Sarah Winman, Still Life

 

- I finally got around to finishing this rather long novel after being pressured by friends and family. I first started to read it eighteen months ago when it was published, but bailed after 80 pages because of the very chummy, rather claustrophobic and tiresome English village character of it. It was full of homey detail and dialogue. 

- But over Christmas this year I returned to it, and I'm sooo glad I did. I realised it was a critical portrait of English coldness and assumed superiority, in stark contrast to the warmth and rich heritage of Italian culture, art, and wisdom.

- A small group of friends and family, young and old, move to Florence after Ulysses Temper, a former soldier in the second world war who was stationed there, inherits a mansion in the heart of the city. They convert it into a pensione for visitors.

- Winman relishes introducing her characters and readers to the magnificent food and wine, streets, architecture, history, cafes, bars, trattorias, sculptures and paintings, and of course the Italian locals of the community. We're taken on a journey into the heart and soul of Italy. As a lover of all things Italian (I lived there for four years) I was totally sucked in. 

- The visitors, old and young, become enamoured of the Italian lifestyle, some falling in love with each other. In many ways the novel is a celebration of gay relationships in all their passion and intimacy. It's a sympathetic portrayal of tenderness and warmth. 

- Winman introduces us to a full range of characters, mostly English and American, including a young man E.M. Forster and his conservative and controlling mother who stay at the pensione for a few weeks. It's a lovely chapter. 

- The flooding of Florence in 1968 is described in detail. The city was totally under water for weeks and thousands of precious artworks and buildings were destroyed, and lives lost. It was the biggest flood in 600 years. Winman's narration here is just superb. She brings the drama of it fully alive. 

- So read this book over the holiday period if you can. It will lift your spirits.

Iain Ryan, What Living And Dying Is Like.

 - Iain Ryan's last novel, The Spiral (2020), was magnificent, and I raved about it here. His earlier one, The Student (2017) was also a very satisfying read. 'An exciting new voice in Australian crime fiction' had emerged according to Adrian McKinty. The city of Brisbane and its dingy underworld was Ryan's natural terrain. 

- This recently published one is, by comparison, a wholly different beast. It's not a novel but two short stories in a self-published little book. It also features a range of amateurish black and white photos of key items and places referred to in the stories. They add to the atmosphere of intrigue and menace. The stories are set in Nevada, Dallas and Los Angeles, about as far away from Brisbane as you can possibly get. 

- The first story, Rusty, is about an orange guitar Rusty has bought on Ebay, and a clairvoyant who he has contacted to find a clue to its provenance. Layabouts, students, dope addicts - it's Ryan's world and he brings it to life.

- The second and far more traditional crime related story, The Drifter, is more interesting and atmospheric, conveying a fair bit of menace. 

- Ryan's note in the Title Page provides the reader with a bit of context:

Although some of the broader historical events described in this book are drawn from the documented history of Sonic Youth, the events and characters in this book (including, for the avoidance of doubt, named people) are completely fictional and imaginary... 

- Ryan's ability to render the lives and relationships of people living and struggling at the margins, particularly in their conversations, is sublime. He strikes exactly the right note. In these two short pieces not a word is out of place or unnecessary. The prose is spare but powerful. 

 

(Some advice to self publishers: You still need a proofreader. Ryan refers to one of his main characters by the wrong name (Eva instead of Ava), and there are a few missing words in the text). 

Sarah Lamdan, Data Cartels

- This powerful little book is exceptionally well written and thoroughly researched. Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York and a former law librarian in law schools and law firms. 

- She very clearly outlines the problems we have with the enormous power companies like Reed Elsevier LexisNexis (RELX) and Thomson Reuters have gained by turning information gathering into data manipulation and exploiting it for profit. RELX is one of the most profitable companies in the world, closely followed by Thomson Reuters. Their hold over critically important knowledge and information in our digital world is monopolistic and borders on abusive. 

- They operate globally in key knowledge industries such as academic research, legal information, financial information, and news gathering. What should be public and made far more easily available has been totally privatised, locked away and paywalled with minimal exceptions. But importantly the raw data they access has been mined, retooled and bundled into information packages sold at high prices to universities, corporates, syndicates and government instrumentalities. Privacy is breached as a matter of course. 

- So many paragraphs in the book are eminently quotable, so I'll restrict myself to a few to give you an idea of the expertise and passion Lamdan packs into this grenade of a book:

The centuries-old concept of a 'marketplace of ideas' was not meant to be a for-profit business. But RELX and Thomson Reuters run closed information universes where they curate informational resources and decide who can access them. Like Facebook and Amazon, RELX and Thomson Reuters have privatised, and now control, social spaces that used to be public. They are the information landlords that decide who can swim in the ocean of knowledge.

Elsevier's high-priced fees for publicly funded research are digital versions of classic, exploitative rent-seeking behaviours.

Publishers prevent digital lending with prohibitive licensing agreement terms...They even sue online lending repositories like the Internet Archive and people who try to 'free knowledge' by sharing articles online...Academia is being turned into a data industry.

Just as 'The problem with Facebook is Facebook' the problem with data companies is data companies - their business model is based on hoarding, paywalling, and crunching as much information and data as possible. Their very existence is based on data exploitation, surveillance, and informational inequality. 

Changing the legal parameters of data analytics' companies' roles requires a large, orchestrated round of legal changes including copyright reform, reinvigorating antitrust doctrine, closing up constitutional law loopholes, and designating resources for government data infrastructure and access. That type of legal revolution isn't likely to happen any time soon. 

- Major reforms are needed, including in Australia, to free this vital information for public access. 

Yumna Kassab, The Lovers

 

- This is a stunning achievement by Yumna Kassab, as was her previous novel Australiana. 

- In short chapters she digs deep into the quagmire of emotional stresses and strains that overwhelm the loving relationship between Jamila and Amir. No locations are divulged, nor any career or work details, not even their ages. All the paraphernalia of the traditional narrative form is deliberately missing. The focus is entirely on the essence of their personal relationship. And this is why it is so magical. 

- Amir is devoted to Jamila and longs for her to assent to becoming his wife. However he was briefly married before and it was a disaster, so he is wary. 

- Jamila is fiercely independent and feels trapped in expectations of normality. Wives are possessions...religion was prerequisite number one...A woman follows the man, not the other way around.

- We are taken to an unnamed village, probably in Lebanon. Parental controls and religious conservatism dominate, and personal freedom is a mirage. 

- As the novel proceeds we learn that Jamila has migrated to the other side of the world, presumably Australia, and Amir remains in the old country. 

- Kassab's lens is set wide - the Traditional versus the Modern, the Ancient versus the Contemporary, the East versus the West, the Religious versus the Secular. The tensions are central. 

- The lovers' reflections on their feelings are conveyed in letters (mostly unsent). They are rich, soulful, insightful and beautifully written. 

These words I write have a meaning and it is love, though we are separated by the greatest ocean in the world...You are like an eternity to me and I exhaust myself with what I wish to say to you. 

I want to draw you close so you are against my heart.

I want to give you so much pleasure because to me, you are passion and desire, and they are intertwined.

I want to imprint myself upon your life till you know you will never walk alone again. 

I am here for you, I am here, I am here for whatever time fate has given us in this life.

At the very end Amir's friend, Samir, offers him some advice on love and loyalty that is so right. Regret is profound. 

Angela Meyer, Moon Sugar.

 

- I absolutely loved this new novel from Melbourne author Angela Meyer. She is a gifted writer. Her prose is fluent and her narrative absorbing. All the pieces in this book, even the other-worldly explorations, nicely come together in a very meaningful and emotionally satisfying way. 

- Mila is a single, 40 year old, fitness trainer who decides to join a 'sugar mamas' online sex site. She wants, and will pay for, a lover. Her 10 year old relationship with her former partner has ended. She wanted a baby, he didn’t, and he suffered from depression. 

- She meets up with Josh who turns out to be a kind, generous and thoughtful young man. They become close friends. Meyer offers us highly erotic descriptions of their sex, and intricate details on female sexuality. This is where her writing excels. It's strikingly good. 

- After a while Josh leaves for a long planned trip to Europe. Unfortunately, however, he dies in Berlin, presumed drowned in the Spree river, having emailed a short suicide note to his family. His body has not been found. 

- Josh's friend, Kyle, and Mila travel to Berlin to search for answers. It seems highly unlikely to them that Josh, comfortable in his own skin, would have committed suicide. They expect foul play. They explore all sorts of meet up sites like SugarMeetMe, Tinder, Grindr, and Oglr, hoping to connect with women and men who may know Josh and have suspicions about what actually happened. 

- Before Josh left for Europe he and Mia had decided to join a drug trial by a private company owned by Lisa, a billionaire. They would be paid. The drug, Xanthoria, was developed from radiated lichen by Lisa's father, a former astronaut, and is deemed to elevate consciousness and mental capacity. So far, however, there's no evidence that it has worked. No-one has been 'activated', despite ancient and modern myths and traditions promising personal growth and enlightenment.

- The story develops in a very thriller-type and satisfying way. But the question lingers - would it have resonated more if Meyer had stayed in the real world and dived deeper into the sex trade, its intimacies, dynamics and resulting emotional quandaries? 

- It probably doesn't matter. It's a supremely good, highly enjoyable, novel just as it is. 

(A future Netflix series for sure!)

Diana Reid, Seeing Other People

 - Diana Reid's debut novel Love and Virtue, released in 2021, was wildly acclaimed and won a number of literary awards. It thoroughly deserved them. Personally, I loved it. In her new novel her prose is far more poetic, intricate and convoluted, which unfortunately at times borders on pretentious. I was reminded of Emily Bitto's second novel Wild Abandon, which I just couldn't finish despite trying three times. (It has just been announced that it has won the 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Award for best literary book of the year, so what do I know?)

- Seeing Other People focuses on two sisters in their twenties, Eleanor and Charlie. Eleanor, a business consultant, is the oldest, and Charlie, a struggling actress, the more beautiful. 

- A key event takes place in the first few pages. Eleanor breaks up with her boyfriend Mark because he confesses that after a night out with his mates he went home with a stripper and ‘almost’ slept with her. A disgusted Eleanor ends the relationship.

- The second micro drama involves Charlie and her rather complicated relationship with her flat mate Helen, who is a theatre director and openly gay and my favourite character. They sleep together. 

- It becomes clear very early in the book that Reid is absolutely obsessed with her characters. She’s the equivalent of a school principal watching her pupils' every move. She creates a psychological drama out of rather ordinary, quotidian interactions. It's a densely painted portrait of young people with their usual emotional eruptions and anxieties. Nobody’s really at fault but everybody thinks they are, including themselves. As one character admits at one point, she is 'insufficiently self-loathing'. 

- Some reviewers have named Reid as Australia's Sally Rooney. That comparison is misplaced. Rooney’s characters have much larger minds and preoccupations. 

- As the novel proceeds the micro threads become quite entangled, and we're sucked into a more fascinating drama. Half-truths and lies complicate the relationships and at times come close to ending them. 

- The way the novel pans out is quite satisfying, if a little sentimental. I was hoping for a hard, wrenching finale, but of course didn't get it. 

(This brilliant review by Beejay Silcox is a must read)

Elizabeth Strout, Lucy By The Sea

 

- William and Lucy were married for 20 years and had two girls Chrissy and Becka. He is a parasitologist by profession, and she is an author. 

- Covid 19 is starting to hit New York. It’s a time of extreme stress. Here’s what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends and a family member would die of this virus. Chrissy and Becka and their husbands all get Covid and recover. 

- This is a covid novel and a good one. There are many recent books and TV shows that reference the pandemic, but very few that feature it front and centre - the pressure on people's lives, the different way they react, the kindness on show, and also the ugly provincialism. Lucy and William decide to leave New York and go north to Maine to sit out the pandemic. They soon experience the animosity from many locals who don't like New Yorkers undoubtedly bringing covid to their community. 

- There’s much more to this novel than Oh William!, its lightweight predecessor, and thank god for that. In this follow up Strout's prime focus is marriage, children and the close relationships of family and friends. On show is the fragility of it all, including the wider social and political spheres. Covid is exposing it, but it was always there - the ordinary lives of older people infused with tragedy and sadness, and their wounds, memories and grief. 

- Her brother Pete dies of the virus. Her sister Vicky got it but recovered. They had come from a very sad family. It was a sadness that went so deep it was like it was a physical illness. Her daughter Chrissy loses her third pregnancy. Her sister Vicky joins a fundamentalist church and becomes an extreme right winger. ‘We don’t wear masks at church’. 

- Lucy is starting to get more aware of the social unravelling happening in her country - the George Floyd murder, the January sixth Capitol attack, the whisperings of a civil war...I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone. For some reason Strout never mentions Donald Trump. 

- Towards the end of the book Lucy feels she's starting to get old and meaningless. Her kids must be sensing that too as they contact her less and less. And William is now over seventy. The have started to share the same bed and sell their apartments in New York, deciding to buy a house in Maine. This is a huge decision as their longing and love for New York remains strong. 

- The last dozen or so pages of this novel are extremely powerful, and bring it to a very satisfying conclusion. 

- There is a lot more detail in the book than I have mentioned here, and it enriches the whole experience of reading it. I have read all of Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton novels and found them immensely enjoyable. This is by far the best.

Nina Kenwood, Unnecessary Drama

- I enjoyed Nina Kenwood's first YA novel very much indeed. 

- Her new novel is just as enjoyable. The narrator Brooke is similarly delightful and anxious, but a little more confident. She's highly organised and a real control freak. Kenwood's deliciously comic touch brings her intensely alive. As readers we can't help but love her. She's also highly intelligent and reflective.   

The thing is, I am a person who prepares. The very essence of who I am is my preparedness, my to-do lists, my thorough research, my above-and-beyond reading, my colour-coded spreadsheets, my first-hand-in-the-air-I-know-the-answer energy.

- She's just moved into a share house in Melbourne as an 18 year old first year university student. She's studying economics and also doing a creative writing class. Harper, whose family own the house, and a tall boy Jesse are her flat mates. She knew Jesse, however, in high school and they had a nice girlfriend/boyfriend relationship when they were 14 until 'disaster' struck. She overheard him saying to a teasing friend ‘Do I like Brooke? No. No. Fuck, no’. She was insulted and it ruptured their relationship. 

- Brooke and Jesse both come from broken homes. They have that in common and it's a bond they can't escape.  

- As they share a house together now their relationship starts to get more complicated. During a pub crawl one night with friends she and Jessie kiss with a passion that surprises them. They do it again a little later. Unfortunately intimate relationships are against the 'house rules' that Harper has set. So it's getting difficult. 

- Kenwood brings a very sure touch to this novel. The world her characters live in is not a complicated one. Apart from the family issues there are no political or social dimensions adding any spice or tension to their lives. But that YA simplicity allows her to focus on the very personal issues of these young people confronting their own emotional development. 

- A highly enjoyable read from a highly talented author. 

  

Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow, Chokepoint Capitalism

- This is an extraordinary book in so many ways. It's full of detail, and clearly makes every effort to be objective and accurate. It's also very clearly written, which helps enormously when it contains so much information that is sometimes overwhelming. 

- Although it's highly critical of the behaviour and commercial practices of today's Big Tech and Big Content corporations it also aims to be fair to all parties. Rebecca Giblin is a law professor at Melbourne University and highly regarded as one of our best and most active copyright reform advocates, and Canadian Cory Doctorow is a best-selling science fiction writer as well as an academic and a long term special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They really know what they are talking about. 

- The book has two parts: Part One, titled Culture Has Been Captured, ranges widely across the whole gamut of our digital lives. It's brilliant on how Amazon grew to dominate the books industry, including the war with Apple and ebooks and how that was fought and eventually resolved. It goes deep into how DRM (Digital Rights Management) became so insidious in cementing corporate control over creative businesses, and how the abysmal music industry rips off artists, including how sampling was killed by extravagant copyright payment demands.

- We're all familiar with music streaming services and the minuscule royalties paid to artists. This book delves into their commercial practices in depth and provides lots of data and statistics. Spotify’s Playlists are now a huge negative, as is their takeover of podcasts. Apple and YouTube are also critiqued in minute detail. 

- Unlike in Australia, the EU and most other countries, US radio stations don’t pay for the music they broadcast. And the live music industry has been concentrated by vertical and horizontal integration, and now under big corporate control. The result has been radically reduced payments to musicians and support staff.  

- Part Two of the book, Breaking Anticompetitive Flywheels focuses on solutions. We can't just rely on stronger anti-trust law enactment.

- Collective action is going to be key. Creators working as freelances need to be able to band together to advance their negotiating power. Now they can’t under law. Authors did recently protest Audible’s open returns policy which was successful in stopping this abusive ploy to reduce author royalties; and there needs to be a radical overhaul of authors' reversion rights under contract. After 25 years the full copyright ownership of their works should be returned to them. Other, more radical measures are suggested, for example paying minimum wages for creatives, or introducing a 'job guarantee' across the board.  

- The final chapter is an excellent summary of the problems and the recommendations covered in the book. However it reminds us that despite the fact that most of us like to deal with Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube and others in our daily commercial, communication and entertainment lives, the massive problems an unregulated internet infrastructure has brought to our creative and cultural industries and thus society as a whole are immense and incredibly damaging. 

- This powerful book is a must read. And because it's frequently dense with rich and detailed information its various chapters will require re-reading again and again. That will be a pleasure.  

  

Victoria Hannan, Marshmallow

 

- This new novel by Victoria Hannan is quite an extraordinary achievement. It's a sensitive and exquisite portrayal of grief, intimacy and love.

-  Ali, Claire, Ev, Nathan and Annie are the five young friends at the centre of the story. They are now in their late thirties and early forties and are old uni friends. Ali and Claire have been in a relationship for a number of years, and Nathan and Annie have been married for longer. Ev is still single. 

- Tragedy and its associated grief have deeply unsettled them all. Nathan and Annie's young toddler died suddenly one year ago. He was celebrating his second birthday. And Ali still feels deep guilt for the death of a young woman on New Year’s Eve 1999. She was only seventeen. She fell from a roof at a party, to which Ali had brought ecstasy. 

- As in her previous novel, Kokomo, Hannan explores family relationships and their tensions with particular skill. Mothers are a special target. Nathan's mother in this book is an unlikeable Toorak snob, married to Bob, a well connected and unfaithful member of the corporate/political elite. The contrast with their sensitive and caring son Nathan could not be sharper. The family gatherings are suffocating. 

- Ev is now a very popular high school teacher, having ditched law because of its meaningless boredom. She’s still single, but a lovely, highly likeable person. ‘She was a wonder, Ev. A strong, funny, beautiful wonder of a woman’. She feels immense guilt and grief because of what she deems to be her part in the toddler's death. What precisely happened at the party becomes clear later in the novel. 

- Claire, also a frustrated lawyer, has been offered a new and exciting opportunity with a law firm in Sydney. However it would mean leaving her Melbourne friends and possibly spitting with Ali. 

- One particular narrative device Hannan indulges in in this novel becomes quite frustrating at times. She refuses to disclose details when, as readers, we're crying out for them. It's a very slow pace of revelation despite being central to empathising with the profound grief the characters feel. While on page 33 we learn that Nathan and Annie had ‘a kid’ who died, we don’t know how, or even the kid's sex. We are forced to wait for those intimate details till page 202, and we finally learn the name on page 226. From then on all the characters refer to the kid by name. As is natural. 

- Hannan wraps up the story nicely however. It's deeply satisfying and will stay with you for a long time.

 

Hernan Diaz, Trust

 

- Has there ever been a novel focused on the finance industry, the major family dynasties in the US who invented and controlled it, and the ways they shaped the 20th century? This is one and it’s magnificent. A stunningly good and enjoyable read which made the Booker Prize longlist for 2022. 

- The novel is in four parts - a fictional novella written by a Harold Vanner, a controversial portrayal of an influential investor and his wife which sold in a huge numbers, and three memoirs, all seemingly addressing the realities. What, we ask, are the facts? Who can we trust? 

- The key players are Andrew Bevel and his wife Mildred. It's the early 1900s leading up to the start of the depression in 1929.

- In smooth, crystal clear prose Harold Vanner's novella tells the story of Benjamin Rask who sells the tobacco empire built by his forebears, particularly his father Solomon, and buys into the financial industry. He becomes a huge success.

- He successfully navigates the 1920 recession, then the bull market of the 1920s, then the crash of October 1929. The bubble became a slump, then a panic. ‘In the general desolation, amidst the rubble, Rask was the only man standing…He had shorted, quite spectacularly, the ensuing crash’. He became a scapegoat, the popular press blaming him for the economic disaster. He made some badly wrong decisions later in the decade and faded from public view.

- The second part of Diaz's novel gives us a draft memoir titled My Life, by an Andrew Bevel, a highly influential financial player in New York who accuses Harold Vanner of basing his novel on him and his wife Mildred. He is determined to demolish the novel's 'libellous trash'. 

- His draft memoir demonstrates what an insufferable, self-entitled prick he actually is. His great grandfather William ‘was an innovator and a visionary…His experiments with currencies, with futures contracts, with treasury notes…show his pioneering spirit’. Andrew is continuing that noble tradition. ‘I’m essential to society and its economy’ he claims. ‘Personal gain ought to be a public asset’. He smugly narrates his ‘success’ in saving and building the nation’s economy in the 1920s...'Nothing to do with the government...My actions safeguarded American industry and business'. 

- He describes the phenomenal post World War 1 economic growth - electricity, motor cars and trucks, highways, home appliances, etc. ‘But the greatest American industry at that time was finance’. 

- He is excruciatingly sexist. Women just 'interfere' if they’re not busy with housework. And he hates the 'interfering' Federal Reserve. 

- Mildred, however, his wife, is really a fascinating character. She is a philanthropist and a very generous patron of the arts, particularly New York orchestras and musicians. She enabled the birth of the Juilliard Graduate School. She actually detests her husband's primitive, ugly views, and they never talk when home, only at public events. 

- The most fascinating memoir is by a young woman Ida Partenza, who is hired by Bevel to transcribe, edit and type his memoir. She is a creative ghostwriter. She visits Bevel House regularly for this purpose. Her father is an Italian immigrant and a radical anarchist, opposite in every way to the New York elite establishment his daughter now works for. They argue a lot, and it's delightful. Fascism is building in Europe and capitalism is raging out of control in America.   

- She delves into Mildred’s diaries to explore her social life in detail. Mildred welcomes many famous composers and musicians to the mansion, including Ravel, Stravinski and Respighi. She generously funded contemporary composers, whom she preferred, and hosted concerts. Bevel hated these ‘untraditional’ performances that ‘barely sounded like music’. Ida however uncovers a far more sophisticated woman, not the childlike, homey, invention of her husband. Mildred also becomes interested in politics and current affairs. This is quite different from Vanner’s version of her as the quiet aesthete slowly going insane. ‘Why make her mad when she was obviously so lucid?, Ida reflects. 

- Any decent husband would be impressed by his wife’s gifts and achievements, but not Bevel, this cold money obsessed knob. Thankfully he dies soon after of a heart attack.

- The fourth part of the novel is titled Futures. It's Mildred's journal, one she kept as a patient in an institution caring for cancer sufferers. Ida discovers it in the New York Public Library 50 years later. 

- What becomes clear, and is absolutely revelatory given the creative fictions we've been fed so far, is that she was very much involved in her husband's financial decisions. She was a 'mathematical genius'. They were a partnership. ‘He taught me the rules of investment. I showed him how to think beyond their boundaries….Andrew followed my instructions. Our profits during those years dwarfed the original Bevel fortune’. At one point she whimsically suggested bribing one of the keyboard operators at the stock exchange to provide all the quotes before punching them into the ticker machine thus making them public. They would have ten seconds at least to buy or sell. He acted on that advice and made huge gains. She was appalled and labeled him a criminal.

- She had an extraordinary gift of correctly predicting market trends. In September 1929, for instance, one month before the great crash, she and her husband liquidated and made a fortune.

- So Diaz has given us a novella of fiction and three books of memoir, all in various ways undermining each other. Mildred however emerges as the reliable narrator, and Ida the honest biographer. They are the voices we learn to trust. 

- Females, finance, a century ago. Who would have thought!

Jock Serong, The Settlement

 

- The Settlement is Jock Serong's final novel in his magnificent trilogy about our early colonial invaders and their brutal treatment of Australia's Indigenous peoples. The two previous novels were Preservation (2018) and The Burning Island (2020).

- The three novels are stand alone and each can be fully comprehended without having read the others (despite there being one character who appears in different guises in each of the novels - he's an embodiment of sheer evil).   

- The Settlement demands to be read slowly and carefully. Serong's rich prose is full of intricate observation. He renders the horror of colonialism in vivid detail.

- The central character is The Man, who we later in the novel learn is the Commandant of the Tasmanian colony in the 1830s. He's a committed christian: We - Englishmen - pursue a duty to bring light to darkness. Civilisation...Here are the savages you once feared, stripped of their terrors and set to become Christians. His mission, under London's orders, is to rid Van Diemen's Land of its natives by removing them to a small island to the north. His preference is to negotiate with them and pursue a peaceful accommodation. A rebel band of natives called the Big River Mob have taken a different approach. They are determined to fight the settlers and take back their land, and not indulge in peaceful, cumbersome negotiation.  

- The names of the Indigenous leaders are long and barely pronounceable, but we gradually get familiar with them: Mannalargenna, the chief leader, and his sister Toogernuppertootener are key players. 'Tooger-Nupper-Tootener', as she spells it out to a white, is plain-speaking and bold and refuses to be cowed by the British. She is delightful. 

- Two key characters are Whelk, the Indigenous orphan boy who yearns to know his origins, and the little girl Pipi, also an orphan. 

- Before the trek north begins we're introduced to a huge dark man who had eyes only for the children. He has an old injury to his nose, and a scar across his brow. The eye under the scar does not move. He will be their catechist. (The previous two novels featured this malignant, evil character). He turns out to be a vicious child abuser, and runs the orphanage. Pipi is beaten savagely and dies. The Commandant does nothing about it. If he raised the alarm about (the Catechist) and his evil ways, he would destroy the careful impression he had built of an orderly, pious settlement. He would scuttle any chance of the Port Phillip assignment.

- However he is upset his request to the Colonial Office for recompense for what he has achieved in Van Diemen’s land (emptying it of natives) was not granted; My contribution to clearing these people off the settled lands has never been properly recognised. 

- Mannalargenna is ill and dying. The Commandant is determined to acquire anatomical  specimens of the natives. The numbers could not be denied: these poor innocents were headed for extinction, and when they were gone, future generations would ask: who strove to collect evidence of these lost tribes? They would look for a name to attach to compendia, to halls of learning. A name to etch in marble. His name...He must have the head. The greatest of the Tasmanian chiefs, emblematic of a dying race: it had fallen to him alone to preserve this vital piece of evidence in anatomy’s long journey to understanding. 

- Mannalargenna has wised up: You told me we safe. We not safe.
Told me we get land. Got no land...An I don’t need your Jesus, Englishman…Doan need your gospel.

- Serong includes other highly dramatic incidents in the novel, which are very satisfying, and in the Afterword tells the history of the settlement and of George Augustus Robinson the Commandant. The graves of Mannalargenna and others were rendered invisible during the twentieth century, trampled by cattle. The ruins of the settlement still mark the grasses of Pea Jacket Point today.

(The Saturday Paper (September 17-23, 2022) includes a very enlightening discussion between Neha Kale and art historian Greg Lehman on the painting The Conciliation by Benjamin Duterrau who emigrated to Van Diemen's Land in the 1830s. The painting depicts Robinson meeting with a group of First Nations people known as the Big River Mob. Lehman's dissection of the painting is highly informative. A must read.)  

Peter Papathanasiou, The Invisible

 

- This new novel from Greek-Australian author Peter Papathanasiou, author of the excellent outback noir thriller The Stoning, sits more comfortably in the political/historical genre than the crime category. It has a lot more richness and meaning than your standard thriller. And the reader is seriously enlightened, especially those of us not that aware of modern Greece and it’s pretty ugly 20th century history.

- Like any good thriller it fleshes out the life of a city, town or village, pulsating with realism and detailing the full locale, not just the underbelly. The village here is Glikinero in the northern region of Greece which borders Albania and North Macedonia. It's located on the shore of the Great Prespa lake. (The book's frontispiece provides a good map of the region). It also brings alive Greece’s natural world, its animals, birds and floral delights, and the wonderful food the friendly, delightful inhabitants eat. The author celebrates…a country blessed with immense natural beauty and warm, generous people, but with poor prospects for growth and prosperity. It’s an ode to Greece in so many ways, and doesn't shy away from criticism of Australia when appropriate. 

- The very likeable Detective Sargeant George Manolis, who featured in The Stoning, shoots and kills a homeless boy by accident in Melbourne, so he’s forced to take time off and chooses to travel to Greece for a holiday. His parents migrated to Australia after World War II.

- His old friend Lefty (Lefteris) is missing. He's a very popular man in the village, or so it seems. As the novel progresses we learn there's more to him than meets the eye. He's a cross-border smuggler of all sorts of merchandise, including drugs, and a scheming con man with no moral compass - ‘borrowing’ money but never giving it back. 

- Manolis never discloses that he's a detective, well experienced in tracking down missing criminals. But he's determined to find Lefty, dead or alive. 

- We're introduced to quite a few characters living in the village. They're generous to Manolis  but some of them have secrets and grudges going back generations. Greece, Albania and North Macedonia just don’t get on. They fought one another during the war, which was then followed by the horrific Greek civil war of 1946-49. Ancient European animosities can never be forgotten. Many children, including the disabled, were victims. We're immersed in a village of prehistoric, lowlife, Nazi sympathisers.…the strange world of the Prespes, a world of black-market smugglers and illegal immigrants and Romani who claimed the land was cursed. 

- One peculiar tradition of the region was the frequent and secret adoption of masculinity by women who would otherwise be passed over for family inheritance. They voluntarily became 'sworn virgins'. 

- This bewildering social cocktail baffles Manolis on many levels as it does the reader. Nevertheless the resolution of Lefty's mysterious disappearance at the end, just as Manolis is about to depart for Australia, is very satisfying.

- If you're a crime genre addict and looking for a straight up and down thriller, even in today's sophisticated Australian noir tradition, you may not relish this book, but you will learn a lot from it and it will stay with you. And you will plan a holiday to Greece.  

Oliver Mol, Train Lord

This is not an essay or a book review. Thus is a love story. I fell in love with writing, and then I stopped. I’m trying to figure out what happened, and whether I can fall in love again. 

- Oliver Lol has written an extraordinary piece of work, a beautifully written bio/essay in which he totally opens himself to the reader. He ranges widely across all sorts of topics: girlfriends, drugs, sex, pain, hope, work and love, creating a rich tapestry of life’s deepest challenges, and the simple everyday stuff that binds it all together. At its heart is always love, for his parents, his wider family, and his friends. His deep relationship with Maria and its sad ending is central. 

- The book is so moving and profound and its radical honesty is breathtaking. He describes the awful pain of his chronic migraines and headaches, jaw pain and back pain. He was utterly unable to write, read, or even look at a screen for months at a time. He couldn't even fill in a form or write his own name.

- He lands a job as a train driver/guard on the Sydney rail network and it grounds him in the everyday. He particularly enjoys the blokey conversations with his workmates, and the ability to occasionally sprinkle his announcements to passengers with a delightful comic touch. 

In the beginning I resisted, but later I grew to love the repetitive rituals that became everyday life: swiping in, filling out the timesheets, blowing whistles, making announcements, opening and closing doors, waking at two or three or four in the morning, watching the sun come up over Waterfall, Penrith or Hornsby. It was, at the right hours and in certain lights, romantic, the way writing or literature or movies or the fictions inside my head had once promised to be. 

… if you’re really listening, the trains will tell their own stories. They’ll tell you about a boy who had a migraine and how he nearly took his life once, but then they’ll say: that’s nothing special - look at us all together; there are millions of people, and they’re all just like you.

  

- He visited many doctors, specialists, psychologists and 'healers', but none of them were of any use. Until he found one at the end who really understood. He needed to embrace the power of forgiveness, of others and himself. The body and the spirit connect. They are one. 

...because sometimes from the wreckage the wounded crawl, they stand up, they sing.

- Mol's prose is so entrancing that I could quote so many passages. Instead buy this book and read and re-read it. It will become a classic in the genre. 

Rebecca Lim, Tiger Daughter

 

- Well known children's author Rebecca Lim's new novel Tiger Daughter recently won the Children's Book Council of Australia 2022 Book of the Year award for older readers.

- High school friends Wen and Henry share a Chinese migrant background and they're studying hard for an entrance exam to gain admittance to a prestigious selective school.  

- Wen’s father, a former doctor, failed four times to be admitted as a specialist in Australia. He is now working at a Chinese restaurant, a profound humiliation he simply cannot deal with. He is an angry, abusive, authoritarian father, and Wen hates him. She seethes with loathing. He utterly refuses to allow her to mix socially with her friends. Her mother, likewise, is treated with contempt, so has become servile and afraid of him. 

- The story is a simple one, defined by anger and abuse. As readers we are engulfed in their miserable lives, and it's hard to take, only minimally redeemed by Lim's central focus on food and cooking, and the bonding it creates.

- Wen rages inside, but like her mother, never confronts her father. As readers we yearn for that.

- The resolution that this tale absolutely needed is absent. There is one, but it's tepid and disappointing. 

Emi Yagi, Diary of a Void

- This award-winning first novel by Japanese author Emi Yagi is a stunningly good satirical portrayal of what being pregnant actually involves for a young, lonely woman.  

- Shibata has a rather empty life. She works in the corporate world in Tokyo where women are second class. Their job is to get the coffee, clean up after meetings, refill the printer, and work at their desk until  8-9pm at least. 

- She realises that if she were pregnant she’d be surely treated with much more respect. So she decides to get pregnant by faking it. All of a sudden her male colleagues start treating her with care and kindness, including her section head who is usually demanding and annoying. He and his wife tried but could not have children. But now that Shibata is pregnant, he becomes a considerate human.  

- She's permitted to leave work around 5pm, and she realises how much she enjoys the busy streets and trains, the fresher food in the supermarkets, the opportunity to see movies, visit art centres and music performances, and having more time to eat and cook.   

- She also, of course, has to keep up the pretence of being pregnant by stuffing towels under her clothes. Luckily for her she begins to put on weight. She enrols in an aerobics class for pregnant women, attending four days a week. She enjoys their company a lot, especially relishing their tirades against their unsupportive husbands.

- As her pregnancy nears the end Shibata's sense of herself and her worth changes. She's adept at fooling her colleagues but she's also fooling herself. And at times, the reader. We wonder, perhaps she is really pregnant? 'Whoa, it moved', she feels at one point. And the obstetrician she finally visits, at week thirty-six, is convinced he can see the baby in the rather fuzzy ultrasound. 

- Yagi's prose is tight and sharp, and she doesn't miss an opportunity to skewer with precision: Everything on the screen was as flat as an old sock run over in the middle of the street; She had a face like an anteater.

- Of course we wonder how it will all end. Week 40 is here, and she can feel that the baby has moved down into position. 

- The ending, as it turns out, is superb. 

(This review in the New Yorker is excellent) 

Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man

 

- Mohsin Hamid is the Man Booker shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, a story of love, loss and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change. 

- His new novel, The Last White Man, despite its title suggesting more of the same, is unfortunately a complete dud. It's riddled with a feeble sentimentality, the exact opposite of 'powerful' as the back cover blurb heralds. 

- Hamid has given us two stories - one exploring racial tensions in a town in America, and the other celebrating family love and devotion. They don't integrate at all. It's a confection that just doesn’t work.

- Anders is white but one morning wakes up brown. He works at a gym. The clients like him a lot.…or they had, for it did not quite feel that way now….because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in..

- Oona, his girlfriend, is into meditation and mindfulness, and she teaches yoga. Her twin brother died a few years previously from a drug overdose. She moves back in with her mother. As more and more whites are turning brown racial animosity is becoming nasty. Gangs are on the prowl at night.   

- Anders’s father remains unconcerned. He's a retired and now ailing construction foreman, and life-long smoker. Anders spends a lot of time in the family house now, looking after him. Oona’s mother sides with the whites. We needed our own places…the dark people could have their own places… 

- Finally the whole white community has turned brown, apart from Anders's father, the last white man, who dies instead. 

- So we're into a story of parenthood, family death, legacy and love. The brown plague plot is receding from centre stage. People are becoming more sensitive, aware and compassionate as the dark skin change becomes widespread. And Anders’s and Oona’s relationship is maturing. Their sex now slow, unhurried…they came close, closer than they had come before. The years go by and their daughter is born. 

- Hamid's writing is introspective, reflective and frequently convoluted in a poetic way, with sentences that require re-reading, and some very long and circular in a pretentious metafictional way. The problem is it gets exquisitely boring as it moves along. Hamid lulls us into a slow meaningless.

- It's meant to be a celebration of love and family but what we're really getting instead is a massive over-dramatisation of the ordinary. The going dark thing is totally unrelated. The parallel stories don’t connect.

- And a major issue in the novel that I find really problematic is the positive portrait of a society that is racially homogenous. Be either exclusively white or brown but don't mix. And where are the African-Americans and Asians? Where is the celebration of multiculturalism? And where are the Indigenous peoples?

- As I said, a complete dud.