These are those books that you don't give up on, but left me with a sense of "not quite there".
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"HAVEN" - Emma Donoghue (UK, Ire 2022)
Emma Donoghue has an impressive CV of short-listeds and best-sellings of many prior works of fiction, and this one scored a full set of five stars in our State daily's Weekend lift-out, so I had high expectations.
The novel is set in the 7th century, a fiction version of a piece of Irish history, this one being of three monks attempting to set up an isolated and austere hermitage on the Great Skellig, a formidable lump of rock about 12 kms out into the wild Atlantic from the Kerry coast, abundant in birds and rock and a panoramic view of the ocean and not much else. But the "Prior", a religious zealot, has had a dream (from God naturally) about this great thing he's to do to glorify God and ensure a place in Heaven. The usual zealot-y stuff.
Okay, it's a good and easy read, meticulously researched, well written, attracted big reviews, but there's something about it that sort of - bothers me. It doesn't have - what? - grunt! - complexity - that sort of stuff that makes you feel more. I like my - what? - ignorance? - to be challenged by a great novel, blow some new air through my brain, be just a bit changed by the experience.
But this one doesn't do it. And it's presented in the "blockbuster" way of modern publishing, cover in glitzy gold print, it's the commercial "big size" of 23cm x 15cm (while "standard" size is 20cm x 13cm), it uses very open line spacing and in biggish print, but it's only 70k words long, shortish for a novel. It's like the publishers are trying to compensate for a lack of substance.
This makes me ask - is this the way of "successful" novels today? - to be in that twilight zone between pulp popular and "literature"? Yep, okay, it's a good novel, an enjoyable read, but it doesn't shift me out of my everyday-ness. Or something. Maybe I simply expect too much of a five star reviewed book. Maybe it's just down to taste. Maybe I don't know my arse from my elbow. Check it out and see what you reckon.
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"WHERE THE QUEENS ALL STRAYED" - Barbara Hanrahan (Aust 1978)
Another one I picked up in an Op Shop recently, quick browse made me think it worth risking two bucks. The back blurb said it was a coming-of-age set in the Adelaide Hills, which caught my attention, and the fact that while her name was familiar - an Adelaide woman - I hadn't read any of her stuff.
First reaction was that it was a First Person memoir of a 13-14 year old girl, as I couldn't quickly place the Time, till the "1907" mention about p37 finally had me re-focused, could see that it's a pure novel, but deeply researched to get a truly authentic Adelaide-South-Aust-in-the-early-1900s feel to it. And the attention to detail flows into her "nature" prose, as she has a feel for plants that is a lesson to any writer-wannabe.
Second reaction was that it's more of a woman's book, as males barely get a mention, and then not in a terribly good light, and it has a thin but recurring theme of gay relationships between the women, but done in a way as would have been the indirect and unspoken treatment of them in the early 1900s. While on the surface of it not normally my choice, I found it absorbing, as it's a "writer's" novel, that is, one that would - should - stimulate your creative juices and all that. It did mine.
An aside - the title comes from a poem by John Shaw Neilsen (Aust 1872-1941), "the Land Where I was Born", and there's one verse in the front cover. You could do worse than look him up online, his poetry has quite a fresh "nature" quality, all there in full, from another time, not earth-shattering, but still worth a look.
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This mixed bag of a (first) novel feels fairly auto-biographical, and Gekoski strikes me as being an American with very English leanings (he spent 13 years teaching in the English Dept of Warwick Uni in the Midlands).
The first two-thirds I found strangely addictive, well-written and insightful, starting with a detailed account of how he goes about locking himself away from the world. It's after some event he doesn't really cover until the second part, being a difficult day to day narrative of the cancer death of his wife, with whom he had a bit of a bumpy relationship, as they are really different characters, him an academic and obsessive and straight-laced and she a writer and flighty and messy and promiscuous! Other than that they were made for each other!
The "front" character (told in the First Person) is one Dr James Darke, an Englishman and a curmudgeon of a man who makes Doc Martin look like a touchy-feely left-wing love-counsellor - caustic, sarcastic, and opinionated, but has an odd sort of wisdom with it.
But Gekoski loses his focus in the last third, like he can't find enough to fill novel-length pages, so waffles on looking back, variously on pregnancy, college, literature, patching up his relationship with his daughter, tennis, sex (too much and too technically graphic), blah blah blah, all of which he decorates with some cleverly cutting observations.....
"I cannot bear dogs, they disgust me. Why would a civilised person welcome such a creature into an otherwise orderly home? No matter how cunningly disguised by fluff and fealty, all I see is a shameless slobbering arse-sniffing leg-humping scrotum-toting arsehole-flaunting filth-spreader: as profligate a shitslinger as Kahil Gibran, only closer to the ground."
But it's his character's (clearly his?) observations on literature and writing that are highlights, such as....
"Starting a novel is the hardest part of the process, except for finding the right voice, honing the language, establishing the point of view, getting to know the characters, developing the narrative, and finding the right ending", and (reviewing his wife's - over-written - second novel).....
"I tended to skip these passages. If I want clouds and trees, I can go for a bloody walk. I want novels bright with observed life, with ideas, compelling characters, both passionate and ironic. And such a fiction has no need of thunderstorms, or roses with sinuous varicosities, or graduations of cerise. (Yep, the man loves to show off his grasp of the English language!). Get to the human content, all this compulsion to describe things merely indicates a lack of faith in the form, makes it some sort of activity that transforms things into words, in order to make you see an imperfect version of the thing itself. Boring." And then he goes on against characters speaking in long paragraphs, unlike the real world where they "...interrupt each other, make short declarative statements."
To sum up, I found his writing style interesting, and his observations - especially on writing fiction - fascinating. But not everyone's cup of tea (which he has an opinion on also!). So, as always, you need to make up your own mind on this one.
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"THE MESSENGER" (Markus Zusak, Aust, 2002)
I did my usual six-pick from the local Library the other day, the above, three waiting in the wings, one that went over the side in disgust after 90 seconds - a self-published collection of short stories and poetry by some writer's group, geez it was bloody bad! - and this one.
I've barely started on this novel, by the same author who gave us the excellent "The Book Thief". But this is not even vaguely close to it in content or style.
I was 3 pages into this one and it wouldn't let go - a 19 yo Aussie (to quote the back-blurb) "...cab-driving prodigy, pathetic card-player, useless at sex... a life of suburban routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery."
I have no idea where it's going, but I had five good laughs in the very first chapter, and the snappy short sentence style just keeps on coming. And the main first person character/narrator, and his entourage of misfit mates (and a great dog!) are just that tiny bit larger than life, the kind of people you suspect probably don't really exist out there but you wish they did. Great movie material.
Most likely autobiographical, Lomer brush-strokes words with a deft touch that borders on lyrical, explores people and relationships in some depth, and just love the title, as "The God In The Ink" is a lesson in clever selection, as it conjures up exactly what you then find inside, a delicate personal exploration of Japanese art (and culture), as well as a country childhood in Tasmania in the years after WWII.
I found this on my own bookshelf, but it's been a while since I read it the first time. A Vogel winner by Julienne Van Loon (2005 Allen & Unwin), set mainly in that endless straight road country out there between Sydney and Broken Hill, young woman on the run, sort of hides out at a truck stop diner in the middle of nowhere.
"EYRIE" - Tim Winton (Aust 2013)Typical Tim Winton insofar as the prose is fresh and inventive, with great dialogue style of short sharp interchanges, and set in the Western Australian urban landscape that he knows and loves, the Tim Winton trademark waters of the ocean and the Swan River never far away and always part of the passing furniture.
Keely is a washed up, discredited, unemployed eco-warrior in the grip of midlife and struggling with just about everything, holed up in the top floor of a tired 10 storey tower block full of the same sad souls. Here he bumps into a woman - as equally beset with injustices and chips-on-shoulders - who shared part of his childhood, but now has a 6 year old grandson in tow who's been damaged by his short life under estranged crack-head parents. Never going to be a comedy! But it's never depressing. Zings along nicely.
Totally under-equipped for the role, Keely needs to be a hero to the woman and the kid, just to feel a sense of worth once more, maybe lay a few ghosts of uncertainty about himself. How he goes about this makes for a good - not great - but good novel. Well worth finding a copy.