So Much for That by Lionel Shriver

Shep Knacker is a nice guy trying to live his dream of heading off to a simpler life in Pemba in Africa. He has sold his business and his home and has been researching possible locations for years. Finally he is about to bite the bullet … and his wife gets cancer. So begins Lionel Shriver’s searing analysis of the American health system, albeit in the guise of a novel. This book took some reading because there were times when, like the characters, I almost felt I couldn’t go on. But it was compelling at the same time, especially the secondary story of Shep’s mate Jackson whose daughter has a rare genetic disorder that is slowly killing her. There’s no escape for these people, and by inference anyone else in the US, where the system exists to serve the profit driven operations of the insurance companies and where employees are stuck in jobs because they need the otherwise unaffordable health insurance that comes along with the gig. The lack of government assistance is chilling. People who don’t have insurance, or whose money runs out because of the incredible 40% co-payments required, are faced with on-the-streets option, something almost unthinkable for an Australian with such a wonderful health care system and a safety net to boot. Shriver has done her usual careful research: the detailed descriptions of the system, the diseases and their effects on people’s lives ring utterly true and are extremely discomfiting. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the ending, which I simply didn’t buy.

On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry

I absolutely loved Barry’s earlier book The Secret Scripture, which I wrote about on this blog some time ago. This one is a good follow-up, the story of a young Irish political refugee who flees to America and lives a life dogged with tragedy. I find it interesting that she refers to the suffering her employer has endured during her life, although she never specifies it, but at the same time she seems not to recognize the truly hideous tragedy of her own life. She reminds me a bit of Bert Facey in A Fortunate Life. Lilly’s first husband is killed, the second deserts her, her son is lost to her and then her grandson kills himself – yet shining through all of this is her beautiful soul, her acceptance of the vagaries of life and her complete lack of self pity. Barry is a poet. He weaves words and phrases in such a melodic way I suspect him of being Irish himself – he may, be, I’ve never checked.

The Quarterly Essay by Mark Latham

The Quarterly Essay by Mark Latham This is really just a record of my having read it. Mark Latham is incredibly matured, incredibly impressive, and incredibly sensible in this must-read piece. I couldn’t possibly summarise the essay here but a lot of it crystallizes what I had been thinking for the last couple of years about what is wrong with the government and what can be done to fix it.

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

Nine hundred odd pages - wow! I'd read this before, when I was much younger, and had seen the television adaptation. But it still has great power, the horror of being stuck in a loveless marriage, or worse in fact, one where you are actively repelled by the man you're married to. And that period where a woman is the property of the man, with no more power than a child. We've all been watching Downton Abbey, set in the same period, but really there is no comparison. One is romanticised and forgiving, set amidst perpetually sunny rose gardens, while the Galsworthy is incisive, shrinking from nothing. I enjoyed reading the saga of the beautiful Irene, the breakaway Young Jolyon, the oily Soames and his conniving, property obsessed relatives. It helps me see where all those middle-class attitudes about hard work and saving come from! It's also interesting to see how bad decisions and sadness in one generation can pass down a family and affect the future generations. It's a sort of English version of Anna Karenina, both in sentiment and length.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

I really wish I hadn’t seen the film of this book even though it was so many years ago. The incredible force that is Maggie Smith still pervades the book, which I’m re-reading for the NSW Art Gallery lecture series on at the moment. I like reading it as a mature person though as it puts the foolishness of Miss Brodie into perspective. What a character. And of course it really is all about her, with the six girls and the drawing and music masters, all lightly drawn, orbiting her like the sun. Everybody is a bit in love with Miss Brodie, and more than a few them get burned by the heat. She really is a very dangerous woman when let loose on a bunch of impressionable children. This is a one of those delightful pieces of writing where the characters and the story are teased out in the retelling, and although it all seems quite genteel when you read it, it’s really a story about sex and lust and procurement and manipulation. One thing I really enjoyed abut her character is that she is a ringer for a friend I had once, a similarly dangerous person who is utterly convinced and religiously fanatical about her beliefs. I hear her speaking every time Miss Brodie opens her mouth to make one more confident pronouncement. Isn’t that great writing when a character is so authentic?

A Room With a View by EM Forster

I’d seen the film, listened to the music, but never read the book. It’s charming, as the young and inexperienced but potentially ‘wonderful’ heroine Lucy Honeychurch discovers herself. She and her cousin Charlotte spend time in a pensione in Florence and meet up with a group of people who become part of their lives – George and Mr Emerson, Mr Beebe the clergyman, Miss Larkin the novelist – and when Lucy returns home and becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, all of these characters play an important part in what happens next. It’s a story about manners and customs and pretensions, beautifully written, with some period moralizing, but with a sort of wonderful, almost languid rhythm that carries you along with the flow of the story.

The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

“The international best selling sensation”. Also the reason I haven’t put anything on my blog for a month or more. I cannot finish this book. It is sitting half read, blocking me from getting into anything else, and driving me crazy. I do so hate abandoning books. I really wish someone would tell me what all the fuss is about with this book. It’s about Allan Karlsson who escapes from an old people’s home on his hundredth birthday and through a series of slapstick mishaps manages to rip off some drug dealers. He teams up with a group of people and they go on the run with dealers and cops in hot pursuit. Interspersed with all this are tales of Allan’s youth and if you think the contemporary story was ridiculous, wait till you read these flashbacks. I actually find this book insulting. It’s like a cartoon but in words, simplistic characters, banal language, entirely focused on the narrative ( and then… and then…and then…) and containing nothing to engage with the reader. Actually a better description comes to mind: it’s like naïve art – Grandma Moses in prose.