Book Review – The Last Sky by Alice Nelson

Alice Nelson’s The Last Sky is the eighth winner of Western Australia’s TAG Hungerford Award. For those who don’t know, the Hungerford is a biannual award for W.A. writers who haven’t yet published a novel length work. The award is presented by none other than Tom Hungerford himself, who is well into his nineties now. Many of Tom Hungerford’s stories have been collected in the volume Straightshooter, which is made up of three earlier collections. Nelson’s novel won the award for 2006, which was actually awarded in Feb 2007, and the book was released in August 2008. No wonder, then, that the cover says ‘Winner of the TAG Hungerford Award’ rather than ‘Winner of the TAG Hungerford Award 2006.’ But I digress. The Last Sky is an effective mood piece of a novel, reminiscent of the works of earlier TAG Hungerford Award winning writers Gail Jones and Simone Lazaroo. Nelson rather impressively carves out her own space in this literary constellation, as this review will attempt to describe.

The cast of The Last Sky is fairly small. Maya Wise is the viewpoint character, although Nelson certainly blurs the boundaries between the perspectives of different characters. She is unhappily married to an archaeologist named Joseph. During the course of her time in Hong Kong shortly before the ‘Handover’ to Chinese rule, Maya meets Ken Tiger and Clarissa. Joseph is the protege of a famous archaeologist named Aurel Stein, whose name certainly rang a bell. My own interest in Chinese history has led to have a vague idea that Aurel Stein was an explorer of the Silk Road region in the early twentieth century. It turns out that the real Aurel Stein died in 1943, at age eighty. Nelson seems to have sent Stein a few decades into his future for the purpose of this novel. Through Ken Tiger, Maya learns about the lives of Ada Lang and Victor Kadoorie. We are also introduced to Maya and Joseph’s respective families through Maya’s ‘flights of fancy’ embellished from shreds of information. It’s hard to say who the main characters of this novel truly are, or what time period the book is mostly set in. Nelson’s technique is slippery and elusive, and for the most part well realised.

The Last Sky doesn’t have a plot, at least very little of one that is occurring in Maya Wise’s present. I could probably summarise the main events in a short paragraph, and it probably wouldn’t seem very impressive, but to do so would be to misunderstand The Last Sky’s subtle art. Rather there are events being remembered (or imagined) in various times, interwoven and interlocking. It’s the kind of thing I suspect would turn a fair few readers off, but I found the technique to be interesting enough. Maya’s life seems to consist of real and imagined wanderings around Hong Kong, as well as her recollections of various events in her own past. The only forward movement in time that I can discern relates to the drawing closer of the actual ‘Handover’ date, with which the novel ends.

One of Maya’s problems is that she feels no real affinity with the Chinese around her. Fairly early on she confesses to this and it causes her to feel alienated from Hong Kong society. For me this was a slight disappointment, as it meant that the narrative lacked the insider dimension that makes Simone Lazaroo’s The World Waiting to be Made so exquisite. Her husband Joseph is even less tolerant of the Chinese, whom he sees as barbarians unappreciative of his works of excavation and scholarship. Maya becomes increasingly ambivalent about Joseph’s charms (or lack thereof) and as such I found him to be an unlikeable character. Maya doesn’t have much more luck with the Chinese than her husband:

“Sometimes I think that these people [the Chinese] will always be inaccessible to me. Once I told Joseph that I thought they deliberately conspired to fulfil all the western cliches about them, about their inscrutability.” (p. 127)

But Nelson’s novel is not so much about this sense of dislocation as about her imagined flights into the lives of Ken Tiger, his lover Ada, and her husband Victor Kadoorie. Maya says it best herself, neatly summarising this novel’s methodology:

“Yes, that’s the place I’d like to be. In the landscape of someone else’s past, between the closed pages of the history book.” (p. 153)

This technique is by its very nature elusive and tangential, and thus the narrative does not so much progress as unfold. Late in the story, Maya rues the fact that:

“I have clung too tightly to a world that is not my own. Ken Tiger and Ada and Victor and Clarissa and Joseph. I have spent all these months here trying to pin them down. Have I become only a prism that refracts their stories, their lives?” (p. 228)

The Last Sky is easy to read, but difficult to review. The various strands fall together neatly and yet seem insubstantial when analysed in isolation. I read this over the course of something less than four hours, in two sessions over the course of one day. This serves as a testament to this novel’s readability, for readers of this blog will know that I often abandon novels mid-course. I found the impact of the novel to build to something like a crescendo toward the end, which is of course a good thing.

On the subject of presentation, Fremantle Press have done a good job of presenting what must have been quite a short manuscript (not more than 60,000 words, I wouldn’t have thought) in such a way as to make the novel appear longer than it is. Generous margins and ample use of white space bulks this up to 250 pages, but the pages themselves breeze by. This is clever work by the publisher, who would no doubt have been mindful of the fact that the manuscript was a little on the short side for today’s market.

This is a work of not insignificant promise. Nelson shows glimpses of an ability to produce imagery as dense and as vivid as Gail Jones. Similarly, The Last Sky tantalizes the reader with visions of an exotic Eastern landscape more fully explored in the work of Simone Lazaroo. In time, Nelson may equal those luminaries on both counts.

Book Review – The Albanian by Donna Mazza

There’s something slightly intimidating about Donna Mazza’s The Albanian, which won the 2004 TAG Hungerford Award but wasn’t published until 2007. Perhaps it’s the dark and brooding cover, maybe the title, or even the slightly imposing page length (360+), but I wasn’t certain that I would like or be able to get through this. The first few pages seemed to fulfill my expectations, but it wasn’t long before I found myself hooked into the story. I had a discussion with my sister recently about reading books through to the end (I often read as much as a third or a half of a book before giving up, she usually perseveres to the bitter end) which was fresh in my mind as I began to read. It was with slight surprise that I looked down at the page number and realised I was on page 55 already.

The Albanian begins in the city of Dubrovnik in 1989 in the old Yugoslavia. This is of immediate interest as the Balkan Wars were soon to engulf the area. Rosa is a young woman from Bunbury on her way to Istanbul. Why she is going there isn’t immediately clear, perhaps not even to Rosa herself. And so we get pages and pages of descriptions, emotions and sensations of the city and of Rosa’s thoughts. This is important to note, as there is precious little action or plot in the first section of the book. This might turn some readers away, and to be quite honest it might have turned me away too had I not especially wanted to read this book, owing to the fact that it was a TAG Hungerford Award winner.

It isn’t long, however, before we are introduced to the Albanian of the title. Things don’t start too well for this relationship, which begins on the streets of Dubrovnik. Rosa isn’t too sure what to make of the prematurely haggard, cigarette smoking Albanian, but he obvious thinks a lot of her, because he rapes or at least coerces sex from her more or less against her will. Rosa seems slightly lethargic about this, in the sense that doesn’t seem overly concerned by this turn of events, even though they were against her will. As we discover, Rosa is a curiously passive young lady, who keeps coming back to the Albanian, despite his thieving of her passport (he gives it back) and a threat that he can find her anywhere in Dubrovnik. The biggest surprise for me, however, was the discovery that Rosa was only nineteen. Nineteen? What is a nineteen year old from Bunbury doing by herself in Yugoslavia on the brink of a war that was to span a decade?

Rosa leaves Dubrovnik promising to return to her Albanian (who remains unnamed), not knowing whether she intends to return or not. There is a significant language and cultural barrier between the two, and yet Rosa feels compelled to return to him. The second part of the narrative sees Rosa tagging along with an American woman, Anya. This is where the story seems most conventional and most touristy. Nothing seems to have much of an impact on Rosa; she is dreamy and vague. Her memories of the rape and her feelings about this seem to take a while to sink in, almost as if she had been existing in some half-asleep state. Despite this, her resolve to return to Dubrovnik only intensifies.

Without wanting to merely retell the plot of The Albanian, suffice to say that there is much to-ing and fro-ing. Rosa goes back to Dubrovnik, and then after a fairly miserable time (part of which is spent locked up in a dingy room) she makes it back to Bunbury. The Bunbury section initially seems aimless (which mirrors Rosa’s own feelings) but builds in momentum as Rosa makes plans to return to her (still unnamed) Albanian, who is now in Sweden seeking political asylum. She returns to find herself more isolated than ever. One wonders why on earth she would continue down such a line of action. The Albanian, by Rosa’s own admission, is ugly, sexist, racist (against Serbs) and has little time for her.

One of the most interesting things about this novel is the description of the culture shock Rosa endures, particularly when she arrives in Sweden. Very few people speak English, even fewer want to speak to her, and the Albanian expects her to cook for him and occupy herself while he slaves away at some awful job during the day. If anything, the situation is worse when he takes her to meet other Albanians. This culture shock is especially stark in terms of how women are treated in this culture. Women are expected to cook, wait on the men until very late in the evening (clearing ashtrays and so forth), and eat leftover scraps. In other words, women have a very low standing. While the Albanian recognises that Rosa is different from Albanian women, he still expects her to adhere to many of these principles, such as standing to shake a man’s hand. Rosa has second, third and fourth thoughts about where she is and what she is doing, and this reader does too.

The other major obstacle to understanding is the language barrier itself. What exactly Rosa sees in her Albanian isn’t immediately clear, but it seems to have something to do with the sense of mystery engendered by their communication difficulties. From the Bunbury section, we see that Rosa’s home life is very safe and very boring, and as such her European adventures are in opposition to this. But as the narrative progresses, Rosa begins to understand that the Albanian cares only for his family and country (Kosove), and while these are laudable concerns they are not directly relevant to Rosa. She becomes an unwilling passenger, long overstaying her three month visa as Yugoslavia spirals towards war.

The final straw is the attack on Dubrovnik, which Rosa sees via the news. This was the city where both she and the Albanian were happiest, and now it is destroyed. There is a sense of terrible loss, and the prospect of further misery. The Albanian himself notes that if the centuries-old city is not immune from destruction at the hands of the Serbs, then what hope does a mere mortal of twenty-four years have? The future is grim, but Rosa is leaving. And so The Albanian ends on a depressing note. The lines of communication have been broken. Henceforth, Rosa will travel as an outsider to Europe’s ills, not as a mute and helpless insider.

The Albanian is an impressive first novel. It has a substance and reality that makes the places and people depicted in it seem real. When I say real, I mean I am taking this to be a kind of autobiographical narrative. It is very tempting to read Rosa as Donna Mazza herself, not least because they are around the same age. There is a sense of authenticity here in the details of life in Sweden and in the ways the streets of Dubrovnik are shown. This is, of course, a good thing. On the other hand, I felt that the structure of the narrative seemed problematic at times. The various sections do not always hang together well, and there are points in the story where momentum is lost. Again, this appears to mirror reality. I can only assume that most or all of these events actually occurred, perhaps to Mazza herself. Perhaps I am mistaken. While not my favourite of the five Hungerford winners I have fully read (The World Waiting to be Made remains my favourite), The Albanian is a very impressive debut. The notes in the back of the book say that it took Mazza seven years to write this, and I can well believe it. Hopefully it will not take her seven years to write a second novel. I look forward to Mazza’s subsequent work with interest.

Book Review – In Ecstasy by Kate McCaffrey

In Ecstasy is Perth author Kate McCaffrey’s second novel for teenagers. It was released in April of this year by Fremantle Press, and should be widely available in W.A. and elsewhere. McCaffrey is a high school English teacher like myself (and a lot of other writers, apparently) and her novel seems directed toward students in the 14-17 age group.

In Ecstasy mainly concerns two Year 11 girls, Mia and Sophie. The novel is narrated from both points of view, and they aren’t always in ‘time sync’ with each other. This is done to heighten tension and to withhold certain information at particular times, and for the most part I thought it was done well. Without being a teenage girl myself, I felt that McCaffrey has done a good job of appealing to the particular target audience. The language and slang seem appropriate, and there was nothing that seemed out of place or jarring.

Sophie and Mia are going in different directions. At the beginning of the novel they are close friends, and have been for some time, but they drift apart over the course of the narrative. Sophie is initially confident and perhaps the more popular of the two, but this changes rapidly. Mia is initially shy and reserved, envying her friend’s looks and demeanour, but her confidence blossoms, in no small part due to the drug Ecstasy.

This book is a virtual travelogue of the pitfalls of teenage life, including but not limited to drug use (ecstasy, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine), underage sex, date rape, and teenage pregnancy. As the novel progresses, we begin to see the two girls drift apart as Sophie withdraws from the drug/party culture. (Interestingly, a similar thing happened to myself at a similar age.) Mia, however, becomes more and more embroiled in the world of drugs and parties, and her health eventually suffers as a result.

Mia’s sense of self seems to come from a couple of sources: firstly, the ecstasy itself; and secondly her relationship with the ultra popular and rich Lewis Scott. This propels her into the popularity stratosphere, but it doesn’t last long. Without wanting to spoil the novel for potential readers, everything goes pear shaped for Mia. Consequently, her story is the dominant one in this novel, and here I encountered a potential problem. Sophie ends up becoming the more sensible of the two girls, and her narrative withers away to virtually nothing. Some of her sections are less than a page in length. But Mia’s story is interesting enough to sustain this reader’s attention.

I’m not sure if McCaffrey intended to address the idea of patriarchy and sexual equality at all, but I thought the novel did so in an implicit way. Most of the girls and women in this novel are in some sense slaves to men, be it physically or emotionally (or both). There is a reverse example, in which young Dominic seems to fawn over Sophie. I have noticed myself that ‘equal rights’ has gone backwards a long way in the past twenty years or so in this country, and In Ecstasy seems to reflect that in the enormous pressure these young girls feel to conform to notions of beauty and fashion sense. It’s very sad to think that we live in a world where girls are put under these kinds of pressures, but there it is.

Ultimately, In Ecstasy is a successful novel. It manages to cleverly interweave a tale around a number of important issues teenagers may face. It avoids being too blatantly an ‘issues novel,’ while carefully mapping this terrain. Most importantly, McCaffrey does this as an insider, not an outsider to the worlds of teenage experience. Any parent with teenage children should read this, as should the teenagers themselves. Hell, my daughter isn’t yet three, and I’m already worried by some of the material in this book, such as the odious Glenn. Highly recommended.

Kate McCaffrey has a wordpress blog of her own at katemccaffrey.wordpress.com

Book Review – The Fur by Nathan Hobby

I actually read The Fur about four months ago, but because I had yet to crank up my blog at that stage, I never got around to reviewing it. Here, then, is my belated review of Nathan Hobby’s first novel, which won the TAG Hungerford Award in 2002.

The first thing to be said is that I ripped through this in about four hours. I’m sure that must be annoying – to spend years working on something that can be consumed in one afternoon and evening – but there it is. I am making a habit of binging on books lately, and The Fur was no exception. It’s about a young man by the name of Michael Sullivan, living with his parent/s in the W.A. locales of Collie, Bunbury and finally near Murdoch University. So this is a familiar terrain for W.A. readers.

Only it isn’t familiar at all. The central idea of the The Fur is, well, the fur. What is it? Who can say? The fur is some kind of fungal growth that covers everything from houses, windows to parts of people’s bodies. It’s not exactly malignant, but it’s inconvenient all the same. As a result, most of W.A. has been quarantined by the ‘Wealth, which is an ironic and apt contraction of Commonwealth. The Wealth, with the help of the UN, has rendered W.A. as some kind of exclusion zone. This reminds me of the ‘Zone’ around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine. So this is something of a science fiction narrative, and an alternate history at that: it seems that the fur first struck during the 1970s. And yet, in this alternate world, the Smashing Pumpkins still managed to release their album ‘Mellencollie and the Infinite Sadness.’ W.A., Hobby seems to be saying, is utterly insignificant to the rest of the world. Unless, of course, you happen to be living in it.

Michael Sullivan is at the crossroads of many things: school, love, family, and faith. All of these things impact upon him in the course of The Fur. Schoolwise, this is a familiar tale of trying to get through the TEE, which echoes nothing if not Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi. In matters of the the heart, Michael is afflicted by his affection for a series of young women, the most significant of whom is Rebecca. In terms of family, Michael has to deal with the death of his mother and moving away from his father’s home. Finally, Michael must contend with a number of theological questions in relation to his Christian faith. In short, there’s a lot on Michael’s plate in The Fur.

As I touched on before, the science fictional elements of this story are backgrounded. There is no attempt to bring them into focus. This works surprisingly well, despite the fact that the nature of the fur itself is a massive unsolved mystery. What this story is really about is the need for acceptance, the need to grow apart from one’s parents, and the need for love. These are all basic human drives, and thus Michael Sullivan is something of an everyman. This is a book about growing up, and the harsh lessons that one learns along the way.

When I said there were harsh lessons to be learned in (and from) The Fur, I meant it. There are no happy endings here. In a sense, nothing is resolved. One aspect I found frustrating was Hobby’s practice of unfolding plot-lines, only for them to shrivel and die before flowering (so to speak). In one episode, Michael and Rebecca plan to escape to Melbourne by way of a volleyball competition. This section is where The Fur seems most conventional, as Michael saves money for a false ID by working for an importer. There is even a scene in which he drinks the highly coveted and expensive Coca Cola. But the volleyball narrative drops away, and Michael moves on. This might be more realistic – for what is life but a series of disjointed and incomplete narratives? – but it is hard on the reader nonetheless.

And thus The Fur is ultimately about frustration. Sexual frustration, familial frustration, and existential frustration. We can feel Michael’s dis-ease, his restlessness. At times The Fur can be a confronting read. But it not an unrewarding one. One hopes that Hobby can build on this early success (he completed this novel at twenty years of age) in subsequent books. From what I’ve read of his thus-far unpublished second novel, The House of Zealots, further improvement seems likely.

Book Review – Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch by Simon Haynes

“Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” is the fourth installment in Simon Haynes’ series, and it’s another strong showing for Hal, Clunk and co. For the uninitiated, Hal Spacejock is an interstellar freight trader running cargo to and fro, but he rarely has enough credits for a nice meal, or a change of clothes for that matter. Clunk is Hal’s robot sidekick, and much of the humour stems from the banter between them. There’s nothing very futuristic about the “Hal Spacejock” series, but what it lacks in gee-whiz it makes up for in laugh out loud.

“No Free Lunch” sees Hal and Clunk arriving on the planet of Dismolle (a pun on dismal perhaps?), which resembles nothing if not a Mandurah retirement village, replete with tea cosies and knitted sweaters and whatever else. There isn’t much crime on Dismolle, so little in fact that the Peace Force consists of a brain-dead robot and a beautiful young recruit by the name of Harriet Walsh. Hal thinks it’s his lucky day, and it is: for once, something goes right for him from the start, and Ms Walsh invites him to dinner.

Unfortunately, dinner is to be served in the presence of Miranda Morgan, a high-profile Dismollean who wants Hal to take a shipment of goods to the planet Forzen for her. Harriet Walsh and Miranda Morgan loathe one another, so it’s only natural that Harriet should end up with an assignment to Forzen herself. Somehow, Clunk has been conned into carving the roast. This is exactly how the “Hal Spacejock” novels work. The plot is cleverly engineered so that the lives of seemingly unrelated characters are thrown together in the most unlikely of circumstances which, on reflection, seem perfectly logical. And, of course, trouble is never far away.

“No Free Lunch” offers us the kind of helter-skelter storyline we’ve come to expect from this series. There’s a familiar-faced stowaway, a lecherous rival for Harriet Walsh’s affections, a mine complete with some very unusual miners, and even a murder mystery to boot. Much of the action takes place on the very cold planet of Forzen (ah…Frozen?). Haynes sketches in just enough detail so that the reader can picture the setting, but not so much as to slow the story down. Settings in Spacejock novels are usually rather generic anyway. Like in Star Wars, where you’ve got the Desert planet, the City planet, the Jungle planet etc., in “No Free Lunch” we have the Dismal planet, the Frozen planet and so on.

Haynes has cranked up the ‘ribald meter’ a notch or two as well, and there are plenty of coy sexual references and double entendres. You could hardly call this racy, however; it’s all good, clean fun. Things tend to go wrong for Hal Spacejock most of the time, and the situation in “No Free Lunch” is often grim indeed. A common theme in these books is for Hal’s ship, the Volante, to be stolen or be otherwise out of action, and for Hal and Clunk to be chased around by gangs of thugs and other shifty characters. “No Free Lunch” follows this pattern, but takes the sense of danger a little further than previous books.

This sense of danger is important, because after four Spacejock novels, the reader cares for Hal and Clunk’s welfare about all else. In addition, “No Free Lunch” develops the character of Harriet Walsh in a way that earlier Spacejock novels didn’t. Another review mentioned the possibility of adding Miss Walsh as a regular character in the series. While it is true that Harriet is the best developed of the secondary characters in the Spacejock series so far, and while I can understand that readers might desire to give Hal a ‘happy ending,’ I think much of the humour comes from Hal’s bachelorhood. But it remains to be seen what role Miss Harriet might play in future Spacejock novels. And this is where the Spacejock series rises above most humorous SF: it manages to be amusing and genuinely warm at the same time.

One of the best things about this series is that each book stands alone as an individual story. Therefore, it is quite possible to start with “Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” without having read the earlier books. There are references to the earlier books, of course, but nothing essential. However, you might find that upon completing this book, you feel the urge to read books 1, 2 and 3. The Hal Spacejock series is highly amusing and addictive fare, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.

 

Book Review – Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts by Simon Haynes

“Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is the third in Simon Haynes’ humorous SF series, and it’s the best yet. Before I get into discussing this book explicitly, I want to give potential readers an idea of what makes this series different to most of the other SF on the market today. The “Hal Spacejock” books are funny, very much in the tradition of “Red Dwarf” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but there are plenty of things that make them different, and in some facets superior, to those famous titles.

For a start, there aren’t any aliens in the Spacejock universe. It took me two-and-a-half books to realise this, but it’s worth pointing out. This isn’t a gaudy, exotic, higher-state-of-consciousness type SF future; it’s a run-down, penny-pinching, two-bit swindling kind of future, and Hal Spacejock is often the biggest swindler of them all. In fact, there’s nothing especially futuristic about any of this. Spaceports are rundown and decrepit, empty places where weeds grow through the cracks in the pavement and old robots sell out of date chocolate. There are a number of parallels with early twenty-first century Australian life, and Hal’s frustrations aren’t that dissimilar to our own. Malfunctioning coffee makers, prangs with other vehicles (one with a yellow sticker, no less), internet scams and annoying voice recognition software are some of the perils Hal faces on a day to day basis.

Paradoxically, however, the Spacejock novels can’t really be described as parodies, neither of science fiction nor of modern life in general. The reason for this is that, beneath the veneer of exploding spaceships and burning fuel canisters, there lies a gentle comedy of some distinction. I found that the more of this series I read, the more I enjoyed it, largely due to the interplay between Hal and his robot friend, Clunk. This relationship is love-hate in nature, and both give as good as they get, but there’s a pleasing warmth about all of this. And robots in these novels are often the most human of entities: they make mistakes, get offended and plan alternate careers when they feel unloved. The “Hal Spacejock” novels are wholesome rather than techno-savvy, old-fashioned rather than forward looking. This is a kind of science fiction which hasn’t been written for decades, and I for one welcome its return. Having said that, Hal is a scientific luddite, a kind of ‘Golden Age of SF Anti-hero.’ I severely doubt that John W. Campbell would have approved of his attitude toward the gizmos around him.

“Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is set in one solar system, and there’s even a convenient map of the system at the front of the book. As usual, Hal is trying to make ends meet by running cargo shipments across empty space, and as usual there are problems galore. That doesn’t stop Hal from stopping to buying the out of date chocolates I mentioned before, and later a whole lot more confectionary. Hal is amusingly childish, so much so that the balance of power between Clunk and he seems to have shifted in the robot’s favour by this third volume. This book follows the tried and tested formula of things starting off on shaky ground, then deteriorating into a poor state indeed, before decaying still further. And we haven’t even met “Just Desserts’” antagonist yet.

Jasmin Ortiz can’t remember very much about her life at all, until she realises that she is a robot with a secret mission. In the hands of a different writer, this scene could have been genuinely horrific, but there’s nothing approaching gloominess in the Spacejock-o-sphere. Instead, Jasmin plugs herself into a power socket and gets on with the business of undertaking her mission. She will require, of course, the use of Hal’s spaceship, the Volante. And this is where it becomes obvious that Haynes has mastered his art. Specifically, Chapter Six is where Haynes picks up all the threads and weaves them together artfully: Jasmin needs a spaceship to transport her shipment; Hal needs a part for the ship which cannot be obtained locally; Clunk has signed Hal and himself up as crew on the Luna Rose; a pallet of coffee-makers arrives at the Volante, and is later mistaken for Jasmin’s shipment. And the narrative unfolds from there.

Space elevators, anti-gravity wells, and no end of spaceships populate this book, but it can’t be said that they are intrinsically important to the storyline. It’s almost as though Haynes has looked at everyday life and transmuted it into SF-speak. This is not meant as a criticism. “Hal Spacejock: Just Desserts” is a funny book because these are all-too-familiar scenarios, and Hal has all-too-human foibles. Occasionally, I felt the veneer of credibility stretching thin (such as when Hal convinces a whole base full of soldiers to salvage a sunken spaceship for him) but generally speaking Hal’s antics are amusing to say the least. The plot motorS along at a cracking rate, and there is even an unexpected twist in the tail this time around. One feels that Haynes is at the top of his game here.

Happily, readers of the “Hal Spacejock” series will not have to wait long to see if the author can top “Just Desserts.” The fourth book in the series, “Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch” is due for release at the end of May. Call me a Spacejock acolyte-I’ve been won over by the interplanetary shenanigans of Hal and Clunk, and I look forward to the fourth installment with interest.

Book Review – The World Waiting to be Made by Simone Lazaroo

“The World Waiting to be Made” is Simone Lazaroo’s TAG Hungerford Award winning first novel. Of the four Hungerford winners I’ve now read, I contend this to be the best. The book appears to be a bildungsroman tale of Lazaroo’s own life, although there is a note in the front saying that some things have changed. There is nothing especially interesting about the structure of this book, but Lazaroo has had an interesting childhood, and this is an interesting read. One notable thing is that there is an abundance of titles strewn throughout the book. As well as having named chapters (which seems to be less and less common these days), “The World Waiting to be Made” has named sections within chapters.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what is so appealing about this book. I have been reading it attentively, soaking up the details of the writer’s early life experiences (stealing an expensive dress from K-Mart, losing her virginity to a dodgy guru named Max, taking up a teaching post in the Kimberley) and I can’t quite get a handle on how this book works. Born of Singaporean and Australian parents, Lazaroo’s family emigrated to Australia (“the world waiting to be made,” as several Singaporean characters describe it) as an infant. Lazaroo writes in a strong, though not overly literary style. This is good. She provides interesting details. This is good too. And the story never drags. This is the best thing. I would imagine that it would be hard to write the story of one’s life in such a way as to make it uniformly interesting, but Lazaroo appears to have achieved this effect here. The book seems effortless. But it has its own kind of confidence and insistence, too. It is as if it is saying: “This is an important story. You must read me.”

There are a few things here that remind me of my own life: upon coming to this country as a child, being disconcerted and confused by the children around me; working as a teacher in a remote town; parents divorcing and remarrying. But there is a difference. I myself am English, thus there is no real cultural dislocation in coming to Australia. For Lazaroo, this divide must have been a wide gulf indeed. By the time we get to the part where the protagonist (I was going to write ‘Simone,’ but I don’t think that name is ever used in this book) returns to Singapore to visit her family, three quarters of this book has already passed.

The most intriguing meeting in Asia is with the much-famed Uncle Linus, who is (or at least was) some kind of holy man, or bomoh. He says something about how ‘people came to the world waiting to be made because parts of themselves were unrealised.’ And there is the essence of this book. It’s about a person’s identity coming into being, about becoming ‘realised,’ if that makes sense. But there is a sense of ambivalence, of loss of identity, here too. For a fairly sunny book, “The World Waiting to be Made” has a brooding conclusion. Like life, it eludes neat categorisation.

Book Review – Jacob’s Air by Bruce Russell

I liked Russell’s “Channelling Henry” so much that I made a point of hunting down his earlier novels, the TAG Hungerford Award-winning “Jacob’s Air, and his second novel, “The Chelsea Manifesto.” “Jacob’s Air” was the 1995 winner of the Hungerford Award (which is for a writer who hasn’t yet published a novel length work and is based in W.A.) Russell is from Sydney but he’s lived in Perth about as long as I have, I think (since 1990).

“Jacob’s Air” is set in the Glebe, a suburb of Sydney, in 1984. Specifically, most of the action takes place in an old house by the name of Octavia. The novel is told from the point of view of Delmarie Fairbridge (Deli for short), a twenty-something woman whom we discover is a recovering alcoholic. She has just moved into Octavia with two brothers, Henry and Jacob. The story revolves around the often-strained relationship between these three people, and at times it’s a harrowing tale.

Let me say at this point that while I enjoyed reading “Jacob’s Air,” my enjoyment in it was somewhat less than I got from reading Russell’s third novel, “Channelling Henry.” While the latter was quick-witted, sharp and fast-moving, the former seemed a trifle slow and overly burdened with foreshadowing. I realised quite early that Jacob was going to kill himself, and as I read I started to become a trifle impatient with the narrative. It would appear that Russell is writing about a series of events that happened to him or someone he once knew (perhaps in altered form), and as such I don’t think he had the same control over the material that so impressed me in “Channelling Henry.”

Despite this, “Jacob’s Air” is still an accomplished work. The characters are lovingly detailed, Deli’s voice is engaging and compelling (although I occasionally became annoyed with her glib pronouncements about why someone wasn’t up to her standards). I think it’s always a challenge for a male writer to write in a female voice (or vice versa). It is a challenge I myself relish in my own writing, but it’s a challenge nonetheless. But I think Russell succeeds with his narrator here.

The story rolled on; it was interesting enough to maintain my interest, but not so much that I became entranced by the story. Having said that, “Jacob’s Air” was quite an easy read over its 280+ pages, and I got through it in under twenty-four hours. I am going to conclude this review by reiterating something I said before: it feels as though the writer is too close to the material to really shape it into a compelling narrative. And there I felt I could see the development in Russell’s art between his first novel and his third. Onto “The Chelsea Manifesto.” For those who might be interested, Russell’s fourth novel, “Mick’s Museum,” is apparently going to be published in 2009. I look forward to that with great interest.

Book Review – Crush by Brenda Walker

Brenda Walker’s first novel, published in 1991, has the distinction of being the inaugural T.A.G. Hungerford Award winner. Set in Perth in the late eighties, it is a strange and slender novel of two people: a barrister named Tom O’Brien, and a writer called Anna Penn. The story is told in a distinctively dispassionate style that records details of everyday life, but not so often the emotions that everyday life causes people to feel.

I read somewhere that Walker completed her PhD on the work of Samuel Beckett before writing Crush, and I must say that the influence is clear here. Like in Beckett, things happen but it’s seldom certain whether any importance ought to be attributed to them. It’s appropriate that this is a kind of murder-mystery, but fans of that particular genre won’t find a great deal to grit their teeth on here. The mystery ends up being much closer to home for Tom than he had ever anticipated.

This review is sounding ambivalent, at least to my own ears, but there’s plenty to like here. For me, the most interesting aspect of this book was in the depiction of life in inner-city Perth in the late eighties. Like T.A.G. Hungerford did in “Stories from Suburban Road,” Walker has gone to some length to describe the details of the world of the time, and in doing so younger Perth-ites can gain an insight into the city that was. For me, this novel feels nostalgic, probably because I came to Perth in 1990 from England. The world Walker describes is the one I saw as an eight year-old boy, fresh off the plane.

Stylistically, Crush is strong. Despite what I would term an ‘emotional vacuum’ at the heart of this novel, there’s plenty to keep the story chugging along. This is a short read, and it has been padded out over its 128 pages with blank pages and a picture which is repeated several times. The novel ends with Anna having left Tom’s house (not that they were in a relationship). She says, “I have listened, I have been touched, but now I am unmoved.” I might end this review similarly by saying: “I have read, I have understood, but now I am unmoved.”

Book Review – Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes

This is the first novel in the “Hal Spacejock” series, and I’m reading it second, after “Hal Spacejock: Second Course.” Confused yet? Luckily, I wasn’t. Simon Haynes has constructed his series in such a way that each book is a stand-alone novel; it’s not at all like a fantasy epic where you have to remember endless lists of characters and places. This is a good thing. There was only one major ’spoiler’ as a consequence of reading book #2 before book #1, but more on that later.

“Hal Spacejock” is an effortless, enjoyable read. I remember reading something Douglas Adams had written about his first “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” novel, and it is worth retelling here. Adams said that he was aware that the book was very smooth and easy to read, but that it had taken a LOT of work to create this effect. I suspect that the same is true of Haynes’ novel. The book goes down so easily because it has been crafted. This is what I especially admire about Haynes’ art: you can see that he is a skilled craftsman of words.

In my review of Spacejock #2, I suggested that Haynes had found a good balance between necessary descriptive passages and humorous dialogue. The dialogue in this novel (which focuses, for the most part, on the interplay between Spacejock and the robot Clunk) is light, even breezy. It’s all mildly amusing. What impressed me this time around, however, was the sheer visceral quality of Haynes’ descriptive writing. Especially in regard to Spacejock’s spaceship, the Black Gull, I was impressed by the verisimilitude (how’s that for a wank word?) of the setting. In short, the Black Gull felt like a real spaceship. A dirty, broken-down spaceship, but a real one nonetheless.

Reviewers of the Spacejock novels tend to mention how the series seems to owe much of its heritage to Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and Grant/Naylor’s “Red Dwarf.” While it’s true that there are similarities (there’s one conversation between Hal and a door on the Black Gull that seems to read straight from the pages of “Hitchhikers”), Haynes is no mere imitator. To me,”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a philosophical fantasy, while “Red Dwarf” is a bawdier, low-brow romp. “Hal Spacejock” is neither philosophical nor bawdy, but it has a gritty reality that neither of the other series’ possess.

Another interesting thing about this series is that, in its way, this is a low-tech future. Sure, there seem to be lots of spaceships whizzing around the galaxy, but there’s not a lot of virtual reality type stuff. I actually liked this aspect, and it ties in with my point about the ‘reality’ of the Black Gull. In Haynes’ universe, credits are physical tokens, not cyber-money (hmmm, like Netbank?). Robots are clunky, lumbering machines, not amorphous shapeshifters. To paraphrase “Hitchhikers” again: men were real men, robots were real robots, and spaceships really need regular maintenance. This is where I’m trying to avoid going off on a rant about ‘gimmicky future bullshit’ science fiction. Okay, I’ve taken a deep breath.

The main plot of “Hal Spacejock” sees Hal in his run-down ship trying to make ends meet. I’ve read a lot of SF, but I can’t remember too many novels in which the protagonist is acutely, genuinely, hard up. But Hal is skint. The main storyline sees the conniving Farrell Hinchfig trying to con Hal out of a shipment of robot parts intended for the cigar-chomping Walter Jerling. Hinchfig and his blaster-toting sidekick try to dupe Spacejock by creating a simulacrum of Jerling. Hinchfig’s spaceship is called the Volante. This is where I encountered my one and only problem with reading these novels out of order. Readers of this series will know that Hal’s spaceship in book two is the Volante. Therefore I was instantly alerted to the fact that Hal would win the day and end up trading in his rust-bucket for the brand new Volante, probably at Farrell Hinchfig’s expense. But that was a small worry. After all, I shouldn’t know that Clunk would end up as Hal’s sidekick for the rest of the series, but as his face is on the cover of all the Spacejock novels, that’s a pretty big giveaway.

Okay, SPOILER ALERT. If you haven’t read this book, and I’ve whetted your appetite for it, then you can stop now. Still here? Right. Hal ends up with a whole host of nasty problems, in the form of Brutus, the debt-collection robot, and Farrell Hinchfig and his sidekick Terry. And then of course there’s Jerling on Hal’s case as well. There’s a series of shenanigans that takes place in or near an exclusive casino, and slightly before that, a very ‘lucky’ car-crash which reunites Hal and Clunk after they had been separated. Hal gets away with it in the end, of course, and there’s an elegant solution to the two sets of nasties that are on Hal’s tail. It all ends with a bang. And Hal ends up with the Volante, as I realised would happen. Hal, who had spent most of the book showing a blatant disregard for Clunk’s welfare, suddenly develops a kind streak, and buys the robot from Jerling before stealing the now-departed Farrell’s shiny spaceship. So it’s a happy ending.

For a theoretically ‘violent’ book (there’s no end of gun battles and explosions), there seems to be a strain of pacifism at work in “Hal Spacejock.” Hal and Clunk solve their problems through trickery and deception, rarely by brute force. This is a good message for anyone, but especially for teenagers: brains with always triumph over brawn (just ask Barry Hall ) And so “Hal Spacejock” left me with a warm fuzzy feeling. Rarely have I read a book that was simultaneously so amusing and so warm-hearted. Humour usually revolves around laughing at the misfortune of others, but there’s precious little nastiness here. This is an excellent novel, and I would recommend it to anyone.