Taboo, by Kim Scott

Fabulous book from the great Australian writer. Haunting and memorable. Should find itself on all the lists of best books of 2017.

The massacre was a long time ago.

An Aboriginal girl raped by a farmer brought payback, and that sparked a massive retaliation against the local population. There weren’t many left after that.

But now a descendant of those farmers, Dan, wants to bring healing to what became a haunted, taboo place.

He’s planned a peace plaque and a ceremony to bring back the descendants of those who once lived in the area, the Wirlomin and Noongar people.

It also brings Tilly, a deeply troubled girl who has connections to both sides – fostered with Dan and his wife as a child, and descended on her father’s side from the Wirlomin mob, and still learning what that means.

As elders and family walk the property, visiting the old sites and planning the ceremony, they evoke the spirits of the past.

Tilly becomes the centrepoint – of present and past, of what happened long ago and what continues to happen.

Scott’s book is stunning – haunted and powerful, giving shadowy presence to those ghosts as they watch and shape unfolding events.

Scott, one of the Noongar people, has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, in 2000 and 2011, along with a host of other prizes.

This book was first published in July 2017. This review first appeared in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. 

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On The Java Ridge, by Jock Serong

Top-notch political thriller from the Australian writer. One of the best things I’ve read this year.

In Indonesian waters northwest of Australia, the paths of two wooden boats are about to cross.

In the one are dozens of asylum seekers of all ages. In the other, a bunch of pleasure-seeking Australian surfers, their captain and two Indonesian crew.

In Australia, the Minister for Border Protection, Cassius Calvert, is heading into an election making a strong statement about keeping Australia’s borders secure.

He announces the recruitment of an outside organisation, Core Resolve, to take over the “remote” control of any attempted breaches of Australia’s sea borders.

It was a move orchestrated by the PM, who is determined that absolutely nothing should disrupt the Government’s message on this issue in the days before re-election. But when circumstances bring these two boats together, the situation spirals out of control.

It’s a political thriller crossed with dystopian horror, except that the savage political situation feels disturbingly close to reality.

Wearing his heart very firmly on his sleeve, Serong mixes a brutal abuse of power with a heart-stopping, tragic story of asylum seekers suffering a major emergency at sea. Fabulous writing, and also seriously disturbing.

This book was published in July 2017. This review first appeared in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine.  

Selfie: how we became so self-obsessed and what it’s doing to us, by Will Story

Will Storr is always worth reading. Fascinating stuff. 

Just a few pages into to this provocative book, British journalist Will Storr presents a horrifying statistic: according to the WHO, more people died from self-harm than from all interpersonal violence (war, terrorism, murders, execution) in 2012.

It predicts this is only getting worse. So why? Where does all this self-hatred come from?

In answering, Storr goes on a journey through Western notions of the self, starting with Aristotle and ending in the bowels of social media. He centres much of his modern discussion on the US – through neoliberalism, Ayn Rand, self-esteem and cultural notions of human perfection.

He explores the suicide in 2015 of visionary Silicon Valley DNA entrepreneur Austen Heinz after a savage media and social media campaign, and selfie-queen CJ’s narcissistic obsession with posting perfect pictures of herself.

And he doesn’t spare himself, enduring a six-day retreat in the Big Yurt in search of his “authentic self”at Esalen Institute in California, and examining himself unflinchingly as each new insight is revealed.

It’s a fascinating journey, with a lot to say about our notions of success and happiness in this modern world.

The Last Garden, by Eva Hornung

Tags

dog boy, prime minister's literary award

Eva Hornung writes unusual and powerful books, with an amazing affinity for animals.

Benedict Orion comes home from boarding school – excited to get away from books and into the everyday work of the family farm – to find his parents dead in a murder-suicide.

In deep shock, he retreats, unable anymore to step foot into the home he loved.

He finds refuge in the barn, in close quarters with the old mare Melba, and the young feisty stallion Fell.

His neighbours in Wahrheit, a close-knit Germanic religious farming community in South Australia, are patiently waiting for the second coming of the Messiah.

Benedict – now living in the barn, never leaving the farm – remains withdrawn from the horrors of the past or thoughts of the future, existing solely through the horses and the needs of the farm and the passing seasons.

Wahrheit’s pastor keeps watch, visiting and bringing food from the community, seeing the gawky teenager slowly rediscover himself. But there are other pressures building in Wahrheit, and the pastor has to find his own way through doubts and trauma.

Hornung won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for her last book, Dog Boy, which explored some similar territory in the close bonds between boy and animal.

Full of symbolism but not overpowered by it, this is a powerful and wonderful book, and the writing is mesmerising.

This book was published in may 2017. The review was printed in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine.

Hello Goodbye, by Emily Brewin

Tags

conscription, Vietnam War

Welcome exploration of what feels like an underexplored part of Melbourne’s past.

May Callaghan is a good Catholic girl who is barely surviving the boredom of the small Victorian country town where she is finishing high school in 1968.

In the background, the Vietnam War and conscription is a constant threat to the young men she knows, and talk of it rattles her father, who has terrible war memories of his own.

May falls for Sam, who has an itch to get out of town that’s even bigger than her own; her cousin Lucy has her own ways of stretching the town’s moral strait-jacket.

Sam heads to Melbourne, landing in a share house in Carlton. When May follows, she’s confronted by a different world, one with draft dodgers and anti-war activists, and plenty of confrontations and excitement.

Her new circumstances transform her life, bringing condemnation from family and authorities, but she has Sam and her new housemates – indigenous student Clancy and bohemian Ruby – and that has to be enough.

Brewin’s debut is an engaging coming-of-age novel that explores a volatile and colourful part of Melbourne’s history.

She has received an Australian Society of Authors Emerging Writers and Illustrators mentorship.

This book was published in June 2017. The review appeared in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine, 

Dear Reflection: I never meant to be a Rebel, by Jessica Bell

Tags

vine leaves press

Small stories are sometimes the most powerful.

Jessica Bell was brought up in a fairly chaotic household that included her mother and her partner Demetri – a  “semi-famous” indie duo who played Melbourne pubs – and her younger brother.

Her mother, Erika Bach, was also a heavy user of pills and alcohol, and was increasingly anxious, making the confusion of growing up even more difficult and isolated.

By her mid teens, Jessica was becoming a rebel herself – drinking and playing hard, finding herself in frightening situations – as depression took hold of her thinking.

But she found her way through, via some searching self-reflection and considerable help from music, particularly writing her own songs and playing with her band, spAnk.

The life she has now made for herself is powerfully crafted from that chaotic upbringing.

She co-founded the small publisher Vine Leaves Press, is a singer with the band Keep Shelly in Athens, has written extensively and lives in Greece.

It’s a story of a troubled upbringing – full of the kind of pain and hard choices young people face every day – that will resonate strongly with teenagers trying to find their own way to a creative and authentic life.

Six Tudor Queens: Anne Boleyn, A King’s Obsession, by Alison Weir

Tags

Katherine of Aragon, Six Tudor Queens, the fall of anne boleyn, the lady in the tower

Interesting instalment in the series on the wives of Henry VIII by the respected historian.

I thought there wasn’t much more you could say about the most notorious and most written about of Henry VIII’s six wives, Anne Boleyn.

At least 24 books plus a couple of plays and TV series have featured her just in the past decade, ranging from the serious to the slightly silly (the vampire version).

But I was wrong. Historian Alison Weir here turns her extensive academic research into a popular novel, tracing Anne’s life from her earliest years – an area often ignored by writers in favour of her dramatic and tragic later years.

It makes a good companion piece to the serious history Weir wrote some years ago about Anne, The Lady in the Tower, which focuses on the final stages of her life. In making the switch from history to popular writing, Weir has modernised the language, sometimes going too far into the jarringly modern (“Orders is orders,” Sir Edmund barked).

This is the second in Weir’s comprehensive series The Six Tudor Queens, each installment told with a fair degree of sympathy from that queen’s point of view.

The result is a portrait of a doomed queen that feels both accurate and very human, in a book that is enjoyably engrossing.

My review of book 1 in this series: Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen, by Alison Weir

https://corinna1blog.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/six-tudor-queens-katherine-of-aragon-the-true-queen-by-alison-weir/

My (brief) published review of the precursor to this book: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

Popular British historian Alison Weir concentrates on Tudor queen Anne Boleyn’s downfall, from the time she first suspects she’s in trouble to her death on the scaffold – just four months – and the aftermath. Weir sets the record straight on a number of myths in this awesomely thorough account, with the rare (for a history) result that these feel like real people caught in a real tragedy. However, that incredible depth on a narrow subject can feel like too much detail. A must for fans of Tudor history.

Release, by Patrick Ness

 

I haven’t read a bad book by this writer, and this is no exception. It’s a book to read in one sitting.

Adam Thorn, 17, is about to have a day that will change almost everything.

The son of a pastor, he’s pretty sure his parents love him, but he hides his sexuality at home anyway.

This day is leading towards a farewell party for his ex, Enzo – his first love and the one who broke his heart.

But first he will have to cope with a range of major shocks – from his best friend, his work manager, his parents, his boyfriend, and his brother.

But that’s not the only unsettling aspect of what’s going on. By the lake, where the party will take place, something else is stirring.

The tormented soul of a drowned girl rises, merged with a powerful spirit who can give that torment shape and function.

She roams the town, looking for answers. This book specifically references two others – Judy Blume’s Forever, about losing your virginity, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which similarly takes place over one day.

Ness deals with young love and sex, and all the issues that go with that, with all the power and respect you’d expect from this multi-award winning YA writer.

The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age novel that is both dark and compelling.

Alan Carter: Marlborough Man; Prime Cut; Getting Warmer; Bad Seed

His fourth book is a triumphant return to form for Alan Carter, who has established himself as a powerful Antipodean crime writer. 

A remote farmhouse in New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds is a handy hiding place for Sgt Nick Chester and his family.

It would be even better if he could be sure that it was far enough away from a very bad man he put in jail in England, and his particularly nasty henchmen.

As his paranoia grows, he keeps a low profile at the local police station, mostly on traffic duty.

But when a child goes missing, he calls on his old skills to find a predator before he can strike again.

In the small community around him, Nick discovers there are some less than pleasant characters, and his investigations stir up some nasty secrets, often hidden by tense inter-cultural relationships.

The rising pressure also adds to the stress on his already-struggling marriage. Carter won the Ned Kelly Award for best first fiction for his first book, Prime Cut.

The hero of that book, Cato Kwong, is a great addition to local crime literature, though the most recent (book three in that series) seemed to have lost some of its mojo.

The good news is, Carter is back to his best in this. He jokes that it is a “temporary conscious uncoupling” from Cato, but hopefully that means he’ll go back to that series in the future. Meanwhile, this is an excellent alternative.

This book was published in June 2017

Prime Cut, by Alan Carter (2011)

Disgraced detective Phillip “Cato” Kwong gets called back into action after being exiled to the Stock Squad.

A headless body has been found on a beach at Hopetoun, a booming WA mining town, and there’s no one else available to investigate.

As Kwong digs, what he finds are shocking conditions for migrant workers, which puts him on a collision course with business interests associated with the mine.

But there are other crimes being hidden in the remote community and the more Kwong stirs the pot the more dangerous the situation becomes.

Helping him sort out the mess are Kwong’s ex, local senior-sergeant Tess Maguire, and a young part-Aboriginal policeman – the surprising Greg Fisher. On the fringes is a long-retired Sunderland copper still on the tail of a brutal killer he first encountered more than 30 years before.

This is a great debut from the WA writer, introducing a detective with loads of appeal who deserves, and seems destined for, a series. Some minor plot issues aside, it’s a confident, witty, entertaining and gritty tale with an interesting, multicultural cast.

The book was shortlisted for the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award in 2010.

 

Getting Warmer, by Alan Carter (2013)

 

Alan Carter started his crime-writing career with a bang when he won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction with Prime Cut.

Now he’s done the really hard bit – followed up with an even better second book. His hero, Phillip “Cato” Kwong, is a policeman in Fremantle, in boom days that have a Wild West feel.

Cato’s smart and his humour’s dry as a bone; he’s unthreatening, but well able to look after himself.

This time Cato has to try to manage a jailed killer, who’s playing nasty mindgames with the mother of his last victim. The squad’s dealing with the murder of an undercover cop working with a Vietnamese gang and with rumblings from the Apache motorcycle club, which is preparing for a turf war.

And throughout it all, the whiff of corrupt copper. But which one? For starters, co-worker Lara is dodgy, his boss has a secret connection to the killer, and his old mate, the charismatic ring-in from the Gang Squad, seems a bit too slick.

Carter delivers a fast-paced and atmospheric tale, with a lively multicultural cast and an absolute gem in Cato.

Bad Seed, by Alan Carter (2015)

Detective “Cato” Kwong arrives at a horror murder scene – multiple bloody deaths in a family home. The shock is worse because the male victim, property developer Francis Tan, was once his closest friend.

The eldest son, who is missing and a suspect, is Cato’s godson.

The murder inquiry spreads its tentacles into Asia, with links uncovered to major Chinese property developers and underworld figures, who take a keen interest in the investigation, with often violent results.

Meanwhile, Cato’s crusty boss, DI Hutchens, is in trouble, facing an inquiry that looks certain to finish his career and possibly put him on the other side of the law.

Cato Kwong first apeared in 2011 in Prime Cut, with author Alan Carter winning the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and being shortlisted for the international Debut Dagger.

The sequel, Getting Warmer, was even better. Both were quirky, gripping and confident with a strong multi-cultural cast and a highly appealing central character in Cato.

Bad Seed takes a step in a slightly different direction, with a crime story that feels both darker and more conventional that the previous two.

Kwong’s personal life, including his struggling relationship with his son and a lukewarm romance, feel thin and unconvincing. It’s still a strong crime story, but it feels like some of the elements that made the series such a standout have been diluted.

These reviews were first printed in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. 

New Boy, by Tracy Chevalier

At the start, this connection of Othello and a primary school in the 1970s seemed inspired. By the end I was just really frustrated by it. 

New boy Osei, from Ghana, arrives at a Washington DC primary school late in the year.

It is 1975 and he’s the only black kid in sight. His connection with popular girl Dee is immediate – they bond, standing against the suspicions, envy and curiosity of the rest of the schoolyard.

But Ian is watching very carefully, and looking for an advantage.

Casper, secure as the most popular boy, is friendly, while Mimi and Blanca wait on the fringes. Over the course of this one day, early sunshine descends into tragedy – misunderstandings, evil machinations, racism, and love all play their part.

A central motif is a pink, strawberry-embossed pencil case – it belongs to Osei’s sister, he gives it to Dee, and she misplaces it, allowing it to become a powerful pawn in a much bigger game.

Shakespeare fans may already get some of the references, for this is Othello transformed as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.

On the plus side, the intense tragedy of this story translates surprisingly effectively into the squabbling of these 11-year-olds, and Chevalier has a highly readable style.

But I was left thinking less of the original play – it lost some of its grand tragedy in the shift to childish players. The grandeur of the language in Shakespeare’s original lifts the story above some of its sillier elements.

And while 11-year-olds might be this sexualised in 2017, they weren’t in 1975. This is something that probably wouldn’t matter to a younger audience (that is, younger than 45 or 50), who have no way of knowing that it was ever different. I can’t know if this is how Chevalier remembers it, or whether she did this as a way of connecting with a younger audience.

This book was published in May 2017.