Reading matters

'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.

'Under Enemy Colors' by S. Thomas Russell

Fiction - hardcover; Putnam Publishing Group; 368 pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

Although I'm not an expert on the naval genre, many of my favourite novels -- Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea and Matthew Kneale's English Passengers -- have been seafaring adventures, so I had rather high expectations for S. Thomas Russell's Under Enemy Colors. I'm pleased to say I was not disappointed.

Set on board a newly-built British frigate, the Themis, during the French Revolution, it tells the story of two very different men working for the King's Navy.

The ship's captain, Josiah Hart, is a notorious coward and an incompetent, bumbling, tyrannical leader, but the Admiralty has turned a blind eye to his failings because he is very well connected through Mrs Hart's family.

Charles Saunders Hayden, a seafaring man of impeccable ability, is his (reluctant) first lieutenant who has been secretly engaged to inform on Hart's exploits. Hayden, who feels the role is beneath him, has only accepted the job because his parentage -- his father is British, his mother French -- has often been used to (wrongly) call his loyalty into question, and to refuse it would only jeopardise his career in the Navy.

During the ship's adventure-filled voyage into French waters, Hayden finds himself increasingly stuck between duty and honour, between a tyrannical leader, who thinks nothing of belittling him in public, and a disaffected crew with leanings towards violence and possible mutiny...

'Unless' by Carol Shields

Fiction - paperback; Fourth Estate; 320 pages; 2003
             
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002, Unless is an unusual story about a 44-year-old woman coming to terms with a family tragedy.

Reta Winters normally happy existence as the mother of three daughters, "marriage" to a successful doctor and growing success as a novelist and translator is shattered when her eldest daughter, Norah, suddenly withdraws from the world.