The Mystery Writer

The Mystery Writer is another fast paced crime novel with many twists by Sulari Gentill. Theo arrives unexpectedly at the home of her brother, Gus, who had moved to America from Australia many years ago and is now working as a lawyer. Theo also started studying law in Australia but has given it up to become a mystery writer.

During the day, Theo usually writes in a cafe near home where a number of other writers also work. There she meets Dan Murdoch, one of her favourite authors, and they become friends. Theo's life changes when she discovers Dan's body. This begins a series of nightmarish events with subsequent murders and Theo, her brother and a friend being main subjects.

There are many layers adding to the main story in this novel including eccentric families who are preparing for future disaster and the influence of conspiracy theories in creating and altering public opinion to their will. As the suspense grew I was reluctant to put his book down until the last chapter.

Praiseworthy

In Praiseworthy, Alexis Wright has written a saga revolving around an Aboriginal community, Praiseworthy, situated near the sea in northern Australia. The main characters in this story are Cause Man Steele, also referred to as Widespread and Planet, his wife with Chinese ancestry who was known as Dance and their two sons, seventeen year old Aboriginal Sovereignty and eight year old Tommyhawk Steele.

It takes 723 pages of small print to tell this allegory of Aboriginal people striving to exist in their own country under rules devised by white men. This results in the creation of a confused no man's land where plans and ideas keep changing depending on the mood. To add to the challenges a huge haze has descended on the area where Praiseworthy is situated. Widespread is convinced that this is the result of global warming and he is determined to find his own solution.

Around the town are many feral donkeys and Widespread decides that he needs to round up as many donkeys as he can to form a business enterprise delivering and carrying goods and people when transport using fossil fuel is no longer available. However he needs a special flagship donkey for this enterprise and spends much of the book traipsing around the country in a broken down car looking for the perfect donkey to be the mascot for the enterprise. When he finds a contender the donkey travels back to the community with him in his car. 

Dance lives in her own world and is obsessed with moths and butterflies which live in the area in abundance. As her relationship with Widespread diminishes she decides to try and find a way to travel to China as a refugee - to return to the country of part of her family. Widespread and Dance live on land in the local cemetery and are convinced that they are traditional owners of this land which does not impress the other inhabitants of the area.

 The two sons of Widespread and Dance do not get on and live different lives though each is aware of the other's presence at different times during the book. 

Aboriginal Sovereignty marries the girl who had been promised to him as a wife since they were children. He is seventeen but she is fifteen. This is OK according to Aboriginal law but not according to white man's law. The girl is sent away to the city for 'safety'. When Aboriginal Sovereignty is arrested he escapes from custody and is last seen disappearing into the sea, a place where many local young people commit suicide.

Tommyhawk is obsessed with social media which he accesses on his phone and other devices. He regularly follows all the reports on white men's views about life in Aboriginal communities including how the communities are inhabited by pedophiles. Tommyhawk wants to leave Praiseworthy to live in safety with white people in Canberra. It is Tommyhawk who reports his brother marrying an underage girl to authorities.

When Aboriginal Sovereignty disappears the local people form search parties to search for him along the beach and in the nearby waters. They are watched over by the spirits of the past who reflect on life in general and changes since their time. From this point Aboriginal Sovereignty becomes a theme of the book as well as the name of a character.

Praiseworthy is also full of churches representing a variety of sects who also try to have an influence in the community. Aboriginal elders, past and present also have words to say about what is happening in Praiseworthy and environs.

As well as Aboriginal Sovereignty, some of the themes in the book include attitudes to the effect of white man's laws and regulations on Aboriginal communities, the development of many Aboriginal communities relying on Canberra for handouts for projects, 'bridging the gap', abuse of children, global warming and care of the environment in general. 

There are several stories meandering through the novel. There is humour in many places, often dark humour, as the author attempts in this saga to encourage the reader to think about the impact of colonisation on the life of the Aboriginal people.

Praiseworthy is the winner of the 2024 Stella Prize and also the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award. The novel is on the shortlist for the 2024 James Tait Black award.

Think of the Children - Sydney Review of Books - 5 June 2023 

Praiseworthy by Alix Wright - How can one novel contain so much? - The Guardian 28 April 2023.

Open Throat

Open Throat, written by Henry Hoke, is a novella narrated by a hungry mountain lion as it observes the world around it. In 156 pages we learn of the life and thoughts of the mountain lion as it regards its environment in a park under the Hollywood sign near Los Angeles. The lion manages to survive but food is not plentiful and there is often danger. It watches hikers walking the various trails in the park and also keeps an eye on a tent settlement where homeless people live. However when a hiker sets fire to one of tents the mountain lion is forced to find safety elsewhere as the fire spreads throughout the park.

The mountain lion finds itself in an urban area as it seeks refuge. Eventually it hides in the cellar of a house where it encounters a teenage girl who befriends it until her father discovers the mountain lion in the house.

The book reads as a prose poem. There is no punctuation but each sentence begins on a new line and there is double spacing between each sentence making it easy to read. The state of the environment, homelessness and inequalities in LA are some of the themes in this work as the mountain lion struggles to survive.

Open Throat was nominated for the 2024 James Tait Black Award.

Though the Bodies Fall

Michael Burns lives with his family in an isolated house at Kerry Head on the Irish coast. The area is known for the cliffs which have served as a suicide spot over the years. Michael's grandparents made it their mission to try and help the 'visitors' who came to the cliffs and many lives were saved. This role was passed to Michael's parents, particularly his mother who made the saving of those planning to commit suicide her major role in life.

Though the Bodies Fall by Noel O'Reagan is the story of family and how a feeling of responsibility can overtake the awareness of the needs of other family members.

After his father died, Michael was drafted into assisting his mother with her mission. After finishing school he did escape for a few years but ,when he finally returned home, assisting the 'visitors' became his obsession to the detriment of his relationships with other family members, his career and his health.

The story is revealed in several time frames. As well as viewing events in the present, we see life when Michael and his two sisters were children as well as Michael's failed marriage. The novel deals with how Michael's life deteriorates as his sense of duty to others overtakes his life. Throughout the book the descriptions of the landscape add to the atmosphere of the novel.

Though the Bodies Fall is on the short list for the 2024 James Tait Black Award.

Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia

In Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia, Jim Haynes examines the reasons why it was decided to transport convicts to Australia from Britain and how the convicts generally coped in their new country. This book provides a readable introduction to the story behind transportation to Australia

For 270 years Britain transported prisoners from British gaols to different parts of the world. Transportation of convicts to Australia took place from 1787 when the first convicts left on ships for New South Wales and 1868 when transportation to Western Australia ceased. Prior to this, many of the prisoners were transported to America until the American War of Independence 1775 to 1783. As prisons and prison hulks were rapidly becoming overcrowded it was considered necessary to find another location.

Many possible locations were discussed until it was finally decided to send convicts to the other side of the world to serve their term and establish a new colony to prevent the French from taking possession of what was eventually to become Australia. Jim Hayes discusses a variety of reasons the transportation to Australia was considered necessary.

Jim Hayes looks at the attitudes in general to transportation and how transportation to Australia differed from transportation to the Americas. He then writes about men who advocated transportation to Australia including Joseph Banks and James Mario Matra. The next chapters are about a selection of people involved in the transportation of convicts including Surgeon John White on the First Fleet and Captain John Hunter on HMS Sirius. Other chapters concern the lives of a selection of convicts including Mary Reiby, Henry Lovell, John Donohoe who became a bushranger, Sappy Lovell and William Westwood who also became a bushranger. Jim Haynes also includes chapters about the Australian Aboriginal, Permulway, Lieutenant William Dawes, Elizabeth Fry who supported female convicts as did Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land.

Lori & Joe

Lori and Joe have lived in a small cottage in the Lake District for twenty-five years. One day when Lori takes her husband his morning cup of coffee she finds him dead in his bed. She considers calling an ambulance but it is obviously too late so she leaves him there and goes for a walk in the fells. 

It is November and a heavy mist encompasses the fells. Lori is waiting for the light to break through, even for a short time, during her walk. As she progresses through the terrain that she knows well, Lori reflects on her life - the good and the bad. 

She reflects on her relationship with her husband who appears to have been the dominant member of their partnership. He frequently played recordings of his favourite classical music and expected her to also appreciate it though she had different musical tastes. Lori wanted a family, Joe didn't. Lori wanted a dog. Joe didn't - though he eventually allowed her to keep a cat. Lori often refers to Joe's fancy bike that resides at the end of the kitchen table. She can now move it to the shed.

But Lori also reflects on death - the people she knows who have died. She reflects on the past as well as the present. Her thoughts are revealed in short blocks and are frequently repeated, each time with a little more information. This moving backwards and forwards through Lori's memory creates a poetic effect in the writing. The heading in each chapter allows the reader to see the progress that Lori is making in the walk through the fells. The weather balances her mood. 

Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold is a one hundred and fifty page reflection on Lori's life. It is a book that should be read without interruptions to fully appreciate the flow of Lori's thoughts and the landscape of the fens.

Lori & Joe was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2023. It has also been shortlisted for the 2024 James Tait Black Award for fiction.

Tilda is Visible

For many years I have had, from time to time, the feeling that I must be wearing my invisibility cloak. These instances include waiting to be served in some shops, when navigating through shopping centres being forced to stop as someone (without peripheral vision) heads towards me with no intention of stopping or changing direction, thinking I am having a conversation with someone who suddenly changes the topic or walks away (am I really that boring?), being pointedly ignored by many of the mothers in the schoolyard when I took grandchildren to and from primary school, having to duck to avoid being hit by bags in shopping centres when I was in a wheelchair for a few months.

I was therefore interested to read Tilda is Visible by Jane Tara, published earlier this year. Tilda is fifty-two and sometimes felt that she was invisible to other people. However her life dramatically changed when she was typing and noticed that she could not see her little finger. She could feel and use the finger but the  finger itself was invisible. Before long other parts of her body, including her nose and neck, were also invisible.

Fortunately Tilda had a strong support group of friends as well as her daughters who supported her and tried to find solutions to this problem. Eventually she went to a therapist who helped her come to terms with the situation and recommended remedies that might solve the problem. The first thing she had to do was learn to better understand herself and come to terms with PEARL, her inner voice, who usually expressed negative feelings.

Then Tilda met Patrick and a firm friendship was formed. Although Patrick was blind he did not allow this to stop him living a full life. Tilda later discovered that Patrick and his brother Stephen ran a website with aids for people facing a variety of challenges. A number of people had suggested that Tilda should try meditation and eventually she discovered that regular sessions definitely helped her to relax and defeat most of the negative thoughts from intruding into her mind.

Tilda also discovered that she was not the only person with this affliction and worked to help others in her situation. She also took time to reflect on her early life and her often tormentuous relationship with her father as well as issues that occurred during her previous marriage to Tom. 

Often amusing, Tilda is Visible provides an account of how our thoughts and childhood traumatic experiences can affect our adult lives. 

At the end of the novel [page 306] Tilda sums up her conclusions on what it means to be visible:

What does it mean to be visible? Everything. It's what you yearn for, in every relationship, no matter how brief. To be seen means we matter. But visibility must always begin with self. We must first see ourselves. And to do that, we must sit by ourselves and listen. Who are we really? What stories  are we telling? And why?