The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Heartbreak in a jar, pretty much. I'm not giving the game away if I tell you (since I'm pretty sure it says this in the blurb) that this is Joan Didion's account of the year following the day when, as her daughter lie in a coma, her husband died. Smack down.

Joan and her husband John appear to be some kind of Gatsby-esque caricatures - writers, living in New York, with tales of having flown between cities to have dinner together when working apart - and there's enough socialite name-dropping in this book to put some glossy magazines to shame, but this is one of the most tender accounts of a marriage I have ever read.

We can't know what it is to grieve for and mourn a spouse without having done it - a sentiment Didion herself expresses, saying:
"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death."
- but I strongly suspect this is the most lucid, illuminating account of such an experience I'm likely to come across.

Cheerfully, her latest book, Blue Nights, was written following the death of her daughter, in case you're interested in a double whammy. I, for one, am going to have to let that one alone for a while...

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

It has been a long while since I devoured a book in a day; I can put this down to having a full time job, busy weekends and it being a rarity that a book comes along that is that good. The literary planets aligned, and I found myself splayed on the couch for many, many hours, pretending I was a uni student, or a sullen teenager. Oh those were the days Cockatoo Mobile Library!

So what is this book about? It’s about time (the title’s ‘goon’), getting older, getting wiser, getting dumber, things you did in your youth and the things you do in your old age, regrets, disappointments, with the loose framework of music linking it all back in together. There is a chapter written entirely in the form of a Powerpoint presentation, and it is a delight. You won’t believe me until you read it yourself. It has a surprising turn of phrase: "the sun felt like it had teeth". The last chapter confounded me a little – I liked what she was trying to achieve, but not sure if she quite got there. But I’ve always been a stroppy ending reader – when I read a really good book, they could end it perfectly and I’d still be grumpy that the whole enterprise was over.

Over to you Hammill…see if you agree with the Pulitzer jury.

The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do

This book won some major publishing prize this year for being one of the highest selling locally written books of the year, and while the writing is pretty basic, the story (and the humour with which it’s told) is quite extraordinary. Anh is an Australian-Vietnamese comedian, who came into the cultural lexicon via a few spots on Rove and Dancing with the Stars, which he won, and became an instant celeb (I was overseas at this time so kind of missed this crucial profile building period). But it seems that for a time, Australians were happy to embrace this Vietnamese looking, Aussie sounding guy because he was funny and non-threatening.

And this is where Anh has snuck under the radar by telling what is a really shocking and devastating boat family story, coated it in gags and Australians have lapped it up – kind of like sneaking vegetables onto the plate and making you like them without knowing you’re eating them. This is a GREAT thing, and there’s even talk of it being compulsory reading for early high schoolers. But while this book is being lauded as one of the best of 2011, we still have the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph howling about sending back the boats on their front pages. Go figure.

I loved Anh’s sweet and unwavering positivity, and belief that he can do anything he sets his mind to – from studying law to being a comedian to wooing his best friend from uni and having three sons, winning a bundle of money for charity on TV – there’s no idea too big or too silly to have a crack at. He’s a massive dag and there is absolutely no pretension to the writing at all. It definitely put a smile on my dial.

A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam

Ok, yes: in some respects, this is a poor man's Midnight's Children, but I'll take it. It's about the birth of Bangladesh / the death of East Pakistan, the characters are a bit wonderful, the setting is so well drawn that I think I could probably direct a rikshaw from the house to the university and the love story elements are so intoxicating that for the 6 hours you'll spend reading this book, you'll be enraptured. Simples.

In truth, I only got this because I read an article about the author's new book, The Good Muslim, about which Helen Garner said:
"What a superb novel. Its delicacy and power and breadth -- the way its compassion and grief keep complicating its anger -- I read it with heart in mouth."
and this one was cheap on ebay. And, on the strength of this, her first novel, I'm going to have to fork out for the new 2011 model. Stay tuned.

Sum by David Eagleman

It took me ages to read this book of forty short stories, because it bent my mind into the kind of shapes you see yogis doing and think, "I wonder whether that's broken, or just dislocated?".

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and these are his forty musings on the afterlife. In some stories, there's a hint of science, but generally, it's completely fictitious. I first heard about this book when they read one of the stories on RadioLab (possibly you can hear the interview and a couple of stories in the link below (if I've done this right?!) from about 6.37 minutes to 11 minutes and 40 minutes to 43 minutes. Do it.

It's hard to think about being not alive, and in a sense, who cares? but also, who can help but wonder? About 50% of all religious belief systems it seems are focused on this very question - offering followers a kind of insurance/backstage pass kind of thing - and through time we have had amazing musings on the whole thing. I saw some maps at the British Library a few years ago that included these incredible celestial maps that included realms of the afterlife - we're kind of obsessed with it, as a species.

Anyway, so the book: Amazing bite-sized pieces of mind-bending incredible-acious-ness. Ok, I made up that word, maybe, but this guy invented Gods, so making up words kind of seems like a misdemeanor...

Also, I may have found my eulogy. Or yours. Guess it depends who pops 'em first. I'll dog mark the page so you know, just in case.

The Sunday Philosophy Club Alexander McCall Smith

This is kind of a spin-off from the 44 Scotland St series, which I really enjoyed. It's very light reading, from a reasonably heavy-weight intellectual. Professor Alexander McCall Smith works in medical and criminal law at the University of Edinburgh, and, somewhere between textbooks, students and awards, writes lovely Scottish fluff such as this and a series about a female private detective in the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Too much time on his hands, me thinks. If I was his work, I'd be keeping a closer on on how he spends his 'hours'...

Anyway, so. On the book: lovely.

Professor McCall Smith uses the vehicle of an older woman of independent means to discuss, in a non-academic forum, some little of life's little, well, brain teasers. Isabel Delhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, her housekeeper Grace, and her niece Cat allow us to ponder questions like 'do you tell when you know someone's partner is cheating?', and 'what does it mean when a young man wears crushed strawberry coloured corduroy trousers?'. Through them we're invited to consider the perspectives of the young & old and the wealthy & the working class, all against a backdrop of Edinburgh and interspersed with conversations about cheese, wine & art. Oh, to be a woman of independent means...

Simply delightful reading on a train North.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

Ahhhh, I love this period of fiction. It's that John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath 1930s & 40s mode of story-telling that gets me every time. The novels of this era, understandably, smack of impotent, latent, restless rage that sits over every thing in them. You feel it in the heat, the hunger, the skinned knees and broken hearts - everyone of which carries the weight of defeat greater than itself.

This particular novel is home to an eclectic grab-bag of characters. John Singer is a deaf mute who works engraving intricate patterns into silver. He is bereft of his best friend, another deaf mute, and left lonely and heartsick in his small town. He becomes the confidant of a host of characters - to the heroine Mick Kelly, the Marxist doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, the alcoholic socialst labourer Jake Blount, and the man in the middle Biff Brannon. None of these characters is resolved to their lot and in this novel we watch them do battle with themselves and each other.

For me, one of the most touching moments in the book involves Mick. The Kelly's are a poor family with not much going for them, but Mick has somehow happened upon a passion for classical music and composes symphonies in her head. In her dusty, stifling, out-of-the-way town, she dreams of playing piano and going abroad. She's playing around in a building site one day and graffitis "Mowtzart" for Mozart on an unfinished wall and at this point it's heartbreaking to think of the distance she'd have to travel to live out her dream. This vignette is emblematic of the gulf between the reality and the dreams of all of these characters.

"Please mind the gap between your aspirations and your observations."

Loved it. Thanks Carson.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Oh Dave. Your fiction befuddles me but your non-fiction talks straight to my heart. After sharing the plight of Sudanese Lost Boy Valentino Achak Deng in his earlier work What is the What, this time around its Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s turn. A Syrian Muslim who lives in New Orleans with his American-born Muslim wife Kathy and their kids, he gets caught up in the storm of disorganization and government fallibility in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

I’m not going to give too much away, but even writing about it now makes my blood boil at the complete ineptitude and cowboy ways of the Bush administration. More about guns and force than compassion and common sense, they made a complete cock-up of the humanitarian effort so sorely needed after the natural disaster and through the plight of this one man, shows how afraid, paranoid and stupid the whole country’s law enforcement and government agencies had become in the wake of September 11.

Read this and weep.

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

It’s quite funny to look at incidents from your childhood and see how they have subconsciously affected what you become or how you act as an adult (change the word ‘funny’ for ‘sad’ or ‘weird’ depending on said childhood). The cover of this book shows Junger as a baby, being held by his mum, as Al DeSalvo, a man who worked as a labourer on their house, stands behind them. Just a few short years after this picture was taken, DeSalvo was later found to be the infamous Boston Strangler and decades on, Junger is an acclaimed journalist, lauded especially for his work in war-torn Afghanistan and reporting on corruption in Africa.

This book is his retracing of the events of that year in his hometown of Belmont, as DeSalvo waged a terrifying war on the women of Boston. But it’s more than just your every day crime biography, looking at the black men who were incarcerated for DeSalvo’s crimes and the blatant racism and police force errors that led him to staying on the loose.

Junger’s eye for detail, and obvious meticulous research, feeds this book, which feels like an extended newspaper profile. It keeps the pace and keeps you reading, so much so that I devoured it in the space of two nights (take that, Toltz). A disturbing look into dark suburban Americana.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Urrrrgh. I blame this book for the blogging malaise of late. I started this book in mid-June and gave up, halfway through, about six weeks later. I JUST DID NOT CARE. And by halfway, I mean I read 300 pages and still did not persevere. I can’t quite put my finger on why I was so disinterested. Am putting this in the You Win Some, You Lose Some book basket.

The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey

You couldn't argue that it's a catchy title, that's for darn sure. I know you didn't get much out of Oscar & Lucinda, Nik, and this wasn't my favourite Carey (I think that gong goes to My Life as a Fake), but it was a pretty amazing novel for a couple of reasons:

1. It's set in a car yard
2. One main character is a pregnant tax inspector, the other is a frustrated wannabe teenage car salesman
3. It made me homesick with a reference to Dandenong (however, I was listening to Paul Kelly at the time and I do not have a heart of steel)

The characters are so unnerving, and the setting so vile, that it's hard to know how to feel about them from page to page. This novel is about defining your relationship with change and decay - do you cede to it, embrace it, reverse it, create it, wallow in it, become one with it, or rise above it? It's about the country being swallowed by the city, it's about the past being lost to the present. It's about honour.

It's a quick read, which will, somehow, make you long for the smell of rain on cement, the sight of a pile of tyres, the sound of a big chicken wire gate scraping across a driveway, and taste of a burnout in your mouth.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

There are authors whose name you hear enough times that you think, 'I must've read something by X, surely?!', but then you're forced to conceded that in fact, you've done no such thing. Sebastian Faulks is a perfect example of this for me. It's weird - he hasn't won loads of awards or anything, but there was a period early on when I was in London that his name was just everywhere. I guess it's not about winning awards, it's about having a marketing team who get your name on everyone's lips. And to that end, well done Sebastian Faulks' publishers.

Not that this is undeserved, however. Birdsong is a very well-crafted novel with round, whole characters and an unfaltering sense of place. It's ambitious, but successful in its breadth - there is an intelligent conversation in this work about violence, betrayal, loyalty and love. Each of these is laid before you both on the scale of the individual and the global, and it's curious to see that they are both equally devastating.

This is a very moving saga/drama/war bonanza and I highly recommend it.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller

You know those books that once you put them down, you take a step back and think ‘That shit was whack”? This, dear friends, is one of those books. There were some deeply disturbing and disquieting scenes that hinted and suggested deep dysfunction rather than told you everything, and that sometimes is more effective than spelling out the awful truth.

It’s a book that dismantles the notion of fulfilled relationships, and looks under the carpet where people sweep their disappointments and deepest regrets to create a big stinking pile of sad dust. Pippa Lee is a complex woman, married to an older man who has ‘tamed’ her – but is it just an act? Is the whole wife and mother act just pretence? And the bigger question is – do all women feel this way, trapped and dishonest in their roles as wife and mother? Do their real selves cease to exist once you have children? Yep, told you it was whack.

There are some fascinating relationships and characters in Miller’s debut work, and while not all are fully formed (the ending for example is wrapped up in a ridiculously short fashion – a sign of an over zealous editor or an out-of-ideas author?) it’s very commendable for going to some dark and interesting places when it could have quite easily become chick lit twaddle.

The Two Mrs Grenvilles by Dominic Dunne

This book is the literary equivalent of ordering a dirty martini from an old school Manhattan bar (yes Amber, I’m thinking of The Algonquin and that chilli martini and the old men in their ties with the napkins. Take me back NOW).

Dunne is totally old school, a writer who wrote for Vanity Fair for decades when there was no demarcation between the stars and the writers, and paparazzi was not a dirty word. Set in 1940s New York, showgirl Ann Arden mets Billy Grenville, a young rich and directionless heir who falls in love with her mystique and wild ways. They marry, much to the disdain of Billy’s family who can spot Ann’s social climbing ways a mile off, and simultaneously bring her into the family while keeping her at arm’s length. Ann is a willing student of the school of snobbery, and turns into the very person Billy thought she was not. Throw in some fabulous parties and the mother-in-law from hell and you have a very absorbing read.

It’s full of bitchy comments and snarky observations on the elite, and those who compromise themselves irrevocably to join them. Like a good martini, this has a delicious kick to it.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

I actually read this about six months ago, but think I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t quite put my thoughts in order enough to write about it. Then I saw it on the bookshelf and realised it had slipped through the C.M.L cracks.

Mr Eggers is feted as a saviour of modern literature, who burst onto the scene with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I am ashamed to say have not yet read – I blame his second novel And You Shall Know Us By Our Velocity which I could not make heads nor tails of for putting me off), edits slightly wanky McSweeney’s and the more useful Voice of Witness series that uses the written word to highlight human rights atrocities.

This is the story of Valentino Achak Deng from Sudan, and his journey as a refugee and boy soldier. It’s told in first person, but Eggers, who has ghost written it, inserts a clever caveat at the start of the book classifying it as a novel – the main events are true but conversations may be ‘as remembered’. There are many parts in this book where you think that this must be fiction, but it’s horrifying to realise that so much of this book is true. The idea of millions of people living in an arid and desolate refugee camp for decades, children being eaten by lions on their three month long walk across Sudan, seeing family members macheted to death; it’s more than my brain, and even the most fertile patches of my imagination, cannot conjure up and would not want to.

Just as heartbreaking is the obstacles that Valentino faces once he does achieve his dream of being sent to America to start his new prosperous life. He becomes one of the ‘Lost Boys’, a term to describe the thousands of young men like him who have been displaced by war and cannot settle in their new lives. The modernity and bureaucracy of the United States is too much for many, who rack up thousands in mobile phone calls to Africa because they can’t read their phone contracts; menial jobs are the only ones on offer; well meaning volunteer sponsors quickly tire of the Lost Boys constant and sometimes unreasonable demands.

But Valentino never gives up. His unwavering optimism and grit to keep going when everything seems hopeless is absolutely awe-inspiring and really gave me some perspective on the hipster saying ‘first-world problems’. I challenge anyone not to read this and then complain about their lot in life.

You Only Live Twice Ian Fleming

Oh, the one where he is on the island in Japan and chick swims naked - I remember!

Right, so the bad guy (a foreigner, no less) has a fort thing on the coast in Japan full of dangerous plants and man-eating fish. Since the Japanese have a predilection for self-directed dying, this place is pretty popular with visitors. Anyway, clearly this isn't great news for Japan and the Brits are pretty sure he's up to no good on a more global scale.

Enter Bond.

It is decided that Bond will swim up to this joint, bust in a kill the guy. Shocker. Turns out the best way to do this is by setting out from this little island off the coast, which just happens to be populated by chicks who dive for abalone in, essentially, the buff.

Now, I don't want to spoil the story, but I will say that this is one of Bond's most tender, domestic relationships, and I couldn't help but wonder whether he might've made the wrong choice by returning to work. But I guess that's where we differ, Bond & I. But that's pretty much the only difference, obviously ;)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

One of my favourite sayings is ‘Too many freaks, not enough circuses’, and both are abundant in this tale of the travelling American circuses of the 30s. This book seems like it would have written itself – lions, tigers, carnies, dwarves and bearded ladies travelling through post-war America on a rickety old train lorded over by a schizophrenic ringmaster and a villanous boss, with obligatory love story and not so commonplace murderous elephant – and I feel like the author herself shouldn’t get too much of the credit, as the writing is plain and the story is the star.

It’s no surprise that the movie version of this book is about to hit screens, as reading it you actually got the sense of almost watching the action (ok so perhaps I do need to give Gruen some credit). A perfectly pleasing mid-week read.

Life by Keith Richards

An interesting one this – on the surface of things, you’d think Keith Richards sitting down to write his memoirs would be the most titillating read on the shelf (and indeed, the publishers have been rubbing themselves in gold since its release) but there’s something a bit….well, slightly boring about the whole caper.

Firstly; how does a man who took more drugs than a war torn hospital remember enough to fill 500 pages? The answer I reckon, must have been to make some shit up along the way. There’s a lot of ‘here’s how I remember it’ – no doubt to negate any potential lawsuits – and there’s a lot of ‘I was a functioning addict’, tales where everyone around him goes down in a drug induced stupor, EXCEPT for him. Which is maybe how it actually happened, and I’m just such a lightweight that I don’t understand how someone can drink three bottles of bourbon, five tabs of acid and a tab of heroin and not sleep for five days and live to tell the tale.

So the excess is there, and people around him turning into monsters on drugs (his long-time missus Anita Pallenberg is depicted as an unreasonable, sex crazed violent psycho), characters dropping dead left right and centre, but there’s not a lot of true introspection. Even his philandering is wrapped up in this warm, fuzzy ‘there were women I cuddled along the way’ dialogue, when really he was cheating on his partner.

What IS fascinating is the rock and roll cultural history along the way, and how some honky English lads managed to take a blues R&B sound and scare the living beejusus out of a God fearin America. And the depiction of a music scene that truly was organic and for rabid music fans – people hunting down rare records, one ‘black’ station and hearing new music at underground parties – no internet, no publicists, no regurgitated hit makers and a population so surrounded by crap music that when something awesome and original comes along, you’ll just as likely hear it on Nova as you will on Triple J.

And if you want to examine a complex and deeply dysfunctional band relationship, look no further than the brotherly hate displayed by Richards and the Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. I think Keith spends a whole lot of this book trying to sound aloof and disconnected, when you get the feeling underneath he's just simmering at a life spent to the left of the man in the spotlight. Also, I can't finish this review without mentioning Richards' fierce mullet and unfortunate above the neck situation - really one of the most unattractive musicians going round.

If anything, it made me a little bit sad that our generation will never have a Beatles or a Rolling Stones to hold up as the marker of better days gone by. And on that old lady having a rant note….

Empire of the Sun J G Ballard

And somehow, yet again, I was reading a war book. This one, at least, had a semi-autobiographical element and was set in the second world war in Shanghai. It's not an angle of the war I've thought about much, but it was a seriously messed up situation, by all accounts!

This book did a couple of things I really love - it had that colonial view of the oriental that is completely unapologetic and describes, without meaning to, the prevailing attitudes of the time in a completely understated way. I find that kind of unintentional insight really interesting. Possibly for obvious reasons, but I'm fascinated by stories of being 'other' and transient and expatriate. The power dynamics of colonialism in no way reflect my own expatriate experiences, but I'm fascinated to read about them - from the Orient to the Raj, it's amazing how people can imbue themselves with such a sense of self-righteousness.

It also does that other fascinating thing of looking at how people bond and bicker in adversity. It's a fine line between safety in numbers and competition for resources, and the way this story commentates on the ebb and flow of these relationships is gripping.

I did, at some point, take the sequel out of the library, but I returned it without reading, but with a late fine... Story of my life.

Timequake Kurt Vonnegut

"I have to go home. I have had one heck of a good time. Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!"

Yes my friend, the time has come for my annual Vonnegut. What a joy. I'm a bit ahead of schedule, I know, as I was reminded of having been reading some of last year's installment during a weekend away in mid-April. I was reminded of this because, it turns out, I was reading aloud out the window from my bath on the second floor of our lovely old Norfolk farmhouse to some friends down in the garden below. Not a bad idea, in theory, except that you might remember a central feature of the book I read last year, Breakfast of Champions, was its illustrations. It was here, I suspect, that the plan fell apart, and not for the simple oddity of having a naked friend read to you from two floors above. I concede that I may have been slightly drunk. Alas.

Timequake. Whoa. I'll let Timequake explain the timequake, as it happened to Kilgore Trout:

"The timequake of 2001 was a cosmic charley horse in the sinews of Destiny. At what was in New York City 2:27 p.m. on February 13th of that year, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point? It fibrillated with indecision. Maybe it should have a family reunion back where it all began, and then make a great big BANG again. It suddenly shrunk ten years. It zapped me and everybody else back to February 17th, 1991, what was for me 7:51 a.m., and a line outside a blood bank in San Diego, California."

In 2001, the timequake 'zaps' everyone back to 1991, and continues for 4 days short of a 10 years. During the rerun, everyone's free will is suspended, meaning that if in 1996 take 1, you stacked your car, or failed your maths test, or forgot to call your mum's birthday, or won the lotto, in 1996 take 2, exactly the same thing will happen again. Vehicles are also subject to this, so you get in your car and it goes where it went the first time, for example, without any direction or input from you. This serves to allow Vonnegut to explore free will and determinism, and as you might imagine in the hands of this master craftsman, it's a joy.

The rerun goes off without a hitch, really, and it's only when the rerun ends, and free will is reinstated that thing get messy. When the timequake ends, people are struck dumb by their own free will. In essence, we're told, "If your brains were dynamite, there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off."

Lucky, Kilgore Trout, science fiction writer turned hobo and Vonnegut's fictional alter ego, is schlepping around and saves the day. "You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to be done," he tells us. People need rousing from their determinist existence, they almost need to be tricked into living again, because '[t]he truth about the human condition is just too awful".

Timequake is one of Vonnegut's last published works, and it is just as much a reflection/memoir/nostalgic conversation as a novel. The book is so aware of itself, to the extent that Vonnegut explains that what we're actually reading is the salvaged parts of an earlier manuscript, Timequake One, which he worked on for a decade but found to be untenable, and the most recent musings of his 78 year old self. Often, poignantly, and as with Breakfast of Champions, many of these musings are on the usefulness or otherwise of writing, art, living and you know, some other big things. Just let me share two thoughts with you, and then I'll leave you, to begin your own Vonnegut discovery journey of wonderment:

"Let me note that Kilgore Trout and I have never used semicolons. They don't do anything, don't suggest anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites."

and,

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone.' "

Get amongst it. You won't be sorry.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

This is totally my version of trash – well-written, interesting characters, snappy dialogue, wealthy New York backdrop that you chow through in a few days without any sense of mental indigestion after snapping it shut and promptly forgetting about it. (In fact, the ending of this book made no sense at all, and was quite disappointing. But I will forgive Dee as the beginning and middle were more than satisfactory).

Centred around an annoyingly self-assured and charmed couple, Adam and Cynthia, The Privileges follows them as they rise through the elite ranks of New York society. Adam is a hedge fund manager turned criminal inside trader; Cynthia seems happy to just bathe in the light seemingly shining out of her husband’s arse. She also seems mildly insane; functioning but likely to snap at any time.

Two diametrically opposite kids (one a spoilt drug-taking princess with zero direction and the other an art school attendee trying to hide his family’s immense wealth) round out this insular quartet. Adam and Cynthia apparently run off their limitless love for each other – her reaction when he tells her that he has been scamming money for the better part of the decade is met with adoration (“you did this all for us!”) rather than anger or fear. They just believe in the power of each other, to the point of freezing out all others. It’s like they're The Untouchables.

That’s what I found kind of charming about this book – that the actions of many characters were unexpected, and almost the opposite of a normal reaction. No-one is caught, no-one is redeemed, wealth, ego and self-fullfillment are applauded. A nice change from the uber earnest Eat Pray Love set.

Never let me go by Kazou Ishiguro

I have a book dealer at work – a very switched on gal that orders 30 books on Book Depository before going on holiday, and gets through them all. She’s been giving me the good stuff for some time now; she knows my taste quite well and I trust her literary judgment. Like a good dealer, she is reliable and trustworthy.

So when she handed me this book with a reverent look in her eye, I took it to be a good sign. This book was going to be AWESOME.

But it was not to be for this little black duck. I had read Ishiguro’s When we were orphans when I was at uni, and remember being completely underwhelmed, but I swept these reservations to the side, thinking that perhaps age and maturity would allow me to read his works in a different light. Also since then I have discovered the zany, eccentric joys of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (the most excellent The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - remember reading this in Argentina?) so I thought I'd see if this Asian bro came up with the goods.

The blurb describes the mood of this book as ‘disquieting’ and that is certainly true. There’s this weird creepiness, and you know something odd is up, but the author never gives much away…very much of the ‘I’m going to start telling you some of this story, but the rest is for another time’ school of suspense. Which works – to a point. It’s such a slow reveal that I found by the end, I was waiting for something so much bigger, that I felt a bit cheated.

And maybe that says something about the way I view things, because the whole plot revolves around this one large ethical dilemma (I won’t give it away if you haven’t read it) that I didn’t find all that alarming or revolting. There just wasn’t enough context, or enough of the emotional side of the main characters, for me to feel they were losing out all that much.

Or maybe I’m just a cold-hearted wench…

Northanger Abbey Jane Austen

Jane,

Not your finest work. Few characters, little intrigue, poor attempts at Gothic parody, and a general lack of wit and insight. I know it was one of your early works, but still.

Frankly, it's no wonder the blokes who bought it off you for a tenner in 1803, decided not to print it, and sold it back to your brother for a tenner in 1817. I guess the upshot of this is that it was never in print while you were alive. This begs the question though, whether your bro was just profiteering when he had it publishing posthumously?

C -

Vernon God Little DBC Pierre

I am aware that I've come to the party a little behind the times on this one, being that it won the Booker in 2003, but I'm here now, ok?

It's possible that I'd read this before (see this post, where a similar thing happened, and where I extolled the virtues of a blog such as this to protect me from this experience in the future). But that didn't actually make any difference, since I have the memory of a goldfish and was therefore just as surprised at every event and masterful turn of phrase as I suppose I must have been the first time.

In fact, if having possibly read it before wasn't enough, I'll also confess to having a seen a play of it half way through this reading (thanks Kate LeM!). Turns out even actually knowing the ending couldn't ruin the reading. That's how brilliant the writing in this book is, it wouldn't matter what he wrote, you'd read it. Guaranteed fact.

So, here's a learning I made: the thoughts and encounters of Vern, a moody, self-obsessed teenage boy in the middle of nowhere, are indeed an allegory for the modern human experience, and they are marvellous. Take this:

I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge. Look at the way things are. I'm no fucken genius or anything, but these spazzos are in charge of my every twitch. What I'm starting to think is maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing.

Vern is the future, and he needs some learnings. And he gets them, boy. It's not until he is literally at death's door that he learns to play the game, and, admittedly, he learns from someone who appears to have lost the game, but the wisdom this man passes onto Vern is literally what sets him free:

'Boy, you really missed the boat. I'll make it simple, so's even fuckin you can understand. Papa God growed us up till we could wear long pants; then he licensed his name to dollar bills, left some car keys on the table, and got the fuck outta town ... Don't be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers.' He takes hold of my shoulders, spins me around, and punches me towards the mirror on the wall. 'You're the God. Take responsibility. Exercise your power.'
...
'Big yourself up - watch any animal for clues. As for us humans - check this ... Learn their needs, and they'll dance to any fuckin tune you play.'

Amazing. So here's another learning I made: don't wait 8 years to read a really good book, spazzo.

The Family Law

What a funny, funny book this was – a total unexpected gem. I’d read Benjamin Law in snippets in The Age and Frankie magazine, and this is his full-length autobiographical effort. And I’m going to make a call and see it’s almost in the Sedaris league for laugh out loud wrongness. For me, who was born in the same year as Law (1982) and found absolutely all of his pop culture and nostalgic references spot on, I couldn’t help laughing hysterically at points in the point.

Basically it’s a collection of essays on his strange but lovable family. The son of hardworking Chinese immigrants, Law grows up in Brisbane and deals with his parent’s divorce, adolescence, coming out and growing up – all with a crude yet touching sense of humour (my favourite kind). None of his trials and tribulations are anything special (he doesn’t get abused, bullied or hit by some mystery illness), he just approaches everyday things a slightly twisted outlook.

Law’s mum is particularly awesome, and there’s a section involving the term ‘vagina meat’ and another involving a family trip where they speculate on Minnie Mouse getting raped at Disneyland that sends them all into fits of laughter, that really show this family's warped sense of humour. I couldn’t get enough of it. Also the section where he remembers watching the movie IT with his older brother and “my nine year old brain almost had a stroke from the fear” was something I totally related to, having also had this same experience.

It’s interesting that Law thanks fellow writer and friend Alice Pung in his author acknowledgements, as I read her account of growing up Asian in Australia, Unpolished Gem, earlier this year. Law has managed to pull off what I think Pung would have liked to, but I think she got a bit scared of embarrassing her family and pulled back a bit, where with Law, nothing is sacred. And this book is so much better for it. It also reminded me a little of what Judith Lucy attempted to do with her Lucy Family Alphabet, but there was a bit of a sinister undertone to her writing – she came across a bit displaced by her upbringing, and you were never certain that her family acted out of love; in The Family Law, there is crassness and silliness, but love is clearly abound.

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

I have attacked Garner’s catalogue backwards: from newest to oldest. This is her seminal first novel, published in 1977 and later made into a cult classic film. Based in Carlton, it’s a tale of loving people you shouldn’t and loving them anyway. I love how unapologetic Garner’s characters are in her novels, unflinching. It’s a snapshot of a place and a time, of twenty-somethings drinking brandy alexanders at the local pub for 20 cents, bed swapping and drug taking, and reminded me of my own Carlton spent uni days, which were not quite as hedonistic but filled with beer, declarations of love, general confusion and good times.

Heroin is abound and Nora’s in love with Javo, a hopeless junkie. He floats in and out of her Rathdowne St share house, ignores her at parties and goes to Hobart to dry out. Everyone is shagging and snorting up, and there’s a weird casualness to these relationships that seems foreign in today’s age of caution. Safe sex or injecting is never an issue. I highlighted this passage as it just so perfectly encapsulated a moment I’ve had more than once (substitute the wood chopping with another small household task):

“Tentatively I stood a great lump of wood on the chopping block and bought the axe down on it. It flew into two perfect halves. Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing Respect and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition almost crying with jubilation – not just about the wood, but because I could live competently some of the time, and because that day I liked myself.”

Perfect, honest, un-airbrushed words from a true wordsmith.

The Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White

These days, anyone who has ever made a sandwich on the telly is qualified to be a ‘celebrity chef’, but back in the 80s, it was Marco Pierre White in London who was the bad boy of the restaurant scene. His autobiography is basically a celebration of what a selfish, uncompromising, single-minded pig he was for much of the time he was running said restaurants. Being an ex-waitress, I know he’s not exaggerating when he says he worked for 18 hours straight, or put a fish down the trainee chef’s pants. I enjoyed reading about the crazy concoctions he came up with, the obscene amount of money being thrown about on restaurant bills, and his almost autistic like search for the perfect piece of cutlery for his eateries. But at the same time, he was boozing, ignoring his family and being a tyrant, which he seems to take some sort of misplaced pride in. The really interesting stuff – like what really went wrong with his venture with former friend Damien Hirst – are completely glossed over, which makes you wonder that if he wouldn’t touch that uncomfortable period in his life, what else has he avoided, or neglected to include? The temperature on this dish of a book is: tepid at best.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Welcome to Germany! It's 1939 and your host for the next 6 years will be Death. The story will star Liesle and be variously populated by Max, Rudy, Hans & Rosa. Oh, and the Fuhrer.

Remember earlier when I said that I was "kind of bored of Books About The War". Well this book, as you might've guess from the DATES and the reference to the FUHRER, is a Book About The War. Alas.

I enjoyed the Book About The War, but it wasn't in anyway incredible - it didn't help me think about the war in a different way; it didn't teach me anything new. It took up some of the questions I always ask about The War, like: What regular, non-Jewish, non-disabled, non-gypsy, non-socialist Germans did and didn't know, and did and didn't do with that knowledge, and it was undoubtedly interesting to have a chance to watch characters attempting to answer these questions.

The narrative was touching, and the book stealing metaphor was lovely. The subject matter was dealt with tenderly and the earthly characters were endearing. Liesel, Randy, Max, Rosa and Hans and their supporting cast were so wonderful, so engaging, in fact, that I found Death a bit of a let down: Death as a character who comes and collects souls as they fall and remembers things in colours is a novel concept, but personifying an experience didn't work for me, really. Luckily, the narrator only imposes his character on the story a handful of times, and for the most part dutifully plays the role of omnipotent messenger.

This was a perfectly good book, and I am judging it harshly - but if you're going to be A Book About The War, I am going to expect Big Things. Nice try, Mr Zusak, but no biscuit for you, I'm afraid. Thanks, none the less, to Vicki & Ric for this, and the collection of other stolen items - watch out I don't take the breaking into your library and eating your snacks...

Tender is the Night by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Let me admit from the outset: I found this book hard work. I then felt less intelligent for it being hard work, as it was loaned to me by someone who I think is really smart, henceforth putting more pressure on my poor brain to both understand and like this book. Which I kinda didn’t, because I resorted to the famed high school skimming technique, just so I could finish the thing.

Phew. There I said it. There was just SO MUCH detail for really quite little plot – like how a quail is more bones then meat, and while that meat is juicy and delicious, you just wish that you had bought a chicken.

The Great Gatsby is a chicken. Tender is the Night is a quail.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Expectation is a funny thing. Expect too much, and you’ll be disappointed. Expect nothing, and be surprised. Not really a life motto I want to adhere to (‘hey, I didn’t get punched in the face today. Tuesday has been good to me’) but as a book reading ethos, actually quite helpful.

Case in point: this book. Penned by the author of one of My Top Three Books of All Time, We Need to Talk About Kevin (Matilda by Roald Dahl and Dirt Music by Tim Winton also make this list), expectations were first date high. And I knew deep down that it was going to take one crazily well-written, engaging and complete humdinger of a book to beat the mind bending heart crusher that was Kevin.

Not surprisingly, Lionel failed with TPBW. If this had been the first of her books that I had consumed, then very possibly I would have liked it more. But like a difficult second album, it just didn’t deliver for me. The premise is interesting; there are two chapters that run parallel documenting the life of children’s book illustrator Irina, and what happens when she does/doesn’t kiss another man.

Basically in one stream of the book she’s in a somewhat happy nine-year relationship with her partner Lawrence; they’re not married, they like the same things but are in a bit of a rut. Oh; also he won’t kiss her on the mouth and only shags her from behind while she faces a wall in their bedroom. Happy times!

In the other, she leaves Lawrence for a professional snooker player, Ramsey – an immature, egotistical Brit whose doodle drives her wild, but ultimately she questions if she shouldn’t have just stayed with Ol’ WallBanger Lawrence.

And that’s what kind of pissed me off. Why does she only have the choice between two douchebags? Why is it believable that an intelligent woman would stay in such a crappy relationship just because of crazy sex? (If actual women did this, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be friends with them). Why is another woman writing a female character like this? And I’ve heard of “original” occupations for your book characters to have, but professional snooker player? That is just a bridge too far really.

Everyone’s had a ‘what if and who if’ moment in their lives, and have questioned if their happy relationship isn’t going a bit stale, so parts are relatable. There is no doubting that Shriver is a fantastic writer – I think in this case she let herself down with her own material.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

"Bob Munroe woke up on his face." So begins 'The Brown Coast', the first in this delectable collection of short stories from Canadian author, Wells Tower. The implication here is that Bob has fallen on his face and spent the night there, but it turns out Bob may have fallen on his face quite some time ago, and as in the paragraph that follows, finds that getting back up off it isn't straight-forward. The theme of this story, of finding the bottom with your face, isn't the only one in the collection, but we do see it a few times: Jacey certainly goes there in 'Wild America', and it's pretty much the forwarding address for the characters in 'On The Show'.

The characters in all these stories are bulging - bursting, engorged, overflowing, even - in a masterfully understated way so that you never feel like you're getting to know them, but rather that they just are. Never is this more obvious though than in the title story, the last in the collection. Here, the protagonist, Harald - a Viking, naturally - is just another guy, tired of raping and pillaging, with ambitions to spend some time with his common law wife, Pila, 'hoping to get through some lovemaking before the Haycutting Month was underway and see if I couldn't make us a little monkey.' Oh, cute Viking!

There's a slightly corrosive sexual undercurrent in almost all of these stories, though. Harald might be bang up for some lovemaking, but he's done his fair share of raping, too, one suspects. Sometimes this malevolent sexuality is latent, like in 'Executors of Important Energies' - classic 'dad takes up with younger woman who young son then proceeds to fantasise about'. Mostly thought, it's overt, and with one exception - the old man in 'Door In Your Eye' who is prompted to go and visit his neighbour because he thinks she's a prostitute - sex is never a good motivator. And it's almost never pretty - take the child who, with the permission of her mother and step-father, will, on long journeys, wrap her lips around the gearstick because 'the vibrations relax her' - thanks 'Down In The Valley', for that heart-warming image. And, while uncomfortable, it's believable that your affable, everyday peado in "On The Show" is just an opportunist with a knack for timing, much like the other bloke in that story who darts in and out of the spaces you and I don't consider. It's seedy, without being dark. And it's illuminating, without being nauseating. Cue applause.

From the first story to the last, this collection is a joy and a triumph. Of course, saying that, it could be quite dispiriting in terms of the reality of the world it reflects, but also it could not. It's up to you, really, what you chose to do with 'Leopard' - the story of a teenage boy, told in the second person, on the art of pulling a sickie when your assholish step-dad is watching your every move. And you can make what you like of 'Retreat' - where the real estate investor brother, exiled by property tax law to a mountain in the country, extends an invitation to his music therapist brother to spend sometime with him there, where beautiful things are sometimes sick but killing them will only poison you.

There are so, so many memorable, share-worthy sentences and passages in these stories, but I will leave you to discover these for yourself. Because, at some point, you will read this book, and you will wish to God you were Wells Tower, because that would be so much better than being in the confusing position of being you - loving him on the one hand, but also hating him for being so much more awesome than you - it's confronting. You'll read these stories, and you'll think, 'Yep, thems some words smooshed together in pleasing, smarty-pants kinda ways, no? Oh, yesssss.' And then you'll consider the words you've just thought and think, 'Oh yeah, I see the contrast now: Screw you, Wells.'

Thanks for the HOTT tip, Soph.

Three Act Tragedy, Hercule Poirot's Christmas and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie

Exactly what it is about Agatha Christie that I love so much is, well, a mystery (PUN I), and one which I will now turn my attentions to solving in a very non-Christie kind of fashion.

Based on approximately zero detective work, I think the attraction is 3 fold:
1. I love the incredibly well described inanity of the 2 dimensional, caricature-like characters;
2. I love the order that reigns throughout, be it social order, or just the order in which the books themsleves unfold, or the orderly way everything is tied up at the end; and
3. I love that I never bother trying to outwit the story, I'm happy to be as bamboozled as the police and let Hercule or Jane explain everything to me at the end. Ignorance = bliss.

More than anything though, what I reall, really love, is the genius way Christie probes social norms, interrogates stigma and brings out, in such delicate ways, the prejudice of her times. It's masterful. For example: Having outfoxed the murderer of Sir Bartholomew Strange (yes, that's right: Sir B Strange the distinguished Harley Street nerve specialist) in Three Act Tragedy, Poirot is engaged in an illuminating dialogue: "Why do you sometimes speak perfectly good English and at other times not?", asks one of the few people left standing at the end of the novel.

'Poirot laughed. "Ah, I will explain. It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. The say 'A foreigner? He can't even speak English properly.' It is not my policy to terrify people - instead I invite their gentle ridicule. Also I boast! An Englishman he says often 'A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much'. That is the English point of view. It is not at all true. And so, you see, I put people off their guard. Besides", he added, 'it has become a habit."'

See? She mercilessly takes the piss out of everyone. Genius. Foreigner = retard = can sneak around the place gettin' all up in peoples' business and solving murders and shit. Likewise the spinster: what the hell would that undersexed, bespectacled old lady know? EVERYTHING, bitches.

And with all this, there are moustaches, and characters with names like 'Boyd Carrington'.

Poirot isn't my favourite, but he was excellent company this festive season. Thanks, old chap.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

One night in June, 1860 in an gentleman's house in Wiltshire, 3 year old Saville Kent was taken from his bed and murdered. When the house awoke the next day, and it was discovered that the child was missing, the family, staff and neighbouring villagers began searching for him. His body was found down an outdoor toilet. His throat had been cut and he had several stab wounds.

It's a totally engrossing story - house, servants, neighbours, mental illness, questionable officials, etc - and complete with a floor plan and a list of 'characters', you the reader are invited to solve the crime yourself. It's about 100% up my street. Tick!

The really fascinating thing about the book though, is the details of the history of the birth of the police force and, more specifically, detective work as a type of police work. The detective branch was reasonably new in the 1860s, and the art of detection completely captivated the public.

This crime then, completely brutal and horrific as it was, as you might imagine, was the talk of the town. With so much public interest and so much pressure for an arrest, the detective in charge, Mr Whicher, to pull one out of the bag. But with no one in the family talking, a far from undisturbed crime scene and the science of detection in but its infancy, solving this case was no easy task. Mr Whicher, in spite of the arrest and conviction recorded, was never quite the same after this case, and went into a kind of semi-retirement for a while.

This true crime spawned an entire generation of fiction - country house, brutal murder, village gossips, long carriage rides - and similarities between this and classic detective works by the likes of Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan-Doyle are obvious. So, yes, it's sad that this poor kid was gruesomely put to death, but we did get some stella writing out of it, if that's any consolation.

I sincerely doubt you're ever going to read this, but I'm absolutely not going to tell you who done it, since that is still a matter for conjecture anyway. I will say that the two prime suspects went on to reside the better part of their lives in Australia and led rich and productive lives, and Mr Whicher didn't do too badly for himself, either. Except for Saville, and his his dad (who kind of deserved what he got anyway), everyone who lived lived happily ever after, the end.