Cheon Seon-Ran, The Midnight Shift

 

- This bestselling cult novel from Korea is about vampires and how challenging they find humans. I found it exquisitely boring.  

- Nevertheless I continued reading it, not just because I'd bought it, but to see if some underlying theme would emerge that would give it some deeper meaning. It did, sort of. Loneliness is central. Vampires exploit loneliness. Children for example kill Santa when they're young, which is why every child gets lonelier and lonelier as they grow up.

- There are two central characters, Suyeon, a female detective, and Violette, a vampire hunter. Six suicides, or so it seems, have occurred at a Rehabilitation Hospital. The old women, who suffered from dementia or depression, had jumped from the sixth floor over a period of weeks. Surprisingly, there was hardly any blood. Violette concludes that a vampire did it. There were two holes above the left clavicle on each victim. Vampires suck so much blood that if humans fall from a height immediately afterwards, a minimal amount of blood leaves the body. 

- Or is there a human serial killer involved? Nanju, a nurse at the hospital, is a suspect, because she cared for all the victims, and was recently identified as a drug dealer. She owed money to criminals and was desperate. Nanju would have picked the victims, who were ‘tired of living'. 

 - Violette is an expert on vampires and knows some intimately. Lily is one. Lily discloses that vampires are two hundred years older than most humans. Violette also knows another vampire, Greta, who tells her about the old Agreement between humans and vampires: vampires would not kill humans by drawing human blood. They would only weaken them, and the victims would fully recover after a few weeks. 

- The novel doesn't end satisfactorily at all. The police don't believe in vampires, and mistrust Detective Suyeon and vampire hunter Violette. So that's it. 

 

Katie Kitamura, Audition

 

- Acclaimed American author Katie Kitamura's new novel is brilliant, to say the least. It focuses on the precariousness of life and relationships. Everything is a play. We're all actors. But pretence can’t last. Playacting can’t last. We can play it hard of course but eventually we're exhausted. 

- Then the quandary: what is the truth about us and our lives? Is it possible to get to the bottom of it?

- It's a 200 page novel in two parts. In Part One a middle-aged woman, who is an actress, meets a young student, Xavier, for lunch at a restaurant in the West Village in New York. Her husband Tomas, a writer, walks in, but suddenly leaves. He had come to the wrong restaurant. Did he see her there, with the young attractive man?

- Xavier had good reason to believe she was his mother. But she didn’t ‘give up a child’ as a journalist's article claimed. She had an abortion, we're told.

- She miscarried the second time, we're told. Her marriage was difficult. She had affairs, ‘an expression of restlessness’. 

- Currently she's rehearsing for the main role in a play called Rivers, and she's struggling with the role of a woman who switches at a key moment between two different characters. She has to move from a woman in grief to a woman of action. 

- In Part Two of the novel we learn that Rivers was a huge success, and her performance was enthusiastically celebrated by reviewers. But the story takes a shocking twist, which adds a whole new dimension to the novel. She is now continually referring to Xavier as her ‘son’ and she his ‘mother’. She even refers to Tomas as his ‘father’, and ‘our child’. Xavier, who has been promoted to the position of Assistant Director at the local theatre, ruptures their tired patterns. Like a kid coming into your life. There's a horror story element to it.

- She and Tomas agree to allow Xavier to stay in their large apartment ‘for as long as you like, it’s your home after all’. ‘I had a memory of the room in his adolescent years, a mess of dirty clothes and half-eaten sandwiches’. 

- Tomas is enlivened by Xavier’s presence in their apartment. ‘…a loosening of the old habits and constraints that had drawn the boundary around this person and made him who he was’. 

- Xavier asks if his girlfriend Hana can come live with him. Hana turns out to be a strong person. ‘He needs to grow up', she said of Xavier. And Tomas, 'an old man', seems attracted to Hana 'a young woman'. Another familiar pattern. 

- Eventually the actress recognises that the story they are playing is a pretence. ‘…in the end it took very little for the whole thing to collapse’. She realises she has become, or was always, a woman who cannot distinguish between what is real and what is not real. 

- Kitamura has written a provocative novel that challenges our ordinary patterns of life deeply. Acting, pretence, marriage, childlessness, loneliness, delusion. 

- As I said, brilliant. 

-(Unfortunately the novel is poorly edited. There are misplaced commas everywhere, and clumsy verbiage like this: ‘I was not indeterminate to myself’.)

Caro Llewellyn, Love Unedited

 

- Caro Llewellyn has written a lovely, delicious, paean to the publishing industry. Set in Sydney, Melbourne and New York it is a story of personal relationships and secret histories. People can love and care, but they can also deeply hurt and betray, parents included. 

- The book has a charm from the word go. Wet Melbourne streets, the leaves, the restaurants (Melbourne's much loved The European especially) all feature in multiple and enmeshed stories that are simply captivating. 

- The prime focus is the editor Edna and her passionate relationship with a famous (unnamed unfortunately) English author who is now living in New York. His wife and five-year-old daughter were killed by a speeding car when he was young man. He and Edna exchange affectionate emails every day.  

- Her parents 'abandoned' her, and she feels pangs of guilt. Her mother died when Edna was a child and her father shot himself a decade later. Edna departed Australia and found a job in NY as an editor at Random House. She attends the Frankfurt Book Fair, giving us a great description of it. And of course she meets up with her author/lover. They travel to Rome and indulge in its food and architectural glory. 

- As readers we glide between timeframes and cities. And we also meet Molly, an Australian book editor whose mother was called Edna. Edna died of Multiple Sclerosis when Molly was five. The echoes are ominous. 

- Molly settles in New York and meets Giancarlo, an Italian chef. They becomes lovers and longtime partners. She contemplates at one point: ‘how much literary business is done in the presence of food and wine’. Delicious food and whiskey and champagne are central in their lives. 

- Molly is reading the early chapters of a manuscript of a memoir that had been sent to her by literary agent Elaine Grimes. Grimes had died a few months earlier. Unfortunately the name of the author was never disclosed. But Molly is deeply affected by it and is eager to find her. 

- We know the memoir was written by Edna. And eventually Molly discovers that. Edna is currently in a nursing home suffering from MS. They eventually meet but Edna refuses to give her the full manuscript. However they talk for hours and bond with each other. Molly tells her about her career and her love for Giancarlo. Edna softens and hints she will complete it and gift it to her. 

- Edna dies a few weeks later and Molly receives the completed memoir. 

- The novel's ending is a gut-punch. It upends so much of what Molly and we as readers were led to believe. 

- This book is just so excellent on every level. One of the best I've read over the last few years. 

(The cover is disappointing. The model doesn’t look intelligent and looks bored. The very opposite of Edna). 

Tanya Scott, Stillwater

 

 - This debut novel from Australian doctor and writer Tanya Scott is a very detailed story full of characters across the love-hate spectrum.

- Most are likeable but a bunch are loathsome. It's about brutal gangsters forcing innocent young people to do want they want or suffer the consequences - like being shot. 

- It's a gripping read on a number of levels. The main character is Luke, a young man who faced a very difficult childhood. His drug addicted mother died and his father abandoned him. But he's highly intelligent and determined to succeed in life. He's also a good fighter, having learnt boxing in a gym run by a gangster called Gus. Gus wants Luke to do the dirty work for him and will not tolerate any resistance. Luke has no choice. 

- We go back and forth across different time zones, allowing the full picture of their relationship to emerge. 

- Another baddie is Jonathan, a rich but corrupt developer, whose daughter Emma meets Luke and is attracted to him. Jonathan and Gus both want Luke’s loyalty.  

- The story gets very bogged down at times. The constant fighting and arguing between the crims is off-putting. They are low-lifes with phones and guns, and as a reader I was utterly bored by the cliched interactions. 

- Luke and Emma are attractive though, and the more time we spend with them the better.

- Of course it's all resolved in your standard way. The baddies end badly, and the goodies survive and flourish. 

-(Scott writes well but the editing could have been better. The prose is littered with confusing pronoun references. One example of many: ‘Gus liked the cafe: Jack made excellent coffee and he could chat in Italian with Marcella’. Who does the ‘he’ refer to - Gus or Jack?)

Michael Robotham, The White Crow

 

- Celebrated Australian novelist Michael Robotham has just released The White Crow, his nineteenth.

- I've read a few of his crime thriller novels over the years and enjoyed them immensely, and this one is simply superb on every level. It's long, at 434 pages, but the chapters are short so it's a comfortable read. And it's set in London, which adds a very distinct dimension. The city is alive and also dangerous. 

- It's a complicated story of crime bosses and their ambitions and families, and the way the police on so many levels are threatened and compromised. A white crow is a person who stands out, and doesn't comply with the usual expectations and demands. Police Constable Philomena McCarthy's father and his brothers are criminals, and Philomena has distanced herself from them for over a decade. Joining the police force was her ultimate 'betrayal'. 

- But she's tough and relentless, and to her father, dangerous. 

- There are many threads and subplots but they all cohere and result in a very emotionally satisfying ending. 

- Take a break from the ugly world we currently live in and immerse yourself in this. I highly recommend it.   

Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope

 

- This is a debut novel from a young Black American gay writer. It's about the challenges the narrator and his friends constantly face just trying to survive in New York. They are well educated but have rather meaningless jobs in the corporate sphere, and spend most of their nights in the many bars and clubs that really define their lives. Drugs of course are commonplace.    

- It's a real challenge to read though, mainly because of Franklin's prose. Although very stylish and slick it's frequently pretentious. He's addicted to uncommon words. Here's an example:

...in college, they'd only come into occasional contact and, even in New York, seemed to pertain to variant slivers of the same milieu. That first postgrad summer in the city, Smith had zealously architected their distance: dinner with Carolyn and the friends with whom she'd grown up...then drinks with...the sleek, swart set to which they belonged...He'd watch their polite conversations from afar with a sense of mute anxiety, fearful that theirs would be a combustible union.

One day that first autumn, Smith awoke to rain, its soft patter percussive against all the city's cars.

- But, to be fair, sometimes the prose is just gorgeous: 

The day grew fat in its middle, then burned off in crimson wisps - the surprise of sunset arriving through a far window and engulfing every ordinary thing in gold. 

- Deep into the novel various storylines emerge that are very satisfying. And the friends and their families become very likeable. The narrator, David Smith Jr, gets charged with cocaine possession and is forced to undergo counselling, his flatmate Elle is found dead on the banks of a river, his friend Carolyn gets so sucked into the New York party scene she becomes alcohol and drug addicted and disappears. They are young, rich, party animals, ‘upwardly mobile urbanites’. 'Nothing good happens after midnight'. 

- In one section we're taken back to the South in 1942 and his parents' challenges. They are 'negroes'. Crack is becoming popular and Black kids getting longer jail sentences. It's ‘…a lifetime of dissonance, of alternately stunted and impossible expectations…’ 

- Franklin has written a love letter to New York:

...the mink-hatted older ladies walking their terriers on the Upper East Side; and down, down, in Midtown, where suits emerged from their gray-slat towers like tidal waves of minnows, their manic lunch-break motion some brief reprieve.

- Surprisingly, he makes no mention at all of key events of the time - 9/11, Obama, the Black Lives Matter movement, or even the experience of racism, subtle or overt. It's about the depth and meaning of personal friendships, and the comfort of welcoming social locales. 

- And it turns out to be a very satisfying read in the end.   

Philip Coggan, The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump

 

 - This short book by former Economist and Financial Times journalist, Philip Coggan, is a masterful demolition of Trump's obsession with tariffs.

- It's an extremely enlightening work, placing everything about tariffs and free trade in an historical and global context. And it's very clearly written. He provides loads of data and statistics, and it's totally up to date. The book has obviously been rushed into print over the last month. References to the ups and downs of what happened as late as the end of June are included. 

- It's very clear to everybody with half a brain that Trump's tariffs would not generate a mass return of manufacturing jobs to the US. The great bulk of the burden of the tariffs would fall on US businesses and consumers. Polls have shown that nearly 90% of Americans agree with that. Prices will increase full stop. And overall, the tariffs represent the largest tax increase on US citizens since 1993, costing the average household US$1,183 in 2025 alone. 

- The decline in manufacturing jobs in the US is part of a long-term trend that has emerged across the developed world, and is caused more by automation than by trade competition. 

- Obviously Trump does not like the multinational order that emerged after the Second World War. The trading system after 1945 was developed by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The guiding principal was to create a climate where, as much as possible, nations treated each other equally. The result, over the decades, was a substantial decline in tariffs and an enormous expansion in global trade.   

- Coggan ends his book with a quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian where Reg, played by John Cleese, forcefully dismisses the benefits of Roman rule: 'Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?'.

One could sum up the message of this book, in the style of Month Python, by saying 'Apart from the failed businesses, lost jobs, goods shortages, hits to consumer and business confidence, weakening of the relationship with key allies and decline of the US's international reputation, Trump has a brilliant plan'. 

Sam Guthrie, The Peak -Political thriller.

 

- This Australian novel is an absolutely absorbing read. It's a political drama set in Canberra, Hong Kong and Beijing. A little congested at times with easily forgotten detail, but it's totally worth hanging in to the very satisfying and shocking conclusion.

- The central characters are Sebastian (the Senator and Assistant Minister of Defence and Foreign Affairs), Charlie (his Chief of Staff), Zheng (the Chinese corporate high flyer), and Chloe (Zheng's daughter). 

- Also featured is ASIO and its Director-General, McCubbin. He's a ruthless and nasty piece of work who also happens to be Sebastian's father-in-law. 

- The drama starts early in the novel. Sebastian shockingly commits suicide after receiving a message from Zheng which says 'It's done.' 

- We're taken back to the 1980's and 90's. The student Sebastian and the Chinese girl Chloe had fallen deeply in love, but Chloe's father, Zheng, is outraged that her daughter is 'mixing with foreigners'. The long relationship between the couple is central to the novel but they had to keep it secret. 

- The Tiananmen Square massacre and the student protests about China's clamping down on democracy in Hong Kong are key elements in the story. Zheng hated his daughter's involvement in the protests. He was a determined and ambitious ideologue committed in every way to the Chinese Communist regime. 

- As the story develops over the decades it becomes more intricate and absorbing. We're sucked into the current challenge Australia and the US face by the power of China and the possible threat it poses to Taiwan. McCubbin has no doubt China will invade Taiwan, and attack the US military bases in the region, including those in Australia. The US would be pressured into responding with force. ‘The rallying fury of 9/11’ will likely erupt in the US and it will be forced into a full scale war which will inevitably go nuclear. 

- McCubbin would be ‘delighted by the actualisation of a long held hypothesis’. 

- But is he right? 

Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna, The AI Con

- Careful, I thought…is this going to be like those old anti-internet books of the 1990's? Thankfully, it's absolutely not! It calls out the bullshit that's everywhere in the AI universe. 

- Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. She's an expert on how large language models work and why the illusion they produce is so compelling. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a former senior research scientist on Google's Ethical AI team. 

- Their basic premise is that 'synthetic text extruding machines can’t fill holes in the social fabric. We need people, political will, and resources...Artificial intelligence, if we're being frank, is a con: a bill of goods you're being sold to line someone else's pocket...it's 'mathy maths', a racist pile of linear algebra, or 'Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences (aka SALAMI)'.    

- '...for corporations and venture capitalists, the appeal of AI is not that it is sentient or technologically revolutionary, but that it promises to make the jobs of huge swaths of labor redundant and unnecessary.' 

- The chapter 'AI Hype in Art, Journalism, and Science' is excellent. 'Today's synthetic media extruding machines are all based on data theft and labor exploitation, and enable some of the worst, most perverse incentives of each of these attendant fields. The use of these systems does further damage socially: displacing working artists and journalists, warping the practice of science, and polluting the information ecosystem. And their existence undermines the position and value of craft across these endeavors'. 

- What we're seeing is the 'normalisation of data theft and exploitation...the derivative works from these models are largely copying their works and also significantly impinging on existing markets...In the case of the New York Times, users of ChatGPT and its different variants are able to produce, nearly verbatim, text from the newspaper, when they provide specific prompts....The argument that these tools are sufficiently "transformative" [permitted under the US Copyright Act] seems to ring hollow if they extrude words and images that are nearly identical to the data they are trained on, and do so on demand when prompted to produce something that matches the work of a specific artist or news outlet'. 

- 'For AI boosters, the threat of these lawsuits is existential. And frankly we welcome that. Venture capital firm Adreesssen Horowitz warned that all of their investments in AI would be worth a lot less if they had to abide by copyright law. "Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development". That is, if they actually had to pay artists illustrators, and writers what their content is worth, rather than simply stealing that content from the web, their business model would fall apart'.

- This well informed, clearly written book will bring you a whole new perspective on what's actually happening in the world of AI. Highly recommend.

Mark Brandi, Eden

 

- Well-known and highly regarded literary thriller author Mark Brandi has written a seemingly simple but deep and penetrating story about crimes, their origins, and their long term repercussions.

- The back cover blurb summarises the story well:

Cities are tough when you’ve grown up as a country kid. They’re even tougher after nine years inside. Tom Blackburn is fresh out of jail and not sure where his future lies. He knows what he wants but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want him.

Tom‘s left his old life and his old name behind but his options aren’t great. He knows sleeping on the streets is the quickest way back to a cell. And then his luck turns around. A chance encounter leads to a job and somewhere to stay. A place in the dead centre of Melbourne. Eden, his new boss calls it.

Honest physical work. A bit of gardening, bit of gravedigging, bit of whatever he’s told to do. Fresh air, currawongs, a bed and some peace and quiet. It’s the perfect place to save some money and make some plans. A place to keep his head down and stay out of trouble.

But trouble finds him. Serious trouble. He’s missed the signs, again. Going back to jail might be the safest option. Unless he can figure some way out of the danger he’s in.

- We can't help but sympathise with Tom, and the work relationships he has to make in the cemetery in order to earn some money, get some accomodation, and move on with his life. But that proves to be very difficult. There are secrets there, and it's worth of lot of money to keep quiet about them. 

- A very satisfying read.

 

Linda Jaivin, Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China.

- Any book written by Linda Jaivin on China is essential reading. Her previous one, The Shortest History of China, 2021, which I reviewed here, was superb.

- Bombard the Headquarters is a smaller book (117 pages), and focuses solely on Mao Zedong and his ugly, abusive, murderous regime. But it is also essential reading. Mao was ruthless, and millions were murdered because he would not tolerate any compromise to his revolutionary communist agenda on any level whatsoever. 

- In the mid-1960's the Red Guards were formed and the Cultural Revolution got underway. 'Academics estimate that between 500,000 and 2 million excess deaths took place in the Chinese countryside over next four years'. It was a killing machine on every level. Over 10 million homes were ransacked as the red terrorists sought evidence of disloyalty to Mao. He was adored like a god. Some enthusiasts even sought to mandate that traffic lights be changed to allow the red light to mean 'go'. 

- After Mao's regime ended most Cultural Revolution radicals paid little or no price for their actions, despite the people generally not tolerating any return to radicalism. Mao had brought ‘domestic turmoil and catastrophe to the Party, the state and the whole people’. 'They struggled to deal with the loss of ten years of their lives to what now seemed a shameful, collective mania, as well as feelings of victimhood, betrayal and guilt...If one thing united many of these diverse thinkers, creators and activists in the immediate post-Mao era it was the spirit of humanism.' 

- The Cultural Revolution 'turned Chinese people against themselves, saw the army preside over mass murder, turned cities into battlefields and villages into killing grounds...After the decade-long upheaval, at least 4.2 million people were detained and investigated and 1.7 million were killed, according to official statistics released in 1984.' 

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Graeme Turner, Broken: Universities, Politics and the Public Good

- Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland Graeme Turner's last book was The Shrinking Nation which I enthused over in this review:

- This just published short book written for In the National Interest series, published by Monash University Publishing, is another powerful condemnation of Australia's public sphere. His focus in on the deplorable state of our university system. He doesn't hold back. It's persuasive, comprehensive, credible, insightful and detailed, and Turner is very angry indeed. 

- On every level he damns Australian governments of both major parties over the last fifty years for the destruction they're wrought on our higher education system. Their neoliberal, pro-market, privatisation reforms have been utterly disastrous.  

-  ‘…students are dropping out, academics are burning out, and governments have been tuning out for decades’. It's a tragic story in so many ways. The shameless behaviour of governments, both Labor and the Coalition, have demonstrated their profound ignorance of what a university really should be. 

- The sector's federal government funding has gone from 80% in the 1980's to 40% now. The 'creeping cancer of excessive casualisation' has meant that 'more than 50% of the teaching in our universities is now delivered by casual staff on short-term contracts', and it's close to 75% in some institutions.

- 'longstanding collegial systems of governance were gradually replaced by management practices drawn from the corporate world that increased the role of the central executive'. In the desperate search for adequate funding, universities aggressively entered the market for international students. Earnings from these students accounted for 50% of Sydney University's total income in 2024.

- Governments have pressed universities 'to think of themselves as businesses rather than as publicly funded institutions....The consequences for the academic culture of the university community, however, have been corrosive'. 'The demands of the vocations or professions have become decisive drivers'. The broader fields of knowledge are deemed unimportant. ‘The myth of the useless arts degree turns up all over the place’. 

- 'Battered, broken and distorted by years of poor policy, disinvestment and piecemeal strategic initiatives, this is a system that requires a major renovation...There is an urgent need for an independent coordinating body to manage how our university system serves our national interests in both teaching and research.' 

- When I was a student at Sydney University in the early 70's, things were wonderful. I would hate going there today. 

Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13

 

(The backpacker murders were a spate of serial killings that took place in New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993, committed by Ivan Milat. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres south-west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were foreign backpackers (three German, two British) and two were Australians from Melbourne. Milat, then 51 years old, was convicted of the murders on 27 July 1996 and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole. He died in prison on 27 October 2019, having never confessed to the murders for which he was convicted). Wikipedia

- Fiona McFarlane's new novel, Highway 13, is really twelve different short stories of around 25 or so pages each, five of them having been previously published. Each of them are set in a different year or time frame, from 1950 to 2028. It's a novel only because they are all connected by a fictionalised version of the backpacker murders described above. The killer is named Paul Biga. 

- The stories are long enough for McFarlane to dig deep into her characters. They are all victims of the murders, or family or friends of the victims. As readers we meet them up close and are drawn to them. What struck me about their stories though was the fragility of their circumstances generally. Their lives are fragile and flimsy, as are their relationships. Most couples end up getting separated or divorced, and brothers and sisters emotionally isolated. McFarlane seems to be reminding us that we humans are always loosely connected to each other in so many ways. Tragedy can happen, but it's hardly surprising. 

- McFarlane's prose is clear and uncomplicated and she has the gift of penetrating deeply into personalities and emotions, focusing on quirks, strengths and  vulnerabilities. It's a real joy to read. 

- The novel is shortlisted for the 2025 Miles Franklin Award, and might well win. It's superb on so many levels. 

Siang Lu, Ghost Cities

 

- Sian Lu's Ghost Cities has been shortlisted for the 2025 Miles Franklin Award, which is why I read it. I doubt it will win but nevertheless on many levels it's a highly enjoyable read. 

- Basically it's a satire of China, combining outrageous portraits of both ancient and modern Chinese society. Lu has fun with Chinese authoritarianism and pretence.  Unfortunately however he doesn't imbue his portrait with much depth. The focus is on the madness of both eras, the abject cruelty of the ancient, and the sham and glitz of the modern. I guess it could be read as a blistering condemnation of Chinese society, but it's laced with such humour and fantasy that it can't be taken too seriously as a critique. 

- The books and paintings of both eras are central too, immersing us in the long tradition of Chinese and Western thought and art. 

- The basic story features four main characters: The ancient Chinese Emperor, the modern Chinese film producer/director Baby Bao, Lu Xiang the Australian translator who can't actually speak Chinese, and Yuan, his girlfriend and also a translator. 

- Also central is the vacant city of Port Man Tou. Baby Bao builds an immense studio encompassing the entire city and offers Xiang Lu a job. It’s a created zone. As a city it's not actually real - nothing is. Bao attracts millions of peasants and serfs to take actor-worker jobs. There are cameras everywhere, outnumbering citizens ten to one. After a while he toxifies the city to make it more real. The air is thick and heavy. The extras no longer live gratis in comfortable apartments in the city. They have been moved to the fringes where the rent is cheaper and the rooms smaller. And they work on farms and in factories. Constantly filmed of course. 

- The ‘Department of Verisimilitude’ is one of the city's governing ministries. Official decrees by the many government departments are authoritarian and dictatorial. Like in the ancient Emperor days. All clocks, watches, and phones showing the time, for example, are outlawed. Only Standard Time showing on a huge clock on a government building is allowed in Port Man Tou. 

- Xiang and Yuan talk while they walk the city. Their conversation is delightful. They are a liberating reality. They were brought up in Australia, and imbue the book with joy and soul. At one point they discuss Chinese art, and Western art like Jackson Pollock’s. Yuan doesn’t like Pollock’s art. ‘It is very like you…to search for patterns in the paint…you construct theories about things, the world, and latch tightly on to examples that will prove your theories beyond doubt’. 

- The Emperor on the other hand throws countless aristocrats, scholars, consorts, chefs and others who offend him into the prison of the Six Levels of Hell. He also burns every book in the Imperial Library. He alone needs to dominate. Authoritarianism is his style. Torture, murder and abuse his tools.

- At one point I wondered whether the director Baby Bao was a skewering of current Chinese President Xi Jinping, a total authoritarian and faux Emperor. If not, at least the novel, despite its comic tone, tells a horrific story of authoritarian abuse.  

Sinead Stubbins, Stinkbug

 

- This new novel by Australian author Sinead Stubbins is a delightfully comic immersion in a toxic work environment. Suffering and surviving incompetent management, poor HR policies, jealous and unfriendly work colleagues, sexist male behaviour and seriously immature corporate expectations all round - all this defines the experience of working at an advertising agency called Winked.  

- Edith is the main character. Her ex-boyfriend Pete has just been sacked. As the novel progresses we learn a lot more about their relationship, and it's not good. Her boss Danny, who thinks very highly of himself (‘If I say something’s alright, it’s alright’) also features. Her colleague and best work friend is Mo who is ‘extremely talented and extremely terrifying’. Other characters feature in the novel, some good, some bad. We get to know them well, and generally speaking, we get to unlike them quite a lot. 

- Edith had a heart that was eager to please and a face that seemed to say “I think you’re a fucking moron”, which, according to Mo, was the best thing about her. She also shaves her head, which annoys everyone. But it's a statement. Mo thinks ‘everyone is a cliche…no one is original, everything is boring.’ 

- Winked has 300 or so staff and has been bought by a Swedish company. Everyone expects a major restructure and lots of redundancies. The company sends them all on a weekend retreat to undergo 'mind-training' at a camp outside Sydney called Consequi. It's ‘a rehab for workplaces’. A slight spoiler here - it's just awful!

- They're subjected to a range of exercises and highly personal questions that are meant to sort out the best and most productive employees. What's revealed is a highly toxic work environment, and one decidedly in favour of men. Edith is very unliked. Danny lists all her lies and misdemeanours. Una calls her a liar and a ‘stinkbug…your stench will get all over them..’ Thomas says ‘she’s a dobber’. Bruno says ‘she’s a fake’. It’s like a religious exorcism. They all get around in a circle and abuse and slap another person. They cut each other superficially with a dagger to prove they ‘belonged’. 

- There is high drama, which thankfully is very satisfactorily resolved. 

- I absolutely loved this novel. Stubbins is such a talented writer. She is able to address significant work and life issues with wit and vitality, making for a thoroughly engaging read. 

Gail Jones, The Name of the Sister

 

- Gail Jones' new novel is confronting on many levels. She writes in highly poetic prose, frequently using strange and unusual words. ‘Everything claimed a greater propinquity’; ‘This disinhibition, this voluptuary of movement’. It's verbal congestion at times, but rich and provocative as well. 

- The principal focus of the novel is the fragility of relationships. Marriages are difficult. Friendships are more lasting, substantial and necessary, and occasional connections essential. 

- The other focus is the isolated outback town of Broken Hill, formerly a thriving mining town for silver, lead and zinc, but now ghostly, reflecting the dead heart of Australia. I grew up in Broken Hill and my father worked in the mines. I know it well. It had a population of 34,000 then. Now it has only half that, and many houses, halls, schools and churches are abandoned and decaying. 

- Jones reflects the whole dark experience in a crime story that fascinates the nation.  An Unknown Woman, called 'Jane', was found on an isolated road near the town.  There's evidence she’s been subject to strangulation, and has recently given birth. She's also severely malnourished. Although still alive she stares at nothing. 

- Freelance journalist Angie is engrossed by the story as she watches it on TV in Sydney. Detective Beverly Calder is her friend and has been sent to Broken Hill to investigate.  

- Angie's husband is Sam and their relationship is suffering complications. They have no kids and her mother Nora is ordinary. She feels a ‘general sense of incompletion and thwarted love…there was respect here, in this marriage, but also heartache and suppression’. ‘Mundanity’ is the word, a 'failure wholly to connect…this turning away - this is what their marriage had become’. ‘Their conjugal irritation was mutual…His automatic authority. The air of amused lack of interest when she expressed an opinion’.

- She talks to people about Jane’s death, and word spreads on social media. A range of people call and text her claiming they know who Jane is - a missing sister, a missing twin, a missing friend, a missing daughter, a missing lover. Most of them are sad, others are whackos. 

- She travels by train to Broken Hill. She describes the place very accurately, including its streets named after minerals and chemicals. ‘There was a kind of emptiness to the streets, and an inertia that they couldn’t quite explain’. 

- There are small and abandoned mines in the area surrounding the town, particularly surrounding the tiny, mainly abandoned, town of Silverton, a half hour's drive north. There's a small museum there which helps Angie in her quest to uncover what happened to Jane. 

- The story's resolution is very satisfying and meaningful. We are left with death but also with life, hope and community. 

- The novel with stay with you for a long time. 

Hugh White (QE): Hard New World: Our Post-American Future

 

- Once again Hugh White proves he's a must read on defence and foreign policy issues. He brings a clear, deep and wide perspective on all the issues confronting Australia now and into the future. He's a refreshing voice because he's not trapped in the dated, cringing, predictable views of most of the commentary coming out of the defence industry and its conservative think tank arse lickers in Canberra. 

- This Quarterly Essay is on many levels a confronting read. We live now in a new nuclear age. Although White doesn't shrink away from demolishing Trump (‘…a lack of common humanity that is, in truth, sociopathic’) he recognises that ‘Trump’s willingness to see America take its place in a multipolar order is something to be grateful for’. The old America-dominated unipolar world that's existed since the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's is now over. ‘A version of isolationism now makes much more sense than the post-cold war vision of US global primacy...The imperatives that drove US strategic commitments in Europe and Asia in the twentieth century are far weaker today.’

- The key changes are the rise of China and India. As China rapidly increases its nuclear capability, the return of nuclear weapons is now centre-stage in power politics. Taiwan has now become the prime focus. What will really happen if China invades Taiwan to restore its ancient identity as a Chinese province? The Australian political establishment, both Labor and the Coalition, keep parroting the line that Australia would support an American response by joining an attack on China, but this is nonsense. ‘It is unthinkable that Australia would join America in a war that America need not fight, that it cannot win and that would quite possibly become a nuclear war...We should tell Washington that we will not go to war over Taiwan’. 

- China’s military strength in Asia has overturned America’s. ‘…there is now no serious chance that America can defend Taiwan from China’. China is quickly building a lot more nuclear weapons. White reminds us that in power conflicts the West constantly overestimates then underestimates. We blunder into a needless conflict then realise we can't win: look at Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In Asia now it ‘could be catastrophic’.

- China wants to push America out of East Asia. In fact Trump ‘has often dismissed the idea that America should defend Taiwan’. But he must know that ‘…if it abandons Taiwan, its entire position in East Asia will be severely, and perhaps fatally, damaged.’ White argues that's inevitable, pivotal, and acceptable. It's the emerging multi-polar order. The ‘balance of power’ strategy is protective. The multipolar order is the future. Small and middle powers will pay a price however, such as Ukraine and Taiwan.

- White is excellent on Ukraine, but realistic. While the first year of the war was successful for Ukraine it now seems it will not decisively defeat Russia, despite average US and EU support. Conceding will of course leave Ukraine forever under Russia’s thumb, but Russia’s nuclear weapons are a real barrier to a Ukrainian victory. America is afraid of Russia employing its nuclear option, so ultimately America cannot defend Ukraine. Trump gets that. Unfortunately Russia’s ambitions will likely not be satisfied just by a settlement of the Ukraine war.

- So we come to NATO. White, although he doesn't predict an end to NATO, does admit that ‘Europe will now have to defend itself, regardless of NATO'. He reminds us that the EU’s combined GDP is as much as ten times Russia’s and has many more tanks and aircraft. (Personally I've long believed that NATO should be dissolved for three reasons: 1. The cold war has ended. 2. The Soviet Union has ended. 3. The EU has been created. Ukraine should apply not to join a dated NATO but to join the European Union). Europe would of course have to create an effective nuclear deterrent. 

- White is refreshingly merciless on the Quad: ‘there is nothing to it but a series of meetings’, and of course the ridiculous AUKUS. (As looks increasingly obvious, even Trump will dump AUKUS). And as for ANZUS delusions ‘…a new, beneficial post-alliance relationship can evolve’. Singapore is an example. ‘It is unthinkable that Australia would join America in a war that America need not fight, that it cannot win and that would quite possibly become a nuclear war...We should tell Washington that we will not go to war over Taiwan’. 

- He's also clear on Japan and Korea. The US alliance would crumble. Japan will have to go its own way without American protection, as will South Korea. Given China's and North Korea's increasing nuclear capabilities, Japan and South Korea might need to ramp up nuclear capability.  

- Australia has yet to confront the new reality, that our future does not rely on the American alliance. Trump is puncturing this complacent optimism, and Biden’s  delusions are gone. We do not have a great and powerful friend any more.

- As for our weapons? They won't be nuclear subs, nor surface warships, nor F-35 fighter jets. Uncrewed drones are the future. 

- Finally, do you think Albanese and Marles are anywhere near this level of thinking? Oh please. 

Henry Gee, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire

 

- This new book by Henry Gee, the celebrated British paleontologist and senior editor of the prestigious scientific journal Nature, is well worth reading. 

- Gee has the ability, rare for academics, to write exceptionally clear and rhythmic sentences. His prose sucks you in. (A bit like Paul Krugman on economics). His early chapters in Part One describe in detail the history of Homo Sapiens since its emergence around 315,000 years ago, and its very likely demise in only 10,000 years time. 

- Most readers will skim these chapters unless they're fascinated by paleontology and space. But in Part Two Gee turns to our current times and where the human race is likely to be in only 200 years time. They are fascinating chapters. 

- We learn about the rapid growth of the world’s human population over the last century particularly, and the rapid decline that awaits us over the next two centuries. (And after ten thousand years homo sapiens will be wiped from the face of the earth all together).

- I virtually underlined every second sentence of these chapters. Here are some amazing numbers:

World population in 1964: 3.267 billion. Population now: 8.2 billion. Likely population in 2100: 6.29 billion. (China: 1.412 billion now; 732 million by 2100). Likely population by 2200: between 2.6 and 5.6 billion. By 2300: between 0.9 and 3.2 billion. 

Countries with increasing populations: Nigeria: 200 million now but 791 million by 2100. Many countries will see a substantial increase in population by 2100, including Australia, because of substantial African immigration, and Israel's population will grow from 9.5 million now to 24 million in 2100 because of its higher fertility rate.

Why is the human population on the cusp of steep decline? Lower birth rates due to the educational empowerment of women and the increasing take-up of contraception. Also, for reasons nobody can quite fathom, human sperm count has fallen, both markedly and recently. 

Climate change: Up to 200 million people (3% of all humans) live in coastal cities that will be below mean high tide by 2100. If the temperature rise gets as far as 4% above pre-industrial levels, a billion people could be flooded out. Cities such as New York could be two metres underwater by the end of this century.

Extreme heat could depopulate large areas of the Middle East, where the current inhabitants will have to move or die. Deadly heatwaves of up to 55 degrees will be an everyday reality. A huge migration of refugees from Africa into Eurasia will take place.