Recommended reading: Paul Shirley’s ‘Stories I Tell On Dates’
Tag: Books
The Evening Game’s Modern Classics: Colum McCann’s ‘Transatlanticism’
Spanning three centuries and two continents, Transatlantic is a dazzling meditation on the links across time and place, a series of interwoven stories on how people influence and inspire strangers they only meet fleetingly, the enduring pull of his homeland Ireland and the ongoing fallout of the Northern Ireland peace process.
The first and most action-packed vignette is a vivid imagining of the first non-stop Transatlantic flight in 1919. With the lyricism and economy of a poet, McCann sketches out the personalities of the two men: Alcock a dashing, fearless figure who craves anonymity and the more reserved Brown, who enjoys quantifying things and sees the world in scientific terms. Alcock was a prisoner of war and Brown walks with a stick and already seemed old at thirty-two. Both are aching for a new start and find it in the flight to Ireland.
In faultless, rhythmic prose, the bracing cold, physical exertion and white knuckle fear of the journey are conjured up, as well as the vertiginous possibility and raw excitement their journey generated. Watching the preparations for the flight with interest are Emily, a reporter who asks nothing but writes insightfully about the pair and Lottie, her daughter, who gives Brown a letter to take with him.
In the story’s second narrative, the great social reformer Frederick Douglass arrives in Ireland where he is to give a series of lectures denouncing slavery. His oratory is warmly received, but he initially feels ill at ease with his surrounds and has a tense relationship with Mr. Webb, his publisher and the organiser of his speaking tour. He senses an energy of doom amongst the Irish as the potato famine descends, but nonetheless finds himself fascinated by the country. His speeches have a particularly profound effect on maid Lily, who is so inspired she leaves for a new life in America.
Later, the senator George Mitchell arrives in Northern Ireland to take part in peace talks. This is another remarkable piece of literary ventriloquism, imagining the emotional tumult beneath a seemingly endless shuffle of meetings, hotels, airports and late-night phone calls as the American’s work becomes a whir of formality and politeness. McCann’s focus here is not on the details of the negotiations, but rather Mitchell’s motivation for getting involved in them. Having given up his quiet, semi-retired life with his young child and risked his impeccable reputation, Mitchell found himself drawn into the internecine feud by his “fascination with the impossible” and in quieter moments, finds himself reflecting on the mysteries of Belfast, a place where “all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy”.
In book two, we find Lily now living in America and running a business selling ice. She and her daughter again cross paths with the aging Douglass, now an advocate for womens’ suffrage. The lives of Emily and Lottie also circle back to the past as they travel England on the tenth anniversary of Brown and Alcock’s historic flight, determined to track down the unsent letter. Finally, Hannah finds herself reflecting on her life in Dublin, 2011, as the city readies itself for a visit from Barack Obama.
Those won over by the critical and popular hit Let the Great World Spin will again find much to admire here. McCann displays a finely tuned antenna for the subtle details of life: the mist of morning fog, the lilt of Irish voices, the way New York cabs become a blur of colour in the rain. Collectively, these small details build into something quite overwhelming: a sweeping, symphonic marvel full of life and charm.
The Evening Game’s Modern Classics: ‘Us’ by David Nicholls
At an ungodly hour one morning, Connie tells Douglas the thought of the two of them alone in the house together without their son Albie is “like a Beckett play”. Douglas hasn’t seen any Beckett plays, but senses this is not a good thing.
The pair have been married for 21 years and have planned one last family trip to Europe before Albie leaves to study photography, but Connie’s decision to leave Douglas once the trip is done turns their holiday into an increasingly desperate one.
David Nicholls on the book tour for his previous hit, ‘One Day’. The European travel formed the backdrop for ‘Us’. (Photo: putnik)
Nicholls’ previous novel was the 2009 phenomenon One Day, which sold five million copies. Us taps into that same sad/funny vein, though this time there’s a sole narrator, the strait-laced Douglas, an earnest scientist who views dinner parties as “a pitiless form of gladiatorial combat”. When he is corralled into one such event, however, he falls for Connie. She’s completely different from him – cultured, vivacious and charmingly free-spirited, though sometimes intolerant of anyone not charmingly free-spirited in the exact same way she is.
The narrative seamlessly flashes back and forth between the built-up frustrations and petty squabbles of their Grand Tour and the early days of their fumbling, transformative romance. Their beginnings were a heady time, but for Douglas also fraught with a fear he didn’t belong in the exciting new world Connie ushered him into.
Parenthood only exacerbates their divide and Albie grows into an artistically inclined, self-focused character much more comfortable with Connie’s bohemianism than Douglas’ sober approach to life. As Albie communicates with his father mainly through grunts and disdain, Douglas feels Albie and Connie have ganged up on him and have overlooked his better qualities.
The trio’s dynamics form a kind of modern spin on the old odd-couple trope, but the raging insecurity and simmering frustrations wrought by those with vastly different temperaments trying to get along has rarely been so hilarious and so utterly painful.
This is a wildly successful return; barely a page passes without some cringe-inducing flash of humour, some small moment of pathos or a quotable one-liner. All those enraptured by One Day‘s surprising depth, pitch-perfect balance of satire and generosity and its insights into contemporary relationships will find plenty more to love and argue about here.
The Evening Game’s Modern Classics: ‘The Greatest’ by Malcolm Knox
“If miracles didn’t happen” Malcolm Knox suggests, “nobody would watch sport”. In the era ‘The Greatest’ covers, the Australian cricket team didn’t just build up anundefeated record in home Test series and set a new record for most consecutive tests won, they pulled off cricketing miracles on a semi-regular basis. They thought they could beat anyone, from anywhere, and mostly they were right.
This dominance was not just a result of the team’s unshakable self-belief (“Confidence is God” Knox explains), but some inspired leadership by the respective captains – Border, Taylor, Waugh, Ponting and the oft-maligned new-age approach of coach John Buchanan, who gets a more favourable and thoughtful treatment here than is often the case. Ultimately, each of the teams outgrew their leaders, the group having been moulded in the image of the captain so successfully that eventually their actual presence became almost superfluous.
Glenn McGrath was a crucial part of Australia’s decade of dominance, taking 944 wickets in Tests and One-Day Internationals.
But leadership aside, no team becomes great without champion players and notwithstanding the presence of legendary figures like the Waughs, Hayden and McGrath, Knox is probably on safe ground when asserting “No Warne, no golden era”. Warne stands as the most remarkable character of the period; a frustrating and sometimes disruptive presence off the field but absolutely untouchable on it. He also proved the dictum that opposites attract better than any other cricketer – his favourite captain was the low-key and dour Alan Border, while England’s famously uptight and conservative cricket establishment loved him unconditionally.
Rather than getting bogged down in the game-by-game grind of the now ludicrously cluttered international cricket schedule, Knox breezily skips over the less memorable series (one-dayers barely get a look in) and only delves into detailed match accounts for the most pivotal encounters. Australia’s victory in Sabina Park, 1995, which shifted the power balance of world cricket is recounted in great detail, as isIndia’s once-in-a-generation comeback at Kolkata, which showed that the Australians at their peak could only be toppled by superhuman efforts from their opposition.
Mostly the best thing about these match accounts is the suspense built into them. Every cricket tragic knows that Mark Waugh got Australia out of jail in Port Elizabeth, or that Shane Warne engineered remarkable implosions by the West Indies (Mohali, 1996), England (Adelaide, 2005) and Daryl Cullinan (pretty much every time he faced Warne), yet reading about them here proves positively nail-biting, Knox extracting maximum drama, cutting back and forth from the action to the larger historical narrative, pacing his accounts like Ricky Ponting paces an innings.
Knox’s writing on Adam Gilchrist is strong throughout (Photo: PrivateMusings)
While clearly a fan and student of the game, and full of admiration for the feats of the Australian team, Knox is also not averse to putting the boot in when he sees the need. His condemnation of Australian sledging as cheating is the most vigorous and well-argued I have read. In contrast, his passionate and perfectly logical defence of Adam Gilchrist’s decision to walk in a World Cup semi-final puts much of what was written about the incident at the time to shame. The writing on Gilchrist is strong throughout, with the emotional turmoil that fuelled his double century against South Africa especially well drawn.
Shorn of the hysteria and short-sightedness that sports reportage can degenerate into, this is an old-fashioned book in its way, clear-sighted and considered, never shying away from the controversies nor bowing to sensationalism. In a season of first-class cricket books, this ranks with the best, Knox applying the polished phrase-turning skill he showed in his glittering novel ‘Summerland’ to great effect.
‘The Greatest’ finishes with the Australian team surrendering to the lionhearted South Africans on home soil, the empire having finally crumbled. The loss to Graham Smith’s men was not the neat punctuation on an era of dominance as was then supposed, however, as Australia pulled off a remarkable series win away to the same opponents just three months later. This triumph was followed by the Ashes loss, another unexpected turn in an utterly compelling, never-ending story. As the next chapters are written, we can only hope to have a chronicler as skilful as this telling the tale.
The Evening Game’s Modern Classics: ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ by Richard Flanagan
”A happy man has no past,” Dorrigo Evans thinks, ”while an unhappy man has nothing else.” The Narrow Road to the Deep North moves like liquid back and forth through his past and present, both of which are dominated by his experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Death Railway.
“A story that is both harrowing and deeply humanist, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been billed as Flanagan’s most personal work.”
In his youth in Tasmania he plays football, and he finds something transcendent in its mixture of toughness and grace: ”All his life had been journeying to this point when he had for a moment flown into the sun.” He also develops an early love of literature and a reverence for the power of the written word that will echo through his story, which turns on a letter he receives.
His fate, however, lies elsewhere and after signing up to the war as a doctor it is his experiences as a colonel that mark him irrevocably. Being thrust into a position of responsibility, he finds he has courage and an instinctive knack for leadership, which he neither sought nor fully understands. He negotiates on behalf of his men, taking responsibility for the ”terrible arithmetic” as their captors demand more and more hard labour from his ailing men.
Before long, disease sets in – ulcers, scabies, starvation, gangrene, ringworm, lice, cholera. Bodies start piling up. The thought of Australia, which once kept them going, begins to feel increasingly distant, an abstraction, a half-forgotten dream. Struggling to maintain the hygiene that will keep them alive, the men lust after scraps of food and hide morsels in their meagre possessions to devour later. Some learn to barter with their tormenters for small favours, while others toy with the thought that death would come as a relief. Meanwhile, their bodies continue to disintegrate, as Dorrigo observes men with ”eyes that already seemed to be little more than black-shadowed sockets waiting for worms”.
A serial womaniser, he feels out of his depth when he meets Amy in the heady atmosphere of an Adelaide bookstore where Max Harris reads his poetry. Mesmerised by her physicality, which ”made him feel almost drunk with its scent and touch and sweep”, and finding someone whose passion for the written word matches his own, he is consumed by thoughts of her.
But a twist owing a debt to Greek tragedy sees her marry Dorrigo’s uncle, Keith, more out of a sense of duty and circumstance than any great passion. Their affair produces some of the book’s most lyrical writing; Dorrigo thinks, ”her body was a poem beyond memorising”.
In later years, Dorrigo has become feted as a national hero, the public clinging to an image detached from his philandering, uncertain self. He throws himself into a string of affairs and maintains a natural magnetism, but comes to realise, ”the more people I am with … the more alone I feel”. The plot quickens as Australia moves into the second half of the century with a more confident bearing, leading to a classic set piece that loops back to a scene at the Death Railway.
A story that is both harrowing and deeply humanist, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been billed as Flanagan’s most personal work, inspired by his father’s stories of his POW experience. It is also perhaps his most ambitious, a deeply felt attempt to come to terms with the almost unimaginable horror of the Death Railway. In an already sparkling career (few novels get as close to perfection as Wanting), this might be his biggest, best, most moving work yet.
The Evening Game’s Modern Classics: ‘Night Games’ by Anna Krien
In the drunken early hours after Collingwood’s 2011 AFL grand final win, celebrations took a dark turn for Melbourne student Sarah. She had ended up at a house party where she had consensual sex with one man she had recently met at a nightclub, and then “felt compelled” to have sex with Collingwood player Dayne Beams. Another player, John McCarthy, was amongst a group of others also in the room, where Sarah felt “trapped”. After she left the house, she was allegedly raped in the alley next to the townhouse by Justin Dyer, a former VFL player.
By the time the matter went to trial, Dyer (fictitious names are used for both the defendant and complainant in Night Games), already a marginal figure in the Melbourne football world, was further isolated from the players he orbited around. Most of the media scrum materialised when the two Magpies players made fleeting appearances at the directions hearing and then at the trial as witnesses and disappeared when they left.
Krien stays, however, and doggedly follows the story, initially feeling discomfort that the events in the townhouse were not pursued and formed only a peripheral part of the trial. She finds herself surprised by Justin’s “gentle demeanour” and passivity and sees him as an outsider abandoned by the football fraternity. She also worries that she is getting too close to the family of the defendant, that her objectivity is destroyed by the defendant’s grandmother hugs her. As it it becomes clear the story won’t conform to any recognisable narrative about rape, she admits to wishing she had chosen to write about an “easier” rape trial instead.
Also troubling is the absence of Sarah from the trial. Like many jurisdictions, Victoria enables complainants to avoid the trauma of facing the accused in court. This rule, known as the ‘rape shield’, is an important protection for women who lodge complaints but Krien fears her absence means she will project her own experiences onto the complainant.
With skill and borderline cruelty, the defence lawyer has the evidence of a neighbour who possibly heard Sarah’s protests discounted, instead focusing attention on how after the contested incident, Dyer kissed the complainant and sat close with her in a taxi to her house, playing on meaningless but well-entrenched notions of how a rapist would act.
While the trial forms the backbone of Night Games, the story branches off into related tangents like the accusations of gang rape by rugby league players at Coffs Harbour, the St. Kilda schoolgirl scandal and the discrimination and vilification female journalists have faced when venturing into the post-game locker room for their work.
As dark as much of the material is, Night Games is far more complex and probing than a wholesale dismissal of football culture. Krien finds a lot to like in the AFL and there are surprising observations at every turn: “One of the reasons…that so many people watch football is not just for the athleticism and the biffo, but also for the tenderness”.In many ways, the sport is making a concerted effort to turn away from elements once accepted as commonplace, with a stand being taken against unacceptable sledging and racism and education initiatives being put in place to avoid some of the ugly excesses of the recent past.
A darker underside persists however, with a “macho culture of humiliation” regularly raring its head, with ex-player Tony Wilson filling the author in on an alcohol-fuelled culture of pranks, youthful bravado, and forms of humour and acceptance rituals which often seem baffling to an outsider.
The narrative always circles back to the trial though and it speaks volumes of the book’s ability to uncover unexpected nuance that it remains gripping even we know though the result. As the verdict draws near, Krien continues to feel haunted by Dyer’s persistence in following Sarah, instinctively sensing that even in his version of events, there is something “off” and disrespectful about his behaviour that night.
This lingering unease is the enduring feeling from Night Games,which is being promoted as a literary hand-grenade, but often settles into a tone more often thoughtful than incendiary. There are few easy answers here, no redemptive sense of any lesson that has been learned.
Whatever the truth about that party and whatever actually happened in the bedroom crowded with footballers and later in a dark, urine-soaked alley, it seems clear that this incident forms just part of a disturbing broader culture, and that much of what took place probably falls in a large grey area between what is against the law and what should be acceptable behaviour.
Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man is an obvious antecedent, but this also brings to mind Michelle Schwarz’s undervalued One Split Second, which similarly used a high profile incident (in that case, the death of cricketer David Hookes) as a starting point to explore themes of masculinity, alcohol and violence and the role they play in Australian society.
Krien has a real feel for the tough, scrappy charm of Australian Rules Football, but seems on less certain territory in discussing other codes. Confusing Rugby League and Rugby Union and referring to the NRL as the A-league are simple mistakes that should have been edited out of an otherwise carefully written book.
Minor quibbles aside, the disquieting, fiercely intelligent Night Games instantly feels like an important work, and is certainly a difficult one to shake.
The Stella Prize: Notes on the Longlist with director Aviva Tuffield
This week the shortlist will be announced for the 2017 Stella Prize, marking only the fifth time the prize will be awarded. It’s already a major date on Australia’s literary calendar, however, having grown considerably in profile and prestige. It continues to offer an annual reminder of the strength and breadth of writing by Australian women across a range of genres.
This year’s longlist selection is typically diverse, ranging from personal examinations of Australia’s drinking culture (Elspeth Muir’s Wasted), poignant autobiography (Cory Taylor’s Dying: A Memoir) and a survey of the journalism surrounding the Port Arthur Massacre (The Media and the Massacre by Sonya Voumard).
The judge’s comments emphasise the extensive research that went into many of the longlisted works and there is little doubt the painstaking task of writing, editing and re-writing can be an isolating activity.
The Stella Prize goes some way towards promoting fraternity between writers. “It’s heartening to feel a part of a literary community” says Julia Leigh, who is nominated for her autobiographical look at the IVF process, Avalanche. “That the prize organisers have managed to build a strong sense of community around women’s writing in a fairly short space of time is a wonderful thing”.
Co-founder and executive director of the Stella Prize, Aviva Tuffield, says the prize has already become a real talking point and a source of inspiration for young women writers. “People say ‘It’s made such a difference to me, people are taking my work more seriously, I feel like a spotlight has been shone on me’”
Unusually for the Stella Prize, this year’s longlist is dominated by non-fiction, with only four novels, by Fiona McFarlane, Georgia Blain, Heather Rose and Emily Maguire, included. “It’s a reflection of the times we live in” Tuffield says. “There’s writing (in the longlist) about refugees, asylum seekers, racism in Australian life. People want serious writing on these issues”.
The judges’ comments on the longlist stressed the topicality of the works chosen. “Many of them address urgent national issues with particular relevance to women” it reads. “Women are fighting to be politically seen and heard, and to secure their positions in the public sphere”.
Julia Leigh agrees the current political and media climate has given a heightened sense of importance to work which is rigorously reported. “Non-fiction literary forms have long been incredibly important” she says. “Today we really need writers who can outflank the mendacious”.
Leigh, also a noted screenwriter and director (her Sleeping Beauty was a festival hit in 2011), says she felt a need to tell her story while it was still raw. “Avalanche felt necessary to me” she says. “I wrote it shortly after I stopped (IVF) treatment because I wanted to capture my strong feelings before they were blanketed by time”.
The $50,000 prizemoney represents a huge boost to the winner. Tuffield says, however, that there are other hugely important if less tangible effects on the nominated authors in terms of validation and renewed self-belief. She says last year’s prize recipient, Charlotte Wood, gained a whole new level of confidence from her win. “She felt like it gave her a real licence to speak out”.
Other winners also experienced massive upticks in their career courtesy of the prize. Emily Bitto (author of The Strays, the 2015 winner) saw her sales double in the month after she won and signed a USA/Canada deal with a six-figure advance shortly after. Carrie Tiffany (Mateship with Birds, 2013) was another recipient who experienced a marked upsurge in exposure and publicity, becoming a mainstay of the festival circuit.
The ongoing effects of the prize are fitting for an award which encompasses school programs, podcasts, monitoring of the gender balance of book reviewers and impassioned advocacy for women writers on a year-round basis. The process of drawing up the longlist is also a lengthy one, with some 180 entries vying for inclusion on the longlist this year.
Tuffield explains that as well as a deep knowledge of literature, it is important Stella prize judges represent the diversity the award champions. The panel will usually include representatives from around the country, as well as academia, the bookselling industry, a literary critic and a ‘Stella fella’, who this year is screenwriter and journalist Benjamin Law.
Tuffield says the inclusion of a ‘fella’ on the judging panel is an important component of the Stella ethos. “It’s a misconception that books by women are somehow just for women” she explains and the prize encourages men to examine and broaden their reading habits.
The shortlisted books will be announced in March and the winner a month later, but the cultural change brought about by the Stella Prize will continue to be felt long beyond that.
The longlist in full:
Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird
Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain
The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Poum and Alexandre: A Paris Memoir by Catherine de Saint Phalle
Offshore: Behind the Wire on Manus and Nauru by Madeline Gleeson
An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire
The High Places by Fiona McFarlane
Avalanche by Julia Leigh
Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane by Elspeth Muir
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
The Media and the Massacre: Port Arthur 1966-2016 by Sonya Voumard
Books we’re Looking Forward to in 2017
Universal Harvester – John Darnielle
New fiction from the mastermind behind The Mountain Goats is set in a video store and If it’s anything like his masterful Black Sabbath-themed fiction, first novel proper or his music, it promises to be pitch black and deftly perceptive.
Anything is Possible – Elizabeth Stroud
The Pulitizer Prize winner’s My Name is Lucy Barton was one of the critical hits of last year, a meditation on family ties, pain reverberating through generations and the impossibility of ever escaping the past. This new novel (not, we’re informed, inspired by Kevin Garnett’s famous exclamation) explores similar themes in a small town setting.
Roots, Radicals and Rockers – Billy Bragg
A long overdue history of skiffle, a DIY musical movement which saw a surge in the popularity of guitars stateside. Anyone who has seen one of Bragg’s shows, which lean heavily on his funny, chatty, outraged persona, will be hoping he brings that same approach to his writing.
Men Without Women – Haruki Murakami
A collection of seven short stories based around the familiar Murakami theme of loneliness. Expect weirdness.
South and West (from a notebook) – Joan Didion
Plucked from her archives, this new release from the incomparable essayist is drawn from a 1970s road trip with her then-husband and her work for Rolling Stone covering the Patty Hearst trial.
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Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Exit West’
Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
From the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, comes a new work billed as a “timely love story that brilliantly imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees”. One of the most perceptive observers of the here and now, Hamid also has a flair for combining innovation with genuinely moving narratives.
The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy
There’s only one Cormac McCarthy and he can (and does) release books as infrequently as he likes. This is his first novel since the indelible, grey skies beauty of The Road, which was released a decade ago. Little is known, other than it’s science fiction.
Hunger – Roxane Gay
Following up on the popular essay collection Bad Feminist, the prominent commentator, writer (and competitive scrabble player) will bring her punchy but nuanced approach to body image and eating, issues she covered in a memorable appearance on This American Life.
The Evening Game 