It is the mark of a writer's greatness that their words do not stop on the page. We reuse them over and over because they fit, most obviously ShakespeIt is the mark of a writer's greatness that their words do not stop on the page. We reuse them over and over because they fit, most obviously Shakespeare - for a nice example in the press recently, there is Blumenthal's account of Trump as Lear, though frankly, if Lear's downfall is a tragedy, does this then elevate Trump when he should not be?
But sometimes it is incredibly personal. At face value these books have nothing to do with my life. They are set in a different world, a different time, with a protagonist who makes life-changing decisions I hope I would never make. And yet! Oh my goodness, how I felt that we were one and the same.
This is part three of has been published as the Vera Wright trilogy, as bitterly sad as the others. And as unread as the others too. WTF, Northern Hemisphere, listen to Coetzee, he's been fighting for the right of Australian (and Southern Hemisphere generally) literature to be accepted for a reason dudes....more
Anybody who has been an expat will share the lost sadness of this one. It amazes me how often people leave, and then come back to their place of origiAnybody who has been an expat will share the lost sadness of this one. It amazes me how often people leave, and then come back to their place of origin and are surprised to discover that it is no longer home. As one who has lived for more than a decade in each of three cities, as well as my original home town, to which I have returned, it seems to me that the sense of any of them being home is lost in the snap of your fingers. Two of them never felt like home. One did, but although for the first years or so that I found myself going back for visits, it felt like I was coming home, that it was where I really belonged, suddenly that changed. There were various reasons why, but that somewhere else was home was not one. How sad is that? Just like the book....more
The intensity of living inside the protagonist's head during the 72 hours of this book is riveting, I could not put it down. If one may divide novelisThe intensity of living inside the protagonist's head during the 72 hours of this book is riveting, I could not put it down. If one may divide novelists into the ones who do everything again and again, vs the ones who need to be moving on, Parks is in the latter category, whilst being much more than 'merely' a novelist. But although he is forever doing something different, exploring another way, there is always the security of it being a Parks affair. I don't know if I've read another author who so blatantly gives himself to the reader. As you read, he is there with you. I feel like we hang out together and that if we ever met, we would simply carry on a relationship which has been long established. How many writers can you say that about?!...more
How lucky I was to pick this up at one of those little bookhouses people have on their front fences these days. It's way too modern for me to have notHow lucky I was to pick this up at one of those little bookhouses people have on their front fences these days. It's way too modern for me to have noticed it otherwise. Look forward to reading more by this Oz author.
PS the captcha asked me to tick all the pictures with stairs, so I picked none. It turned out that I was supposed to count steps as stairs. ...more
The second in the trilogy which starts with My Father's Moon, it is episodic reverie, maybe a little harder to follow, to begin with, than the first. The second in the trilogy which starts with My Father's Moon, it is episodic reverie, maybe a little harder to follow, to begin with, than the first. Stick with it!...more
Is it only the Brits who think that a book about a chap who brutally beats and rapes his 5 year old son, whilst terrorising his wife who is complicit Is it only the Brits who think that a book about a chap who brutally beats and rapes his 5 year old son, whilst terrorising his wife who is complicit in the treatment of their child, is humorous? I suppose not. Mr Google tags it as 'humorous fiction, domestic fiction, coming-of-age story' with, one supposes, the emphasis on coming.
Having read most of Sharp's books for adults now, this is the only one which is weighed down with the predicament of the main character to the extent Having read most of Sharp's books for adults now, this is the only one which is weighed down with the predicament of the main character to the extent that there is no relief. Not even the unusually satisfactory ending for Cathy changes that. It's a total downer. And the ending is so odd that one wonders if Sharp felt that it had to be tied up in what is not a deus ex machina, but might just as well be, in order to make up for the relentlessly dreary, unhappy life she presented here for her readers. Looking back on it a couple of months after reading it, it strikes me still as unsettling, if not disturbing. But please read it!...more
Apt that Adelaide just this weekend held Speaking from the South conference. Led by Coetzee, it is (yet) another get-together of writers bemoaning theApt that Adelaide just this weekend held Speaking from the South conference. Led by Coetzee, it is (yet) another get-together of writers bemoaning the cultural dominance - ignorance born of presumed superiority - of the North. If Elizabeth Jolley had stayed in the UK, she would have become a famous writer and a band of academics would be milking her texts for their livelihood. But she moved to Perth on the west edge of Australia, thus damning her to a career which is monumentally underestimated. This is the third of hers I've read, and they keep getting better. The protagonist in this one engages our sympathy despite her being rather ghastly - or perhaps because. I kept thinking how like hers my life has been, right from the ways she is not happy as a child, not in the detail but in the sentiment. It was only after finishing it and looking around for people's thoughts on it that I discovered it is the first of a trilogy. Number two is on my pile, but I have yet to spot number three at my usual bookshops. I'm expecting a lot of cringing as I carry on....more
Every time I notched up another hundred pages of Liberty, my sense of foreboding increased. It is the book I couldn't put down, but never wanted to fiEvery time I notched up another hundred pages of Liberty, my sense of foreboding increased. It is the book I couldn't put down, but never wanted to finish. Not only because the story itself will have ended at that point, but because of the author's stupidly early, fast, death. The end of the book marks the end of the author, rabid cancer at forty years. Wiki quotes his publisher at the funeral: "And now here I stand, with a freezingly clear and merciless awareness that, in the course of the past year, I have witnessed something of the most unfair and meaningless I have experienced in my life. To see so much originality, so much talent go to waste and never get the chance to unfold. It is unbearable."
And he died alone, no partner, no children, which is how he might have died in his own book which is about the aloneness of everybody.
It pains me to put this book - and the whole trilogy, I suppose, and maybe everything he wrote - into my shelf 'books you won't read before you die'. It drives me crazy that the Anglo-world's obsession with Scandi is limited to 'noir' (an abused word if ever there was one) and a certain type of furniture. I recommend An ‘Un-business-like Business’: Publishing Danish Literature in Translation in the UK 1990–2015 by Ellen Kythor for a consideration of why it is that Miss Smilla sold over 1M copies in GB, whilst the three volumes of the African Trilogy together sold 600 copies between them. Shakes head.
It was particularly hard to track down volume three of this trilogy. By accident I ended up with two copies, both ex-library. So you can't even read this by asking your library for it. Shakes head again....more
It's not so easy to get Makine novels in Australia. In the end the purchase of this, along with a couple of others, was convoluted. I discovered what It's not so easy to get Makine novels in Australia. In the end the purchase of this, along with a couple of others, was convoluted. I discovered what was supposed to be the best, or thereabouts, secondhand bookshop in Melbourne, Fully Booked. It has no web presence, no email, no phone number. Strictly in person purchases. Luckily my friend Noela doesn't live far from Thornbury and was happy to make the trip, no doubt being an avid reader herself was an inducement. I gave her a list of authors I was after, including Makine. Then, on her next flight to Adelaide, Noela delivered them, fittingly, in a French bistro.
I cannot claim to be happy with this book. At the time I was reading it, I thought it was because I was between a couple of truly sensation authors - Murnane and Ejersbo - and however good Makine is, maybe he doesn't cut the mustard in that company. But now I read that it is the third and last in a series and I haven't read either of the others. I loved the setting, how he writes about his Russia. The love story aspect to me had something false about it and maybe that's because he used it as a rationale for what he wanted to write. The ending in France is unsettling to say the least and I wonder what French nationals thought of it. It seems I have to read numbers one and two, and then revisit this one, much as it feels like a stand-alone to me.
Somebody online said that Makine's great theme is how we in the present undervalue, for no good reason, the past. The historian in me agrees. Maybe that's why I am drawn to reading him....more
Not one of my GR friends has read this! Not one person on GR has reviewed it. It's an even worse cold-shouldering than Australian books get in generalNot one of my GR friends has read this! Not one person on GR has reviewed it. It's an even worse cold-shouldering than Australian books get in general and I'm guessing that's because it has the wrong number of authors. Don't let that put you off, this is a hilarious short novel - I would have called it a novella, but I guess that's the kiss of marketing death along with joint authorship.
Spoilers follow.
Should you happen to be an Adelaide person, then the particulars of the university merger will seem somewhat prescient. I loved the description of the military influence on the merger - no doubt this is the case, some 32 years later as it actually unfolds. Oh, and the tone of the book has it all just right. Apparently it is no accident that in the real world now, the joint committee calls their get-togethers the Future University meetings. Magpie gets the FU tone perfect. Talk about crystal ball.
But this is just a small aside in the book. The major theme is writing and publishing, and in this case, I think it's better to stay schtum, other than to say it's clever, witty, and if you have ever wondered if fictional characters should have rights, then this is the book for you. Highly recommended....more
Kate Jennings is one of those authors I intend to work my way through, but it's easier said than done. Even Snake, which is more or less an AustralianKate Jennings is one of those authors I intend to work my way through, but it's easier said than done. Even Snake, which is more or less an Australian classic and had a commercial publisher, is hard to get hold of.
It may be problematic with this collection that they seem simple, but aren't. Being, however, easy to read, that can escape one's notice. They also feel intensely personal, like they come from the author's life but she doesn't want to say so. I'm undecided, after the dazzling Moral Hazard, what to make of this lot. I think 'Observations' would be a better description of the pieces that 'Stories'....more
I thought this, her first, was an improved version of her second book, Candelo. But still, it has the same monotony of repetitious reflection and non-I thought this, her first, was an improved version of her second book, Candelo. But still, it has the same monotony of repetitious reflection and non-action throughout. I suspect I’ve picked up another of Blain’s in my travels and whether I should open it or not is the question.
I'd forgotten that horse racing and gambling on it were once such an endemic part of Australian life. My own upbringing, like the protagonist's in thiI'd forgotten that horse racing and gambling on it were once such an endemic part of Australian life. My own upbringing, like the protagonist's in this story, was RC and poor. Like his mother, mine was virulently anti-gambling. And like his father, mine was addicted to 'the races', as they were always called. In the case of my father, this was despite the stories he would tell of those around him, including his own brothers, being unable to afford warm coats in winter because all their money went on feeding the bookies. The difference, however, was that my mother wouldn't let my father do it 'for work', in that way Augustine justifies his relentless losses, and so almost all my father's bets were purely theoretical....in that way Augustine's are when he 'stops'.
Thank heavens my mother held her ground on this. She herself had experienced anguish at the hands of the 'industry'. Her very decent father suddenly died when she was at the end of primary school, forcing my grandmother to make ends meet for her four daughters and herself by opening a fruit and veg shop. Unfortunately her very decent dead husband had a brother who was quite the opposite. He ran an SP booking racket using my grandma's shop as the front. Eventually it was raided and there was a most upright, decent, God-fearing sort of woman up before the courts, taking the blame for her brother-in-law. Perhaps the memory of this was partly to account for my mother's attitudes, but in any case, she would also have been well aware of what happens to the families of those who decide that they are brighter than the trainers and the bookies and the big punters with their scams.
I never lived in small town rural Australia, but every Australian has been through them, they have felt the glazed heat, understood what the local pool means, seen the still smallness of such places. The aloneness that creates the rich imaginary life of small children like Clement. Because others drink with the consequent brutal behaviour as well as bet, his father Augustine sees the extreme poverty through which he puts his family as somehow more acceptable, superior perhaps. However sorry we feel for Clement, we know there is far worse, within the walls of the story and without.
Murnane has both the knowledge that comes of his own fascination with the horses and the understanding, I suppose born from a capacity to stand outside himself, to see it for what it is. Again, it was incredibly evocative for me. There is a moment when Augustine is regretting not the amount he has lost - that is never a source of regret for compulsive gamblers - but the amount he has won. It brought to mine my friend B. with whom I was flatting. We were part of a community which saw itself as a group of pro betters, this was back before computers made ordinary people able to compete. My friends were all numbers people. Some of them were dedicated professional winners. But some, and B. was one, were mere addicts. B. always made sure he paid his rent and his health insurance, but other than that, it was all for the horses. Or rather, for the people who won from people like him. One work day (as the horse betters saw Saturdays) I heard he'd won a lot of money, it was around 30K. I called him and said the kind of things you say at such a moment. But he was sad, just like Augustine was sad with such a win. Addicts think not of what they did win, but of what they didn't. It was the one they should have had the house on. It was the first time I really felt pity for B. He couldn't win, even if he won.
This world of horse betting is dying in Australia. Partly this is because there are so many ways to part addicts with their money these days. But it's also because horse racing is seen as bad for the animals involved. Gone is the culture of Melbourne Cup day, a day which unofficially served as a national holiday throughout the land. My mother, harking back to the period when this book was set, recalled the big hall at Wayville in which school and university exams were held. At the time the race started, pens were downed, the radio put on, and for ten minutes all in the hall were transported to a different place. Murnane has preserved an Australia which is dying, not only because of the horse races, but because drinking has changed, isolation has changed, attitudes have changed.
Some years back the NYT predicted a Nobel prize for him and I can understand why. By the time I was a few dozen pages into Tamarisk Row, I went back to Imprints and bought another eight by him that they had in stock. I haven't started my next yet because I found this one deeply painful. Not only because of the horse racing, but also because it dragged up memories of the brutality of Roman Catholicism as we children experienced it in that period. Oh, and we can add gender relations into the mix as well. But above all its precise exquisiteness hurt like needles being placed in just the right positions.
Maybe it's a book to love, rather than to like. But don't let that put you off reading it....more
A haunting account of Nazi period's impact on Jewish people in Europe. It starts in the period where, looking back with our hindsight, we are always tA haunting account of Nazi period's impact on Jewish people in Europe. It starts in the period where, looking back with our hindsight, we are always thinking why, WHY are you still there? Run while you can. But running from your life is never easy psychologically even if one has the material means. The young narrator is taken, put in a concentration camp and Kertész has a unique way of describing what that was, and how it was survived...when it was. Most importantly, he points out as needs to be pointed out ad infinitum that nothing changed when he went back 'home'. He was surrounded by anti-Semites in the same way that Germany remained more or less in the power of the Nazis. If they weren't obvious, it was because they hid in plain sight. They never went away. They are still here. And now, they are coming out in the open again all over the world. Nothing has changed.
The author of has been called a 'national treasure'. It's at times like this that Brexit makes sense to me.
I tried hard. I put up with the wanky cleveThe author of has been called a 'national treasure'. It's at times like this that Brexit makes sense to me.
I tried hard. I put up with the wanky cleverness, that Brit fake self-deprecation thing. I looked up bullshit pop artists I've never heard of so that I could be in the know for the humour. Want to put that word in inverted commas. I put up with the male idea of how sex should happen, though I sped-read the first instance and entirely skipped the second. But who's counting? Half way through the Jeff part, I decided maybe reading from the back of the book forward would be better, but it wasn't. I've been to Venice. It was hot as hell. But does that meteorological fact really have to fill so much of these pages? Maybe if you are a Brit it does. Maybe Brit readers go OMG, it was hot in the morning....now it's afternoon and it's HOT...maybe it'll be hot in the EVENING TOO. Unbearable tension, will it be resolved? To be fair, there was also binge drinking and hangovers, should you find them as interesting as Amis did.
I have a female friend who, God knows why, won't read books by women. This is going to be her Christmas present.
The friend who suggested this to me introduced me to Tim Parks. How could she have got one so right and one so wrong?...more
I feel ashamed at not being able to deal with this; as I understand it, it's a day in the mind of a woman developing dementia and I tried hard for thiI feel ashamed at not being able to deal with this; as I understand it, it's a day in the mind of a woman developing dementia and I tried hard for thirty-odd pages. But even if it is I who am revealed to be unworthy, rather than the book, I'm sticking to my plan of seeing my days out reading what I want to. Sorry Janet Frame.
PS: It pissed me off to discover that the word 'ruminate' has been hijacked by psychotherapists and is considered to be a bad habit. I consider otherwise, it's an important word, it describes something that is necessary to do, and it should be given back to its normal English usage. However, that said, it crossed my mind more than once in my endeavour to read this book, that the character needed to stop ruminating. Please, please, please stop that!
Merged review:
I feel ashamed at not being able to deal with this; as I understand it, it's a day in the mind of a woman developing dementia and I tried hard for thirty-odd pages. But even if it is I who am revealed to be unworthy, rather than the book, I'm sticking to my plan of seeing my days out reading what I want to. Sorry Janet Frame.
PS: It pissed me off to discover that the word 'ruminate' has been hijacked by psychotherapists and is considered to be a bad habit. I consider otherwise, it's an important word, it describes something that is necessary to do, and it should be given back to its normal English usage. However, that said, it crossed my mind more than once in my endeavour to read this book, that the character needed to stop ruminating. Please, please, please stop that!...more
My perfect book. And to think that I bargained the price down at the Paperback Bookshop in Melbourne: it was in poor nick and I asked for another copyMy perfect book. And to think that I bargained the price down at the Paperback Bookshop in Melbourne: it was in poor nick and I asked for another copy. But it was this or nothing, it had ten years of shelf wear adding character to its look, and the person selling let me have it for $10. Perfect because it is everything a novel should be. For a start, that title, worth ten bucks on its own. It is laugh out loud (with monotonous regularity) hilarious and harrowingly sad. It has a sort of sociological background, being a look at what happened after the last financial crash from the point of view of an American type that might have been rather neglected by the press at the time. Ordinary middle class people whose financial status consists largely of a house, and as its theoretical value goes up they invest that purely theoretical value into improvements, extensions: aspirations. So when suddenly their house is worth nothing much and they are in debt, there is no way out.
And from that point we see what happens next in such very ordinary families, probably the backbone of the Democratic party in the US. What happens next is secrets and fears, outlandish ways forward, inevitable steps back. It's astonishing just how believable our hero's completely insane plans are. Well, of course, I kept thinking. Wonderful book! I'd never heard of the author, but I am on a mission to read the rest.
It strikes me, having called this 'perfect', that the last time I said that was about another book with the same setting of the last financial crash, Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings. It's like something good did come of all that suffering, though one might argue that a couple of thin books aren't really enough. Here in Australia we missed the whole thing, and if it hadn't been for my reading of such books, I wouldn't really understand what an appalling event this was in the history of the US in particular. Yes, we had all those documentaries about Republicans losing their everything and becoming Amazon workers on the road, telling us all how good that was. Keep optimistic. Look at the bright side of losing your whole material life. But this is a different sort of person altogether and I'm glad to have read about their miserable lives....more
I found this to be vastly inferior to Nagasaki. They do have different translators, which might explain it, the writing in this is very stilted and itI found this to be vastly inferior to Nagasaki. They do have different translators, which might explain it, the writing in this is very stilted and it often felt inconsistent, if not contradictory, even within a sentence. But then again, the subject matter was not to my taste either. ...more
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