M. John Harrison, The End of Everything.

- This novel by the multi award-winning author M. John Harrison has been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize (which will be announced today). I've read a few of the entrants and can confidently say it has no hope of winning. None.

- It's not just mysterious from the word go, it's boring. We're taken to a post-disaster world. Everything has been upturned and discombobulated. What's caused it? We don't know and throughout the novel we're never told. There are hints but they lead nowhere.

- Has AI had a profoundly negative affect on the ordinary lives of individuals and communities? Has the digital revolution across all aspects of society in general been the problem? We're told the 'iGhetti' invaded the planet but Harrison never provides any details. The ‘crisis’ happened decades ago. There’s a tailfin of an Airbus A330-200 airliner in the land nearby. ‘A disaster brought it down’. 

- There are two main characters who live in a small town southeast of London - Phillip and his aunty Marnie. Phillip collects artefacts from the sea and sells them. He shouts at one point: 'They took everything and we got this junk in return'. Marnie is a lover of art, museums and galleries, and emerges as central to the novel's story as it proceeds. She has good taste and is well informed. But she's also crazy and quick to solve problems with a gun. 

- The final chapters of the novel introduce us to the 'artifact', a robotic entity who has recently emerged from the sea. It helps Marnie cremate Phillip after he dies, and it drives, shops, cleans and cooks. An AI Assistant perhaps? 

- For some reason a girl artifact appears at the end. She's immature and annoying. Marnie gets fed up and kills them both. 

- The novel ends. Thank god.

(Update November 10th: It actually won the Booker! Which tells you a lot about the judges.)

Olivia De Silva, Plastic Budgie

- This novel won the 2026 Readings Prize for fiction. It's a young woman's story of her childhood and her school and university years. But it's mainly about her family, particularly her grandparents, Gong Gong and Poh Poh, who were Chinese from Hong Kong. They named her 'Fa', a Cantonese name meaning flower. 

- The book's only 150 pages long but packs a powerful punch. Her life in Adelaide and later in Brisbane was permeated with racism. She was bullied at a Christian school and went quiet for a year. At home she became absorbed in Australian TV programs and popular music. She loved Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. 

- She hated the crazy superstitious Chinese beliefs of her grandparents and relatives.

- She calls her dad ‘Purple’ because his temper was like a thunderstorm. She realises she was afflicted with anger and bitterness too. Her parents didn't get along and eventually divorced. Her mother sent her to an all-girls private school where Fa felt like a loner, an outsider. Her taste was far superior to the bubblegum pop girls. ‘I saw myself as an outsider, a cool loner that was yet to be appreciated'. Her dad bought her an electric guitar for her 14th birthday. A young trendy man taught her music. 

- She goes to Uni, starts running, loses weight and looks fit and attractive. She gets a bit feral and she has sex. She felt her time was coming. She also obtained the highest score in Creative Writing (Honours). 

- But the ghosts of her childhood still haunt her. Her dreams and visions of her 'double' still haunt her.  

- She is also diagnosed with stage-four endometriosis. ‘There is significant damage to your bowels, colon and uterus’. The doctor recommends an urgent operation. 

- The last few pages of her reflections are some of the most beautiful writing you could ever read. This book will stay with me for a long time.

Nick McKenzie and Ben Schneiders, Building Bad

 

- Seasoned journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Nick McKenzie and Ben Schneiders, have written an important and powerful expose of the criminal-led union the CFMEU (Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union). 

- They take us inside the corruption that permeates the CFMEU on all levels. The key players are the violent lowlifes John Setka and Mick Gatto and their links with outlaw bikie gangs and underworld figures. They extracted millions of dollars from building companies by denying them Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs) unless they complied with their demands.  

- For years the journalists have been covering in detail in the newspapers and TV's Sixty Minutes what was happening. But in this book they dig deep and summarise, clarify and link all elements of the picture. I particularly relished their exposure of the pathetic Victorian Labor Party under Jacinta Allen and how she failed dismally as a Minister and Premier by allowing Setka and Gatto and their mates to carry on enriching themselves and the union at taxpayers' expense. 

- I underlined heaps of sentences and paragraphs as I read the book. Here are a few examples:

At least a dozen construction companies and their owners had been targeted by fire bombings.

The barrister [Geoffrey Watson] described the union's transformation under Setka's leadership from 'champion of the working class' to an organisation 'that turned to looking after gangsters, standover men, bikies, heroin traffickers, and even killers'. 

During the Setka era [2012-2024] the CFMEU was forcing contractors to employ patched bikies, meth abusers, violent standover men, killers, boxers and cage fighters. 

The Setka-led Victorian branch of the CFMEU was no longer a trade union, it was a crime syndicate....it had strayed a long way from its mission of holding greedy bosses to account and protecting the pay and conditions of blue-collar workers. Instead, the union had turned to helping select greedy bosses and their gangland mates drop their snouts into a taxpayer dollar-filled trough. 

In her final address to Victoria, Allan all but ignored the scandal that had cost her the premiership. 

- The book's final para before the Postscript is this however: 

When the new Victorian Premier Ben Carroll held his own press conference, however, he didn't prevaricate. The first promise made by Victoria's 50th premier was to call a royal commission into the construction industry.

Bonnie Garmus, Peck & Peck

- The bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry (2022), Bonnie Garmus, has written an exhilarating, wonderfully comic story of an old quarterly poetry journal in the US. It's been owned and managed by the Peck family since the early 1900's and is currently suffering from appallingly bad management. Since its inception the journal has been managed by sets of twins, hence 'Peck & Peck'.  

- A young man named Batter Gray, about to graduate from high school, wants to be a poet. He's always been fascinated by poetry. His name 'Batter' came from a family dog who died just before the boy's birth. 

- His twin brother also died during childbirth. Interesting, given the vital role twins play in this story. 

- After studying a variety of subjects at College in LA, including accounting, he ends up in New York. He comes across a fancy building called ‘Peck & Peck’, sees they do poetry, and applies for an advertised editorial position. He gets the job and finds out it's hardly an editorial role. He's to run the photocopying room. His job is to copy all the manuscripts sent in by so-called poets and deliver them to the 39 editors. The great majority of the poems are rubbish and the rejection letters simply say 'NO'.

-The current man in charge is Salton Peck and he's a nasty piece of work. He's abusive and a know-all, and he knows nothing about poetry. In fact he thinks it's rubbish and pretentious and a sham. He wants to commercialise the journal by allowing ads and even some porn, and substantially increasing the price. Garmus's portrayal of him is deliciously brilliant. He's got a way with words and hates everything and everyone and doesn't hold back. 

- Batter starts to intensely dislike his boring job and decides to resign. His parents persuade him to stick at it - things will get better. So he does. He starts to make friends with some editors and even former Peck family members. He even becomes very attracted to some young women, one of them a Peck family member. 

- He also occasionally gives his opinion about some of the poems chosen to be published and some chosen to be rejected. Salton, the boss, grows to respect him, and increases his salary substantially. 

- There are various subplots in the book that add to its richness. But what stands out is the constant tension between excellence and detritus. Those distinctions affect life in profound ways. 

- Garmus has written a highly enjoyable and insightful novel. Like Lessons in Chemistry it will become another popular TV series for sure.

 

Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say.

- I've read most of Elizabeth Strout's novels over the last few decades and this new one is easily one of her best. It focuses on the intense, complicated relationships that quite ordinary people experience throughout their ordinary lives. Lives that seem comfortable but on many levels are not. 

- The key word is 'ordinary'. We're immersed in ordinary communities, watching ordinary families deal with ordinary dramas. Couples split up, marriages begin and end, people argue, new friends are made, accidents happen, and people die. Some from suicide, like the school principal. 

- The main character, Artie, is a history teacher at a local high school. He talks to his students about about wars, fascism and the Nazis. Why are there always wars? Can there ever be global peace? He felt he had to convey some optimism to the young students but he knew there could never be peace. The current political environment after Trump's reelection in 2024 is ugly and its negativity ever present. 

- He and his wife Evie seem to enjoy a good relationship, despite some tragedies upending their lives, such as the death of their young daughter, and his son Rob's disclosure that Artie is not really his father. Artie doesn’t confront Evie and tell her he knows. He buries it within himself. But he does contemplate suicide. 

- He’s starting to keep more secrets, and even to indulge in shoplifting. ‘He had somehow slipped the ties of the world that had been his for almost thirty years...It was a private thing, to be alive. He understood this now’. 

- His relationship with his son, despite the biological secret, is deep. Rob relies on his father for advice and their love is strong. 

- There are other incidents dotted throughout the novel that enrich it immensely. The book is only 200 pages long and the writing is clear and unpretentious. It's a joy to read. 

  

Emma Cline, Switzy

 

- Emma Cline is a bestselling young American author of The Girls, Daddy, and The Guest. I haven't read any of them. On the front cover Mark Haddon calls her new book 'Sublime...completely gripping...a wonder'. Daisy Johnson calls it 'Her best book yet. Completely extraordinary'. 

- My opinion? It's easily one of the most tedious novels I’ve ever read. It's a deep penetration into a shallow man, and everything about it annoys the crap out of me. Her staccato prose reflects his consciousness and vacuity. She's a writer of talent but it's wasted on this annoying lightweight of a man. The silly title, the meaningless front cover, and the absence of an author photo, says it all. 

- David Hastings, now in his early seventies, is a former Chief Financial Officer on a flight to Zurich via London, and he reflects on his long corporate life: suits, coats, shoes, flights, hotels, dinners, a Rolodex, Christmas cards, secretaries. He works for his boss called Stearns. He's constantly playing Solitaire on his phone. He’s an empty soul with minimal intellectual energy, no interest in politics, world affairs, or today's wars. He has no deep love for his family or friends, apart from one school friend Tom. In other words he’s as boring as batshit. He’s off to Switzerland for euthanasia. 

- He doesn’t reflect on how much money he’ll leave his daughter, nor his house, furniture, belongings. Not even his Will. His wife Annabel and he divorced when their only child, Rebecca, was ten. 

- At least he recognises his current irrelevance: 'Now the young people had different brains…They had seen behind the curtain..’ He's also aware of 'The smell of old people. Their decaying skin. The addled brain'. He's been diagnosed with Amyloid plaque and has, as he tells it, 'odd fake medications, tests and treatments. For executives only'. His memory is virtually gone altogether. Only habitual things remain. He's ‘now learning that everything - oh, just everything - disintegrates’. 

 - By far the most interesting character in the novel is Cody, his assistant. Cody is in his mid-thirties and looks after him in every way. I guess he's well paid but we're never told. 

- An interesting dimension to the story is his reflections on his school days, and his friend Tom. They'd go to Tom’s house for school breaks. Tom was bright. And David was attracted to him, even physically. The school bullies attacked Tom on one occasion and David stood there and did nothing. They were distant from that point. 

- At the end of the novel he and Cody fly in a private noncommercial plane to Zurich.  

- In a comfortable room, with a nurse in attendance, he swallows the barbiturate. 

- As a bored reader I thought 'thank god!' You may wonder why I lasted until the end. It wasn't because I wondered whether he'd chose life over death. It was solely because of Emma Cline's entrancing prose. 

Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.

- Cory Doctorow is a snappy writer whose insight into all dimensions of AI companies and their scamming techniques is comprehensive. He’s always worth reading. 

- His new book is a fascinating social and economic take on how AI is influencing virtually all dimensions of business, employment and income, and not in a good way. He's probing deeply into the business side of AI corporations and who they’re screwing. He's not fooled at all by their pretentious rhetoric about how productive our future can be. 

 - He delves deeply into the appalling way tech companies like Google and Amazon treat their workers. 'Amazon's coders are now being worked like Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, among the most abused workforce in the wealthy world'. They're not even allowed to take toilet breaks. 

- He also addresses the contentious copyright issue. Most authors and artists are loudly proclaiming they are not being paid for the scraping of their content and that this is a breach of copyright law. Legally this isn't true. And 'every search engine makes a copy of every web page it can find, without taking a license or seeking permission to do so'. The substantive issue is that the huge dominant corporations all agree on paying their workers, including creative ones, as little as possible. Their wages are there for the taking. That is the principal issue we should be focused on. 'Scraping in order to make a transient copy of a work for the purposes of analysis, indexing, and so on, is legal'. 

- Doctorow is convinced that AI is a bubble, which will burst. ‘Every AI company is losing money, and the bigger the AI company is, the more money it’s losing. The biggest AI companies are losing billions per quarter…. even if one AI company survives most or all of the rest of them will fail. When that happens the AI bubble will burst. Investors will panic-sell their holdings. Companies will collapse. In other words the bubble will burst as all bubbles do, always....Remember: seven giant AI companies account for 35% of the US stock market...We're talking about a crash that will put 2008 in the shade and meet or exceed the pandemic sell-off'. The economic costs will be felt around the world for generations to come. It will be 'a prolonged, brutal, global crash'. 

- What's more 'The serious environmental costs of AI will be borne by everyone on the planet, and all the animals and plants we share it with, for hundreds of years to come’. 

- Cory Doctorow has written by far the most informed and enlightening book on AI and its consequences I've ever read. I highly recommend it.