Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Less not more chop suey

by
October 2005, no. 275

Noble Sindhu Horses by Lynette Chataway

Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 232 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

98% Pure by J.D. Cregan

Otmar Miller Consultancy, $29.95 pb, 384 pp

Less not more chop suey

by
October 2005, no. 275

With broadly similar subjects – Australians in South-East Asia – and related themes that touch on culture shock and existential angst, you could be forgiven for thinking that Noble Sindhu Horses and 98% Pure might have something in common. But these two first novels are a lesson in the difference that self-control and sensitivity on the part of the writer, and good judgment on the part of the editor, can make. To draw on the Asian motif for a moment, Noble Sindhu Horses is a delicate Asian broth, restrained and subtly flavoured, while 98% Pure is street-vendor chop suey – a bit of a mess and not so good for your health.

In Noble Sindhu Horses, Lynette Chataway has drawn on her time with an aid agency in a northern Thai village to explore not only the overseas experience but its near devastating after-effects. The characters of Francis and Ava, along with their daughter Elizabeth, are based on Chataway’s own family, and there is a strong sense of that reality in the writing. She manages to avoid the tedious eyewitness travelogue aspects to which so many other ‘I went overseas and then I wrote a novel’ writers have fallen prey. There are observations that only hard-won understanding can yield, and the novel rings with authenticity and integrity. Small moments are telling, such as when Ava goes to the supermarket, with a mental image of a starving refugee boy, under whose gaze she cannot bring herself to buy ‘toilet spray, or Exit Mould, or Ajax, or ice cream, or cordial, or instant noodles’.

Noble Sindhu Horses

Noble Sindhu Horses

by Lynette Chataway

Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 232 pp

98% Pure

98% Pure

by J.D. Cregan

Otmar Miller Consultancy, $29.95 pb, 384 pp

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.