Reading matters

'Three Dollars' by Elliot Perlman

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 368  pages; 1999.

Eddie Harnovey, a 38-year-old chemical engineer, is married to a brilliant academic with whom he has a young daughter. He has a lovely house in the suburbs, a strong moral conscience and a kind, friendly nature. He is intelligent and well educated. Why, then, is his world falling around his feet? Why is he on the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name?

This is the premise behind Elliot Perlman's award-winning debut novel Three Dollars.

Essentially it charts the rise -- and spectacular fall -- of a young man, who could have had everything but looks set to lose it all, including his home and his marriage.

'Seven Types of Ambiguity' by Elliot Perlman

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 624  pages; 2005.

At last. A book by an Australian novelist that isn't about convicts or the pioneers or soldiers heading off to the Great War. This one is, in fact, set in modern times - or the economic rationalistic 1990s anyway.

What's more it's set in the Australian city I know best - Melbourne - at a time when I was a resident. How wonderful to recognise names and places in the pages of this well-crafted novel: I have downed many an ice-cold beer at The Esplanade Hotel, drooled over the cakes that line the bakeries along St Kilda's Acland Street, gone shopping (for books!) in Chapel Street, admired the mansions in Toorak, seen the beach at the end of Glenhuntly Road, walked along the streets of Sorrento.  

American readers, British readers will not understand this, because they are collectively spoilt by so many modern novels set in their homelands. But for me, as an Australian, I can't tell you how refreshing it was as a reader to recognise such places in the pages of a book that wasn't non-fiction. I don't know why, but it made the story all that more real, and all that more special, to me.

What's more it's set in the Australian city I know best - Melbourne - at a time when I was a resident. How wonderful to recognise names and places in the pages of this well-crafted novel: I have downed many an ice-cold beer at The Esplanade Hotel, drooled over the cakes that line the bakeries along St Kilda's Acland Street, gone shopping (for books!) in Chapel Street, admired the mansions in Toorak, seen the beach at the end of Glenhuntly Road, walked along the streets of Sorrento.  

American readers, British readers will not understand this, because they are collectively spoilt by so many modern novels set in their homelands. But for me, as an Australian, I can't tell you how refreshing it was as a reader to recognise such places in the pages of a book that wasn't non-fiction. I don't know why, but it made the story all that more real, and all that more special, to me.