2010 | start narrative here

Short stories, for me, are a way of easing myself back into reading following a severe reading rut. They serve as a reminder of what fiction can do, even in small doses, how words can shape images, emotions, thoughts. I took The Best Australian Stories 2010, edited by Cate Kennedy, with me on my recent trip and though at first only dipping in and out of the selection, by the end I threw moderation aside and was happily gorging myself on story after story. Of course, with an anthology like this it can be difficult to organize your thoughts coherently: do I look at it as a whole? Do I select one or two stories that I enjoyed and focus on them?

There are names both familiar and previously unheard of in this collection, unpublished stories are placed equally among those that have been retrieved from hallowed literary journals. These stories cover a wide range of emotional territory and styles, from the funny, the breathless, the painfully sad, the joyous moments, and the horrific. Given the restraints of the short story form however, these explorations of emotions never feel too exhausting or depleting.

Against the darkness, other faces from that shared past occur to my mind with stunning vividness. Even closer, thicker, than the dark is the heat. Another scorcher on the way. Somewhere out there a forest is burning, and a family crouching under wet towels in a bathtub, waiting as their green lungs fill with steam and soot muck. I test the coffee’s temperature. As often happens at this time of morning I find myself in a strange sleep-bleared funk that’s not quite sadness. It’s not quite anything. Through the trees below, the river sucks in the lambency of city, creeps it back up the bank, and slowly, in this way, as I have seen and cherished it for years, the darkness reacquaints itself with new morning.
- from “The Yarra” by Nam Le

My personal highlights, in bullet point form:

Paddy O’Reilly’s “The Salesman” which, though working on accepted stereotypes of working class suburbanites as brute, racist and insensitive, plays with these expectations as much as it reinforces them.
Karen Hitchcock’s “Little White Slip”, a nicely unromanticized look at motherhood and the expectations it places upon a woman’s identity, this story ruthlessly cuts through to the pain, the bodily changes, the heightened and sometimes irrational emotional battles and the hormonal impulses without the need to glorify the role of motherhood. Although I enjoyed it, the ending did feel a bit too “and they lived happily ever after”, which detracted somewhat from the powerful depiction.
Nam Le’s “The Yarra”, probably the longest story in the anthology, is an involved tale about the experience of second-generation Vietnamese men involved in brutal acts of violence along Melbourne’s river. Le wonderfully captures the relentless heat of Melbourne summers which works towards heightening the internal struggle of the protagonist, Lan, whose brother has just returned home after a long jail stint. Both of them are forced to confront their violent past, its consequences and the strength and contradictions of their filial bond.
Chris Womersley’s “The Age of Terror” is quietly horrifying. What at first seems to be a meditation on aging turns into something else entirely, and it wasn’t until after I finished reading this story that I began to put the pieces together, to see the comparison being made and realize how truly terrifying it is. A difficult, multivalent story that lingers for hours, days after reading.
John Kinsella’s “Bats” is a lovely and strange story of vanity, youth and attraction. A girl and a boy watch a purple sunset over a mountain and he educates her on the fauna of the inland, culminating in a bat getting caught in her long blonde hair. This may be my favourite story of the collection, simple but rich.
Antonia Baldo’s “Get Well Soon” is another strong contender for the favourite story though, a beautiful story on living with a family member suffering with depression, how it effects the entire family and exploring the limits of responsibility and the tenacity of faith.

Rebecca’s disappointed that I don’t live for these moments of rapture anymore. It’s true. I’m ordinary. I’ve accepted the inadequacies of living. But I can’t sit beside her forever and whisper that discovering the world is a matter of choice. I can’t remind her of the smile on her face when she wore that strapless sea-green dress to her formal. I can’t tell her she’s so alive she just might have to die while I, half-dead, can afford to go on living. And so I leave her, a white frame twisted on a bed, those sharp-angled thoughts cutting into her brain.
- from “Get Well Soon” by Antonia Baldo

It becomes increasingly obvious that guilt features heavily in this selection: the guilt over past mistakes, past sins, guilt over irreversible accidents and damage, guilt over failed relationships, guilt of not living up to social expectations. Is this guilt something that is deeply embedded in the national literary consciousness – from the vicious blights on our national history, to our past as a colony of convicts, a quick overview reveals much to feel guilt over- or is it merely a quirk of editorial selection? Whatever the cause, toward the end of the anthology this recurring theme does begin to feel needlessly repetitious. The guilt is felt, but rarely are actions taken to appease this guilt, these stories prefer to wallow in the personal regrets, as though acknowledging it is repentance enough.

My knowledge of the Australian literary scene is not sufficient enough to comment on any glaring omissions, but The Best Australian Stories 2010 is overall a strong collection, showcasing a wide variety of contemporary Australian storytelling talent, offering readers a number of names to look forward to reading more from in the future.

How It Feels by Brendan Cowell (2010)

October 29, 2010 Book Reviews

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Accomplished Australian television and film actor, screenwriter, playwright, and director Brendan Cowell has turned his creative hand to fiction, with his debut novel, How It Feels. How It Feels examines the sadder aspects involved in growing up and coming to terms with the choices and consequences of one’s actions and the gradual acceptance of adulthood and responsibility, told with a gritty been-there-done-that narrative style.

On the night of receiving their final school results, Neil Cronk and his friends indulge in drugs, booze, violence and, almost but not quite, sex. This is not the final adolescent party before emerging into calm, well-behaved adulthood; this is an evening that has irreperable repurcussions for all involved. This section is told with the vital energy of youth, that feeling of invincibility and that actions have no consequences. Thought much of the focus is on Neil’s sexual failure with his girlfriend, Courtney, the real highlight is Cowell’s sensitive, though uncompromisingly honest, take on male friendship. The friendships between Neil, Gordon and Stuart are refreshingly free of pretension, Cowell transfers the middle-class, outer suburban male voice and attitude seamlessly onto the page. Though the events of their wayward adventures aren’t of the magnitude of those that will follow, significant changes are already taking place within the characters.

The evening deepened and dipped as everyone packed off into cliques and corners, merging with those they had formed an alliance with over the past one to thirteen years. If adolescence was a war zone then fashion and music were both protection and artillery: they kept us safe and offered us a position to fire ourselves from.

As Neil breaks from his planned life of university and city living and instead studies drama in Bathurst, Cowell brings in some of that pretension that comes with university, and in particular, the Arts. Neil turns from the slightly weedy cohort of his friends to a unrelentingly egotistic and self-involved prick, yet it’s an evolution that makes sense considering the difference between his university crowd and those he left behind. Back home, major changes are taking place, but Neil is too absorbed with the rituals and institutionalized weirdness of his life – seeing it almost as more enlightened than, for example, Gordon going into business. Again, on the eve of graduation and his final performance piece, Neil is shattered by the news of a friend’s death.

As an adult in London with a moderate degree of theatrical success, Neil still maintains a strong connection to those he left behind. This adult section is told in a sometimes disconcertingly fractured way, as the narrative moves between the past in London, the past before the wedding, and the present, it is easy to lose track of where exactly Neil is. Nonetheless, the dramatic events of this section – death, break ups, watching a friend marry your ex-girlfriend, drug use, abuse and recovery – carry great emotional weight.

Told over these three major transitional stages in Neil’s life, How It Feels is a brutal look at masculinity in contemporary Australia. Though there is much to cover in terms of youth, love, loss, heartbreak, success, failure – the running theme throughout is the male experience of contemporary life. Cowell’s narrative voice is strong, at times raw and confrontingly masculine. Issues such as home and the past are deftly dealt with, but what resonates is the connection we have to the place we grew up, despite how far we run from it or how much we try to deny it, and how this place and its people define us. To say this is a strong debut is understating the point, How It Feels is ruthless, wrenchingly felt and truthful, yet not without the necessary light to guide us through.

They gave me another chance, and I am eternally grateful. It is easy to jump out of the village, move to the cities, and spend your time poking fun at the little places we hail from and their routine ways, but deep down inside you know that’s where the real people are, the truly decent souls, and you fight and fight to deny it, until you need them so bad it hurts.

[Disclosure: publisher supplied proof copy from work. How It Feels is released by Picador Australia through Pan Macmillan Australia in November 2010, ISBN: 9781405039291. View the How It Feels book trailer on youtube.]

Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s by Seamus O’Hanlon (2010)

October 15, 2010 Book Reviews

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For my birthday this year, a group of friends and I went on the Haunted Melbourne walking tour. The host constantly lamented the lack of old buildings in which these ghostly sightings or morbid stories had occurred. While I imagine that the structural evolution of a city somewhat hampers attempts to revisit its supernatural past, in Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s, Seamus O’Hanlon takes us through the myriad of architectural changes within Melbourne’s centre since the 1970s and how they represent the shift from an industrial history to a post-industrial society.

O’Hanlon covers much of the inner city of Melbourne, as well as the hip inner suburbs. Looking at different aspects – landmarks, retail, the Yarra river, events and the iconic streets – he outlines the significant development of Melbourne since the 1970s. Not simply reminiscing the loss of historical structures, O’Hanlon instead insists that history is evident not just within the heritage listed buildings, but in the evolution enforced by changing social, cultural and economic shifts.

Mainly, it is a pleasure to learn stories about places that have become so routine that it’s easy to forget their long history as they are so gradually removed from their past. Take Melbourne Central, for example. Now a bustling underground train station and modern entertainment and retail complex, it was once a closed off and dominated by department store Daimaru. I remember getting lost within the maze and seeming lack of exits many times, or struggling to even find a way into the building. O’Hanlon also points to how the integration of the new, more open retail space with laneways not only opens up Melbourne Central to the surrounding streets and make it more inviting, but also places it within the larger context of Melbourne itself. The now iconic Melbourne laneways exist as almost polar opposites to the mega-development schemes that dominated the city for many years. Here we see the small scale, quirky and local enliven and define the city space, even as they exist alongside the massive globally financed structures.

Soon after completion the Rialto was dubbed ‘Melbourne’s Ayers Rock’ by journalist Keith Dunston; like a member of other former Collins Street defenders Dunstan found himself something of a reluctant fan of the building’s twin blue glass towers that seem to change colour depending on the time of day and direction of the sun. The beauty of the building is breathtaking, especially from a distance. One of the best ways to see it in all its glory is from the West Gate Bridge at dusk. Even up close it has a majesty that’s difficult to describe.

It would be too easy to simply recite all the interesting changes that have taken place over the past forty years, changes that have been evident within my lifetime, and some that their relative consistency seems to erase their past. There is much to learn in Melbourne Remade about the origins of Melbourne in trade and free enterprise and how these traditions are carried on in to our current consumer culture, how the public transport system affected the growth of inner city retail strips, the creation of a recreation space along the Yarra, and the transformation of the inner suburbs from “working class landscape[s] of production” to upmarket residential zones.

Although one aspect of Melbourne Remade that struck me was the creation of Melbourne as an event, sport and culture destination to offset the deindustrialisation and urban decay after the recessions. It was an economic necessity that has significantly boosted tourism numbers and the structure of the city itself. Even more interesting is the fact that less than 10% of the metropolitan population live in Melbourne’s inner city, so that while Melbourne city can now be seen as a hub of culture, events and recreation, this centralisation effectively distances the benefits, both cultural and economic, from the majority of the population. O’Hanlon makes a heartfelt argument, and one that I strongly agree with, that though it may not bring in the international tourists, extending these cultural renewal strategies out into the suburbs will ultimately benefit more of Melbourne’s population. I also wonder, if this sort of extensive influx of money and resources ever happens, will we see the same gentrification of the outer suburbs and industrial areas that the inner city has seen over the last 40 years, thus pushing the outer suburbs even further “out”?

Melbourne Remade shows us how a number of forces, economic, social, cultural and historical, have seen the inner city reinvent itself from a past of manufacturing and industry to a post-industrial, economically privileged retail, recreation and residential space. O’Hanlon provdies more context for these changes than you would think possible for such a physically little book, and even manages to build some hype for Arcade’s next release MacRobertsonland with the intriguing legacy of Macpherson Robertson making an appearance. Most importantly though, O’Hanlon gives us another outlook through which to view our city, through the changes that occur, and keep occuring, allowing us to build our own “visual archaeology” of Melbourne.

[Disclosure: Publisher supplied e-galley of Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s, but then I liked it so much that I went out and bought myself a physical copy! Melbourne Remade is published by Arcade Publications, ISBN 978-0-9804367-8-5]

Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper (2010)

October 8, 2010 Book Reviews

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Like anyone hooked on contemporary television series, which seems to be one of the few mediums that can match the book for complexity, character development and elaborate plots, I’m slightly obsessed with Mad Men. In one of those now familiar “blog gets a book deal” cases, Natasha Vargas-Cooper adapted her Footnotes of Mad Men blog into Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America, which provides some cultural, social and historical context for the show itself. Mad Men, for the uninitiated, is set in the early 1960s and follows the lives of several people working for an advertising firm on Madison Avenue. The show’s historical context allows for a rich exploration of changing (or not) sexual politics, the illusion of advertising and the massive cultural shifts that occurred in America in the 1960s. So, there is obviously a lot of ground to cover in a book like Mad Men Unbuttoned.

Divided in to sections exploring the advertising world, fashion, working women, sex, drinks and drugs, decor, literature, movies and the future, Mad Men Unbuttoned aims to explore the broader context of the 1960s era. This does encourage some understanding, some deeper insight into the show itself, but isn’t at all analytical in the way I anticipated. The wealth of contextual information is presented in short blog post mode, which doesn’t really allow for anything more than a superficial glance at these mostly unspoken aspects of the show. It speaks volumes that the longer essays – in particular on Don and smoking, the ambiguity of Salvatore Romano’s sexuality and the significance of Don reading Frank O’Hara – are the most illuminating, the ones that have the room to set up an argument or position and then explore it. The rest are basic introductions to topics that seem to deserve further exploration.

Don smoked and continued smoking because of two compelling motives: One, he was surely addicted to nicotine. Second are the myriad reasons that, with all the scientific and cultural cues, so many men continue to smoke even today. There are a couple of heady postulations including the idea that despite demonization, smoking has endured. The act of drawing hot smoke into your lungs still retains a touch of manliness, of strength and unspoken prowess. That might as well be a dictionary definition of the words Don Draper.
- Alex Balk in “Always Be Smoking: Why Don Won’t Quit”

For all my frustrated expectations, there are moments where the content elaborates on underlying cultural tensions, and does so in an engaging way. Coming from a program as rich as Mad Men, I ultimately expected Mad Men Unbuttoned to possess the same level of depth. Perhaps it is the intricacies of the characters in the show that lends gravity to the fraught cultural era of the 1960s; we come to understand the changes through the characters rather than through the historical background. What is presented here is a cursory look into the cultural, social and historical context of the early 1960s and Mad Men Unbuttoned works as a handy glossary companion to the series. It must also be said that the book is gorgeously designed with photos from the era. These essays are too short to allow strong analytical connections to be made, but are ideal for a building a basic understanding of the contextual background of the show.

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg (2010)

October 6, 2010 Book Reviews

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Frustrated by the direction his life is taking, Avi Steinberg quits his freelance gig writing obituaries and takes a job in the library of a Boston prison. Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian is a refreshing memoir that sheds light on life behind bars whether stuck there by choice or by crime, and on understanding the position of the prison institution in social, cultural and historical terms.

Steinberg, thankfully, recognizes that he is not the main focus of the story, but also knows when it is appropriate to insert himself, his past, his family history into the text, that is, when it illustrates, through the personal stories, a larger issue within the prison walls. These stories stretch from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, to a mysterious grandmother and teaching a creative writing class to his prisoners. Though Running the Books lacks a strong overarching thesis, it doesn’t suffer from this lack of direction. Instead there are moments of redemption, justice, and yes, even beauty, in the minutiae of the stories Steinberg finds in day to day life in prison. Some of his musings on communication in prison, the power struggles between inmates and staff, and the privilege of names are thought-provoking.

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world’s misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. [...] When I looked around the world, I couldn’t see these letters. But I became aware of their indirect presence. They contained life’s great subtexts, embedded between the lines of cell phone conversations of strangers on the bus, in the hazy motive of a coworker who told me she was taking a “metnal health” day off after receiving a difficult email from her mother. These notes were virtual, folded up, hidden, like letters tucked into books of the prison library. A kite, barely visible in the sky, bound to a person by an almost invisible string. Even the unsent ones are very much present. Especially the unsent ones.

Strangely though, and this could totally just be the effects of watching too many HBO prison shows, Steinberg witnesses very little actual violence within the prison library. His one potentially violent encounter happens on the outside, in the free world, when he is mugged my an ex-con who recognizes him. But the most heinous act of violence that Steinberg reports is an officer letting off fart bombs in the library. I wonder how much of this is self-censorship, respect on behalf of the institution he represented or if he just didn’t witness these things in the prison library. It just struck me as somewhat strange, given how much free reign the prisoners seemed to be given within the library.

Some of the inmate stories are genuinely effecting, though the conclusion of many of them are unrelentingly sad, too often ending in untimely death. The story of a prisoner who connects with Steinberg to create a life plan to host his own cooking show, the female prisoner who wants Avi’s help to reunite her with her long lost son. Steinberg never sees these people as just criminals – though he does have something of a crisis when he discovers the crimes of a prisoner he has been bonding with and ponders the implications of this relationship – but as trapped humans whose only chance at personal redemption can be found within the library.

Diana had said that the library wasn’t complicated, that it was just a place for people to pass time with books. Perhaps that was true back in the old days, when the prison would simply deliver books to inmates in their cells, a practice that had lasted hundreds of years. But the library was different: it was a place, a dynamic social setting where groups gathered, where people were put in relation with others. A space an individual could physically explore on his own.

Like Scott Douglas’ Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian, Steinberg recognizes the function of a library as something beyond a repository of knowledge. Instead, these libraries always perform a communal, social function in giving equal footing and access to all those who desire it. Even when the community is made up of the so-called undesirables of society, the opportunity for creating their community and finding their place with in it must be important in such isolation. While Running the Books is not without fault, the lack of cohesive direction does diminish the overall power of the book somewhat, many of the stories held within offer insight and a greater understanding of the incarcerated and those that work with them.

[Disclosure: Review copy provided through publisher through the Shelf Awareness newsletter (some of those galley request adverts do ship internationally it turns out!). Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian is published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday through Random House, released on 19th October, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-385-52909-9. The New York Times recently published a brief excerpt - "A Prison-Library Reunion."]

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2010)

September 27, 2010 Book Reviews

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My initial reaction to Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains was something like “Pfft, yeah right, as if the Internet is making us stupider and less attent…hey look! A video of a boys choir singing like cats hahaha!” However, I did come to this book as both as a reader – that is someone who can sit down for hours with a book without distraction – and as someone who has grown up with the Internet. Concerned over his increasing inability to concentrate on reading, Nicholas Carr sets out to investigate how the Internet and widespread use of digital technologies is changing how we read, the ways we pay attention and changing the very structure of our brains.

The Shallows is set up with a brief introduction to the concept of neuroplasticity, that the brain is constantly changing and adapting to new circumstances, both positive and negative. Good and bad habitual behaviour changes the way our brains work, strengthening our bond with, or reinforcing, that behaviour. Carr shows us how the research on the topic has gradually been accepted, challenging as it was to the deeply held notion that the brain is stable, completely set in its ways past a certain age. This section delves into the scientific research that led to these conclusions, but never alienates the non-scientific reader with jargon and technicalities.

From there Carr looks at how technologies in the past have shaped the way we think and act, from maps and clocks changing perceptions and understanding of space and time, to the formation of the alphabet and the onset of cultural privileging of literacy over oral culture. These “intellectual technologies” had far reaching effects on us beyond their original intentions. This history lesson did feel like a rehash from Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, but it worked as a reminder of the evolution of the written word on the brain.

The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer’s work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. “All great men have written proudly, not cared to explain,” said Emerson. “They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them.”

The Internet, Carr argues, remains a literate culture, but profoundly different from the printed page. It combines all previous media streams – sound, film, images, print – whereas previously they had all developed separately. This multitextual medium has seen a change in our attention, immersion and experience of media. Digital media, not just the Internet but that is Carr’s primary focus here, is not conducive to deep thinking and cohesive understanding, and it is effecting our perception of human memory. Metaphors of the brain as a computer have misled our understanding of our memory itself, memory is alive, computer mechanics are not. Memory involves new synaptic growth, it is a continuing process that is reinforced through repetition. Carr presents the arguments of those that champion the technology – the “computers free up our memory and allow us to concentrate on more human things” argument – and then carefully sets up an argument that entirely refutes these claims with specific neurological and psychological studies.

The central argument is that we are becoming more intelligent, more adept in the ways the internet demands of us, but in different ways. Scanning, skimming, browsing and multitasking are becoming the dominant modes of reading online and these methods don’t allow our brains to fully comprehend or to deeply consider what we read. New technologies come to define us but also see the weakening of the human tool it replaces or assists (and this is true of non-digital technology too) and the Internet is changing how we perceive and use memory, emotion and intelligence. I found a study on academic research citations rather interesting, it showed that more recent “Internet age” research has a narrower scope than other “paper based” research – that is that when search engines prioritize prevailing opinion, researchers generally only follow along those lines. While more information is thought to be available to us now, the ways we use it, and the tools we used to sort through it, may be damaging our understanding of that information.

Carr’s argument is a compelling one, but the ending of this book seems to come out of nowhere, and just as I was beginning to really connect with the ideas he puts forward. Though his reasoning and logic is convincing throughout, this conclusion, or lack thereof, was comparatively weak. Carr is not the internet-phobe luddite I was expecting, and he doesn’t suggest we stop using the medium absolutely, just that we seek to understand it and the changes it places on our neurological patterns. And yes, The Shallows has convinced me to take action, to get out of the cycle of checking email, checking Twitter, checking stats, checking Google reader and then starting all over again. To actually turn the computer off when I’ve checked everything, to step back from that idea of constant immersion. It may not make much of a difference, but it is the first step.

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (2010)

September 20, 2010 Book Reviews

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When I read Alan Warner‘s The Sopranos back in June, I was very much taken with his group of rebellious schoolgirls and their misadventures in the city, and in particular, Warner’s ability to show a great amount of compassion and understanding for his less than perfect characters. The recent sequel, The Stars in the Bright Sky, brings the girls together again, this time in their early twenties and preparing to jet off on an international holiday together. A series of mishaps see Manda, Finn, Kay, Chell, Kylah and newcomer Ava stuck in Gatwick airport, spending their nights in swanky hotels and guzzling more than a few drinks.

As with The Sopranos, The Stars in the Bright Sky is a character driven novel. These are the same girls from the port, their behaviour sometimes ludicrous, their attitudes brash and their emotional outbursts frequent. For all their negative characteristics, it is difficult not to warm to them, as they struggle along the paths their lives have taken them. Whether they are still stuck in the port, like Kylah and Chell, or with a young child to an absent father, like Manda, or escaped to university like Finn and Kay, they’re all trying to assert their identity. And it is within a group such as their own that the positives and negatives of their personalities are most evident.

Though Manda was a key figure in The Sopranos, her small-mindedness and domineering personality bringing tension to the group, here her personality is the primary element of emotional clashes. Manda is loud, she is brash, she is excessive, almost to grotesque proportions. There are a number of incidents where her actions seem ignorant of the rules of hygiene and personal safety. She talks, endlessly, about herself and her opinions. She is the character that hasn’t, and probably never will, leave the confines of the port town for good. In a way, she reminded me of a less vindictive version of Rhiannon from Rachel Trezise’s Sixteen Shades of Crazy. However, for all her thoughtless actions and spiteful words, Manda’s brand of viciousness seems considerably less threatening than it did as a schoolgirl. Her lack of intelligence and worldliness shows, and the other girls are better prepared, mentally and emotionally, to deal with her ignorance. Some of her actions would push the closest of friends to breaking point, but these girls are loyal to her despite her faults. She frustrates the reader as she dominates conversations and ruins the serene mood of the holidayers, but that’s also what makes her such an enjoyable character to read.

Chell’s smaller voice said, ‘But girls. The stars is still there even in the daytimes. Just you can’t see them. And it’s the night that shows the stars. Like Kylah. She’s a star now and we all know it, but one day she’ll show up brilliantly. And all of us. I just know it. The stars are still up, shining just for us all girls.’ Chell’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

Particularly interesting is the group dynamic of the girls, however focused on Manda’s ego it can be. The narrative falters when the girls separate – a long sequence of a drug binge lacks the dynamic of the larger group. Unlike in The Sopranos, where the girls personalities seemed to be overshadowed by the group itself, here they seem to each bring something to the group, something unique. I was surprised by the lack of information on Orla’s death between the novels, especially as it seems to be an event that played a large part in Manda becoming who she is. The group dynamic is altered somewhat by the introduction of Finn’s university friend, the glamourous, rich and sophisticated Ava. Her background is so different from what we know of the girls, yet she manages to include herself in their gossip, their discussions and their hedonistic activities. The somewhat late revelation of her drug problem felt a little forced, and signalled the novel’s weakest point.

Although I imagine the slang-ridden, gossip fuelled dialogue of these novels aren’t going to appeal to everyone, it continues to amaze me that Alan Warner so accurately captures the voice, the thoughts and the nuances of being a woman from a lower socioeconomic class. Morvern Callar also displayed his talent in this cross-gender realm, albeit with a much darker story. Cinematic images of mundane beauty are another highlight of The Stars in the Bright Sky, like getting caught in a hedge maze in a thunderstorm, or sitting slumped on suitcases waiting for check-in. Female friendship is something that is mostly plagued by petty bitchiness, or defined around a male character, but here it is warm and empowering without ignoring the problems of jealousy or spite. The nature of international airport culture and larger world affairs are mere backdrop for the minutiae of everyday life for these young women, and it is the genuine warmth of their strong friendships that gives The Stars in the Bright Sky its true heart.

Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training by Tom Jokinen (2010)

July 7, 2010 Book Reviews

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After quitting a comfortable government job, Tom Jokinen takes up a position as an apprentice undertaker. Working in a family run funeral home in Canada, Jokinen begins to feel increasingly perturbed with the way much of the Western world treats death, in particular the evolution of the funeral itself. As more people begin to turn to cremation as a viable option for post-mortem disposal, and secular rituals begin to take place of the religious, what becomes of the humble funeral home? Jokinen uses his own on the job experience, some journalistic investigation and a good sense of humour to explore this idea further in his memoir Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training.

People don’t want to know. There’s a time, from when someone dies to when they magically pop up at the funeral or the cemetery or as a bag of ashes, that remains a black hole, invisible to the rest of the world, and everyone’s happy with that arrangement. We in funeral service cover the gap. People pay us to keep to ourselves what goes on there.

The changing socio-cultural value of the funeral is at the heart of what Jokinen is investigating. Through a look at the funeral business itself, and how it has had to adapt to changing attitudes toward the funeral, he reminds the reader that undertaking is, above all, a business. And that in business, and the commercial world, people will seek value for money, even if it is at the expense of respect and dignity for the dead. The growing trend of personalized memorial services is also being capitalized on by the industry, and it’s not hard to see why. As the popularity of cremation grows the funeral industry loses their profit from embalming, caskets, flowers, services, etc, and so they’ve had to adapts their services in an increasingly secular world that ultimately aims to celebrate the individual.

What Jokinen is really mourning is the loss of communal ritual and tradition. He provides indepth descriptions of how people of different faiths ritualize death, and how the tradition of that is waning in the face of growing religious scepticism. Now, he argues, with no religious links or community to guide our actions and reactions to death, we’re gradually becoming a generation that has lost touch with the inevitability of death, we’re insulated from it to the point of ignorance. We’ve replaced faith and the tribe with an overzealous faith in science and medical technology, which, obviously, cannot prevent death and fails to offer a way to deal with it.

Scatter where you want, bury where you wish, but do something with intent, don’t be passive and follow what commissioned pre-need salesmen consider the norm. Use your imagination, balance your spiritual beliefs with guesswork, but do the work: accept we know nothing about death, take a leap of faith, and have the courage to act anyway.

Through his examination of the various rituals we use, Jokinen comes to a conclusion that could work as an effective market for the environmentally and socially aware or perhaps just an ideal vision of how he would like to be seen off. Either way his conclusion and the progression of his thoughts feels natural, he makes everything he argues for seem so logical, almost obvious. He is able to see the humour in what may be an otherwise dire occupation and weaves many hilarious anecdotes into his discussion. Jokinen’s deft touch stops the memoir from getting too bogged down in the seriousness of the issues he explores, and his consideration of the industry and our cultural relationship with death is thought-provoking and insightful.

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly (2010)

July 2, 2010 Book Reviews

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I first took notice of Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree when I read a write up in the July 2010 issue of Good Reading magazine. Sometimes all it takes to convince me to read something is the mere mention of a decaying mansion being an important part of the plot. Yes, this has something to do with the novel I’ve been carrying around inside me for years now. One day, my friends, one day. But until then, I keep reading other people’s take on the deteriorating house hoping that they haven’t pilfered my idea.

It’s the sweltering summer of 1997, and Karen Clarke, a gifted student of languages is finishing up at university. Unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, she uses her new found freedom as an opportunity to extend herself beyond her comfortable friendship group. A chance meeting with the wildly bohemian Biba Capel sees Karen pulled into the inclusive and mysterious world of Biba and her brother, Rex, and their crumbling childhood home in London. By the end of the summer, as the byline goes, two people will be dead and lives changed irrevocably.

She slung an arm around me so that our cheeks were pressed together and mouthed the words as my pencil formed them. Personal space was clearly an alien concept to her. That, coupled with her eccentric clothes and complete lack of self-consciousness meant that by now I was pretty sure I was dealing with a mad person, fascinating and disarmingly different to everything I was used to.

Told in Karen’s perspective between the past and the present, The Poison Tree spends much of its time vaguely hinting at what is to come, and the secrets that are being kept from the other characters and the reader. This attempted build up just wasn’t effective or suspenseful, there are no real hints at what or how things panned out, just the deliberate ambiguity that something did happen. Why not trust the natural dramatic momentum of a story rather than resorting to the tired flashback technique? I had much of the same issue with Rebecca James’ Beautiful Malice, (which is in many ways very similar to The Poison Tree, the secrets and hidden troubled past of a main character, now with child, looking back) so I wonder how much of my impatience with this technique has to do with the genre itself, or my lack of knowledge and awareness of psychological thrillers.

I’m loathe to reveal too much more of the plot, as the unravelling of the secrets is the main point of enjoyment of such a novel. The early days of Rex, Biba and Karen’s friendship doesn’t quite reach those frenetic, heady heights of new and exciting friendships, as I imagine was intended. The last third is a rush of tying up loose ends and revelations, which makes for moderately thrilling reading but the accelerated pace here jars with the slow beginning. An uneven pace and wildly vacillating characterizations prevent The Poison Tree from being truly gripping, but it somehow manages to be passably entertaining.

[Disclaimer: publisher supplied proof copy from work. The Poison Tree was released in Australia by Hachette in June 2010, ISBN: 978-144-470104-3]

Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk (2010)

June 14, 2010 Book Reviews

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The cover to the left of Chuck Palahniuk’s latest Tell-All doesn’t look like it contains a story about the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood, does it? When I first saw it online I thought it looked too blank but when I picked up a copy from the library I was surprised to discover that the cover is actually covered in GLITTER! Far removed from the typical hyper-masculinity we’ve come to expect from Chuck Palahniuk.

Alas, as those much wiser than I have said, all that glitters is not gold.

Hazie Coogan is the live-in maid, confidante and assistant to fading, aging Hollywood actress Katherine Kenton. Despite Hazie’s careful methods of preventing her Miss Kathie’s heart being broken by yet another man, their lives are interrupted by the arrival of Webster Carlton Westward III who quickly wins the heart of the tired and lonely actress. When Hazie and Kathie find a tell all memoir manuscript in Webb’s suitcase foretelling the star’s imminent death, they set out to thwart the attempts on her life that come with each new draft.

Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection. Nowadays, I tell her that erections are less likely a compliment than they are the result of some medical breakthrough. Transplanted monkey glands or one of those new miracle pills.
As if human beings – men in particular – need yet another way to lie.

Before the narrative starts there are eighty pages of incessant name-dropping of celebrities from the golden years of Hollywood – this in a novel of only 179 pages. Eighty pages of repetitive, shallow hints at the social circles Kathie once moved in, as if to show us the stature that she once held. It repeats that Kathie is desperate for the love of any man, and that Hazie is just as weirdly possessive of Kathie as the suitors she tries to protect her from. The writing follows a stilted style supposed to mimic screenplay directions which comes across as awkward and clumsy. The lack of adequate scene setting or relevance to the story that is to come smacks of disrespect for Palahniuk’s readers – the same readers he trusted would be willing and able to decipher the pidgin language in 2009′s Pygmy.

The repetition doesn’t end with the lacklustre scene setting, as the methods of execution found in Webb’s manuscripts and Kathie’s evasion of these elaborately planned deaths repeat. Over and over again. She overcomes the prediction that she will be mauled by bears only to be faced with potentially falling from a high-rise balcony, and overcoming that too. Is this constant repetition somehow supposed to show us lowly minions the tedium of fame? Endless parties and award ceremonies surely cannot be as boring as the scenario Palahniuk presents us in Tell-All. The Chuck Palahniuk Twist Ending™ is as weak and watered down as the vodka in my parents liquor cabinet when I was 15. Like my parents, I’m not easily fooled by a story that is lacking structure, relevance or humour.

I know it may be difficult to believe, but I write this as a Palahniuk fan. I don’t open his books expecting enlightenment and breathtaking literary writing, but I do expect dissatisfaction with contemporary life to be twisted into darkly funny prose. I resent being treated like a dumb Palahniuk disciple who is willing to lap up any poorly written dross that is dished up to me. No matter how much glitter is thrown on the cover, Tell-All is still a dud.

The Best Australian Stories 2010 edited by Cate Kennedy (2010)

How It Feels by Brendan Cowell (2010)

Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s by Seamus O’Hanlon (2010)

Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper (2010)

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg (2010)

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2010)

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (2010)

Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training by Tom Jokinen (2010)

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly (2010)

Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk (2010)

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