Alice Pung, One Hundred Days

 

- It took me a while to get hooked by this new novel from Alice Pung. A young teen coming of age. A harsh, miserable mother. A broken family. A private school/state school melodrama. It's hardly an original story. 

- But as it proceeds Pung turns this narrative into a gritty and utterly absorbing exploration. 

- This element - electric, pulsating prose - is original: 

Just when Nurse Chin least expected it, along came this demanding peasant yakking away about her daughter being duped, like this was a chickenshit village instead of a big world where smart Asian women could get opportunity and independence.

- Her mother steals the meagre wages her daughter makes at the hairdressing salon, and the generous amounts of money her father gives her. Her justification is that she's the one paying the rent and buying all the food.

- But only rarely does the daughter vocalise her thoughts and feelings to her controlling mother. She only thinks them, which is very frustrating for the reader. She should be railing at her, loudly expressing her anger. Thankfully in the end she does, and it pays off in spades.

- Only an Asian writer could bring Asian family dynamics so vividly to life. Pung has a full grasp of the traditional habits, prejudices, beliefs and superstitions of the older generation, their anti-Western bias setting them against modern science and medicine. This makes for some measure of comedy but it's well and truly overridden by the resulting ugliness and horror experienced by their children and grandchildren. Modernity is a harshly contested zone.

- But Pung also castigates this so-called modernity when needed. The incidental contacts with males dotted throughout, on buses and streets, depict ugly, low rent, feral racists. The mother's urge to protect her daughter and her new baby is not entirely unjustifiable. 

- A thoroughly satisfying read, magnificently written. 

David Brophy, China Panic.

 

- This new book by David Brophy, a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney, is such a refreshing read. It is highly intelligent and informed, and full of facts and insights that so urgently need to be circulated and debated in these hyper-charged times. 

- It would be a mistake to characterise it as 'balanced', a rather meaningless cliche. It aims high, not low, thoroughly destroying anti-China posturing from the usual suspects on the left as well as the right. It names names and doesn't hold back. Clive Hamilton, Peter Hartcher and Hugh White are frequent targets. As is the defence and national security establishment.   

- Brophy's principal contention is straightforward: I see as dangerous any efforts to uphold a flagging American hegemony in Asia, which is now of an almost exclusively military nature. I worry at the visible rise in anti-Chinese racism we see here. And I worry at the worsening levels of state repression in China.

- Heather Rose’s highly lauded fantasy novel Bruny (2019) about a Chinese takeover of Tasmania is judged ‘a deeply problematic narrative’, indulging as it does in tired racial stereotypes. I read this book when it first came out and considered it dreadful. Thankfully Brophy destroys it. 

- The Conclusion addresses an important question of today: what should Australia do if China attacks Taiwan? We should oppose it in the same way we oppose America's wars: with demonstrations, strikes and coordinated international action, but not by calling for war on China ourselves. 

- These reviews on the preliminary page of the book are spot on:

Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

 

- This little novel is so unbelievably powerful. It’s a must read.

- It’s the 1990’s. He is 14 and bullied by Ninomiya and his friends at a Middle School in Japan. A girl classmate, Kojima, who is also bullied, asks to be his friend. Kawakami describes the  bullying in graphic detail and it's horrific.  

- The unnamed boy, the narrator, has a lazy eye, hence his nickname ‘Eyes’. Kojima struggles to be ‘normal’. They write letters to each other and talk freely. Both are from broken homes and unhappy marriages. 

- They are thoughtful, inquisitive and caring, despite suffering immense pain and sadness. 'Why do you think they do it? Why do you think they treat us like they do?’ 

- Kawakami allows her characters to indulge in Nietzschean philosophical musings on these fundamental moral issues. What is 'the right way to act’ here? Kojima is of the firm belief that fighting back with courage is a negative. I know there's so much pain in this, but we have to keep going...A time will come when everything will be clear. The reader can't but be unimpressed. It's a heavy handed moral imperative which is so unrealistic it's virtually other worldly. Nietzsche explored this in his tract Thus Spake Zarathustra, where he castigated the commitment to poverty, humility, chastity and asceticism as 'moralistic mendaciousness'. 

- Kojima also celebrates poverty and isolation. She conspicuously avoids being social, even to the point of rarely washing her hair or bathing. Unsurprisingly she's vehemently opposed to Eye’s consideration of undergoing surgery to fix his eye. She loves his eyes as they are. She refuses in the end to see him again or answer his letters, and begins to starve herself. She's become a victim of a moralistic cult.

- A counter perspective comes from one of the bullies. When challenged by Eyes he justifies his behaviour as having no meaning. It's an amoral universe. Everyone just does what they want...They’re acting on urges...Nothing’s good or bad…Nobody does anything because it’s right. That’s not why people do things.

- Kawakami gives us a superb and beautifully written ending. She could well have opted for sadness and tragedy, but she choses hope. 

(This review in the New Yorker is well worth reading)

(Pan Macmillan have priced this small 167 page paperback at $32.99, which is a complete and unforgivable rip off. In the UK it retails for £9.99. At the current exchange rate it should be no more than $24.99).

Martin McKenzie-Murray, The Speech Writer.

- This is so good and delightful, and a brilliantly funny book in all sorts of ways. It's clever, outrageous and way over the top. McKenzie-Murray's prose is punchy and often vulgar, and his Aussie dialogue hits the mark. 

- Toby Beaverbrook, son of English Baron George Beaverbrook II, tries to bring a measure of Churchillian eloquence to his political masters when he finally lands his dream job as a Canberra speechwriter. 

- The book has not received too many generous plaudits from Canberra-based political and media hacks who seemed to want something far more satirically serious, but these leaden sensibilities are tiresome. The author obviously set out to write a witty, comical, lighthearted read, and he's totally succeeded in my view. 

- There is perhaps an underlying critique of our political and public service elite, where rank self interest and stupidity rules, but it's a light touch. That's all that's needed. 

- The narrator, our junior speechwriter, ends up being thrown in jail for infusing a few drops of LSD into the prime minister's coffee, so he gets to read his memoir to Garry, his cell mate. Garry's comments, dotted throughout, are hilarious.

 - If you're stuck in lockdown, here's something to well and truly lighten the load. 

Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This.

 

                                 
- There is no denying Patricia Lockwood can write. Her prose is studded with sparkling gems. And she peppers her frequently tedious reflections with sharp, wry insights. Her focus is today's social media, mainly Twitter. She refers to it as the 'portal'.

- Her unnamed narrator occupies a space between dystopia and reality, never indulging in damning critique but never shying away from honest and cutting commentary. 

- It’s the Trump era, although he's only referred to as the ‘dictator’. There's nothing really original in her political observations but she occasionally nails it: 

The labored officious breathing of the policeman, which was never the breathing that stopped.

White people, who had the political education of potatoes - lumpy, unseasoned, and biased towards the Irish - were suddenly feeling compelled to speak out about injustice. This happened once every forty years on average, usually after a period when folk music became popular again. When folk music became popular again, it reminded people that they had ancestors, and then, after a considerable delay, that their ancestors had done bad things.

Go not far enough, and find yourself guilty of complacency, complicity, a political slumping into the cushions of your time. Go too far, and find yourself saying that you didn't care that a white child had been eaten by an alligator.   

- Generally I found her descriptions of social media and its obsessions pretty uninspiring. Her brilliant, colourful writing can’t disguise some middling insights. Her odd posts like ‘can a dog be twins’, and her invented words, like spelling sneezing as 'sneazing', are meaningless and tiresome in the extreme.

- In Part Two of the book, however, things change dramatically. Her sister’s baby is diagnosed through ultrasound as seriously brain damaged. If it survived pregnancy it would only live for months. It's an immensely sad and jolting event for her wider family. They address the abortion option but decide not to go down that legally complicated path. They display a commendable and surprising moral depth. This is real life. It's not the empty, indulgent 'portal'. The writing is beautiful and very emotional. 

The doors of bland suburban houses now looked possible, outlined, pulsing - for behind any one of them could be hidden a bright and private glory.

Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library.

 

- This delightful historical novel brings vividly to life the occupation of Paris by the Nazis in 1939, and how the locals coped, particularly the destruction of their work lives and the lack of food and other necessities. Their family, friend and colleague relationships were put under enormous stress. There was outright betrayal, plenty of dobbing, hatred of citizens deemed, often falsely, 'collaborators', and rank antisemitism. Ugly behaviour defined so much of French society during the war years. But on the other hand it also created close friendships and intimacy, and enabled courage and the spirit of resistance to emerge despite the risks.

- There’s something irresistible about a book that so emotionally engages you in the lives of its characters. This book achieves that benchmark in spades.

- We're also taken to the small town of Froid in Montana many years after the war where Odile, the main character from Paris, now lives. The author captures the parochialism of this small American town perfectly. It's 1983 at the height of the Cold War and the enemy is Russia.

- We're provided with rich details of the characters' family lives. Odile’s beautiful, loving relationship with her twin brother Remy, is just one example. The Paris library staff and their regular clients also add to the rich tapestry. 

- Unfortunately the novel drowns a bit in sentimentality, despite toughening up at the end. Personal disagreements are too frequently dissolved in an instant. Such was the fragility of those stressful times.

- Nevertheless this is an exceptionally enjoyable read. 

Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts.

  

- This new novel from Jhumpa Lahiri is simply wonderful. We're offered small, two or three page capsules of everyday life in an unnamed Italian city, quite probably Rome. It builds slowly and powerfully, the narrator defining herself as an immensely likeable, attractive and thoughtful woman. She's never married or been in a long term relationship. She leads a solitary life but she’s very honest and open about disclosing all her small and larger secrets.

- She did not have a happy childhood. She was an only child and her parents were the very opposite of generous, caring and supportive. Her father was a miserable penny pincher who kept to himself, sitting in his armchair all day reading the newspapers. He hated going out apart from to the theatre, his only passion. Her mother was miserly too. ‘I mourn my unhappy origins’ she admits at one point. 

- As a result she’s very sensitive to the lives of husbands and wives, whether neighbours or local shop and cafe owners, and particularly welcoming of their friendly gestures. She's an academic but dislikes her working environment and most of her colleagues. 

- Lahiri originally wrote this novel in Italian then translated it into English. Unfortunately it shows. She drops some strange words at times, quite foreign to the native English speaker - gelid (icy cold), springing (opting), agenda (calendar/personal organiser).