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 Unknown Terrorist' by Richard Flanagan

Fiction - hardcover; Grove Press; 336 pages; 2007.

Australian author Richard Flanagan's latest novel, The Unknown Terrorist, is dedicated to David Hicks, the Australian-born Taleban fighter captured by US forces in Afghanistan in November 2001. Hicks was detained by the US Government in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for more than five years, before he was tried and convicted of supporting terrorism in 2007. His ongoing detention without trial made him a cause célèbre in Australia.

If nothing else, this particular case highlights that those accused of terrorism are not subject to the normal "rules" under the justice system as it operates in most democratic countries: if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you could be locked away without trial and, what's more, you could be mistreated and tortured on the simple basis that you are presumed guilty with no legal right to defend yourself.

Since the advent of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, we live in dangerous times, but who is in danger? Innocent civilians who may be blown up at any moment? Or innocent people accused of plotting to blow things up on the flimsiest of "evidence"? It's a blurry line and it is exactly this line that Flanagan exploits for the purposes of this thrilling, thoroughly modern novel.

Set in Sydney across five hot, summer days, the story follows Gina Davies, a lap dancer known as the Doll, on the run from the law having been accused of helping to plot a terrorist attack. But Gina is entirely innocent. Her "crime" has been no more than having a one-night stand with an attractive stranger, Tariq, who is blamed for three unexploded bombs found at Homebush Olympic Stadium the previous day.

'The Sound of One Hand Clapping' by Richard Flanagan

Fiction - paperback; Grove Press; 425 pages; 1997.

I seem to be on a roll with Australian books. This one, my third in a matter of weeks, is by Richard Flanagan, who first came to international prominence with Gould's Book of Fish, which I read several years ago and loved very much. The book went on to win the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2002.

Prior to this Flanagan had written two other novels: Death of a River Guide, in 1994,  and The Sound of One Hand Clapping, in 1997. Like Gould's Book of Fish, both are set in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, where the author resides.

At its most basic level The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the strained relationship between a father and daughter, but it is far more complicated than that, touching on a wide range of issues including poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence and wartime atrocities, all set within the social and historical context of Australia's immigrant past.

'Night Letters' by Robert Dessaix

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 276 pages; 1999.

Night Letters was published in Australia to critical acclaim in 1996. I had long been aware of its existence but had never got my hands on a copy -- until now.

Picking it up, it's hard to work out if it is a fictional story or a real-life travel memoir. This confusion is aided by its subtitle -- A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy -- and the note which claims it is "edited and annotated by Igor Miazmov". But for those who aren't quite sure, this is a novel and Miazmov is none other than Dessaix under another name. (Quite hilarious, then, to see that Amazon.co.uk lists Miazmov as if he is a real editor.)

The book comprises a series of 20 letters written on consecutive nights by an Australian man staying in a Venice hotel. The man, who is named Robert, has been diagnosed with an incurable illness and while the disease is never named one gets the impression that it is HIV.

These letters, which are not addressed to anyone in particular (but are effectively you, the reader), are filled with Robert's wide-ranging thoughts on travel, love, religion and mortality. But the common theme, which threads in and out of the often meandering narrative, is man's search for paradise and whether, in fact, it exists. This is underpinned by references to Dante's The Divine Comedy, which Robert is reading out of sequence, so that when he finishes Paradise he feels "oddly becalmed [...] if that didn't bring you to a point of absolute stillness, nothing would".

'Bad Debts' by Peter Temple

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 336 pages; 2007. 

When I started reading Peter Temple's much acclaimed The Broken Shore last summer I became so enamoured with his writing style that before I'd even reached the half-way mark I rushed out and bought Bad Debts. I could sense it was going to be the start of a beautiful romance. Unfortunately, life got in the way -- along with a few dozen other books that beckoned me -- and it took me eight months to eventually get around to reading Bad Debts. The wait, I think, was worth it.

This book is not dissimilar to The Broken Shore in that it features a damaged protagonist with a slightly dodgy past and a penchant for spirited women. But that's probably where the similarities end.

The main difference is the writing style. Bad Debts, which was written almost ten years before The Broken Shore, certainly feels less polished, the language is tougher, the dialogue more choppy. And in the best tradition of hardboiled noir, the main character, washed-up lawyer Jack Irish, treads a very fine line between enforcing the law and breaking it. You're never quite sure whether you should admire him or despise him.

'Theft: A Love Story' by Peter Carey

Fiction - hardcover; Faber and Faber; 274 pages; 2006.

The wonderful and intriguing world of art forgery is explored in Theft: A Love Story, the Booker shortlisted novel by Australian author Peter Carey.

In my experience, reading anything by Peter Carey can be a bit of a hit or miss affair. There are certain books by him that I love (Jack Maggs, Oscar and Lucinda) and certain books I've struggled with and eventually abandoned (The Illywhacker, The True Story of the Kelly Gang). Fortunately, I found Theft: A Love Story to be immediately accessible and highly entertaining. I loved it's balance of humour and melancholy, and the twist at the end was a joy.

'The Broken Shore' by Peter Temple

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 400 pages; 2007.

Crime novels set in modern day Australia are few and far between. In fact, I've never read one before. But then I heard lots of good things, mainly from British critics, about Peter Temple's The Broken Shore and knew it was a book I had to track down.

I picked up a cheap copy from Waterstone's earlier in the year and read it over the course of a dismal weekend in June. The book was absolutely enthralling in a way I could not put my finger on. And because I couldn't quite work out what it was about the book that I loved so much I couldn't muster the creative energy to write a review. I then gave the book to my father, who was about to embark on a long haul trip back to Australia, and kept telling myself I'd write about it ... soon.

Well, two months later I'm finally composing this review-of-sorts. Since my reading of The Broken Shore, it has been awarded  the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (formerly the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction) for 2007. Temple, who was born in South Africa, is the first Australian to win the award.

'The Solid Mandala' by Patrick White

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 316  pages; 1977.

In Jungian psychology a mandala is a symbol that represents the effort to reunify the self.

In this book twin brothers, Arthur and Waldo Brown, cannot seem to reconcile the fact that they once shared a womb, the two of them being so different in temperament and personality. And yet, there's a strange kind of reliance on one another, especially in old age, when the two share a bed and often walk about town holding hands.

Even their lack-lustre love lives (neither of them get married) are remarkably similar, when, as teenagers, they both fall for Dulcie Feinstein and then, as adults, when they strike up a close friendship with their neighbour, Mrs Poulter.

But despite their differences and their tendency to secretly loathe one another, they cannot escape their lifelong familial bond. It is their ongoing struggle to find a balance between intimacy and independence that marks the lives of these two very different men.

'The Vivisector' by Patrick White

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 617  pages; 1989.

First published in 1970, The Vivisector details the life of Hurtle Duffield, an Australian artist, from a four-year-old up until his death as an elderly man living as a recluse in Sydney with Rhoda, his hunch-backed step-sister.

A clever, all-knowing kind of boy, Hurtle shows early signs of creativity, drawing on walls and being attracted to old paintings and leather-bound books. His poverty-stricken parents -- a laundry woman and a bottle collector -- are convinced his intelligence mark him out as a genius and sell him to a wealthy family in the hope he will get the education he deserves.

Thanks to the nouveau-rich Courtneys he enjoys an oh-so comfortable lifestyle and gets to travel abroad.

But there is a part of Hurtle that cannot engage with people on any emotional level -- perhaps because he sees himself as a loner that doesn't fit in  -- and as a young adult cuts himself off from his step-family, finding comfort in the life of a struggling artist.

Later, with the help of a mysterious benefactor, he becomes a comfortably rich artist, but he never seems to take any consolation in his success. In fact, he seems almost embarrassed by his accomplishments, as if it's something shameful to hide away.

All the while he carries on a series of failed love affairs, using women as muses to inspire his painting.  He never invests much of himself into these relationships until, at the ripe old age of 55, he falls in love with a teenage girl -- it is this Lolita-like relationship that serves to shape the rest of his creative life.

'The Secret River' by Kate Grenville

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 349 pages; 2006.

You generally know that a book has had an impact when you dream about it -- or when you wake and it's the first thing on your mind.

This is what happened to me with Kate Grenville's Booker short-listed and much acclaimed The Secret River.

I had not expected to like this book. This is because I think there are too many Australian novels about the country's convict past and one more wasn't really going to add anything to the sum of human knowledge. But I was wrong about this one.

On the face of it The Secret River is a good old-fashioned tale about a poor Thames waterman who, having been found guilty of stealing some precious timber, is sent to the other side of the world -- New South Wales -- for the term of his natural life. Here, accompanied by his wife and children, he is eventually pardoned and then tries to make a new life for himself as a waterman on the Hawkesbury River. He secures a 100-acre plot in the forest, where he builds a hut and plants a cornfield, and contends with the native population and their intimidating ways...