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Australian Fiction

Not another novel about heroin, you might ask. You might as well say, not another novel about addiction to anything, including love or death. Luke Davies’ novel risks being seen to jump on the bandwagon of relevance, or grunge, or whatever turns you off. But this a good book, a true book, which left me feeling sad for some days, not a bad thing in these times of numbing busyness in which many of us seem to be trapped.

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My Boyfriend’s Father by Ben Winch & The Man Who Painted Women by John Newton

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July 1996, no. 182

‘When I was eighteen my boyfriend’s father died in jail.’ This is the opening sentence of Ben Winch’s second novel; it is also the conclusion of the novel and, having got that out of the way, we can settle into the details that will tell us why this man died in jail and what his story means for this now eighteen-year-old woman.

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The Truth Teller is a novel about a man hiding from himself. Told with pith and passion by Margaret Simons, it chronicles the career of journalist, Simon Spence. Spence lives in an exterior world. He hides behind facts and what he understands to be the truth. But Spence’s truth is a public one, not private. His private truth lurks far beneath the surface, suppressed by the very nature of the journalist’s ‘truth telling’ work. Simons writes about a world she knows, as a former journalist on The Australian. Her crisp writing style is ideal for the ambiguity of the subject. With razor-sharp words Simons sends messages that are as soft and blurred as clouds. She conveys the subterranean urges of the soul (‘the earthworm heart of a man’) as concisely as the fast-paced media world that buries it.

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Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas

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October 1995, no. 175

How do you give a plot description of this book without entering into the very language that it problematises? Ari is young, unemployed, Greek and gay ... Or Ari is a poofter wog, a slut, a conscientious objector from the workforce ...

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Jigsaw Bay by John Merson & Restless by Garry Disher

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May 1995, no. 170

More than ever books on today’s market have strong competition – particularly so if the title is intended for the 10+ reading audience. Publishers of children’s literature are responding to the need to entice a reading audience from the many technological forms of vivid and spectacular entertainment. Jigsaw Bay deserves a mention in this capacity.

The puzzle of Jigsaw Bay begins on an autumn morning as Danny McCall sets off, not to school, but to a secret place on the bay where he is playing truant with Yoko and Sam who will soon be part of the mystery. The plot is a good action one, strongly based in environmental ecology, corruption, and power. Danny, Yoko, and Sam with the help of greenie school teacher Bob and some slick court room tactics eventually win out and the murky details of corruption in Billington are revealed. The ideas in the plot kept me reading to the end of the book which is intended to attract readers by its directness and lack of complexity. I question, however, whether in an effort to succeed, the author has underestimated his audience and with the very best of intentions has ended up short changing readers.

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A Dream of Seas by Lilith Norman & The Secret Beach by Jackie French

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May 1995, no. 170

Lilith Norman’s exquisite novella was first published in 1978 and was an IBBY Honour Book in 1980. Set in a lovingly realised Bondi, the archetypal seaside suburb, the book packs a huge amount into its seventy-eight pages: life, death, love, grief; a question of focus; and, drawn in spare and beautifully controlled strokes, the disparate two worlds that touch at the shoreline.

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Ruddy Gore by Kerry Greenwood & Without Warning by Peter Yeldham

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May 1995, no. 170

In her previous Phryne Fisher instalment, Blood and Circuses, Kerry Greenwood took advantage of her knowledge of circus and carnival life to weave an intriguing tale spotlighting a whole host of oddball types. Now in Ruddy Gore she uses her insider’s familiarity with the precious world of the theatre to similar effect. Greenwood always handles her material with a deft, almost disdainful assurance, and this book is no exception. The year is 1928, and a special performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Ruddigore is being staged at Her Majesty’s to honour the famous aviator, Bert Hinkler. On her way to the theatre Phryne intervenes in a fight involving a Chinese man, then during the show two of the actors are poisoned, one fatally, and Phryne’s services are engaged by Management to solve the mystery.

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This is a fascinating publication. The first book by Wiradjuri author John Muk Muk Burke, Bridge of Triangles, is really free-form short fiction than a novel proper. Novella length, it is episodic, impressionistic, often poetic and open­ended. And, while it has many strengths, this 1993 winner of the David Unaipon Award for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors is ultimately a disquieting piece of work.

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Are you a regional writer?

I suppose I am, if your definition of a regional writer is someone who evokes atmosphere and themes which have a particular relevance for a region. Firstly, to take the most obvious thing there has always been a particular buccaneering business style, dating from the days of the goldrush of the 1890s and in various eras since, and the whole 1980s materialistic era was written even larger on the West Coast than other places. Going even further back in historical terms when you think of the peculiarities of the exploration of this coast, both by the French and the Dutch, that is something which distinguishes the West Coast. Because of my particular enthusiasm for history and research and canvassing matters of the early exploration, it is a theme which has found its way into three or four of my books.

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The Orchard by Drusilla Modjeska

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September 1994, no. 164

Like Drusilla Modjeska’s earlier book, Poppy, this is a book that resists easy classification. It’s the sort of book that may infuriate those who like their ideas served up in separate self-contained portions: fiction, history, biography, criticism. It’s also likely to confound librarians and booksellers, faced with the problem of where to shelve it. Modjeska’s ideas are not answerable to the Dewey Decimal System.

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