Reading Matters

'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 This is not a book for the faint-hearted, nor is it for those who are easily offended, especially by outdated and misogynistic attitudes to women.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.

'Gone Again' by Doug Johnstone

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 256 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

When it comes to high-octane psychological thrillers, Scottish writer Doug Johnstone knows how to deliver. I've read two of his novels — Smoke Heads (2011) and Hit & Run (2012) — and thoroughly enjoyed both. His latest novel, Gone Again, is another fine example of his raw, edgy and fast-paced narrative style.

A missing wife

The story, which is set in Edinburgh, revolves around a newspaper photographer, Mark Douglas, whose wife, Lauren, goes missing. Lauren was supposed to pick up their six-year-old son, Nathan, from school, but she never turned up.

Mark is out on assignment — photographing a pod of whales stranded in the waters off Portobello Beach — when Nathan's school principal calls him to break the news.

At first, Mark thinks Lauren might have got side-tracked at work — she has a high-powered job in a real estate company — and simply forgot. But when she never answers her mobile or responds to her voicemail, Mark begins to suspect that something isn't quite right. Has she run away? Or has someone done her harm?

The second time she's disappeared

But this isn't the first time Lauren has gone missing. Not long after Nathan's birth, she disappeared for several weeks, which makes Mark wonder if history is merely repeating itself. If he keeps telling Nathan that his mother has simply gone on a work trip, perhaps when she eventually returns he'll be none the wiser. But how long can you keep lying to an inquisitive six-year-old?

In Mark's case, pretty much for as long as it takes. His relationship with Nathan is one of the novel's strengths. In fact, Johnstone captures the joys and frustrations of parenthood so well that it's easy to think you're reading a gentle domestic drama — albeit tinged with a generous dose of paranoia.

When things really kick into action — about 50 pages from the end — it comes as quite a shock. The explosive finale, complete with Johnstone's trademark Tarantino-like violence, is a little crazy but that's largely a failing of the genre (in which all loose ends need to be tied up in dramatic fashion) rather than the author's. In other words, it comes with the territory and doesn't necessarily detract from the overall entertainment value of the novel.

Beautifully controlled reveals

In terms of narrative pacing, Gone Again is exceptionally good — the chapters are short, the writing is tight — but it is the beautifully controlled reveals that make this such a glorious page turner. Johnstone delivers a steady drip feed of information that makes you question Mark's version of events all along the way — is his marriage with Lauren all that he says it is? What secrets do they have? And why are the police so hesitant to get involved?

I enjoyed the emotionally charged storyline even if I wasn't entirely convinced by the over-the-top dénouement. But this is a novel filled with moments of genuine tenderness, genuine fear and genuine shock — perfect fodder for those who like their psychological thrillers with a bit of bite to them.

Gone Again will be published in ebook form in the UK tomorrow and paperback on 7 March.

'Gone Girl' by Gillian Flynn

  Fiction - hardcover; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 416 pages; 2012.

Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is one of those much-hyped books that I wasn't sure I would like. Hence, I borrowed it from the library instead of forking out £10 for the hardcover edition. (The paperback isn't released in the UK until next March.)

Admittedly, I wasn't impressed when I first began reading it — it felt overwritten, too preppy and unconvincing. But when I asked the good people of Twitter whether I should continue reading, I received an avalanche of replies, mostly in the affirmative.

And I'm happy to report that I am glad I persevered. The book might not be perfect — indeed, it's completely ludicrous in places — but it's an enjoyable romp, with plenty of (unexpected) sharp left and right turns in the plot and a story arc that is far from conventional. In short, this is a fun, suspense-filled read.

A perfect couple

The story revolves around a seemingly perfect 30-something loved-up couple — Nick and Amy Dunne — who both lose their magazine jobs in Manhattan within a few months of each other. They move out west, to Nick's home town in Missouri, to start afresh. Nick sets up a bar with his twin sister, Margo, and helps out his parents, both of whom are ill (his mother has cancer; his father Alzheimer's), while Amy, who is independently wealthy, stays at home and does not very much at all.

On the surface, the couple appear happy, but behind closed doors all is not well.  And when Amy goes missing on the morning of the couple's fifth wedding anniversary police suspicion falls on the emotionally disconnected Nick. But did he really kill his wife? And if he did so, what was the motive? And what did he do with the body?

Over the ensuing 400-plus pages, the reader is taken on a rather surreal roller-coaster journey as we follow the outfall of Amy's disappearance and get an inside glimpse of a marriage between two very complex, needy characters full of contradictions: Nick is the perfect husband but harbours misogynistic thoughts; Amy is the dutiful only child but secretly hates the parents who dote on her.

Unreliable narrators?

The structure of Gone Girl is one of the most interesting things about this suspense novel. In alternate chapters, Nick and Amy take it in turns to tell their version of events, but it's done in such a way that you are never quite sure which character is telling the truth and which one is lying. And just when you think you have things figured out, one of them does or says something that makes you change your mind. Nothing is entirely straightforward or clear cut.

But the novel is not perfect. Putting aside the fact that the concept of the plot is preposterous — don't think about it too much and just go with the flow, is my advice — I found that there was little to distinguish the voices of Amy and Nick, so that I occasionally got them muddled up. It doesn't help that Nick is not a convincing male character.

The prose also feels heavy-handed and overwritten. (On more than one occasion it reminded me of Tana French, who has the same tendency towards verbosity.) Initially, I wondered if it might simply be  a characteristic of Nick's voice, but Amy's voice was written in exactly the same vein so I suspect it's just the way Flynn writes.

A masterpiece of plotting

But these are only minor criticisms. Flynn's real strength — apart from turning the suspense/crime genre on its head — is her careful plotting and her steady drip-feed of new facts and admissions that make you constantly switch your allegiance from one character to another the further you get into the story.

Flynn is also very good at capturing modern America after the global financial crash of 2008 — most of Nick and Amy's neighbours have defaulted on their mortgages, the local mall has gone bankrupt, hundreds of people have been laid off — and the way in which public opinion is determined by the media.

This is a fast-paced, incredibly well plotted and often surprising read. I have to admit I didn't become truly hooked until page 144 when I was so alarmed by the turn of events I just had to keep turning the pages — and then I couldn't stop. Gone Girl  is not exactly a pleasant read — the characters are nasty, manipulative, shallow and conniving — but it's an addictive one.

'The Garden of Evening Mists' by Tan Twan Eng

Fiction - paperback; Myrmidon Books; 448 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists has been shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. It is a beautiful tale set in the central highlands of Malaya about memory, forgetting, war, politics, atonement, redemption, forgiveness, gardening — and the Japanese art of horimono tattoos.

A judge looks back on her life

The story revolves around Teoh Yun Ling, the sole survivor of a secret Japanese slave-labour camp, who takes early retirement from her career as a judge at the Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur. For the first time in almost 35 years, she returns to Yugiri, in the Cameron Highlands, where the beautiful Japanese garden called "Evening Mists" is located.

Six tall, narrow stones huddled into a miniature limestone mountain range in the centre of the pond. On the opposite bank stood the pavilion, duplicated in the water so that it appeared like a paper lantern hanging in mid-air. A willow grew a few feet away from the pavilion's side, its branches sipping from the pond.

It was here, during the Malayan Emergency, that she met the garden's designer, Nakamura Aritomo, and tried to convince him to create another Japanese garden as a tribute to her sister who died in the camp. Aritomo, the exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan, declined, but he agreed to take her on as an apprentice so that she could learn the necessary skills to create the garden herself.

From this narrative thread, other narrative threads begin to spool out, including: Teoh's time in the slave-labour camp; her years living on the Majuba Tea Estate in the Cameron Highlands (where the threat of murder and kidnap by communist guerrillas put her life in constant danger); and her present situation in which she tries to fob off an historian, Professor Yoshikawa, seeking permission to use Aritomo's artworks (woodblock prints) — now in her ownership — in a book he is writing to prove his hypothesis that the emperor's gardener was also a tattoo artist.

These threads are told in a kind of random fashion, because they are revealed in a memoir that Judge Teoh is hurriedly writing before the illness with which she has been diagnosed leaves her unable to read or write. That illness is just one of many pieces of information she withholds from her friends. As the narrative gently unfurls we discover more of these secrets. It is not that she is an unreliable narrator, but that she only tells you what she wants you to know when she wants you to know it.

Surprise and mystery

As a result this is a novel full of surprises.

It is also a novel fully of mystery. I don't think it's a plot spoiler to say that midway through the novel Aritoma disappears — and no-one knows what happens to him. If he was enigmatic in life, he is even more enigmatic in death.

There's also the curious notion of how Judge Teoh managed to escape from a camp that no-one has ever heard of and one that even she cannot locate. And why does the Majuba Tea Estate seem immune to the war raging between the British and the Malayan nationalists — exactly which side is the owner on?

The garden as a focal point

The thing I most loved about The Garden of Evening Mists was the way in which Tan Twan Eng describes the garden and the art of creating it. I admit that I am a sucker for Japanese gardens, having learnt about them at university (as part of my studies in landscape architecture) and he brings to life their beauty, elegance and symbolism in an incredibly visual — and sensual — way.

And Judge Teoh is a wonderful creation; a Straits Chinese woman who hates the Japanese for what they did to her (and her sister) in the camp, but is able to put that aside to work closely with a Japanese man — even though his very presence reminds her of what it was like to be "a prisoner of the Japs".

Sometimes the narrative falls into a slight lull, but the multi-layered storylines provide sufficient intrigue to maintain the reader's interest.

Despite the gentleness of the prose, this is a book about extreme violence and cruelty in all its many facets.

But it does not paint things in black and white. This is a book full of light and shade, with the garden as its central focus, for it is the act of building the garden which helps heal the psychological wounds of both Judge Teoh and Aritomo. Later, it becomes a refuge, a place of solace, from the war happening in the hills beyond, and later still, it provides comfort to an ill woman trying to make sense of her extraordinary life.

'The Girl on the Stairs' by Louise Welsh

Fiction - hardcover; John Murray; 279 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It can't be a coincidence that I've read two psychological thrillers set in Berlin this year — Melanie Joosten's Berlin Syndrome and Louise Welsh's The Girl on the Stairs.  The German city has such a rich and chequered history — the Wiemar Republic, Nazi Germany and then the split between East and West — that it is haunted by the ghosts of the past. Welsh capitalises on this eerie atmosphere in this, her fifth and latest, novel.

Life in a strange new neighbourhood

The story revolves around a lesbian couple, Jane and Petra, who live in an old but renovated apartment in an ex-Jewish district of Berlin now populated by streetwalkers and well-to-do professionals. Petra, who is German, has a high-flying job in a bank and is the major breadwinner; Jane, a former bookseller, has just moved to Berlin from Scotland, and is seven months pregnant with their first child.

While Petra is busy at work, Jane is left to her own devices. When she is alone in the apartment, which faces onto a cemetery, she doesn't feel comfortable and she often gets the sensation she's being watched. At night she thinks she can see a flame burning in the abandoned building out the back.

There it was again, the faintest glimmer on the other side of the courtyard. Was it a light from somewhere in the building reflecting on a broken window in the derelict backhouse? It flickered again and disappeared. The windows in the backhouse were almost all free of glass. It shone again, faint and wavering; could it be the wind breezing through an unglazed window, causing a flame to tremble?

She can also hear her neighbours — Alban Mann, supposedly a respected doctor, and his 13-year-old daughter, Anna — arguing through the wall or in the stairwell. On one occasion she hears Herr Mann call his daughter a whore and on another she notices that Anna has a bruise on her face.

Jane then begins to wonder if Anna, who looks far older than her years and dresses like the streetwalkers that work in the neighbourhood, might be spending her evenings in the backhouse to escape an abusive father.

What would persuade a child to hide in an abandoned building amongst the pigeon droppings and scuttle of rats? What could be so bad that you would prefer the company of ghosts to home?

Jane's suspicions about Herr Mann are heightened when she meets her downstairs neighbours, an elderly couple, Karl and Heike Becker, who tell her that Herr Mann's wife went missing several years ago. According to Heike, Herr Mann murdered his wife and buried her under the floorboards, but Heike's befuddled behaviour suggests she might have dementia — should Jane believe her or not?

Can you trust your neighbour?

The nub of the novel is this: is Alban Mann a murderer and child abuser, or is Jane simply letting her imagination run away with her?

All of Jane's attempts to help Anna — by approaching her directly and by speaking with a local priest — are thwarted, but you are never quite sure whether she is being told to butt out because she's a busybody or because she's onto something. Her persistence — even when her front door is painted with an ugly slogan and the police arrive to warn her off — suggests the latter.

Welsh is very good at building a sense of eminent doom and a rising level of paranoia. In fact, the narrative is so menacing and claustrophobic, I wouldn't want to read this book if I lived alone.

But by the same token, as with these kinds of psychological thrillers (of which I've read dozens and dozens in my time), there can only ever be one outcome: the protagonist has it all right, or she has it all wrong. And I'm afraid that in this case I guessed the over-the-top ending far too easily and felt some elements of the storyline towards the end slightly far-fetched.

But if you like fast-paced heart-hammering reads and don't mind the odd implausibility in plot, then this is a good one to get the pulse racing. And it's got enough spooky elements to make it a perfect Halloween-type read. But make sure you lock the doors, the windows — and the attic hatch — first.

'God's Own Country' by Ross Raisin

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 211 pages; 2009.

Ross Raisin's debut novel, God's Own Country, is about a troubled young Yorkshire farmer who develops a friendship with a teenage girl and runs away with her. It turns the notion of pastoral literature on its head, and is a compelling mix of adventure, Gothic romance and black comedy. Mostly, it is a very disturbing and unsettling read.

No ordinary man

The story is narrated by 19-year-old Sam Marsdyke, who lives on the family farm with his mum and dad. From the outset, we know that Sam is not an ordinary young man — he delights in throwing stones at ramblers, whom he describes as "daft sods". Later, we learn that he despises "towns", those people who move from the city to live in rural Yorkshire, because "they couldn't give a stuff for the Moors, all they wanted was a postcard view out of the bedroom window".

There are other, darker, elements to his character, which the reader discovers the further you get into the novel (I won't mention them here, to prevent spoiling the plot, suffice to say they are quite shocking). And as the narrative slowly unfolds, so, too, does Sam's hold on reality.

And while there's a menacing undertone to this book, Sam is sympathetically drawn. He has a deep love of the countryside (the descriptions of the moors are particularly vivid) and a love and respect for the livestock he tends. He has an especially tender relationship with a puppy, whom he dotes on.

Black comedy

The story is not without humour. And because it is written in a regional dialect, it ties the narrative to a specific place and imbues it with a real sense of authenticity. The use of language is inventive — a Labrador jumps up onto a gate and "jowled the top of it with drool", a breeze is "chirring through the trees",  there's a "hubbleshoo of small boys spewing out the bus" — and Raisin effortlessly brings scenes to life in gorgeously crafted sentences, such as this one:

Father took hold the wire and wrenched it up. A shimmer of raindrops spring out, arching a rainbow an instant, till they fell to the sod and he began pulling the wire off his post with his hands.

God's Own Country — the title refers to the beauty of the North York Moors — is best appreciated when read in large chunks, as opposed to a chapter here and a chapter there. It takes a good while for any narrative tension to build, but the patient reader is amply rewarded when Sam goes on the run with the teenage girl who has moved in next door. But the story does get quite confusing towards the end, a reflection of the state of Sam's mind at the time.

It reminded me very much of Patrick McCabe's Butcher Boy and even MJ Hyland's This is How, both of which are far stronger (and more disturbing) novels featuring deeply troubled male narrators, but as a first-time novelist it marks Raisin as an exciting new talent.

God's Own Country won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2009, The Guildford Book Festival First Novel Award in 2008 and a Betty Trask Award in 2008. It was shortlisted for a host of other awards, including The Guardian First Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

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This book was chosen by Claire for our Riverside Readers book group. It generated quite an interesting discussion — about everything from mental health to living your life according to the label you have been assigned by others — so if you are in a book group looking for something to generate debate, do consider reading this one.

'Gillespie and I' by Jane Harris

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 624 pages; 2012.

One newspaper review described Jane Harris's Gillespie and I as "literary crack cocaine" — to which I can only concur. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun reading a novel. It transports you into a strange world of art, deception, troubled families, disturbed children, grumpy housemaids and caged greenfinches, and then takes you on a rollicking good ride that you don't want to end.

At more than 600 pages, this book — Harris's second novel — kept me entertained for a fortnight. I had been reading it for so long, toting it around on public transport, reading it in bed and on lunch breaks, that I felt bereft when I came to the last page.

An elderly lady takes us into her confidence

The tale is narrated by Harriet Baxter, a woman of independent means, who wants to set the record straight about her earlier life in Glasgow in 1888. During this time she befriended a struggling artist called Ned Gillespie and became an almost permanent fixture in his family's household — until something went very wrong with their relationship.

She interleaves this account with her current situation — it is now 1933, she is rather elderly and living in a mansion block in Bloomsbury, London, with two little greenfinches for company — in which she begins to have doubts that her assistant, Sarah, is as trustworthy as she makes out.

Through Harriet's eyes, we get to experience her take on the world, both as a young woman and as an old lady. She comes across as being very demure, compassionate and friendly, but beneath it all we get glimpses of her innermost thoughts, her eccentricities, and her rather wicked sense of humour. Here, for instance, is how she describes a "slender young woman" she meets for the first time:

From certain angles, she might have been considered a great beauty. The neck was graceful; the features fine. Her eyes were deep blue, almost violet. But there was a hard quality in her face — and something in the breadth and tilt of her jaw — that (unfortunately) put one in mind of a frying pan.

There are lots more little snipes like this throughout the novel, which is one reason why it is such a joy to read. But it also makes it slightly hard to reconcile the public image of Harriet — a Good Samaritan who helps people whenever she can — with the woman who confides so much to us. As one character says towards the end of the book, "I'm not sure what to think any more. I  don't know what to think about anything or anyone, including Harriet Baxter".

A Victorian novel with a 21st century spin

The book takes the best elements of Victorian fiction — idealised portraits of difficult lives, morality, inherent evil and undertones of a sexual nature — and gives it a fresh slant by throwing in some mystery and a courtroom drama. It's also hugely evocative of Glasgow in 1888 — Harris has clearly done her homework about the International Exhibition that was held there at the time — but less so of London circa 1933.

It's all wonderfully paced — and plotted — too, so that you never become bored despite the novel's length. And the overall atmosphere, while quite cheerful on the surface, is actually quite disturbing and chilling underneath. It's a brilliant, brilliant read.

Gillespie and I has been nominated for this year's Orange Prize. It deserves to win it.

'Get Me Out of Here' by Henry Sutton

Fiction - paperback; Harvill Secker; 272 pages; 2010. Review copy courtesy of publisher.

Henry Sutton's Get Me Out of Here languished in my reading queue for more than a year. Billed as a "credit crunch" novel, it wasn't something that immediately piqued my interest. Then I saw Guy Savage's perceptive review and knew I had to dig it out for a read.

The novel — Sutton's sixth — doesn't really have anything to with the global economy sliding into free-fall. Instead, it's about a 30-something brand-obsessed businessman losing his grip on reality.

Aside from my introduction to Ross O'Carroll-Kelly earlier in the year, our narrator, Matt, is the funniest — and sickest — character I've come across in modern fiction for a long time. But where Ross is pretty much harmless, Matt isn't quite as innocent.

Matt is, quite frankly, absolutely delusional and filled with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. He's the type of person who thinks the world revolves around him, and he has no sense of shame whatsoever.

When the book opens he's busy trying to get a refund on a pair of sunglasses he no longer wants. That's because he's seen another, more expensive, pair in another shop that he prefers. What he doesn't tell the sales assistant — although surely she suspects — is that he deliberately broke a lens and "possibly bent an arm back with more force thant was strictly necessary".

This is a pattern that repeats itself throughout the book: Matt buys highly desirable products at great expense, then rashly changes his mind and returns his purchases, usually damaged, and demands a refund. He is a shop manager's worst nightmare.

But these scenes, particularly when he's arguing his case and lying through his teeth, are explosively funny. Take, for instance, his purchase of some Japanese-made luggage for an impending business trip. He takes home his new grey "indestructible" ballistic nylon suitcase and...

I thought I'd put the bag through its paces and test the strength of the handle and the play on the wheels and what would happen to the grey it if were subjected to a bit of tossing around in the yard. After all, this was probably mild compared to what the baggage handlers at Heathrow, or Pyongyang International for that matter, would subject the thing to — except they wouldn't, of course, be getting their hands on it, as it was only ever meant to be hand luggage. However, the hopelessly young sales assistant in Selfridges' luggage department — what was his ambition in life? To front a boy band? — didn't necessarily know that. If I'd had a gun I'd have shot the damn thing to see what it was really made of.

While the handles and wheels "held firm", the nylon "marked atrociously", so he returns it within a matter of hours, only to be greeted with a shocked: "Why does this one look so used?"

I said, "You told me they were indestructible. Bulletproof, is what you said. How, if that's the case, is it possible that in a matter of only an hour or two they look like this, if they are really as tough and practical as you made out? What's the point in having such smart and expensive luggage if it looks like this after its first outing? What would it look like if I took it on a trip to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Democratic Republic of Congo? And that's beside the fact that my fiancée hates the colour. She's right. For once. What a ridiculous fucking colour for a bag. It's only ever going to show up dirt, like shit on a toilet bowl."

So, as you can see, Matt is alarmingly shallow and manipulative. But what becomes increasingly clear as you get further and further into the story is that Matt treats his girlfriends — and there are a string of them — in exactly the same way, exchanging one for another as soon as he has become tired of them. But because he is narrating the story — in a wholly unreliable manner — the reader has to fill in the gaps. Why is he cleaning stains off the wall? And why is he dumping Bobbie's secret shoebox in a skip in a laneway?

What makes Matt such a fascinating character is the gap between his reality and the real world. He is constantly making plans to leave London and set up some exotic business in far-flung locales, but never gets beyond filching expensive meals off his friends or shoplifting wine from the corner store.

All the while he moans about the state of the world, the state of the economy, the immorality of the times and his pet hate — fat people. Obnoxious, self-centred and absurdly funny, Matt is not what he seems. Sutton scatters little clues here and there which allow you to build up a picture of the real Matt — and it isn't exactly pretty.

Get Me Out of Here is a truly memorable read, one that could best be described as a wicked satire about murder, madness and the never-ending quest to keep on shopping! It's enormous fun and yet it's probably the most disturbing novel I've read all year. Do try it if you are looking for something different.

'The Getting of Wisdom' by Henry Handel Richardson

Fiction - Kindle edition; Project Gutenberg; 209 pages; 1910.

Henry Handel Richardson was the pen name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, an Australian author who was born in 1870. The Getting of Wisdom, her second novel, is probably her most famous book, and a century later it remains in print.

Its enduring popularity is probably due to the universal story it recounts: an unworldly young girl from the country goes to boarding school in the city and tries desperately to fit in -- with mixed results.

The story is supposedly semi-autobiographical -- aren't they all? -- and is based on Richardson's own experiences at the prestigious Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne, where The Getting of Wisdom is set.

The protagonist, Laura Tweedle Rambotham, is a likable character but she is completely hapless and, at times, annoyingly unable to learn from her mistakes. She is 12 years old when she is sent to school from her rural backwater home.

She's an outsider as soon as she arrives, because most of her fellow students come from well-off backgrounds. Laura, by comparison, comes from a one-parent family (her father, a barrister, has died) and her mother makes ends meet by taking in embroidery and other sewing-related jobs.

Much of the story revolves around Laura's painful attempts to fit in. Although she is accepted socially by her peers, it is a constant balancing act to keep it going without anyone detecting the flaws in her background.

When, in "a moment of weakness, she gratuitously gave away the secret that Mother supported her family by the work of her hands", her standing within the school community begins to slide.

Work in itself was bad enough -- how greatly to be envied were those whose fathers did nothing more active than live on their money! But the additional circumstance of Mother being a woman made things ten times worse: ladies did not work; someone always left them enough to live on, and if he didn't, well, then he, too, shared the ignominy. So Laura went in fear and trembling lest the truth should come to light.

As much as I enjoyed this novel, I did begin to wonder what the point of it was. In most coming of age stories the protagonist goes through some kind of "test" and emerges all the stronger for it, but in The Getting of Wisdom Laura merely gets sucked into the cruel games of her peers. Instead of standing up to them -- defying them -- she lowers herself to their standards and offers them what they want, even if that means she has to lie or carry on a charade to do so.

And by the end of the story, as Laura gets ready to leave school for good, she feels that she still doesn't fit in:

She went out from school with the uncomfortable sense of being a square peg, which fitted into none of the round holes of her world; the wisdom she had got, the experience she was richer by, had, in the process of equipping her for life, merely seemed to disclose her unfitness.

Despite this failing, the book is an evocative read, particularly of another time and place. It has a distinctive Australian feel -- I loved the descriptions of Laura's holidays on the beach and her excursions into the city -- which ensures its place in the Australian literary canon.

And I rather suspect girls in their early teens would enjoy it, seeing as it is filled with callous, often bitchy, characters with which every girl has to contend when she is growing up. There's also plenty about what it is like to negotiate the unfamiliar world of boys when you don't quite know what is expected of you...

 

'The Grass Arena' by John Healy

Non-fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 272 pages; 2008.

The Grass Arena, a memoir by John Healy who spent 15 years living on the streets of London, will alter the way you view homeless people.

The book is written in what can only be described as schoolboy English, with sparse prose and an affinity for exclamation points. But this naive, un-educated voice, rings true and becomes rather endearing once you get into the rhythm of it.

It begins by detailing John's rather impoverished, ultra-religious and violent upbringing in which he sometimes lives with his parents in London and sometimes lives with his extended family in Ireland.

It then turns to the horror of his adult life lived on the margins of society. Here, in the "grass arena" he hangs out with all forms of low-life -- petty criminals, alcoholics, drug addicts -- and survives by his wits.

Much of his time is devoted to avoiding violence on the streets (nasty punch-ups fuelled by alcohol) and finding enough money -- either through begging or petty thievery -- to secure the next drink, whether it be beer, red wine or methylated spirits, he's not fussy (although he does confess that meths is "bastard stuff" which is "hard to get down first thing in the day -- any time for that matter".) 

Life is a blur of abject, hopeless drunkenness, broken by stints in prison, but underneath it all you get the very real sense that Healy desperately wants to escape this way of life. And, eventually, he does, by a rather surreal saviour: the game of chess, for which he has a particular talent.

This memoir isn't exactly a fun read, although it does have moments of high humour of the blackest variety, but it's an illuminating account of what it is like to be a member of an underclass spurned by society. And it details, almost lovingly, the camaraderie and sense of community which exists between those people who have no homes to go to.

The autobiography, first published in 1988, was made into an award-winning film by the BBC in 1991.

As an aside, I read this book back to back with MJ Hyland's This is How and was surprised at some of the similarities between the fictional Patrick Oxtoby and the very real John Healy: both suffer from severe tension in the upper back and neck that can only be alleviated through drink; both become alcoholics; and both eventually end up in prison.

To hammer the point home further, Oxtoby reads an unnamed book borrowed from the prison library which I believe can only be Healy's Grass Arena. I'm convinced MJ Hyland must have read it as part of her research for her novel.