daughter Lexie has a loving and supportive relationship with her brother Jesse by contrast. There are lots of other characters dotted throughout, most only tangentially. The stresses and strains of mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, and siblings.

- Underpinning this rather ordinary and often tiresome narrative is Erica's obsession with labyrinths. She had a dream and is now its ‘captive’. We're constantly teased about the deeper meaning of it, but never convinced. Is it a rendition of her mother’s womb? An ancient entity with a mystical edge '...as if my body has been laid on the ground in another form…its pattern of sinuous pathways’?

- Normally individuals who are alienated from the mainstream go to the margins, and become thinkers and critics. Erica doesn’t think at all. She is also burning her son’s many books just because he asked her to. 

- In Part 2 of the book called The Labyrinth we meet Jurko the itinerant stonemason of Albanian heritage who is an illegal immigrant living in a tent near the town. Erica hires him to build the labyrinth. He is a fascinating character who thankfully invests the story with a bit of life. He hates religion and many so-called civilised things and is a delightfully straight talker. 

- So what is Lohrey on about here? Is it about outsiders, marginals, the lost, finding a way, a journey back? She likes the word 'banality': ‘the banality of the everyday’; ‘the banality of the reasonable’. 

- The touch is too light though, rendering the book, in my opinion, a lightweight. A huge list of quoted reviews in the preliminary pages of the book however are fulsome in their praise - 'compelling, visceral, deeply moving, haunting, luminous'...etc, etc, etc. I'm totally outnumbered. 

- The novel won this year's Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary prize. Which doesn't surprise me.
 

Steven E. Koonin, Unsettled.

 

- Steve Koonin is a highly regarded theoretical physicist and a leader in science policy in the US. He served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under Obama. His book, published in May this year, has caused a lot of controversy and debate. Climate Scientists, who zealously guard their patch, don't like it. Climate denialists do. 

- In my view it's a pity that he titled it Unsettled. His principal argument is not that the science is unsettled, it's that the science is constantly being poorly communicated and misrepresented. It's not just the media who are to blame. The summary documents and assessment reports from the IPCC and other bodies too frequently gloss over the fine print in the interest of infusing their key messages with a bit of popular appeal. And the fine print is never as dramatic, challenging or frightening. 

- Koonin's argument is you can’t be a scientist and an activist at the same time. Many climate scientists are ‘…overwilling to persuade rather than inform’.

- Is this naive? Is it sophisticated denialism? Or is it an informed critique of apocalyptic media messaging. In my view the latter. It's a very measured and sobering account of complex issues. He doesn't deny climate change is happening, and that human influence is a key contributor. What we get is a very clear presentation of the key issues: what is natural versus what is human caused. We should pay more attention to the science than what he labels ‘The Science’, an entity constructed mainly by the media. He labels his work as ‘accurate, frank, and accessible’. 

- The first few chapters cover the basics of the science. There's nothing new here, but his ability to write clear English definitely helps. The chapter on climate modelling is a little too technical for the average reader but it's definitely worth persevering with. Koonin wrote a classic textbook on statistical modelling in the 1980's. He's very enlightening on how it all works, how long it takes to do, its structural weaknesses, and how accurate it's likely to be in the end. 

- Then come the controversial chapters. Temperature increase: no significant trends over the last century. Hurricanes, twisters, floods, droughts and fires: modest changes with little significance. Rising sea levels: no evidence of human contribution being significant. Climate related deaths, agricultural disasters, enormous economic costs by the end of the century: ‘apocalypses that ain’t’.

- He quotes Leo Tolstoy:  The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

- He then addresses in Part Two of the book 'The Response'. Here his manifest scepticism is clear. He considers the Paris Agreement's goals of limiting warming to 2 degrees, or preferably 1.5, by 2050 totally unrealistic. As for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 that is 'highly unlikely'. Even by 2075. Even if the developed countries succeeded in their ambitions, the developing world’s economic growth makes it virtually impossible. He argues that ‘adapting’ is the only way to go. 

- As the book progressed the more disappointed in it I became. He’s a bit of a fossil fuel advocate (not openly but by inclination). He's conveniently pessimistic about renewables and their commercial potential. He barely mentions solar, or wind turbines, or government incentives. He's not keen on a carbon tax or government regulation. He's lazy in ambition, his complacency is evident, and there's always a distinct lack of urgency. Of course he settles for adaptation. It's far easier. It's almost as if he lives in another universe. '...the US accounts for only some 13% of global greenhouse gas', so why bother? 

- His final, totally uninspiring, thought is this: 

‘I believe the socio-technical obstacles to reducing CO2 emissions make it likely that human influences on the climate will not be stabilised, let alone reduced, in this century’. 

- So let's all live for today for tomorrow we die.

Mark Brandi, The Others

 

- An eleven year old unnamed boy lives with his father on a small farm in the bush. He’s home schooled and has no friends. He keeps a diary and we’re reading it. He’s a very sensitive, warm-hearted young boy, but he's wary of his often angry father.  

- Brandi's tone is one of foreboding and it's totally sustained. The boy tries hard to read his father and his moods. He keeps his distance and refers to him as ‘him’, never ‘dad’. His father constantly refers to 'the others', plague-ridden people from the 'town' and the 'commune' who they must avoid.

- The boy's fascinated by the natural world around him, the foxes, the birds, and the sheep they tend on the property. The foxes eat the young lambs, their favourites, and the crows pluck out their eyes. There are plenty of mice around. And only the boy seems to notice that there's 'a fire up the hill'. And a sound of some sort. He's afraid ‘…the others might come. Like he says they would’. 

- There’s a sinister tone to many diary entries. ‘That’s the thing about things that are good. It always seems that they never last. But bad things, they can go on forever’. ‘You can never know what’s underneath things. Like the rusty sheets and the mice. Like him and his eyes’.  

- The tension builds, very slowly. The boy ventures out of the farmhouse against his father’s orders, just to explore and try to get some answers. His father refuses to answer his questions on their circumstances and his mother’s death. His curiosity is denied. 

- After secretly following his father up the hill he finds a young woman chained to a tree and bound. He concludes his father is training her to be his servant. 

- Evil is closer than you think. Perhaps it’s not the ‘others’. Once a sound like thunder is heard. ‘He doesn’t want to talk about the sound. Or the smoke. Or the woman'.

- Like Brandi’s two earlier novels, Wimmera and The Rip, the resolution is nice and uplifting. Good people and the authorities come to the rescue. Brandi can’t seem to stay in the darkness. He believes in a Christian salvation.

- He should stay in the darkness however, because that's where his remarkable talent lies. 

T.J.Newman, Falling.

 

- It's been ages since I've read a thriller. I've been holding off, just desperately waiting for the next Don Winslow due in September and the new Adrian McKinty due soon after (hopefully). 

- But this debut by former American flight attendant T.J.Newman has been receiving huge plaudits by some big names, including Winslow and McKinty, and Dervla McTiernan, Janet Evanovich, Lee Child and James Patterson. So looking for something light and breezy during lockdown I tried it. 

- Wow! It's a riveting story with loads of pace and tension. There are three interlocked dramas that propel it: one on the LA to New York flight, one in the pilot's home in LA, and one involving FBI agents and their intervention. This is not your classic who-dun-it, the perps being disclosed early on. It's a drama of terrorists seeking revenge and retribution. 

- Because of the author's decade of experience in the skies there’s a credibility and realism to the story. It's full of fascinating details brought vividly to life. She also has the ability to suck the reader in emotionally. Virtually every chapter, for example, ends on a mini cliffhanger.  

- The terrorists are immigrants to America from war-torn Kurdistan, and are at least allowed to articulate their case. Newman is sympathetic to their unforgivable betrayal by the US and its allies during the Syria-ISIS conflict over the past decade. They were abandoned and subsequently invaded by neighbouring Turkey. 

- To a non-American there are evident weaknesses in the book. It celebrates and honours every category of person and entity involved in the drama - whether they be police, air traffic controllers, flight attendants, airport authorities, politicians, passengers. They're great Americans heroes, the lot of them. They're all lauded and honoured. In other words it’s thoroughly sentimental.

- Nevertheless, it's an absorbing read, and will undoubtedly become a blockbuster movie in a few years. Thankfully Tom Hanks will be too old by then for the lead role! 

Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy.

 

- In very lucid prose journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has written an extremely powerful book exploring the fate of liberal democracies over the last half century - how they've swung between left and right, liberalism and authoritarianism, and what gives rise to these ever-present forces.

- It's a personal journey in many ways, involving friendships often ripped apart by changing political dynamics and allegiances. An American by birth she's lived and worked for many years in Europe and the UK and has always been part of the political elite. Her husband was a senior politician in Poland and held international roles in the UN. 

- She explores dissenting movements and constant frictions in Poland, Hungary, Venezuela and Spain in particular, before moving on to Britain and the US. Her analysis is always astute and detailed. She castigates the awful, ruthless, far right and corrupt Orban government in Hungary, and its Tory sympathisers in the UK. It's one of the world's ugliest and vicious regimes yet they, thankfully a minority, support it.

- As a former conservative herself (as an editor for the centre-right Spectator) and a colleague of Boris Johnson at the time, her story of the rise of anti-EU sentiment and the Brexit debate is simply riveting. She condemns the whole Brexit campaign and its lies. Boris is not spared.

- In today's world she believes something else is going on that propels the fierce political divisions we're seeing. It's 'the contentious, cantankerous nature of modern discourse itself'. So many people can't handle it, can't understand it, and want a simpler, united, traditional society. Simple visions and explanations give birth to QAnon conspiracy theories and take a psychological and emotional hold.

- Her chapter on America and its constitution, its birth and fundamental optimism, is superb. The radical leftist forces of opposition to this exultation of capitalist ‘exceptionalism’ versus the Christian right’s antipathy to what it perceives as secular moral depravity. 

- Of course this leads to Trump and how the Republicans have split. Applebaum's former friend Laura Ingraham, now a Fox News host, and her whacky Trumpism, is thoroughly annihilated.

- The extreme woke left is not exonerated however. So-called 'cancel culture' on the Internet, the extremism that sometimes flares up on university campuses, the exaggerated claims of those who practice identity politics are a political and cultural problem that will require real bravery to fight. 

- The final chapter takes us back to the Dreyfus affair in 1894 and how the primitive antisemitism that drove it divided French society in a way that sounds familiar today. 

- Nothing much has or will change. 

Aravind Adiga, Amnesty

 

- Indian-Australian author Aravind Adiga has written a quite brilliant evocation of the constant tensions felt by illegal immigrants in Australia as they live, work and observe life around them. He also depicts the strangeness of Australian ways that are so apparent to them. 

- Danny, the main character, initially flew to Australia on a student visa. He had declined the option suggested by friends in Sri Lanka to pay people smugglers to come by boat. He saw himself as a legitimate refugee after having been tortured by the Sri Lankan military because he was deemed a 'terrorist' Tamil. 

- He overstayed his visa and is now officially an 'illegal'. He chose to apply for refugee status immediately after his legitimate arrival by plane to Sydney, and his application was rejected. Now his passport has expired, he has no Medicare, no driving licence and no social security benefits. He lives in a tiny, rundown attic above a grocery shop. And he is terrified someone will dob him in. 

- So....he has an extremely uninteresting, although stressful, life. Nothing significant happens. He trawls around inner Sydney, as in Ulysses, having random thoughts and memories, and does a few apartment cleaning jobs. The streets of Glebe, Broadway and Sydney's CBD, including George St and William St, the sandstone buildings, the Coca-Cola sign in Kings Cross, Central Station, Circular Quay, the buses and trains: all these celebrated Sydney landmarks have become his neighbourhood. But it's a seedy, untrustworthy, cruel, corrupt world that illegals inhabit. They're always anxious and on edge. The screeching birds of Australian cities don't help.

- This novel is as much about Indians in Australia generally as it is about ‘white people’. Adiga doesn’t really like them. He paints them as loud, crude, grasping and self-indulgent. His first novel, the 2008 Booker prize winner The White Tiger vividly excoriated them too. He’s not too enamoured of the Chinese either. Muslims are occasionally mentioned but never negatively. Prior to coming to Australia Danny spent a satisfying year working in a hotel in Dubai. It is apparent he prefers white Australia, despite our underlying racist character. White people have got the law, and we don’t.…where did it come from, this fair law? In Sri Lanka … it does exist - evil. A man puts on a uniform, and becomes the uniform.

 - Quietly Adiga builds a plot. Two of Danny's cleaning clients, Radha, and her lover Prakash, are addicted gamblers. Rhada's husband Mark sells real estate to Chinese investors. Rhada is murdered. 

- Adiga handles this deftly and he builds a measure of tension and dread. The police investigation presents Danny with a moral choice. Because if he talks to them about what he suspects he's effectively disclosing his illegality.

- This novel has been shortlisted for this year's Miles Frankin Award. It deserves to win.