Sparrow’s Fall

By Terry Lane

Pan, $12.95 pb, 52l pp

‘What I wanted to do was to write a story that would confront me with a number of incidents requiring moral, philosophical or theological reflection,’ Terry Lane writes in the postscript to this novel. There’s something a little unfashionable about such an aim: most contemporary fiction markets itself in more secular terms. But Lane was once a religious minister, prior to his career in broadcasting, and this book testifies to that history. It is a novel that returns obsessively to questions of spiritual crisis and dissent. From the perspective of the dissenter, it targets public morality, and doctrinaire religious observance. From that of a sceptic, it asks how senseless disasters can be squared with a divine plan.

Describing Sparrow’s Fall in such a way, though, risks misrepresenting what is more apparently a wartime adventure story and romance. The protagonist, Gerry Goodman, tells how he came to enlist to fight the Hun, and of his impassioned pursuit of Helga, his German love. The prose is plain but effective, the perspective masculine and middle-aged. The story’s moral reflections emerge from the adventures it describes. In this way Sparrow’s Fall offers both secular entertainment and spiritual dilemmas to its readers.

Great Australian Urban Myths

By Graham Seal

Harper Collins, $14.95 pb 175 pp

Urban myths are defined in part by their familiarity. Hence, I found myself nodding in recognition as I leafed through this selection. I had heard more than once of The Hairy Hitchhiker aka The Lady with Hairy Arms. The stories of kid(ney )napping reminded me that, when overseas, one’s internal organs must be guarded constantly. Less familiar were accounts of ‘skinrunners,’ of whom the author writes:

These are usually naked humans who are seen running beside automobiles at far greater speeds than we are normally capable of. Intriguing mention is made of the Nullarbor Nymph.

For the most part, such legends are neither urban nor Australian. As they circulate they are adapted to local conditions. They deal with communal anxieties in everyday settings: contamination, bodily invasion, embarrassing disclosures and alien dangers. The compiler of the collection, a folklorist, provides details of alternate versions, interpretation and historical background. The effect is somewhat demystifying – perhaps it’s more fun to hear urban myths recounted singly, in an atmosphere of breathless authenticity. There is no doubt, however, that certain of these stories, concerning fingers in meat-pies or nesting spiders, will evoke a pleasurable shiver wherever they are encountered.

Unnatural Order

By Liz Porter

Mandarin, $15.95 pb, 457 pp

Unnatural Order is a Story of Obsession, its cover announces. Combining thriller and romance, it promises to be a page-turner of the first order. The narrative follows Caroline, an Australian journalist attached to her independence. One summer she finds herself courted by Karl, whose insistent, charming attentions lead her to take up his invitation to live with him in Germany. Karl can be very persuasive, as typified here:

Sleepily Caroline abandoned herself to his attentions, breathing deeply as the stirrings of desire flared slowly under Karl’ s persistent fingers.

Once installed in Karl’ s apartment, however, everything changes. Karl wants a hausfrau, and Caroline finds his rule­bound approach increasingly oppressive. Counterpointing this relationship drama is Caroline’s developing obsession with Germany’s Nazi past. Her journalistic inquiries lead her on the track of war criminals, and Germany’s uneasy relationship with its history is exposed to her inquisitive gaze.

As the story unfolds, Karl’s character remains strictly cardboard, just as the ‘exploration’ of Germany merely reproduces cliches. If these cliches were compelling, though, all would be forgiven. Alas, no – rather than beings wept up by this narrative of obsession, my experience was of being inexorably dragged into someone else’s tediously dysfunctional relationship. Unnatural Order lacks the ingredients which turn pages: passion and intrigue.

Resilience: Stories of A Family Therapist

By Moshe & Tesse Lang

Mandarin, $14.95 pb, 258 pp

‘Story telling is healing,’ Moshe Lang suggests at the beginning of this collection, because stories give shape and coherence to experience. Along with their therapeutic benefits, stories have an aesthetic advantage:

The story is a form which captures the uniqueness of the encounter. To describe it as a ‘case presentation’ is to lose that uniqueness. As a story it is engaging and memorable.

The collection is as good as its word: its stories of ‘people and problems’ from Lang’s work as a therapist are indeed often engaging and memorable. Families are described vividly: a child’s refusal to attend school, for example, shows up larger issues of family interaction. Focusing these tangled networks, family therapy finds its justification.

Perhaps, though, the story format also risks removing the rough edges – the work and the agony – from the situations it depicts, and turning them into neat parcels. Some stories verge on the anodyne. But others, like those concerning Holocaust survivors, powerfully resist this possibility. Such stories evoke the particular experience, without imposing the finished form of a ‘case’. They show how silences live on, and what is at stake in telling of the past. The unfinished, haunting quality of these stories makes the collection memorable.