Reading Matters

'Questions of Travel' by Michelle de Kretser

Fiction - hardcover; Allen & Unwin; 528 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

If books won prizes for ambition alone, Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel should win every gong going. This is a "widescreen" novel that explores the interconnectedness of our lives brought about by the advent of the internet, cheap travel and globalisation.

Dual narrative

The book spans 40 years and follows two characters — Australian Laura Fraser and Sri Lankan Ravi Mendis — whose tales are divided into two separate narrative threads. These two characters are poles apart, not least the ways in which they travel the globe.

Laura is a drifter, who has the freedom to travel across the world wherever her Australian passport might take her; Ravi is forced to flee Sri Lanka under difficult circumstances and seeks political asylum in Australia, never knowing whether he will be shipped back home against his will.

The pair eventually meet, but that's not really the climax, nor purpose, of the story, which covers  many issues and topics associated with "travel", including the way in which the development of the internet and cheap personal computers made the world smaller. Indeed, following these character's lives is a journey in itself.

Laura, who uses an inheritance to travel around the world, leads the kind of life to which many of us might aspire. But even though she lives in London for several years, there are pitfalls to never putting roots down in one place — she doesn't have a proper career, nor a settled relationship. But when she returns to Sydney and begins working for a travel guide company (a thinly disguised version of Lonely Planet), there is no miracle "cure" for her dislocation.

By contrast, Ravi, an academic who develops one of the first websites and understands the potential of the internet, has no choice but to leave his homeland following the brutal murder of his wife and young son. When he seeks political asylum in Australia there is the constant fear that he will be returned home, even though he would love to see other family members and continue his life before it was so viciously interrupted.

Thoughtful and intelligent

There's no doubt that Questions of Travel is a thoughtful and intelligent novel, the type of novel that doesn't shy away from exploring big issues — in fact, on more than one occasion it reminded me very much of last year's Giller Prize-winning novel, 419, by Will Ferguson, which was equally ambitious in scope and outlook.

But this is also one of those rare books that is all about the detail — incredible detail. Indeed, there's so much detail in this book, it requires a lot of concentration and attention from the reader. It is not an effortless read. It is not a book to rush through.

Because of this it took a long time for me to get "into" the story and, just occasionally, I found it dragged in places. This may be partly to do with the author's prose style, which felt convoluted and "showy", but once I got used to it, I enjoyed her descriptions, particularly of objects and places, which were evocative and often quite beautiful. Likewise, her characters are wonderful — quirky, original, authentic and memorable.

But it is the little revelations, scattered throughout the narrative, that makes the book such an entertaining and often surprising read. And the ending, which almost made me fall off my chair with the shock of it, is one of the most powerful and totally unexpected conclusions I've ever read in contemporary fiction. Weeks later I'm still thinking about it — just as I am also thinking about all the many issues thrown up by this extraordinary, eloquent and deeply moving novel.

'Dirty Work' by Gabriel Weston

Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 192 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Gabriel Weston is a practising surgeon. Many of you may be familiar with her first book, Direct Red, which explored what it is like to be a surgeon, and went on to win the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography in 2010. She sticks with the medical theme in her first novel, Dirty Work, which is a dark, oppressive tale about a doctor who makes a terrible mistake and then must face the consequences.

The kind of surgery no one talks about

From the opening line — "I have never seen so much blood" — this novel transports you directly into the fascinating world of surgery, where every decision (and incision) can make the difference between life and death.

But this is not the kind of surgery we normally talk about, for Nancy, the narrator of this story, is an "abortion provider" — she never calls herself an "abortionist" — and her career is not something she can freely mention in company without being shunned or condemned. Even fellow surgeons look down on her line of surgery, which is viewed as "dirty work".

When she makes an error during a procedure, her world is turned upside down. She is investigated by a tribunal appointed by the General Medical Council to explain herself. If she is found to be negligent she will be struck off the register and unable to practise as a doctor again.

A novel in four parts

The book is structured around the four sessions of the tribunal (one a week for a month) — what happened in theatre; a psychiatric assessment; her recent performance as a doctor; and the verdict — but the narrative does not follow the cut and dried Q&A to which she is subjected. Instead, it ebbs and flows around Nancy's memories — her childhood split between the USA and England, how she got into medicine, why she began providing abortions, the support she receives from her sister — which occur to her before, during and after each session.

This is a successful technique, because not only do you come to know Nancy very well and empathise with her predicament (it's clear she is an excellent surgeon), you keep turning the pages because you want to know the verdict, which is delivered in the final pages of this short novel.

Compelling and claustrophobic read

I read this book on a four-hour plane journey and I have to say I was hooked from the start. It's not a light or fun read though, because it covers such dark territory and there's an oppressive atmosphere which resonates off the page.

While Dirty Work is told in a cold, detached manner, the author manages to make it incredibly moving in places. It's an extraordinarily powerful novel for those prepared to read about a topic told in such a frank, forthright and often unnerving way.

But it's real strength is the way in which it explores lots of issues and medical ethics and is able to show that nothing is black and white. This is not a book that examines the arguments for and against abortion; instead it looks at the mindset of those carrying them out. For instance, what makes a doctor want to become an abortionist? How do you rationalising saving life with terminating the unborn? And what kind of psychological impact, if any, does this kind of surgery have on those providing it?

For another take on this novel, please visit Jackie's review at Farm Lane Books.

'The Uninvited' by Liz Jensen

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 320 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The older I get and the more books I read, the more difficult it appears to be to find truly original novels, because I find so much fiction is just a rehash of stories I've read before. But from the opening page of Liz Jensen's latest novel, The Uninvited, I knew I was about to embark on a reading adventure that would have no parallel. Indeed, it is quite unlike anything I've ever read before.

A genre-busting novel

The Uninvited is not an easy book to classify, because it's a heady mix of all kinds of genres, including dystopian science fiction, crime, horror and psychological thriller. Throw in a main character who has Asperger's syndrome, plus plenty of deadpan humour, and you begin to see why it defies categorisation.

But the one element that really stands out — for me, anyway — is just the spine-tingling creepiness of it all. I'm not sure how Jensen does it, because her writing style is neat and restrained, but the subject matter of this book got under my skin and quietly horrified me, perhaps because it felt so believable. On more than one occasion it reminded me of the very best of John Wyndham's novels, notably the The Midwich Cuckoos (which has only made me want to go back and reread all his wonderful work), and Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child.

If you are familiar with the latter two references, you might have already guessed that this a novel about children who do terrible deeds. From the book's shocking prologue — a seven-year-old girl kills her grandmother by putting a nail gun to her neck and firing three times — to the concluding chapters, Jensen catalogues a series of violent incidents, including murder, committed by youngsters around the world.

At the same time, the narrative chronicles a string of incidents involving corporate sabotage in which the adult offender claims to have become possessed by something which made them carry out these usually deadly crimes. But are all these disparate events linked and, if so, why are they happening?

An anthropologist turned detective

Step in anthropologist Hesketh Lock, the narrator of the story, who is employed by an international firm that investigates corporate fraud. Hesketh, who has Asperger's syndrome, has an uncanny ability to spot human behaviour patterns and, because he in incapable of lying, is always focused on getting to the truth of a matter, which makes him the perfect investigator. (He also has a penchant for languages, the brand names of colours in paint catalogues, origami, Venn diagrams, folk tales and belief systems.)

Over time Hesketh has learnt to mimic human emotions — "But apparently I still lack some of the 'normal social graces'" — and has developed a close and touching relationship with seven-year-old Freddy, whom he regards as his step-son, despite the fact that he is no longer involved with Freddy's mother. It is only when Freddy's behavior becomes more violent and "odd" that Hesketh begins to understand how the pieces of the jigsaw might be falling together. What he discovers is not only deeply disturbing, it threatens the existence of the entire human race...

There's no doubt that The Uninvited gets my vote for the most original paperback published this year — so far. It's thought-provoking, unsettling and creepy. It's a genuine page-turner, too, the kind of novel that is unforgettable in all kinds of ways. And if it's any indication of Jensen's usual standard, I'm delighted to discover she has a hefty back catalogue for me to explore.

'Jammy Dodger' by Kevin Smith

Fiction - Kindle edition; Sandstone Press; 320 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Tomorrow, the shortlist for the 2013 Desmond Elliot Prize — an award for new writers — will be announced, so what better time to review Kevin Smith's Jammy Dodger, which is on the longlist?

Black comedy

Set in 198os Belfast, this debut novel is a darkly comic tale about an audacious literary hoax that goes awry.

The narrator is bohemian slacker Artie Conville, who is joint-editor of a poetry magazine called Lyre — and subtitled "A Supplement for the Imagination" — which is funded by quarterly grants from the government aimed at "normalising life in the province". Most of the money goes on booze and long lunches and it allows the pair to drift along without ever having to worry about the usual 9 to 5 regime of normal adult life.

But when the grant money looks like drying up, Artie and his co-editor Oliver Sweeney dream up a rather bold and cheeky way to keep the money coming in — they fill the magazine with poetry they have penned themselves but publish it under a pseudonym. This cunning plan looks to be a success until the powers that be want to meet this new exciting poet in person and have him go on a literary tour around Northern Ireland...

An Irish twist

If you think this sounds strangely like the Ern Malley affair, you'd be right. The book does pretty much mirror the events of a real life literary hoax in 1940s Australia.

But Jammy Dodger gives it an Irish twist and the way that Smith cleverly contrasts the beauty of poetry with the godawful violence of The Troubles — which are only ever mentioned in passing — shows a real flare for black comedy.

Sandwich boards on the pavement outside the newsagent’s proclaimed the day’s headlines: Six Soldiers Killed in Lisburn Bombing, (Long, long the death …), Provos Claim Fun-Run Slaughter, (… Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace / And that high-builded cloud …), Ten Civilians Injured In No Warning Blast, (… Moving at summer’s pace.)

Peopled with quirky characters who get dangerously embroiled in a series of strange events, Jammy Dodger is one of those books that is a joy to read.

It's not just the one-liners, of which there are plenty — "‘How’s the wine? Is it amusing?’ he asked, slapping my shoulder. ‘Oh, it’s hilarious. Just don’t get any in your mouth’" — nor the succession of very funny set pieces throughout, but the way it sends up the art world and pokes fun at the whole pretentiousness of literary circles and egotistical writers, including the ways in which certain people are fawned over while talentless wannabes think they are god's gift to literature.

That said, it also reveres and celebrates literature. It name-checks so many classic authors and poets, it's enough to warm the very cockles of your heart. Indeed, if you love poetry and poets, then I doubt you'll find a better novel that celebrates this particular art form. But for me (who doesn't know very much about poetry) I loved the James Joyce references:

After lunch (beans on toast), I continued with Ulysses. God it was intense! Hallucinatory almost. The detail. The energy. The flow. The colours. Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets … Moist pith of farls … the froggreen wormwood … mouths yellowed with the pus of flan Breton … rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer’s ink … sanguineflowered … Old hag with the yellow teeth … Green eyes … the blue fuse burns deadly … orangeblossoms … breeches of silk of whiterose ivory … a dryingline with two crucified shirts … Pure poetry. Every page. Totally absorbed, I read until I realised the afternoon had gone and then feeling thoroughly Bloomish strolled round to Kavanagh’s for a pint and a plate of stew.

The book isn't just a comedy, however. A gentle romance is interwoven into the narrative, which sounds soppy written down like this, but is actually quite touching, because it makes Artie feel like a proper flesh-and-blood character.

On the whole, Jammy Dodger is the kind of novel that might normally have slipped under the radar had it not been for its Desmond Elliot Prize nomination, of which it's a very worthy contender. It's a laugh-out-loud funny satire, sharp and witty one moment, tender and painfully honest the next, all delivered with a lightness of touch that marks Smith as a writer to watch.

'The Burial' by Courtney Collins

Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin UK; 310 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Courtney Collins' The Burial is such an extraordinarily powerful book it's hard to believe it was written by a first-time novelist. From the opening line — "If the dirt could speak, whose story would it tell?" — to the closing sentence, I was held in thrall by the exquisite prose, the luscious descriptions of the bush and a cast of curious well-drawn characters. But most of all I was captivated by the storytelling.

Female bushranger

The Burial tells the tale of Jessie Hickman, a female bushranger who rustles horses and duffs cattle, in the years after the Great War. The book opens in dramatic style: she's just given birth to a premature baby while on the run and she's buried it alive.

In a distinctive and unusual twist, it is the dead baby that narrates the story — a literary device that feels more natural and less showy or intrusive than you might initially expect. Indeed, the baby has so much sympathy for her mother, that you immediately warm to Jessie despite her track record as livestock thief, convict and murderer.

Through a series of flashbacks we learn about Jessie's colourful past, which includes a stint as a circus rider and a two-year stretch in prison.  We also learn how she was apprenticed to Fitzgerald "Fitz" Henry, a fiery red-headed man living in a remote valley, to help him break in horses. She later marries Fitz, even though he treats her appallingly and is violent and abusive from the first day they met — any wonder she decides to do him in.

You might like to think of your own mother knitting blankets expanding outwards in all colours while you were in her womb. Or at worst vomiting into buckets. On the eve of my birth, my mother concertinaed my father while I lay inside her. Six foot, eight inches. She brought him down with the blunt side of an axe.

But this is not just Jessie's story — the narrative also covers the two men who are on her trail: the opium-addicted Sergeant Barlow and the aboriginal tracker Jack Brown who secretly knows (and loves) Jessie but never lets on.

Adventure and romance with a Western feel

Part adventure tale, part romance, part Western (but without the gunslinging), The Burial has already earned Collins comparisons with Cormac McCarthy. I haven't read enough of McCarthy's work to tell whether the praise is justified, but I did find it reminiscent of Paulette Jiles' civil war novel Enemy Women, which I loved when I read it more than a decade ago.

There's a beautiful, haunting quality to the writing, which brings to life a diverse range of characters, as well as an Australian landscape of heavily wooded mountains and big open star-filled skies.

And Jessie, who is based on a real female bushranger, is wonderful company: feisty, unafraid, daring and brave.

The Burial is a dazzling book and one that has already garnered critical acclaim and prize nominations aplenty in Australia. It has been optioned for a feature film, which is hardly surprising — Collins writes with an eye for detail without ever losing sense of the bigger picture, which is to tell a dramatic story in a visual and exhilarating way.  It will be published in the UK by Allen and Unwin on May 2.

GIVEAWAY: If you live in the UK and would like to win a copy — I have three to give away — please leave a comment below telling me the name of the county you live in. I'll then draw the winners using a random number generator or some such in a week's time. The usual competition rules apply.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'The Cardboard Crown' by Martin Boyd

Fiction - Kindle edition; Text Classics; 288 pages; 2012.

Martin Boyd's The Cardboard Crown is the first part of a quartet exploring the secret history of an  upper-class Anglo-Australian family.

It's an amazingly vivid and absorbing saga supposedly based on Boyd's own family —  in his author's note he claims the plot is factual, but "the characters and certain episodes are fictitious".

Unsurprisingly, for a book that is so gripping and entertaining, it became a bestseller in the UK when it was first published in 1952. But Australian audiences didn't agree. It wasn't until it was reprinted almost 20 years later, in 1971, that it garnered critical acclaim in Boyd's homeland. Now it has been reissued again, this time by Text Classics, for a whole new generation of readers to enjoy.

A story set in England and Australia

The story revolves around the independently wealthy Alice Verso, whose marriage to Austin Langton forges a dynasty that spans two continents. But at the heart of this alliance lies a shocking secret kept hidden from the world for three generations.

The secret is discovered by Alice's grandson, Guy Langton, some 50 years after her death. Guy, who narrates the novel, finds her diaries in the Melbourne home he has inherited. By going through the diaries and talking to his uncle and a cousin about the family's history and mythology, he is able to piece together his grandmother's amazingly privileged if somewhat tragic life.

The tale he tells swings between England and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where the Langton family leads two very different lives depending on which country they happen to be living in.

A rootless existence

In Australia, the Langtons are well regarded and socially pre-eminent with connections in all the right places, and their newly built home, in native bushland 30 miles outside of Melbourne, becomes a home away from home for a vast array of family and friends.  In England, they have less social standing, but life is gentler and more cultured, and their surroundings at Waterpark, the traditional family home, are far more pleasant with grand gardens and plenty of land upon which to go hunting. England also has the benefit of being much closer to continental Europe, specifically France and Italy, where the family can experience high culture, art and travel. (I should point out that quite a bit of this novel is set in Rome.)

But despite having the good fortune to be able to reside on either side of the world as and when they feel like it, there is a downside to this inability to put down permanent roots. Alice, for instance, never feels truly at home in either country and a restlessness develops that can not be cast aside. This is how Guy describes the dilemma:

A Cornishman once told me that when he was a boy he caught a seagull, and clipped its wing so that it could not fly away. After a while the feathers grew and he forgot to clip them again. It flew back to its companions who killed it. In its captivity it had acquired some human taint which they sensed was hostile. My family were captive seagulls, both at Waterpark, and even more, as time went on, in Australia.

A story about love, money and class

I will admit that it took me a little time to get into this story. I think that's largely because it starts off in a kind of meta-fiction type of way, with Guy Langton recalling a conversation in which he was encouraged to write his grandmother's story. And following on from this, there's a lot of ground-setting to be done and what appears to be a complicated cast list to get your head around. But once I got into the nub of the story — Alice's marriage to Austen — things really took off and I found myself completely hooked on this story about love and money and class on two sides of the world.

It's quite witty in places and terribly sad in others. Indeed, the narrative is full of light and shade, a reflection, perhaps, of the two very different countries in which the book is set.

But what I liked and appreciated most was the way in which Boyd portrays Alice as a woman before her time — a matriarch with plenty of money who did not flaunt her riches but used her wealth to keep family and friends in comfortable circumstances. And while she seemed to always put others before herself, she was not afraid to do her own thing and to forge her own path even if that meant upsetting social conventions of the time.

As an exploration of Melbourne's colonial past and Australia's early history, The Cardboard Crown is a fascinating read. But what this book really excels at is capturing that terrible sense of dislocation when you're never quite sure which country to call home.

Note that the three other books in the Langton Quartet are A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love and When Blackbirds Sing. All but the latter have been republished by Text Classics. Do visit the publisher's website for ordering information.

To read about the author's extraordinary life (and family) check out the entry on Wikipedia.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'The Cook' by Wayne Macauley

Fiction - hardcover; Quercus; 304 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I thought the Brits were obsessed with cooking shows and celebrity chefs, until I got sucked into watching MasterChef Australia on satellite TV last year.  The series, which is based on the original British MasterChef but is 100 times more sensational and loud and bombastic, was screened six nights a week for several months and turned cooking into an Olympic-like sport. It was so over-the-top ridiculous (and puffed-up) that most of the time I watched it so that I could take the mickey out of the contestants rather than because I wanted to learn about fine dining.

So it's no surprise that it took an Australian author to prick the bubble of pretentiousness which surrounds "celebrity" cooking and the entire "foodie" industry. But Wayne Macauley's The Cook is more than just a brilliant satire, it's a viciously funny black comedy with an oh-my-goodness-I-didn't-see-that-coming shock ending.

Learning to become a chef

The story is narrated by 17-year-old Zac, a young criminal who is given a choice: he can go to a young offender's institute or enrol in a rehabilitation scheme that teaches teenagers how to cook. (Think Jamie Oliver's Fifteen apprentice programme, which was turned into a television show about ten years ago.)

Zac chooses to go to the cooking school, which is presided over by a rich and glamorous Head Chef, who is rarely seen (if this book was turned into a film, Head Chef would probably be played by Gordon Ramsay). The students are taught to "do restaurant food top-class top-shelf" by Sous Chef Fabian, a hard-working but rather stressed out character, with a heavy emphasis on provenance (they grow their own fruit, vegetables and meat) and French gastronomy.

Zac discovers that he is rather natural cook and becomes slightly obsessive about food and goes to extraordinary lengths to raise lambs (and later ducks) that taste exceptionally delicious based on the kinds of food that they are fed and the ways in which they are slaughtered. He becomes so good at cooking that he is offered a job as a private chef before he finishes the course — and so that is how he ends up working for a rather rich family "in one of the best suburbs of Melbourne".

The Cook is essentially a book of two halves: the first is all about Zac's time at cooking school; the second follows his exploits living with and working for middle-aged housewife Deidre Fletcher — "but you must call me Mistress" — her rich husband and their two spoilt teenage daughters, Melody and Jade. It is while working as the Fletcher's private chef that Zac begins to dream big — all his experience, hard work, passion and drive is one route towards getting his own restaurant sometime in the future.

A compelling voice

The most interesting thing about this novel is the narrator's voice, which is honest and intimate. It's also semi-literate, because the book is written without the use of commas. This can take some getting used to, but once you find the rhythm this is an exceptionally clever literary device because you immediately assume that Zac's not the sharpest tool in the box and feel some empathy towards him. And because he is prepared to work hard to get what he wants, this endears him to you even more. It's only later that you begin to wonder if he might not have taken his obsession just a step too far.

Much of the book is laugh out loud funny. I really loved the way it pokes fun, tongue-in-cheek style at the way restaurant food is described grandiose-style on TV and in the press. And Macauley's commentary on the restaurant business, in which the chefs are there merely to serve rich people who can afford expensive gourmet meals, seems to be exceptionally biting — and probably accurate.

I found the entire tale deliciously dark and subversive and on more than one occasion I was reminded of Michel Faber's Under the Skin, which treads similar territory. The Cook is a deeply unsettling read but it's a thrilling one, too, and the ending came as quite a shock. I know that I will be thinking about it for a long time to come — and I'll probably never look at an episode of MasterChef in quite the same way again.

For another take on this novel, please visit Jackie's review at Farmlane Books.

Note that this book is yet to be published in the USA, although an ebook version is available.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'The Women in Black' by Madeleine St John

Fiction - Kindle edition; Hachette Digital; 208 pages; 2011.

What do you do if you've just finished a hard-hitting, quite brutal and confronting, and overtly male book? You choose something completely different — in theme, tone and style — to read. So, hot on the tails of David Ireland's The Glass Canoe I picked up Madeleine St John's The Women in Black — first published in 1993 — and what an utter delight it proved to be.

Delicious black comedy

This rather delicious black comedy is set in F. G. Goode's, a Sydney department store — rumoured to be based on David Jones — during the 1950s and follows a group of women from various backgrounds who work in Ladies' Frocks.

There is Patty Williams, fretting away because after several years of marriage, she remains childless and she fears that she may have chosen the wrong man in Frank, who prefers to spend all his spare time in the pub. There is Fay Baines, fast approaching 30 and imminent lifelong spinsterhood, who is growing sick and tired of all the hapless men she dates. There is Miss Jacobs — "whose Christian name remained a secret" — a stout and elderly woman, who has never missed a day's work, but keeps herself to herself. There is Lesley "Lisa" Miles, the temporary sales assistant who has just finished her Leaving Certificate and wants to go to university — although her father doesn't approve.

And finally there is Magda — "no one could even try to pronounce her frightful Continental surname" — a Displaced Person from Slovenia, who runs the Model Gowns department in super-efficient and glamorous style.

Magda, the luscious, the svelte and full-bosomed, the beautifully tailored and manicured and coiffed, was the most overwhelming, scented, gleaming, god-awful and ghastly snake woman that Mrs Williams, Miss Baines and even, probably, Miss Jacobs herself had ever seen, or even imagined.

Written in a style reminiscent of the delightful Muriel Spark, The Women in Black charts the ups and downs of these women as they struggle to find their place in a rather male-dominated world. And while there's no real solid plot, there's a decidedly fairy-tale element to it in which Lisa is taken under Magda's wing and transformed from a shy, bookish and naive young schoolgirl into a confident young woman intent on following her dreams.

Fun and frothy, but never simple

And while the story is good-natured and fun and perhaps just a tad "frothy", there's some important issues underpinning it, not least the way in which women are treated by the men around them. I  don't think it is any coincidence that all the Australian men in this book are depicted as rather insensitive or chauvinistic — or both (which, funnily enough, ties up nicely with my previous read, even though that was set a decade or so later). And it is only the "Continental" men — specifically Magda's husband Stefan and his Hungarian friend Rudi — who are cultured and sophisticated and who treat women with respect and courtesy.

Indeed, St John writes these refugees — or "reffos" as they were pejoratively called at the time — who settled in Australia after the Second World War with acute sensitivity and insight, presenting them as well educated and "cultivated" — everything that an ordinary Australian at the time was not. This is nicely summed up by Magda when she denounces Rudi's plan to find a nice Australian girl to marry as "madness" because all the cultivated girls have gone abroad. "You will hardly ever find one here; if you do she is saving her fare to London, I can guarantee it," she says.

Although The Women in Black — the title refers to the uniform the ladies wear at work — is slight and can easily be read in a couple of sittings, it is hugely intelligent and acutely perceptive about human relationships and the way in which "Continentals" began to transform Australian society — for the better. It's an utterly delicious read — heartwarming, life affirming, funny and sad, all at the same time. I found it rather joyful and fun, as did Victoria Best who reviewed it so beautifully on Tales from the Reading Room last year. Whispering Gums also has a lovely review on her blog.

The good news for British and North American readers is that you don't have to order it from Australia to read it — there are two editions (one by Abacus and one by Text Classics) readily available.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'The Glass Canoe' by David Ireland

Fiction - Kindle edition; Text Classics; 288 pages; 2012.

David Ireland's The Glass Canoe won Australia's most prestigious literary award, The Miles Franklin Literary Award, in 1976. But the book — and Ireland himself — fell into a kind of obscurity. It has only recently been brought back into print thanks to Text Publishing's Text Classics imprint, where, I am sure, it has found an entirely new audience. 

But let's be frank — this is a confronting book, probably one of the most confronting I've ever read, because it presents an entirely male world, one which revolves around alcohol, violence, sex and sexism. This is not a book for the faint-hearted, nor is it for those who are easily offended, especially by outdated and misogynistic attitudes to women.

The world inside a pub

The book is set entirely in a pub —  The Southern Cross hotel, situated in Northmead, western Sydney, to be precise — which is described as follows:

It was home. The world and history passed by on wheels. Life stayed outside. Babies were started, and born. Weddings, shootings, promotions, dismissals, hungers, past and future — all were outside.

So the pub is seen as a refuge, a home away from home. But it's not a place of comfort — indeed, it's a kind of metaphor for a different, more sinister, kind of world.

At night the Southern Cross often looked, even to me, an illuminated tomb. A sort of past solidified in masonry. The traffic tried to run by all the faster to stay in the present or the past might grab them. But to us, our tomb was where life was: outside was a world fit only to die in. The dark, a live monster, leaned on the roof and tried the glass doors. Its eyes were black, fathomless as death.

It is narrated by Lance, better known as Meat Man (a nickname which refers to the size of his penis — I told you this was a very male book), who lets us in to this secretive world inhabited by Australian males from the early 1970s, most of whom are poor, working class types who "drink to erase everything".  He does this by recounting dozens of stories about the men who frequent the pub as well as his own adventures in drink and lust.

The book doesn't follow the normal conventions of the novel — it's a series of short fragments and episodes, some of them less than a page long, each one a separate tale in its own right. It feels disjointed at first, but there are common threads and themes running throughout, so that Ireland builds up a rich tapestry, albeit focused on action, not plot.

And the intimate nature of the prose — almost as if Lance is confiding his darkest secrets to you, and you alone — makes it a compelling read.

Adventures in alcohol

The Glass Canoe — the title, by the way, refers to a beer-filled glass  "and after however many glasses it took, the glass got bigger and bigger, we stepped into the glass and claimed our freedom to float away" — might be set in a pub, but it does not glorify drinking. If anything, it shows how alcohol dependence ruins lives and livelihoods.

It presents the drinker as a kind of underclass, even if Lance can't quite identify with that view himself. Indeed, he thinks it quite humorous when his old school friend Sibley starts hanging around the pub studying the clientele for a university thesis. When he asks him how his investigations are going, Sibley says "I'm finding all sorts of things. This is another dimension here."

‘They [drinkers] can’t survive in our world and in the future, Lance,’ he said kindly. ‘The non-drinker is a member of the civilised races: the drinker, no matter the language he speaks, belongs to one identifiable inferior race spread throughout the planet. But to go on, some past authorities say that to speak of intelligence in respect of drinkers is a misnomer; they present hardly any of the phenomena of intellect. They are unreflective and averse to abstract reasoning and sustained mental effort.’ ‘You’re describing a drunk.’ ‘Lance, baby, that’s when a drinker’s a drinker for Christ’s sake.’

Outdated attitudes to women

Lance also struggles to see how his misogynistic attitudes to women are anything other than normal — although he does warn the reader that "if this is not your style of thing, skip this paragraph" when he describes a trip to a strip club, so he clearly has boundaries. And while he appears very much besotted with "his Darling", he still sleeps with other women whenever the opportunity presents itself. For Lance, and all the other randy blokes in this book, it is all about quantity, not quality.

Indeed, women are generally sneered at — "Did you know that on a golf course the ladies hit off from different tees, closer to the hole? They haven’t protested yet at the inequality" — unless, of course, they work behind the bar and/or look and behave like men.

But lest you think this book sounds rather hard-hitting, I have to confess I got quite a lot of laughs out of it. There's a laconic sense of humour that keeps it from becoming a juggernaut of angst. And Lance, for all his faults, is a likable character — he might be sexist and enjoy a fight, but he stands up for the underdog, feels sympathy for the old men in the pub, appreciates Sibley's attempts to better himself through education.

In short, even though The Glass Canoe is essentially about men drinking, fighting and shagging, I'm glad I read it. In its depiction of another time and another place it is very good, but as a raw glimpse of a macho mindset it is exceptional.

For another female take on this novel, please do read Lisa at ANZLitLover's brilliant review.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'Utopian Man' by Lisa Lang

Fiction - Kindle edition; Allen & Unwin; 264 pages; 2010.

What a lovely surprise this book turned out to be!

Lisa Lang's debut novel, Utopian Man, was joint winner of the 2009 Australian/Vogel Literary Award. It is based on the life of  Edward William (E.W.) Cole, a legendary eccentric who built an amazing retail emporium in Melbourne during the 1880s.

His pièce de résistance was a fabulous three-storey book arcade, supposedly filled with a million books, where readers were encouraged to sit and browse and use like a library. This was later expanded to include a tea room, a conservatory and a live monkey display. Bands would perform regular lunch-time concerts there, too.

And if that wasn't enough, Cole also installed a printing press to publish pamphlets (often political or issue-based) and his own books, mainly for children — indeed, many Australian readers of a certain vintage will be familiar with Cole's Funny Picture Book, which was filled with poetry and puns and humorous drawings. (You can read this in its entirety on Project Gutenberg.)

An eccentric's life

This novel doesn't really have a plot other than to chart E.W. Cole's life in two-yearly increments. This allows you to see how his business expanded from the time of the arcade's opening to his death in 1918 and gives you glimpses into his blissfully happy family life — he married a faithfully devoted much younger wife, Eliza, with whom he had six children, and they all lived in a rather lavish apartment (what we, today, might call a penthouse) above the book arcade.

But the narrative, which is written in a lovely Victorian-style prose, is far from predictable. There are little scandals and tragedies everywhere — including the unexpected death of Ruby, Cole's 8-year-old daughter, to scarlet fever; an older son who becomes an opium addict; and an employee who steals the arcade's takings — and there are brushes with extra-marital affairs, spiritualism and politics. In fact, Alfred Deakin, whom Australians know as the "father of federation", has a starring role (he was a close friend of Cole's, though that friendship came to a bitter end when Deakin became the second Prime Minister of Australia and helped usher in the White Australia Policy).

Interspersed throughout are flashbacks that recount Cole's time on the goldfields, where he befriended a Chinese man when racism — the "yellow peril" — was rife. But while Cole made enough money on the diggings to escape — he set up a market stall selling books in Melbourne, the first step towards much greater commercial success — there are hints that something dark and troubling happened while he was searching for gold. You have to read a good two-thirds of the book to find out what that was — and I'm not about to reveal that here.

Melbourne's history

One of the most successful aspects of Utopian Man is the way in which Lang captures the mood and spirit of an ever-changing Melbourne during the late Victorian and early Federation periods. She manages to evoke a particular time and place so effortlessly that history truly comes alive in these pages. Here we have a provincial town turned into a booming metropolis thanks to the gold rush, but then the depression hits, the banks close and destitution is on every corner — but Cole, good-hearted man that he is, refuses to make any of his staff redundant and chooses instead to expand his business rather than consolidate it.

Indeed, I came away with the impression that Cole was not only hugely generous — perhaps to the point of being weak — he was a man before his time. He champions equality for all and cannot understand when people poo-poo his idea that the colour of a person's skin does not matter, we are all human underneath. He seems, in many ways, to be almost too good to be true.

All in all, Utopian Man is a charming book, which is an utter delight to read. It will especially appeal to fans of Victorian-era novels and those who love books (I guess that's all of you, then). And the best bit is it is readily available outside of Australia in both ebook and paperback editions — hoorah!

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.