As novels such as Lucky Jim attest, universities provide a fertile setting for excursions into bizarre humour. Even at the best of times they seem somewhat divorced from reality, so sending them further off the planet by depicting them through the jaundiced eye of satiric exaggeration fits nicely.

            Exit Points by Nick Gray is set in a university. But it is not about tertiary education as such. The novel – often hilarious, usually funny, sometimes ludicrous – is an extravagant attack on the structures of reality, undertaken in an academic context for the reasons I’ve already suggested. Like Alice in Wonderland – towards which it nods deferentially – Exit Points digs a way at ordinary human assumptions until the reader is dropped into the chaos of thoroughly enjoyable nonsense. But, as in Alice, we remain aware that reality is the real issue here, even though its structure might be utterly discredited.

It may seem flippant and insensitive to call this account of political threat and persecution a highly enjoyable book, but it is precisely that. Fang Xiangshu and Trevor Hay have fashioned a beguiling tale out of Fang's experiences during the Cultural Revolution and China’s political and social turmoil in later years. The product of their collaboration strikes exactly the right note. They have made no attempt to capture the idioms of Shanghai speech, but have substituted a restrained Australian colloquialism, judiciously peppered with examples of Chinese maxims, proverbs, and quotations from classic poets to give their prose something of an exotic flavour. Their narrative is constructed with great skill, negotiating expertly between the past and present, China and Australia.

In 1983, Bill Dodd was nearly eighteen when he dived into a river and nearly lost his life. Dodd warns against diving carelessly into waterholes: ‘It can give you a lot of unnecessary hassles, take it from me.’ This laconic understatement is characteristic of Dodd’s account of his life. He is now a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair for life. Yet, without straining credibility, Dodd manages to convince you that he is a lucky man.

Who does this book think it is? Fiction or autobiography, for teenagers or adults? Every book has an idea of its own identity, established by its author, editor, and publisher, and proclaimed through its cover, the style and form of the text, and the accompanying publicity. A Long Way Home seems to suffer from an identity crisis.

Over the past four months, three homeless men have been murdered in Melbourne, apparently without motive, and Detective Sergeant Dennis Gatz is determined to apprehend the killer. The action starts immediately with Gatz in big trouble for shooting at three fleeing thugs in Banana Alley during an all-night stakeout. Leon Cranston Harle is killed and his mates, Warren and Troy Stimson, swear to seek out this homicide cop and avenge ‘Harley’s’ death. Gatz’s superiors are not too happy about the whole incident either.

Harley Morrison has never had much luck with women. His mother, a specialist in family law, abandoned him at a tender age and then when he began following her around, at the height of the bomb threats to Family Law Court judges, she called him a little sneak and threatened to sue his father.

The editors of Who Do You Think You Are? cheerfully point out the imprecision and contradictoriness of the second part of their title. ‘How can you be born in Australia and also be an immigrant? If you were not born in Australia but came here at an early age, how can you be second generation?’ Nevertheless, they have chosen to regard the linguistic slipperiness and confusion inherent in the term ‘second generation immigrant’ as being appropriate to the social reality of those to whom it refers. The thirty-five contributors are therefore predominantly women who were born in Australia of immigrant parents or who came to Australia at an early age.