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. 

Lucinda Holdforth, Going On And On

 

- The back cover blurb on this book sums it up perfectly:

'What do we owe future generations?

And how do we act now to support them?

One way is to think - hard - about the damage our obsession with longevity is wreaking on the economy, our society and our future.

Australia's aged care crisis is escalating as Baby Boomers grow old. According to latest research, our ageing population is as great a risk to Australia's future as climate change and looming geopolitical risks - yet we're refusing to talk about it. 

As Lucinda Holdforth argues, we have become defined by a narcissistic refusal by ageing leaders to grow old or give up the reins of power - or even squarely face the fact that we must eventually die. The disastrous consequences include blocked political progress, the disenfranchised young people and death of the essential cultural renewal that once occurred with the natural blooming of each new generation. 

As we strive to extend our lives to the maximum, we must ask ourselves difficult questions. What is our social contract with those who come after us? Why is 'ageism' unacceptable while age-based prejudice against the young is commonplace? And what price will our younger citizens pay for the rest of us going on and on?'

- Holdworth has written a real treasure of a book. In very lucid prose she addresses in detail all the major issues associated with the ageing process, particularly the negative effects it has on the younger generations. And she litters the book with fascinating statistics. The clarity of her argument is highly convincing.  

- Baby Boomers are a major problem. As George Bernard Shaw put it in Heartbreak House: 'Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world'. 

- Euphemisms and blather dominate the discussions doctors, carers and clergy have with old, dying people. Frankness and honesty are rare. Surgery and medications to sustain meaningless lives are the easy option. 'To live well and to die well' should be the central focus, and 'deliver happier and more peaceful deaths for patients and less trauma for families'. 

- Holdsworth wants Australia's euthanasia laws to be far more progressive and meaningful. 'Today there will be people who don't want to live at all costs, for they have lived long enough. They feel their life to be whole, resolved, completed. They are ready to end it in an orderly self-directed way - and ready to hand over to the next generation'.  

- Consider this: 'As the 2023 Intergenerational Report tells us, by 2063 almost a quarter of Australians will be aged between 65 and 85, more than double their number today.' 

- Consider this: 'Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton was 21 and James Monroe was just 18. Contrast that with today's Washington 'one decrepit old president after another, and the US Senate described by former presidential candidate Nikki Haley as 'the most privileged nursing home in the country'.  

- Enough already!  

R. L. Maizes, A Complete Fiction

- American author R. L. Maizes has written a thoroughly absorbing and fascinating novel. She documents in detail the stories of two authors who, in their new and as yet unpublished novels, explore the sexual abuse of young employees by their bosses. 

- P. J. Larkin's novel is inspired by the awful workplace experience of her younger sister, Mia. George Dunn, an editor at the small publisher her agent sent the manuscript to, really liked the book but, mysteriously, rejected it because in his opinion the #metoo thing was becoming tiresome. 

- George himself is also an author, and for ten years or so has been working on a book that is based on his own experience of sexual abuse while he was a young teenage intern in a female Senator's office in Washington. That experience traumatised him. But his book is highly successful under auction and he lands an advance of $1 million. 

- Word spreads however that he stole parts of Larkin's story and incorporated them into his own. She posts this on social media:

Hey @GeorgeDunn congratulations on the sale of UP THE HILL. Your book sounds a lot like my book HALLS OF POWER, which my agent sent you. Not good enough to publish but good enough to steal?

- We're deeply immersed into all dimensions of the publishing industry - its authors, agents, editors, managers, advances, contracts, and unfortunately, lawyers. 

- The press are captivated by the controversy and it becomes an absorbing media story for months. But the publishers of both novels are very reluctant to proceed until the legal issues are settled. 

- Maizes is across all the issues in the industry and very accurately brings them to life. The drama is captivating. But she's written not just an industry story but a deeply human one as well. The details of the abuse and its tragic effects on the lives of the victims are rendered with emotional and psychological depth. 

- Highly recommended.

 

 

J. P. Pomare, The Gambler

 

- Pomare has written a very intriguing story. It's a rather complex drama but unfolds in a very controlled and satisfying way. It’s an old fashioned page-turner, gripping, and hard to put down. 

- There are many characters in the novel, many of whom are family-related in a rather same-father, different-mother, or reverse, way. We're in mid-America. Katie Marshall, a politician’s assistant, is shot dead by a local, well-known and liked, woman at a rally. But the shooter is then shot dead by a young man called Jason who was embracing Katie and was carrying a gun. They were, apparently, early in a relationship. 

- Central to the story is a very elaborate scam operation where people are messaged by an unknown person named 'Enigmas' who predicts sporting outcomes before the match. And he is always right. So the victims make a lot of money. All they have to do is send relatively low amounts of money to this mysterious person, in order to place their bets.  

- Vincent Reid, a private investigator, has been persuaded by a friend to investigate the shooting. At every stage he's flummoxed. What on earth is happening here? Who was this 'Enigmas', and how did he always predict the sports game winners? And who was this mysterious Jason guy? And what on earth did the local Amish community have to do with it? There were events in the past that seem now relevant. 

- I was very impressed by Pomare's deep dive into the world of high tech, AI, and the dark web. As readers we're thrown in deep. And the way all the threads in the story are brought to a resolution at the end is very satisfying. 

- This is an extremely enjoyable and well-constructed novel. One of Pomare's best for sure. 

 

Eva Hornung, The Minstrels

 

- The Minstrels is a pool surrounded by cliffs in a gorge, near the town of Bolton in regional Australia. Drought is a frequent problem, as are heavy rains and floods, and plagues.

- A young boy Will and his younger sister Gem live with their parents on a farm.  

- Will was troubling. He filled his mother with 'a vague misery, a vague terror'. Gem was also difficult. Her habit was to resist. She screeched and screamed and bit. ‘..a difficult, dirty girl’. But she loved machines, as did her father. 

- They were from the Thurstons lineage, who were known for being smart. They were in universities, professions and government. Gem was that kind. The residents of Bolton on the other hand were basics - anti immigration and anti 'Abos' (familiar?) who they called ‘hopeless’. Gem was offended. It made her aspire to active disobedience and transgression. There are complicated sexual relationships in Bolton, especially between the hight school students. 

 - Gem was a brilliant university student. She won a prize for her Honours thesis and a scholarship for doctoral studies. But she withdrew from her doctorate after being disillusioned. 

- She now owns her deceased family's property. She buys lots of new equipment and supplies, enabling her to run cattle and sheep and harvest hay crops. She stays well away from Bolton, where she is treated as an outsider. Something she relishes. 

- Then the mining process of fracking was about to happen to so many areas in Australia. Gem led the resistance in Bolton, harassing politicians and creating media storms. She was now seen as a natural leader in the whole district. 

- This is when a very important character enters her life and becomes central to the novel's significance. He was Uncle Jim, the local Indigenous leader. He wanted access to her property. His tribe and their language become rather intrusive. And he insists she throw back into the lands the Aboriginal artifacts she's collected all her life. But he teaches her their language. The novel now becomes on so many levels an Indigenous story. Their presence 'made it appear more than a farm, more than soil and fields and trees, more than seasonal crops…much more than ownership and land taxes.’ The Bolton pub crew hated that. 

- Over the next two decades Jim helps her write a series of three hundred Ngawarla language books.

- Again Hornung introduces a new character who changes the shape of the story significantly. Gem's nephew Benjamin is invited to stay with her. She likes him and he helps her with the farm work. 

- Hornung also throws in a few more subplots presumably to give more colour to the novel at this point. Gem finds a stray horse on her property one morning, gifted by an unknown owner. This turns into an annual pony festival/celebration which happens on her farm, which frankly I found completely meaningless. (And I think Gem does too!)

- Another subplot: the non-English speaking Elena, a resident with her family on the farm, is pregnant and has contractions for far too long. Gem helps, guided by Elena who is a medical specialist, and the baby is successfully delivered. But after a while the family disappears. 

- How are all these incidents connected? They’re not. We're a reading a bio. Well researched and full of detail, but just informative about Gem's rich and varied life. 

- By now Gem and Uncle Jim are suffering the aging process. He dies and all the Aunties, nieces and nephews come to console her and bury him. 

- Benjamin also returns, bringing with him an unrelated five year old girl called Memory. She's an absolute delight. 

- The novel ends very dramatically. It's the End of Times: she decides to stay on the farm, against Benjamin's and Memory's urgings. They themselves rush to leave. Her home is utterly destroyed by the elements and the severe aggression of wild nature. She walks to Bolton to see what was happening and finds it deserted and in ruins. The power was down and all the residents had left. 

- Despite the distracting side stories, Hornung has written a brilliant novel. As in her two previous novels the prose is powerful, poetic, rich, delicious and brimming with colour and movement, and invigorating to read. Her depiction of her characters and all the incidents involving them is detailed and convincing. She is easily one of the best novelists of our age and a national treasure. 

M.L.Stedman, A Far-Flung Life

 

- Sometimes the truth is unbearable, and best kept secret. Stedman’s proposition is contentious but explored in depth in this her second novel after her hugely successful first, The Light Between Oceans.  

- The MacBride family live on a large and remote sheep station in Western Australia. The father and his oldest son die in a tragic truck accident in 1958. The youngest son, Matt, who was also in the truck, is severely injured and rendered mentally unstable for a number of years. 

- The daughter Rose, the middle child, is bright and confident and helps their mother run the property. Unfortunately she gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy. She's deeply ashamed and refuses to reveal the identity of the father. She commits suicide by jumping into an abandoned mine shaft with the baby, who survives. The family and friends interpret it as an accident. 

- We're taken forward to 1969. Matt has fully recovered, and the baby, named Andy, is now ten. He’s curious about his parents. Why did his mother commit suicide and who is his father? 

- As the story develops we're introduced to a variety of fascinating characters, each with their own stories and secrets. One of them is Bonnie, a mining engineer who is exploring areas on the station that may contain minerals currently in demand. The mining boom that will dominate Australia's economy for decades to come has started. 

- Bonnie and Matt are attracted to each other, and eventually they get engaged. 

- We're taken decades ahead and discover how all the characters have dealt with their challenges, successes, disappointments and tragedies. We're drowned in sentimentality but lots of interesting detail. 

Evelyn Araluen, The Rot

 

- I thoroughly enjoyed Evelyn Araluen’s previous collection of poetry, Dropbear, which won the 2022 Stellar Prize.

- The Rot is similarly academic, philosophical, political and highly literary. 

- But unlike in Dropbear, too many of The Rot’s poems are overly condensed and deliberately obscure, making it difficult to comprehend essential meanings. They are virtually closed to the reader and therefore fail to inform or persuade, much less please. 

- The formal structures of most of the poems are rather meaningless and pretentious. One intensely annoying feature of many of them is the frequent blackout of names or words as if some political authority had ordered it. That may be Araluen's point but it's still very off-putting. 

- However I did appreciate Araluen’s frequent condemnation of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. She clearly registers her anger and fury in many of the poems, and reveals how much it is affecting her not just emotionally but mentally as well. 

- Most reviewers have heaped praise on the book. And of course it won this year’s Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prize for Indigenous Writing. 

- I was at first reluctant to post this review. All reviewers so far, mostly literature academics, highly commend it. But I studied Australian poetry at university so I don't feel I'm ignorant.