2025 Reading Round-Up

 

Ten years since Bowie died

Last year was a curious year, with 90% of my books packed away in piles of boxes while our new house was being built. I kept a select few out, ready to read, but, of course, quickly added to that number via digs in second hand bookstores in Perth and Melbourne and in op shops in Subiaco. This situation led to me reading one of my many long-held books, A Landing on the Sun (1991) by Michael Frayn, which I deliberately left out of the boxes in order to finally read it, and I’m pleased that I did. This novel didn’t end up as the best book of the year, however, that honour goes to what is considered to be a perfect novel, Stoner (1965) by John Williams. A beautiful, brilliant novel that everyone should read. Another great discovery was Paul Auster, an author I had long known about, but it took finding Leviathan (1992) in an op-shop for me to finally read him. Once again, thoroughly recommended. I also managed make progress in my Martin Amis project, with Money (1984) coming close to being my book of the year, and the short story collection, Einstein’s Monsters (1987) being a worthy read. I finally got around to reading one of the classics I’d long wanted to read, Childhood’s End (1953) by the great Arthur C. Clarke, which didn’t disappoint. City (1952) by Clifford D. Simak also falls under that classification.

Stoner - book of the year

It was great year for reading generally, with some great books resulting from the library book club; Our Evenings (2024) by Alan Hollinghurst, There are Rivers in the Sky (2024) by Elif Shafak and Stoner being notable examples. As aways there were some lesser books, with Dark Magus (2006) by Gregory Davis being the worst, a poorly written account of being Miles Davis oldest son, which was fascinating, but hamstrung by repetition and cliché. Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (1984) by the eccentrically brilliant Samual R. Delany was a mild disappointment; it was complex and unique, but ultimately a bit pedestrian. Still, I’m pleased to have read it and the same can be said for many of the others I read in the last year, an adventure as always. This year promises a better organised personal library when I unpack all of my books and organise more shelving, you can’t just have piles of books balanced against walls in the corner of the room in a new house can you? Who knows what literary adventures await…?

Addenda: So, why a picture of Bowie on this post? Well, it's the ten year anniversary of his passing - 10th January 2016, he was a renowned lover of books and literature, a great lyricist and cultural mavin. Besides, I read a Bowie book this past year, We Could Be...Bowie and his Heroes (2021) by Tom Hagler, so that makes it legit!

Three Boys Gone - Mark Smith (2025)

 

Rating: Admirable

This is not going to be a typical book review, as, frankly, I’m just too knackered to concentrate on something like that. I’ve just spent the last two weeks (and it is ongoing) moving into my newly built home (a modern wooden Federation style weatherboard house). This involved lots of logistics, packing and then the actual shifting. Such is my dedication to physical media we moved forty-five boxes of books, twenty boxes of CDs and then packed, with the help of some friends, fifty-two boxes of vinyl records, which were then shifted by specialist removalists. Given it is also the end of the year (with all that December entails), and we are still setting up the new house, this will be brief.

Three Boys Gone is a library book club read and to make sure I was ready to lead the sessions I read it in advance, before all the house moving craziness begun. Therefore, I’m a bit hazy on the details, even though one of the meetings is today (I’ll fudge my way through if need be). The novel is the first adult fiction written by Mark Smith; he usually writes acclaimed YA fiction. It is a thriller about a school camping trip that goes terribly wrong. Whilst trekking along a remote beach three boys are separated from the main group and, for reasons never explained, run into the sea and are drowned. The teacher in charge, Grace Disher, is a witness, and as she decides to protect herself, she does not attempt to rescue them. The resulting outrage, hounding and bullying that follows makes for realistically harrowing reading. The novel is, in part, an examination of the pressures that can be brought to bear in our hyper-connected world. It is also a reasonably traditional thriller in that there is, of course, more to the story, typically leading to an extreme denouement. Three Boys Gone is quite well written, although Smith is not a great stylist, the writing is taut and impactful. Smith makes it easy to connect with Grace and her partner, Louise, who bear the brunt of the aftermath of the tragedy. If you are after a decent thriller written by an Australian author, then you could do far worse than Three Boys Gone. Now, it’s getting time to start unpacking those boxes of books, after I buy some more book shelves…

A Landing on the Sun - Michael Frayn (1991)

 

Rating: Excellent

This rather intriguing looking novel was gifted to me by my brother Barry, about twenty or more years ago for Christmas, and, of course, I have only just got around to reading it, which is all too typical of me. So, who is Michael Frayn? Frayn is an English novelist and playwright, as well as a reporter and columnist and A Landing on the Sun was the winner of the Sunday Express book of the year, which was quite a significant award at the time. The novel is certainly a fine piece of work. Frayn’s style is spare and restrained, nicely mirroring the civil service approach of main protagonist Brian Jessel, as he undertakes an investigation into the mysterious death of fellow civil servant Stephen Summerchild, who fell to his death from the Admiralty building. Set in the early seventies, the novel exudes old school public service sensibilities, something I appreciate, being a public servant myself. Jessel is a fantastic creation, a public servant through and through, following proper procedure, grimacing through his beard at the improprieties of both Summerchild and his colleague, academic (a philosopher) Elizabeth Serafin, as they undertake an investigation into ‘quality of life’, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. Summerchild and Serafin are a ‘strategy unit’, holed up in an obscure turret within the Admiralty building. Their very existence, let alone their subsequent philosophical investigations into the nature of happiness, represents an all too ironically funny and satirical skewering of bureaucracy.

Michael Frayn, contemplating civil service beards.

Jessel’s investigations into the events some fifteen years ago reads like a police procedural. Jessel reads their clumsy attempts at reports and listens to recordings of their discussions, slowly putting together the events leading to Summerchild’s eventual death. Jessel essentially relives their lives, following in their footsteps, sitting with pictures of them in the turret and in doing so reveals some aspects of his own life that set up intriguing insights into his own character, history and past connections with Summerchild. Without wasting a word Frayn develops a narrative that is various shades of melancholy, suffering, hope, regret, humour, with glimpses of happiness and optimism. A Landing on the Sun is unlike any other novel I’ve read previously, I’m not even sure who I could compare Frayn to, perhaps he exists in his own literary realm. It’s a beautiful book and very English, with a great London atmosphere of old buildings and laneways of dappled early evening light. Some readers may find the novel boring, but it is anything but, rather it rewards your attention and draws you into a very singular world. It’s difficult to say much more about it without giving away too much, except that, from the evidence of A Landing on the Sun, Frayn is a special and classy writer who, in his nineties, is still publishing work, the most recent being a memoir (Among Others: Friendships and Encounters (2023)). The novel was adapted by the author for a TV movie in 1994 that has a IMDB rating of 8.2 – worth a viewing then, if only to see the rarified world of the British civil service on the screen, with a frowning Jessel stoking his beard, which presents almost as a character in its own right in the novel. In fact his beard should have had its own spin-off novel, or at least a TV series of its own, now I'd like to see that.

Twist - Colum McCann (2025)

 

Rating: Excellent

Twist can be added to the list of narratives that use Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness (1899) as a template, which also includes Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Robert Silverberg’s novel, Downward to the Earth (1970). McCann actually directly references both Coppola and Conrad in the narrative, but it is the story of John Conway, a brooding and mysterious character who leads the crew of the Georges Lecointe, a ship dedicated to repairing the fibre-optic deep-sea cables that carry over 90% of the world’s internet traffic, that acts as the main reference point to Conrad’s novella. Anthony Fennell, a writer and journalist, who has his own array of damages and dysfunctions (alcoholism, familial estrangement), is tasked with buddying up to Conway and joining the repair crew as they embark on the difficult mission to fix broken cables off the coast of West Africa. Fennell is a compelling narrator, as he ponders his own broken life, the psychologically dark depths of Conway’s salty persona and the improbable world of cable repair, which takes heroic levels of skill and determination to achieve. That aspect of the novel, the technical details of the cables, their purpose and fragility, is fascinating and strangely compelling. McCann fully utilises the thematic and metaphorical links between the cables and the manner in which humans communicate. Conway is directly involved in keeping the cables functioning, the very cables which, ironically, carry all the dark and toxic gossip about his partner, Zenele, an actress who is starring in a controversial adaptation of Beckett’s classic absurdist play, Waiting for Godot (1953); yet Conway himself is a closed book, much to the frustration of Fennell, who aims to pry open all of his secrets and motivations.

McCann reveals himself as a great stylist, his prose is cinematic and, at times, profound and beautiful. Some readers may find his stylistic flourishes pretentious, but couched within the novel’s wider themes, McCann gets away with his sometimes unrelentingly vivid descriptive prose. As Twist progresses the tension is ratcheted up, Conway goes without sleep in order to find and repair the offending cables. Fennell roams the ship, observing and fretting about his life and his semi-estranged son. However, curiously, once the situation with Conway becomes that of a man gone AWOL, the novel loses some of that tension, to its slight detriment. As Fennell begins to find out more of Conway’s activities and whereabouts the writing becomes more like reportage. There’s a section in second person, which works quite well in allowing both Fennell and the reader to see the world through Conway’s eyes. Still, Conway’s ultimate motivations are opaque, leaving the reader guessing at his end game, although given the general thematic thrust of the novel, it’s surely not much a leap to understand the root causes of his disillusionment. At this stage Fennell becomes the more interesting character, even though Conway still dominates. Still, Twist is, overall, a satisfying and unique novel. It does encourage reflection regarding the current state the world finds itself in, in regard to the environment, the ills of the web and pressures brought to bear on individuals and cultures due to the web’s overwhelming sway over humanity. A great novel for book clubs, as it encourages discussion regarding both its themes and its prose. Most of my book clubbers' found Twist to be an intriguing and well written novel, and they can be harsh in their judgements, McCann, it seems, passed the book club test.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - Samuel R. Delany (1984)

 

Rating: Admirable

Samuel R. Delany is unlike most other science fiction writers, not only is his densely descriptive writing style highly erudite, but his work is conceptually sophisticated and quite often oblique. His themes explore gender norms, sexuality, sociology and cultural mores, especially relating to social politics and government bureaucracy. Delany has more in common with Ursula Le Guin than the likes of most other science fiction authors, particularly from the era in which he produced the majority of his published work, the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand takes place in a distant future in which humanity is spread across some 6000 planets. There are alien species, but only one shares humanity’s ability to harness faster than light travel, a xenophobic race known as XLv. Sounds simple enough, but Delany adds in two competing quasi-religious factions, the Family and the Sygn, both of which become only marginally understood as the novel progresses. One of the handful of main protagonists is Rat Korga, a gangly misfit who voluntarily undergoes a process called Radical Anxiety Termination, in which his brain is permanently altered to take away all mental suffering, but he effectively becomes a slave on a desert planet which is eventually destroyed in mysterious circumstances. The first section of the novel is taken up with his story, told in third person, until the narrative switches to first person, told from the perspective of the other principal protagonist, Marq Dyeth on the plant Velm.

The novel is an intense exercise in comprehensive and detailed world building in which the reader is totally thrown in the deep end. There’s very little in the way of background information regarding the Family or The Sygn, how humanity came to be spread across the stars, the nature of their space travel, but most significantly, the culture and society of Velm in which humans live alongside the Evelm, a reptilian species with a multitude of forms and social norms, including ‘dragons’ that live in the north of the planet. We get to know Marq Dyeth quite well, however her (Marq is actually a male, but it seems that everyone on the planet is referred to as a female, but at other times as a male, depending on sexual preferences…) interactions with her family and the Evelm are exceedingly complex. The array of cultural and societal norms is bewilderingly detailed and is explored comprehensibly throughout the latter half of the novel. It’s very easy to get lost and overwhelmed by such world building, as such it is both the novel’s strength and its weakness. The best way to approach Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is to just go with it and enjoy some of the novel’s more manifest joys, such as the literary elements, like the poetry recited at a social gathering, from where the title of the novel is taken, or Rat Korga’s experience with information cubes that transfer their data directly into the brain (many of which are great literary epics that sound fascinating - of course Delany goes into them in detail). There’s also the dragon hunting undertaken by Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth on Velm, which is unlike any hunting practice that you could reasonably consider. Delany also explores an internet like technology called the General Information Service, which reminds you that the novel was written and published during the early years of the Cyberpunk genre.

Samuel R. Delany, contemplating being oblique

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand demands a great deal from the reader, to the extent that it would simply be too frustrating for many readers; the XLv race is barely explored in the end, despite its obvious promise; there are just too many long detailed passages describing social customs and there's also the matter of confusing gender pronouns and a plot in which not much really happens in terms of action or typical plot devices that move the narrative forward in a dramatic fashion. Also, the novel was meant to be the first in a diptych, but the second novel, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities has never been completed, meaning that there is a number of loose ends that are never resolved, as they were no-doubt going to be explored further in the second novel. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is fascinating, beautiful, frustrating and even maddening. I really don’t know whether I fully enjoyed it, but three weeks after finishing it I’m still thinking about it, so I’d say it’s worth reading, but be prepared to be both bewildered and challenged.

We Could Be...Bowie and His Heroes - Tom Hagler (2021)

 

Rating: Admirable

I find it hard to resist a good Bowie book and when We Could Be...was returned across the counter at my library I, predictably, took it home. Since Bowie died, now approaching ten years ago, there have been a multitude of Bowie books, all with their own angles in an attempt to get away from just a straight Bowie biography. This one collates an array of meetings that Bowie had with other significant people in the public sphere, in music, film, art, fashion and politics. It is arranged chronologically, starting with Absolute Beginner: 1947-1969 and ending with The Next Days: 2005-2016. For a hard-core Bowie fan like me the early years were the most interesting, for example I never knew that Bowie hung out with Brian Jones during the Rolling Stone's early years; that Bowie, as Davy Jones, was invited into Paul McCartney's home and they listened to an acetate of one of Bowie's songs; or that Ridley Scott directed the ad for 'Luv ice lollies' that featured Bowie in 1969. As the eras roll on the anecdotes become more familiar, although there are still many nuggets of unknown incidents to be found. The writing style is fairly informal, but good enough to carry the stories of Bowie's interesting meetings with other well known people. There's a smattering of photographs, most well known, among a few that are relatively unseen. Over all it is a handsome, well presented Bowie book.

Bowie and Visconti, circa 1979, getting their facts straight

Tony Visconti, Bowie's friend and significant producer throughout his career, is noted on the cover as being a 'consultant editor'. Apparently, as indicated in the introduction, Hagler managed to get an early draft to Visconti to read and he offered insights and corrections, saying that his input was based on what Bowie had told him directly. This does seem to give particular credence to the veracity of the stories, however, I was disappointed to note some oversights. I know it comes across as churlish to point out mistakes, but in a book like this it has the effect of the reader not being as trusting when it comes to some of the less well known encounters. Firstly, there's the account of the reasonably well known meeting in which Bowie mistook Doug Yule for Lou Reed when he attended a Velvet Underground gig in New York in 1971 (Reed had left the band by that stage). It's a humorous, and true story, however Hagler notes that it was supposedly John Cale who answered the stage door and let Bowie inside. John Cale had long left the band (in late 1968), with Doug Yule becoming his replacement. Cale was certainly not in a version of The Velvet Underground that didn't include Lou Reed. Strangely there is then no mention of Bowie meeting and hanging out with John Cale later in the book, in particular in New York, where he and Cale jammed together, something documented on some rather dodgy bootlegs. It's an odd oversight in the context of the thematic thrust of the book. Another error comes later, regarding Nagisa Oshima, who made the film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983); when shopping around for an actor to play a British POW he saw Bowie in an TV ad for Pepsi, also starring Tina Turner. Except unfortunately this ad didn't appear until 1987, when Bowie advertised Pepsi in a deal to help with the expenses of touring the Glass Spider Tour. I think the actual ad the director would have seen Bowie in was one he did in the early eighties for a brand of Japanese sake, which featured the amazing instrumental Crystal Japan (1980), but not Tina Turner. Finally, in the section covering the 1990s, Hagler notes that Bowie had written the song I'm Afraid of Americans (1995) with Trent Reznor, but the co-writer was Brian Eno. Reznor did a remix or two of the song, toured with Bowie and starred in the video, but there was no co-write. Now I feel really churlish! But, despite being a fine book, these oversights, as a hard core Bowie fan, mean that I question other stories that I've never encountered before, despite Visconti's involvement. Despite this the book is worth a read for Bowie fans overall, regardless of my nit-picking.

A Personal Epilogue

We Could Be... is all about Bowie encounters and what it was like for himself and the significant others he met throughout his life. As a fan I had my own encounter in 1987 in Sydney, where I attended four of the eight Glass Spider shows. I was hanging around the entertainment centre and walked past an area near the backstage. There was a cyclone fence running between the back of the centre and a multi-story car-park. A few people were hanging about and one told me that they knew that Bowie was going to arrive for a sound-check shortly. He did indeed, and the experience of meeting him was surreal. He stood about 30 centimetres away from me on the other side of the fence, wearing a black fedora hat and a suit. He signed a page from a book I'd managed to convince someone to rip out of a Bowie book they had with them (I had nothing with me). I can't remember what I said to him, nor what he said to me, but I remember that it evoked a feeling like you get from having a beer on an empty stomach. I also remember that he was friendly and polite, totally relaxed and his skin was so white that it was almost translucent. It was a thrill to meet him and still feels surreal today, like it happened in another realm, despite the physical evidence of the signed page hanging in a frame on my wall. A great experience - I was among those who met Bowie and I'll always treasure it. That day I also met Carlos Alomar, one of Bowie's great and important collaborators, having played guitar on countless Bowie classics. Now he was a dude, exuding lots of fun and enthusiasm as he jumped around in his black leather stage attire. A great day all round.

I Want Everything - Dominic Amerena (2025)

 

Rating: Excellent

I Want Everything is Dominic Amerena's debut novel, a five year effort, emerging after years of successfully publishing shorter works in various publications around the world. The novel concerns an unnamed protagonist, a would-be writer, struggling to actually get down to the business of writing and producing, in his dramatically uttered words, the ‘great Australian novel’. We first meet him as he’s leaving a Melbourne hospital, a place we find out later he is well acquainted with for reasons that are kept from the reader for quite a while, which ends up adding nicely to the narrative spice. He decides to venture down to the local swimming pool on the way home and spots an elderly woman whom he recognises as the great lost Australian cult author, Brenda Shales, who wrote two books in the 1970's, The Anchoress and The Widowers, before running into legal problems and then disappearing. Our unnamed protagonist weasels his way into Brenda’s life in order to extract her story in an effort to make his mark on the literary scene. Brenda Sales is a fabulous creation, apparently mostly based on Australian writers, Helen Garner and Elizabeth Jolley, she crackles with wily self-awareness and cynical cunning. Believing the protagonist to be her grandchild, Shales acquiesces to recounting both her life-story and the circumstance's that led to her cult literary notoriety. The sections that feature the stories of her past, mostly set in the 1960s and the 1970’s Whitlam era, are perhaps the best in the novel; fascinating and visceral, her life becomes vivid in the mind’s eye of the reader. She's cantankerous, difficult, but ultimately charms both the protagonist and the reader. 

I Want Everything is also a satire about writers, their struggles for inspiration, their hubris, and more seriously, the ethics surrounding writing. The main theme at play is literary fraud, principally the fraud the protagonist is attempting to perpetuate by passing himself off as someone else in order to insert himself into Brenda Shales’ story. But Amerena also explores the moral issues around how writers obtain inspiration for the material they need to feed on, like literary vampires, in order to produce their work. The protagonist’s partner, Ruth, a dedicated writer, is ruthless (no pun intended) when it comes to fuelling her drive to write, including withdrawing emotionally from the protagonist as the novel progresses. In one of the novel’s great scenes Ruth and the protagonist are at a dinner party with fellow writers, one of which reacts with jealous horror regarding Ruth’s recent essay publication and success, breaking glasses and even crying pathetically at the dinner-table at one stage. In terms of poking fun at writers’ egos, it is darkly humorous stuff, particularly when we find out that what Ruth has written is considered to be ‘mother-boarding’, which, in the context of the novel, is a term used to describe demonising your mother in writing. Amerena’s writing pops with confident verve, sometimes bordering on pretension, but he manages to get away with it by being fleet-footed in terms of pacing and sheer chutzpah. It also helps that the novel features a satisfying twist that makes you revise everything you’ve read and adds layers to the narrative you didn’t know were there. A book club read, one in which not everyone was enamoured with, however I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent debut and hope that there’s more to come in the future.