Steve Toltz, A Rising of the Lights

- Steve Toltz's first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and his second novel, Quicksand, won the 2017 Russell Prize for humour. 

- His new novel, A Rising of the Lights, will blow all judging committees absolutely away if there's any justice in the world! It's brilliant on all levels. In prose that's bursting with life he's gone deep into the rather miserable life of Russell who's a total loser. 

- His marriage to Alison doesn't last, his affair with a friend and teacher colleague, Edwina, is on and off then on again perhaps, and he's been fired from the two jobs he's ever had. His sister, Bonnie, is a completely unlikable, friendless nutcase and scammer, so obviously they don't get on. His parents split when Russell and Bonnie were young kids. On the roll of dice his mother took him and his father took Bonnie. Both dumped them a few years later. 

- This is madness on steroids - shocking, crazy and comical. But at the same time a deep and thoughtful dive into what actually being human, sensitive and intelligent means. Toltz explores interiority and immerses the reader into all its dimensions. 

- AI is also under the spotlight. Consciousness still dominates. 

- The ending is surprising on many levels but very satisfying. 

- Here are a couple of paragraphs that will give you a taste of the book's brilliance. Russell is a career counsellor at Edwina's private school and he's addressing the parents:

'Let me offer you a deeper insight into your children and the lives they’re hiding even from themselves. When I first arrived, I saw your kids as emotionally dysregulated, insecure shit-talkers, chronically stressed, disconnected perfectionists, spoiled, coddled, overpraised budding pansexuals curating their litany of psychosomatic mental illness self-diagnoses, the girls floaty bundles of mimetic desire and mysterious endocrine dysfunction, and the boys neurodivergent maladaptive daydreamers setting the mould for at least three decades of chronic loneliness and Peter Panning it.

But after spending time with your children, I can now confidently say that your parenting has fostered remarkable resilience. These kids aren’t haunted by the spectres of unlived experiences or alternative selves. They’re not burdened by subconscious guilt. Instead, they’re navigating unseen pressures with impressive grace. Now, do they sometimes grapple with feelings of inferiority and experience some pretty hilarious cognitive dissonance? Of course. That’s part of growing up online. What’s striking is how they’re tackling these challenges, demonstrating the strong psychological foundation you’ve given them. In my professional opinion, the strength and adaptability I’m seeing in your children is a testament to your parenting. So while it’s natural to worry, I want to assure you, anxiety is the life force manifested. Genius reveals itself in the foetal position. And as for their futures, we can only admire their shadows as they fly overhead'.

Anna Goldsworthy, The God We Made: The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence

 

- I've read quite a few books and articles on AI over the last few years but this recent Quarterly Essay from Australian author, musician and academic Anna Goldsworthy is by far the best. It's, quite simply, superb.

- What makes it special is its personal voice. Anna talks about her two teenage sons, O who is thirteen, and R who is seventeen, and how they see AI, use it, and experience it at school and in their daily lives. They are extremely bright and highly literate kids. Their conversations around the dinner table are simply invigorating. 

- But the essay is also full of detail and data about AI, not so much on how it works and how trillions of dollars have been and will continue to be spent building data centres. It focuses mainly on human beings and their real personal and social needs, and how AI will affect them and satisfy them. So it's not a technical analysis. It's about communities and the likely positive and negative impacts on the quality of life. 

- Another very pleasing feature of the essay is Anna's reflections on her life and career as an academic. She is highly literate and her frequent references to noted authors, philosophers, historians and artists really enrich her thoughts and arguments. She is also a wonderfully talented writer. The prose is delightful. 

- She also quotes many senior staff who have recently resigned from their AI jobs. Their opinions as to how the current trajectory of AI is worrisome in the extreme are enlightening. Some of them are forming new companies with a more careful and social focus. Daniela Amodei, co-founder and president of Anthropic, notes that in an AI world 'studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever' for 'understanding ourselves, understanding history, understanding what makes us tick'. 

- So the essay is well worth reading. I read it twice. It's so damn good!

Wayne Marshall, Henry Goes Bush

- Wayne Marshall's first novel is a fascinating story about famous Australian poet and writer Henry Lawson. It's historical - set in the 1890's - but also an indulgence in fantasy, often whacky and insane. Nevertheless it's delightful and full of meaning.   

- Lawson is sent to Bourke in the North-West of NSW by The Bulletin’s editor, J.F.Archibald, to write some articles about the bush. He’s also a drunk. ‘He’d gladly sell his soul for a beer’. He's pretty negative about all the romantic bullshit about the bush. His famous poem is 'The Drover's Wife'.

- His upper class mate is famous poet Banjo Paterson, ‘a city wanker’ according to Henry. He's a celebrator of the character of the bush and its people, and he created 'Waltzing Matilda'. He's also sent to Bourke. Archibald wants a 'poetic dual’. 

- Henry discovers a tunnel located in a backyard. It's washed in brilliant colour. He falls down and around and ends in a new room. Banjo and his female friend also fall into the tunnel where it’s dark for days. 

- The novel is written in a rhythmic prose which echoes the poetic style made popular by Lawson and Paterson. Each line is balanced by two clauses - 'There was movement at the station for the word had got around'. It's lyrical and engaging. 

- Marshall adds details of the life and death of Lawson and how the rivaIry with Banjo and their friendship developed. I would urge you to read a selection of their famous works. 

Moreno Giovannoni, The Immigrants

- This new novel from Moreno Giovannoni was announced a few weeks ago as Winner of The Age Book of the Year 2026. On all sorts of levels it's brilliant. 

- The author calls it a work of fiction but the historical truth of it underlies it and gives it richness and credibility. It's the story of Giovannoni's family, mainly his father Ugo and his mother Morena who decide to migrate to Australia in the late 1950's. Australia, an English colony, is considered an attractive destination for hard working men and their families. Life in an impoverished Italy after World War II is harsh and offers minimal prospects.   

- What I really loved about the story was its absorbing nitty gritty detail about the predicament of being an Italian immigrant to Australia. There is life, there is work, but  there is also death. In fact deaths, including murder and suicide, frequently happen. Being an immigrant is hard on all sorts of levels. Tensions run deep. Marriages fracture. It's not really a Fabula Mirabilis, or a Wonderful Story. It's a deep challenge. The colony is biased against foreigners. The book, later a film, They're a Weird Mob, is typical.

- Ugo and his friends worked in the tobacco industry. It was dirty, hard and unforgiving. But it paid a reasonable wage. And allowed them to return regularly to Italy to see their families who they missed so much. 

- Here are a few passages:

'He is a foreign boy, learning how to live among the Australians as he goes along. There is no pub drinking culture in his family, no oval football game culture, no interest in the Melbourne Cup or Anzac Day or public drunkenness or vomiting'. 

'Ambitious farmers like Ugo grow twenty tons of tobacco in a season. Of the 1200 growers 800 are Italians. It cannot be said often enough. It is an Italian operation'. 

'They're really just pagans who have laid a thin veneer of Christianity over ancient beliefs in the gods of vineyards and olive groves....Father Lacey and the Catholic nuns fight a losing battle trying to get the Italians to follow Irish Catholic protocols'. 

'His mother and father don't like it here and are getting their little family ready to go. The colony isn't a place you take seriously as somewhere to spend the rest of your life. It is too far away, from mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends. It is too far from the world. At best all you have here is are small islands of repair in an ocean of desperation'.

        

          

 

 

Antoinette Lattouf, Women Who Win

- Loved this book. Lattouf tells the stories of lots of women pioneers and protestors throughout Australia’s history. 

- Her writing is often cheeky and colloquial but she digs deep into the predicament of so many women who were sacrificing so much to overcome the constant barriers facing them. Since Australia's founding men were in charge, not just domestically but politically, morally, legally and socially. Across every spectrum of society women’s ambitions were constantly denied and their opinions and protests ignored. They couldn't stand for parliament, they couldn't study and get employment as lawyers, abortion was illegal, and so many women were denied access to so many domains dominated by men. 

- Running throughout these stories is her own - her sacking from the ABC for sending as a private person on Instagram the Human Rights Watch condemnation of Israel’s starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza. A WhatsApp group called 'Lawyers for Israel' wanted her sacked and rendered 'unemployable'. Millions of people across the world, including thousands in Australia, had read the HRW statement, but how dare an ABC employee of a Lebanese, Arab, or Middle Eastern 'race' innocently repost it.  

- David Anderson, the ABC’s Managing Director, and Ita Buttrose, the Chair, were harassed by the Israeli lobby and, as is so typical of ignorant and cowardly management, they caved. 

- Lattouf describes the effect this had on her emotional wellbeing. And on her family, her husband and two young daughters. It was devastating. 

- After the ABC refused to settle on reasonable grounds, the case went to court in early 2025, and after a long and stressful time the Judge handed down his verdict. She won. 

- ABC management 'should have stamped out the sparks of external pressure, but instead they tried to extinguish me. In doing so, they doused themselves in accelerant and struck the match...' They also had to pay $220,000 to Latouf, and had spent more than $2.6 million fighting her plus internal legal staffing fees. 

(Recently the publisher UQP cancelled publication of the children’s book Bila, a River Cycle by Wiradjuri writer Jazz Money and Indigenous illustrator Matt Chun because of Chun's political views on the Bondi attack and Israel's slaughter of Indigenous Palestinians. Here are Chun's contentious views which were not included in the book in any way, shape or form. Once again senior managers indulged in disgraceful and cowardly behaviour. And remember MUP's appalling cancellation of the respected journal Meanjin? How on earth are our cultural and academic leaders so easily coerced by the Zionist lobby?) 

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Going To Tehran; Vali Nasr, Iran's Grand Strategy.

 

- I was desperate to find a few scholarly books on Iran so I could probe deep into this ancient civilisation, and get informed into how and why it's so central to today's U.S. and Israeli obsessions. 

- The 2025 Nasr book is magnificent. It clarifies the power of Iran’s Islamic State, and why Shia Islam is central to it. 

- America favours secularism, and Iran has become entrenched as the enemy. Rather than confirm the caricature of an archaic theocracy begrudging modernity and seething at the West, Nasr makes it clear that Iran today sees itself as the inspiration for a global movement of resistance to the U.S. and why America should quit the Middle East and leave Iran alone. 

- The Leverett book was published in 2013 but has become a classic. Challenging the daily clamour of U.S. sabre rattling, the Everetts argue that America should renounce thirty years of failed strategy and engage with Iran. America must 'go to Iran' just as Nixon revolutionised U.S. foreign policy by going to Beijing and realigning relations with China. 

- In 1962, President Kennedy warned that 'the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought'. 

- As the Leveretts make clear 'The prevailing Iran mythology is rarely challenged in mainstream discourse...If the myth of the Islamic Republic's irrationality is not dispelled, Western perceptions that war with Iran is inevitable will eventually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy'. 

- Nasr argues persuasively that Iran as a society is by no means perfect. Its cruel and abusive refusal to recognise the place of women and young people by continuing to enforce its morality rules, women's dress, and observance of the hijab, is angering the majority of its population. And its insistence on resistance and confrontation with the United States has reached its limit of popular support. The problem is not just the hijab, but the entire patriarchal social and legal structures that govern family law, labour relations, and the access of women to jobs and services. 

- Both books are thoroughly enlightening. You can skip over a lot of historical details in a number of dense chapters but still get the full picture. I highly recommend both books, but especially Vali Nasr's.

 

Ben Lerner, Transcription

- Ben Lerner, aged 47, is an American poet, novelist, essayist and critic. He's won numerous literary awards, and is considered one of the most talented writers of his generation. 

- Transcription is his latest novel. I absolutely loved it. It's brilliant. There are three basic stories that make up this short novel of 130 pages.   

- His focus is on the communication process people engage in. An arts journalist plans to interview his 90 year old academic mentor, Thomas, and publish it in a respected journal. He plans to record it on his phone. Unfortunately however he drops the phone in a sink full of water in his hotel, just prior to his scheduled meeting. So he pretends the phone is working when Thomas starts his story. 

- While most seniors can't handle the digital world, it seems most younger people are flabbergasted by the analogue world. Communication is frustrating and mostly impossible. How do they find phone numbers or locations? 

- In the second story our journalist has just given an opening speech for a symposium on Thomas's life long contribution to the visual arts. Thomas has recently died. Unfortunately many film makers in attendance hated his speech. He had pretended to quote Thomas in his article. Though he'd told them he hadn't recorded it or taken any notes. As the symposium organiser says to him 'You more or less confessed that you falsified what many of us thought of his last testament'.  

- The third story involves our journalist listening to a friend's story about his ten year old daughter, Emmie, who has an eating disorder. She refuses to eat, other than nibbling chocolates and sweets. Dieticians and doctors seem unable to cure her. Her father gets angry and gives her a stern lecture. The daughter's response was to down a whole and nutricious smoothy the following morning then vomit it all over the floor. 

- The grandfather visits them and the granddaughter has always loved him. He was European, of high culture, and an expert on Golden Age Hollywood film. We learn he was Thomas. Thomas brings up the subject of screen time. The parents had enforced a strict regime. When Thomas leaves, they allow Emmie to manage her own screen time. She combines it with eating and using her iPad. She's in her own world and starts to eat good food regularly. 

- Lerner takes us into the communicating world of young people, old people, fathers and sons. But mostly into today's world of digital communication and recording. They are stories that are full of detail and imbued with vitality. They also confront us with how vulnerable our lives are in these challenging times.