Reading matters

'Sorry' by Gail Jones

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 218 pages; 2008.

Gail Jones' fourth novel, Sorry, has been shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize as well as the Miles Franklin Award. Even before it was nominated for these prestigious literary prizes, I was looking forward to reading it. I gave Sixty Lights a glowing five-star review way back in 2006, so I expected high things from Jones' new one and promptly ordered a copy from Amazon as soon as it was available in paperback.

But Sorry was disappointing. I wanted to love it. I wanted to find it so brilliantly readable I would find it impossible to put down. Instead, it was the opposite: I'd put it down and then find it almost impossible to pick up. This bugged me, because I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason for my unwillingness to finish the book. And then it occurred to me: I simply did not like any of the characters, a cast of kooky, unlovable and deeply confused people that, quite frankly, annoyed the hell out of me.

Is this a shallow reason for not liking a book? Probably.

That said, Sorry deals with some big themes, not the least of which is Australia's shameful past treatment of Aboriginals in which children were taken from their families and raised with whites, what we now know as the "stolen generations". Jones' book is, indeed, timely, given that the country's newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, recently apologised for a (now defunct) Government Policy that ruined so many lives and caused so much heartache and pain.

'The Old Jest' by Jennifer Johnston

Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 158 pages; 1984.

This classic text by Irish writer Jennifer Johnston won the Whitbread Award for the best novel of 1979, the year in which it was first published.

It's set immediately after the Great War in an unspecified village by the sea, a short train journey from Dublin. Here 18-year-old Nancy, an orphan, lives with her Aunt Mary and her invalid grandfather, a veteran of the Boer War. It's summer and Nancy is on the brink of adulthood, excited about starting her new life, but reluctant to bade goodbye to childhood.

Secretly in love with her neighbour, Harry, a city worker who treats her like a younger sister, she knows deep down inside that he will never reciprocate her feelings: he's too busy wooing another villager, the haughty Maeve Casey.

Nancy, naive but headstrong, spends much of her time alone at the beach, where she discovers a secluded hut -- "built by some railway workers many years before, cleverly hidden in among the granite blocks, which protected it from the sea wind" -- that she makes her own.

During one visit she discovers, much to her annoyance, that someone else has been using the hut, and before long she meets the intruder, an older man, in hiding, whom she befriends. And then, one day, he shows her his gun...

'Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry' by B. S. Johnson

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 187  pages; 2001.

What goes around, comes around. This is the premise behind this short, quirky and experimental novel, by the late B.S. Johnson, which was first published in 1973. Sadly, the author killed himself not long after publication.

Christie Malry, a simple man from a humble background, decides that if he can't have money he will work close to it. He therefore takes a lowly job at a bank where he learns the principles of double-entry book-keeping. It is only when he moves to a new position as an invoice clerk in a sweet factory that he decides to apply the system of credit and debit to his own life. This system allows him to "even up" all the hard (and not so hard) knocks that society throws at him, so that if he feels aggrieved by something -- for instance, his boss yelling at him -- he must balance the books by doing something to accrue credit -- for instance, playing a prank on his colleagues.

As the novel progresses Christie's credits become more and more outlandish -- and criminal. Bomb hoaxes, death threats and then poisoning of the water supply become the order of the day. Eventually, Christie's account is settled in full in a very karma-like if tragic way.

'Two Moons' by Jennifer Johnston

Fiction - paperback; Headline Review; 232  pages; 1999.

Two Moons is another startling novel by Jennifer Johnston, who  writes in a crisp, clear style reminiscent of so many of her Irish counterparts.

A kind of cross between Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship and Salley Vickers' Instances of the Number 3, this book is part comedy and part family drama, but has an element of spiritual "fantasy" that gives it an unusual twist -- although some readers may find it too "inventive" for their liking.

Essentially it is a story about three generations of women, two of whom live together -- Mimi, the elderly grandmother, and her daughter, the stage actress Grace -- in a house overlooking Dublin Bay.

'The Gingerbread Woman' by Jennifer Johnston

Fiction - paperback; Review; 213 pages; 2000.

This beautifully succinct novel tells the story of two lonely 30-somethings, both coming to terms with personal tragedies, who forge a tentative -- and rocky -- friendship, almost by accident, on a cliff top overlooking Dublin Bay.

Clara, a freelance writer and lecturer who lives in a house filled with clutter and an overgrown garden, is recovering from major surgery and nursing a broken heart after a failed love affair in New York.

Meanwhile Laurence (Lar), a teacher from Northern Ireland, is mourning the loss of his wife and 10-month old daughter, who were killed two years' earlier.

'Out of the Silence' by Wendy James

Fiction - paperback; Random House Australia; 320 pages; 2005. REVIEW COPY.

This delightful book by first time novelist Wendy James is set in Australia at the dawn of the twentieth century.

It revolves around two women from vastly different backgrounds: Maggie Heffernan, a headstrong working-class country girl; and Elizabeth Hamilton, a well educated Scottish immigrant keen to start afresh after the death of the doctor to whom she had been engaged to be married.

Elizabeth's friend Vida Goldstein, an early feminist reformer and the first woman to stand for Parliament in Australia, is also a central pivot to the story, which goes something like this..

'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' by James Joyce

Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 272  pages; 1994.

First published in 1916, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical first novel that has been much lauded for its inventive use of language and its expose on the claustrophobia of growing up in holy Catholic Ireland.

Stephen Dedalus, the narrator of the novel, tells his story stream-of-consciousness-style from early childhood, where he boards at a strict Jesuit school, to early adulthood, when he has a crisis of faith, abandons his religion and flees his country.

'Sixty Lights' by Gail Jones

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 224  pages; 2005

Sixty Lights is a compelling, captivating novel about one young woman's drama-filled life in Victorian times.

Orphaned as a young child, Lucy Strange and her younger brother are brought up by a slightly eccentric uncle. Leaving their native Australia, the family moves to Dickensian London, a city that was "too vast, too chill and altogether too drear". Later, Lucy sets forth for the more exotic India, where she sets up home with her uncle's fey friend in a wealthy European enclave of Bombay.

'The Earthquake Bird' by Susanna Jones

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 272 pages; 2002

Did she do it, or didn't she? This is the one question that propels the reader to keep turning the pages in this unusual but gripping murder mystery.

I read this book in one sitting - okay, so I was trapped on a long-haul flight from London to Melbourne, but even if I wasn't I'm sure I would have read The Earthquake Bird just as quickly.

Set in Japan, it tells the story of an ex-pat English woman, Lucy Fly, working in Tokyo as a translator. She is arrested by police on suspicion of murdering a fellow English backpacker. What the reader is never quite sure of is this: is Lucy telling the truth? And why did she leave Yorkshire all those years ago? Why is she no longer in touch with her family? What exactly is she hiding?

Susanna Jones has written a sparse but intriguing novel with a menacing undertone throughout. As well as being a gripping, intelligent read, I found the insights into Japanese culture equally interesting. It's also very reminiscent of Losing Gemma by Katy Gardner.

But don't just take my word for it:  this book won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger for Best First Crime Novel of 2001.

'Enemy Women' by Paulette Jiles

Fiction - paperback; 4th Estate; 302pp; 2003. REVIEW COPY.

Remember the Lassie movies? I remember one particular one — Lassie Come Home I think — in which the collie overcomes great obstacles and distances to return home to her owner. She has had such a difficult journey her little paws drip blood and you don't expect her to survive. It sounds pathetic, but I remember crying my eyes out at the end. It's odd, I know, but I can't help comparing the emotional impact of that old black and white movie with Enemy Women.

Set in America during the Civil War, the heroine, Adair Colley, is imprisoned under (false) accusations of being a Confederate spy. Feisty and determined, the 19 year-old escapes jail and goes on an amazingly tortuous journey to reunite her family torn asunder by the war. During her long walk home we see her being worn down mentally and physically, courting danger at every turn. She has many narrow escapes and before long the reader begins to wonder if she will ever reach her destination at all.

I won't spoil the ending, but let me say it was like watching Lassie Come Home all over again. I'm not ashamed to say I had tears coursing down my cheeks by the time I turned the last page.

This is a brilliant book, extremely evocative of a past era, and while it plays the emotion card it's never cloying or overly sentimental. It will, I'm sure, make a brilliant movie should the screen rights ever be sold. Take your tissues.