The shocking story of Australia's inequitable water market. Once upon a time Australian farmers traded thousands of megalitres of water for something as simple as a slab of beer. Then the economic mood changed. The 1980s brought political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, spruiking the invisible hand of the free market. By the early 2000s, Australian water was transformed into an aggressively traded financial product. Early water policy in Australia, influenced by the work of Alfred Deakin, deemed that water should not be monopolised or exploited by individuals. Water was to be allocated fairly through bureaucratic systems. This consensus changed in 2004 with the National Water Initiative, allowing water to be traded separately from land. Enter the sophisticated traders of the financial markets, with their fast computers, superior knowledge and market manipulation. By 2018, the Register of Foreign Ownership of Water Entitlements showed that 10 per cent of all water assets were held by foreign entities. The great tragedy of this “hydrological casino” is that Australian farmers don't have a hope of competing in such an asymmetrical market. Opening the trade in water was supposed to make its allocation more efficient, but as authors Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells show, it has created a whole host of perverse outcomes. With its mix of anger and urgency, this is essential reading on an arcane subject that Australians should know more about. Sold Down the River: How Robber Barons and Wall Street Traders Cornered Australia's Water Market, by Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells. Published by Text. $34.99 First Published at Books + Publishing. Review by Chris Saliba A young North Korean couple's quest for freedom comes at a tragically high cost. It's the late 1990s, North Korea. Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Leader, revered among his people. Despite famine ravaging parts of the country, his grip on power remains absolute. Jin comes from an impoverished rural family suffering from hunger. He has been fortunate to win a scholarship to Kim Il-sung university in Pyongyang, where a daily food ration is assured. It is there he meets Suja. Her family is well connected, her father employed at Rodong newspaper, a part of the Korean Central News Agency. A romance soon blooms between Jin and Suja. On a trip back to visit his family, Jin discovers that the police are raiding food supplies from starving peasants. In an effort to report what he believes is a crime, he instead gets caught with a bag of cornmeal and is mistaken for a thief. Stealing food in North Korea is a heinous crime, punishable by forced labour. Eventually Jin is caught, humiliated in front of his university class, and ends up in the notorious Yodok prison camp. Suja is devastated. She vows to meet with Jin, no matter what it takes. What follows is a journey for both that will see them pushed to the very brink. Ann Shin is a Canadian filmmaker and poet who has worked with North Korean exiles. The Last Exiles, her debut novel, works as a heart-stopping thriller, inspired by real events. Shin is a storyteller of great clarity, carefully wending the reader through a labyrinth of nightmare scenarios: sex slavery, beatings, murder, starvation and every known humiliation under the sun. It's a story of great tragedy, unflinching in its realism, but one that holds out a glimmer of hope. Suja and Jin go through much on their journey, and come out the other side resilient, yet damaged young people nonetheless. The book also offers a stark education into the realities of life in North Korea, the climate of fear and devotion to the “Dear Leader” that keeps the regime in power. Gripping suspense and idealistic young love in a story that addresses serious human rights issues. The Last Exiles, by Ann Shin. Published by HarperCollins. $29.99 When a famous Kandinsky painting is stolen from the Guggenheim Museum, young crime sleuth Ted Spark knows he must solve the mystery. Twelve-year-old Ted Spark has a new mystery to solve. His cousin Salim is now living in New York with his mother, Gloria, who is a curator at the Guggenheim Museum. When Ted and his older sister Kat visit New York with their Mum, they get drawn into a sophisticated art heist. A series of smoke bombs go off at the Guggenheim, causing mass confusion, then a famous painting, Kandinsky's In the Black Circle goes missing. It's a painting that is worth millions of dollars. Most art thefts are inside jobs and the finger is soon pointed at Ted's Aunt Gloria. It's discovered that Aunt Gloria's credit card was used to pay for a removal van that made off with a packing crate, presumably containing the painting. Ted, Kat and Salim don't believe this for a moment. It's obvious she's been framed. But by who, and why? Robin Stevens (renowned for her Murder Most Unladylike Series) was asked to write this second Ted Spark mystery, based on an idea by Siobhan Dowd. Stevens, a supremely skilled mystery writer, is the perfect choice. The story is expertly laid out, with clues, odd behaviours, run ins with shady characters and a roster of suspects who all deny being the thief, the children excitedly getting closer and closer to the solving the crime until all is revealed by Ted in a sudden lightbulb moment. The Guggenheim Mystery doesn’t have the family dramas of the previous mystery, instead concentrating more on the clockwork precision of its story telling. There are more puzzles and moving parts – smoke bombs, credit card fraud, removal vans, packing cases and misplaced pop tarts – all adding to make a mystery that fits together like an intricate jigsaw. Robin Stevens had a lot to live up to taking on this commission and she comes out with flying colours. Wonderful, uplifting fun. 9+ years The Guggenheim Mystery, by Robin Stevens. Published by Puffin. $14.99 Review by Chris Saliba. Published by Puffin. $14.99 What goes up, doesn't come down in this Siobhan Dowd mystery. Twelve-year-old Ted Spark plans to be a meteorologist one day, using his skills to help the world deal with climate change. He has an eye for detail, looking for patterns to make sense of life. By his own admission his brain works on a different operating system from other people's. He sees what others don’t. Despite a razor sharp mind, Ted can be lacking when it comes to his interpersonal skills. He doesn't lie and can be blunt with the truth, egregiously lacking in tact. Ted has a cousin, Salim, whom he hasn't seen in five years. Salim's mother, Auntie Gloria (or Glo for short), has just secured a nice job at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. There has been some friction between Auntie Glo and Ted's mum, Faith. To try and make things up between the sisters, Glo suggests she and Salim stay with the Spark family for a few days before leaving for New York. While the parents settle in together, trying to smooth over problems from the past, the children – Ted, Salim and Ted's older sister, Kat – organise to ride The London Eye, a cantilevered observation wheel on the River Thames. While waiting in line to get on board, they are approached by a young man who has a spare ticket. He says he's suddenly had second thoughts about riding the wheel, as he is claustrophobic, and would they like the ticket? After some discussion, it's decided that Salim should take the free ride. The queue is very long and besides that, Kat and Ted have ridden the wheel before. Salim boards the wheel at 11.32am. It takes half an hour for the wheel to do a complete cycle, and so Ted and Kat expect to see Salim re-emerge at 12.02. They wait, 12.02 arrives, the pod containing Salim opens and people spill out, but their cousin doesn't. He's disappeared. Completely. Ted and Kat take it upon themselves to discover what happened, sifting through clues and doing their own legwork. While Kat has the bravado and is ready to jump in harm's way to find out more, it is Ted's deductive skills that save the day. Siobhan Dowd writes a consistently compelling mystery story, centred around an ingeniously brain-teasing problem and finishing with a nail-biting cliff-hanger. The story is made all the juicier by its turbulent family dynamics and vibrant personalities, especially the flighty and flamboyant Auntie Glo. Holiday fun, family squabbles and a gut wrenching missing person drama make for a wholly satisfying mix. Siobhan Dowd planned a second Ted Spark mystery, but sadly died before she could write it. 9+ years The London Eye Mystery, by Siobhan Dowd. Published by Puffin. $14.99 Review by Chris Saliba A young witch starts up her own business. Twelve-year-old Kiki is a young witch. Her coming-of-age is upon her and she must start to make her own way in the world. She takes her broom, which she is skilled at flying, and for company brings Jiji, a male cat her own age. The two set off on her broom, fly over some mountains, and settle upon the port town of Koriko. There they meet a baker named Osono, who asks Kiki to perform a delivery errand on her broom. This sparks an idea: why not start a delivery service. The baker offers a corner in her store room as an office and so Kiki's Delivery Service is born. Kiki's delivery work involves her in many an adventure, transporting all sorts of weird and wonderful objects. The novel basically is episodic, with no real plot structure. A moment of personal transformation arrives, when she goes home for to her parents and discovers where her heart now truly lies. Cute, charming and sweet. Ages 7+ Kiki's Delivery Service, by Eiko Kadono. Published by Puffin. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba When rival groups Pig City and Monkey Town go to war, things get hilariously out of hand. When sixth grader Laura Sibbie finds a quirky cap at a junk sale, with the words Pig City written across it, she decides to start up her own club. To join Pig City, a totally secret club, you must offer insurance. What this usually entails is doing something you would never want anyone to find out about. One of the girls in the group, Allison, gives a nude bathtub photo of herself at age three. Another girl, Kristin, must supply a pair of underpants. If any of the girls should tell anyone about Pig City, then the insurance is paid out and made public, with humiliation sure to follow. When Gabriel, a boy Laura both loves and hates, finds out about Pig City, he wants to join. Due to a series of misunderstandings, Laura refuses his membership application and Gabriel creates his own rival club, Monkey Town. Soon enough the two groups are at war. Can the two groups patch up their differences, and will Laura and Garbriel ever kiss, despite the fact that she “mustardised him”? Originally published in 1987 as Sixth Grade Secrets, this Bloomsbury edition renames Louis Sachar's brilliant comedy with the more funky, Pig City. You won't be disappointed. Sachar's punchy prose is perfectly timed and his cast of characters enormously enjoyable. Laura is a treat as the sassy leader who's always finding herself in a pickle. Not one for taking a step back, she makes her fair share of mistakes, but plows ahead nonetheless, coming out wiser for all her schoolyard battles. A story with a superb sense of fun that hasn't dated one bit since it was first published over thirty years ago. Don't miss it! Ages 9+ Pig City, by Louis Sachar. Published by Bloomsbury. $14.99 Review by Chris Saliba An advertising copywriter's comfortable suburban life in 1960s America slowly unravels when a Black man knocks on his door. Little known and underrated African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley wrote a series of remarkable novels during his twenties and early thirties, then moved his family to Jamaica and converted to Judaism. He never published a novel again, although he completed several works that are yet to see the light of day. dem was Kelley's third novel, published in 1967. Advertising copywriter Mitchell Pierce has a materially comfortable life in 1960s America. He is married to Tam and has a little boy, Jake. They are well off enough to afford a coloured maid, Opal. Despite being financially secure, with a nice home and good job, Mitchell is angry, anxious and close to losing his mind. His status as a white man is on psychologically shaky ground. While he unthinkingly accepts the status quo, putting white males at the centre of the world, war in Asia, feminism and the civil rights movement is causing him confusion. One day when a friend of Opal's named Cooley turns up to take her out, Mitchell is incensed. He doesn't want her parading her Black boyfriends around and insists that she never allow Cooley near his house again. Opal apologises and adopts the submissive demeanour necessary for Black people to survive in the United States. This doesn't help, however, as Mitchell's racism leads him to believe she's been stealing from him. When Mitchell's wife Tam later gives birth to a coloured child, it causes a descent into madness. Mitchell takes a trip, often hallucinatory in tone, through the Black underworld to try and find the father, experiencing life on the other side of the racial divide. He doesn't learn anything, however, as he can't see beyond his white privilege. William Melvin Kelley is probably unique in that he wrote some of his major works from the perspective of deluded white characters. He portrays the world through white eyes – its prejudices and skewered thinking – to only turn the tables and expose the depth of racism in American society. Despite the challenging subject matter of his books, Kelley is actually a joy to read, somewhat similar in style to American greats such as Richard Yates and John Cheever. His prose is beautifully simple and crystal clear. The situations and characters feel so real that the reader immediately becomes immediately invested in them, eager to follow their unfolding dramas. Kelley's portrait of Mitchell Pierce is one of great originality and piercing truth: how a white man is trapped inside his own racism, warping his view of the world and his position in it. Mitchell Pierce is unhappy and uneasy right throughout dem, an unnerving hum is the background soundtrack to his life, and while he may vaguely brood why this is the case, he can never figure out why, perpetually imprisoned inside his ingrained racism. A remarkable work that deserves a wider audience. dem, by William Melvin Kelley. Published by Riverrun. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba The third instalment of Deborah Levy's autobiographical series. Real Estate forms the third part of Deborah Levy's “Living Autobiography”, following on from Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living. In it, Levy discusses different concepts of real estate, the things of value we own or even produce ourselves. The condensed timeline of the autobiography follows various trips around Europe, meetings with film producers, visits with friends, literary parties and so on. Some dramatic effect is added with the shenanigans of her best male friend, whose romantic life is up in the air. The autobiography's most central concern, one that is treated fairly lightly, is the author's impending sixtieth birthday. This is seen as a coming milestone, but not particularly meaningful. Levy sprinkles her book with quotes from favourite authors and ruminates on some feminist themes. It would have been nice if some of the book's intellectual ideas were expanded a bit, mainly because they were quite interesting, offering a diversion from the concentration on day-to-day minutiae. A pleasant enough ramble, a thoughtful meditation on ageing that is often fairly upbeat. Real Estate, by Deboarh Levy. Published by Penguin. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba A mixed-race British woman learns some astonishing things about her father Anna is a middle-aged British woman of mixed race heritage. Her mother is Welsh, and her father, she learns, is African. When her mother dies she comes across a diary her father had kept when her parents were young lovers in 70s London. He describes their early meeting, when he was lodging at her parents' house, their subsequently brief romance, and his sudden fleeing back to his native country of Bamana. Her mother had told her very little of her biological father, but now armed with his diary, Anna desperately wants to learn more. When he was a student living in London, Anna’s father went by the name Francis Aggrey. He joined radical student groups committed to fighting British imperialism, meeting in dingy backrooms to plan a more glorious future. Francis experiences a lot of racism on the streets of London and carries a certain amount of justified rage. Upon his return to Bamana, he adopts the name Kofi Adjei, and eventually becomes the country’s president for 30 years, in reality its dictator. The more Anna discovers, the more her head spins. With her marriage in a state of hopeless disrepair, and her adult daughter striking out her own independent path, she decides to search out her father. She makes an uncertain trip, with a few dodgy contacts helping her along the way. Sankofa is Nigerian novelist Chibundu Onuzo’s third novel. Unlike it’s witty and often farcical predecessor, Welcome to Lagos, this new book takes a more serious turn. Discussing mixed race identities, British imperialism, racism and African politics, among other things, Sankofa is a page-turning read, despite the heavy themes. Onuzo has a gift for observation and distilling complex ideas into the easily digestible. For readers wanting to explore the impact Europeans have had on Africa, the resultant political and cultural legacy, Sankofa offers an entertaining primer and an emotionally satisfying story of a woman’s discovery of her truer self. Sankofa, by Chibundu Onuzo. Published by Virago. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
AuthorNorth Melbourne Books Categories
All
Archives
October 2024
|