Sofie Laguna, The Underworld

 

- Acclaimed Miles Franklin award-winning author, Sofie Laguna, has gifted us another sensitive, insightful and beautifully written novel. One of the best I’ve read this year. 

- A young girl, Martha, is in her mid teens. It's the 1970's. She’s absolutely delightful and fascinating, and the only child of an unhappy marriage. Her parents and their friends are all conservative Liberal voters. They of course hate Whitlam. 

- Martha attends a private girls boarding school south of Sydney, and she loves it. She's exceptionally bright. Classes on the ancient underworld of Greek and Roman times captivate her. ‘A dead language suited her best. It was her own. Latin - reading it, translating it, learning the stories and poems - was her private inner puzzle...It was study and reading and being in the library that made Martha feel better’. Her school friends are her life, and her best friend is Valerie, a girl from a large family (mainly boys) from a farm just east of Broken Hill. 

- Her mother doesn’t like Martha. ‘It had been that way for years’, and Martha doesn’t like her mother either. She particularly hates horse riding with her. But she likes her father, sort of. She enjoys being with him - eating pizzas, watching TV. But he’s also frequently distant and absorbed in his work. 

- She gets her first period, and Laguna describes the painful experience in detail. Martha writes the dreaded letter 'M’ in her calendar. 

- She reads that homosexuality was accepted by the Romans, but not between women. Valerie invites her and another friend to her family’s property. With the many brothers and dogs they have a wonderful time - riding horses, singing songs, eating good food, roasting marshmallows around the fire. She undergoes a sexual awakening. She feels sexually aroused by Valerie. 

- She reads about homosexuality at the library. Homosexuality was accepted by the Romans, but not between women. It was considered ‘…a social or moral aberration….No individual is born homosexual’, according to most scholars. 

- At their final end-of-year party she's partly drunk and thrusts herself onto Valerie. She’s shamed by the other girls. They isolate her, as does Valerie herself.   

- She finds her first year at Sydney University very difficult but really excels in the following years, getting High Distinctions in all of her subjects. But she misses Valerie, who went to Adelaide Uni, terribly. Laguna brings Sydney University alive - the old sandstone paths and buildings, the beautiful lawns and trees, the surrounding streets and pubs. And Martha's lectures on Roman poets are described in detail. We're immersed in the course details. And there are heaps of quotes in Latin, many not translated into English. The point is to absorb us, to thrust us headfirst into it. 

- The 1970's of course, to those of us who were students at the time, were alive with protests on political issues like Vietnam, Women's liberation, and University administration. Martha however ignores them. ‘Latin language, literature and the history of Ancient Rome formed the parameters of her world’. 

- Over the four years of her course she receives short letters from Valerie expressing love and friendship and apologies, but she doesn’t reply. 

- Martha's choice for her honour's thesis in her fourth year is the poetry of Sulpicia, a female poet who was considered a fake by male scholars. A visiting Professor from the UK was convinced the poems were written by the male poet Tibullus. His anti-women attitude pissed Martha off, so she decides to write her thesis on Sulpicia. '…what really gets me is that it’s still going on today - and so pervasively. The male dominance, and the attempt to monopolise scholarship.’ 

- Laguna plummets her reader into the ancient world and Martha's thesis, and doesn’t condescend. I personally found it absorbing. (Martha's thesis in the end is judged 'outstanding'). 

- The final chapters of the novel are very dramatic, involving rape, trauma and depression. But the resolution is very satisfying indeed. 

- Sofie Laguna has written an exceptionally powerful and original book which doesn't hold back. We're thoroughly immersed, challenged and enlightened. The whole point of novels after all. 

 

Greg Sheridan, How Christians Can Succeed Today.

 

- This has to be the most theologically illiterate tome I’ve ever read. It fails on so many levels. 

- Sheridan has minimal understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its richness. His book is simplistic in its Christian beliefs about the resurrection of Jesus, his ascension to heaven, and other ‘facts’. He makes no attempt to engage with the gospels and their stories and parables and whether the facts as presented actually happened, rather than being a rich collection of fictional and mythological elements that constructed the Old and New Testaments over centuries. 

- His constant quoting of familiar conservative writers of the last century like G.K.Chesterton, C.S.Lewis, and Malcolm Muggeridge, add absolutely nothing to his treatise other than supporting his simplicity. 

- His fundamental proposition is ‘with God out of the picture, humanity is immensely reduced’. Sheridan hates our modern world of secularism and modernism, initiated by science. ‘…our civilisation faces a choice between a re-enchanted culture informed by Christianity, or a future of chaos and cruelty’. The smartphone and social media are satanic. Popular culture is always anti-Christian. 

- There’s no analysis of the Catholic and Protestant traditions. ‘Christianity’ seems all one and the same. It becomes clear as the book proceeds he favours a fundamentalist evangelical extremism as his expression of true Christianity. 

- All that said, there are some positive features to the book. His chapter on St Paul, while being disappointing theologically, is excellent biographically and sociologically. 

- There’s also an excellent chapter on early Corinth and its deplorable practices regarding marriage, infanticide, forced abortions, and forced prostitution, and Christianity’s condemnation of these behaviours which inspired a revolutionary change for women. Paul preached the centrality of love. As a result the majority of early Christians were women. Sheridan makes clear how revolutionary Christian belief was at the time. 

- ’Christians exploded the sexual hierarchy of the ancient world as well as the social hierarchy.’ He’s also good on slavery, money, children, and death. ’Christians hold the most elevated view of the human body that has ever been imagined in human history’. 

- His chapter on the early church fathers is informed and enlightening. Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp were all executed for their belief in Christ. Irenaeus was the first great theologian. Also influential were Gregory of Nyssa in Turkey, Tertullian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, and St Anthony the Great. The early centuries were prone to heresies from influential sources, which had to be met effectively.

- The most important figure was Augustine of Hippo in Algeria. His two important books were City of God and Confessions. 

- Part 2 of the book is biographical. Sheridan introduces us to ‘Contemporary Early Christians’, as he calls them. They’re presented as models of Christian behaviour for our time. Most of them are unknown. Some of them are celebrated for their conservative social and political positions - Jordan Peterson, Mike Pence, Niall Ferguson for example. He interviews them in a very journalistic, Sunday Magazine, style. He certainly doesn’t indulge in any critique of their views. 

- An exception would be Marilynne Robinson, a Christian novelist. She’s excellent on Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament. 

- It becomes quite clear at the end that Sheridan is positing a Christian rebellion against the modern world, a world of digital ‘gadgets’ like desktop computers, iPads, and mobile phones. These internet obsessions are destroying our society, making it ‘woke’ and meaningless, particularly for the young. He's a great fan of the recent 

movement in the US, and increasingly in Australia, called Classical Liberal Education. The curriculum of these private schools is centred around the great books of history, and ancient Greek civilisation. Many teach Latin as well. God is always central. 'In a distressed and bleeding culture, these classical schools are field hospitals; perhaps more than that  - base camps; perhaps more than that - signs of a new creation.' 

- Two stars out of five. Max. 

Sulari Gentill, Five Found Dead

 

- I hadn't read any of Sulari Gentill's previous novels, despite the fact she's a multi-award winning Australian author, well known internationally. But I absolutely loved Five Found Dead, her latest.

- Just a few pages in, I was hooked! We're on the famous train, the Orient Express, travelling from Paris to Venice. There are murders on board and the suspect unknown. Hints of Agatha Christie's famous novel. 

- Fortunately there are a few retired police detectives on the train who meet and take charge of the investigation. They are led by the delightful Bonaparte Duplantier, a charming Frenchman. Our narrator, Merdith Penvale, and her twin brother Joe are also invited to help, as Joe is a successful thriller writer. 

- Other odd-bods are on board, all with opinions of course. As the first murder is followed by others the drama intensifies. There is also a Covid outbreak in one of the carriages, so that has to be locked down. The passengers are not happy at all. 

- There are so many characters, many forgettable, and the drama gets a bit congested towards the end. But that's a minor issue. As the story develops, and there are more murders, the resolution is surprising and very satisfying. 

- Gentill's prose is lively and highly readable. What a talent. 

William Boyd, Gabriel’s Moon

- This novel, first published in 2024, is the first in the Gabriel Dax trilogy. (I reviewed the second a few weeks ago). It's a little more complex than the second, but it's just as good. In fact both books are superb. 

- Gabriel Dax is a celebrated travel writer. In this novel he's in his early thirties and it's set in the early 1960's. This was a time when smoking indoors was common, and heavy drinking even more so. And there's also lots of sex. Gabriel is good-looking, fun to be around, and has a fair bit of money. What's not to like? His only problem is he can’t sleep well at all. His mother died in a fire in his home when he was a child, and he suffers from nightmares about it. He believes he caused the fire. 

- We first meet Gabriel in the newly independent republic of the Congo. He's landed an interview with the Prime Minister which he records on tape. A few weeks later the PM is ousted in a coup and killed by firing squad.  

- The other principal character is Faith Green. She's a senior agent in the British MI6. She approaches Gabriel and offers him small jobs involving spying. 'Do us a small service, a small favour'. He's sent to various countries for a few days each, and never disappoints. 

- He feels he’s always being followed however. He's in possession of information that he doesn't realise is critically important, secret and dangerous. We're in the early 1960's after all. The Cold War was feverish and nuclear war deemed highly possible at any time. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 magnified the fear. 

- The novel is loaded with intrigue, and many minor characters and subplots that enrich it on many levels. And its ending is very satisfactory. 

- I particularly relished the details Boyd includes, on everything about villages, towns, cities, public transport, restaurants, food, drinks, clothes, shoes, cars, bikes - you name it. They enliven and add so much colour to the story. Boyd is a writer of exceptionable talent. His novels are a joy to read. 

Ilan Pappe, Israel On The Brink

 

- This book is so damn good. As in his previous book, A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Ilan Pappe whacks us with the undeniable truths about Israel’s history and its current genocidal operations in Gaza. (He is an Israeli Professor of History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter).  

- In this just published short book he utterly demolishes the idea of a two-state solution. ‘In real terms, the two-state solution is a stinking corpse’. He focuses on the very likely future of Israel, and predicts how things will inevitably work out over the next thirty or so years. There will be a State of Palestine, a democratic, multiracial, multi-religious state living in peace with its Arab neighbours. The Jews and Palestinians will have achieved a national harmony as did the South Africans after the end of apartheid. He diligently examines all the complexities of how this will be brought about despite the support for Zionism across the Western world, particularly the United States.    

- The state of Israel has fatal cracks: 1. In 2025, there are two Jewish peoples living in Israel, with practically nothing in common: the ultra-Orthodox, theocratic Jews and the secular Israeli Jews. Both are, however, united by the constant threat of an external enemy.  2. The Subjugation of Israel. Many countries are now boycotting Israel goods. 3. Jews across the world do not universally identify with Zionism, particularly younger people. 4. The Inevitable Economic Slump. Israel is one of the most unequal nations in the world, with 20% living in poverty. 5. Is the Israeli army invincible? No, it’s more like a police force. 6. The State Is Not Working. It is utterly unprepared for the logistical challenges of wars. 7. A New Palestinian Liberation Movement is emerging. Young people are dominant. ‘Instead of pursuing a two-state solution, as the Palestinian Authority has done fruitlessly for several decades, they are seeking a genuine one-state solution…I believe in a future in which everyone is able to live freely, where Israeli Jews and Palestinians work alongside each other for a better future in a decolonized and free Palestine, and obtain it. It won’t be easy but it is possible.’ 

- This new Palestinian national movement must unite Hamas, the old Palestinian Authority, and the new youth guerrilla groups.The old and tired PLA must fundamentally change. It’s now corrupt and often pro-Israel. The Palestinian Youth Movement wants to move beyond the old ideological and political stasis of the PLO. The internet and smartphones are central. Palestinians are now the largest group of users of the internet in the Arab world. The vision is one democratic secular state in Palestine from the river to the sea. Islam is welcome, but it will not be a theocratic state. 

- Many countries across the world in the two decades will move beyond the tepid two-state solution and introduce severe, if not total, sanctions on Israel. Including the USA. All military aid to Israel will be suspended, and the 'new PLO's proposal to conduct, under international supervision, elections for a democratic state over all of historical Palestine' will be fully supported. 

- Pappe digs deep into the likely future of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In the one state of Palestine there will be the possibility of peace and social harmony, although the process will be difficult given that so many Palestinians were violently ousted from their homes, farms and workplaces.  

- In the final section of the book, a little fanciful perhaps, but very enjoyable, Pappe travels into the future as an old man and looks back at the journey he's witnessed as the state of Israel transformed into the state of Palestine. 'I managed to scribble something on 31 December 2049; this was a small card I wrote to friends and family:

MAY THE NEXT YEAR BE THE FIRST BORING YEAR IN THE HISTORY OF PALESTINE. 

(I loved this para:

In addition to that, the continued change in the American policy was enhanced by the reformist winds blowing from Tehran. The country was still an Islamic republic, but eased its pressure on the public sphere and, in particular, reformed the policies towards women's dress code in public. So it seems that without American sanctions and military adventurism, a more reformist version of theocratic rule developed, mainly because educated young women were needed to push forward the crippled economy, and because, like everywhere else in the world, a younger generation navigated the tensions between sacred principles and the realities of life more successfully than the previous one.)

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

 

- I've read and hugely enjoyed most of Ian McEwan's novels over the last few decades. This new one is absolutely one of his best by far. It's a detailed examination of personal relationships between close friends and partners. 

- There are two parts, one set in the future in 2119 (Part One), and the other in our current world, the early 2000's. It's an unashamedly literary work, obviously a total indulgence for McEwan and his loyal readers like me. Most of the characters are literature academics, and he obviously relishes their discussions and arguments. His prose is congested at times, but delicious. It has a biographical flavour to it as it digs deep into his main characters' predicaments, fascinations, passions, and multitudinous love affairs. It's very insightful, and dotted with comments on everyday human behaviour, (‘The mind was our most erotic feature').  

- Part One, in 2119, is rich and confronting as McEwan describes what's left of the world after the ravages of climate change and wars. The 21st century was a global heating catastrophe: the deadly and destructive ocean rises, the new inland seas, scores of vanished cities (Glasgow, New York, Lagos for example), the collapse of the global economy, the collapse of heavy industry and fossil fuel use, the population of earth having declined to below four billion (half what it was a century earlier), a shattered Germany incorporated into Great Russia, a totally isolated Scotland. The ‘Derangement’, the period was called, a 'Metaphysical Gloom', the fading of a belief in progress.

- As well there were nuclear wars costing more than 200 million lives: India and Pakistan - over a million killed; Israel and Iran; the US and China; a Russian nuclear bomb dropped into the Atlantic flooded cities, including London and Paris. Britain became an archipelago, its population halved.

- Thankfully post-nuclear global cooling was encouraging a new spirit of optimism. ‘When the rising curve of global temperatures met the descending curve of population numbers and industrial activity, nature seized the moment and pushed up through the ruins.’ Students in 2119 ‘cannot believe that pre-Inundation people…were at all like themselves. Those ancients were ignorant, squalid and destructive louts...social media was run for profit not as a public service...The stupidity and waste…the self-serving short-sightedness or plain folly or mendacity or viciousness of political leaders - take your pick - and the quiescence or craven idiocy or terror of their populations...the accumulated victims of global heating, nuclear battles, drowned cities, ruined economies, shattered ecologies, untamed viruses.’ 

- A century earlier, pre-Inundation, Vivien, our main character, is married to her second husband Francis Blundy, a celebrated poet and national icon, and climate change denier. They live on a rural estate. He composes a poem (a corona) on vellum, rolls it, secures it with a ribbon. At a party with their circle of friends, he reads it and they toasted it. It was a classic, they said, utterly brilliant, 'a glorious love poem, a hymn to Vivien'. As one guest reflects: ‘poetry, not the novel, was literature’s indispensable form…The novel was the froth of recent centuries….to meet the needs of intelligent, privileged women excluded from formal education and meaningful work…It took modernism to shake the novel up’. Vivian retained the only copy. But it disappeared and was never found again. And that mystery is at the heart of the novel. 

- A century later in 2119, Tom, our narrator, is a humanities researcher at Oxford University. He's a huge fan of Francis Blundy's poetry, and is determined to find the poem. He's convinced it must be hidden somewhere, most probably on their rural property, which is now old and abandoned. ‘Vivien’s love of poetry was too fierce to let her consign the poem to oblivion. It was somewhere and I would find it’. 

- Part Two is all about Vivien and her first marriage to Percy, who suffered early onset Alzheimer’s. It is hard for her to abandon her academic career and care for him. He had no interest in books or poetry, but he was an excellent musician and tradesman. 

-Her problem was that she ‘had a partner and a playmate, but I also wanted a thought-mate’. 

- She meets the famous poet Francis at a launch, and is immediately, and sexually, attracted to him. Percy, however, is still alive, although his mental faculties by now are virtually non-existent. He lingers...and lingers. 

- McEwan has written another brilliant novel. It is highly challenging, and thought provoking, and so very relevant to today's personal, social, and political realities. An absolute joy to read.   

William Boyd, The Predicament

- This new novel from celebrated English author William Boyd is the second in his three-part Gabriel Dax series. I hadn't read the first so wondered if I'd find the second frustrating. I certainly didn't. 

- The novel is so absorbing in every way. The central character, Gabriel, is a successful travel writer who also secretly works for the UK spy agency MI6, and occasionally the CIA. It's full of other charming characters, locations, and stories that make the novel come dramatically alive. It’s set in 1963. John F. Kennedy is the US President, and we all know what is about to happen in Dallas, Texas. 

- Gabriel is thirty-three, single, and has just bought a cottage in the small village of Claverleigh in Sussex. He travels to London frequently to meet his MI6 agent Faith Green, who also happens to be his previous, now just occasional, lover. Green visits him in Claverleigh. She requests he go to Guatemala, run by an unpopular autocratic military regime, to interview the possible future leader Santiago Angel Lopez, a popular ex-priest known as ‘Padre Tiago’. There will inevitably be a regime change and an election, and Tiago the likely new President. The CIA wants to know how the relationship with the USA would play out. But the CIA is not one united body. It's riven with power plays, some very ugly indeed. Gabriel has to be careful. 

- While in London he regularly meets his publisher, who's now told him he is being sued for plagiarism by an old famous author who wrote a book years ago on the 

Greek Islands. Gabriel's latest book is also about the Islands. He's enraged by the outrageous claim, and hires a lawyer. Then he decides to confront the author directly.  

- There are numerous subplots in the novel that delve deep into the political complexities of the time in an extremely satisfying and highly credible way. The resolutions are perfect. There are assassinations by lone gunmen as we know. That characterised 1960's America. 

- Kennedy was also assassinated at that time. By a 'lone gunman'.  

Karen Hao, Empire of AI

 

- If you’re looking for a clear, detailed and timely guide to how artificial intelligence is reshaping global power, this new book is an essential read. 

- Empire of AI examines how Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs have marshalled state resources, talent, data, and industry to become a major force in artificial intelligence. Karen Hao, an experienced AI journalist and former MIT Technology Review reporter, traces the history, institutions, and people behind the AI push. She explores the interplay between government strategy, private companies, academic labs, and everyday uses of AI like surveillance and social management. The book is part reportage, part policy analysis, and part ethical inquiry into what concentrated AI power means for democracy, security, and human rights. [This para was written by AI, which is why it's so flat and boring!]

- The book is a fascinating and very clearly written story about the beginnings of AI and its development over the last decade. Sam Altman is central to the drama. He is a brilliant entrepreneur with deep connections to billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Over the last ten years he has assembled a small group of computer programming geniuses and other heavyweights in Silicon Valley. He founded OpenAI in 2015 to compete with Google Search, and was able to source huge funding from Microsoft particularly. 

- Altman's ambition from the start was to purchase a huge number of computer chips from Nvidia and build massive data mining operations. He viewed this data consumption as absolutely essential, not just to build a new business, but to position AI as a groundbreaking service to humanity. It was to be a check against purely market forces. That early and noble ambition of course turned out very quickly to be complete nonsense. Hao was given unparalleled access to the management and staff of OpenAI, and also its Board members. She discloses the truth and doesn't hold back. 

- The essence of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the 'compute' power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground 'cleaning it up' for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. 

- Hao also explores very personal details about Altman and his family, and his peculiar management style. He was considered untrustworthy and deceptive by key staff and board members. 

- What I really enjoyed about the book was the intricate way Hao delves deep into how data is amassed on such a huge scale, of course without permission. Then tested and refined by heaps of poorly paid staff from third world countries, many of whom could barely speak English. 

- I learnt so much from this book. It's totally absorbing. And so well written and edited. There's not one editorial mistake in the whole 482 pages. Congratulations Penguin.

Paul Daley, The Leap

 

- Acclaimed journalist and writer Paul Daley has written an intriguing novel about Australia - its colonial history, its people and its blokey way of life. 

- Your typical Englishman, Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill, MA Philosophy and Theology (Oxon), is posted to Canberra as a diplomat. He and his now wife, Lucy, were familiar with Australia, particularly Sydney and its beaches. They had toured as backpackers years ago. But now there are bushfires all over southeastern NSW, including Canberra, making it difficult to enjoy the old haunts.  

- The book is riddled with so many dopey Aussie cliches unfortunately - blokes, beers, pubs, fights, pig hunting, Bondi beach. It focuses on the ugly. And of course snakes and crocs are mentioned. Canberra has become unwelcoming due to the haze and ash in the hot air, prompting Ben to become a little cynical about the War Memorial, the vacant suburbs, and even ANZAC Day. 

- An Australian woman, Charlene Sloper, an air hostess, is killed by falling from a high window in Saudi Arabia. Two Northern Irish women, both known petty thieves, were arrested for having pushed her. The Saudi government will summarily execute them, as it usually does to offending women, by a beheading or a stoning. Ben is tasked with persuading Cecil Sloper, the father of the dead woman, not to continue pressing for their execution as he's been doing. The British government is anti this primitive Islamic behaviour. 

- Cecil Sloper is a successful grazier with a long family history. His forebears were granted an 'empty land' in 1818. 'There was no one here. Not a damned civilised soul…The wretched natives! They’d no rightful claim to this place.’ He's fond of quoting passages from the Old Testament, ones praising retribution and revenge. And legitimising violence. Ben quotes New Testament passages back to him, focussing on love and forgiveness. They don't wash with Sloper. 

- Ben flies to a regional town called The Leap, adjacent to Sloper's property. He meets a driver called Nelson, who's an Indigenous leader and musician. And, as it turns out, highly intelligent and influential. 

-The Leap is an ugly town full of uneducated, racist, drunk morons. The name comes from the leap that native women and their children did over a cliff to escape the murderous colonial forces in 1856. As Sloper's ancestor wrote: ‘We slayed the warriors with gunshot and blade and instilled into the stragglers the greatest terror so that they ran like so many lemmings and leapt off the highest cliffs, a pitiful procession one after another, whereupon their bodies were dashed on the stony ravine floor far, far below.’ 

- The drunk blokes in the pub decide to go pig hunting and demand Ben come too. He is utterly weak when it comes to succumbing to beers, whiskeys, smokes and pills. He is forced to kill a boar by slitting its throat. ‘He realises that these men…dwell on the edge of another civilisation’. Nelson tells him he's like 'that other poor English bookish type who drank himself to death in the hut the other side of the Babylon'. We're reminded of the classic ‘Wake in Fright’.

- There is another side to Ben however, and it emerges slowly. He's angry and articulate and holds nothing back in condemning Sloper outright. 

- The novel ends dramatically but it's a satisfying resolution. 

Andrew Roff, Here Are My Demands

 

- This debut novel from 'child-wrangler' and lawyer Andrew Roff is simply superb on so many levels. It's a novel with two dimensions - we're immersed in the technological and social world of 2058, and we're bogged down in a major political row in Canberra, now officially known as Ngunnawal-Ngambri.

- Getting familiar with Roff's future is a challenge, yet it's entirely credible. There are no mobile phones any more, and AI has greatly reduced work hours and job opportunities. The dominant technology is augmented reality via 'shrouds', activated by facial implants around the eyes, nose and ears, that offer projectors, cameras, microphones and earbuds that just need to be touched. In addition to projecting virtual representations of non-occupants into the virtual space, the shroud allows for physical occupants to see and hear the virtual visitors. 

- The main character is Maggie. She's twenty-six and a lobbyist. A new progressive government has been elected after 19 years in opposition. Labor and the Greens merged in the early 40’s, and transformed into the Australian Progressive Party, OzProg. Other parties are the Truvies (conservatives who broke away from the Liberal Party in the 30’s), and the Liberals. The new government, in their election campaign, promised to introduce a Universal Basic Income scheme, since this was their way of dealing with high levels of unemployment and the greatly reduced work hours available to those employed. Automation had wiped out loads of jobs, low-skilled but also accountants, winemakers, auctioneers, and middle managers.

- Maggie wrote the basic Income proposal for Tan, the Treasurer, to take to Cabinet. She is passionate about it. ‘Almost half the country lives below the poverty line…there aren’t enough human jobs to go around’. But as she's told constantly the business class will hate it, as will many MPs, and the Americans who Australia still bows and scrapes to.

- Now Tan and her boss Brij are tasking her with the job of liason. The Liberal/Truvie alliance is chucking a tantrum. One of their leaders is willing to ‘compromise’ provided corporates won't face substantially increased taxes. Maggie is morally outraged. She's asked to take some leave.

- There are a number of side stories in the novel, including family, relationships, and the press, that add richness to the central political and social focus. 

- Andrew Roff has written a deep, stimulating and fundamentally realistic novel. I found it very hard to put down. 

Anne Irfan, A Short History of the Gaza Strip.

 

- I can do no better than this back-cover summary in capturing the essence of this magnificent, detailed, and lucidly written book. It was completed in March 2025, so it is fully up to date. 

- Anne Irfan is a multiple award-winning historian and lecturer in Interdisciplinary Race, Gender and Postcolonial Studies at University College London. 

'The world‘s eyes are on the Gaza Strip. After more than a year of Israeli military bombardment, it is the scene of unimaginable destruction. It is also one of the most politically significant territories on the planet. Yet how many of us know anything of its history?

In this vital book, Anne Irfan, a leading historian of Palestine-Israel, examines six key moments that bring us to the present day. She begins with Israel’s expulsion of the Palestinian people in 1948, when Israel was established and the Gaza region was truncated to a tiny territory of just 141 square miles. Going on to detail Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the Palestinian national struggle and formation of the PLO, the first intifada, the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the rise of Hamas, Irfan argues that, collectively, these events help explain how we have arrived at the catastrophe of the 2020s and the genocidal violence unleashed by Israel in Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7.

Written with remarkable clarity, A Short History of the Gaza Strip draws on a decade of meticulous research, weaving in the voices and stories of Palestinians from farmers and teachers to poets and activists. It is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to deepen their knowledge of Palestine and the wider region. In Irfan‘s words, 'History matters, especially in Palestine' - and never more so than today.

'A timely, short, highly informative history that is sure to dispel many of the misconceptions currently widespread about Gaza. It will remind readers of what was lost in the course of Israel’s aggression, as well as recognising Gaza's resilience'.

(Raja Shehada, author of 'What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?')

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’.)