This will hurt me...

Mad as hell

2024-09-14T11:07:00.001+10:00

So there I was, arm hooked up to the machine, watching my plasma swirl away into a bag while the morning news dribbled across the screen like a bad fever dream. And what were they showing? A "riot" in Melbourne, allegedly. The sort of riot where the real thugs wear body armour, carry pepper spray and look like they just walked off the set of RoboCop. The people they were beating? A ragtag crew of teenagers and old hippies—probably fresh out of a drum circle, still smelling of patchouli. But sure, let's call it a riot.

Now, here's where it really gets good. I mentioned this spectacle to a few people later, thinking maybe they'd share my outrage or, at the very least, give a damn. But no. What did I get instead? A smirk, a chuckle, and—oh, the pièce de résistance—"You should really just let it go." Let it go? Yeah, let me uncork a nice, overpriced cup of coffee, sit back with my legs crossed, and soak in the latest reality TV trash. Why bother caring when I can numb myself with someone else's humiliation for entertainment?

And then comes the great revelation: "Hey, you know Donald Trump is bad, right?" Oh, do I? Try not to dislocate your shoulder from patting yourself on the back for that one. Wow, you've done it. You've cracked the code. Trump is a lying sack of shit? Stop the presses! Tell me, what are you going to hit me with next? Fire burns? Water's wet? The Earth is round? Here's a medal for being a little less asleep than usual.

But while we're busy pointing fingers at the obvious villain, can we also take a minute to remember that an awful lot of evil happens simply because it's lesser? We love our small outrages, don't we? Get mad just enough to feel good about ourselves but not so much that we actually do anything about it.

Because let me tell you something—if I ever find myself anything less than incandescently pissed when I see jackbooted thugs disguised as peacekeepers, thumping the life out of some kid, or casually spraying grandma in the face with tear gas for suggesting that maybe—just maybe—killing kids isn't cool, well, that's when you know it's all over for me. I'm done. Call it quits. Hand in my humanity card.

But we live in this fine era of hypocrisy, don't we? Where the political classes are ever-so-concerned about the sanctity of life—until it starts messing with their investment portfolios. Oh, you're homeless? Here's the solution: make it illegal. Mentally ill and freezing on the streets? Tough break, but we're busy funnelling taxpayer money into tax cuts for the rich. They need more summer homes, after all. It's truly a heartwarming display of Christian compassion. Turn away refugees at the border with one hand and quote the Bible with the other. Love thy neighbour—but only if they've got a Visa and a steady job. Amen.

And what a beautiful alliance, Christians and capitalists united in their one true faith: crushing dissent. You stand up for the oppressed? You're a troublemaker. You get rich off of exploitation and cruelty? You're a patriot. We're all too busy debating the obvious—Trump bad, police good, blah blah blah—while they're out there making sure the status quo stays nicely oiled and profitable. It's a neat little system they've got going.

And then there's our ongoing, delightful reconciliation with Aboriginal people. The headlines love to make it seem like progress. Oh look, we're graciously giving them back their ancestors' stolen bones—pat on the back, good job, everyone. Meanwhile, they're still denied land rights, dignity and a voice. Ancestors slaughtered, children stolen, culture stomped into the dirt—and we roll our eyes at their anger. What ungrateful bastards!

Don't even get me started on those politicians who claim to represent the workers while selling our futures for a fistful of dollars from their corporate overlords. Traitors, the lot of them. Meanwhile, the middle-class zombies around me float through their lives, plump and lazy, fattened on pay rises they didn't earn and leave days they didn't fight for. I've never seen you on a picket line, and I've certainly never seen you dip into your pocket for the union that's won you your cushy little world. But sure, tell me again to "let it go."

Move on, they say. Move on? I'd rather rip my own head off and feed it to myself.

Listening to Music, Getting Horny

2024-09-08T16:06:00.009+10:00

Night light. The road to Whyalla, South Australia.

Listening to Music, Getting Horny

The air is acerbic, bitter,

abominable in its annoyance—

but then, the music.

It hums, a mellifluous aurora,

diaphanous as gossamer, sliding

into my ears with astonishing aplomb.

I do not want to be here,

beleaguered by the banalities

of daily life—its atrocious hullabaloo,

the appalling humdrum—but the sound,

the sound is different.

It is always different.

The beat is a clandestine caress,

as capricious as it is compelling.

I feel it move through me,

not delicately, no.

It hits with a benevolent violence,

awakening something deeply familiar.

An ineffable ache stirs,

somewhere between ribcage and hips,

a strange, sublime longing

that becomes suddenly unavoidable.

It is this: the music touches,

then taunts—now casual,

now intense, now furious,

moving like lithe fingers across skin.

My thoughts blur, my body answers.

A dreadful conundrum:

to sit still or to feel

everything.

The melody does not care,

it continues, deftly, deliberately,

as though it knows

what it does, how

it weaves me into

its winsome cacophony.

And I am left

with this astonishing ambivalence:

horrendous and beautiful,

as the beat plays on

and I, always, want more.

"The pain you feel today will show itself as strength tomorrow."

2024-08-25T12:16:00.002+10:00

Reflection of self. Back after a run. Geilston Bay, Tasmania.

Ah, the Point to Pinnacle. The name alone conjures images of an epic quest, doesn't it? A half marathon that, quite literally, takes you up a mountain. It's not so much a race as a rite of passage for those of us who have a penchant for... well, let's call it "creative self-destruction."

Let's dive into the logistical nightmares. First on the list: chafing. Yes, the age-old nemesis of all who dare to run further than their driveway. Picture it: a nether region, chafed to the consistency of sandpaper, rubbing mercilessly against sweat-soaked shorts. It's like grating a brick of Parmesan on a rusty cheese grater. An image to savour, I know.

And then there's the sweat. Oh, the sweat. It pours from my cap like a relentless waterfall, blinding me with its saltiness. I start to feel like a tragic hero from a Greek myth—Sisyphus with a side of sodium. Each droplet is a sharp, stinging reminder that I am, alas, human.

Ah, but let's not neglect the quads. Around the 15-kilometre mark, they start screaming louder than a toddler denied ice cream. It's a burn so intense it feels like I've got a thousand miniature suns trapped in my thighs. A delightful sensation, I assure you. The kind that makes you question all your life choices up to this very moment.

By the end, my shoulders are encrusted with salt—a crusty, gritty badge of honour. A testament to my endeavour, a physical manifestation of my sheer bloody-mindedness. I wear it proudly, like some kind of sweat-soaked warrior from a very peculiar tribe.

And then there's the mental game. Oh, the headspace one must inhabit to willingly trudge up yet another hill. It's a game of wills: me against myself. My toes are plotting mutiny, my lungs are auditioning for a part in a melodrama, but somehow, I keep moving. Because in this dance between agony and endurance, quitting simply isn't on the playlist.

And yet, amidst all this madness, there's a peculiar serenity. Yes, that's right—a strange peace that washes over you on a long, tough run. It's the kind of tranquillity only achieved through complete physical exhaustion—a Zen state of sorts, where every step becomes a meditation, every heartbeat a mantra. You find yourself in a rhythm, lost in the pounding of your feet, the steady thrum of your pulse. It's almost... beautiful. The French word "Jouissance" hints at it.

So, why do I choose this madness? Why willingly march into the fiery crucible of burning muscles, blistered feet and the ever-present spectre of chafing? Perhaps Nietzsche was onto something when he spoke of the will to power—the drive to transcend oneself, to push past the confines of comfort and familiarity. In this uphill struggle, I find a strange kind of freedom, a release from the mundane. It’s not about conquering the mountain (after all, I've already don't that a dozen times); it’s about conquering myself.

There’s a meditative quality in the rhythm of my steps, a sense of clarity that comes only when all else is stripped away. In those moments, as I trudge ever upward, I feel profoundly alive.

In the end, the Point to Pinnacle is more than just a run. It’s my personal existential playground, a place where I confront the absurdity of existence and, in doing so, find meaning. It's my peculiar form of relaxation, my brand of fun, a paradox wrapped in sweat and salt. So yes, I'm back again for November, ready to face the mountain once more, not because I have to, but because I choose to.

Post-industrial societal decay

2024-08-24T20:06:00.009+10:00

Picture this: a broken-down wind turbine marooned in a semi-arid, cold South Australian desert, with rain slanting down like a cosmic joke. Once a symbol of innovation and progress, it's now a hulking testament to stalled dreams. And isn't that just the perfect metaphor for the Australian Dream? We were all promised a slice of the pie, a fair go, a home with a bit of a garden, maybe even a white picket fence if you were into that sort of thing. But now it feels like the dream's been yanked out from under us, leaving us all standing around like that useless wind turbine—broken, rusting, and utterly bewildered as the rain pours down.

This disintegration isn't just about the fading hopes of home ownership or a cushy retirement. No, it runs deeper, right to the heart of what once bound us together. Class solidarity, the good old notion that we're all in this together, seems to have crumbled like a sandcastle in a storm. Maybe it's the endless grind of casualisation, or perhaps it's the relentless march of individualism. Whatever the reason, it's as if we've forgotten that there's strength in numbers. It's easier now to see your neighbour as competition rather than a comrade. Without that unity, we're left stranded— much like that turbine — without the collective wind in our sails to push back against the powers that be while Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, snouts firmly planted in the trough, laugh all the way to the bank, perched atop their golden toilet seats.

Apologies for the confusing metaphor, but if the Croc fits...

Speaking of the powers that be, let's talk about those men in suits. I don't trust them. Never have. Maybe it's the polished shoes, the perfectly knotted ties, or the way they say "stakeholder" with a straight face. Or maybe it's because their promises sound as hollow as the wind howling through that deserted turbine. They seem to move through life untouched by the grit and grind that the rest of us know so well. While we're left out here in the cold, they're warm and dry, spinning tales of opportunity and meritocracy that feel as broken as our dreams. And as the rain keeps falling, I can't help but think that if anyone's going to fix this mess, it sure as hell won't be them.

“There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.”

2021-09-17T06:00:00.011+10:00

Dude on half a motorbike, Shag Bay. August 2021.

The Humans by Matt Haig

Synthesizing 'clever' and 'funny' is a tough act in a novel. Too often, what is intended as humourous can land as smug or smarmy. Or, perhaps more often, tiresome and dull. Credit to Haig here, as I found The Humans both smug AND dull.

The whole thing was just so obvious, laborious descended into a sickly sweet tweeness that was clearly intended to be sincere and wry. Perhaps it was my mood, as looking at other reviews here, I am clearly swimming against the current.

Not for me.

⭐ 1/2

“You cannot lie down behind your badly made decisions and call them fate or determinism or god.”

2021-09-15T06:00:00.015+10:00

Evening clouds, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

Remix of the classic Oedipal myth? I found it alienating, abstruse and far too tiring to become absorbed in the story. Far too often I scratched my head wondering "Which character is this now? What timeline is this happening again?" only to sigh and keep going because the whole thing is too dreary and confusing to worry too much about it.

For me, the mix of bleak social realism with a neo-classical retelling of a Greek myth just didn't work. The shifting timeline, fragmented storyline and preposterous plotline were more tiresome than energizing. There is a cold and 'deliberate' artifice that never gave me a sense that the author has just relaxed into the story. What we're left with is a self-conscious and turgid mess.

⭐ 1/2

“A hush is a dangerous thing. Silence is solid and dependable, but a hush is expectant, like a pregnant pause; it invites mischief, like a loose thread begging to be pulled.”

2021-09-13T06:00:00.002+10:00

Light on the hill, Macquarie Street, Hobart. August 2021.

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

This is not the book for me. I found it cloying, overly sentimental and filled with banal observations and predictable twists. Crikey, I'm bored just thinking back on it.

If superficiality is your thing, and you won't bristle at the guileless, dated presentation of developmentally disabled characters and lazy anachronisms in the overused flashbacks, you might find this more bearable than I.

⭐ 1/2

“Maybe we'd all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.”

2021-09-11T06:00:00.004+10:00

The bins are out, Geilston Bay, August 2021.

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

After delivering a rather scathing critique of Dalton's last book - All Our Shimmering Skies - I am glad that I succumbed to the badgering of my darling wife to give his much-praised debut a chance. She is correct. This is the infinitely superior book.

I suspect that this is largely because Dalton is treading more familiar ground. Unlike the new book, there's an authenticity to the place and characters despite the shaggy dog tale that emerges. This is a likeable coming of age tale that will have appeal to anyone with memories of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in 1980s Australia.

There's a heart to what could have been a bitter and unpleasant tale. Still, Dalton pulls no punches, and there are no shortage of triggers for anyone who grew up in violent, tumultuous households. I appreciated the sophistication that the author has sensitively explored the concept of how young people cope with childhood trauma. I particularly liked Poppy Birkbeck, the high school guidance counsellor, who runs against type in playing a positive role in the boys finding a way forward in life.

While the final few chapters stretch credulity, I enjoyed the novel very much. Well worth your time!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.”

2021-09-09T06:27:00.014+10:00

Good morning. Federation Dock, Hobart. August 2021.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

A "companion piece" rather than a sequel to one of my favourite books that I've read this year (Life After Life. Much like the first book, this one is also experimental in form. Timelines skip backwards and forwards but (largely) avoid the 'parallel realities' that marked the earlier work.

The experimentation did not disrupt the experience, and I found that it again afforded Atkinson the power to explore the concept of memory, fiction and imagination. If I didn't quite enjoy it as much as its predecessor, it was due to the presence of the distasteful Viola. Without a doubt, her character is an essential exploration of the intergenerational shift, but I did find her irritating to the point of distraction.

There is a fine art to the wilful disruption of chronology that goes some way to explaining Viola's attitude. The resolution of the piece - like Life After Life - is at once original and devastating. This is indeed a novel that reminds one of the exciting potentials of the form. It is both exhilarating and heartbreaking at once.

Atkinson's writing never feels fake or masturbatory. Indeed, she has presented here another deft and inspiring achievement by a novelist who seems fearless in her confidence in setting about to new and imposing challenges. I am always sceptical about the mythology of the literary canon, but my word, if there is such a thing, one should reserve a seat for Kate Atkinson.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“It takes courage to keep love at the center when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of things! It’s easy to get angry, anyone can do that. It’s making good that’s the hard part, it’s staying hopeful that’s the hard part! It’s staying in love that’s the hard part.”

2021-09-07T06:00:00.025+10:00

Sails above. Pier One, Salamanca, Hobart. August 2021.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

This is an immense book in all sorts of ways. Just shy of 800 pages, it is quite unlike anything that I have ever read before. A sprawling, opulent alternative history novel about human civilisation beginning with a twist that eliminates European influence from events post-1400.

We begin with a small detachment of Mongol soldiers stumbling across the fact that nearly all of Europe has been killed by a plague of such magnitude that it has emptied most cities and towns, leaving on a few survivors to scrabble on. From here, we travel through a series of chronologically spaced sections over the next seven centuries on an alternate Earth in which the societies of varying forms of Islam, the vast Chinese empire and other Buddhist states dominate global affairs in the absence of western Christendom.

The conceit is fabulous, and in embracing a broad approach to reincarnation, we can follow three distinct characters who carry some elements of themselves and their memories (with intervening moments in bardo, the transitional state between death and rebirth.

It's hard on the brain, but Robinson aides the reader by keeping the various reincarnations as characters whose names begin with 'K', 'B' and 'I'. Switching cultures, genders, status and (in one case) species, the literary device grants the book omniscience that at once feels natural and real.

While it could be trimmed down a bit, and at times,, the characters discuss the finer points of philosophy at tedious lengths, in sum, there is a sardonic and gentle charm that carries through the wonderfully diverse and exotic characters and places.

One particular quite captures the heart of the piece:

"This is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing."

There is a sanguine lens to what the World might be like free from European influence. World wars, genocide and exploitation emerge, as does feminism, a class consciousness despite the absence of Marx along with the full gamut of scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment.

The world that emerges is for the most part no better or worse. While distinctive in terms of surface details like fashion and language, it remains much the same at the human level. Species extinction, the nuclear threat and climate change all emerge as the world is both the worst of times with the possibility of becoming the best of times ever-present.

Be warned though, this is a book that tests the intellect. A solid footing in philosophy, world culture and basic scientific principles should see you through, but it will challenge you nonetheless. The book delves deep into the metaphysical weeds of eastern religions, which are then assimilated into a truly unique setting, unlike anything that I have seen previously.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“You know,” George said, “when I look in the mirror in the morning I see a miserable old bastard looking back at me. Yet when I see you, I take great comfort, knowing how much progress I have left to make on that same path.”

2021-09-05T06:00:00.015+10:00

Sunrise over the Tasman Bridge. Hobart. August 2021.

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

A terribly sad and decidedly still novel, this is not at all as I expected. I was pleasantly surprised by the light touch that Harris has applied to what is a brutal tale. Set in the south in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, I understood that the book would tackle issues of race and sexuality.

Before starting, I was prepared for either an affected and anachronistic (but largely 'worthy') book or one that embraced the usual machismo (with a queer twist). This is neither. It weaves twin narratives quite effortlessly in a quiet way. The weak but thoroughly decent George Walker is at the centre, who anchors the novel to allow the natural exploration of themes not usually found in such books.

Reminiscent of Sebastian Barry’s work, The Sweetness of Water is a lovely, lyrical novel. Moreover, Harris's fine writing achieves the complex interweaving of the grand and the intimate and explores what can be burdensome themes deftly at a personal level.

An awe-inspiring debut; I look forward to reading more from this author.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."

2021-09-03T06:00:00.015+10:00

Zinc work, East Risdon Bay. August 2021.

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott

A masterpiece. In Bobby Wabalanginy, an intelligent and optimistic soul, Scott conjures up a narrator who will live long in the memory. Bobby, whose real name remains unpronounceable to the invaders throughout the novel, means "all of us playing together", a bitter irony given the course of events.

Bobby is a marvel. Bright and eager for knowledge, he is a natural showman. These capacities allow him to shine in both his indigenous world and the newcomers to his land. Part clown, part shaman, the book does a magnificent job of naturally showing the reader the centrality of songs, music, and dance to the Noongar people of southwestern Western Australia.

Bobby learns to speak, read and write in the white man's language, but a reoccurring motif throughout is the fundamental disconnect in understanding between the two cultures. His native culture is just as complex but more physical, present and elemental. One knows the land because one can feel it under his feet. The feel and smell of the wind, the rhythms of the season, the behaviours of the wildlife. Life is a collective endeavour of sharing bountiful resources.

The new culture arrives and does things quite differently. We know how this story goes...

Oh, but the telling. The telling is lovely. The newcomers are a motley crew, a mix of dreamers, opportunists, wastrels and strays. They are not all bad, but the repercussions of their arrival are profound in ways not immediately apparent.

Few and isolated, the first colonists in the region are profoundly ignorant of local conditions and rely on Indigenous knowledge to survive. In this setting, a range of relationships ensued. While ‘equality’ of Noongar and European was most certainly not on the cards, these relationships are distinguished by forms of genuine exchange. As the story emerges and the visitors grow in strength and confidence, the cultural divergences become grimmer.

The hubris and self-assured ignorance of the Europeans is maddening to Bobby as he struggles between the two worlds. Here, That Deadman Dance serves as a fascinating companion piece to Tom Kennealy's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith from 1972. Unlike Jimmie in that book, Bobby replies in sorrow rather than anger.

"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."

In his author’s note, Scott says

"I wanted to build a story from [Noongar] confidence, their inclusiveness and sense of play, and their readiness to appropriate new cultural forms - language and songs, guns and boats - as soon as they became available. Believing themselves manifestations of a spirit of place impossible to conquer, they appreciated reciprocity and the nuances of cross-cultural exchange."

Scott himself has played a critical part in the attempt to regenerate Noongar speech, and the book itself does a beautiful job in weaving it throughout the text.

Given everything, this book is incredibly generous. Despite everything that happens in the text - and the course of Australian history - it emerges from the point of view of Aboriginal confidence. It rightly serves as a pillar for a new understanding of what has gone and the potential to come.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“I can’t say for certain why the three of us are friends. Sure, who can answer a question like that. I suppose there aren’t many children along our road, so there isn’t much choice, and I don’t give it a lot of thought. We carry on as we are, and there’s plenty of fun to be had. That’s not to say that I couldn’t make nicer or better friends in another place, but how would I ever know the difference.”

2021-09-01T06:00:00.016+10:00

Pole in the sky, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here by Frances Macken

You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here strikes me as a book that is something of a fusion of Derry Girls and Normal People, with a jarring murder/ disappearance side plot that is left unreconciled. As such, it did not quite hit the mark for me.

In our narrator, the drifting Katie, along with best (!) friends, the toxic Evelyn and meek Maeve, we follow the unlikely trio. as they try to adjust from childhood to life in adulthood. For a story that centres on this cramped friendship, it is striking the extent to which these girls don't really like each other.

I note that some reviewers took issue with the lack of resolution to the Katie and Evelyn dynamic, but the lacklustre death of their relationship seemed a natural course to me. What bothered me more was the seeming abandonment of the disappearance of Pamela Cooney. A number of clues/ red herrings are sprinkled in the direction of a range of characters, but the entire plotline just peters out with little fanfare.

Similarly - and perhaps not unrelated - a fair bit of effort has been made to get readers to look at the decidedly odd Maeve in all manner of ways, but the ending to this arc also felt queerly unsatisfying. To this reader though, unlike the Pamela plotline, this is likely a deliberate literary choice from Macken. One not to my taste though.

All up, I liked more of the book than not and will keep a keen eye out for what comes next.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“Ol' Bill's bein' all cagey because it's hard for blokes to admit a woman might choose death over putting up with more of their bullshit.”

2021-08-31T06:00:00.011+10:00

Samurai, Hobart. August 2021.

All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton

I have no problem with a protagonist being a precocious child, but there is a point where precociousness becomes aggravating, and young Molly Hook hit that point for me early on. In part, this is because I did not believe in her. Given the trauma and neglect of her upbringing - told in unyieldingly graphic detail - she is remarkably erudite and thoughtful. There is a difference between "taking a strength-based approach" to building a character and "taking the piss".

In terms of other characters, Greta and Yukio were fine, albeit thinly sketched. My main issue concerns the construction of Aubrey. Dalton wants to have his cake and eat it when it comes to Molly's cruel uncle. Dalton frames Aubrey as evil personified, making some effort to explain how he came to be this way. We have many (many) pages expended on how the traumatising childhood of young Aubrey has programmed him with hate. Hate is repeatedly cited as his key motivation, yet we are to accept that spurned love triggers his actions that propel the book. Make up your mind! This jarred for me.

Mostly though, I found the treatment of the landscape – and we’re talking the awe-inspiring, gorgeous but deadly Kakadu – slight and incomplete. Given that our protagonists are on foot and alone in far north Australia in late February, they have an effortless time of it. How and where Molly learned so much bushcraft is not entirely explained, and her preternatural gifts did have me rolling my eyes on occasion.

The story's arc is solid, and there are plenty of thrills, near misses to keep you on your toes. Still, the shallow treatment of Yukio and Sam’s respective cultures had me cringing. One might have hoped that the editing phase would have corrected this course.

In summation, if cliched characterisation, anachronistic behaviours and whimsical, trite self-help-isms are your thing, this may well be the book for you. If not, best give it a miss.

⭐ ⭐

"…in Queanbeyan, Helen Kalasoudas couldn’t break even; down in Mildura, Jim Melemenis got himself into trouble with the Italians; Mick Papacostas and his brothers were playing too much dice in Camperdown…"

2021-08-29T06:00:00.009+10:00

Setting sun, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Lucky's by Andrew Pippos

Another book that chooses to advance its story irregularly. Dynamically shifting timelines are so typical these days that I am unsure whether the word irregular fits anymore!

We primarily dwell in 2002, where the unmoored Emily leaves her failing marriage in the UK to set about researching and writing a New Yorker article about the rise and fall of a now-defunct Australian chain of family restaurants, one that ended in a mass shooting. Shadowing this journey is the mystery of her long-dead father's interest in what seems to be nothing more than a little bit of trivia on the other side of the world.

From here, we jump back first to 1944 for a while, then back twenty years previously as we get our heads around the Greek diaspora. Between zipping back and forth to 2002, we spend a bit of time in the 1940s and 1950s on the emergence of the Lucky's empire and dissolution of a marriage. Moreover, we have the mystery of Emily's father revealed (and reburied).

It is odd that the mass shooting felt a little tacked on and somewhat immaterial to the core events of the piece. It feels like it should be more critical to the narrative. While the story's gravitational pull - from both past and present - builds in tension leading to the massacre in the early-1990s, I found it significantly less compelling than the present-day arc involving the titular character's run on Wheel of Fortune.

I did enjoy the book's exploration of the lives of migrants (and the milk bar culture of the 50s and 60s) in the immediate post-war period. It would likely make for a colourful and engaging mini-series. Thumbs up, albeit slighter than I expected.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“I laugh out loud at how wonderful life is that it takes a hell of a knock like that and it’s just fine, and I find the steadiness in myself...”

2021-08-27T06:00:00.013+10:00

Starlings, Lindisfarne. August 2021.

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

As an oddly structured novel, the book features alternating chapters from the perspective of our narrator's present (told in the past tense) and her past (told in the present tense). Those chapters set in the present progress in an even and linear fashion. Those chapters set in the past hop and leap backwards in a disconnected and disjointed way. While this is an innovative way to capture our protagonist's haphazard and traumatic past, the fragmented nature of the telling is confusing at times.

There is some evocative writing here, with those sections set on the remote sheep station and in the present particularly resonant. Other sections failed to convince, with the strange relationship with the withered Otto and the period of sex work in a port town in the Pilbara striking a bit of a dull note to my ear.

We know very little about our central character, as Wyld lets the past emerge in fragments and half-light. The one constant is a woman carrying a load, traumatised by something (or someone) and choosing self-isolation as her defence. I appreciated how the relationship emerges with the similarly damaged Lloyd, which emerges in the present in a natural and hopeful fashion. This gives the entire piece some possibility of light and redemption amidst the dark and desolate surroundings.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

"...because when you know people all your life you try to understand how it is for them. What you can't understand you just accept."

2021-08-25T06:00:00.017+10:00

Pipes, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf

Despite the arduous and grim lives of the characters within, The Tie That Binds is an extremely gentle novel. There is an ease with which Haruf's prose emerges on the page, a plain-speaking directness that carries significant emotional heft.

Covering 80 years, the novel is a slow burner that starts at the ending, whips back around to the beginning and meanders across a lifetime of (largely) sadness, missed opportunity and resignation to a life suffocated by a hateful and bitter man.

Told in snippets of memories and assumed events, the book bears an elegant sense of time and place rarely seen. The town of Holt, Colorado, is a small but exquisitely realised world. It saddens me to think that Haruf's oeuvre only stretched to six novels, but I am looking forward to reading the four that I haven't read.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2

""The place where a part connects is specially prepared with a housing, a thread or a flange. One true surface against another. It’s not possible for the parts of the body to fit together like this. There’s skin and there’s the flesh under it. The flesh, the meat of the body, isn’t stable. There are three lines cut into the middle of father man’s belt.

2021-08-23T06:00:00.013+10:00

Droplets on a leaf, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Exploded View by Carrie Tiffany

Hmmm. Perhaps the fact that cars are quite possibly the least interesting things that I can imagine explains my coolness to this one. It's a bleak and sombre book, but I never quite believed it. The novel progresses through what is essentially one unbroken stream of consciousness from the mind of a young girl.

Our narrator - dealing with significant neglect and abuse - struck me as too uneven to fully accept as authentic. This may well be due to her use of a Holden car manual to process her trauma. Still, there is an incongruity to her singular prescience, acumen and utter lack of agency that struck me as unconvincing.

There is an implausibility to the car journey that serves as the centre point of the story, which is not helped by the feeling that the author gave up on it a third of the way through. I found the entire thing uneven and frustrating, which is disappointing as there are moments of great writing.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2

“Someone can decide it’s in their best interests to agree to something, but a choice is only really a choice if there’s a genuine alternative. Otherwise it’s manipulation and it’s taking advantage.”

2021-08-21T06:00:00.012+10:00

Blue sky and power lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

A slow-burn mystery set in the hot and dry southwest of Queensland (the bit that is closer to Adelaide than Brisbane), I enjoyed The Lost Man a lot. While it is something of a murder mystery, the story isn't driven by a police investigation. It progresses through the examination of the intergenerational trauma of one dysfunctional farming family.

More exploration of how brutalised Australian men deal with such trauma than boilerplate mystery, Harper adroitly captures the harsh landscape that centres the whole work. It is a strong addition to her previous books and continues the shift towards a more nuanced understanding of masculinity and loneliness in Australian settings.

Well worth your time.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

2021-08-19T06:00:00.016+10:00

Self-portrait, Hobart. August 2021.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

A strange mix of genres that touches on the metaphysical without fully entering the world of magical realism. I suspect that I may have missed some of the nuances of the narrative because of my lack of familiarity with African folklore or the oral biblical tradition, so any confusion as to what was going on at times is entirely on me.

Still, it is a deeply moving and affecting work, with a feeling of real sorrow at its heart and a range of fascinating and frustrating characters that will remain vivid long in my mind.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left.”

2021-08-17T06:00:00.002+10:00

Power in the lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

This is a long and intricate book with a huge cast of characters, every one of them annoying and flawed in their own special way. Just like real life! With this, a mysterious illness arises and stalks across the fractured United States in the midst of an election that pits a career politician (who happens to be a capable but cold and aloof woman) against a reckless and obnoxious billionaire with some decidedly nefarious allies.

Yes, the parallels are stark and Wendig is not shy of sharing his thoughts on the matter. The centrepiece of the novel is the emergence of a sleepwalking illness that causes a (seemingly) random group of people to zone out and hit the road, walking with some kind of predetermined destination unknown to all. If you try and stop them, they explode (generally killing anyone nearby). Very messy.

The beginning of the book introduces the sullen and irritable teenager Shana, who wakes up one morning to discover her younger sister is patient zero with the sleeping sickness. Shana's peevishness stems from a detached father and mother who took of mysteriously a few years earlier. I never quite warmed to Shana, but this wasn't enough to put me off the book.

At 800 pages, I will not waste your time on a detailed outline. Suffice to say that the CDC is called in, a maverick scientist takes up the challenge of solving the puzzle of the sleepwalkers and pretty soon we have an evolved artificial intelligence supercomputer, a weak and vain preacher being manipulated by a powerful group of white supremacists, a raging pandemic destined to kill most of the world's population and an ageing rock god struggling with a secret and desire to find some meaning in the worship that he craves.

Sure, it's too long and a little bit "by-the-numbers", but it proceeds with gusto in an engaging style and some of the curveballs thrown in are really fascinating (not to mention cool). There's a bit too much standing around, and while I'm all in favour of flawed, rounded characters, they don't all have to be such pricks.

There is a general passivity to the whole thing which - while fitting the metaphor of sleepwalking into destruction - belies the importance of saving everybody on the planet. Perhaps the fact that the author's politics aligned well with mine (I won't complain about maligning hypocritical right-wing Christians and racists) kept me going, but all up I'm erring on the generous side.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Auhl sensed a busy, populated landscape even though he’d barely seen or heard anyone yet. He listened, and presently followed a rattly snore to a bedroom midway along the hallway.""

2021-08-15T06:00:00.013+10:00

Broken bottles, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher

This is the first book that I've read by the prolific Australian crime write Garry Disher, and I am confident that it won't be the last. It's an interesting take on the modern police procedural, introducing Detective Alan Auhl, an old-timer back in the job after a few years away.

Auhl has been roped into the cold case unit, finding himself surrounded by a younger group who aren't that excited to be sharing an office with an old-timer. He's a likeable chap with a tendency to drift through life, as exhibited by a rather bohemian home life and dissatisfaction with the system failures that lead to too many bad men getting away with crimes against women.

We have several puzzling murders to solve against this backdrop, each progressing on multiple fronts and Auhl getting involved in a decidedly irregular fashion. These deviations from the usual tropes keep this one engaging all way through to a satisfying conclusion.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“The lie was one they - children, doctors, nurses - all encourage. The lie was that postponing death was life. That wicked lie had now imprisoned Francie in a solitude more absolute and perfect and terrifying than any prison cell.”

2021-08-14T06:00:00.014+10:00

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

I have so many questions. What is Richard Flanagan trying to say here? What was with the colossal pivot about halfway through the book? Is it a book about dying? Or is it about Mental illness? Am I taking things more literally than is good for me? Perhaps the biggest question is, is Richard Flanagan okay?

One of the treats of living at the arse-end of the world and fancying myself as the rugged outdoorsy type (land and sea) is that I occasionally bump into Richard Flanagan. Now, he wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, but I have shared pleasantries on more than one occasion on some matter or another.

It's going to be very hard not to ask him what this book is all about the next time I bump into the bloke.

I recall most vividly the awful Tasmanian bushfires of 2006, 2013, 2016 and the terrible fires in January and October 2019. I also remember the trauma of the seemingly eternal fires blighting the big island above and share the frustration of the political class in this country to take the profound implications of climate change and the ongoing collapse of our ecosystems seriously, so I get it.

Yet... I find myself looking for metaphors that perhaps aren't there. I really should be content in my determination that it's a desperate and furious scream into the void and that I needn't fuss over deeper meaning.

In the damaged siblings denying the reality of the death of their mother, I felt on reasonably sure ground until body parts started disappearing. Not amputations, but 'vanishings', while the story keeps on chugging along (or veers off wildly into the scrub, to mix my metaphors).

Perhaps it's me, not you, Richard. I've always struggled with magical realism (although I loved Gould's Book of Fish. As you'd expect from the Booker winner, there's some lovely writing here, but the despair got me down, and the fragmented nature of the telling did not help.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2

“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”

2021-08-04T06:00:00.015+10:00

Jen looks out to sea. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 is one of the rare books that I have returned to and re-read several times throughout my life. The first time was as a young and impressionable 17-year-old, and I delighted in the confidence Heller displayed in flourishing his love of language and deployment of marvellous words. After reading the novel, I am sure that I was willing to open up and use the full vocabulary available to me under the English language (and a few others to boot). It was darkly funny, and I took delight in the absurd wordplay and ingenious structure.

The second time I read it, I was in my mid-20s and neck-deep working in a large, bureaucratic institution (a university). The complexities and absurdities that didn't strike me during my first read suddenly had more resonance. I came to appreciate the author's skill and cunning in replaying the same incidents repeatedly and the art beneath the nonsense. It struck me as a more sombre book, and the idiocy of events seemed more clownish than before.

The third time around, I'm in my thirties and have a couple of babies about the house. That might explain why I can't quite recall much about it because I was likely so very, very tired. Still, the violence - particularly the casual and sexual nature to it - hit harder, and I think that I finally could connect the flippancy around rape with the ever-present nearness of death. The fear was more palpable than earlier readings.

This time around, I am wearied by nearly a decade in a bureaucracy even larger than a university (a state government). I'm also the father of a couple of teenage boys. I still love the book, perhaps even more than before. I am likely more attuned to some of the details than earlier and am a little less inclined towards that ornamentation of language than previously. I have a decade more of reading that I'd like to think has sharpened my tastes. Overwhelming though, the laughs aside, it strikes me as a far more melancholic novel than it did in my youth.

Despite everything that happens, the existential anguish of Yossarian's plight had not struck me with the force it did this time around. I feel the agony of the chaplain, the torment of poor old Major Major Major Major and Chief White Halfoat's sorrow affected me far deeper than previous readings.

Similarly, the innate heroism of Orr stands out in a way that I'd not noticed before. From this vantage point, Doc Daneeka becomes a far darker figure and Cathcart and Corn have faces to them now quite different to I'd experienced prior to my time in Weber's stahlhartes Gehäuse.

Then we have Snowden. Poor Snowden. Snowden was always tragic, but this time around the death of Snowden hit in a profoundly different way that helps me understand Yossarian's dread in a far more intense way than before. Clevinger remains Clevinger, but by golly, this time around, I finally started to feel sorry for the poor bastard!

All up. I love this book. I don't do "favourites" but if you're holding a gun to my head this is on the shortlist in the rolladex in my head. It is such a funny, dark, mournful, bitter, bleak, optimistic, tender, jagged work in ways so original that it defies easy categorisation.

I can't wait to read it again in my fifties.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ (Six stars you say? That's because of the catch. You know which catch.)

“Generations of men are frustrated, angry and ashamed that, despite following the rules - and despite sacrificing the tender, emotionally connected boys inside of them - they're not getting what was promised to them.”

2021-08-03T06:00:00.002+10:00

Ezra up a tree. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence by Jess Hill

A bleak insight into the history, culture and laws around familial violence in Australia. The book offers a broad sweep of the movement Hill identifies as a "historic shift in power and accountability" in which "the Western world [has] finally started taking men’s violence against women seriously". The full truth of the latter half of this statement remains still to be seen.

Unlike the dry government reports and inquiries cited throughout the work, Hill gets behind the simple facts and figures (although there are plenty of these too) to give the reader a real visceral sense of the terror, abuse and personal and institutional failures behind the dreadful data.

It's not perfect, and I scratched my head at times in which she defers to various authorities and takes assertions at face value (telling rather than showing), but it largely doesn't detract from the whole. There is a tendency to simplify the very complex forces at work (it seems to posit a unified feminist position on psychoanalytic and psychological approaches to shame in relation to violence), but perhaps this is unavoidable if you're trying to appeal to a broad audience.

All up, a worthy addition to the literature and a great primer on the issues.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐