Meanwhile, elsewhere…

In the meantime, before I get on to the next juicy little tidbit, here’s what I’ve read. This is the stuff that I’ve liked well enough, but just hasn’t quite electrified my mind.

Tsu-Ming Teo, Behind the Moon

I’ve got a lot of time, and a lot of love for Western Sydney literature. I’m a Westie, I still work in those big badlands, and there’s a whole world of stories and voices – often startlingly accented –  there that struggle to be heard in the wider world. This one is set in Strathfield, and follows three young people through those horrid years of early adulthood, when it’s still not certain who you are and what the world is. The dialogue is lovely, and often hilarious, and it’s a book with a lot of heart – but no danger and not enough dash to really grab me.

Thea Astley, Reaching Tin River

I love Thea Astley, and think she’s one of our most underrated writers. And this book had me from its opening lines:

I am looking for a one-storey town, with trees, river, hills, and a population of under two thousand, one of whom must be called Gaden Lockyer. Or.

Mother was a drummer in her own al-women group, a throbber of a lady with midlife zest and an off-centre smile. Or.

I have decided to make a list of all the convent girls who learnt to play ‘The Rustle of Spring’ by Christian Sinding between 1945 and 1960.

Three alternative opening statements, all perfectly fitting. It’s a beautifully quirky book, about obsession, dissatisfaction, nostalgia and fantasy. And I bought it on my Summer holiday at Vinnies for one dollar. Gold.

A.S. Byatt, Sugar

Possession is one of my ‘comfort books’ – books that I can read again and again, when I need something snuggly and dependable. Which is why I borrowed Sugar from a friend’s bookshelves. I just love raiding other people’s shelves. And these are smart and sexy stories, sometimes folkloric or mythic, but really, only the last of them – the title story – had the dazzling complexity and challenge that I expected from Byatt. It’s a digressive and fragmentary story of family myths and lies, remembered as a relative lies dying in a Dutch hospital. And it’s brilliant. I would have loved it as a novella all its own.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

I think I waited too long to read this, and had heard so many hyped-up reviews that my disappointment was almost inevitable. I did love the spare and brutal language, the incredible stripping back of every word and mark of punctuation not needed, the strange similes. But there’s a terrifying spareness of narrative as well. Goddamn it, nothing happens.

Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives

I’ve decided that Bolano is a bit like Entourage. Guys think it’s fantastic. Rave about it. Just love it. Because it’s a big male dream – a glamourous fantasy of wealth, women and fame. Women, on the other hand, enjoy it perfectly well, but don’t go losing their heads over it. The poet characters in this book are living the Beat dream. They drop out of uni, they bicker, they wander. They hang about in cafes and bars and pick up women and smoke and drink and plot to kidnap Octavio Paz. It’s glorious, and terribly funny, but I do think it’s a very masculine imagining, and so didn’t find the books as life-changing as a friend of mine had warned. That said, it’s an incredibly dexterous and skillful book, the gradual unfolding of facts is so masterfully controlled through a series of dramatic monologues that are nothing short of virtuosic. I have a favourite section, where each of these begins with ‘The thing about poets is…’ and then romps through a story of wild behaviour and betrayal. And it’s also a keen and witty portrayal of writerly cliques, and the tiffs and hissy fits that they throw. It did make me long for a place where poetry matters as much as it does here, for poetry that is the bread and butter of such lives…