Archive

Sometimes I long for beauty – in a book I want beautiful writing and even some beauty illuminated in everyday experience. Fiona McGregor’s short story collection does little to ease my longing.

Bryce Fraser takes a break from his inner city flat and moves to the ideal writer’s retreat: a waterfront cottage amongst the trees – and only twenty minutes from the centre of Sydney. He goes fishing and spears, in a most unsportsmanlike fashion, what turns out to be Lennie, the neighbours’ pet leatherjacket who lived beneath the jetty. Oddly enough, these same neighbours entrust him with the job of becoming minder to Rummy, the dingo.

When reviewing Matthew Rubinstein,
One is tempted to revert to rhyme.
This opus he has undertaken
Has left me somewhat pale and shaken
At the audacity of his task.
What possessed him, one well may ask
To undertake this mammoth effort?
To play with all that he’s been taught
From Seth, Shakespeare and Tolkien too
It’s really quite a thing to do.
But does it work? Now there’s the rub …
What future for this gifted cub?

Youness, a Bedouin from the Ananza tribe, comes in from the desert with his slaves and a thousand she-camels. His wish is to buy an olive valley on the outskirts of Gaza, the place where his mother is buried. Youness buys the olive valley and marries Fatima, daughter of the chief of Tuffa (a district of Gaza).

Cowrie makes a pilgrimage from New Zealand to Punalu’u, a Hawai’ian island where her grandfather once lived. She is welcomed by her extended family who live very simply and well on this bountiful island. Cowrie, who is a lesbian, revels in her family’s harmonious way of life, and begins to fall in love with Koana, a heterosexual woman.

Mary Bates, a young Australian living in London in the 1930s, is advised by Dr Gerald Somerset where to do her nursing training: ‘The London for hard work. St Mary’s for sport. Guy’s for flirts … and St Thomas’s for ladies,’ he says. Mary thinks Gerald would be as cold in bed as a dozen frozen eggs, but nevertheless she takes his advice and applies to St Thomas’s Hospital.

In 1960, Dr William McBride drew the world’s attention to the dangers of thalidomide. This drug had been found to cause multiple severe abnormalities in babies born to women who has taken it during early pregnancy. In 1961, thalidomide was withdrawn from sale in Australia, and McBride’s reputation grew as an authority on drug-induced birth defects. In 1971 he was awarded the inaugural BP Prize of the Institut de la Vie for his discovery. He used the prize money to establish Foundation 41, where he continued his research.

For the untutored Western reader this exuberant and clever novel about the histrionics of twentieth-century Indian politics invites comparison with Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. But this is a mistake. Tharoor covers similar territory to Rushdie, and gives voice to the same virulent distaste for the late Mrs Gandhi, but his book couldn’t be more different.