Hag-Seed Margaret Atwood
On Chesil Beach Ian McEwan (novella)
Come Rain or Come Shine Kazuo Ishiguro (novella)
The Last Byzantine Renaissance Steven Runciman (history)
Cleopatra Michael Grant (history)
Train Dreams Denis Johnson (novella)
Barracuda Christos Tsiolkas
The Subtle Knife Philip Pullman
Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds Stephen Kinzer (expository)
Bourbon Penn 25 (collection/lit mag) Ed. Erik Secker
The Book of Dave Will Self
Folktales of Greece Ed. Georgios A. Megas
The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt
Dreamside Graham Joyce
Nothing Holds Back the Night Delphine de Vigan (memoir)
The Love of a Bad Man Laura Elizabeth Woollett (collection)
The Lies of Locke Lamora Scott Lynch
Mother Tongue Bill Bryson (expository)
How to Be an Author Georgia Richter & Deborah Hunn (expository)
Mythic Resonance Ed. Stephen Thompson (anthology)
Prosper’s Demon K.J. Parker (novella)
Island 139 Ed. Matthew Lamb (lit. journal)
Fly Away Kathleen Jennings
Black Dogs Ian McEwan
Rubik Elizabeth Tan
The Eternal Machine Carol Ryles
The Hill of Dreams Arthur Machen
To Paradise Hanya Yanigahara
Griffith Review 68 Getting On Ed. Ashley Hay (lit journal)
A Room Made of Leaves Kate Grenville
CONGRATS TO SOME KNOWN PERTH LOCALS
I'll open with a warm congrats to a few Perthites first.
Carol Ryles has worked a long time on her steampunk novel The Eternal Machine, so it is heartwarming to see it published. The first fifty pages are absolutely impossible to put down. It's also a novel for readers who desire more from their magic than simply 'it exists'. The Eternal Machine has a rare and unique scientific sense of why and how magic works. Ryles has put a lot of real thought into an authentic and innovative steampunk world.
Deborah Hunn was a lecturer of mine, whose classes I loved, so it was also a thrill to read her work How to be an Author, which was written in collaboration with Georgia Richter.
And I had the good fortune of studying with the talented Elizabeth Tan, and finally read the inventive Rubrik, whose emotional launch I attended a few years ago.
And moving out of WA, I previously met Kathleen Jennings in Sydney in 2012 at the Aurealis Awards for 2011. We have shared a couple of anthology homes together, and we've also shared another four Yearly Recommended Reading lists in the back of Year's Best anthologies. Jennings is a wonderful artist, and she designed a beautiful cover for the Aurealis Award winning anthology Bloodlines (Ed. Amanda Pillar), in which we were also both story compadres. Fly Away is a unique rural Australian dark fantasy with distinct horrific elements.
And last, but not least, I read Mythic Resonance because Sue Bursztynski has a retelling of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' within. Sue had my second story published, which happened to also be the second story I'd written, so I tracked this anthology down. And by chance, Alan Baxter has a story in it too. Bursztynski's story has the dwarves of the LOTR type, which is how I love my Khazad.
THE SHORT FORM
In the short form, I only read eighty-nine stories, which is a far cry from my norm. I enjoyed a few stories from Mythic Resonance (Vicky Daddo's was my pick of the bunch, followed by Alan Baxter, Sue Bursztynski, and Jen White's stories). And although more for horror fans, Laura Elizabeth Woolett's dark collection The Love of a Bad Man was of a consistently good quality with strong entry and exit points. Think devotees to quality horror may unearth a real find here. All the narratives are written in first person present, and, as they're from the lenses of actual historical figures, it's a harrowing and nightmarish read. But I guess that's Woolett's intention.
Due to my limited reading, I'll just mention ten Greek folktales as standouts rather than my usual list of twenty five or so stories. All are from George Megas' collection. As stated last year, please keep the context of production in mind if you do track these folktales down:
‘Master Semolina’
‘The Turtle and the Chickpea’
‘The Seven Ravens’
‘The King’s Godson and the Baldchin’
‘The Navel of the Earth’
‘Cinderello’
‘The Two Neighbours’
‘What is the Fastest Thing in the World’
‘Princess Plumpkin (Pachoulenia)’
‘The King and the Basket Weaver’
STANDOUT NOVELS AND NOVELLAS
NOVELS
I'm limiting the brief commentary to three from each form. As usual, I could mention many more, but I like to keep my posts a little briefer.
Hagseed by Margaret Atwood
This was the fourth novel in Hogarth's Shakespeare Initiative. Atwood has some riotous fun here, utilising caricatures for extra hilarity. The protagonist, our modern day Prospero, is the aging theatre director Felix, who although seriously flawed, we are positioned to barrack for. Felix, whose inflated air of self-importance would fuel a battalion of hot air balloons, is putting on The Tempest; partly to resurrect the memory of his own deceased daughter Miranda, who tragically passed away at only three years of age. Yet Felix with his over-the-top character reinterpretations, which include a transvestite on stilts and paraplegics on skateboards, is undone and sabotaged by Tony. Felix is fired, and flees to a hovel on the outskirts where he broods for many years in isolated squalor.
Eventually, Felix is drawn back into the real world by taking on an educational drama programme for the incarcerated. Felix, under cover, plans his revenge with the old play within a play routine. The retelling, acted out by a colourful array of inmates, while comedic, also explores various interpretations and perspectives of The Tempest. On the more magical-realist side, Miranda's ghostly presence both haunts and guides Felix at times.
This was my favourite read of 2023. My bookclub also loved Hag-Seed. It is a rambunctious playful read in the same cheeky style as Atwood's collection The Stone Mattress. I have been strongly drawn to books over recent years which utilise meta-elements in their narratives, and Hag-Seed falls into this category. It's an intelligent, hopeful and refreshingly fun novel. Rather than targeting the macabre, Hag-Seed is intended for readers who are after a light hearted, but still intelligent and meaningful work. Whereby Fowles looked at the dark side of The Tempest in his revered The Collector, Atwood's novel reflects the more comedic elements of the play, which is a brave move as so many readers expect these rewrites to be deep and dark and flooded with gravitas. Yet, when the original play was produced it was marketed as a comedy or tragi-comedy, and as such, Atwood has done the original play more than justice. It's a delight!
Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas
I have a confession to make, I really like Christos Tsiolkas: his interviews, his commentary, his articles, his work in Overland, but prior to Barracuda, I had not yet finished a novel of his. I often felt like the shock or the attempted-shock after shock after shock after shock lost its effect on me.
Tsiolkas was a leading author in the innovative era of Australian 'grunge fiction'. I found, however, little to connect with in his other works, and I certainly didn't see too many of those enjoyable moments of characters connecting. For me, these connections and times of light allow dark fiction to resonate more so, but Tsiolkas' lights in my previous reading seemed pretty dim, or at least in the parts I got through.
But Barracuda, although still imbued with the grunge elements of his other work, feels far more human, and there are moments of light, although not huge rays, throughout. This lengthy work is a winner. It captures the polarised class elements that exist within Australia: Tsiolkas explores self-loathing; notions of success and failure; and the loss of self with the search (and often failure) to realise one's place and identity not only within Australia but also within a broader global context. I also love Tsiolkas's inclusivity in terms of his repertoire of characters. In a sensitive writing and reading world, although Greek Australian, Tsiolkas is not fearful of portraying a broad array of characters, including a Turkish mother, another character of mixed Greek and Chinese background, a Hungarian swimming coach, both the privileged and the unprivileged, the upwardly mobile and the stuck, along with a broad spectrum of gay identities. The novel is insightful and gutsy and culturally very apt for the times.
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The sequel to The Golden Compass, although not quite matching the stratospheric qualities of the first, is still a delightful piece of world building and storytelling.
NOVELLAS
The novella has become my favourite form along with novelettes and long short stories.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Once again, McEwan captures the times so well, and he also explores, in his typical manner, the grey areas of morality, or as I like to term it, 'McEwan's moral dilemma'. The structure is especially clever as the ending condenses time and breaks completely from the slowing down of a moment in the rest of the narrative. Another of his finest works.
Come Rain or Come Shine by Kazuo Ishiguro
Humorous, clever and subversive.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Shades of Steinbeck, but with overt dreamlike elements. Unique and experimental, Train Dreams was short listed for the Pulitzer that was never awarded, and like Karen Russell's Swamplandia, it was worthy of the listing and more...
HISTORY & EXPOSITORY
The Last Byzantine Renaissance by Steven Runciman
One for history buffs alone. Runciman explores a late flourishing of thought in a dwindling kingdom. While their empire diminished rapidly around them, Byzantine scholars managed to keep alive classical philosophy, scientific and mathematical inquiry, while also separating the spiritual side from the scientific. Not the easiest of Runciman's works but one of his most intriguing.
Cleopatra by Michael Grant
An enlightening read for those who want to truly understand the skills and diplomacy and navigation that Cleopatra used to strive to keep the Hellenistic kingdom of Egypt alive.
Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer
My uncle told me that this is the best work on modern Turkey, and I happened to read it twenty one years later... It's fascinating to read the book and see where Turkey was and where it is today. For instance, at the time, the once mayor (and now president) Erdogan, did time in jail and became a mocked figure for being an Islamic extremist. Ironically, in the preceding generations, Islamic extremists were kept at bay by the army. My how things have changed... Kinzer's fears have been realised, and his hopes that he had: alliances with Greece with the earthquake aid (when the Turkish army failed to prove effective when the nation needed them most); potentially a nation that celebrates progressive elements and thinkers; and a member of a relatively modern part of the world rather than kowtowing to religion like many of its southern and eastern neighbours. Well, the hopefulness that Kinzer expresses here tragically hasn't eventuated.
Kinzer furthered my understanding of Turkey so much, especially regarding his insight into the Kurds; but also topics like the the Korean veterans; journalists and writers and thinkers and how they are curtailed; the degree to which the former pro-Kemalist military prevented an over zealous religiosity in the country.
However, Kinzer's insight into Cyprus is a lopsided Turkish perspective. For many years, Cypriot Greeks had been calling for Enosis (unification) with the 'Fatherland'. As far back as 1950 only 4% of Greek Cypriots voted against unification with Greece (with a voting turn out of 90%). Kinzer fails to acknowledge that the notion of enosis was long on the cards for the Cypriot Greeks, and he also fails to acknowledge or recognise or even vaguely understand the cultural history of the Cypriot Greek people. It's as if he's unaware that the national anthem of Cyprus is the same as that of Greece.
Regardless of his warped view of Cyprus, Crescent and Star is a beautiful work with a cutting and personal and confronting interrogation of modern day Turkey. Well, the Turkey of twenty years ago. Reading it now does not make it worse, in fact the parallels and downslide of Turkey become all the more apparent from understanding its recent past.
Happy 2023
Nice to see the world so connected again with high vaccination rates and a less virulent COVID strain. There is still some work to do ensuring all parts of the world have the opportunity to vaccinate.
Like always, I hope we look after our wildlife, environment, and rich natural heritage, along with each other.
Wishing you all a meaningful year.
