Jen Craig: Since the Accident; Wall

 

- As an enthusiastic fan of Jen Craig's Panthers and the Museum of Fire which I raved about here, I bought and gobbled up her first novel Since the Accident, now re-released, and her just published Wall. Both novels are published by the small Australian publisher Puncher & Wattmann in beautifully designed editions.  

- Craig writes about childhood, family, creativity, ambition and failure in a very personal and gritty way. She renders the micro-world of her narrators in such detail she forces us to confront personal realities that are often overwhelming. We all live in small worlds demanding exploration, at times obsessive.  

- In Since the Accident Trude, the unnamed narrator's older sister, one of many as it happens, is recovering from a rather serious car accident. She has moved out of her partner Murray’s place and is now recovering in a small room in a local pub. The owners of the pub are treating her very kindly. 

- Trude’s reflections dominate the novel. Our narrator hated Trude when they were growing up together because Trude was totally self-centred, and still is. And they both have a complex relationship with their mother. 

- A large section of the novel has Trude telling us about the art workshop that she has recently attended for three days, and her observations about the small group of other participants, who were all frustrated 'artists'. They each have their stories and most of them are sad and about failure. 

- After the workshop the group go to a pub and an animated discussion about art and creativity forces all of them to fess up. One of them, Monique, bursts forth with a frank, vulgar and utterly refreshing spray about so-called ‘creativity’, which is so grounded it's just wonderful. 

- Since the Accident is an an extremely accomplished novel. 

- Wall, Craig's just published novel, is on the other hand a far more complex beast. It took me a long while to get hooked as our narrator prattled on like there's no tomorrow, but eventually, probably half way through, I warmed to it, sucked in by the incredible writing. 

- Her father has died and his house in Chatswood, full of trash, needs a thorough cleaning. He was a right wing fruitcake of your standard sort, constantly ranting. 

- She has returned to Australia after a decade in London and is talking, in her head, to her friend Tuen. She had a tense relationship with her former Australian art teacher Nathaniel Lord, and memories of him obviously drive her. She is also intending to construct an art installation inspired by the wall created by the revered Chinese artist Song Song. Her initial intention is to splatter it with her father's belongings, but as she sifts through them she gives that idea away. 

- To complicate things further, she also has issues with former art school friends Elaine and Sonya. They share a painful history of anorexia, art being a child of pain. And there is more pain right until the sad and emotional final page. 

- Wall is not an easy book to read but it demands perseverance. This blurb on the back cover by Shaun Prescott, author of Bon and Lesley published last year, sums it up brilliantly: 

Wall is an extraordinarily compacted work of rich complexity, humour and sadness. Its narrator's steadfast desire to explain herself, to clarify the seemingly unclarifiable, is as close to mirroring the roiling momentum of real consciousness that I've read in a modern novel. When I read Jen Craig I find it impossible to imagine a better way to capture the mysterious workings of the mind - its inadvertent epiphanies, its loose but determined associations, its cruelly recurring entrapments - without writing just like her. But no one else could.   

And the ABC Radio Hobart interview with literary academic Emmett Stinson is well worth a listen.

Stephanie Bishop, The Anniversary

- A highly intelligent, penetrating analysis of writing and how real life and fiction intersect by award-winning novelist Stephanie Bishop. 

- There are two pivotal events in this fascinating story. Our novelist narrator, J.B. (Lucie) Blackwood, has been shortlisted for a major literary prize, and within days her husband of fourteen years dies under suspicious circumstances during a storm on a luxury cruise holiday to Japan. 

- It's a celebration/tragedy clash, and of course the writer is torn and under massive emotional pressure. 

- Bishop has given us an exquisitely structured novel. Her narrator reflects on deep issues that have characterised her life and career as a writer, blurring the line between fiction and memoir. We're immersed in a dissection of interiority, her thoughts and emotions central. The tiresome publicity tours, the insensitive interviewers on breakfast TV, a cruel New Yorker article, all happening while she is struggling to come to grips with her husband's death.  

- While sometimes we're enmeshed in Lucie's interminable self-conscious meandering, we can't help being captured by her sparkling, invigorating writing and the depth of her insights. We're treated to deep reflections on films and their art, and how they differ from books. We're treated to a powerful critique of male dominance in fiction writing and reviewing, and the tired expectations in the industry and among the literati that define and imprison female authors. We're treated to the current debate about literature and its 'form' - 'Sometimes our allegiance to form might, simultaneously, be a dismissal of it, a refusal'. We're submerged in the reality of so-called creative collaboration. Patrick read every draft of her chapters, every addition or deletion. He demanded that. She was slow to realise she needed to be liberated.

- Until her marriage to Patrick, a celebrated film director/producer, she was a decidedly unhappy young woman. Her mother left her and her sister when they were young children, and today they’re still unclear why. There's never been any contact. She also fell out with her father, a renowned academic, years ago. He ‘despised’ her books. Despite her husband's wishes she has never wanted children. Families and children are a major theme in the book. Patrick's son from his previous marriage is an angry, moody, unpredictable teen and impossible to deal with. Her sister's eleven year old daughter is totally out of control. Their parents aren't spared however. Lucie makes that pretty clear. (There is a telling incident at a McDonald's when her sister adamantly refuses to buy a Jumbo pack for her daughter, despite the daughter being voraciously hungry after swimming practice, as eleven year olds are.)

- Pregnancy is a hot topic. ‘I wanted to avoid the disruptive presence of a child, only for that to be one of the things that ruined us in the end’, reflects Lucie. During the cruise Patrick had disclosed to her that his new girlfriend in LA is pregnant. Visiting her sister May and her family four weeks after Patrick’s death, she herself ironically tests positive after a pregnancy test. 

- Bishop has accomplished something wonderful in this, her fourth novel. Page after page, passage after passage, requires re-reading. I loved it. 

Dominic Smith, Return To Valetto.

- Dominic Smith is the author of the international bestseller The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos, which was excellent. This new novel is just as good if not better. It combines Anglo and Italian traditions beautifully. If you’re a lover of everything Italian, particularly the people, as I am, you’ll love this book. 

- There are lots of Italian sentences and phrases sprinkled throughout that are always repeated in English. That adds a delightful element. It's an homage to Italian culture and way of life. Food, cooking and restaurant ownership is in the family history, so great food is featured and celebrated. 

-Valetto is a town of only 10 people now, formerly three thousand, after a major earthquake virtually destroyed most buildings and houses in 1971. Valetto is a fictitious town but it's positioned in Umbria in central Italy.

- Italian-American academic, historian and author Hugh Fisher is the central character. He lives in Michigan and he's now on sabbatical at the family villa in Valetto. His three aunts and his grandmother Ida live in the villa, and Ida is about to turn 100 (or 'one thousand' in her view!). They've all had professional careers, and haphazard love lives, and their banter is sharp and funny. They plan a major birthday celebration for close to 200 guests. The food they eat is described in detail and it's, well, unbelievable!

- Aldo Serafino, Ida's husband, was a partisan during WWII but disappeared in 1944. The local pharmacist during the war was a dedicated patriot and fascist and enthusiastic supporter of Mussolini. He is still alive and ninety-six years old. He committed an act of atrocity which is central to the novel's development in its second half. 

- As the birthday party approaches the family plans an offical 'denunciation' of the old fascist during the dinner. The build up is tense and dramatic and the whole thing could turn ugly and unravel. The old man's family will be at the dinner too. 

- Smith's prose is beautiful and his portrayal of his characters sensitive and empathetic. He brings alive not only his characters but the country of Italy too, with its ancient traditions, its culture, and its social tensions. 

- A highly satisfying read. 

Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews.

 

- Paula Fredriksen is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University  of Jerusalem, and has long been a highly regarded scripture scholar and author. 

- When Christians Were Jews is her latest book. It's a fascinating exploration of the early Christian community and how they dealt with Jesus's sudden and unanticipated crucifixion. 

- She also analyses the gospel stories of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John and the writings of Paul, and contrasts their quite different accounts of the significant events and what they meant. There were certainly many differences between them. 

- The blurb summarises the book's major focus well: How did a group of charismatic Jewish missionaries end up becoming the foundation of the gentile church? In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the forty years of this community's lifetime. Moving from its hopeful beginnings with Jesus at Passover through to its fiery end in the war against Rome, Fredriksen presents a vivid portrait both of this temple-centred messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it. 

- They believed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah and that his 'second coming' and the long awaited apocalypse were immanent. They would be 'freed'. As the years went on of course this expectation died.  

- Fredriksen clearly outlines the various arguments and disagreements in the early community about Jesus's anticipated 'return'. But what she doesn't do, quite disappointingly in my view, is question the historical reality of Jesus's so-called 'resurrection'. She takes for granted that he actually rose on the third day and soon after 'ascended to heaven', confining her exploration to the eschatology of the 'second coming'. 

- The book has extensive notes, maps and timelines. It's a scholarly work and not for the faint hearted. 

Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

 

- Birnam Wood is a deeply political novel for our times. It's intellectually challenging and confronting, but utterly absorbing. It has the most mature and robust dialogue between passionate characters that I've read in a long time, something that is very rare in literary fiction. Catton never condescends. 

- She offers us a penetrating scrutiny and assessment of each of her characters - their minds, hearts, talents, self-obsessions, grievances and more. It's a 'relentless interior critique' as she says at one point. 

- There’s been an earthquake in Korowai National Park near the town of Thorndike in New Zealand's South Island, and the whole area has been closed off. Mira Bunting is the founder of a group of young nature-loving activists who secretly descend on deserted parks and farmlands to plant vegetables and gardens. They've named themselves Birnam Wood from Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

- Mira drives to Thorndike to see the former sheep station that has been listed for sale. She is confronted by a man who's just landed on a field in a small plane. He is Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire, and founder of a large corporation that makes drones for surveillance purposes around the world. He tells her he's a 'doomsteader' and plans to build a bunker on the property to survive the 'coming apocalypse'. He's in the process of buying the farm. His real intention, however, is to secretly mine the extensive farmlands and surrounding hills for rare earth elements destined for top secret applications in defence against China. His radiometric drones have discovered them. He's seized on the opportunity to 'make trillions'. 

- There's a touch of Bond villain about Lemoine. He's a bit of a caricature. But another central character in the novel becomes a counter focus to this rather silly narrative and substantially rescues it. Tony Gallo was one of the founding members of the group in its early subversive days and is the epitome of the far left. He's intellectually formidable and an aspiring investigative journalist. His anti-capitalist rants against ‘the market’ at one of the group’s quarterly meetings is nothing short of brilliant. The novel's plot has evolved into a battle of political ideas. It's the extreme woke left versus the extreme ugly right. 

- At the same meeting Mira informs the collective that she's met Lemoine on the farm and that he's offered to generously fund their operations. Tony is horrified but he's outvoted. What none of them know is that Lemoine sees their work as a convenient cover for his secret mining operations. He has also compromised Mira’s phone and stolen her data. He’s quickly intruding into and taking over their lives. 

- Tony is suspicious and is determined to uncover the truth. He starts researching a long investigative article. He also drives to the farm, staying out of sight, but is spotted by the drones. His life is in danger.

- Catton embarks on a fairly detailed and complex denouement, as Tony and Mira wise up to what's really happening and Lemoine takes measures to protect himself and his covert operations. To avoid spoilers I can only say that death wins out in the end. Not life or hope or one party of the political divide. Just death. 

- Most reviewers have highly praised this third novel from Catton. I am a great fan of her first two The Rehearsal and The Luminaries. But although Birnam Wood is a vigorous and intellectually energising read, and on many levels highly satisfying, it's seriously flawed as well. 

Sebastian Barry, Old God’s Time.

 

- This new novel from celebrated Irish author Sebastian Barry is perhaps the best and most absorbing novel I’ve read in a long time. His two previous novels were set in America, but in this one he comes home.

- Much of contemporary Irish fiction has a certain flavour to it. Authors, like Claire Keegan, confronting the awful legacy of child abuse committed by priests and nuns, and the church authorities who denied the seriousness of it and hid it all away - 'nothing to see here'. They also pressured the police chiefs to cease further investigations. Everyone was a loyal Catholic.  

- There's a decidedly Irish lilt to Barry's prose, in its repetitive, circling, and mesmerising short sentences. His narrative often slides into another zone altogether, creeping up on you, shifting to a different time or a different place. There's a beautiful dreamlike texture to it. 

- Tom Kettle, aged 66, a retired police detective, is living a simple life on Dalkey Island across the strait from Dublin. He’s soft and quiet by nature and very introspective. Mental clarity, however, is something he doesn’t have. As the novel proceeds we learn why. Tragedy has been a constant burden. He’s visited by two former junior colleagues and his old boss who are seeking his help on an unresolved case from a decade ago. A priest was found in a ravine with injuries suggesting he was stabbed and pushed down a mountain. 

- We learn that Kettle's wife, an orphan, was constantly raped by this priest, and he himself, also an orphan, was constantly abused by a religious Brother. His police colleagues know this sad history. They ask him to submit to a DNA test. They know his anger at the priests and the senior police officers has always been fierce. 

- There are a number of other characters, including his two children, in this beautiful, haunting novel that flesh out the whole very satisfactorily. 

- One of Sebastian Barry's extraordinary gifts as a writer is his boundless capacity for empathy. (IRISH TIMES).

Mali Waugh, Judgement Day

- If you're looking for an Australian crime thriller that's not another standard outback noir iteration then this is it. It's Mali Waugh's first novel and it's riveting. 

- It's set in Melbourne's CBD and upmarket eastern suburbs. As the police drive around, a lot of streets and buildings are constantly named and cafes visited. And houses are brought to life as vividly as in a real estate brochure. 

- Kaye Bailey, a senior family law court judge has been murdered during a gathering of her colleagues to honour the current Chief Justice who is retiring. Ironically, she was named as his replacement. 

- There's a taste of the Death in Paradise TV show in the set up - a close community, a small group of characters who are all suspects, and the murder happening during a get-together. 

- What elevates this book well above the usual trope however is the way Waugh enriches the drama with her characters' personal stories. Detective Senior Sergeant Jillian Basset, who is leading the case, is a fascinating and complicated new mother, desperate to get back to work to escape the psychological trauma she has experienced since giving birth. Her colleague, McClintock, a young man who was acting Senior Sergeant while she was on maternity leave, is a blokey, sports-loving, fairly arrogant and sexist pain in the arse. In fact, as Jillian sees it, there are sexist men everywhere, particularly in the court. They are elitist, imposing and self-entitled. Her pungent thoughts on them as the investigation proceeds are conveyed to the reader in italics: 'There'll be a press conference later too' he added. Of course you wouldn't want to deprive the public of your precious mug.

- The narrative is full of rich details about the everyday jobs of the court justices, their assistants and the police. And the personal drama and complications of motherhood. Jillian is sharply observant. And Waugh's telling intimate and sensitive.

- Like all crime dramas there are suspects and surprises, tangents and dead ends, but this novel pulls them all together and comes to an extremely satisfying resolution. 

- The Epilogue is emotional and beautiful and had me in tears.