Reviews
If it no go so, it go near so: A Brief History of Seven Killings
Understandably, James wants to rescue Marley from the kitsch images of bong hits and tropical holidays, re-situating him as a political player emerging from a particular historical setting. But Marley’s social significance cannot be disentangled from his art. If, as A Brief History of Seven Killings suggests, Marley came to embody a sense that ‘there was this once time when we could’a do it’, it was, first and foremost, through his music.
Neo- frivolous: Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Journey By Moonlight is often said to be a book about nostalgia. Szerb himself said so. Agnes MacDonald, in her dissertation on the Nyugat writers – the only English text on the subject more detailed than a Wikipedia entry – quotes from a letter Szerb wrote in 1937 ‘Now I am writing a novel about nostalgia. It will be something like Le Grand Meaulnes and Les Enfants terribles. The plot will take place in Italy, of course. Assissi, Gubbio. Have you been there before?’
Nothing too serious: Amnesia by Peter Carey
Amnesia is a less serious novel than I thought it would be. This is, for the most part, a good thing. There are long moments in which the novel sinks its reader into the soft pillow of a well-told story, the guilty pleasure of being in the hands of a practised manipulator of readerly emotions, as Carey deals out his cards of sentiment, guilt, betrayal and compromise. Much of Amnesia, however, works in another, slightly less comfortable register.
H is for Hinch: A Companion to the Australian Media
If the Companion does not aspire to be an integrated history of the media, what is its raison d’être? In some ways, it is easier to note what the book is not. It is not a contemporary guide to media practitioners or media outlets. It is not a list of contacts or available products. Nor is it an analysis of media product or producers. It does not set out to critique the media. But it does set out to be comprehensive.
The same but different: 10:04 by Ben Lerner
Like a night of vivid, randomly connected dreams, the content of 10:04 holds together in hindsight. The catalogue form of recollection permits this: and then, and then, and then … It is easy, in this way, to smooth the novel out and make a neatish summary of its events and concerns. But if we look closely, we find that references to when things occur in time are often missing.
Creature comforts: The Wonders by Paddy O’Reilly
The Wonders is an allegorical novel with worthy intentions. However, O’Reilly’s attempt to unpack a surfeit of twenty-first century issues – including animal welfare, human rights, the cult of celebrity, ecology, conservation, disability and gender politics – is marred by over-simplification and a tendency to parrot clichéd and prosaic opinions.
One unusual dude: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth
Booth’s point is simple enough: Larkin projected multiple personas in his life, many of which summoned up images of old Englishness, while at the same time getting on with being a modern person and an important poet. Some of this has been obvious for some time. Though he projected the approved Movement-style philistinism and Little-Englandism, the poems of The Less Deceived are the obvious product of someone steeped in French symbolism, pre-war surrealism, and the explosive effects of apocalyptics such as George Barker.