The Children's Bach - Helen Garner (1984)

 

Rating: Excellent

This is my second read of Helen Garner’s novella, The Children’s Bach, the first time was as part of the Modern Australian Literature unit I completed at university in the mid-nineties. I enjoyed it greatly at the time and on my second read I’ve enjoyed it even more. When I first read it, I was actually, in hindsight, a novice reader when it came to Australian literary fiction, and literary fiction in general. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of a certain kind of literary storytelling, serious, yet playful, told simply, but with mysterious literary mechanisms lurking underneath it all. I was intrigued and impressed by the tale of the Fox family, the married couple Athena and Dexter and their sons, Arthur and Billy, who are living out their lives in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. The novella stayed with me for decades, often coming to mind when I visited Melbourne. The Fox family’s lives are altered by the appearance of Elizabeth, an old university friend of Dexter’s and her much younger sister, Vicki. Both end up being drawn to the Fox’s house, an old run-down weatherboard (my internal image of the house anyway), with cramped rooms and a large, dishevelled back yard. This then brings the cock-sure rock musician, Philip, who is loosely involved with Elizabeth, into their lives, who provides just the louche distraction Athena needs to break free of the restrictions of domestic life.

Helen Garner, in the inner suburbs

Set in the early eighties, The Children’s Bach is culturally fascinating, both in terms of Garner’s portrayal of inner-city Australia and her singular writing style. Garner presents as an Australian writer developing her own literary landscape, particularly when taking into consideration her breakout debut Monkey Grip (1977), which mined a similar, but darker urban milieu. Garner’s style is impressionistic, with characters appearing abruptly and scenes flowing into each other. The novel will perhaps not make sense to readers expecting a linear notion of time and setting (something this critic had a great deal of trouble with, so much so it made me think that he has a limited understanding of narrative), however it’s not that radical, rather it comes across as a more modest and pared back emulation of Patrick White’s high modernistic stylings. The novel is thematically rich, exploring family values vs. the nonconformity of counterculture lifestyles, sexuality and the yearning disaffection of middle-age, mostly played out through Athena’s lust for what lays outside of her established life with the loving, yet overbearing Dexter and their disabled son Billy (who presents as autistic). Of course, music runs all through the novella, with Athena’s attempts at learning to play Bach on a rickety piano a metaphor for attempting to master living one’s life in the face of a complex world. The Children’s Bach is a beautiful, rewarding reading experience and underlines that Helen Garner is rightly celebrated as a talented and important Australian writer who appears as both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, somewhat like the characters she created for The Children’s Bach.

This is Where the Serpent Lives - Daniyal Mueenuddin (2026)

 

Rating: Excellent

Daniyal Mueenuddin is a US born Pakistani author who has managed to produce a brilliant and seriously literary debut novel in This is Where the Serpent Lives. In part based on his own experiences, having moved back to Pakistan from the US to take over the family farm and as an individual who straddles both east and west; This is Where the Serpent Lives encompasses sixty years of Pakistani history (1955-2013) from the point of view of both the wealthy land-owning classes and the servant classes. Told via four interlinking sections, the novel begins in 1955 with ‘The Golden Child’ when the owner of a tea stall, Karim Khan, takes in orphan, Bayazid (mostly known as Yazid). Yazid goes on to be the significant and sympathetic character who provides a link throughout the novel's different sections. Yazid, humble and observant, goes from being a tea stall holder to chief driver for the Atar family, principally Hisham Atar and Shahnaz Atar, important characters who feature in the third and fourth sections. Although only some 343 pages long This is Where the Serpent Lives reads like a Russian epic, both stylistically and thematically. Critics have compared Mueenuddin to Chekhov, particularly due to the author’s vivid realism, unclear narrative resolutions and the complex relations between landowners and servants in feudal rural Pakistan. Simply put, This is Where the Serpent Lives is an extraordinary novel, full of complex characters and fascinating historical and cultural detail; one could say that it’s lapidary in its attention to detail. 

Spanning decades of Pakistani history during the post-war period when modernisation and Westernisation was making inroads into societies that had long entrenched social hierarchies, Mueenuddin creates a complex dramatisation of societal tensions, ambition, decadence and thwarted social mobility. Once we've been introduced to Yazid and his world, the second section, ‘Muscle’, acts as a scene-setting exploration of class, hierarchy, and engrained corruption via the young sophisticate, Rustom, a character who is thrown into the deep end when he returns from America to take over the family farm (the author has acknowledged the autobiographical nature of this section). This section introduces the Atars, who, along with their young servant, Saqib, then dominates the third and fourth sections, ‘The Clean Release and ‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’, which, as one would imagine, has well developed, but not cliched black and white biblical themes. When the attentive reader takes in the complex interrelationship between the wealthy and amoral Atars and the humble, but underhand Saqib, it is not clear just who is the serpent in question, although this is part of the point. Having never read any works by Pakistani authors, nor read any novels set in Pakistan, This is Where the Serpent Lives was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, especially Mueenuddin’s beautiful and precise prose, which at times was just exquisite in its jewel like clarity. As the novel comes symbolically full circle in its dénouement, one can only admire the novel’s brilliance and hope that Mueenuddin, already in his early sixties, can produce more novels of such a high standard. The book club attendees loved This is Where the Serpent Lives, awarding it high scores; I very nearly gave it a sublime rating, but it’s somewhere between excellent and sublime and would get four and a half if I used a numerical system.

 

The Ganymede Takeover - Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson (1967)

 

Rating: Excellent

Some part of me that desired, no, actually needed a shot of paranoid weirdness that only Philip K. Dick can provide. This happens at least a couple of times a year. Fortunately, Dick was prolific, so there are still plenty of his novels I’m yet to read, despite being an avowed ‘Dickhead’ for decades. The Ganymede Takeover is one of the few novels that Dick collaborated on with another writer, in this case Ray Nelson, who was an interesting character in his own right, as an author, cartoonist and the inventor of the propeller beanie hat that went on to become emblematic of science fiction geekdom. Nelson and Dick were friends from childhood and it was after Nelson gave Dick his first LSD trip (I read somewhere that Dick didn’t have a particularly good time, no surprise there...) they decided to collaborate and apparently Dick rounded up some in-progress story fragments and they came up with The Ganymede Takeover. Set on a future Earth that has been invaded by reptilian worm creatures from, you guessed it, Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The Ganymedian invaders are also aided by a ‘Creech’ slave race of ugly bipedal monsters. There’s only one area (a ‘bale’) left on Earth in Tennessee that resists the worms from Ganymede, where a ‘Neeg’ leader called Percy X leads a small army of black Americans. There’s also another rebel group called the ‘World Psychiatric Association' (of course) who end up collaborating with Percy X. This premise is merely the framework for hanging all of the typical Dickian tropes from, such as flying cars (ionocraft), telepaths (Percy X and Mekkis, one of the Ganymedian's), vidphones, androids, liberal drug taking and, of course, half deranged doctors who design weird brain warping machinery; everything you’d want from a Philip K. Dick novel basically.

P. K. Dick, staring down Ray Nelson

The Ganymede Takeover can be placed among Dick’s lesser novels; however it is a much better effort than many of his pulpy novels, which typically were knocked off under the influence of legal amphetamines to keep the money, and the amphetamines, coming in. It could very well have been the collaboration with Nelson that created a narrative that is more polished than the usual knock-off effort by Dick. It’s still a wild, schlocky ride though, particularly about halfway through, when an epic battle begins between the Neegs and the Creech led Ganymedian army, involving a herd of gigantic African Aardvarks with “...evil, glittering eyes...” and "...tongues that lick ionocraft out of the sky...", causing the greedy and slovenly character of Gus Swenesgard (a typical Dick character, well and truly trapped within the maw of his flaws) to exclaim “Oh my god, not Aardvarks!!” It becomes unbelievably wilder from that point on, with a totally crazy battle involving all kinds of bizarre creatures that emerge straight from the fevered minds of Percy X and his assistant, who are using a machine stolen from the mentally unstable Doctor Balkani that can create very real shared hallucinations. The plot becomes a bit convoluted from that point on, but it is entertaining non-the-less and it was a totally enjoyable 157 pages of Dick freakiness. The Ganymede Takeover is not the place to start for Philip K. Dick initiates, but for established Dickheads it's lots of freaky fun of the kind you’d expect and, of course, need in your life.

The Black Album - Hanif Kureishi (1995)

Rating: Excellent

I've long been aware of Hanif Kureishi due to his association with David Bowie and the music he made as the soundtrack to the BBC adaptation of Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia (1990). I've long had that novel sitting on my shelves, but I spied The Black Album at the fantastic second hand bookstore, Bella's Books, the kind of second hand book store that is crammed with books and goes on forever. I decided to read The Black Album now rather than sit on it for ages, and I'm pleased that I did. Published during the thick of an upsurge in youth culture in the mid nineties, Kureishi captures the beginnings of that era (1989) and expands on it by exploring ethnic identity in multicultural Britain, and religious tensions, in particular the fatwa on Salman Rushdie due to the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988). College student, Shahid Hasan, meets Riaz Al-Hussain on the first page, thus begins Shahid's entanglement with the forces of radicalisation that causes the somewhat youthfully naive Shahid to confront the cultural and religious forces swirling around him. Shahid is a convincing and compelling character, who is also a budding writer, which allows Kureishi to explore the literary struggles and pretensions of his craft, perhaps inspired by his own experiences studying at Bromley College of Technology in the 1970s. Shahid falls into a romantic relationship with one of his teachers, the inspirational Deedee Osgood, an older woman going through her own transitions. Their adventures together include taking ecstasy at raves and sex fuelled nights together whilst avoiding her politically principled semi-estranged husband. 

Bowie and Kureishi circa early 1990's

Shahid's life trajectory collides with his involvement with Riaz and his band of followers, including the intense former drug addict, Chad, who pull him into situations that are diametrically opposite to those with Osgood. In-between them stands Shahid's brother, Chilli, who is buckling under the pressures of being caught between the pleasures on offer in London and the demands of family life, of which he's trying to escape; he's a deeply flawed, yet sympathetic character. Kureishi cleverly uses Chilli's and Shahid's double lives to explore the tensions between the temptations of secular life in the heart of the decadent West and the supposedly pious life of religious extremism. The two worlds end up clashing towards the end of the novel in spectacular fashion. The novel is rich in both action and discourse, with multiple themes intertwining. The Black Album is sophisticated literary fiction that engages both the brain and the emotions. On the evidence of this novel Kureishi is a superb writer, different to Rushdie, whom is name-checked throughout the novel, yet definitely up in the same literary category as the author who famously suffered under the threat of the fatwa. Kureishi unfortunately has his own torments, having become a tetraplegic from a fall in Rome in 2022.  Fortunately he is still producing work, via the memoir, Shattered (2024), and recently he appeared in the latest Bowie documentary The Final Act (2025). I'll be definitely reading more of his work, and god speed Hanif Kureishi, I wish you well.

Chess - Stefan Zweig (1942) AKA Chess Story, AKA The Royal Game

Rating: Excellent

I found my copy of Chess in my local street library, a well-loved source of great finds in the neighbourhood. The book’s eye-catching cover stood out, despite its slender 104 page-count. Stefan Zweig was a name I vaguely recognised, but I didn’t realise that the Austrian writer was one of the most popular writers in the world during the 1920’s, through the 1930s. Zweig’s story is unfortunately typical of Jewish born artists and intellectuals in central Europe during the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Zweig emigrated to England in the mid-1930s to escape Nazism, eventually settling in Brazil, where he was initially happy. Unfortunately he and his wife became so depressed by the state of war-torn Europe and humanity that they committed suicide by barbiturate overdose in 1942. Chess was the last work Zweig submitted for publication, emerging just before his death. An anonymous narrator recalls his experience aboard a passenger liner travelling from the USA to Buenos Aires, where he recognises world chess champion Mirko Czentovic. The narrator first establishes Czentovic’s background, his emergence from obscurity to being a world-renowned chess genius – an idiot savant basically. The narrator very much wishes to play Czentovic and engineers a situation, the playing of a chess game in the bar on the liner, in which to attract his attention. This ploy works, but it also attracts the attention of one Dr B., who, before long, takes up the challenge of playing the champion, with alarming results.

Stefan Zweig, contemplating the future

It is the background story of Dr B., who recounts his past experiences to the narrator during the middle section of the narrative, that is the crux of this short but affecting novella. Dr B., when living and working in Austria, is arrested by the Gestapo in order to find the whereabouts of Church assets he had helped to hide. Dr B is imprisoned in isolation for many months, with his only respite coming from the stolen contents of an instructional book on chess, which also outlines a number of famous games. Dr B., in attempting to survive captivity, plays games of chess in his mind, becoming highly skilled in the process. Such a premise allows Zweig to explore the insidious reach of Nazism, which caused untold physical damage to the world, but also emotional and psychological damage as well. The suicide of Zweig and his wife, Lotte Altmann, indicates that they very much felt the terrible psychological effects of having been driven from their home country, only to helplessly watch as Nazi Germany threatened the world with their tyranny. Dr B., who is physically safe from the Gestapo, still suffers from psychological trauma, something that emerges during his games with Czentovic. It’s a clever device; one made all the more affecting by Zweig’s precise style and the exacting brevity of the novella. Easily read in one sitting, Chess remains in your mind long after, making it a powerful artistic statement from a dark era in modern history.

Cinema Speculation - Quentin Tarantino (2022)

Rating: Excellent

Quentin Tarantino has always come across as someone who can’t keep his mouth shut, most recently he’s been rounded on for his description of Paul Dano as the worst living actor in America, among other more colourful insults. If you’ve heard Tarantino talk then you know that he is an enthusiastic and opinionated motormouth and when you read Cinema Speculation you can’t help but hear his voice, which, ultimately, is a good thing. Cinema Speculation is a blend of memoir and critical appraisal, beginning with ‘Little Q Watching Big Movies’, in which he talks candidly about his childhood brought up by his mother and being taken to the movies by her and his stepfather, and then a succession of boyfriends. Basically, Tarantino was taken to see movies in the 60’s and 70’s that he was far too young to see, and this then informed his approach to making his own movies. It’s a fascinating opening chapter, setting the scene for a foray into his favourite movies between 1968 and 1981. This is film theory, but not the kind you’re used to, it’s fast paced, both irreverent and reverent, taking no prisoners with opinions blasted from the gun used by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (1971). Tarantino starts with Bullitt (1968), a Steve McQueen feature, in which he riffs on the leading male actors of the time, claiming that Elvis could have been up there with the likes of McQueen and Paul Newman if he’d taken his movie career more seriously. Such conclusions are a feature of Cinema Speculation. Dirty Harry (1971) is next and there’s no stopping Tarantino’s motormouth and at only the third chapter in you are caught up in his endless enthusiasms, wanting to see these movies again, to see them through his eyes, with his voice running through your addled brain.

Steve McQueen as Bullitt - 1968

During each chapter he references many other actors and movies, most of them obscure and lost to time, but kept alive by cinephiles just like Tarantino. This is the kind of book to have a notepad by your side to write down all the obscure movies he mentions for later viewing. Cinema Speculation is totally digressive, but all the better for it. It’s an invaluable insight into what became known as ‘New Hollywood’, when actors and styles that had been rusted on were swept away by the likes of Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg (whom Tarantino refers to as a genius) and Francis Ford Coppola. There’s a chapter entitled – 'New Hollywood in the Seventies' that is brilliant. Tarantino loves these directors, but throughout the book he really champions the ‘Grindhouse’ and the ‘Revengeorama’ sub-genres that existed in the darker realms of movie-houses. He writes great pieces on the likes of Deliverance (1972) and Taxi Driver (1976), but also on the more obscure likes of Rolling Thunder (1977) and The Funhouse (1981), movies made by smaller studios and risk-taking directors. It’s these movies that Tarantino talks about that really make Cinema Speculation something special, to the extent that I’m going to try and watch as many of these movies as possible. They are out there, existing in the search engines of lesser streamers like Tubi or floating around in the piles of DVDs that are filling up op-shops these days (people are dumping their physical media in their droves). Ultimately Cinema Speculation leaves you with a deeper understanding of where Tarantino came from and what informed his stylistic choices when it came to his own movies. I don’t love all of Tarantino’s movies (I’m one of the few people who aren’t partial to Reservoir Dogs (1992), for example), but I do believe that he is one of the most significant writers and directors around. If you have any interest in cinema history or Tarantino, then Cinema Speculation is well worth the read.

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.

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

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.

Leviathan - Paul Auster (1992)

 

Rating: Excellent

I'd long wanted to read a Paul Auster novel, having seen his books on shelves for many years, without really knowing that much about him, other than he seemed to be a typical 'New York' writer. That phrase could be taken as a compliment, or a put down, in Autser's case it's definitely a compliment, as Leviathan is a cut above the typical narratives about kooky New Yorkers getting into scrapes. The critical opinion of Auster is that he was a significant post-modern author, using multilayered narratives, and typically exploring themes of identity, chance, the nature of truth and identity. His childhood directly influenced his writing, having witnessed a lightening strike that killed a teenager while they were on a school camp, Auster became obsessed with the role of chance in life. Leviathan explores chance through the lives of various characters, most notably the friends, Peter Aaron and Benjamin Sachs, who are both writers (Auster's protagonists are typically writers apparently). Chance events and chance meetings with other characters drives Sachs to take some radical directions in his life, all told from the perspective of the narrator, his friend Aaron. Sachs struggles with self-worth and the nature of purpose, and being a novelist ends up being viewed by him as a trite manner in which to engage with the world, instead Sachs takes a more radical path. Sachs' journey is compelling, maddening and, ultimately, tragic. 

Auster, contemplating the nature of chance

Auster's writing is dense, layered and full of tension and mystery, which makes for compelling reading. This novel really gets under your skin, you begin to live it. The unravelling of the mystery of just how Sachs ends up at the point of his ultimate fate is engaging and fascinating. Auster could really write believable and complex characters, including the female characters, such as Sachs wife, Fanny, who is also a romantic interest for Aaron. Another brilliant female character is Maria Turner, a photographer who is based on French conceptual artist, Sophie Calle. Turner is the fulcrum around which the other characters move through the complex plot, in particular Sachs, who is strongly influenced by Turner's experiments with art, chance and lifestyle. Aaron's narrative voice draws in the reader, like a story-teller around a camp fire, you want to stay with him and be pulled further into the story (or even the fire). The plotting is circular in nature, with Sachs' fate revealed at the beginning, and the path that led him there is then fleshed out by Aaron's musings and investigations. It's like a detective story with political and cultural leanings, piecing together fragments of the complex life of Sachs and his search for meaning within the context of America and its place in the world. The novel's title is a direct reference to Thomas Hobbes exploration of society and the nature of government, Leviathan (1651); some familiarity with its themes would help decipher Auster's Leviathan, although it's not essential. Appropriately the novel begins with a dedication to DonDello, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, who is also another 'New York' writer who transcends that label. Auster and DeLillo were friends, but on the evidence of this novel, they were certainly also equals. It's such a pity that Auster passed away in 2024, but at least there's his rich body of work, of which I'll be reading more of in the coming years, and so should you.

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

 

Rating: Excellent

It's been some twenty five years since I last read Arthur C. Clarke's work. As a teenager and beyond I must have read at least a dozen of his novels, but I never got around to reading Childhood's End. Somehow I even missed out on encountering any hint regarding its plot or themes, and for that I am grateful. It has long been regarded as a true science fiction masterpiece, despite many of its tropes becoming science fiction cliches in the ensuing decades. Essentially an alien invasion narrative, Childhood's End begins with the space race, but not that one, instead it begins with an opening chapter that Clarke rewrote in 1990, replacing a competitive cold war race to land on the moon, with a united effort to reach Mars in the twenty-first century; until it is interrupted by the arrival of massive alien spacecraft that hover over the major cities of the world. Sounds familiar? Such a scenario has been played out countless times, particularly in the TV series V (1983, 1984-85) and the godawful movie, Independence Day (1996). Fortunately Clarke's approach is far more subtle, intelligent, philosophical and powerful. The aliens remain hidden for the first third of the novel, instead they direct humanity from behind the scenes into a utopian age in which all suffering ceases and world peace endures. I'd forgotten just how good Clarke's writing was, he was certainly stylistically sound, but more significantly he really knew how to build suspense and create an expectation that the secrets that are bubbling away under the surface would be worth the wait. This is exactly how it played out for me, not knowing the true nature of the aliens, dubbed the 'Overlords' by humanity, the reveal that arrives a third of the way through the novel was impactful and satisfying. 

Arthur C. Clarke - master of suspense

Childhood's End contains themes that Clarke would explore later in his career, but here the notion of a transcendent higher power comes with definite uncertainty as to just how benevolent it really is, unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which there seems to be a no stings attached evolutionary assist from higher powers. The Overlords themselves appear consistently benevolent throughout, however Clarke gives subtle hints as to what is really going on throughout the novel. When an Overlord known as Rashaverak attends a party at the residence of a man called Rupert Boyce and is found to be perusing his large collection of books on the paranormal, you can't help but be intrigued as to what is really going on. Clarke takes his time to let the reader in on the secret, something some modern readers can get impatient about, perhaps confirmed by some of the comments on Goodreads, with a couple of readers remarking that the novel is "tedious to get through". Actually the novel is perfectly paced, with the reveals regarding the Overlord's planet of origin, their ultimate role in Earth's fate and the nature of that fate itself, coming as well timed rewards for a little bit of patience. Childhood's End is an almost perfect science fiction novel and is rightly regarded as Clarke's best, it was also the moment when Clarke broke through as a novelist, both critically and commercially. On completion I was left with feelings of both wonder, and a nameless dread. Despite the unscientific paranormal elements Clarke utilises in the novel, the hard science aspects are sound, and given what we now know about the nature of the universe (that most of what is going on in the cosmos is a total mystery), the notion that we could at some stage be ultimately confronted by the shocking truth of the true nature of existence is not beyond the realms of possibility.