November 23rd

Book & Publishing News

- Arrived recently: two great Christmas buys for the ageing Rockers….Brian Cadd’s “From This Side of the Fence”, lots of gossip and memoir’s from this legendary singer/songwriter, rrp $35. Also out now is “The 100 Best Australian Albums” a beautifully-presented coffee-table style souvenir, rrp $60.

- What did you think of the TV adaptation of Andrea Levi’s “The Small Island”? Our regular reviewer, John, found it all too rushed

- The latest “Quarterly Essay” is by “The Australian’s” George Megalogenis, [who also appears on “True Believers”.] Of the 2010 poll, George says wisely “…Gillard and Abbott, and behind them their poll-obsessed teams, were so terrified of offending the disengaged that they forgot to inspire the voters who were paying attention.” Excellent reading, as always. Available from Paton Books and your library, rrp $19-95.

* Geelong Library representatives will be on “The Blurb” monthly in 2011.

-What better Christmas gift than a new book? Support our station sponsors – PATON BOOKS and Angus and Robertson!

- Commencing this Monday , November 29th at 3 pm , I will be hosting a new hour-long program – “MY BLOOD”S COUNTRY”- which will present how writers, of all kinds have viewed Australia over the years. Be prepared for short stories, poems, diary extracts, interviews, etc from 1788 till now.

* Keep listening to “The Blurb” for my TOP TEN BOOKS of 2010!

This Weeks Review: A collection of Reviews from recently released books about Aussies and War

Did you watch “Sisters at War” on ABC1 the other Sunday? An excellent film about the trials of two remarkable Australian’s. It seems we still like to read about and watch the stories of our fellow countrymen/women in the throes of conflict. We want to applaud, perhaps, or maybe it just does us good to be humbled in the face of such blatant heroism. The bookstores keep a regular stock of new titles and this year has been no exception. I have already reviewed a number of ‘weightier’
books on various wars [which you might like to scroll back and find], I will make these comments briefer as there are so many books to talk about.

The quality of the story-telling in these books varies significantly, but would-readers will probably select according to their innate interest. I felt “On Radji Beach” was the standout of the current crop along with “The Changi Brownlow”. Ian Shaw tells again the truly heroic story of the survival of a group of Australian nurses in the aftermath of that most unforgivable of blunders, the “Fall of Singapore”. Having nearly escaped capture once, the original group- numbering in the hundreds – were sunk in their escape vessel, captured by the Japanese and subjected to three and a half years of humiliation…and, mostly, murdered. It is a heart-wrenching read, but superbly written.
"On Radji Beach",Macmillan,pb,rrp $35,pp 358

Though “Beersheba” came out last year, I’m not sure I gave it suitable mention at the time. This is the story of “the last great cavalry charge’, but it is more than that. Daley takes us to the site and has managed to source a lot of new material about the events. He effectively challenges some of the prevailing myths that surround our involvement in World War One, particularly the Middle East campaigns. As with the previous book, sound index and footnotes.
"Beersheba", MUP 2009,rrp 35, pb, pp 337

Roland Perry takes us into the lives of others who were in Singapore at the time of the infamous surrender – the men who suffered through imprisonment in Changi and the slaver labour camps on the Thai-Burma railway, have we forgotten that 23000 Australian and other Allied POWs died in that awful time? Gain it is a story of survival – and tenacious good humour, a product of basic humanitarianism by these amazing ‘blokes”, to this day in our district, only a handful of these soldiers still survive.
What does a group of Aussie men do when there’s nothing else to do? They grab a footy, and have a kick! Bizarre as it seems, this is what happened among the Australians in Changi – they organised an Aussie Rules comp. A very lively and uplifting tale.
“The Changi Brownlow”, Hatchette, pb, rrp $35,pb pp 376

Patrick Lindsay’s book “The Coast Watchers” brings us closer to home – to the islands of our north where, it was felt at the time, the very survival of Australia was in the balance as the Japanese war machine relentlessly thundered south. As have several of these authors, Lindsay has worked in journalism so the story moves swiftly and authoritatively. Not unlike the heroes of the next book, the Coast Watchers were ‘left behind’ to keep an eye out for the Japanese advancing across the Pacific after Pearl Harbour. When all hope of defending their particular space had been abandoned. Again, the persistence and practicality of these men and women is beyond belief to most of us today. More than thirty were captured and executed, in fact.
“The Coast Watchers” Random House, pb, rrp $34-95,pp 416

“The Men Who Came Out Of The Ground” were ‘Sparrow Force’, a Special Forces Unit set up to fight behind enemy lines on the island of Timor [sic]. It was a guerrilla war, relying on the support of the locals ,of whom many thousands died during the Japanese invasion, “avoiding pitched battles, instead picking the right time to strike…..They tied down thousands of the enemy, not just matching them, but beating them”.
“The Men Who Came Out Of The Ground”, Hatchette, pb, rrp $35,pp 382

Moving closer to our times, “Bomber” tells the story of a remarkable man, Tony Bower-Miles, who served his hour in Vietnam as a sapper and who since 2001 has devoted much of his time to the daunting job of removing landmines in Cambodia.
We’re still only slowly learning about illnesses such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as we continue to ‘debrief’ as a community the aftermath of war, for example. Tony confronted his post-Vietnam demons and turned them on their head, as it were- by enlisting fellow vets for those days to help the war-damaged people of Cambodia, The story is not always very well-written, but deserves to be heard.
“Bomber”, Macmillan, pb, rrp $35,pp 292

New Zealand-born Rob Maylor served as a soldier in various guises and in different theatres. His story ranges from his homeland to Northern Ireland through East Timor [sic] to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the cover blurb says, his was “the world of an elite Australian marksman”. Established author, Robert Macklin, worked on Rob’s memoirs with him…fortunately because this book narrowly avoids being a smoke-social, boys-own-adventure rave. I have little doubt that people like Rob are necessary tools in our defence apparatus, but I wondered at times abut his motivation and thought processes in the field, and his evaluation the events he recalls.
“SAS Sniper”, Hatchette, pb, rrp $35,pp 330

Just when I had completed these jottings, onto my desk came Craig Stockings’ weirdly-titled “Zombie Myths of Australian Military History”. The book sets out to tackle ten myths – eg the ‘heroism’ of “Breaker Morant” [not even his real name!] – most of us have entertained unquestioningly forever. Perhaps, Stockings argues, Australians have a need “to commemorate and venerate the deeds of past servicemen, conceptions of national identity wrapped in the imagery of war, and the all-encompassing social implications of our central national legends – Anzac and the ‘Digger’…challenging stuff? Indeed. I hasten to add that nowhere in this lively book is the authentic bravery of our military doubted, it is the myths that are under fire. Heartily recommended.
“Zombie Myths of Australian Military History”, Newsouth Books, pb, rrp $35, pp 275

November 23rd

John’s Review- ‘How It Feels’ by Brendan Cowell

I have to confess I come to this review with something of a personal prejudice. This is a book written by someone who identifies as an actor albeit an actor I much admire. Brendan Cowell is an Australian actor, writer and director and perhaps best known for his role as Tom in Love My Way. He was nominated for an AFI award for his role in Noise a nomination I thought he thoroughly deserved and for a film I thought did not receive the acclaim it deserved.
However, I’m always a bit suspicious when professions cross boundaries. I mean would you employ a plumber to perform your open heart surgery? Should writers be allowed to act or actors allowed to write? Perhaps the listeners have some views on this topic.
I concede there are closer links between the skills of an actor and those of a writer than perhaps between plumbing and surgery and to be fair Cowell has written scripts for film and television.
‘How It Feels’ is basically a coming-of-age story about Neil Cronk and his girlfriend Courtney and his mates Gordon and Stuart. It’s a story of booze, drugs sex and violence told in a style that is unrelentingly gritty, coarse and very frank and perhaps comes across as trapped in an adolescent rebellious style. As a genre I suppose it could best be described as ‘grunge’ and in the Australian tradition of Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas or Praise by Andrew McGahan. The writing style is direct and unflinching and packs a real punch. It’s an unrelenting high octane story of the struggle of a young man to move beyond the self-destruction of addiction and his total focus on personal needs above those of anybody else. This is a compelling story but I do think there are some problems with the style.
For example there is some confusion about the construction of the story. The first few chapters proceed in a chronological order which is easy to follow but then in mid story there are movements back and forth in both time and location that left me confused. I’m not a rabid supporter of sticking to a strictly chronological structure and some of the best novels are flexible in playing with time and location in a narrative but here these changes were badly handled and confusing.
There are also some gaps in information and presumptions from time to time that needed more explanation, a sketchiness that the narrative doesn’t completely cover.
Despite the energy of the writing style, and there is plenty of that, at times the style fell into purple prose or felt just too overwritten. A simpler, more pruned back style could have been just as dramatic and more impactful. Take for example this statement: ‘Hell sat pregnant in my face. Something beautiful had left the building. I was a shell of a man. The scallop of my soul had been sucked out and I couldn’t help but think the cliché: I could have saved him.’ Much of the style is like this, overwritten, overdramatic, even clichéd when less might have been better.
The novel’s point of view is very definitely a strong first person main protagonist voice but it does have some limitations. We see everything through this character’s eyes and I soon wondered how reliable a narrator he really was. The other characters feel a bit like puppets or chess pieces to be moved about or given dialogue to deliver rather than living as full-blooded characters in their own right.
I’d love to hear what some female readers would make of his portrayal of the female characters and what his male characters have to say about women. I did notice that Louise Swinn in The Age on November 6th suggests that ‘we don’t get a good enough view of Courtney, who is an important character.’ One of the main revelations of the story revolves around the question of which of the 3 male characters ‘took’ Courtney’s virginity, which is a pretty sexist view.
In many ways this is a ‘blokey’ novel, not exactly from a sexist angle but more than that, concentrating on the fraught ways Australian men struggle to express affection and friendship for one another. But it should be highly commended for its attempt to portray Australian male friendship, something that has perhaps been neglected in contemporary Australian fiction.
With a first novel questions can always be asked about the quantity of autobiographical detail and this is a fair question in this case. Given that Neil Cronk’s CV has some resemblances to that of Cowell we can fairly conclude that there is some autobiographical material here. Both grew up in Cronulla and attended Drama at Bathurst University.
Despite its flaws there is an incredible energy and heart at the centre of this novel, which mostly overrides the stylistic limitations I have mentioned. This is a story told with guts and lack of pretension and armed with this sort of energy Cowell can only go on to refine his writing skills further. Perhaps after all it’s an argument for more not less intermarriage between writing books and writing for the theatre.

This Weeks Poem:

“Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum ”- Peter Porter

Music

This week we played the following tracks:
-‘Livin In The Seventies’ by Skyhooks
-‘War’ by Gossling

November 9th

Book & Publishing News

Here are the nominees and winners from the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards:
CHILDREN’S FICTION- ‘Star Jumps’ by Lorraine Marwood
FICTION- ‘Dog Boy’ by Eva Homung
NON-FICTION- ‘The Colony: A History of Early Sydney’ by Grace Karskens
YOUNG ADULT FICTION-‘Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God’ by Bill Condon

This Weeks Reviews:

John Reviewed- ‘Resistance’ by Owen Shears

RESISTANCE by Owen Shears was published 2007 by Faber & Faber and has been translated into ten languages and was short listed for the Writer's Guild of Great Britain Best Book Award 2008. Currently under preproduction as a film.

I first discovered the writer Owen Shears on ‘A Poet’s Guide to Britain’, ABC 2, Sunday at 8.55pm and was an instant fan. Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales and has published 2 books of poetry and a novella and his work has been nominated for a number of awards.

The plot is based on a very creative premise, presupposing that the Germans defeated the Normandy landings of 1944, and counter-attacked so powerfully that they soon occupied almost the whole of Britain. The premise is actually based on historical facts that Shears discovered when working as a builder’s laborer one summer in a Welsh valley. During the war evidently men had been recruited into a Special Forces division dedicated to resisting German occupying forces, should Britain be occupied which was a distinct possibility. This particular genre is described as ‘alternative history’ or ‘counterfactual’ and in the spirit of Philip Roth’s ‘The Plot Against America.’
Sheers takes readers to a small Welsh village during a speculative WWII – featuring a German invasion of Britain . It’s 1944 and Sarah Lewis and the women in Ochlon valley are left alone after all the local men disappear one night without warning. The women’s worlds suddenly shrink to the day-to-day struggles to keep their sheep farms going until the war comes to their doorsteps in the form of Captain Albrecht Wolfram and his men, who have a murky mission to carry out in the valley. Wolfram, despite being a Nazi Captain emerges as atypical, having studied history at Oxford before the war and more interested in classical music and history than the business of war.
Promising to leave the women alone, the Germans occupy an abandoned house and the two camps keep mostly to themselves until a harsh winter takes hold, and it becomes clear that the locals and the Germans will have to depend on one another to survive. When the weather breaks and the valley reopens to the world – and hence the war – the peculiar idyll threatens to shatter. This is pretty much the plot outline, relying on the tension between these 2 groups of sworn enemies living together in this winter-bound valley.
There are mysteries and revelations: why have the soldiers been ordered to come to this particular valley? Will the men return? What will be the nature of the relationship between Sarah & Wolfram? How will the story end? It would be unfair to to reveal any of these details.
Shears is a poet at heart and he expresses this poetry in his prose too. He gives readers a wonderful sense of place in this valley with its day to day rhythms of farming and sheepherding and the connection to the land and its animals. Particularly poignant is Sarah’s dedication to keeping a diary for her absent husband detailing the small changes in nature and the farm as the seasons roll by.
The valley is cut off from the rest of the world and the only information about the outside world comes through a crackling radio broadcast which gradually reveals a picture of the gradual take-over of the country by the invading German army. The destruction of London and the major landmarks we take for granted today is particularly touching depicting the possible outcomes had that war been quite different. We learn of the almost total destruction of London buildings and Nelson’s column at Trafalgar square being dismantled and taken to Berlin as a war trophy while in small English villages groups of citizens are being executed for resisting the occupying forces.

The story has a lot to say about the futility of war and its effect on individuals. Its strength lies in the fact that it goes beyond the sorts of stereotypes of individuals that now, more than 50 years on we have come to see as normal. It is also a stark reminder of the effects an occupying force can have on a population, something Western colonialism perhaps hasn’t yet quite understood. Dare I saw the occupation of Australia is one case in point. This is a poetic and impressive story with much to tell contemporary readers.

This Weeks Poem:

“Small Man With Tree (After Domenico Tiepolo)”- by Peter Steele SJ
This poem comes from a published collection of his works ‘A Local Habitation: Poems and Homilies’, it is based on a passage from Luke 19: 1-10 in the bible.

Music

This week’s music featured Australian artists:
-‘Rock It’ by Little Red
-‘Day Too Soon’ by Sia from her album ‘Some People Have Real Problems’
-‘Poorhouse’ by The Audrey’s from their album ‘Sometimes The Stars’

November 16th

This Weeks Review: 'Fall Girl' by Toni Jordan

Reading this book was really refreshing. Here is a newish young female novelist who is prepared to write an unashamed piece of pure escapism and does so with style and flair.
Perhaps the title is in danger of telegraphing the book’s denouement, but if the end of heroine Della/ “Ella’s” journey isn’t quite what she had hoped for, the ride is certainly entertaining. In a recent interview, author Toni said: “I’ve tried to channel my love for screwball romantic comedies of the 40s and 50s into a modern story – a novelist’s ‘Charade’ or ‘To Catch A Thief’ except set in contemporary Melbourne…fascinating characters, intricate plots, witty dialogue and sexual tension. I only hope I have done them justice.” Well, Toni, I think you have.

Della and her extended family are eccentric in way we don’t often encounter: they are ‘con artists’ with a naïve Robin-Hood principle backing their often-grand highly illegal schemes for making money. Their whole lives – where they live, the daily and weekly routine, their identities, issues of security and secrecy dictate their comings and goings. Every moment is devoted to the sourcing, planning, and precise execution of serial ‘dodginess’ involving everything from carrying out phoney real estate deals to selling shonky patent medicines. The elegant, confident and articulate Della is sure she is onto a winner with her elaborate plan to relieve a ‘ridiculously wealthy’, handsome young millionaire, Daniel, of many thousands which will finance a spurious field research program to prove that the ‘Tasmanian Tiger’ is still at large in the Wilson Promontory National Park.
Masquerading as Dr ELLA Canfield, evolutionary biology academic extraordinaire, she sets up the interview with the respective foundation, secures the promise of a sizeable grant and sets off – in a very amusing sequence – for a field trip in order to demonstrate to Daniel just how his money will be spent. As the blurb says, “Someone is going to take a fall.”
Because this is a ‘sting’ story, I will say no more. Things move at a rattling pace throughout, but it is the characters who got my attention – the sincerely amoral family: father, stepmother, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, hanger-on Jerome and Della’s would-be-boyfriend, Tim. They represent a highly original take on the Fagin syndrome…One thinks of the British Ealing comedies [“The Lavender Hill Mob”!] of the early 50s as well as the more sophisticated American films already cited.

This is pretty daring stuff in that it defies genre which of course should guarantee Toni a broad reading audience. The dialogue is sharp and has an authentic contemporary ring. The locations – Melbourne and the Prom – are handled with sureness. It would make a good film.
I know we will be reading Toni Jordan again. An earlier novel, “Addition” ,is next on my list. She has the gift of telling a good yarn fluently and in a way that kept me turning the pages.

Published by ‘text’,2010,pp 234,rrp $32-95.

“Hand Me Down World” by Lloyd Jones

Doesn’t the variety of the human imagination just floor you? It does me. The way composers can continue to invent new tunes –and make them into songs and orchestral suites and symphonies and operas….Or the ways painters can ‘create’ new colour combinations into shade and tones and shapes that give us new visions of the world?...And the novelty of our WRITERS! Well, that is largely what “The Blurb” is about: giving you, dear reader , some of the NEW that is around in books and ideas.
New Zealand novelist, LYOYD JONES, reminded us last year about an awful civil war which raged on our northern doorstep not long ago – on the island of Bougainville – in his award-winning “Mister Pip”. Since then, he has given us an ’uneven’ [in the opinion of or reviewer] anthology of short sties, “The Man In The Shed”. Lately he is back to his best, thank heavens, with another highly-original yet topical story with “Hand me Down World”.
“Ines” is an African woman whose short-term lover kidnaps their baby son in northern Africa which leaves her utterly distraught, but not to the extent that she gives up on life. She determines to seek out both, and to get her child back. Now, you can see the possibilities for an emotional ‘journey”/”road” novel in the making. Jones manages to create the woman’s world as she moves from Africa into Italy and then northern Europe. But it isn’t until the second half of his novel that he really takes us into Ines’ mind. Until then we must be content with the viewpoint of several very different people she encounters, and this is the particular skill Jones manages in this remarkable book. Each of these people not only tell us her piece of the global story, but incidentally and importantly present an opinion on her situation. This in turn forces the reader to contemplate Ines’ plight – and the situations so many thousands face in today’s world, the stateless refugees who knock daily at the doors of us, the wealthy and comfortable. Jones re-awakened in me the shame I feel as an Australian whose successive governments effectively shut the gate on the trickle of supplicant-refugees coming to my country. Ines’ story is very moving, especially when Ines is finally able to be with her son in Berlin.
Of course, the son had been “handed on” in a sense early in the book; Ines is on occasion literally handed on, and not always kindly. Jones is a very compassionate writer, but avoids sentimentality. I suspect it is his journalism background that enables us to see his Italy, and particularly Berli [….which has been to the fore for me of late, with a TV documentary last week about Weimar Germany and :the real “Cabaret’”. There was the new Le Carre novel with its hints of his early classics “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, etc.] Jones has a rather spare writing style; there aren’t many adjectives or adverbs. None of those purple patches, so dreaded by teachers of English [and creative writing] Listen, for example, to Defoe, one of Ines’ lovers, talking about his stroll through Berlin on World Cup Day : pp 175-6.

Text Publishing, 2010, pp 313, rrp $32-95,pb.
SCORE: ***+

Author Interview: Toni Jordon author of “Fall Girl”

We spoke with Toni Jordon this week about her new novel “Fall Girl”. Toni also writes a weekly column for The Age as well as teaching creative writing.

Toni on the warm response her book has received

I was not expecting the response that this book got because you can’t fit my work into the box of typical genres.

Toni on the inspiration for “Fall Girl”

Classic 50s and 60s romantic comedies…People think it [romantic comedies] has to be brainless these days, but I wanted to make something that was genuinely funny.
Films are helping to portray the brainless side because the actors and actresses these days are young and can’t seem to carry off deeper, underlying stories.
My novel is a character driven comedy that can only have a funny line because it comes from that character.

Toni on her writing

I write by word count. I sit down every day and have to write at least 1500 good words before I finish for the day.

Toni on her first novel “Addiction” being made into a movie

Screen writing structure is a specific skill and I could not do it. If they [the screen writers] need more dialogue, I would be happy to write more, so that book can translate to the screen well.

This Weeks Poem:

“The Sharpener ”- Chris Wallace Crabbe

Music

This week we played the following tracks:
-‘Dance, Dance’ by Fall Out Boy, covered by the String Quartet Tribute to Fall Out Boy. This was an instrumental version using only string instruments.
-‘Talking Like I’m Falling Down Stairs’ by Sparkadia. This is the first single to be released off their new album coming out in 2011.