Emma Darragh, Thanks For Having Me

- This novel won this year's Readings Prize for fiction. Frankly, I don't know why. 

- It's about everyday family life in the working class burbs (we're in Wollongong) and has a distinct Young Adult feel, although technically it's not a YA book (there's too much sex). It's a chaotic jumbled up mix of kids, teens, sisters, mothers, fathers, rabbits, parties, sex, pregnancies, cassettes, Walkmans, 70’s pop stars, and dopey commercial TV shows.

- It spans four generations, from the mid-1900s to today. The main focus is on mothers and their daughters, and the mothers have a habit of deserting their husbands and kids when they simply can't take it anymore. 

- Vivian's life as a child, teen and mother is central. She hasn’t spoken to her own mother in years. Her experience of raising her baby, Evie, who won’t sleep, is the best part of the novel in my view. It's a dramatic and credible rendering and so well written. As a young adult Viv was a 'party girl'. A decade later, in an unhappy marriage, she leaves home, just like her own mother, and often considers suicide. 

- We spend a few chapters with the teenage Evie and her sister and school friends as they experience their sexual awakening. It's graphic. They are desperate to see an erect dick. 

- We also spend a lot of time reading about alcohol. On virtually every page. 

- Oddly, the boyfriends and husbands are not central to the tale, but they seem nice and normal and there's not a hint of abuse, sexual or otherwise. 

- All the painful drama belongs to motherhood. 

Samantha Harvey, Orbital

 

- This novel won this year's Booker Prize. It's certainly a worthy winner. It's a breathtaking, visionary, deep view of planet earth and the humans who live on it. 

- Six astronauts from different countries - Roman, Shaun, Chie, Pietro, Nell and Anton - are circling planet earth in a spacecraft. Their job is to tend to all sorts of scientific stuff, which they assiduously do. They also reflect on their families, personal relationships, achievements and ambitions. They are not so special. They are normal human beings. They circle the earth sixteen times a day. They are in awe of its stunning beauty. 

- Samantha Harvey's prose is beautifully poetic, and its written with passion and anger. The astronauts are in awe of their planet and continually reflect on its beauty, geography, colours, and weather systems - 'just a giddy mass of waltzing things'. And its headlong journey to destruction. 

- It's a 137 page short novel, but the small print and dense prose mean it can’t be read quickly. I had to read sentences and paragraphs a few times to let them sink in. It's certainly worth the effort. 

- They see a huge typhoon developing near the Philippines ‘..a charging force closing in on land’. They can see how destructive it will be.

- Harvey confronts us with all sorts of challenges. ..only white American men have gone to the moon - this is what the world is, a playground for men, a laboratory for men; OK, we’re alone, so be it; trying to go where the universe doesn’t want you when there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does; the atom bomb - be afraid my child of what a human can do - you must never forget the price humanity pays for its moments of glory; This thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness…Can humans not find peace with one another? With the earth? Can we not stop tyrannising and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend? Every swirling neon or red algae bloom…every retreating glacier…every mound laid newly bare…every scorched and blazing forest…every shrinking ice sheet. 

- They come to see the politics of want. The politics of growing and getting, a billion extrapolations of the urge for more, that's what they begin to see when they look down. They don't even need to look down since they, too, are part of those extrapolations, they more than anyone - on their rocket whose boosters at lift-off burn the fuel of a millions cars.

The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.

Percival Everett, James

 

- Most reviewers and literary critics highly anticipated this superb novel would win this year's Booker Prize but it didn't. Perhaps because it's not really original but a reworking of Mark Twain's classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

- Unlike Twain Everett digs deep into the cruelty of slavery. And his narrator is not Huck but Jim, Huck's black companion and an escaping slave. Huck is the supporting character. James is the lead. It's a highly dramatic story, with action aplenty. 

- James and his slave friends speak to each other in perfect English, but in ‘the correct incorrect grammar’ to their white masters, because the whites need to ‘feel superior’. James gives the children language lessons: Let’s try some situational translations...'And the better they feel, the safer we are’ becomes Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be. He is highly intelligent and literate, having taught himself from reading books in his former owner Judge Thatcher’s extensive library. He dreams of Voltaire and his liberal views on racism and ‘hierarchy’.

- James and Huck are real friends. Huck is running away from his abusive father, and James has to leave his wife and daughter and hide away because Miss Watson, his owner, wants to sell him to a man in New Orleans.

- On their journey down the Mississippi river in various stolen canoes and hastily thrown together rafts they meet plenty of strange and dangerous characters. Crooks and liars posing as the 'King of France' and the 'Duke of Bridgewater'; the 'Virginia Minstrels', a group of singers in blackface; Henderson the repeat rapist of young black girls; a steamer full of white thrill-seekers powered by a starving young black man shovelling coal into the furnace 24/7. 

- The word 'nigger' is common parlance. When Twain's original novel was published in 1884, after the civil war, many critics condemned it for frequently using this horrific word. In fact even today many school libraries refuse to hold it, accusing it, ironically, of racism. What Everett has done in his new version is to openly confront the real ugliness of racism at its core. It's a confronting read, and very powerful indeed.

 

Jock Serong, Cherrywood

 

-A brilliantly written but ultimately tedious novel. While the characters are real and attractive, the dominant story is juvenile and silly. As a minor character observes at some point: it's an Enid Blyton, Jack and the Beanstalk tale. 

- There are two time frames. The first is a century ago, in the early 1900’s. The second is in 1993. An Englishman, Thomas Wrenfether, has inherited a fortune from his wealthy parents, and is persuaded by a business colleague to invest in a newly discovered European timber called cherrywood. He could ship it to Melbourne and build a new type of ship, a paddlesteamer. Once in Melbourne he hires the right builders, carpenters and other crewmen, and fulfils his dream. Until the ship's launch. 

- 1993 in Melbourne we meet Martha, a formidable young lawyer. She's frustrated at work, and yearns for something far more meaningful. One night in Fitzroy she happens upon a small pub called the Cherrywood, and becomes immediately attracted to the young barman. She wants to return but, surprisingly, can't find it. Here's where the Disney-like fantasy element begins. 

- I started to get Serong's point. Successful people in their daily work worlds can be deeply confused, unstable and unsettled, and it frequently doesn't end well. 'The grounded life...doesn't satisfy'. He has also written a love paean to Fitzroy. There are connections to ancient histories and English-named streets, and people to old families. When reality is harsh we create our own haven. Our imaginations and creative sensibilities save us. Like the concept of ‘salvation’.

- ‘How is the irrational alternative world I’m inhabiting any more batshit crazy than Christianity, or Thatcherism, or betting on greyhounds?’ Martha proclaims at one point. 

- As the novel proceeds the history and real identity of the pub becomes clear. Unfortunately it's a magical tale that becomes increasingly silly and meaningless, and goes on and on and on...

- So half good, half bad.

Robert Harris, Precipice

 

- I've read all of Robert Harris's novels over the years and can say, without a doubt, that Precipice is easily one of his best. A master of historical fiction, he has delivered here a beautifully and sensitively written drama about about love, companionship and intimacy, and the need for deep, trusting personal relationships in difficult times. The First World War is about to begin, and Britain is sucked into supporting its allies France and Russia against their enemies Germany and Austria. 

- It's a fascinating story by a master of the craft. We're taken deep into the heart of the British government in war time, and the passions, arguments and personal feuds at the Cabinet level. Harris fully captures the dynamics of the predicaments and debates. 

- The Prime Minister, H.H.Asquith, heads Britain's first and only Liberal Government. He's an intelligent, sensitive human being as is revealed to us, and a real leader, unlike some of his loud and boisterous colleagues. Many names are familiar: Winston Churchill, Lord Kitchener, Lloyd George, Edward Grey, Arthur Balfour. Their personal hatreds and resentments are often on show. Cabinet meetings are reliably contentious. We're also exposed to the key role of Ambassadors and their frequent telegrams. 

- The communications of the time were telegrams and letters. The postal service delivered mail up to twelve times a day - an analogue email if you will!

- Hidden from his colleagues and the public is the very personal and intimate relationship Asquith is having with a young woman from the aristocratic class, Venetia Stanley. They see each other regularly and write loving letters every day. Unfortunately the security service catches on and secretly photographs their letters before they're delivered. The married and much older PM is likely to be engulfed in a huge scandal propagated by the conservative press. 

- Meanwhile we're taken to the heart of the war. The British naval landing in the Dardanelles is a total failure, despite being enthusiastically supported by Churchill. Many British ships are sunk and thousands of sailors drowned, so the army is sent to Gallipoli, along with Australian and New Zealand troops. Thousands are slaughtered. The novel digs deep into the machinations of war planning and resourcing - the soldiers, munitions, ships, weapons, and maneuvers - and the mistakes that can be made on every level. 

- The ending brings the political and personal dimensions of this highly emotional drama to a satisfying resolution. And Harris's Historical Note is very enlightening. 

- I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is magnificent. 

Noam Chomsky, The Myth of American Idealism

- The great Noam Chomsky, now 95 years old, is widely credited with having revolutionised the field of modern linguistics, and is equally renowned for his incisive writings on global affairs and US foreign policy. This new book, written in collaboration with Nathan J. Robinson, co-founder and editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine, re-works some of Chomsky's pieces over the last few decades or so to bring them up to date. 

- It is an utterly inspiring book. He brings a razor sharp clarity and perspective to today's substantial issues, and he's as unforgiving of ‘liberals’ as he is of conservatives. It's a critique of American delusion and imperial ambition. The US is a warmongering nation. Every president has committed crime after crime.

- Each chapter addresses a major war or issue over the last seventy years, and America's disastrous response. The US had no legal or moral right to interfere in Vietnam. The wrecking of Afghanistan was just appalling US revenge for 9/11 - the Taliban offered to give bin Laden up, but Bush declined. The war was a major US crime, with no justification whatsoever.

- Similarly the invasion of Iraq was  ‘…a criminal act of aggression by a state seeking to exert regional control through the use of violence’. 

- If you just want to dip into this book then read first the thoroughly enlightening chapter on Israel/Palestine history. The war is placed into a deep historical perspective, and Chomsky, a Jew himself, does not shy away from condemning Israel's atrocities. 

- Then read the chapter on China’s emergence as a ‘threat’. It's full of sense, and is highly critical of Obama, Trump, Biden and other US leaders and politicians. Their demonisation of China is ignorant, America-first hogwash. And they use the so-called defence of Taiwan as cover. He actually praises Paul Keating as one of the only Western leaders to call it right. 

- Then there's Ukraine and NATO. He questions the relevance and continued existence of NATO after the end of the Cold War, condemning it for engaging repeatedly in illegal and aggressive warfare. The US should have dropped the goal of NATO membership for Ukraine and persuaded it to become a neutral country. 

- Nuclear: the frightening prospect of a nuclear war initiated by the US is real. The US consistently refuses to do anything to help avoid it. It refuses to support any related UN resolutions.  

- The current climate disaster? Oh please, ‘US politicians have consistently placed the interests of the fossil fuel industry over the future of humanity’. The Green New Deal (AOC led) was cynically disparaged by senior Democrats, even though it was the right way forward. ‘The green dream, or whatever they call it’ scoffed Nancy Pelosi. Influential media like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times continue to be abysmal in their coverage.

- ‘In the United States now, there is essentially one political party, with two factions’. The Republicans’ ‘core agenda is to privatise, to deregulate, and to limit government’, and the Democrats ‘have essentially abandoned whatever commitment they had to working people and the poor, becoming a party of affluent professionals and Wall Street donors.’ 

- The US believes it has an inherent right to dominate the rest of the world. ‘As Harold Pinter argued in his Nobel Literature Prize address: "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless...The US has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good". 

- Chomsky ends with this paragraph: An extraterristrial observer looking at our species would say that our primary trajectory is toward suicide, that we are collectively running toward a cliff. Human civilisation, having started almost ten thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent, may now be approaching its inglorious end. It may turn out that higher intelligence was a kind of 'evolutionary  mistake'. One of the theories put forward for why no intelligent life has so far been discovered elsewhere in the universe - the 'Fermi paradox' - is that intelligent life may be a kind of lethal mutation that annihilates itself whenever it arises. 

- A brilliant book from one of the best minds of the last hundred years. 

Josh Bornstein, Working For The Brand

 

- This is so damn good. It's comprehensive, enlightening and global in reach. Bornstein, an award-winning Australian lawyer who specialises in employment and labour-relations law, digs deep into the underside of corporate operations and how they treat their staff. He sees through their bullshit. If you’re not a leftie you’re gonna hate this book. If you are, you’ll love it!

- If you've been awake and alive over the last few decades you will recognise the multitude of awful instances of corporate and institutional stupidity that Bornstein covers in detail. Here are some of them: Scott McIntyre and SBS cowardice; Yassmin Abdel-Magied and the ABC (‘Like SBS, the ABC sacked Abdel-Magied in order to placate a right-wing mob’); Israel Folau and his immature treatment by Rugby Australia; the appalling treatment of Antoinette Lattouf and Laura Tingle by an ABC management terrified of the Murdoch press. 

- He provides us with an excellent background to these current employer-employee woes - the neo-liberalism agenda of the 80's onwards, the disaster of Howard's WorkChoices, the huge drop since then of union membership, and the development of corporate cancel culture. I relished his destruction of Alan Joyce and Qantas and their sackings of thousands of staff represented by unions. 

- Academic freedom also comes under the microscope. The Roz Ward case was an example of ‘serious misconduct’. She posted, satirically, a photo of a red 'communist' flag on social media on Anzac Day and was persecuted by her university. Universities have become corporate institutions over the last three decades, and we've witnessed a rapidly shrinking minority of tenured academics. The ugliness of the system in its underpayment of casual academics on short term contracts is horrendous. Bornstein provides lots of examples of unbelievably stupid and immature behaviour by university administrations.

- He also digs deep into the current status of news outlets. 'The ideals of fairness, objectivity, and impartiality are invoked in support of the rules that severely restrict the human rights of their journalists...and like other businesses, the rules are often selectively enforced, in response to dubious online shaming campaigns'. 

- And what about consensual sexual relationships? That freaks corporates out. So 'morals clauses' are now common in employment contracts. Corporations have amassed far-reaching powers over the private lives and opinions of their employees. 

-Bornstein’s dream corporate statement closes the book and it says it all. If only!

We sell goods and services for profit. We employ many people who harbour a range of values and views. We support our employees' fundamental right as citizens to participate in debate and other forms of civic life, including by expressing unpopular views. Their views are their own. They don't speak for the company. We will not censor, sack, or discipline them for exercising their rights.

- (This book has no index, which is intensely annoying. It also has no author photo. This cheapness is common in the Australian publishing community unfortunately.)