This week’s fiction ranges across feminist revenge to pulp-fiction tropes and gritty Australian noir, while our non-fiction selection includes Paul Keating, the local housing crisis and cannibalism at sea. Something, then, for everyone...
Fiction
Crescendo by Robert J. Harris (Polygon, $23)
Robert J. Harris launches a struggling writer into the domain of Alfred Hitchcock in this novel, which is full of the director’s favourite tropes, including damsels in distress, mistaken identities, and psychological trauma. When Bobby Burgoyne is hired by Hitchcock to work on a screenplay for the (fictional) movie Crescendo, he’s delighted by the opportunity to prove himself, but soon a series of unfortunate events starts to plague the film set, and Burgoyne is tasked with the extra job of trying to figure out who’s trying to sabotage the production. “Someone is out to murder my movie,” deadpans the director. Bobby teams up with a former lover, who’s also a gun newspaper reporter, and the two get into all manner of dangerous scrapes, all the while “cracking the wise” in their repartee. Harris informs his novel with the charm, glamour, and seediness of 1950s Hollywood; there are car chases and cigarettes aplenty. And while this novel is a tribute to the pulp fiction of yore as well as the oeuvre of Hitchcock, its twisty plot is well conceived and executed.
Mayfly Season by Matthias Jügler, translated by Jo Heinrich (The Indigo Press, $25)
Based on historical events, this novella-sized book — a bestseller in Germany —packs an emotional punch. In spare, considered prose, Matthias Jügler tells the story of Hans and his wife Katrin, whose newborn son, Daniel, is reported to have died hours after his birth in 1978 in East Germany. Katrin never accepted the authorities’ verdict, and her suspicions, coupled with Hans’ Stoic stonewalling, led to the dissolution of their marriage. Forty years later, an unexpected phone call reveals that their child is very much alive. Interspersed between the tense narrative of lost and found are more bucolic descriptions of seasonal changes and fishing. These may seem incongruous, but for Hans, a keen angler, the patterns in the natural world provide stability in an unpredictable world. In times of confusion and despair, contemplating and witnessing the migration and spawning habits of fish offer distraction and solace. Mayfly Season is a quiet, contemplative book, and a reminder that “something doesn’t cease to exist just because it’s always out of sight”.
Just like the Night by Michael Caleb Tasker (Allen & Unwin, $35)
Sera’s been in prison for 8½ years, and is now out on parole. Though she aspires to “go citizen”, find an honest paying job and blend into society again, two factors mitigate against her. She was brought up by a grifter father, a card shark who plied his trade across America, and her daughter, Lena, is involved in hustling scams of her own. It’s not long before Sera is drawn into the dark side again. Set in Sydney, Just like the Night is a violent tale of three generations beset by crime and the struggle to break old habits and go clean. “There were so many ways to make easy money,” Sera reflects, but later, she realises there were equally as many ways for things to go wrong. Written in spare prose, the narrative moves back and forth between Sera’s past and present to explore both the stain of familial influence and the sacrifice of maternal love. As noir as it gets, with its gritty setting and morally compromised characters.
Natural Selection by Clare Edge (Bloomsbury, $20)
Natural Selection cleverly riffs on that viral hypothetical TikTok question that asks whether women prefer to be alone in the woods with a wild bear or a strange man. Clare Edge’s novel is a feminist revenge thriller with supernatural elements that explores generational misogyny and sexual misconduct in a rural town ruled by guns and machismo. When three teenagers, Outlaw, Megan, and Bee, team together to punish a fellow student for his misbehaviour, they unwittingly set off a course of events in which predator becomes prey. The death toll soon grows. Divided into points of view of each of the three girls, the narrative captures a town so beset with male privilege, entitlement, and abuse that the women’s preference would always be the bear. How they wreak vengeance and reclaim their safety, however, makes for an interesting take on girl power; this YA thriller for older teens is a timely tale told in urgent bursts of hurt and outrage.
The Heights by Ian Rankin (Hachette, $35)
The Heights is a fancy high-rise in London, the domain of the cashed-up and elite, but when a humble night-shift concierge is found murdered in the lobby, it’s up to Detective Sergeant Gillian Gish and her team to figure out the culprit. This novel is Ian Rankin’s first standalone thriller in 20 years, so one expects something special, however, it’s a little disappointing that it reads like a typical police procedural, with the requisite plot twists and red herrings. There’s nothing wrong with it — Rankin keeps the narrative moving along — but the pacing is slow, and the suspense dialled down as the occupants of the building and their associates are methodically interviewed, and authorities follow various leads. The suspects include a pop star, an actress, a Russian oligarch, a gangster, and an art dealer – many of whom have reason to kill the concierge. Not surprisingly, the rich and affluent have resources at their disposal to hide their secrets. But the book’s tagline, “the higher you rise, the further you fall,” has resonance.
Non-fiction
Grand Ambition by James Curran (Simon & Schuster, $50)
The phrase that inevitably comes to mind in any discussion of Paul Keating’s career is “big picture”, a phrase often spoken by the right with a sneer, and invoked by much of the left as a badge of honour. Professor James Curran, in this deeply informed study, examines Keating’s vision for an independent Australia – the republic, Indigenous reconciliation and our place in Asia. But it’s also a study of Keating himself, with all his contradictions. Fittingly, he begins with the 27-year-old Keating, newly arrived in parliament, standing at Churchill’s grave, paying homage to his hero. Never mind that Churchill was an Empire man down to his bootstraps; to Keating, he was the embodiment of leadership, especially having the courage of your convictions and being prepared to take risks. Woven into this is the paradox of Keating the European aesthete and his insistence on the country finding its place in Asia. An astute, analytical portrait of one of the most singular figures in Australian politics.
The Shortest History of Dublin by Gillian O’Brien (Black Inc, $28)
Towards the end of Gillian O’Brien’s cameo portrait of Dublin (“Black Pool”, from the Gaelic), she invites the reader to walk in the shoes of fictional characters Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus from James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, and follow their meanderings across the city as described in the novel. Many of the landmarks have, of course, changed. But, she maintains, the essence of the place remains and “retains the same capacity for encounter, coincidence and renewal”. It tells us two key things about her approach – emphasis on the spirit of place, and the rich contribution of the arts in creating the cultural identity of the city. Along the way, in engaging prose, she charts Dublin’s rise from a Viking outpost in the 800s, through massive changes brought about by the Reformation, the fight for independence and the civil war, to the cosmopolitan city that it is today. Dublin, almost like a character constantly reinventing itself, emerges as a place of paradox and contradiction. If you’ve never been there, this is the kind of history that might inspire you to go.
Our Place by Matt Lloyd-Cape (La Trobe University Press, $37)
While Matt Lloyd-Cape recognises that the current government has put more money into housing than any since the 1990s, and acknowledges the daring and breadth of Jim Chalmer’s budget changes aimed at addressing the housing crisis – basically abolishing the rort of negative gearing and scrapping the CGT discount – he says more still needs to be done. Moreover, in this surprisingly upbeat study, he argues that our approach needs to be rethought so that we see it in terms of the big national picture. This crisis impacts so many aspects of daily life: birth rates, crime rates, job mobility and mental health. It also impacts our politics, facilitating simplistic populism like One Nation. But, he says, we have faced just such a crisis before in the post-WWII years, when PM Ben Chifley and the brilliant Nugget Coombs devised the Commonwealth Housing Commission, which, combined with Menzies’ measures, made Australia a world beater in terms of housing. A timely, jargon-free study.
Captain’s Dinner by Adam Cohen (Bedford Square, $37)
When Sydney lawyer John Henry Want bought a yacht in England in 1883 and hired a four-man crew to sail it back to Sydney, he couldn’t have known the chain of events he’d set in motion. The yacht sank, and the starving crew drifted for three weeks. On the 23rd day, the captain proposed they kill the cabin boy, Parker, who was semi-conscious and ill from drinking seawater. Soon the captain and first mate were feasting on Parker’s warm blood, liver and heart. They had committed murder and were officially cannibals – but protected by the tradition (or, so they thought) of a quaint old notion called “custom of the sea”. When they fetched up in England and told everyone their story, they were astonished to find themselves arrested for murder. The resulting case – the Crown Vs Dudley and Stephens – became one of the most celebrated in Western legal history. Cohen, a former New York Times journalist, tells the story almost with a pervasive air of disbelief while also being alive to the gravity of his themes.
The Remarkable Greig Sisters by Iola Mathews (Monash University Publishing, $33)
We take women doctors and lawyers for granted now, but as this meticulously documented history of Jane, Janet and Flos Greig reveals, it was a hard-won right. Mathews (the sisters’ great-niece) takes the reader on a sweeping journey from Scotland to Australia in the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th, charting the lives of three intelligent, ambitious and determined women who chose professional lives in medicine and law over roles of wives and mothers (although one nearly married). Encouraged by their father, the family moved to Melbourne in 1889 because Melbourne University had begun taking female medical students. Jane and Janet not only studied medicine (often to furious opposition), but established medical practices and were instrumental in establishing institutions like the Queen Victoria Hospital for women and children. Flos, the first woman to practise law in Australia, became a royal commissioner. A keyhole onto the times as well, this is a richly detailed (sometimes too much) group portrait of bravery, struggle and triumph.