 Six stories with a focus on relationships in the age of technology.
Jem Calder is an English writer. Reward System is his first book, a collection of six stories, with some characters re-appearing several times. In the novella length “A Restaurant Somewhere Else” a young woman thinks her career is on the up and up when she takes on a job as a chef, only to find emotional jeopardy in a relationship with a co-worker. “Better Off Alone” sees a twenty-something man unenthusiastically attend a party, ruminating on old friendships. In other stories two people try their luck on a dating app; office politics is laid bare in the age of digital surveillance and finally, two friends communicate via various forms of technology during one of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. One of the main themes of Calder's fiction is communication and relationships in the digital age. Perhaps more so than any other writer, he explores in simple, clear prose the ways technology has affected how people – especially young adults – relate to each other. Despite the ubiquitous nature of technology, and its myriad forms – texts, tweets, emails, instant messages – communication appears fractured and broken, smashed into little bits. Much nuance is lost in translation, as technology demands speed and simplicity. In Jem Calder's world, lives are lived in the shadows, friends and lovers try to negotiate their ambivalent feelings about each other and dubious careers are fashioned out of go-nowhere jobs. This may all sound rather maudlin and self-obsessed, but what elevates the book is its dry humour and sharp observations. There are laugh-out-loud moments and many stories exhibit a fascinating understanding of information technology, how it works and impacts society. A seductive collection that explores the way we live now. Reward System, by Jem Calder. Published by Faber. $29.99 Review by Chris Saliba  Academic Sarah Churchwell demonstrates that the American Civil War never really ended.
American academic Sarah Churchwell has taken the interesting route of trying to explain Donald Trump's dominance of US politics by examining the text of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. UK based, Churchwell is a professor at the University of London, perhaps giving her enough distance to form a clearer view of American culture, history and racial issues. After being asked so many times why the American people had chosen Trump, she wrote The Wrath to Come in response. Her argument can be put in Shakespearean terms: the past is prologue. The American Civil War never really did solve issues of race, slavery and the South's financial dependence on cheap Black labour. In reviewing both the novel and the famous film adaptation, Churchwell finds a narrative of white victimhood and self-pity. Slavery was not that bad, the majority of whites believed, and it was only the Northern incursion into the South that brought problems. Everything was fine before then. Slaves were mostly satisfied with their lot, whites believed. Hence the utter shock when the enslaved were set free: their white oppressors couldn't believe they wanted to leave. What makes this denial even more extraordinary is the public nature of lynchings. Thousands turned up to watch these grotesque spectacles that involved mutilation and dismemberment before death, then the scrambling for body parts as souvenirs afterwards. How could whites not realise that Black people would be rightly terrified? And yet Southern white people continued to paint a picture of themselves as a civilised and gracious community. The Wrath to Come (the title is a quote from James Baldwin, a euphemism for white rage) interweaves history with literary criticism. Churchwell contrasts Gone With the Wind's' timeline against the actual historical record, throwing into relief the text's underlying racism and wilful ignorance. A difficult and disturbing read that does make sense of today's American white supremacism. It also provides a template of white denialism that could be transplanted to many countries around the world, Australia included. The Wrath to Come, by Sarah Churchwell. Published by Apollo. $39.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A stray dog offers emotional support to its human owners.
It's the period just after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Many were left homeless and traumatised. A young man, Kazumasa, who has lost his job due to the disaster, discovers an abandoned dog at a convenience store. The dog looks scraggly and in need of some care, but also seems fairly intelligent and intuitive. He gives the dog food, invites him into his car, and in a desultory fashion, adopts him. The dog – it appears a mixed breed, part German Shepard, part Japanese – has a name tag: Tamon. Kazumasa has always had a bit of a reputation in his family as a bad boy. Since losing his job, he's taken on delivery work for a Yakuza gang. When his boss ups the ante and offers big money to drive a gang on an actual robbery, Kazumasa is torn. His mother has dementia and his sister is looking after her. They desperately need money. Even though this means Kazumasa will be an accomplice in a crime, he takes the job. For good luck, Kazumasa takes Tamon along. The job is a success and the thieves take to Tamon, calling him their “guardian angel”. One of the bandits even offers to buy Tamon, but Kazumasa won't part with him. It soon becomes obvious, though, that a life of crime carries enormous risks. Kazumasa and Tamon become irrevocably separated when a new crime job is botched. Having lost his owner, Kazumasa, Tamon continues on his own. The truth is, he has a deep sense of purpose and is on a journey of his own. Tamon is looking for a human he lost contact with long ago. As he patiently searches, Tamon is adopted by several more people – a gangster, an unhappily married couple, a sex worker and a young boy. Hase Seishū is a Japanese novelist specialising in Yakuza crime stories. Half of the interconnected tales in The Boy and the Dog have gritty crime themes. The chief charm of Seishū's writing is its pared back simplicity and lack of pretension. While the story has a lot of sentimental qualities, it skillfully avoids mawkishness. The varied cast of characters are all compelling in their authenticity and drawn with an astute understanding of human frailties. The chapter featuring a wife who feels she has made the wrong choice in her freewheeling husband, when she needs someone more grounded, is particularly affecting. It is, however, Tamon, the eerily wise dog that steals the show. He brings calm and peace to all he meets, working almost like a healer among this group of damaged humans. A gritty, realistic novel that also exhibits grace and dignity. The Boy and the Dog, by Seishu Hase. Published by Scribner. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A young girl goes mysteriously missing under Pinochet's military dictatorship.
Nona Fernandez is a Chilean writer and actress. Born in 1971, she grew up under the brutal military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Her childhood experiences inform much of her 2013 novel, Space Invaders. It's the 1980s. Estrella González is a school girl who enjoys socialising with her little group of friends. She even writes some of them letters. Her father and uncle are connected to the Pinochet government. A clue to her father's dangerous job is his missing hand - it was blown off trying to diffuse a bomb. Now he wears a prosthetic one and keeps a cabinet of spare wooden hands. Estrella's friends avoid her house because of the ghoulish cabinet. The children play games at school, reenacting famous war scenes. They also like to play the video game, Space Invaders. The game becomes a metaphor for the violence and strange silence swirling around the children. When one of the children asks his teacher about politics, the teacher quickly changes the subject. Then one day, Estrella disappears. She simply doesn't turn up to school any more. As the children grow older, they ruminate on what could have happened to her. Narrated by many voices, including letters from Estrella herself, Space Invaders is both dreamy and unsettling. It describes a world of children's play, of school and visiting friends, but there is a sense of deep unease as unexplained murders and disappearances invade their innocent world. A carefully honed novel that expertly juggles its many different perspectives, creating a satisfying literary novel that examines childhood experiences under dictatorship. Space Invaders, by Nona Fernandez. Published by Daunt Books. Review by Chris Saliba  A confident young woman describes work, love and friendship in this quirky yet addictive tale of 1960s London.
English poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks wrote six novels and two well received collections of poetry, before sinking into obscurity in the mid-1970s. She suffered some personal traumas, converted to fundamentalist Christianity and then turned savagely on her own literary legacy. Legend has it that she frequented libraries, hunting down copies of her own novels and burning them. Her new found faith told her they were the work of the devil. The Bloater, her 1968 novel, was quickly written in four weeks with the express purpose of creating a bestseller that would bring in some easy money. Reading this quirky, idiosyncratic novel today, one can only assume she was delusional. The Bloater is a good page turner, with punchy dialogue and a well rounded cast of characters. But it doesn't strike as something bound for commercial success. The plucky narrator, Min, is a sound engineer at the BBC working on various esoteric audio projects. She's married to George, a paper cutout of a husband, hardly taken seriously by Min and of no erotic value. The real love interest of the story is the eponymous “bloater”, a chunky sized opera singer with a magnetism all of his own. Min is both attracted and repulsed by Carlos (the singer's actual name). She plays a flirtatious game of witty jousting with the somehow comically sensuous Bloater, sure to always win as she has no intention of succumbing sexually. It's all an energetic word game, any erotic tension between the two playing out more in Min's head than reality. Indeed, while Min is not an entirely unreliable narrator, her brassy, overly confident voice subsumes everything. This is a story told very much from her perspective. It's hard to place this out-of-the box slice of 1960s London, but perhaps fellow poet Stevie Smith's first novel, Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) is a good place to start. Like The Bloater, it has a unique authorial voice that only a poet could create, describing Smith's circle of friends and political views. The Bloater is a snappy breath of fresh air, a mischievous and delicious frolic. New fans may pray that Vintage sees fit to publish more of her work. The Bloater, by Rosemary Tonks. Published by Vintage Classics. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba  Whistleblower Chelsea Manning has written a compelling and insightful memoir.
Chelsea Manning, a former US soldier and intelligence analyst, leaked some 700,000 classified documents pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She felt an increasing cognitive dissonance at how both wars were portrayed at home, compared to the reality on the ground. At first she tried to get what she knew published through mainstream media channels, anonymously approaching journalists and editors. Little interest was shown, so she decided on the bold plan of simply releasing all the documents online. Wikileaks soon made a name for itself in publishing the leaked documents. Much has been written about Manning's motives. To set the record straight, she has decided to write her own story. Too many times, Manning writes, she has been held up as a figure head for certain political movements. As the pages of Readme.txt reveal, she sees herself more as a transparency activist, someone striving to put the truth before the public. Born Bradley Manning in Oklahoma, she experienced a tough upbringing with a violent father and alcoholic mother. As a teenager she spent a period homeless, living on the streets and hustling for food and board. Desperately poor, with no prospects and trying to gain acceptance from her father, she decided to join the army. Since childhood Manning had been grappling with gender dysphoria and she hoped the army would somehow resolve these issues. Despite this, the dysphoria remained, with the need for secrecy influencing career decisions that would see her eventually stationed in Iraq. Readme.txt is written in crisp, concise prose, neatly putting Manning's endlessly fascinating story into a satisfyingly digestible form. She claims to have always been a voracious and wide reader, and a sharp intelligence comes through in the text. Her story is one of surviving extreme psychological duress during seven years of prison, especially her early years of incarceration, where it was clear the authorities wanted to mete out the toughest possible punishment. Despite this, she managed to advocate for herself as a trans woman and receive appropriate gender treatment. Manning is a complex and fascinating character. She comes across as both incredibly vulnerable and resolutely strong. A gifted computer technician and analyst, she's also a passionate activist, someone ready to face jail for her beliefs. A trans woman who has had to fight for her identity. Chelsea Manning is certainly a polarising figure, but one who can't be ignored. Readme.txt deserves a wide readership. Readme.txt: A Memoir, by Chelsea Manning. Published by Jonathan Cape. $35 Review by Chris Saliba  A selection of Behrouz Boochani's writing from his time detained on Manus Island.
Behrouz Boochani fled his native Iran in 2013, his work as a journalist having brought him the unwelcome attention of the authorities. He was on his way to Australia via Indonesia when the boat he was travelling on was intercepted by the Royal Australian Navy. He was detained on Manus Island from 2013 until 2019, when he managed to travel to New Zealand for a literary event and was subsequently granted refugee status. Freedom, Only Freedom is a collection of Boochani's prison writings, translated and edited by Omid Tofighian and Moones Mansoubi. The book is divided into ten parts, covering key events of Boochani's time in detention and also addressing philosophical and political questions regarding Australia's asylum seeker policies. Each part finishes with two pieces by different writers – academics, activists, journalists and supporters. These pieces aim to give context and perspective to Boochani's writing. While these contributions are interesting, they tend to be densely academic in tone. Boochani wrote the majority of the work presented here on his phone – an amazing feat of determination and commitment. He covers all aspects of detention – the constant humiliation, the hunger, dirt, filth, squalor, poor health of detainees and lack of appropriate services. The aim of detention, it seems, is to psychologically break down detainees until they are mere shells. One man whose only pleasure was playing his guitar had it confiscated. The official reason was the strings were considered a suicide risk. Despite so much misery and indignity, Boochani strives to show the humanity and hopes of his fellow detainees. If prison life offers only sadness and desperation, there are still the beauties of nature: birds, sea, sunshine. When all promise and dignity is stripped from the individual, nature allows detainees to still feel themselves as human. Another aspect of detention the book addresses is the political. Boochani asks why Australia has chosen such a cruel and merciless system. Does it have roots in our colonial past, our former White Australia policy? Manus and Naru are like a gulag, where people are disappeared. Boochani sees his writing as a history project, a secret history that Australians don't want to confront. “This writing that comes out of Manus is the unoffical history of Australia, a history that will never be authorised by the government.” Freedom, Only Freedom proves to be a unique and critical document chronicling Australia's detention policy. It will surely only grow in status and relevance in the years to come. Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani, by Behrouz Boochani. Published by Bloomsbury. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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