Ordinary Gods and Monsters

Nick Wheatley is seventeen and has just left school. He has not yet decided what he wants to do with his life. Marion who lives next door has also just finished school and plans to go to university. Nick and Marion have always been special friends and remain so.  However they both realise that their relationship is changing as they start to experiment with other friendships.

Their lives are also changing in other ways. Nick's mother and father are divorcing which causes a strain on family relationships. Nick's sister's behavioral  problems are intensifying and annoying. Then Marion's father is killed in a hit and run incident which greatly affects her family.

Both Nick and Marion have experimented with using recreational marijuana and smoke cigarettes. However when Nick and Marion try to investigate who might have killed Marion's father they run into some dangerous characters involved with the drug trade. The chase that ensues places them in grave danger.

This sometimes amusing, sometimes tension filled story keeps the reader guessing as Marion and Nick make some serious life choices.

The Diplomat

When Edward Degraves returned home to Melbourne after five years in London he was not sure what his future held. He and Gertrude fled to London after their involvement in the theft of the Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria in 1986. In London they managed to exist from the money paid by creating paintings attributed to a fake artist and through taking drugs. Before returning to Australia, Edward spent time in detox. Once out of detox he discovered that Gertrude was dead and that thieves had stolen most of their belongings. All he had left was cash and a quantity of drugs from their last sale and the urn containing his wife's ashes. He now had to confront family members and try to explain what happened. He also had to sell the heroin he had brought back to Australia.

The Diplomat by Chris Womersley is a study of how Edward copes with grief and regret as he begins the new challenges of  living without Gertrude and drugs. The book also has chapters which show the life led by Gertrude and Edward in London and how Edward found himself in his present situation. 

Gertrude and Edward were also characters in Cairo by Chris Womersley and The Diplomat continues the story of those characters. Like Cairo the novel also focuses on suburbs of inner Melbourne, in this case Brunswick and St Kilda, the location of the Diplomat Motel in Ackland Street.

Bereft

"Do you know, Quinn, there isn't even a word for a parent who has lost a child? ... It is unspeakable: Bereft." - Quinn's mother attempting to describe a mother's feelings concerning the death of her child. (page 144)

In 1919 Quinn Walker returns to Flint in outback New South Wales after serving in the army during World War I. But he cannot go home. In 1909 he fled from the district when, as a sixteen year old, he found the body of his twelve year old sister, Sarah, after she had been murdered by two men. Both his father and uncle threatened to hang Quinn if they ever found him. Yet he returns and watches from the hills the family farmhouse where his mother is dying from the influenza epidemic that affected many parts of Australia after the war. When he is sure his mother is alone Quinn visits her and tries to explain his ten year absence.

To some extent, due to lack of rain, the countryside is dry and almost barren, not dissimilar to part of the countryside destroyed by battles in Europe. While deciding what to do next he meets twelve year old Sadie, an orphan who is waiting for her brother to return from the war. Quinn is haunted by memories of war and it is Sadie who helps him when his dreams become too real. In many respects Sadie is a mystery, not just in her use of magic but in her knowledge of  Quinn's past. They both fear Quinn's uncle and know that he will eventually come and look for them. Together they hide and forage and wait until they both know that they will have to move on.

This novel portrays the lasting physical and mental affects of war on those who served, the loss felt by family members left at home, the affects of epidemics on families and the reactions and fear of members of small, isolated rural communities when faced with violent crime, the appearance of strangers and events that cannot be explained.

Cairo

Set in Melbourne in the 1986 this novel traces the experiences of seventeen year old, Tom Button, when he leaves home in a country town to live in the city. His aunt had recently died and he has the use of her small flat in Nicholson Street Fitzroy. The block of flats, Cairo, was built in 1935. Tom is soon befriended by musician, Max Cheever, and his wife Sally and their close circle of artists and poets, all of them much older than he is.

This is a right of passage book where the naive Tom must learn to cope in this alien, exciting Bohemian lifestyle including the danger of being drawn into the schemes of the older group members, including the plan to steal a painting from the art gallery. Tom learns about friendship, love and betrayal as well as how to cope in the 'real' world. The descriptions of living in the city of Melbourne and Fitzroy in the 1980s form a major part of the book, Cairo by Chris Womersley.

Cairo flats do exist and there are a number of links online providing information about them.
The Cairo: romance and the minimum flat
Cairo flats
Art deco buildings
Fitzroy history: the Cairo flats on Nicholson Street
Cairo flats model - Melbourne Museum

Theft of the Weeping Woman