By Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
The Son of Man
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Text, $34.99
The Son of Man is a black parable told with irresistible force.
French writer Jean-Baptiste Del Amo was introduced to an English-speaking readership with Animalia. That book excavated the bleak lives of a rural family living in grinding poverty with a poetic relentlessness that’s also a hallmark of his latest book to appear in translation. The Son of Man summons the spectre of domestic violence. It opens on a stark, prehistorical vision – like something out of Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or William Golding’s The Inheritors – before homing in on the present. An unnamed family – man, woman, child – drives to a crumbling house in Les Roches. This is the place where the man lived with his own abusive father, and there is no escaping its haunted history. A gnawing sense of dread develops through the closely drawn portrayal of family violence and psychological responses to it, escalating into a hostage situation as the man’s controlling behaviour worsens. It’s a devastating, provocative black parable, told with irresistible force.
The Road to the Country
Chigozie Obioma, Hutchinson Heinemann, $34.99
The Road to the Country is a powerful contribution to Nigerian literature.
This gruesome and unflinching novel grapples with the legacy of the Nigerian Civil War. The secession of the Igbo-dominated state from Nigeria was short-lived, and millions died during the brutal counter-insurgency. Kunle is too busy studying to notice the outbreak of war – the guilt-stricken student caused an accident that crippled his younger brother, Tunde, and now Tunde has been lost to the fog of war. Kunle sets out for Biafra to find him, and promptly falls into the hand of rebels. Kunle has Igbo heritage, which saves him from being shot on sight. But it also compels him to fight on the Biafran side, and the mission to save his brother turns into a journey into the underworld, where myth mixes with the grim toll of the battlefield. Chigozie Obioma’s The Road to the Country is a powerful contribution to Nigerian literature, which is still trying to make sense of the collective trauma of war generations on.
Misrecognition
Madison Newbound, Bloomsbury, $32.99
Misrecognition has a great premise, but the writing doesn’t live up to its promise.
This coming-of-age novel navigates polyamorous relationships and the world of nonbinary dating – a great idea, though the writing doesn’t live up to its promise. Twentysomething Elsa has been dumped by an older couple. It was a defining sexual experience, and the deflated young woman retreats to her phone screen. There, she becomes obsessed by a famous actor (a thinly veiled Timothee Chalamet) and is introduced to his circle when he comes to town for a theatre festival. At length, Elsa’s focus shifts to the androgynous Sam, and Elsa must face the complexities of her own sexuality, as well as the destructive behaviours which look doomed to be repeated, that led to her last relationship breakdown. Gender diversity and polyamory are reshaping 21st-century romance, so it’s a shame Madison Newbound’s Misrecognition gets bogged down in garden-variety emotional angst.
The Skeleton House
Katherine Allum, Fremantle Press, $34.99
The Skeleton House depicts a young woman’s struggle in a Mormon community.
Winner of the Fogarty Literary Award, Katherine Allum’s The Skeleton House depicts a young woman struggling against the constraints of life in St Stephens, a Mormon community in Nevada. Meg isn’t a Mormon, but the faith’s influence is everywhere, and her own life path follows a familiar template. Everyone thinks her husband Kyle is perfect, and they’ll soon move from a caravan into their dream home (the “skeleton house” of the title). Yet Meg becomes disconsolate. She was so young when she decided to be with Kyle and start a family. It’s only when she spreads her wings and starts throwing herself into activities separate from her husband that she realises she is living someone else’s dream. Meg must walk a hard road of resistance to escape her small-town existence. It’s a brisk, well-turned novel about a woman’s quest to seize belated agency over her fate.
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Everything is Water
Simon Cleary
UQP, $34.99
Author Simon Cleary walks the length of the Brisbane River to understand it fully.
If you are a lover of fine nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Nan Shepherd, Everything is Water is a work to put on the bookshelf alongside them. It is also a perfect example of how a regional landscape – in this case, the Brisbane River and its immediate environs – can, in all its particularity, take on a universal, almost mythic dimension. Simon Cleary grew up on a creek that fed a creek that fed the river. Now living in the city by the river and still in the thrall of this waterway, he decides to walk its length to see and understand it more fully. In honed prose, he tells the story of his journey from the source to the sea as he learns of massacres of First Nations Peoples who lived on its banks, meets the farmers and river people who rely on it and contend with its many moods, encounters its network of animals and plants, and the elemental drama of the river itself.
Growing Up Indian in Australia
Ed., Aarti Betigeri
Black Inc., $32.99
Melancholy and loss feature in this collection, but so does community and gained wisdom.
“I crave a tribe, a new skin, a sense of belonging, an identity,” writes Sharon Verghis of finding herself in the deadly quiet of the Australian suburbs after the lively soundtrack of her hometown outside Kuala Lumpur. While each story in this collection is as unique as its teller, Verghis’ longings echo like a melancholy refrain, whether the author was born in Australia or immigrated as a child. Underscoring this refrain is a sense of loss: of culture, language, place or family. But there is also the solace of community Swagata Bapat finds in dance when she becomes pure movement and joy. For others, there’s the wisdom gained from the hard lessons Australia imposed. It made Sunil Badami the writer he is. “Whoever we were is but a memory; whoever we’ll be but a dream. Our selves are always changing, just like the waves on the eternally moving, restless ocean.”
Critical Care
Geraldine Fela
NewSouth, $49.99
When young men were dying during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, isolated by fear and prejudice, often the only person at their side to hold their hand was a nurse. In some cases, the nurses working these isolation wards were themselves ostracised and even asked to use public toilets rather than hospital staff facilities. Yet it was these nurses and their union who played a vital, unsung role as providers of care, educators, advocates and activists during this crisis. They also helped shape what has become known as the Australian Model, a successful community-led approach to limiting the spread of HIV and AIDS. In this deeply moving chronicle of the contribution and experiences of nurses working on the frontline, Geraldine Fela pays tribute to their “care, compassion and solidarity” as she documents the lasting impact it had on their lives and those of their patients.
We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky
Mara Kardas-Nelson
Scribe, $37.99
It was hailed as the answer to poverty in the developing world. Lend small amounts of money to women to help them start a business and they would escape the trap of a hand-to-mouth existence. NGOs from all over the world jumped on board and applied a one-size-fits-all approach. There were, however, unintended consequences. For many, the small size of the loans and the high interest rates led to a cycle of debt that, in countries such as Sierra Leone, also saw women jailed for defaulting. Mara Kardas-Nelson draws on the experiences of a group of women from that country to capture the impact of microfinance on their lives, interweaving these stories with the history of this credit and its most famous proponent, Nobel prize-winning economist, Muhammad Yunus. Rigorous scrutiny and skilled storytelling expose the dangers of “bite-size solutions” to complex problems.
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