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.

City - Clifford D. Simak (1952, complete edition - 1988)

 

Rating: Excellent

This 1988 edition of City (pictured above) contains a ninth tale, not included in earlier editions of this remarkable book, and an author's forward. Known as a 'fix-up' book, containing stories published separately between 1944-1951, it was then published in 1952 with interlinking tales that explain how the stories are fragments of a greater narrative. The ninth story, or Epilog, was first published separately in 1973. This edition begins with the rather sobering words: "City was written out of disillusion." Simak had lived through WWII and had despaired at its devastation. City is a rumination on what the future could hold for humanity, however Simak's visions of the future are unlike any other typical dystopias or utopias encountered in science fiction. The interlinked tales are woven together with brief extrapolations regarding their veracity and origins, how they came to be part of 'Doggish lore', for in City dogs are intelligent and can speak, having been given that capacity by the Webster family, who feature from the very first tale. Not only are there talking dogs, but there are also robots, in particular the servant robot, Jenkins, who features throughout the book. Robots, talking dogs and the future of humanity? You might consider that you'd know how the tales found in City will play out, but, once again, Simak produced work that defies typical science fiction tropes. Simak's writing is a curious blend of fable, fantasy, science fiction and folklore. It's a bit baggy and, indeed, shaggy, but is irrepressibly endearing because of these very tendencies.

Clifford D Simak, contemplating the future of humanity.

Within these tales humanity's future is marked by both stasis and expansion, some humans who have settled away from cities (as most of humanity end up doing, despite the title) find themselves becoming agoraphobic and in later stories many end up in virtual reality suspended animation. Some, whilst exploring a highly improbable conception of Jupiter, find escape into ecstasies of alien existence. Others are beginning humanity's exploration of the stars and disappear for good, others still become human mutant outliers, experts in logic, theory and their practical applications. Their impact on ants turns out to be significant, but no spoilers here. However it is the dogs that are at the heart of these tales, after all, they inherit the Earth and ponder the past via their Doggish fables of times long gone. They develop a sophisticated society over the eons, with the aid of the robots, the faithful servants of both humans and dogs. There's just enough weirdness and intrigue to keep the reader engaged, but Simak is careful not to reveal too much, keeping you wanting more. Probably my favourite parts of City involves the concept of 'cobblies', entities who live in other parallel worlds, with some of them slipping through to Earth, with unintended consequences. I'm surprised that City has never been made into a television series, or at least a movie, it would make an excellent visual narrative, but I could not find any mention of it ever being optioned in any way. Although eight of the nine stories here were written and published during WWII, they have aged well, perhaps because the notion that humanity is inherently fatally flawed is still persuasive. Also the concepts involved and the style in which they are presented are remarkably contemporary. Fortunately when I found my copy of City in a kooky second hand book store (Bella's Second Hand Book Store), I also bought six other Simak books, so I'm looking forward to more Simak thrills to come.

 

Two beautiful editions of City

There Are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak (2024)

 

Rating: Excellent

Elif Shafak is a significant author, activist, academic and speaker on the world stage. Shafak is of Turkish descent and lives in exile from Turkey due to persecution over alleged charges of 'insulting Turkishness' and spurious accusations of plagiarism. There Are Rivers in the Sky is an epic and complex novel that ties together three seperate narrative strands; Arthur Smyth, a brilliant savant (based on real Victorian Assyriologist, George Smyth) who emerges from poverty during the Victoria era to unlock the mysteries of the Assyrian clay tablets, notably The Epic of Gilgamesh (2100-1200 BCE), a Yazidi girl called Narin and her family in 2014 and Zaleekhah Clarke, who lives in London circa 2018. It all begins, however, with one drop of water falling into the hair of Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, which then goes on to cycle through the skies and water-ways of the world to later interact with all three main protagonists. It's heady stuff at times, with deep themes of symbolic connection weaving throughout the novel. Zaleekhah is a hydrologist at the crossroads of life and via her story we learn more about the ways of rivers and river systems, which often provide handy metaphors for human psychology. As with most novels that interweave multiple narrative strands, there's some that pale next to others that are more immediate, or much more interesting. Narin's story is initially slight, especially in comparison to Arthur's story, which is fascinating, vivid and compelling. Zaleekhah's story sits somewhere in-between, with her marital crisis dominating initially. Yet as the novel progresses Narin's story comes more to the fore and plays out under the menacing cloud of the emergence of ISIS and the multitude of crimes they committed in the name of righteous belief. It makes for powerful and tragic reading and becomes the focal point that ties together the other two strands.

 

Lamassu statues at Nineveh

Shafak's writing is sophisticated, erudite and complex, but it is also totally readable. Although thematically and symbolically dense the novel is generous with its ability to allow the reader to connect the narrative dots. Shafak has also created fully developed characters who connect with the reader; I found myself becoming anxious regarding Arthur's fate, such is the precariousness of his early life. As Arthur progresses, from the life of a street urchin, to work as an apprentice at publisher's Bradley and Even's, who end up publishing Charles Dickens (who turns up a couple of times, much to Arthur's amazement) and then to The British Museum, which houses the huge Lamassu statues from ancient Nineveh, to work at translating the masses of clay tablets from Assyria, to expeditions to the middle east, you are fully invested as a reader. As the novel progresses both Zaleekhah and Narin's stories become more realised, before entwining in both tragedy and hope. Along the way Shafak manages to explore inequality, colonisation, identity, religion, ethnicity and cultural memory that sits within those who are exiled from their homeland. There Are Rivers in the Sky has its flaws, notably it is perhaps overly long (a common flaw for modern literature, or is it?) and displays some bagginess within its pages, which are overflowing with maximalist thematic and informational overload. Still, such concerns are minor compared to the novel's shear scope, its audacity and the emotional impact of its denouement as the three narrative strands come together powerfully. There Are Rivers in the Sky is a perfect novel for book clubs, inviting analysis, discussion and appreciation. My three book clubs revelled in the novel's multifaceted themes and genuinely connected with many of the characters. Apparently, as revealed in an interview, Shafak is a metalhead and listens as she writes, which sounds like an intense way to create such a work of complexity and insight. She points out that metal is full of raw emotion, energy and even harmony, which could easily describe this remarkable novel. Totally recommended if you are after something thematically challenging to read.

A Lamassu at The British Museum

Einstein's Monsters - Martin Amis (1987)

 

Rating: Admirable

Martin Amis is not known for his short stories, with only two collections published in his lifetime, Einstein's Monsters and Heavy Water and Other Stories (1998), among some later omnibus publications of collected stories which included the two volumes and some other strays. Einstein’s Monsters was apparently put together when Amis realised that the short stories he had been writing were centred around the theme of nuclear weapons. Einstein's Monsters begins with an essay called Thinkability, in which Amis outlines the true horror of the threat of nuclear weapons and the annihilation they could potentially unleash. It makes for harrowing reading and despite being written and published during the height of the Cold War, the essay is still chillingly relevant. Amis bemoans the terrible irony of the need for nuclear weapons because of the existence of those very same nuclear weapons. After this short essay the first story, Bujak and the Strong force, Or God’s Dice, provides a very decent beginning, with a Polish protagonist whose strength is such that it metaphorically mirrors the strong nuclear force. It brings him a great deal of trouble, of course, and things don’t go well for his loved ones because of it. It’s a fine, if flawed tale. Insight at Flame Lake uses contrasting diary entries to tell the story of the impact of a schizophrenic boy on his host family. The boy’s father had worked with nuclear weapons before committing suicide. Ultimately it’s a rather heavy-handed allegory for the travails of having nuclear weapons around.

Martin Amis, contemplating Einstein's Monsters

The Time Disease is entertaining but doesn’t quite suit being shoehorned into a collection of nuclear themed stories. It’s futuristic in nature, featuring people who are terrified of time and its deleterious effects on aging, in this case they are aging in reverse. As with all of these stories it features enough of that trademark Amis erudite flair and biting wit to make it worth reading. The actual writing is quite brilliant, but the overall effect is diminished by the shape of the plot. The Little Puppy That Could continues in this fashion. Set in a post nuclear apocalyptic future, things are so bad that a huge, deformed malevolent dog is menacing the ill and deformed residents of a dilapidated village. Their ploy is to offer up weekly sacrifices. Meanwhile a little puppy (who doesn’t appear to be normal himself) with great persistence worms his way into the heart of a little girl. Most of the villagers are scared of the poor little puppy, due to the giant deformed canine that menaces them on a weekly basis. It’s a bit long and grotesque, but does create a nice amount of tension, particularly in the last third of the story. The story has classical mythological allusions within its twisted narrative, but it doesn’t provoke enough motivation to do the research to understand them, at least in my case. The final story, The Immortals, is one of the finer to be found within this slender collection. It recounts the life of an immortal as he traverses the gulfs of time that encompass the history of the planet. There are some great lines, included references to decades long recreational habits and how various epochs compared in terms of boredom and danger. Turns out that ultimately the future involves the imposition of nuclear warfare and the last of humanity in New Zealand who dream that they are indeed immortal. It’s clever all right, but other than its often-brilliant prose it doesn't work quite as well as you want it to. Based on Einstein’s Monster’s, Amis wasn’t really a natural short story writer and it is probably not a coincidence that he didn’t produce many throughout his otherwise brilliant career. This collection is vaguely disappointing, but even acknowledged geniuses have lapses and in the scheme of things these stories are still worth reading just to bask in the glory of Amis’s brilliant prose style.

Show Don't Tell - Curtis Sittenfeld (2025)

 

Rating: Admirable

Curtis Sittenfeld has a great reputation for her dark wit, sardonic humour and putting a contemporary spin on old problems, such as the war of the sexes, power imbalances and complex moral situations. My prior experience with Sittenfeld was via Rodham (2020), a clever and entertaining alternate history of the life of Hilary Rodham, if she had not married Bill Clinton. Show Don’t Tell is a collection of short stories and typically for such collections some stories are better than others. Beginning with the better material, the eponymous story starts off the collection, following a young student, Ruthy, who is awaiting news about the annual grants awarded to creative writing students, referred to as the 'Peaslee’s'. It features a middle-aged student, a smoker, who is a general annoyance to Ruthy, a visiting Bukowski type of writer who dispenses writerly wisdom, a White Noise (Don DeLillo, 1985) namecheck and other various descriptions of college life (this is set in America). It’s a fine story about not being too precious and checking your privilege, which is a common theme throughout the collection. The Marriage Clock involves a buttoned-up Christian author of a best-selling marriage guide and a studio rep who can’t help but desire him, but in doing so reveals that his marriage is far from ideal; ultimately it’s quite clever and well written. A For Alone deals with a married conceptual artist who undertakes a project that involves testing the infamous 'Mike Pence rule', that posits that married men should not be alone with single woman. Of course it goes pair-shaped in the most entertaining manner possible. The Hug is my favourite and perhaps the best story here; a couple, Daphne and Rob, argue about whether Daphne can hug a former partner who is travelling through town and wants to meet up. Not only is it in the midst of the pandemic, but it’s also her ex, and Rob doesn’t like it. The ending is deftly handled - poignant, telling and relatable.

The stories in Show Don’t Tell that don’t quite work as well continue the major unifying theme of age-old problems set within modern moral conundrums, such as cancel-culture, the ‘Karen’ phenomenon, our love/hate relationships with corporations, generational change and being called out for privileged behaviour, but without quite the same amount of finesse featured in the ones mentioned above. As with many of the stories, most of the principal protagonists are middle-aged women, or younger women facing the challenges of being young in a complex world. White Women LOL doesn’t quite gel due to its convoluted nature. Creative Differences is better, with a photographer taking a moral stand regarding being featured in an advertisement masquerading as an art project. The Tomorrow Box explores the nature of success, how it can’t always make up for other shortcomings, like acceptance and success with the opposite sex. The Richest Babysitter in the World explores similar ground but is a bit predictable in its denouement. The Patron Saint of Middle Age and Giraffe and Flamingo are both flawed but ultimately admirable stories, exploring white privilege (the former) and bullying (the latter), with varying degree of success. The final story, Lost But Not Forgotten, features a character from Sittenfeld’s first novel – Prep (2005), Lee Fiora, who is now older and attending a school reunion at the school from the novel. Fiora thinks back to a past secret experience whilst forging a new relationship with a former student. It’s interesting and entertaining enough, but, once again, doesn’t quite hit the mark like the superior stories in this collection do. No doubt it would come across better if you’ve read the novel. Sittenfeld is a class writer however, and this collection is a fine example of her snappy and insightful style. It was another book club read and as always with short story collections, it received mixed reviews. However it is worth a read for its insights into our complex moral world and array of middle-aged characters in confused free-fall. 

Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene (1958)

 

Rating: Excellent

Graham Greene was a prolific writer, with many significant novels to his name, such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Quiet American (1955) and the screenplay to The Third Man (1949), a brilliant film that has aged extremely well. Greene also gets a pivotal reference in one of my favourite films, Donny Darko (2001), when a Greene novel that is censored by the high school gives Donny gnostic guidance. Due to his significant cultural presence and the fact that Greene is considered one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, I've long known about him, but I had never managed to get around to reading his work. Apparently (according to Wikipedia) Greene divided his works into two genres, thrillers, which he referred to as 'entertainments' and the others as 'literary works'. I'm uncertain as how Our Man in Havana should be regarded, being a black comedy of sorts with a light humorous tone; ostensibly it's not a thriller, but I have a feeling that Greene perhaps regarded it as one of his 'entertainments'. The novel is genuinely funny, following the adventures of vacuum cleaner salesman, James Wormold, a world weary man who's wife left him to be the sole parent of his teenage daughter, Milly, who has a extravagant lifestyle to maintain. When Wormold is approached by the mysterious MI6 plant, Hawthorne, to spy for MI6 he reluctantly takes up the offer in order to help cover the cost of his daughter's many worldly desires. There begins a series of tricky situations, faked reports and run-ins with shady characters who threaten his life. Greene himself actually was recruited into the MI6 in 1941, where he encountered information about a character call Garbo, who was based in Portugal and filed fictitious reports in order to gain bonuses and keep his espionage career going. 

Greene, contemplating his 'entertainments'

Published four years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took the world to the brink of nuclear war, the novel is eerily prescient. Wormold uses the fittings from one of the vacuum cleaners he sells as inspiration for faked drawings of military structures in the mountainous areas of Cuba, and of course MI6 are very concerned. Wormold nominates a range of informants, some of whom he knows of, but does not know in person. Reality and falsehood collide when weird things start to happen to his informants, leading to some very tricky situations indeed. There's some romance too, when love interest Beatrice Severn is sent from MI6 to assist Wormold. There's also the comedic, yet pathetic character of Dr. Hasselbacher, an elderly German expat who is Wormold's only real friend in Havana. He also has to deal with the sinister threat of Captain Segura, a military thug and the owner of a wallet supposedly made from human skin, who has romantic designs on Milly. Such characters, on paper, could seem like caricatures, however Greene really brings them alive and imbues them with complex motives and human foibles. Greene's prose is concise and snappy, providing a propulsive edge to the narrative. It's a clever and classy novel and one gets the sense that, well, they just don't write them like this any more. If Our Man in Havana is typical of Greene's oeuvre then I'm keen to explore further novels. Greene was certainly prolific, with some 26 novels, numerous short stories, plays and screenplays published. Our Man in Havana was also adapted for a movie in 1959, starring Alec Guinness and Noel Coward and was critically acclaimed at the time, although hasn't had the same afterlife as The Third Man, but if it is any where near as fine as the novel it would be worth watching.

Our Evenings - Alan Hollinghurst (2024)

 

Rating: Excellent

Another book club read, the second by Alan Hollinghurst, with the first being The Stranger's Child (2011), which was the follow-up to the Man Booker Prize winner, The Line of Beauty (2004). I enjoyed Our Evenings a great deal more than The Stranger's Child, which, looking back at my review, I ultimately found 'turgid'. Our Evenings is character driven, told via the first person point of view of David Win, beginning when he is a fourteen-year old student at one of England's well to do private schools; he is also the beneficiary of financial support from Mark Hadlow, the philanthropist plutocrat patriarch, who's son, Giles Hadlow, is Win's frenemy and a future political force in the UK. Win is an outsider, is of mixed race (part Burmese), from a single parent family (his mother, Arvil, has her own significant role in the novel) and is gay. Despite Win's outsider status he thrives at school, at university (Oxford) and despite some setbacks, goes on to become a successful actor. Our Evenings is the story of his life and the story of the changing attitude to homosexual relationships over the decades, as well as the rise of a new era of intolerance as personified by Giles Hadlow, who goes on to be a right-wing Tory politician who campaigns to remove the UK from the European Union (Brexit). There's some serious themes at play, both personal and universal, but the novel proceeds at a languid pace as we follow the episodic narrative of David Win's life, rather than ratcheting up the tension. At first the novel appears too passively reflective, however as Win grows up and faces the challenges of adulthood the narrative becomes absorbing and fascinating. It draws you into Win's world of theatre, love and friendship, all narrated via his wry observational voice.

One of the strengths of Our Evenings is Hollinghurst's elegant style, there are plentiful beautiful passages throughout. The novel rewards close reading, revealing a narrative dense with sophisticated descriptive power. I rarely quote from books, but I just have to share my favourite passage in which Win is enduring a speech from Giles Hadlow: "I blanked out what he said, tipped my head back and gazed up at the great glass dome. Beyond it, in slow transition of dusk, silver planes could be seen escaping, bright in the last sun above the darkening city." It's so evocative and beautiful, but also it shows a character in opposition to the mainstream attitudes as personified by Hadlow, of conservative righteousness and philistinism. This opposition between Win and Hadlow's lives, and what it represents, is not laboured by Hollinghurst, but it is palpably felt throughout the novel, even during lengthy periods in which Hadlow is absent, but not forgotten. Our Evenings is both a very personal exploration of what it meant to be gay and an artist in the era since the middle of last century and an exploration of where we've ended up politically and culturally. It's subtle, clever and close to brilliant. In the great novelistic tradition of showing, but not telling, Hollinghurst sums up the era of the likes of Trump and Boris Johnson (whom Hadlow mostly resembles) with a great scene in which Hadlow, now the Minister for the Arts, leaves early during a performance involving Win in a helicopter, which completely drowns out the performance in a show of ugly egotistical distain. Although some readers may find the novel's slow pace and character driven narrative too much of a slog, Our Evenings really is worth the time and stands as a beautiful, topical and touching literary work.