WEST OF SUNSET
Stewart O'Nan
Allen and Unwin, RRP$29.99
June 2015
Ever find that you read one book about an era, event or group of people, and are then bombarded with a multitude of other books centred on the same theme. For me, I am never sure whether my book trends are actual publishing trends or mere coincidences. I suspect my current trend of books about the Jazz Age—more specifically the leading couple of that age, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald—is an actual publishing trend. It definitely feels like one, right?
In my earlier discussion on Found Stories, I mentioned three interactive stories that I wanted to examine. This first of these, Ruins, is the oldest and perhaps the simplest in terms of approach. Dear Esther is more recent and takes the form of a dimensional first person, um, well, not a ‘shooter’ as there is no shooting… a first person wanderer? The story begins on a dock at the shores of a deserted island, probably somewhere in the Outer Hebrides or maybe an outlying island of the Orkneys. Without knowing anything about this ‘game’ it would be easy to think that there will be monsters or ghosts or something that will need violent dealing to, but there is not. There is a mystery… but it is not an extrinsic mystery. This is where things get interesting.
I think you can make an omelet in the dryer. Crack the eggs into a zip-lock bag, wrap it in a pair of pants and run them through on high for an hour. I know it will work.
Colin would never let me try it when we lived together. He acknowledged it might work, but felt that the reward couldn’t justify the risk. Continue reading
There is a very strange thing that happens whenever a popular idea runs wild through the publishing industry. And for all it’s slowness of pace, the publishing industry does experience these heady rushes and crazes from time-to-time. By this, I don’t mean a hyped up genre, author or title. Instead I’m thinking of the sort of book-as-something-more-than-a-book craze. Think back on the rush of magic eye books in the late nineties, or sudoku books, or the current mass of colouring books for adults… a novel and (usually) interactive idea comes along, there is a rush and fury of enthusiasm, and in time, eventually the novelty fades and the idea drifts away. Though in the meantime some odd reactions seep out of the woodwork.
Stay With Me
Maureen McCarthy
Allen & Unwin
May 2015, RRP $19.95
Tess is leaving. ‘It’s around three a.m. I can’t be sure exactly, because I’m hiding under a house, ten minutes’ drive out of Byron Bay, off the old Bangalow Road… I’m not cold. It’s still summer – just.’
Tess was seventeen when she travelled to Byron Bay for schoolies with a couple of friends. It was a break from the troubled years following the death of her father and desertion by her mother, events that had left her older sister, Beth, to lead a household of siblings. When Tess is offered a job in a Byron cafe and encounters the handsome, older Jay, she decides to stay. Four years on, Tess is trapped on a farm with Jay and their daughter, Nellie, with no job, money or friends.
Imagine a world where women are pitted against each other, forced to comply with nigh unattainable standards of beauty and behaviour, and live their lives entirely according to the whims of men who treat them with nothing but contempt. Oh sorry, you don’t need to imagine. That’s our reality*. Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours** is our reality up to eleven. I’ll say it now: massive trigger warnings for eating disorders, shaming of women’s sexuality, rape culture, misogyny, domestic violence and toxic masculinity. As someone who, like most women, has struggled with body image (etc.), I was not terribly affected, but I cannot speak for other readers and potential readers.
freida is entering the final year of School. She is 16, and with her 29 classmates she has spent the last twelve years of her life in a routine of maintaining stringent beauty standards, learning proper feminine behaviours, and being rated weekly on her appearance by her peers as well as total strangers. In the future earth of freida’s birth, sex-selective abortion almost led to the extinction of the human race. It was decided that women must be designed and educated to become the mothers of future generations. But, since men need more than just wifely companionship, a large number of concubines are also required. freida’s destiny is to become either one of ten companions, a concubine, or a chastity–a celibate teacher for girls at the School. Continue reading
Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad
Richard Stephens
Hachette Australia
July 2015
Unfortunately, Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad is a book entirely deserving of the shadowy mist of obscurity. It’s hard to think of another popular science book so disorganised. Richard Stephens is so enamoured to show us the hidden benefits of being bad, that he writes a book filled with flawed research, unsupported conclusions, referencing that wouldn’t get through a first year lab report, and dumbed down explanations of scientific concepts (“This is what we call replication”). No doubt he’s a man who can sell himself; it’s just a shame he seemingly can’t deliver. Being bad? ‘Bad’ has more than one meaning, and Richard Stephens may not have achieved the sort of bad he wanted to.
On the surface, Black Sheep pulls us in with the promise of vice justified. There’s a certain cool factor associated with bad behaviour; it embodies defiant rule breaking in opposition to social norms that try to constrain and define us. By being bad we signpost our independence. After all, don’t we know that those who break the rules are ultimately the ones who change the world? There’s something seductive about the idea; that small, everyday bad behaviour is simply a precursor to wider participation in the great waves of social, organisational and technological change. Continue reading
When I reached the supermarket, an electrical pole stood burning near the parking lot. Firemen shot water at it while one of them gabbed with a policeman. I asked a security guard, whom I found watching, what had happened and he just reported the visible details of the scene.
“That electrical pole has caught fire,” he said, “Firemen have started spraying water on to it. A policeman stands next to them.” Continue reading
One of the fastest selling seasons of Hamlet in Britain came to a close only a few hours ago. The National Theatre’s record breaking performances at the Barbican were helped along by the pulling power of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch playing the eponymous role.
And while some poor sad bitter critics may have been lamenting that the audiences were not true theatre goers but merely (merely?) blindly screeching fangirls (and boys), the truth is, even if it was via the attraction of a major star, it brought an entirely fresh new audience to the experience of live theatre and perhaps has inspired them to see more. A win for theatre I would say, and every subsequent play one of those first timers sees from here on in is a fine—if invisible—middle finger to those critics who have nothing better to do than to harp and moan over the “death of theatre”. Continue reading
The Book of Memory
Petina Gappah
Faber & Faber
September 2015
The Book of Memory is Petina Gappah’s first novel, a tightly woven tale of privilege and prison, of Zimbabwe, and of course memory. It is the fictional memoir of the convicted murderer, Memory. She has been asked to write in service of a potential appeal against her death sentence.
Memory is an albino woman. Sent away as a child from her home in one of Harare’s townships to live with a white man, Lloyd, she struggles to find a sense of belonging and of self. She feels neither black nor white; her birth family has rejected her; and with her Cambridge education she is at great odds with her fellows in the Chikurubi Prison. We see as she pieces together clues from her life, trying to work out how it arrived at this ugly point. Of course she professes her innocence of the murder. Continue reading
In my area, the city council empties the rubbish bins once a week. We wheel them out to the road; the City of Monash empties them; we wheel them back to our houses and spend the rest of the week filling them up with hotdog packets. Then we repeat the cycle.
My neighbors paint their apartment numbers on their bins. That way they can make sure that each week they wheel out the same bin that they wheeled out the previous week. They have a history with their rubbish bin. Continue reading
Ruins, by Cardboard Computer is a free, slightly older example of the Found Story, and if you’d like to experience what this mode of storytelling is like you can download it and toy around. Possibly, you should do so before even reading this piece. Although I will try to avoid spoilers, I may end up revealing some elements of the tale, and a big part of the joy of Found Stories, is discovering the story, piece by gradual piece.
THE DOG SQUAD Vikki Petraitis Penguin Australia, May 2015, RRP $32.99 A number of years ago I traveled to Tasmania by boat. When we arrived at the port, the customs team brought their sniffer dogs to have a sniff at everyone’s bags. The dog stopped at a young Asian woman’s pack, … Continue reading
Ever find that you read one book about an era, event or group of people, and are then bombarded with a multitude of other books centred on the same theme. For me, I am never sure whether my book trends are actual publishing trends or mere coincidences. I suspect my current trend of books about the Jazz Age—more specifically the leading couple of that age, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald—is an actual publishing trend. It definitely feels like one, right?
