Tag Archives: Australian Fiction

Spinifex Press and Finola Moorhead’s Modern Classic

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A Handwritten Modern Classic by Finola Moorhead. Spinifex Press 2013. (First Published by Post Neo Books 1982).

handwritten

From the original 1982 Post Neo edition

I must have read Finola Moorhead’s A Handwritten Modern Classic just after it was published in 1982. It was one of those books that you never forget. It was handwritten not typed.

HANDWRITTEN!

I had to relearn how to read this book. I started as if this was just another book but by the second paragraph I had tripped over words and landed flat on my face.

Finola’s handwriting is not that hard to read (compared to mine for example) but I had to approach the text in a different manner, I had to read more closely, and I had to reread just to make sure… those last two letters are they ‘th’ or a strange ‘r’? Is the word “death” or “dear”? Reread the sentence…ah must be death!

But once you crack the code you are in!! And it’s a wonderful place to be (whether it is 1982 or 2013!) and the Post Neo edition has held a special place on my bookshelf for decades.

A Handwritten Modern Classic is a manifesto, it is (at times) handwritten poetry disguised as prose. Interestingly it still seems contemporary – Malcolm Fraser may not be PM but the issues remain the same. Above all it asks questions about writing and literature that we still need to ask today.

It is exciting that Spinifex has republished this small press classic – and brought it to the attention of a new generation, a new group of readers and writers. It will be interesting to see how it is received 30 years after Pete Spence and Post Neo Books decided to publish a handwritten manifesto – a classic even then!

Rochford Street Review is proud to be able to publish berni m janssen’s extraordinary launch speech for this ‘classic’ of Australian literature and is over the moon at being able to publish Finola Moorhead’s own thoughts on her classic becoming a classic!

- Mark Roberts

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A Handwritten Modern Classic is available from Spinifex Press http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=219/

The thinking about writing: berni m janssen launches Finola Moorhead’s A Handwritten Modern Classic

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A Handwritten Modern Classic by Finola Moorhead. Spinifex Press. 2013. First published by Post Neo Books 1982.

a-handwritten-modern-classic


In 1977 Finola was writing the everything of her living, in her own hand, in a small notebook and this is The Handwritten Modern Classic. She was writing of her living, her thinking about her living, the thinking about writing, and writing all of this – this everything of Finola’s living at that time.

I first read the Handwritten Modern Classic in the eighties, and was delighted and my delight has been re-ignited.

Simone Weil says ‘attention is love’ and Finola is attending, attending to the everything of her living, and this everything so interesting and of interest, we feel Finola loving; living, thinking, writing, everything. We are immersed in this close attending of everything that is so interesting and it is in this that a present, a now, that continues to be now, is composed.

In The Handwritten that present is still so now, continuing into this present

In the handwritten the writer is always present: present in the writing of the hand

In the handwritten the voice of the writer is printed. The handwriting a voiceprint.

The handwriting composing the voice in a continuous present that we are reading now.

And so present, that my delight continues.

But, what a cheek Finola has! To name her writing a classic as she is writing it, well before she is dead. What a tongue in cheek she has! She is poking her tongue at capital H History, capital L Literature, capital A Authority and all capitalisation! Amongst other things.

Finola says

- it is political to write a handwritten modern classic -

In 1977, feminism spoke of the personal as political, and so Finola writing the everything of her living is a political act. As a writer, thinker, feminist, lesbian, protestor, questioning, questioning the everything of living, outspoken, critiquing; this places her outside of the mainstream, on the outer. Standing on the outer is a way to look in, look at, closely. Standing on the outer, looking in, so many minute details, filter in to focus, out. Pass.

She is writing of the everything of living in that time of 1977 – the politics of politics, the politics of living, the politics of thinking, of being, of relationships, of communication; thinking about and questioning the everything of living – writing, freedom, rules, roles, genius, romantics, literature, philosophy, alienation, imagination, insanity and sanity, of what is correct, of escape, of sarcasm, expression, failure, success, of barricades, a little seventies literati gos , an occasional portrait, wry observations, and of conversations with mother, lovers, friends and of speaking of language unbound in a Fitzroy laundromat. What a gritty hilarious romp it is!

As Gertrude says –

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition.

(Composition as Explanantion)

Finola pays respect to her lineage. Nods to the thinkers and literary forebears: Austen, Woolfe, Simone Weil, Marcuse, Wittgenstein, Coleridge, Tolstoy, Eliot. We feel this continuity. And of course, the entire composition, more than a nod to Gertrude Stein. It’s a rigorous conversation with Gertrude’s Composition as Explanation.

The Handwritten makes us laugh, sigh, groan, roar in protest, escape into, deeply, deeply into, the thinking and the imagining and the writing. As Finola says ‘imagination is best employed on what is’.

I am breath-taken, breathless by the scope, the attention, the detail, and the writing – the language so wonderfully composed. Composing the everything of a living, in words elastic, precise, evocative; playing playful. A sentence being more.

The Handwritten Modern Classic is difficult to read. We are unfamiliar now with handwriting – an idiosyncratic flow of script. Finola’s handwriting loops and lurches across the page. You must pause whilst reading to distinguish an ‘i’ or an ‘l’, one must pause in the reading of the writing, take time to be with the writing, in a way that text typed, text texted does not.

We pause in the irregularity. Pause to decipher, and in those moments of pausing, we are ciphering the word, rolling it around, and the word is clarifying and as the word clarifies the sentence has formed and nestled in our consciousness. The act of ciphering the hand, makes space for the intensity of thinking, of thinking of living, of questioning the thinking of living and the writing is living with us, as close as it can be.

This writing makes us stop to think, and in the pause of reading we are thinking, as Finola has been thinking through her writing of her living. She is not only thinking of how the writing is to be written but how her living and thinking of her living and her writing of her thinking of living is written. We pause in the loops of the handwritten, as we pause in the loops and twists of living, and the loops and twists and returns of thinking. We return again and again. We must start again, in reading and thinking, and reading the writing of living and thinking.

As Gertrude says, writing is often not recognised at the time it is written whilst it is very contemporary and exciting, but that often it must wait some thirty years or more before it can be recognised. And this is mostly when the writer is dead. Long dead. However once it has been accepted after it has been refused, and the writing is still contemporary and exciting, this is what makes it a classic.

Finola has us in her now of the living of these days in 1977. There is a freshness still, a beauty of the moment, a now that continues into now, that makes it a classic. A classic does not have wrinkles in its words, nor dust collected in the serifs. Unless placed there, with intent.

Gertrude says that a classic is wonderfully beautiful, after many have found that it has been annoying, difficult, stimulating. Some see the beauty whilst it is still annoying difficult and stimulating. Others will never see beauty in such.

A classic endures time.

Fresh as it was then, we are in the present of her writing of her living of everything and it is a delight, and the delight also makes it a classic.

And so Finola, who with tongue in cheek, nodding to her philosophical and literary lineage, with imagination, attention and foresight wrote The Handwritten Modern Classic. She wrote this from the outer, from the other side of the law, and as Gertrude has said you are an outlaw, until you become a classic.

As I was reading, I was noting so many lines, sentences, thoughts that delighted me and that I wanted to quote -so many hilarious quotable lines that I wanted to share, to sprinkle through these launching words, but they became so thick, I may as well have read you the book, so better you buy it and trip with this handwritten, pause in its stimulating difficult beauty, living in the writing of the living and the thinking of the living and the writing of the everything. Buy this book, so that you can begin and begin again, for the continuing delight of it. Gertrude would be well pleased with this classic composition!

- berni m janssen

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The Handwritten Modern Classic is available from Spinifex Press http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=219/

“How little we change! How much we change!” – Thoughts on new edition of A Handwritten Modern Classic – Finola Moorhead

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Finola Moorhead at the (re)launch of A Handwritten Modern Classic - Collected Works Bookshop Melbourne.

Finola Moorhead at the (re)launch of A Handwritten Modern Classic – Collected Works Bookshop Melbourne.

Notebooks with mock leather covers, looking like a Reader’s Digest edition of the Complete Works of, say, Thomas Hardy, called, I think, “modern classics”, were sold in newsagents. There were neither lines nor words within. Di Wilson gave me one. She had suffered me writing my first novel, Lots Of Potential. I have an elusive memory-feeling that this notebook was an ironic present. Di shared with my mother a rich vein of sarcasm. I play those curly balls with a straight bat. I do, and being a sportswoman, I know what I mean. Being a sportswoman never ever sat with the full package of “being a writer”. Being a writer meant that you were an indoorsy person who read well and didn’t mind the sound of your own voice. My voice does not have a particularly pleasant timbre. Like the disappointing image in the mirror, the sound of my voice on radio makes me recoil blushing and rushing outside to hit a ball. Hitting a ball with a straight bat means, when metaphorically referring to a response to sarcasm addressed to myself, is nodding and seriously doing what is sardonically suggested, that is, stepping to the pitch (for those ignorant of cricket = where the ball bounces) to disempower the spin, not aggressively trying to whack it for runs. But whack it for runs, it seems, is what I have done. Ania Walwicz said to Kris Hemensley some time between 1972 and 1977 about me, “Who can believe a writer in a tracksuit?”, a little thing I have remembered all these years because she nailed my problem. What the f*ck am I doing pretending to be a writer when I don’t look/act/seem like one? .Forty years on I reckon I know what would have ensued had I been believable in the sense that Ania meant. I don’t think I have to explain that to readers of the Rochford Street Review, but I really don’t mind not being invited to speak and read at Writer’s Weeks or Festivals, judge literary prizes, give my opinion on the best books written in a given year, teach creative writing, hunger for residencies, grants and so on. So much of that is what you seem, not what you are, or what you wrote exactly. It drove me mad and it does drive me crazy when I am interviewed by someone who has not taken the time to read what I’ve written enough to understand or appreciate what I did.

What I did in terms of literature is important to me; the how, where, why of the what. What my sportswomen-friends read is not what I write, though, dear literary folk, they do read, a lot; an amazing amount. Their opinions are fierce on who is best, better and good; they are talking about plot. Plot is what I am not good at, though I do try. What I love is how a story, or feeling, or insight, or record unfolds, how the writer explains and describes. I love structure, form, philosophy subtley embedded in metaphor, symbol and action. What literary writers like is language, and I love them for that, but English for me is like a second tongue even though I have no other. That, ironically, is why I am a writer.

Kris Hemensley, forty years ago, like he is now in owning Collected Works, was a person as place. He was where we who wanted to explore the possibilities of writing gravitated as villagers might gather and chat at the well; outside the establishment, the houses and offices of standards where stamps of approval were given in relation to accepted, tried and true values of literature as taught in universities and schools. He gave Melbourne its avante garde in the literary genre by being open and versed in what was being done in England, America and Europe in the moment of the 60s and 70s, and publishing new work in any way he could. I was lucky enough to visit that well and drink from its licence.

So freed from being a short-story writer, or playwright, — my poetry was always over-blown and declamatory – I could set about writing “writing”, as we called it at the well. What was verse? What was prose? Was it grammatical? Did punctuation matter? These were good questions. But I don’t think I ever really “got it”, which means I had a fundamental problem with post-modernism. Women’s Liberation had thrown a spanner in the works in that, suddenly, the track-suit (even though I didn’t own one) made sense to other people, women. So by 1975 my image fitted in with a mob while my writing could develop in another intellectual direction. By 1980 I had worked out that I could write fiction with a female aesthetic using the allowances afforded me by being for a short while in the company of men who were writing great stuff which changed literature for the rest of the century.

In between these two was the serendipitous gift of a notebook and the writing in 3 weeks in 1977 of A Handwritten Modern Classic whose first edition has a print-run of one. For all those apparently sane people who collect things, especially rare books this one is the very definition of unique. Start bidding. In 1985 it was published by Pete Spence, who opted in his concrete-poetic way to keep the hand-writing. When Spinifex Press brought out the hard copy for their e-book publication of it this year, I read my “classic” again and it’s cute, it’s crazy, it’s readable; it is the picture of a thirty-year old’s mind, which I recognise as mine.

How little we change! How much we change! We can never have that opinionated energy again; a certain sort of poetry is ever youthful. By poetry I mean a delightful marriage of words, fresh, like the first taste of an avocado; an experience of literature which feels like teenage love. Maybe the wearing down of the sandstone, aging, can result in something sculpturally nice; the sharp edges of criticism smoothed by the wisdom that one must accept that people need their illusions, their ideals now not much more than words spoken, that tolerance is a part of the caution we have learnt to survive, we are more circumspect with what we commit to paper. The re-issue of A Handwritten Modern Classic has brought home to me the importance of being true to your age, when putting thoughts into words for others to read.

- Finola Moorhead

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A Handwritten Modern Classic is available from Spinifex Press http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=219/

What does satisfaction feel like?: Miriam Zolin reviews Tarcutta Wake by Josephine Rowe

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Tarcutta Wake by Josephine Rowe. UQP 2012

tarcutta wakeIn our first world comfort zone, we’ve mostly forgotten what it feels like to have an empty belly. That kind of hunger is mostly something we’ve found a way to solve. But there are other hungers, and it is these yearnings for a those other kinds of sustenance that Josephine Rowe tackles in Tarcutta Wake. This collection of short stories, snippets and slices pares back the layers of her characters’ lives to describe – with metaphor and indirect gaze – the human ache to be the weft in something’s weave.

Tarcutta sits at the mid-point between Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. It’s in New South Wales, on the Hume Highway and up until relatively recently was the main road route between the two centres. Four hundred and fifty six kilometres from Melbourne and 438 kilometres from Sydney: whether or not you stop there, the secret of its position has the pull of the symmetrically symbolic. (Few ever stopped there, I gather – and even fewer now that it’s been bypassed by a dual carriageway freeway). I could not help making the leap, as I read and re-read this collection, extrapolating out from Tarcutta to ‘mid-point’ and leaping out from there to ‘limbo’. The story that names the collection is at least in part about being past the midway point – it touches on aging and death – so maybe I’m reading too much into nothing, but that’s something Rowe’s stories tend to lead us to. Our species has a kind of inbuilt hunger for stories, and we are good at filling in the gaps, even if we’d rather someone did it for us.

On my desk at home I have stack of other peoples’ photos. They are old, faded and sepia. I bought a vintage album and they were in it but because I bought the album for the album, and because I couldn’t bear to discard these pictures of real people, I keep them in a stack tied with ribbon and I reach out to look at them from time to time, between other things. I can see just enough in them to be tantalised by who they might be and what their stories might be, but knowing is impossible; they are completely out of context. A man in a suit with a brick wall and climbing roses behind him holds his trumpet in his left hand, against his midriff. A buxom older lady with a tight bodice glares into the camera. A family of five stare at me from the centre of a dirt road – a strange little group in the middle of nowhere, all dressed up for civilisation and only gumtrees all around. These photos have a similar effect on me to Rowe’s collection. Her pieces are like snapshots, full of intricate detail and deftly drawn characters. Her people are fleshed out in delicate brushstrokes, and we feel we almost know them, but she is all show and no tell. In ‘Into The Arms Of The Parade’ a model takes a break from sitting for a portrait. She is intrigued by the artist’s existence, and wishes she could turn over a postcard she sees on the shelf: ‘I thought that if I could only flip it over and read what was on the back, I might be able to know something about her.’ The model is experiencing something like I experienced when I read the story with her in it. I wanted the back of the postcard.

Another story, ‘Heart of Gold’ is narrated by a puzzled observer of some strange and unexplained behaviour. The piece finishes with the line, ‘We tried our best to make sense of it.’ As did I. I turned that page back and forth, reading the story over and over again to try and make sense of it. The piece became more and more beautiful the more I read it – I believe I could recite it now, if prompted. But the meaning I yearned for was out of reach.

The paradox of Rowe’s writing is that even as she stops short of rounding out her pieces to something we could recognise as a ‘story’, you do sense that you are in safe hands. She has a gentle, assured touch, a deep understanding of what it means to be searching and lost. But she draws no conclusions. Without a doubt, her portraits of people and circumstance create a clear, true picture, each authentic in its simplicity and complexity, poetic in its language. But they are only portraits. The story is somewhere else.

And no, there is nothing unfinished about this collection. The writing is all beautiful – breathtakingly so. But it does have incompleteness about it. These stories will not help you find answers to your questions. They will not provide you with explanations. They will, instead, push you gently to the window and remind you to keep searching for a way to satisfy your own very human need to connect.

- Miriam Zolin

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Miriam Zolin’s writing has recently appeared in PenTales, Griffith Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Book Review and The Sleepers Almanac.

Tarcutta Wake is availble from http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1206/Tarcutta%20Wake

For another view of Tarcutta Wake see Lyndon Walker’s resposnse Practicing for the Novel: Lyndon Walker reflects on Tarcutta Wake by Josephine Rowe

Issue 6: November 2012 – February 2013 Contents

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Two Visual Poems by Cornelis Vleeskens from his book ” A h ! “ Redfox Press 2011 (http://www.redfoxpress.com/dada-vleeskens.html). Thanks to Katherine Blackwell for the use of these images.

Abortion, desertion, corruption, self-interest, revenge and the need for justice: Petrina Meldrum reviews ‘The Tower Mill’ by James Moloney

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The Tower Mill by James Moloney. QUP 2012

Tower MillThe Tower Mill is James Moloney’s first attempt at writing for adults. His reputation as one of Australia’s best known and well respected writers for children and young adults precedes him.

In the early stages of the novel we can be forgiven for feeling we are reading a YA novel as Moloney’s two main characters, Tom Riley, and Susan Kinnane (Tom’s mother), recount, from their own points of view, the history of their somewhat unconventional lives. Mother and son are given alternating sections within each chapter to tell their story, and although Tom, now an adult, is looking back, trying to make sense of how he feels about his mother’s role in his life, and Susan’s story is running forward, starting in 1968 when she is still a schoolgirl, and finishing in 2003; their stories are chronologically matched throughout, a structure that works extremely well. We are left to put the story of these two lives together and draw our own conclusions.

It is through the story, as we watch the characters mature emotionally, that we become aware of the shift from a young adult to an adult voice, a process that Moloney perhaps needed to go through himself in its writing, and which he has carried off with aplomb.

The backdrop for the story is Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland at a pivotal point in 1971 when the Springboks Rugby Team came to Brisbane and met with anti-apartheid protests. These, in turn, were met by the declaration of a State of Emergency, and followed by excessive force meted out by Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s police-force. There are political references throughout the novel; for those who have no prior knowledge of this era in Queensland’s history, the references do no more than whet the appetite, while, for those who lived through it, they provide a time for reflection. In view of Queensland’s present political climate, The Tower Mill could be read as a cautionary tale about where voter complacency can lead.

The book takes its title from The Tower Mill, a convict tower which gave its name to the hotel where the Springboks stayed while on tour. The protests took place outside the Hotel. Moloney has a fictional event take place, during a protest, that has a momentous effect on Tom’s life and that of his mother, Susan. We become involved, not always sympathetically, as we follow the consequences of the events that took place on that dark night in 1971.

Tom is the character most emotionally damaged by what happened that night. He never knew his father. He never felt his mother’s love. But the alternative would have been worse. From his point of view Susan always kept him at arms length; his brief encounters with her in his teen years felt more instructional than loving – how to be an activist – how to thumb your nose at authority – how not to conform. Susan might have been trying to open his mind beyond the conventional life he was leading with Mike Riley, the man he calls Dad, but for Tom, a teenager looking for a way into his mother’s heart, it was not what he was longing to hear.

Susan is a person with a vision of where her life should lead, and, like many who opt to follow their chosen path no matter what, she makes sacrifices that impact on others and leaves them to cope as they will. Her strong feminist views will do little to endear today’s readers who view gender politics in a more balanced way, but Susan is of her time and this needs to be taken into consideration. The characters whose lives she touches are left to pick up the pieces, not least the man she marries out of convenience, Mike Riley, a poet and English teacher. He becomes Tom’s surrogate father when Susan chooses to leave him and Tom and become a ‘political exile’ after receiving a letter, the contents of which are withheld from Mike until close to the end of the novel. If there is a weak point in the plot, I feel this is it. The content of the letter does not warrant the secrecy. If Susan were true to character, whatever the obstacles, whatever the outcome, she would have pursued the man responsible for taking away the life of her lover and Tom’s biological father, to the end. She would not have used it as an excuse to leave Brisbane for Sydney.

That said, The Tower Mill will not disappoint. We are left with plenty to think about long after we have put it down. The issues are huge: abortion, desertion, corruption, self-interest, the desire for revenge and the need for justice. Moloney has left Tom’s lack of willingness to agree to forgive and move on at the end of the novel open enough to allow him a way into a sequel, and to allow to Tom to take up the cause for justice his mother failed to pursue. I for one would look forward to reading it.

- Petrina Meldrum

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Petrina Meldrum is a Tasmanian based writer currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Tasmania. Her short stories for adults and children have appeared in a number of publications. She is presently working on a novel.

The Tower Mill is avaialble from http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1210/The%20Tower%20Mill

Risk Taking and Fast-paced Comedy: Heather Taylor Johnson reviews ‘Pangamonium’ by Zanesh Catkin

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Pangamonium by Zanesh Catkin. MidnightSun Publishing 2012

Let’s begin with the cover: it’s shocking pink with black silhouettes of an inverted man, gun and elephant, and there is a dildo in place of the ‘i’ in its title, Pangamonium. Seriously a standout at any bookstore. Now, for the farce that lay inside….

Francis Germaine is a freelance writer whose occupation just took a very wrong turn in Africa to a culturally arid country, shaped like a kidney with a central question mark, called Panga. It is here, while in jail for a mismatched suitcase full of dildos, he meets Easter, an African who is in search of pirate treasure in the form of his grandfather’s own booty. While Germaine agrees to join Easter, for purely financial gains, the two become enmeshed in taking down a dodgy sex toy factory (what other type of sex toy factory would one expect?) which literally chains its underage workers to the job. Joining them is a Amila – a librarian who really needed to get out – and her destined lover Daeid – a Bollywood fanatic.

Though Pangamonium deals with major post colonial issues of capitalism in a third world country and child slavery, debut author Zanesh Catkin has written a fast-paced comedy. The narrative lends itself to many laugh-out-loud moments, and though I wanted to, and felt I needed to, I failed to fall prey to 90% of the jokes. But I don’t think it is reason enough for me to say the book isn’t funny. The book is very funny. It’s funny in its premise, it’s funny in its structure (the indexes, especially), it’s funny in its literary quirks (particularly the bastardised intertextuality) and it’s funny all the way back to the author’s imaginary origin we have no choice but to call his ‘bio’. There were times I began thinking that the book could be so much more if only there was more genuine tragedy, but that is pure bullocks on my part. There is plenty of tragedy in this book, only it is paraded around in near slapstick drag. If the tragedy of this book is that the tragedy isn’t tragic enough, then that is a tragic assessment, because to say this book should be or could be anything other than what it is – a political spoof, and a literary one, at that – really points to the pretenses of the critic, and if that were the case I would have to come back with, ‘then you write the book it should’ve / could’ve been; see if you can do something better’.

This is an adventure story, no doubt, and though I found it initially difficult to get into (there were days at a time when I didn’t pick it up, proving it to be a chore rather than a joy), something happened, and I’m not sure where it happened exactly, but something happened that made it ultimately difficult to put down. Either I had caught on or it had caught on or everything had simply fallen into place, but reading the book became an adventure in itself. And speaking of adventure, this is MidnightSun’s second book in its first year of publishing. Publisher Anna Solding has made a bold choice with Pangamonium as a follow up to her own ethereal very-literary The Hum of Concrete. It leads us to question what will come next. But for now it is Catkin’s turn, whose literary prowess particularly shines in Francis Germaine’s incidental, penned-along-the-way articles, and in Easter’s enormous and disarming character. Truly one can see the risk taker that Catkin is when, like a ray of sunlight in a boarded up cave, he gives us something spiritual in a corporal way. Rather than spoil the plot, I’ll just say the ending takes the book to an inspired level.

-  Heather Taylor Johnson

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Heather Taylor Johnson is the author of two poetry books, Exit Wounds and Letters to my Lover from a Small Mountain Town. Her third collection will be out in February from IP. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and occasionally teaches it at Flinders University. Her first novel, Pursuing Love and Death, will be published by HarperCollins.

Pangamonium is available from MidnightSun Publishing:  http://midnightsunpublishing.com/books/pangamonium/

A Fraught-Filled Game: Dianne Dean reviews ‘The Dragon and the Crow’ by T. B. McKenzie.

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The Dragon and the Crow by T. B. McKenzie. Dragonfall Press, 2011

You live in a world where everyone has a particular skill – how would you hide that you do not? How would you feel?

Young Brin of T.B. McKenzie’s The Dragon and the Crow is still a boy, he hasn’t as yet earned the name of his father. Every day is filled with pain, anger, jealousy and frustration as his peers learn how to harness the ‘magick’ they are doled out each day. He, on the other hand, must find ever inventive ways of disguising his own lack of magick. Convinced that he would receive full measure on the day he was to be named, Brin plays a fraught-filled game that has him constantly on the edge of being discovered.

In fact, at times it was hard to believe that no-one had discovered his secret as those around him perform acts of magick to heal, mend, communicate and a score of other things that assist their daily lives. But then I was given to wonder that in a world where everyone is expected to have the skill then any observed lapses would be easily reasoned away – particularly for a young child still learning the rudiments of spell-casting.

And yet that there would be one without magick was prophesised – a child that would ‘right an ancient crime’.

So our Brin gets drawn into a power struggle, one in which he feels very much to be the cat’s paw, powerless to determine his own destiny and unsure as to who to trust.

McKenzie begins the first book of his series, Magickless, with one of his more twisted characters, The Hen – a nameless man in which Brin eventually finds many reflections of himself.  Each event within the story unfolds more of the world and more of players. Simple motives become more complex as the plot thickens with more tangles. This approach by the author lends a reality to his story telling with his King and his Witch becoming multi-dimensional – I am still not totally certain as to who will end being the ‘good’ and who the ‘bad in this series – and not even sure that that designation will be totally appropriate to the side that wins out. You will need to make your own decision.

You will be drawn deeply into Arkadia as you try to determine where the twists will lead you. And there are some nice subplots that develop some interesting characters to add depth to an already masterfully woven novel.

McKenzie also scores well on his development of a language of spells, something that isn’t as easy as it, no pun intended, sounds. He says on his own blog that he was looking for something that would not sound like latin and had a runic feel to it. What he has made has a distinctly musical sound.  In his words:  “Solresol can be sung. What better way to cast a magick spell?”

The novel centres around the restrictions of expectation. Sons are expected to follow their father’s professions. The names they take as adults are expected to be those of their fathers. Brin’s father expects him to be a Mender – an expectation that binds Brin tightly, even leavened with love as it is. It is wish to fulfill this expectation that motivates Brin throughout the novel until he begins to reluctantly grow away from it. Most will live within their restrictions, happily even, but for others the frustration is too much.

McKenzie is also asking us to consider whether or not the ends justifies the means. Once there was a trend within fantasy novels that the good are unblemished and the evil are stained black. The characters of The Dragon and The Crow do not stand on each end of the spectrum.

Those that are painted as good at the beginning of the story are soon found to have committed acts that can only be defined as evil to achieve their ends – but are they evil?

Those that stand as enemies of the land also seem to have reason and compassion in their hearts – so are they evil or not?

Even Brin finds himself doing things that he finds distasteful and even repugnant in the attempt to reach an end that will satisfy the expectations of his family and his community.

… and at the novel’s end we are still left to wonder who Brin should trust.

Perhaps he should trust himself.

Literally.

- Dianne Dean

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Dianne Dean is based in North East Victoria. Her first children’s book is currently with a publisher and will be released in early 2013. She can be found at www.austwriters.com

Dragonfall Press can be found at http://www.dragonfallpress.com/

A Sparkling Constellation: Kate Pardey reviews The Hum of Concrete by Anna Solding

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The Hum of Concrete by Anna Solding. MidnightSun Publishing. 2012

There should be a rule against acknowledgements at the end of a novel. How can readers be expected not to keep on reading? As I blithely turned the pages at the end of Anna Solding’s excellent novel The Hum of Concrete I was confronted with some details about its inner workings that I would rather not have known. It was similar to watching a woman being sawn in half and then being taken back stage to be shown how the woman contorts herself into small boxes while the saw cuts through only a hair’s breadth away from her toes.

Spoiler alert, spoiler alert …. We’re told in the acknowledgements how some of the stories which make up this novel existed independently and then how good friends, and there seems an army of them, helped Solding in those last intense months when she ‘frantically tied all the strings together’. To her credit Solding does tie those strings together beautifully; the ending of The Hum of Concrete is as satisfying as the ending of any good novel and her friends deserve their acknowledgements.

There are many novels which are a combination of short stories, deftly woven together, think Julian Barnes, David Mitchell or Gail Jones but perhaps there could be a new name for this kind of novel? A decameron novel perhaps?

The Hum of Concrete is called ‘a novel constellation’ which is as good a name as any. Is this a confession that the author does not see this as a novel at all but rather a collection of short stories, which like a group of stars, will eventually, form a recognizable pattern. This is not a criticism of the Solding’s work just a perspective of a reader who likes to know what kind of book she’s buying or borrowing before she commits.

Interspersed amongst Solding’s intriguing stories of five main characters are wonderful evocations of what life is like in the  Swedish city of Malmo. We’re given vivid descriptions of Malmo in the quiet of winter, lively markets in summer, picnics in parks and feeding the ducks all of which work to give greater depth to her stories. Sometimes these places seem incongruous with her characters’ lives although perhaps that is what Solding is trying to tell us; that lives can get too caught up with people and rather we should spend more time enjoying the beauty of what is around us, the seasons, ripening fruit and even hissing geese.

This wariness of people is a theme also played out in Solding’s clear and deep appreciation of children. All five women are mothers and whilst their children have the capacity to bring worry and fear into mothers’ lives they also have a capacity to bring love and to help adults make sense of the world around them. The trajectory of these women’s lives seems solely propelled by their relationship with their children. Perhaps on a second reading partners will appear more centre stage or better still this will happen in Solding’s next novel; her ability to deal with the complexities of relationships would work well on a bigger canvas.

A secondary theme, which reinforces her main message, is the idea of gender. Solding looks at people’s ability to cope with what is different, the failures and successes of acceptance. This aspect of the novel is thought-provoking and is too large an issue to be left on the periphery. These are small criticisms of what fundamentally is a very good  ….. decameron novel/novel constellation.

MidnightSun is committed to an honourable cause; in these troubled times they are prepared to take risks but, I would suggest,  their publication of Anna Solding’s The Hum of Concrete was never a risk but rather a guaranteed success.

-Kate Pardey

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Kate Pardey is a Sydney based fiction critic.

The Hum of Concrete is available from MidnightSun Publishing: http://midnightsunpublishing.com/books/the-hum-of-concrete/

The lives of three saints: Lucas Smith reviews Unaccountable Hours by Stephen Scourfield.

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Unaccountable Hours by Stephen Scourfield. UWA Press, 2012.

There is something refreshing in Unaccountable Hours, Stephen Scourfield’s compendium of three novellas released early this year by UWA Press. The refreshing thing, or rather the refreshing absence, is irony. Irony saturates modern culture. We are ironic about our tastes in television, books, music (especially music) and clothes. It’s probably fair to say that irony is modern culture. There even exist those who practice religion ironically. Not so much swimming against the current as floating far out beyond it, Scourfield has delivered an utterly sincere book. It is an amazing achievement but not necessarily an entertaining one and the refreshment leaves a puzzling after-taste.

In the first novella, “The Luthier” Alton Freeman is a meticulous crafter of fine violins. He uses Australian hard-woods in his monomaniacal search for the Sound.

“The sound makes Alton Freeman’s chest vibrate. It seems to enter his body and force its molecules to drum together. It feels almost dangerous. It is as familiar as his own pulse, as the sloshing tide inside him when he plugs his ears with his fingers. It is as familiar, but better. It isn’t just biological or organic, it is emotional, expansive, interpretive. It is majestic.”

The sound is a recording of Bach’s cantatas and partitas made by the fictional violinist Monica Erica Grenbaum.

Majestic! In a modern novel. Incredible. Surely this is a sign that the story is a tragedy. Surely Alton Freeman is due a major misfortune, perhaps a fire to burn his precious viols or a jealous rival to steal his shaping techniques? In fact not only is “The Luthier” not a tragedy, it is a story in which not only the main character’s dreams are fulfilled (through those awfully true clichés hard work and determination) but his precocious child also enjoys great success. It is a story without a villain and therefore only half a story. Though he struggles mightily with his tools and the limitations of his ability he is not even in battle against himself. No vices plague him, and his loving family and loyal friends do everything they can to help him (with the exception of his initially sceptical father).

The writing is often elegant and there is much to enjoy for lovers of classical music or those who enjoy learning the details of somewhat archaic crafts. (I am both, by the way.) If Scourfield is not himself an amateur instrument-maker then he has done some incredible research and love for the Alton and the rest of the characters drips from every page.

The second novella, “Like Water” is the most humourous of the three. It is narrated by thirty-four year old Australian-Italian writer Matthew Rossi. He divides his time between Rome and Perth, two cities which are in most ways polar opposites. The idea of the “Dyadic—of two parts,” defines the story. “I occasionally adopt the name Sydney-Fairfax…using both components of this has the advantage of, overseas, of defining a refined antipodean, which everyone loves.”

Freed from quotidian concerns by a hefty inheritance and a lucky movie deal for one of his novels Rossi muses on such things as “the question of Happiness,” and remembers, in great detail, former lovers. But he is like all of Scourfield’s characters concerned with how to live. He has determined not to procreate, “not to exacerbate the situation generally, not to make everything worse.” In a turbulent encounter at the beach he befriends seventy-two year-old Beatrice and perhaps does more than befriend. Of the three works, “Like Water” features the most conflict, though it is internal. Rossi is intensely neurotic and self-concerned but likeable.

In the final novella, “Ethical Man” Scourfield creates Bartholomew Milner, a sort of old-fashioned naturalist obsessed with doing things the right way. “It mattered. It all mattered. It mattered to Dr. Bartholomew Milner—scientist, biologist, ornithologist, author of numerous papers, namer of two species—how he moved, his quietness, his fluidity, not just whether he could complete a given task, but how he could complete it.” (his italics)

Milner is given a contract to survey a section of the Little Sandy Desert—it’s plants, insects, reptiles and mammals. For six months he will live alone in the desert following what has become known, scornfully among some, as “Milner’s Ethic”: “not even treading lightly, in the popular idiom, but leaving absolutely no trace whatsoever.”

Somewhat implausibly, given his talent for solitude, Milner is “a mesmerising speechmaker.” The speech he gives at a university about the coming “Sixth Extinction” gives Scourfield a chance to repeat pious, millennial ideas about the destructive nature of humanity, which will end up causing our own annihilation. Ideas which are hard to deny, but when found in fiction as barely concealed authorial comment have me reaching for the most scurrilous Kingsley Amis novel. To Milner’s great credit, he does live his ideals but painstakingly having respect for nature is not the most compelling storyline available to a novelist. A nasty mining concern, hunters or even dirt-bikers would have provided a much-needed counterfoil for Milner’s musings.

Unaccountable Hours gives us three saint’s lives in circumspect, careful and often elegant prose. What’s missing is plot and conflict both inner and outer. There is a deep Christianity about these stories as well, unusual in Australian writing and Scourfield has grasped well the way faith and ideas influence our behaviour. Unaccountable Hours is an at times fascinating read but it remains un-compelling despite the attention to detail. There’s a reason hagiographies aren’t read much anymore.

- Lucas Smith

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Lucas Smith is a writer living in Melbourne. He has been published in The Australian Book Review, New Matilda, Eureka Street and The Lifted Brow. He is currently one of those ‘responsible’ for The Nose http://thenose.com.au/, a Melbourne based free fortnightly newspaper of satire, journalism and literary review.

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Unaccountable Hours is available from UWA Publishing, http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/