Jen Craig, Panthers and the Museum of Fire.

 

- This Australian novel was published in 2015. Respected literary agent and industry colleague, Martin Shaw, has been raving about it for yonks so I felt it was about time I read it. 

- And I'm so glad I did. It's just brilliant. Experimental, strange, meandering and complex, it's like walking through a hall of mirrors, but with a witty and delightful companion. 

- The story, if that's what it is, moves forward, circles back, catches up. The narrator seems vaguely autistic, indulging in ...the kind of writing that moves over water without visible sails; 

- Here's the narrative framework: Jen had a friend at school called Sarah who has just died. At the wake Sarah’s sister Pamela gives Jen a manuscript written by Sarah called Panthers and the Museum of Fire. So this book is not just titled Panthers and the Museum of Fire it is ABOUT Panthers and the Museum of Fire. 

- But as readers we're not just subject to a technical indulgence. We’re plunged into a maelstrom of reflections, weaving and circling, the product of a consciousness that's sharp and insightful, sceptical yet confident. She walks the streets of inner-city Sydney, bored by her day job, but relishing her friendship with Raf who frequently visits for dinner and who tolerates her endless prattling about her comings and goings and observations. And her aching, 'diseased' ambition to be a writer.

- The book is full of absolutely wonderful quotes, so here's a taste:

The older people get, the tighter they get, their skin becomes loose but their minds just tighten like drums.

I actually enjoy reading - and while I am usually sure just from reading the first two pages of a book that I will be nothing but disappointed when I read it, I have never allowed myself to give that book away without testing how far this could be true...I force myself to read these books from beginning to end, I force myself to read them just in case I am wrong, although at this moment I cannot recall a single example of this.

I am always being duped into thinking that there is, somewhere, a clear connection between all events and outcomes in my life. But in reality nothing was obvious then and is not obvious now (and is still not obvious, as I can see now, four years later). 

It is inevitable that the young person becomes convinced that they are the first to see clearly what others have failed to see; that they judge eighty to ninety percent of the population to be bogged in imbecility and that they alone (with very few intellectual compatriots) are the only ones to have the daring and capacity to resist.

Highly recommended.