When a procedure is discovered that can turn Black people white, an unlikely new era of racial fear begins. Max Disher is a likable, streetwise denizen of Harlem. While at the Honky Tonk Club with his friend Bunny, he approaches a white woman he’s always fancied. When he asks her to dance, she coldly dismisses him with a racial epithet. Max is humiliated and crushed. The next morning his friend Bunny calls him, with the news of a new procedure that can turn Black people white. It’s a process that has been developed by Dr Junius Crookman, a Black scientist who has studied in Germany. The Black-No-More procedure (it is widely promoted as such) turns out to be a big hit, and a big money spinner. There’s even a spin off – coloured babies from nominally white unions can be put through the process. Finally, people can free themselves from being the subjects of systemic racial prejudice. Having turned himself white, Max Fisher goes into partnership with a white supremacist, Reverend Harry Givens, the leader of a group called The Knights of Nordica. What is Max doing there, the reader may well ask? Making a lot of money. As white fears rise that Black people could be everywhere but undetectable, memberships of The Knights of Nordica are skyrocket. Max Fisher, being a Black man, knows exactly how to press the buttons of frightened white people. Racial fear turns into a great money spinner. Armed with loads of cash, The Knights of Nordica get involved in politics, teaming up with the Anglo-Saxon Association, headed by the aptly named Arthur Snobbcraft. They hire a statistician to investigate the nation’s genealogy, hoping to use their findings to smear their opponents as racially impure. The shock results show that most Americans have at least some African blood flowing in their veins. Horror of horrors, Givens and Snobbcraft, it turns out, are part Black. The sections in Black No More describing the Knights of Nordica and its leader, Harry Givens, are spookily reminiscent of Donald Trump. Especially the Knights' large public rallies where the crowds are fired up up on a hot brew of conspiracy theory and xenophobia. The organisation's newspaper, The Warning, pumps out fear mongering rubbish akin to today’s self-congratulatory tweets. “...14-point, one syllable word editorials painted terrifying pictures of the menace confronting white supremacy...Very cleverly it linked up the pope, the Yellow Peril, the Alien Invasion and Foreign Entanglements with Black-No-More as devices of the Devil.” Sound familiar? The portrait of the smugly ignorant Reverend Harry Givens reminds of today's empty headed populists. We learn that enraptured audiences flocked to see Givens talk. “...night after night (they) sat spellbound while Rev. Givens, who had finished the eighth grade in a one-room country school, explained the laws of heredity and spoke eloquently of the danger of black babies.” We also learn that poor white workers are easily kept exploited and non-unionised by their fears about Black people. They allow their rights to be usurped, their attention besotted by racial anxieties. Racism economically disempowers poor white folk. George S. Schuyler published this acerbic satire in 1931. It’s set a few years in the future, between 1933 – 1940, and for that reason has been selected for Penguin Classic’s science fiction imprint. But the novel is really a brutal, excoriating critique of race in America. White and Black groups – the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP – are criticised in equal measure. Schuyler is ruthless about what he sees as the weaknesses of Black leadership. As a work of fiction, the characters are two-dimensional, the plot farcical. Most of the characters are given absurdist surnames: Snobbcraft, Crookman, Buggerie. The book’s fictional aspects are more cartoon than literature (it's also quite funny). And yet what an almighty wallop this book serves. A diabolical critique of race, power and money in modern America. Black No More, by George S. Schuyler. Published by Penguin. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba A fascinating look at how the mind affects the body. Doctor and psychiatrist Jeff Rediger has long been fascinated by the phenomenon known as spontaneous remission or healing, where patients with terminal diagnoses, mostly cancer, but including other diseases, suddenly find themselves healed. Spontaneous healing isn’t well researched in the medical literature; in fact, it’s very much sidelined. Doctors who want to be taken seriously don’t delve too deeply, if at all, into these well documented cases. Since 2003, Rediger has been on a quest to discover more about spontaneous healing, starting his search in Brazil, where various wellness retreats have had impressive results. It’s important to note that not everyone who embarks on a quest of self-healing is successful. Stick with your traditional medicine is the advice of this book. Nonetheless, the cases that are presented in Cured are extensively documented and prove that people have beaten their terminal diagnoses with alternative therapies. (That is, if you believe the alternative therapies worked and weren’t some unexplained spook of nature.) Modern medicine, Cured argues, is pretty much a blunt instrument. If you pick up a bug, then bomb the body with antibiotics, even though a lot of good bacteria will get killed in the process. Rediger argues that human health is far more complex and nuanced than that, with a lot of different interlocking factors at work. He wonders why doctors don’t ask patients about their personal histories, looking for clues to poor health. Stress, loneliness, poor diet all wear down the immune system, making us susceptible to disease. People can carry around stress for years, thinking they are living normal lives, but really harboring ticking time bombs. Even a poor self-image can keep the body in a constant state of stress, not allowing it time to do the repair work it needs. All of this is backed up with cutting edge science, research and compelling personal stories. The message of Cured is fairly simple: eat right, relax and put yourself first. If you are in a loving relationship, that’s good too, and failing that, maintain friendships and be a part of your community. Alienation, stress, anxiety, poor self-worth, bad diet, all keep the body in a permanent state of defense, wearing down immunity to disease. Commonsense advice backed up with scientific research. Cured: The Power of Our Immune System and the Mind-Body Connection, by Jeff Rediger. Penguin Life. $26.99 Review by Chris Saliba A massive, shambolic Victorian house made up of old junk is about to spew forth its terrible secrets. The scene is set in a borough of London called Forlichingham. It's 1875. Young Clodius (Clod) Iremonger lives in the sprawling Heap House. The house has belonged to the Iremonger family for generations and is made up of trash collected from the “heaps” surrounding it. The heaps heave and groan with discarded Victorian objects and are a menacing presence. Clod is about to be “trousered”, made to wear trousers, a sign of adulthood. He is also the subject of an arranged marriage, to which he understandably has a great aversion. A sense of dread looms. To add to his disturbed state of mind, Clod can hear objects speak to him. They call out their names. When the orphan Lucy Pennant is pressed into service at Heap House, she makes an unlikely friendship with Clod. Soon they discover that the objects Clod can hear have strange lives of their own. They up and move about, shift shape and morph into something else, revealing a secret history that the Iremonger family have kept hidden. The first in a trilogy of Iremonger novels for children, Heap House is gloriously weird and atmospheric. There is a strong Dickensian touch, with the large cast of eccentric characters and their wonderfully inventive names. The plot is perhaps slow to start, Carey taking care and leisure to build up the bizarre and creepy atmosphere, but once the novel gathers stream it moves quickly to a rollicking finish. Sophisticated young readers will soak up this immersive novel full of unusual sights, smells and textures. A Gothic adventure, rich and strange, with a teasing cliff hanger that will leave the reader gasping for the next book in the series. 9+ Heap House, by Edward Carey. Published by Hotkey. $16.99 Review by Chris Saliba A six hundred year old map found in an attic leads to a terrifying battle between good and evil. Simon, Jane and Barney Drew are holidaying in the Cornish town of Trewissick with their parents and Great Uncle Merry, known to the world as Merriman Lyon, a learned professor. They are renting a big grey house from Great Uncle Merry's friend, Captain Toms, for the duration of their vacation. One day they discover a secret door that leads into the attic and find an old manuscript, complete with a mysterious map. There are lots of odd and strange people in the town of Trewissick, some especially creepy. When Mr Withers and his sister Polly cheerfully invite the children on a boat trip, Jane declines, feeling there is something queer about the couple. Days later, the grey house is ransacked, all the books ripped from their shelves and the framed pictures of maps stolen. The break and enter job, it seems, is the work of the Withers siblings. The children decide it's time to confide in Great Uncle Merry, who is more confidante than authority figure. They show him the map and discover that it was written by a Cornish monk some six hundred years ago. It is in actual fact a copy of an earlier manuscript dating back another three hundred years. The map holds the key to where the Grail, a powerful relic from King Arthur, is hidden. And so begins a quest to recover the Grail, but also escape the gathering forces of evil. Over Sea, Under Stone is the first in a five part sequence of novels called The Dark is Rising by English novelist Susan Cooper. This first instalment has everything you could possibly wish for in a children's novel: a great cast of characters, including the mercurial Great Uncle Merry, a finely balanced plot that unfolds with a sense of wonder and surprise, and finally, a ripping adventure. The core of the novel rests on a battle between the forces of good and evil, and these sequences are written with heart stopping suspense. The final pages of the novel leave enough questions still floating in the air that reading the rest of The Dark is Rising Sequence seems a forgone conclusion. Riveting storytelling, full of fantastical elements, but rooted in an atmospheric Cornish seaside town that will recall youthful holidays spent swimming and trudging through seaweed. 9+ Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper. Published by Puffin. $14.99 Review by Chris Saliba Writer Sean Kelly finds in our current prime minister much surface and little substance. Before becoming a columnist for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, Sean Kelly was an advisor to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. He’s worked both sides of politics, as minder shielding politicians from intrusive questioning, and journalist, digging deep to get the real story. Like fellow columnist Niki Savva, this gives him a unique perspective. In The Game, Kelly tries to get the measure of our current prime minister, Scott Morrison, and by his own admission, pretty much fails. It’s not for want of trying, or due to intellectual limitations. Kelly is arguably one of the country’s most incisive and penetrating writers on politics. The reason for the failure is that Morrison is such a skilled politician, he never lets a crack appear that could give a clue to his real personality. Most politicians at some stage make an embarrassing gaffe, giving a clue as to what they really think. Morrison is preternaturally aware: recall when Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton and Morrison were waiting for a meeting on Syrian refugees and some indiscreet comments were made about “Cape York time”. It was only Morrison that noted there was a boom mic above them. “There’s a boom up there,” he calmly cautioned. The story is a testament to Morrison’s awareness of himself as an actor playing a part, never making a slip or going out of character. (Morrison started his career as a child actor.) He has presented himself as the suburban dad who loves sport and makes a curry once a week. A simple, uncomplicated man. Any reality that gets in the way of this image – bushfires, a pandemic, violence against women – causes Morrison to lash out and get angry. (He famously said, “I don’t hold a hose, mate,” when questioned about the bushfires of early 2020.) Sean Kelly reaches a somewhat grim conclusion in The Game: “Morrison, unlike his predecessors, is the symbolic perfection of a certain version of Australia.” In other words, the two dimensional political character that is Scott Morrison (“How good is Australia?”) is a close reflection of how most of us see the country. In many ways, Morrison is a fictional character, an actor playing the part of someone we want to believe in. Australians have voted this mythical being into life. The book argues that we need to do better than this. Otherwise the country won’t move forward. Worse, poor policy will be made that adversely affects the country's citizens. But one wonders how? The Game provides first class political analysis, bringing the problems and deficiencies of Scott Morrison’s leadership into sharp focus. It can also be read more broadly as a political treatise, examining issues of personality and appearance in bracingly intelligent prose. A brilliant debut that is a cut above the usual political biography. Sure to be read and discussed in years to come. The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, by Sean Kelly. Published by Black Inc. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba A young Italian woman tries to gain independence from her family, but walks into tragedy Delia is seventeen and living with her oppressive family. Their small house in a poor Italian village is bursting with three younger brothers and a distant cousin, Nini, who has lived with the family since he was a young boy. An older sister, Azalea, has married and moved away. Delia's parents are unhappy, her mother angry and resentful at her lot in life, and her father largely apathetic. Now that Delia is seventeen, it's her mission to get married and get out. To escapes life's boredom and terrible home life, Delia takes trips to the city. Walking the road to the city with Nini one day she meets a doctor's son, Giulio. He gives her a quail that he'd hunted. He is studying medicine and has prospects. And so Delia and Giulio start up a relationship. It's not a particularly passionate one, more a means to an end. There are roadblocks in the way to marriage, most notably Giulio's mother, who is openly hostile to Delia. The callous way they openly talk about each other is so crass it's almost funny. Things take a turn for the predictable when Delia finds herself pregnant and her mother, in a tough-as-nails piece of negotiation, fronts Giulio's family and secures a respectable marriage. Despite this looming betrothal, Delia has been growing closer and closer to Nini, her distant cousin. Her pregnancy and marriage cause all sorts of turmoil for the pair, leading to tragedy. Natalia Ginzburg's pithy novella The Road to the City is by turns riveting family drama and black comedy. Every page details the emotional twists and turns of a group of young, poor Italians, trying to get ahead in hopeless circumstances. An air of resignation permeates everything, especially for the women who are economically dependent and worked to the bone. Ginzburg is brutally candid about the drudgery of motherhood, painting it almost as a curse. My mother always said children were serpents' teeth and that no one had any business bringing them into the world. Indeed she spent all her days cursing her children, one by one. The scenes in the hospital when Delia has had her baby are almost farcical, as she can't be bothered attending to the infant and dreads going home where the real work of changing nappies and feeding will begin. Such a frank assessment of children and child rearing, determinedly wiping the gloss off the usually sainted image of motherhood, makes this a startlingly modern work of fiction. A short, sharp and satisfyingly honest portrayal of loveless marriage and hated domesticity. The Road to the City, by Natalia Ginzburg. Published by Daunt Books. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba A young woman’s loveless marriage drives her to the brink. The Dry Heart opens with a startling revelation. The unnamed narrator reveals she has shot her husband between the eyes. To find out why, we are taken back four years to the beginning of her relationship with Alberto, a man over a decade her senior. Their relationship was not passionate from the beginning, Alberto confessing to a prior love, a woman named Giovanna whom he still meets clandestinely. Complicating matters is Augusto, Alberto’s good friend. He doesn’t particularly like the narrator and the two can barely tolerate each other, except when it suits their own interests. The freewheeling friend of the narrator, Francesca, adds more drama to this already explosive mix. Tensions escalate when the narrator has a baby and finds herself even more isolated. Loneliness had stalked her life, making her vulnerable to a loveless relationship with a man who physically repulsed her. Finding herself emotionally cornered, she hits out. First published in 1947 by Italian novelist Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart reads as very contemporary, almost like something by Rachel Cusk or Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s sparse and forensic in its dissection of a very unhealthy marriage, one full of pathetic neediness and cruel indifference. Ginzburg brilliantly sustains an unrelenting tension as the narrator finds herself boxed into a corner, desperately needing release from her hopeless situation. An expertly told psychological thriller that reads as very modern indeed. The Dry Heart, by Natalia Ginzburg. Published by Daunt Books. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba A loose retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a hospital and underground railway. Kleinzeit is a copywriter at an advertising agency. When he feels “a clear brilliant flash of pain from A to B” he realises that his hypotenuse is out of whack. It’s become skewed. He loses his job at the advertising agency and is admitted to hospital. There he meets a range of characters suffering all manner of bizarre illnesses. He also meets the head nurse Sister, whom he falls in love with. Russell Hoban’s second novel for adults is a whimsical, playful, often delightful trip through one man's fevered consciousness. Not only do conversations happen with people, but also inanimate objects, God and death itself (personified as a monkey). Kleinzeit often leaves hospital, rides the underground railway, writes poems on yellow paper, sells them to commuters and plays his glockenspiel. He riffs on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and reads from the classical Greek historian, Thucydides. Kleinzeit and Sister in some ways work as stand-ins for Orpheus and Eurydice, the underground railway line a metaphor for the Underground of Greek mythology. What to make of all of this is anyone’s guess. The novel, one could say, conerns itself with the mystery of being, the alienation we feel at times from the world, and the incessant internal voices that can overwhelm. A sympathetic and all-too-human journey through spiritual illness, one that leaves the reader sometimes discombobulated, but oddly elated at the end. Kleinzeit, by Russell Hoban. Penguin Modern Classics. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba Two turtle obsessed Londoners go on a quest of freedom. Two middle-aged London misfits, Neaera and William, become obsessed with the turtles kept at the London Aquarium. Neaera is a children's book illustrator, and William works as an assistant bookseller. Neither know each other, but their similar concerns with freeing the the turtles brings them into contact. They had both independently hatched a plan to free the turtles, and so when they meet, their quest feels pre-ordained. It's almost as if a force larger than themselves drives their actions. They make friends with George, who is in charge with the turtles, who surreptitiously help with the project. A long road trip in a van will cause these two deeply introverted oddballs to come a little more out of their shells and find some personal solace. Russell Hoban (1925 – 2011) was an American author who moved to London in 1969 and lived there until his death. Despite Hoban's American background, Turtle Diary (1975) reads like a quintessentially English novel. William the bookseller lives in a squalid rooming house with a host of other sad and lonely cases, while Neaera ekes out a living in her little flat, worrying over whether she should take on extra work to make ends meet. Both characters exist in an existential fug, unsure of their place in the world, or what they even mean to themselves. As Neaera and William describe their troubled states of mind in alternating chapters (diary entries, hence the novel's title) the reader is given two very candid psychological profiles. Few novels are as intimate and humane as Turtle Diary. In the end, as they emancipate the turtles, they also free a little of themselves. A story both unusual and deeply affecting. Turtle Diary, by Russell Hoban. Penguin Modern Classics. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba The classic novel about the post-war experience of West Indian immigrants in London The Lonely Londoners opens with a disgruntled Moses Aloetta. A Trinidadian immigrant himself, he's off to Waterloo station to greet a new arrival named Henry Oliver. Moses is a reluctant good guy. He feels a sense of duty to help out fellow immigrants, but there's also a sense of futility. This new arrival will follow in the same economic and social footsteps as other West Indian immigrants. Moses moves about in a small but vibrant West Indian community consisting of mostly men. He describes their lives: trying to get work, forming emotionally unsatisfactory relationships with white women, living in substandard housing, dire poverty (Henry Oliver, nicknamed “Galahad”, even kills a pigeon to eat he's so hungry) and too much drinking. They are all trying to get ahead, to make a life for themselves in the promised land that is London, but the great city falls short. While the racism experienced in England isn't as explicit as in America, it's still there, hidden beneath the surface and practised in all manner of subtle ways. These coloured immigrants are denied decent work and housing, forced to live on the fringes of British society. Moses has lived in London for ten years, and despite this, he still hasn't been able to establish himself. His life seems to be stuck. Samuel Selvon moved to London in the early 1950s and in 1956 published The Lonely Londoners. The novel's standout feature is its use of creolised English. Selvon had originally written only the dialogue in this style, but found it didn't properly capture the feel and energy of the stories and characters he'd accumulated during his time in London. So he re-wrote the whole novel in English creole. For example, here is a description of a dole office: “It ain't have no place in the world that exactly like a place where a lot of men get together to look for work and draw money from the Welfare State while they ain't working. Is a kind of place where hate and disgust and avarice and malice and sympathy and sorrow and pity all mix up. Is a place where everyone is your enemy and your friend.” Some readers may find the style a little discombobulating. Nonetheless, it is this which makes such a lasting impression, the language giving the characters a solid presence and three dimensional feel. The sense of loneliness and estrangement, despite the often comic tone of the dialogue and situations, is palpable throughout. A seminal work of literature that is said to have influenced such writers as Zadie Smith and Hanif Kureishi. The Lonely Londoners, by Sam Selvon. Penguin. $39.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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