Book Review: 'A Wrong Turn At The Office Of Unmade Lists' by Jane Rawson (No 20: Fiction)

Jane Rawson’s 2013 novel ‘A Wrong Turn At The Office of Unmade Lists’ defies easy description. Its genre is indefinable, the plot ambitious, and the characters unusual, and yet familiar at the same time. It is no surprise then that this release by small press publisher Transit Lounge was recently awarded the 2014 MUBA, ‘Most Underrated Book Award’ judged by a collection of Australian indie publishers. The complexity of material in the novel deserves close attention, and hopefully the publicity surrounding the win will bring Rawson a wider audience.

‘A Wrong Turn At The Office of Unmade Lists’ begins in the future, a fairly bleak Melbourne, where the rivers are polluted, survivors live in humpies, and the UN patrol the camps giving aid to those trying to eke out a living. We meet Caddy, who has lost her home and her husband; she sits in a bar by the river, negotiating deals with the street kids around her, and musing on the short story she has been writing while she whiles away the hours:

‘At the Newell settlement someone had been cooking fish on a fire. It smelled good, but she’d learned a long time ago that she didn’t have the constitution for river fish. Instead, she’d pulled a pack of oat bars from her humpy. Man, she needed to find some work’.

Caddy’s mate Ray is also trying to survive in this grim world, and he enlists the willing Caddy to sleep with clients who still have money from some undisclosed source of business. Rawson paints the future Melbourne evocatively: the environment is ruined, disease is rife, the Internet is still ruling people’s lives but is essentially useless in providing what everyone wants, food and fresh water. Rawson’s vision of the future is depressingly easy to believe but at the same time vividly imaginative:

‘These days, navigating the smeared platforms and dismantled escalators of the City Loop settlement stations was a much bigger worry than terrorists. Thousands of people lived in the three underground stations, with no water, no ventilation and noone clearing anything away, ever. Elsewhere in the city settlements took care of themselves, kept things clean, looked out for each other. But for some reason the City Loop had attracted the worst down-on-their luck transients, the most mentally ill, the creepiest scanners, the fallen-from-favour cops and bouncers, tough guys and reprobates always assuming someone else would clean up after them, never doing a thing for themselves.’

We exist in Caddy and Ray’s world for a while before Ray takes a detour and stumbles across some printed maps amongst the junk piles and they pique his interest. And so it is the maps that lead us into the strange world of the ‘suspended imaginums’, and we are to learn through a mix of Ray’s travels and a sub plot concerning two new characters Sarah and Simon, that we have entered Caddy’s unfinished short story. Rawson enters meta territory, and Ray’s introduction to the Office of Unmade Lists with its curious employees is reminiscent of the film ‘Being John Malkovich’ or the absurdity of classic ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’:

‘’No maps, bud. Look, this is Shadow Storage and Retrieval. Head over that way’, she pointed left, ‘and you get to Suspended Imaginums. Past that, Imaginum Incubation. To your right, Odd Socks, then Tupperware Lids, the coffee shop and gift store, then Partially Used pens, then Remotes, then Lost Oddments. Unmade Lists have just set up their own Office, but they’re still waiting on funding for equipment’.

The dialogue in this section is witty and droll, perfect for the scene Rawson is setting. The plot becomes more complex, the narrative moves between third and first person, and time moves between past Australia and future Australia. Rawson is ambitious in her structure and voice, whilst maintaining coherence and pace. I did think the earlier sections in future Melbourne were more confident, less dialogue driven and more purposeful. However, the latter sections no doubt were what captured the attention of the MUBA judges: their scope and imagination make this an unusual and worthy read.

*This review is part of the Australian Womens Writers Challenge 2014

http://australianwomenwriters.com/

Book Review: 'Whiskey Charlie Foxtrot' by Annabel Smith (No 19: Fiction)

Annabel Smith’s 2012 novel ‘Whisky Charlie Foxtrot’ explores two of life’s mysterious phenomenon: identical twins and coma. The title refers to twin brothers, Charlie and William. After a childhood friend’s Air Force father teaches the boys to use the military alphabet on their walkie talkies, William becomes Whiskey to complement his brother’s already apt name. Charlie is the more reserved of the two, Whiskey the adventurous, popular one. He’s slightly older, slightly taller, slightly better at golf, slightly more memorable in the playground. It is the slight edge that sets the two apart in a lifelong struggle for independence from the other. Charlie hopes that the family move from England to Australia when they are teenagers will give him a fresh start but his hopes are dashed. Whiskey is a hit in the new high school and he’s soon seeing the most glamorous girl in the year, Anneliese. That is until Charlie is assigned as Anneliese’s dance partner in the lead up lessons to the end of year ball and his foxtrot starts a series of events to gradually destroy the boys’ relationship:

‘Sure enough when Charlie got home, Whiskey was waiting for him, lying on his back on Charlie’s bed, legs crossed, arms behind his head.

Well, you’ve really done that dickhead Randall proud, he said, without even looking at Charlie.

How’s that? Charlie asked warily, putting down his schoolbag.

You’ve got the cunningest foxtrot going, Charlie. You certainly know how to steal another man’s chicken.’

The novel moves between the present and the past; we are told early in the piece that the adult Whiskey is in a coma after being hit by a car, and as family members come to the hospital we piece together the events that have lead them to the present. We learn the story of how another girlfriend comes between the adult Charlie and Whiskey, ‘Juliet, however was not like Whiskey’s other girls. She was a beauty, that part was true’ and how Whiskey’s travels through Peru lead him to a wife Rosa, who is a surprise to the family, and is a catalyst for bringing the brothers back into contact, ‘You and Whiskey are brothers, Charlie, she began. You are family, whether you like it or not. And your family is never going away’.

There are other revelations in the novel which thread the two way alphabet into the narrative, and while this conceit could have been twee, Smith has a deft touch, and the serious nature of the novel’s premise allows the concept to feel clever rather than naff. Smith understands the inner workings of families, and I think her portrait of Charlie was honest and unflinching: he’s not a very pleasant character at times. She shows us in Charlie the flaws that we have all fallen prey to in life: petty jealousy towards siblings and romantic rivals; fear that manifests itself as failure to take action; and fear towards major life commitments. I also thought Smith’s exploration of the hospital environment and the medical staff a family meets during the recovery period rang true. My grandmother recovered from a significant period in a coma and the emotional journey of the characters, described by Smith, was deeply relatable for me.

This is a very fine novel on what it means to be part of a family, and how we can grow from the intense but immature feelings of our youth into a more nuanced person in adulthood.

*This review is part of the Australian Womens Writers Challenge 2014

http://australianwomenwriters.com/

Book Review: 'Return To Coolami' by Eleanor Dark (No 18: Classic)

For my latest classic Australian text I picked up a copy of Eleanor Dark’s 1936 release ‘Return to Coolami’, re-released as part of Allen and Unwin’s House of Books collection. It was on the ‘recommended reads’ shelf at Berkelouw and I was pleased to have it bought to my attention: my mother, with her maiden name of Dark, has been telling me for years that we are related to Eleanor, and she would point out Dark’s plaque on the boardwalk of Circular Key when we walked over it. Alas, last year I looked up Dark’s biography, and of course Eleanor had married into a Dark family and they were from America I believe, not from Germany as was our family. I had hoped to leverage off my literary celebrity there, but it’s not to be: instead I have read my first novel from her body of work just for pleasure, and am pleased that I did.

This very much reminded me of my reading of Harrower’s ‘In Certain Circles’ in that so much of our literature from the first half of the twentieth century was consumed with analyzing the impact of the wars on those who returned and those who had waited at home. This novel focuses on three marriages of varying stages: Brett and Susan who have been married for a year, Susan’s parents Tom and Millicent who have been married for decades, and Susan’s brother Colin and his wife Margeryy who have little children and live out in the country. The novel opens with Brett and Susan arguing about the direction of their marriage before joining Tom and Millicent, who are to drive the younger couple from Sydney back to Brett’s farm Coolami. On the way they will stop overnight at Colin’s farm, before driving a second day to their destination. This is the full scope of the plot, but Dark drip feeds us information as the narrative develops: Susan has lost a baby not long after the birth and we are soon to find out that it was not Brett’s child.

The long car trip allows Dark’s characters time to reflect on their relationships and Susan has a particularly complicated recent past to contemplate. She had been in a relationship with Brett’s brother but had not been able to get past a fondness to actual love:

‘Because love still hadn’t come, but it was harder than she’d expected to retreat in good order. The tormented misery of the young man she wasn’t in love with had become in the end as strong a tyranny as love itself. She was confused by it, vaguely frightened, desperately sorry for him. But not contrite, not remorseful. Never that. She hadn’t pretended. She hadn’t promised. She had denied and still denied responsibility’.

Brett similarly has his mind on the relationship, with the spectre of his brother Jim always clouding his frank interactions with Susan:

‘He put his pipe in his pocket and stood up. “It’s no good Susan”. He looked down blackly at her impassive face and lowered lashes. “We always end up with a row – bickering, hurting each other accidentally or deliberately, insults – other things”. He paused for a moment. Each of them in the rough, pebbly ground beneath their eyes, saw a long procession of unlovely incidents – of words forged by their speaker’s pain into instruments of torture, of actions twisted with the inspired ingenuity of mental suffering, into veritable nightmares, of kisses like blows and caresses rotten with a taint of cruelty’.

Tom and Millicent worry for their children, but more notably feel a shift in their relationship as they see their youngest off to married life. They are in their late fifties and wonder what role they now play in society, no longer parents but too used to being responsible to start afresh with adventure in retirement. The fourth relationship in the novel is that of city to country, as Millicent looks back on her move from her childhood home Wondabyne to live in Sydney with city boy Tom with some regret, and envies her children who have returned to large properties in the country out of some ancestral yearning. Landscape is dramatically imagined during the travelling party’s stops from the Blue Mountains into the wider New South Wales countryside: ‘High cliffs and tangled gullies dwarfed into deceptive flatness by the great expanses round them. Savage country, all but unknown, drowned in its mysterious and ineffable blue’.

Margery and Colin’s relationship is given the least focus of the partnerships but Colin’s mental state, affected by his return from the war, provides the catalyst for the shift in dynamics at the close of the novel. Like Harrower, there is a confidence with Dark’s writing, and an intelligent understanding of the inner workings of both women and men. I thought this a very modern feeling novel, which is high praise given its 1930s release. Some of the issues raised in the portrayal of Susan are strongly feminist although of course, this period was a time of monumental change for women. In the early chapters of this novel I was concerned that I would find it hard to keep caring for the characters to finish reading, but I think the novel becomes much more engaging after the midway point, and the resolution was quite charmingly romantic. After reading this very fine novel I feel even more disappointed that I’m not descended from Eleanor’s line. It would be a very impressive lineage.

*This review is part of the Australian Womens Writers Challenge 2014

http://australianwomenwriters.com/

Book Review: 'How To Build A Girl' by Caitlin Moran (No 17: Fiction)

I am a big fan of Caitlin Moran and her writing. Her first piece of non fiction 'How To Be A Woman' was a fantastically humorous, thought provoking contemplation on contemporary feminism. I highly recommend reading that text, and also her second piece 'Moranthology' which was a collection of her editorial  and long form articles for British newspapers - not quite as enjoyable as 'How To Be A Woman' but her account of Kate and William's wedding is worth the price of the book alone.
Moran started her career as a music journalist: she was a ballsy teenager who talked her way into writing for a well known publication Melody Maker, which brought her notoriety for slamming indie bands with ebulliently sarcastic reviews. Once you read a few of Moran's books you'll be aware of her poor upbringing, her family situation relying on a pension, her wonderfully droll parents and siblings, and her frank attitude towards sex. So it is interesting to see her now foray into fictional writing as she begins what is touted as a series of books, starting with 'How To Build A Girl'.
This novel is apparently 'loosely' based on Moran's adolescence, although I would say it reads almost identically to Moran's biography. We meet Johanna Morrigan in the 1990s, fourteen years old at the start of the novel, unhappily living in cramped conditions in working class Wolverhampton with her large family and masturbating furiously to experience some rush within the mundanity of her life. Johanna is mature, both in looks and in attitude, exemplified by the visiting council nurse mistaking Johanna's mother's new born twins as Johanna's own:
'This is all because I am fat. If you're going to be a fat teenaged girl, it becomes hard for people to guess how old you are. By the time you're in a 38DD bra, people are just going to presume you're sexually active, and have been having rough, regular procreative sex with alpha males on some wasteland. Chance would be a fine thing. I haven't even been kissed yet'.
The novel outlines Johanna's coming of age as she 'blags' her way into writing music reviews for NME magazine, loses her virginity, explores casual sex, falls madly for indie musician 'John Kite' after interviewing him, has her first epiphany about attitudes towards women's sexuality, and revises her tendency to invent herself as the cynic in order to get one over those she regards as superior in class. Johanna learns how to build the 'real Johanna'. I think it's an interesting direction for Moran because I approached it as a YA, but at its resolution I don't really think it's completely intended for that market despite the age of the protagonist. I would really treat it more like memoir, rather than as fiction, but this may be because it is so similar to Moran's real life.
Categorising it is not essential though: it's an enjoyable novel and Moran's funny, clever, joyful and perceptive style permeates the writing. Moran paints a visual joke with much of her writing, and while it is often about bleak material, there is always a wink in her descriptions: of their television being repossessed, 'The children line the route from the front room to the front door like it's a funeral - weeping as it leaves the house. We then go back into the front room, and stand around the empty spot - like sad woodland animals around Snow White's dead body'.
Johanna is a charming character, as is her brother Krissi, her crush John Kite and her incorrigible muso father. The staff at NME have some wonderfully witty dialogue as well.
Moran, who just recently interviewed Lena Durham for her new book, very much shares with her a penchant for discussing vaginas, and this novel is no exception. There is an inner eye roll from me at times, but I did enjoy the over the top description of cystitis in 'How To Build A Girl' merely for the fact that surely cystitis is an unfairly overlooked everyday horror. More of the mundane in high literature I say: 'There is a very particular noise women make when they have a pain in their reproductive chutes, caused by something unhappily trying to egotiate its way out. Years later, during childbirth, I recognise the self-same noises. I'm sure a musicologist could pin-point the exact pitching of 'vaginal immolation'. Perhaps they could play it on a church organ, whilst a room full of women wince'.
Moran is exactly the same age as me, so I feel quite attuned to her pop culture references but certainly for anyone who remembers nineties music fondly, this is a real celebration of that time. Indeed, this is one for those who want to reflect back fondly, but I think there is also enough timelessness in these adolscent issues that a teenaged audience now would find this equally rewarding.

Book Review: 'This House Of Grief' by Helen Garner (No 16: True Crime)

I would read a bus timetable written by Helen Garner. This is why I raced to buy her latest release ‘This House of Grief’, despite knowing the content of the criminal case the book recounts, having read excerpts of the text in various newspapers, and having watched her recent interview with Jennifer Byrne for the ABC Book Club. Certainly, there was much discussion about the challenging material within the book before its release, and I noticed many friends and fellow readers on social media were hesitant to read about the deaths of the three Farquharson children. It was a truly tragic case: I’ll make no other comment here on the details of the case. Instead, my comments are about Garner’s story telling alone.

The usual commentary about Garner’s style is her observance of small details, and her insightful interpretation of human idiosyncrasies and traits. Garner often speaks of her curiosity of what makes people ‘tick’, and her search for meaning in events and actions of people fuel much of her work. This case is no exception: Garner was compelled to follow the case out of curiosity on the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’ and she soon realised that she wanted to write an extended piece on the case. Her previous account of a true crime in ‘Joe Cinque’s Consolation’ was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful book: the mother of the victim in that case became close with Garner and was a wonderful ‘voice’ in the account. Her involvement with the writing of the book gave vital insight into Joe’s character and really made it an exceptional piece of non-fiction. Garner did not have access to either party in this case, bar limited access to the maternal grandparents of the boys, and some minor interaction with the representing lawyers. As Garner noted in her interview with Jennifer Byrne, this is the gamble one pays with recounting a true crime; access to the Farquharson parents was always going to be tricky and ultimately did not come to fruition. Like Anna Krien’s ‘Night Games’ which I reviewed here last year, I didn’t think the lack of direct material from the affected parties left either book lacking, which is a testimony to the quality of writing from both Krien and Garner.

In fact, I was hugely engaged in the retelling of the case and for someone who has never been on a jury or had any need to be involved with lawyers or a trial, it was educative and informative. The law is indeed a complex beast. The personalities in this case, including the legal counsel, the jury members and the media court reporters provided ample interest in the narrative, and Garner’s ability to draw out interesting conversation from those around her enriches the text. A serendipitous element of the book is Garner’s tag-along gap year student Louise, ‘a close friend’s daughter, a pale and quiet sixteen year old with white blonde hair and braces on her teeth’. Louise says some wonderful things of the case, as only a savvy teenager can, and provided Garner with some moments of levity within the book.

Garner maintains a clear and succinct style as befitting the retelling of a court case, but weaves occasional moments of absolutely moving imagery: she writes of the children’s graves, ‘In the mown grass sprouted hundreds of tiny pink flowers. We picked handfuls and laid them on the grave, but the breeze kept blowing them away. Every twig, every pebble we tried to weigh them with was too light to resist the steady rushing of the spring wind’. And every so often her signature brutal honesty makes a welcome appearance: ‘My head was full of a very loud clanging. Nothing expert, nothing trained or intellectual. Just a shit detector going off, that was all. The alarm bells of a woman who had been in the world for more than sixty years, knowing men, sometimes hearing them say true things, sometimes being told lies.’

I won’t say this is a great read, because I feel uncomfortable when people lightly celebrate works on such grave matters. I will say this is a very important read, and urge readers to engage in this content for the very reason that by ignoring domestic violence out of an unwillingness to imagine such horror we make no progress in addressing the issue. Garner wanted to understand the ‘why’, and I can empathise in that quest, as hard as it is to enter the mindset behind it. Thank goodness the conversation here has been furthered by such an intelligent and compassionate mind.

*This review is part of the Australian Womens Writers Challenge 2014

http://australianwomenwriters.com/