Forgotten

Recently our Book Club read “Stoner”, a wonderful 1965 novel by John Williams which had gone out of print until its success in France led to its reissue in the United States. It reminded me that one of the books on my 'Hope to Get To' list had a similar history. I had read an article in the New Yorker about Australian writer Elizabeth Harrower, whose works had been out of print for many years until, in 2012, the Australian publishing house Text reissued them and persuaded her to publish her last novel, which she had withdrawn just before it was to be released in 1971. The article declared The Watch Tower to be her greatest novel, so I decided it was time to read another forgotten work.

Although the story is set in the Australia of the 1940's, I kept being reminded of novels from earlier times. Laura and Clare Vaizey are not orphans like Jane Eyre, but they might as well be. Their heartless mother yanks Laura out of her academic high school so that she can support the family, then abandons the girls completely to return to England. Laura sacrifices her own dreams and attempts to save her sister's future by marrying Felix Shaw, her boss at the factory where she works. Harrower describes him as “a swarthy nuggety man of forty-four who looked closer to fifty”. All I could think of was poor Dorothea stuck with boring, insensitive Casaubon in "Middlemarch".

But Felix turns out to be much worse than the pompous Casaubon; in fact, he proudly compares himself to Bluebeard. What follows is a harrowing psychological tale, as Clare attempts to escape the toxic household that Felix has created around Laura and herself. If you've ever wondered why a woman stays in an abusive marriage, this novel provides a vivid case study.

Harrower's language is precise and controlled, sometimes witty, always honest. The story was terrifying, but I couldn't look away.

Reverberations

On a summer afternoon in suburban Melbourne, a group of friends and family gather with their assorted children for a barbecue. The host Hector is of Greek descent, his wife Aisha is Indian, and their guests are a mix that probably represents Australia in the 21^st century – white, aborigine, Muslim, Jewish, gay, straight, wealthy and working class, young and old. Three-year-old Hugo has been behaving obnoxiously all afternoon, but his parents keep making excuses for him rather than correcting him. Finally, wielding a cricket bat, he vaguely threatens nine-year-old Rocco, whereupon Rocco's father Harry, Hector's cousin, slaps him.

That's the starting point for The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, and the reverberations from that slap ripple through the entire story. Tsiolkas divides his book into eight sections, each one exploring the inner life of one of the characters from the party. Some of the storylines directly follow the effect of the slap – Hugo's parents press charges, family and friends are forced to take sides in the dispute, friendships are threatened. Others explore more personal stories – marriage and infidelity, mid-life crisis, the bonds of friendship, adolescent coming-of-age and dealing with the loss of aging friends. Through them Tsiolkas examines racism, homophobia and class prejudice without ever preaching or sentimentalizing.

Every time I thought he was headed for a stereotype he swerved from it to give a realistic but sympathetic view of a character. I found some stories more compelling than others (maybe I've just read too many coming of age tales?), but Tsiolkas does an admirable job of keeping all eight threads woven together. Starting with a single shocking act he paints a nuanced picture of a network of complex relationships.

Completely Pointless and Beautiful

That's Tim Winton's description of surfing in his new novel Breath. I hadn't intended to read another coming-of-age novel so soon but I happened to see Winton's book on the New Fiction shelf at the library and remembered enjoying his “Cloudstreet” long ago. Winton is an Australian, and the main story, told in flashback, takes place in the small town of Sawyer in western Australia in the late 60's. Eleven year old Bruce Pike (“Pikelet”) and his twelve year old friend Ivan Loon (“Loonie”) have little in common, but they share a love of adventure in the forests and rivers of Sawyer. One favorite pastime is diving to the bottom of the river and holding their breath as long as possible. (“We scared people, pushing each other harder and further until often as not we scared ourselves”.), This is the first and most obvious reference to the title, but the notion of breath plays out in more dangerous ways as the story progresses.

The ocean is only a short distance from their mill town, but Pikelet's parents are afraid of it and Loonie's father, who owns a bar, is oblivious to it. But the ocean is a seductive presence for the adventurous boys, especially when they discover surfing. And even more seductive is Sando, a veteran international surfer who lives by the ocean and surfs with a grace and passion that the boys admire. They become his acolytes. Initially he is their teacher and guru, but gradually he begins to push them to surf in riskier and riskier situations. At the same time his wife Eva makes it clear that she can barely tolerate their presence.

I loved Winton's spare but lyrical descriptions of the exciting, harrowing thrills of surfing, as well as its beauty. It's easy to see why the lonely boys were so quickly addicted to it. But what happens when a boy is seduced by the attentions of powerful adults? When he is convinced that taking risks is the key to becoming extraordinary? That's the question Winton tackles. The two boys discover different answers, but both are powerfully and permanently affected by their childhood experiences.

Life Underground

It's always interesting to read a book about which you know absolutely nothing. So when I received His Illegal Self by Peter Carey as a gift I carefully avoided reading the synopsis on the book flap and the blurb on the back cover. I didn't even look at the About The Author text on the back flap, and I'm really glad I didn't. Had I looked I would have discovered that Peter Carey also wrote “Oscar and Lucinda”, definitely not one of my favorite reads. I've forgotten most of that story, but the image of Oscar transporting that damn glass cathedral through the jungle as he doses laudanum is one I wish I could forget.

But this book tells a very different kind of story. If you're old enough to remember the radical student groups of the late sixties (think SDS, Weathermen), you may be intrigued by Carey's premise. It's 1972, and a seven year old boy named Che Selkirk, the child of two radicals now living underground, is being raised by his grandmother, a Park Avenue matron. Not surprisingly she has changed his name to Jay. But very early in the book his life takes a sharp turn as he is pulled back into the world of his parents. A great deal happens very quickly at the beginning of the story, and to describe it would be to deprive you of what for me was an enjoyable part of reading it – the exhilaration of seeing the unexpected events unfold.

The story is narrated primarily from Che's point of view, even though it's written in the third person. But occasionally Carey has to backtrack to fill in missing pieces that Che doesn't know. That's a little jarring, and the story definitely has a fragmented feeling. The latter part of the book is set in a hippie commune in Queensland Australia, and Carey's descriptions both of the natural world and of the weird dynamics of commune life are vivid and convincing. Occasionally Carey's Che sound more Australian than American, and at times his observations are too adult for a seven year old, but I thought he did an admirable job of telling the story from a child's perspective.

So my advice is this – if you're going to read this book don't read any reviews – it's better to be surprised. And if you have read this book I'd love to hear your opinion of the meaning of the last paragraph.