Angela Savage

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of Black Glass in preparation for a panel I shared with its author Meg Mundell at the Writers at the Convent festival earlier this month. It arrived only a few days before our session but I had no trouble finishing in time. I read the last few chapters slowly over coffee at the Convent cafe, savouring the compelling story and Meg’s gorgeous prose.

Black Glass is a work of ‘speculative fiction’. I wasn’t even sure what that meant until I read it. The story is set in Melbourne in a possible future, neither too far away nor too hard to imagine. The city is divided into zones, its rivers choked with pollution. Those with full ID and clean papers work in the Civic and Commerce zones and live in gated communities in the suburbs. Beyond the city are The Regions. The ‘undocs’ hover in the margins, but not beyond the reach of surveillance and experiments in ‘positive re-calibration of the aggregate psyche, achieved via the artful finetuning of public space.’

Tally and Grace are sisters whose drug manufacturing father is killed in an explosion while they are hiding out in The Regions. Grace believes Tally has died with him and flees to Melbourne in a daze. Tally likewise heads to the city, knowing it’s where her sister will go. The plot is propelled by Tally’s search for her sister against what often seem like insurmountable odds, both girls resourceful but vulnerable.

I figure being an ‘outsider’ gave New Zealand-born Meg an edge when it came to writing about Melbourne and she agreed when we talked about it at Writers at the Convent. The city of Melbourne is one of the strongest characters in the novel. Meg depicts it vividly and without sentimentality.

A river slid through the casino district, but it was choked with plastic bottles and old coupons; its tea-brown depths merged with the oily harbour of the Docklands, where vacant high-rise towers and basement strip joints marked the dodgy part of town. Most of the fountains in the city grid were dry now, just drifting spots for dead leaves and fast-food litter. The fountains in the rich part of the city still ran clear, but they were monitored; thick-necked guards materialised like magic if you stopped. Tourists could throw coins in, but you weren’t allowed to drink. The city was already teaching her tricks: scoop and slurp, slip away, keep moving.

The story is harsh rather than bleak, a cautionary tale closer to The Lorax than The Road. It sparkles with unexpected humour. Public servants work for ‘Polbiz’ and speak ‘Beige’, media employees work in ‘Journotainment Units’, and the Docklands has become a ghetto. Like I say, a futuristic Melbourne not too hard to imagine. The only stretch is that in Black Glass the Southern Star actually works.

As a manuscript, Black Glass won the 2007 DJ O’Hearn Memorial Fellowship and was short-listed for the 2010 CAL Scribe Prize (my partner Andrew Nette was long-listed for the same award). Now in print and due to hit bookshops on 28 February 2011, I’m predicting Meg’s debut novel goes on to win a few more awards. It deserves to.

This review has been submitted as part of the Aussie Author Challenge.

I’ve written elsewhere about how one of the great perks of being a published author is access to free books, and being on a panel at a writers’ festival generally triggers an influx. In preparation for the Writers at the Convent festival this weekend, I’ve been reading novels by my co-panelists Toni Jordan and Meg Mundell, starting with Toni’s second novel Fall Girl.

Fall Girl centres on Della Gilmore, who lives with her extended family in a kind of con artists’ collective. She comes up with a plan for an ambitious sting, her mark a handsome, ‘expensively dishevelled’ millionaire Daniel Metcalf, head of the Metcalf Trust. Posing as Dr Ella Canfield, she applies to Metcalf for a grant to fund a non-existent research project to prove the Tasmania Tiger still lives in the Wilson’s Promontory National Park. What transpires is a great romp of a story, peopled with engaging characters who may or may not be on the level.

Toni has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Queensland and has worked as a molecular biologist. As a girlie swot myself, I loved all the scientific references. There’s a scene where ‘Ella’ tells Daniel about the discovery in 1992 of the vu quang ox in area on the Laos-Vietnam border. I was actually living in Laos at the time what the locals call the saola was discovered. I remember having a similar reaction to Ella/Della, marvelling that there was a part of the planet so unexplored that an animal of this size could stay hidden all these years from western scientists. And you’ve got to admire a writer who can slip the theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny into a hot seduction scene.

Fall Girl provides anthropological insight into the world of people who make a career out of parting fools and their money. There is glamour and adventure in the con artist’s life, but also loneliness and deprivation.

That said, Fall Girl is laugh out loud funny. I particularly enjoyed the character of Julius, adopted as a baby from Nigeria by Della’s aunt and uncle, and last seen ‘building his fortune…as a Russian online bride who only needs a few thousand to bribe an official for a visa and then a few thousand more for an air ticket to come here to Australia to be with her new beloved.’ Also hilarious is the camping trip to Wilson’s Prom for Daniel to see Dr Canfield and her students researchers in action, complete with German backpackers on the beach.

Fall Girl is a highly entertaining and engaging read and I look forward to talking more about it with Toni Jordan about it this Saturday 12 February 2011 at 12pm in the Community Room at the Abbotsford Convent. Book here or drop by on the day.

This review has been submitted as part of the Aussie Author Challenge.

Out of the Black Land, Kerry Greenwood’s first foray into ancient Egypt, also the first offering from new kids on the publishing block Clan Destine Press, is a sexy and sensational read, peopled with engaging characters in exquisite, exotic settings.

The book is set during Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt, which Greenwood ‘boldly and with some justification’ estimates at 1450 BC. Following the death of his father Amenhotep III with whom he has co-reigned, Amenhotep IV — deformed and impotent, though married to famed beauty Nefertiti — re-names himself Akhnaten and sets about replacing Egypt’s polytheistic pantheon with the sole worship of the Aten or Sun God. In combination with his economic mismanagement, Akhnaten’s religious fervour threatens the fabric Egyptian society and the security of the Empire. But can those who would protect Egypt penetrate the powerful clutch of corrupt officials who surround the Pharoah?

The story is told through the eyes of two characters: Mutnodjme, haf-sister to Nefertiti, scholar and one-time priestess of Isis before the imposition of monotheism; and Ptah-hotep, the Great Royal Scribe, plucked from obscurity on the whim of Amenhotep IV.

It is a ripping yarn. Kerry is such an engaging writer, she doesn’t describe Ancient Egypt so much as plunge the reader into it. I wasn’t at all sure if I’d enjoy a book so far removed from what I normally read, but after a slightly slow start I was hooked.

In an interview on Joy FM, Kerry describes how the story was inspired by a visit to the Valley of the Kings and the tomb of a great judge decorated with images of ‘two men making love in the reeds, along with a whole lot of beautiful paintings of people making wine’. She was taken with the idea of writing a same-sex love story set in a time and place where homosexuality was considered neither sinful nor surprising.

The result is a very sexy read, with the sex being both bountiful and diverse. There’s straight sex, gay sex, lesbian sex and transvestism; orgies and ménage a trois; sex between family members — father with daughters and daughters-in-law (those Pharoahs were a pretty incestuous lot) — ritual sex and sexual abuse, not to mention sex with surrogates to signify consummation of marriage. Phew! No wonder Out of the Black Land kept me up at night.

I’d like to think that reading Out of the Black Land has better prepared me for the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs Exhibition coming soon to the Melbourne Museum. Certainly, I will understand more of the history and symbols. But as Kerry points out in the Afterward, the study of Egyptology is full of contradictions, not to mention the cultural and religious bias invested in different interpretations of the historical record. I for one am glad she didn’t let the inexact ‘science’ of Egyptology stand in the way of a good story.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have met Kerry on several occasions and while we are not intimates, she did puff my most recent novel, The Half-Child, calling it ‘clever and funny’. I was so proud, I wanted to get a T-shirt printed with ‘Kerry Greenwood thinks I’m clever and funny’ on it.

This review has been submitted as part of the Aussie Author Challenge.

Simone Lazaroo’s first three novels all won the WA Premier’s prize for fiction and I wouldn’t be surprised if Sustenance continues her perfect strike rate. Beautifully crafted, satirical and poignant, Sustenance strikes the perfect balance, being a character-driven novel with an engaging plot. I read it in two days and loved it.

Set at the Elsewhere Hotel in an unnamed part of inland Bali, Sustenance revolves around Perpetua de Mello, an ‘illegitimate kampong child abandoned by her expatriate father’. Perpetua marries and migrates from her mother’s place in Malacca to Perth, but her marriage does not survive the death of her young son. A surprise invitation leads her to Bali and the Hotel Elsewhere — ‘a slightly precarious place between Malacca and Australia…between hope and despair’ — where her English father is co-owner and she takes over the cooking.

The story unfolds over twenty-four hours and is told from the point of view of Perpetua, her father Oswald whose mental health is deteriorating, a Balinese couple Tedja and Made who work at the hotel, and a suite of guests — Australians plus a French family — who are brought together in dramatic circumstances, ‘reduced to the bones of [their] being’ by fear, forced to contemplate what matters most to them.

Lazaroo peppers the story with reflections on food, culture and religion. But this is no Eat, Pray, Love – it’s practically the antidote. In place of Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-absorption, Lazaroo provides acute, often biting observations about the clash in perceptions between locals and orang asing or ‘outsiders’. Where foreign tourists see the Balinese as innately easygoing, obliging, even spiritual because they smile all the time — and will tell them as much — the Balinese perspective is different.

Even when he wasn’t working at the hotel, Tedja was unfailingly courteous to tourists, including the bad-mannered ones. This wasn’t because he was particularly acquiescent by nature, or frightened, or following the local newspaper’s injunctions to be friendly to foreigners. It was because his politeness saved him from spending any more energy or thought on difficult people than was strictly necessary.

Where tourists lured by slogans like find yourself envy the Balinese their extended family ties, the locals reflects on how family conflicts are ‘intensified by living so closely’.

The novel poses questions about how poorer people damaged by unconscious insensitivity and conscious exploitation can seek redress, but is all the more powerful for placing these questions in the context of broader reflections on grief and hope across all characters and cultures.

‘There is no adequate compensation for some kinds of loss,’ Perpetua muses towards the end of the book. ‘You must work hard to realise the possibilities. Difficult but necessary, this day in, day out making of sustenance from scarce ingredients.’

It’s Perpetua’s ability to make sustenance from scarce ingredients that sees her emerge as the hero, enabling her to find a sense of peace the foreigners on detox diets, being massaged with herbs and buying up bronze Buddhas can only dream of.

For me, reading Lazaroo’s book was like a masterclass in fiction writing. So it was no surprise to learn she is a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Arts at Murdoch University. And this is the second outstanding novel I’ve read in the past few months by a Western Australian author, the other being Line of Sight by David Whish-Wilson. Both will be guests of this year’s Perth Writers Festival.

Thanks to Clare Kennedy (who reviewed The Half-Child for the Herald Sun) for recommending Sustenance to me. I’ll certainly be seeking out Lazaroo’s other novels.

As the year 2010 nears its end, I’ve just learned about the annual Aussie Author Challenge, a terrific initiative designed to encourage people to read more works by Australian authors. As an Australian author, I can only support such an initiative.

As it turns out, I have met the requirements of the ‘tourist’ category for the 2010 challenge, having posted 3+ reviews of books by Australian authors on this blog in 2010, namely:

A Few Right Thinking Men – Sulari Gentill

Gunshot Road – Adrian Hyland

Take Out – Felicity Young

Line of Sight – David Whish-Wilson

For the 2011 Aussie Author Challenge, aiming for ‘true blue’ status and reviewing 12 books by Australian authors is probably a bit ambitious, given that I am also trying to write another novel.

But I reckon I can keep being a tourist, a get better at it with practice.