The Last Thread by Michael Sala

Title: The Last Thread

Author: Michael Sala

Publisher: Affirm Press 

Publish date: 2012

ISBN: 978 0 9871326 8 0

‘One of Michaelis’s fingers gets wedged between concrete and metal and splits open. He screams. The go-kart stops and he sits there, staring at the wound. (…) A curled leaf of skin hangs from his finger. The tears do not come straight away. The blood holds back. Both come out at once, and then he can’t stop. He is bleeding and wailing like he was made for it. (…)

The tomatoes are swollen and dark and red. Mum runs a knife along each one, before she drops it into boiling water. A thin cut in the flesh, barely visible. The skin of the tomato unfurls when it hits the water, like a flower blooming.’

This is the autobiographical story of a migration and re-migration from the Netherlands to Australia, back again to the Netherlands, and back again to Australia, from the viewpoint of a child of Dutch-Greek heritage, set from the 1970s onward. The first two thirds of the story is told in the third person, and concerns the story of the protagonist as a child. The last third is in the first person and shifts (generally) to events further towards adulthood.

By far the greatest strength of the book is in the spare and evocative language, which is mainly deployed in the third person section. The example above, where disparate scenes or thoughts are linked by visceral images into an impressionist collage of fears and pains, is typical. Most of the initial section is satisfyingly close to poetry. The spaces between the words are given exactly the right amount of room for the reader to create their own experiences, and assimilate the force of often confused emotion behind the language.

This strength ebbs rather dramatically in the latter section. Whether the intention is to impose a more ‘adult’ structure on the thoughts, to seem more detached, more in charge or further along the path of understanding, or some other reason, for me this was a disappointing development. Not only is the language less dense, but the structure is strangely confusing. The narrative about the half-brother Tomos has been shoehorned in awkwardly, with no attempt to fit it into the rest of the story. Possibly this imitates the awkwardness and immobility of the character being described, but for the reader I didn’t find it translated into greater appreciation – it was just like having a filing cabinet out of order. Likewise, the story about the quasi-stepfather Brian is spattered messily across the latter pages, leaving the reader in a sense of confusion about when exactly the events are happening. Again, perhaps this is intentional, as it creates a nightmarish loop of different iterations of the same events taking place over and over again, which is redolent of the character of Brian. But from the consumer’s perspective, it gives but a half-hearted satisfaction.

Overall, the enjoyment of language was notable in parts, and I would be happy to read more from this author. Between three and four moose-hoofs up out of five – would be a clear four, but the subject matter is a little dreary and lacks the zest to pull it into the clear.

Trash by Andy Mulligan

Author: Andy Mulligan

Publisher:  David Fickling Books

Publish date:  1988

ISBN: 978 0385 61902 8

‘I learned perhaps more than any university could ever teach me. I learned that the world revolves around money. There are values and virtues and morals; there are relationships and trust and love – and all of that is important. Money, however, is more important, and it is dripping all the time, like precious water. Some drink deep, others thirst. Without money, you shrivel and die. The absence of money is a drought in which nothing can grow. Nobody knows the value of water until they’ve lived in a dry, dry place – like Behala. So many people, waiting for the rain.’

This is a story about three dumpsite scavenger boys who find a wallet with a clue to a mystery that happens to have massive political implications.

It’s a fantastic, fast read. The story is passed on from one first-person narrator to the other, as they have parts in the action. As the boys are chased by the utterly corrupt authorities. The action is so fast you can’t help but be completely caught up in it. The author’s violent hatred for corruption and unfairness is immense, but even that can’t overshadow the brilliant personalities that populate the novel.  Mulligan has said that ‘children’s fiction needs a bit of toughness’ – and boy does it get it here.

Five moose hoofs up out of five. Strongest points are pace, characterisation, and a prose style effortless as and elf running. Not sure what the weak points are. Go for it.

Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden

Title: Tomorrow When The War Began

Author: John Marsden

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia          

Publish date: 1993

ISBN: 978-1-74351-994-3

‘Then the day came when we stopped playing. We’d gone a couple of months without our usual games, but a few days into the school  holidays I got my dolls out and tried to start up again. And it had all gone. The magic didn’t work any more. I could barely even remember how we’d done it… now it was like reading a meaningless book.’

A group of teenagers go on a camping trip, and on their return, find Australia taken over by a foreign force. Their Rip-Van-Winkle realisation of the situation and awakening to the new reality mirrors the coming of age transitions for most of the characters.

It is not completely without merit. In the latter stages (as long as you get that far) there’s a fair pace of plot – even if that plot is more like a comic action-adventure episodes strung together with no particular direction. Fair enough. I struggle to find further good points, though.

This text (which for some reason is a set text in high school) is so clunky you want to go in and apply WD40 to all moving parts. Listing all the examples would be tedious, so here are just a few, in no particular order.

WHAT is the point of the character of Chris? I strongly suspect he was brought on a) to fill up the girl-boy numbers and 2) as an example of absentee rich landlords not giving a fudge about anything. The poor critter reminds me of those occasional silent characters in Shakespeare who have been transferred over from the original source but are never given any lines. He is seriously useless in plot terms.

When the kids are arguing about the rights and wrongs of the invasion, Robyn’s supposed understanding of slum dwellers being justified in wanting to ‘take over’ is totally at odds with not one of them having in the least clue what country the invaders could even be from. Clueless teenagers? Fine, believable. Clueless but suddenly full of liberal Christian forgiveness grounded in observation? Not so much. I understand the need to fudge the identity of the potential invader, but the disjunction here leads to a lack of internal credibility and logic.

The character selection is a heavy-handed pick-and mix selection, thumping down the diversity belt. Kevin represents a thuggish right-wing working class, Lee the thoughtful Asian, Robyn the Christian lefties, Ellie the narrator is the agrarian, hardworking backbone of the country, and so on. Rarely have we seen such cut-outs since characters were called names like ‘Vice’, ‘Patience’, or ‘Sloth’.

There are several examples of sloppiness. In an episode in which the supposed narrator is participating, they write ‘No-one mentioned the possibility that they might not get back.’ This is not the gender-neutral ‘they’. It’s simply the writer forgetting who is where. It’s not narrative idiosyncrasy or characterisation, either. No-one would refer to themselves in a group as ‘they’.  These things happen to the best. We all need an editor, and ‘they’ have failed here.

Lol moment. They find ‘Heart of Darkness’ in the Hermit’s hut? Seriously? Why not just read that instead?

The instance of Ellie being ‘in the habit of doing things without looking over my shoulder every sixty seconds to see if an adult was nodding or shaking his head,’ because she gets on with farm work. What kid thinks of themselves like that? Would much better have been a show, not a tell. The novel as a whole struggles with this concept, and the premise that the document is supposed to be a public record of what has happened doesn’t tally with what is on the page. No-one would carefully set down secrets and inner thoughts as part of a collective testament in case they all get blown away. It really isn’t that hard to contrive a different framework. Even if it’s a private diary, for Pete’s sake.

You get the picture. I understand there’s been a film made of this. Oh dear. Not the worst book I’ve read but was not a pleasure. Two moose hoofs up out of five.

Bad Samaritans - Ha Joon Chang

Title: Bad Samaritans

Author: Ha Joon Chang

Publish date: 2008

For a book on economics, this is very easy to read. Heaps of great examples to support the ‘Bad Samaritans’ theory, as well as a convincing amount of detour into why every situation isn’t the same and generalizations are a bad idea. It was a little bit of a duplicate of ’23 things they don’t tell you about Capitalism’ but hey, all in a good cause. Recommended. In the light of what it’s trying to do, I don’t see why it shouldn’t get five moose-hoofs up out of five.

               

Lethal White - Robert Galbraith

Title: Lethal White: Cormoran Strike Book 4

Author: Robert Galbraith

Publisher: Sphere Books

Publish date: 2018

I struggled to get through this book. It’s not without its plus points. Chiefly:

1.       Description is masterly, and sensitive. The language itself is finely honed. Characterisation is clear and full.

2.       The plot is so complex one’s got to take one’s hat off just for the feat of pulling off the job. It’s like some super-real piece of art, or massive mandala made of butter, or sand, or some other improbable material. It’s a big effort to get something like that together.

Unfortunately, not a single one of these perfectly-rendered characters has any likeable aspect whatsoever. One just wants them all to die, and hopefully the cast to be replaced. It’s more a feeling of ‘thank god’ when it all ends than any sensation of satisfaction. Lexical anaesthesia. It’s much more finely crafted than I remember the first Harry Potter book being (that’s as far as I got in the series) but still put-downable. What a shame of such beautiful work.

Three moose hoofs up out of five, simply because of the massive effort and skill, lopsided though it is.

MaddAddam

Title: MaddAddam

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Doubleday    

Publish date: 2013

ISBN: 978 0 385 52878 8

‘He could sense words rising from him, burning away in the sun. Soon he’d be wordless, and the would he still be able to think? No and yes, yes and no. He’d be up against it, up against everything that filled the space he was moving through, with no glass pane of language coming between him and not-him. Not-him was seeping into him through his defences, through his edges, eating away at form, sending its rootlets into his head like reverse hairs. He needed to keep moving, preserve his outlines, define himself by his own shockwaves, the wake he left in the air.’

The final book in the Oryx and Crake trilogy, there is a quality to this book in particular which defies summary. Not that there isn’t a definite progression of narrative and it’s easily described: Zeb’s life prior to the happenings in the other two books are detailed, various backstories are filled in, there is a culmination of action in an altercation with some Painballers, and one of the Crackers brings the narrative to a close with some hint of hope for the future for the human / humanish race. However an aura of disintegration is carefully produced by the episodic and retold nature of the majority of the narration. The only solid point is Toby, who actually experiences time in the present – almost unwillingly. The rest are retellings, memories, shadows and imaginings.

So once again, we find here a novel that is essentially about the act of storytelling, and the meaning that act has for our existence. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not wading in metatextual vagaries and indulging in navel-gazing. There’s a damn good storyline going on there, a frightening political and sociological commentary, and shitloads of wickedly dark humour on all fronts. It’s everything you’d expect. But the novel itself is an enquiry into the justification of human existence, through the medium of the nature of storytelling.

Stories are endlessly demanded by the Crakers, who, stripped of all human passions that might make for disquiet, seek tales of creation and remembrance, to the distraction of the humans. The narrative baton is passed from reluctant human to the next. They interject with ‘I have a headache.’ ‘That is enough for today.’ And ‘Please don’t sing.’ The burden of being the storyteller is one of the chief recurring motifs. When the Craker boy Blackbeard (whose name is initially comic until we realise he is the first to learn to write, and that it is almost Blackboard) takes over the storytelling role, even he, a singer himself, asks the audience: ‘please don’t sing’. The ‘what happened’ and the ‘how can I retell this’ is on a constant back-and-forth.

It is a book that puts bizarre images in your mind, that disturbs, and haunts. But for a book on mass extinction and the potential end of the human race, it leaves you with a surprising calmness. It’s painted with the light touch of a consummate master. Go read, and then re-read. Five moose-hoofs up.

The Magus

Title: The Magus

Author: John Fowles

Publisher: Dell

Publish date: 1985

ISBN: 978 0 440 351 627

Am doing a review but it’s not a proper one. I couldn’t make it through this book. I don’t like to give in, but decided while struggling  late one night that life is just too short.

The language itself is fine. Elegant, considered. All got off to a good start. Then the protagonist moors up on his island, becomes obsessed with old geezer and gal in isolated villa, and the pace not so much slows as simply stops. What had been an interesting portrayal of a flawed character, interacting with other flawed characters, turns into a tail-spin of self-indulgent repetition. I got the distinct impression it was going absolutely no-where. I don’t care what the God Game is. If it repeats itself that much you might as well be stuck in a hall of mirrors. Had this manuscript come across my desk I would have given it short shrift, and then calculate the amount of life I’d just wasted getting nowhere.

One moose-hoof up out of five, in honour of the elegant language. When it bothers to do something.