A debut collection full of biting satire. Evana Belich is a New Zealand author who has won several awards for her short stories. She's held various jobs, as a trade union official and employment relations officer, roles which have clearly informed her fiction. How to Get Fired, Belich's first published collection, comprises 16 stories, many linked by reappearing characters. The main focus of Evana Belich's fiction is on workplace relations – crappy jobs, ambitious bosses, dubious productivity gains, vacuous motivational mantras etc. etc. She also writes about strained friendships and difficult families. The tone is acerbically comic and ruthlessly observational. No one escapes this author's steely gaze. Belich writes about modern life as it really is – crowded with so much cognitive junk. There are sales targets for useless products to be met, the emotional labour involved in keeping bosses happy, and explosive Christmases where years of repressed stress come to the fore. If you have enjoyed quirky workplace fiction such as Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, by Kikuko Tsumura and Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, then you will love How to Get Fired. How to Get Fired, by Elana Belich. Published by Penguin. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba A cast of troubled souls throng the pages of Alexander McCall Smith's The Enigma of Garlic, the latest in the 44 Scotland Street series. Big Lou and Fat Bob are about to be married, but the bride has much on her mind. Her coffee bar business keeps her busier than she'd like and rumours are that Fat Bob is seeing another woman. Could it be true? Bruce Anderson has been struck by lighting, apparently resulting in a personality change – for the better. Gone is his vanity and replacing it a sense of purpose. He flirts with joining a monastery. And finally, Stuart Pollock is trying to assert himself when his pushy, estranged wife, Irene, makes an unwelcome return. Stuart's mother tries to dispatch Irene, but events take an unexpected turn. Most of the novel's plot turns on the resolving of several moral quandaries. Comic relief is offered in the guise of Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, an intrepid nun who has received training from the Vatican's secret service. She successfully trails Fat Bob to find out what his secret is. A sympathetic, realistic portrait of everyday lives engaged in life's central struggles. The Enigma of Garlic, by Alexander McCall Smith. Published by Polygon. $34.99 Review by Chris Saliba An eco-activist group bites off more than it can chew when it accepts funding from a billionaire. Birnam Wood is an eco-activist group, guerilla gardeners who descend on vacant plots of land and plant small food crops. The grass roots collective is run along non-hierarchical lines, yet real power in the group resides with its founder, the emotionally and philosophically complex Mira Bunting. Mira is your proverbial angry left wing activist, ready to make revolution and bring down the whole corrupt capitalist system. Despite Birnam Wood's egalitarian aims, with its eschewing of vertical power structures, the membership is revolting. Shelley, second in command in all but name, has a long list of private grievances against Mira. She secretly wants to leave. Ideologically pure Tony has returned from exile to confront the hypocrisy he sees in the group, making an uncomfortable scene. Enter Robert Lemoine, billionaire drone manufacturer and tech wizard. He's about to seal a purchase for a cattle station and surrounding land with owners Owen and Jill Darvish. Owen, now Sir Owen, has just received a knighthood for his contributions to the environment – a ridiculous honour, considering his past as a pest controller. Sir Owen has set up a business with Robert Lemoine's drone company, Autonomo, to monitor at-risk species, hence the knighthood. All of this makes Mira's very blood boil. She investigates the Darvish property, with ideas of doing some planting. It is here she runs into Lemoine. The canny Mira has soon met her match when she tries to conceal her intentions and Lemoine checkmates her. Nonetheless, a deal is soon hammered out. Funding for Birnam Wood, in exchange for the environmental gloss the partnership will give to Lemoine's drone business. But Robert Lemoine is not to be trusted, not even at this level. He's up to his eyeballs in some of the most evil business practices imaginable. Eleanor Catton won the Booker in 2013 for The Luminaries. Birnam Wood is her follow up. It's been worth the wait. Part eco-thriller, part satire on left wing politics, Birnam Wood is expertly plotted and has the suspense of a ticking time bomb. The cast of characters is superbly drawn, especially the self-satisfied middle class, middle aged couple, Sir Owen and Lady Jill Darvish. The dialogue is refreshingly real and tone perfect, capturing speech heard regularly in everyday life. Catton has a sharp eye and is an astute observer of life, of our vanities and frailties, which she conveys with peerless skill on the page. A classic page-turning thriller, with a rogue's gallery of do-gooders, baddies and the plain indifferent, whose indifference allows the worst to happen. The shock ending will leave the reader reeling for days. Don't miss it! Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton. Published by Granta. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba In 1960s Australia, a Catholic priest starts an affair with a young student. Gifted student Maggie Reed attends a Catholic boarding school in Cumberland, a western suburb of Sydney. It's 1967 and Maggie is seventeen-years-old. She's won a scholarship to attend the school, which is just as well, because her drunkard father would prefer she give up studying altogether and find a job. Her mother, who puts up with a lot of spousal abuse, has too much on her plate to take care of her daughter. Home is a depressing place, full of fear and anger, and Maggie is happy to be boarding, a brief respite from so many troubles. Events take a sharp turn when local priest Father Nihill, handsome and charming, takes an interest in Maggie. She initially resists, but soon finds herself succumbing to a sexual relationship. It's one full of secrecy and deception. When Maggie becomes pregnant, her life is turned upside down as Father Nihill – Lloyd, as he has insisted she call him – tries to deal with the pregnancy in a very un-Catholic way. Maggie is Catherine Johns' debut novel. It reads as autobiographical and one wonders if it's based on personal experience, or that of a friend. Every page feels real and immediate. The novel provides an excellent overview of social mores in 1960s Australia - the position of women, the church and reproductive rights. The hypocrisy of the church's priests is jaw dropping. Sometimes evil. The treatment of Maggie as a problem to be hidden away, with no concern for her as a person, will make readers indignant at such injustice and misogyny, obviously the norm for the times. One minor caveat: for a story driven by so much drama, the writing can feel flat at times. Characters don't leap off the page and the plot structure feels pedestrian. Having said that, the book is still a page-turner and Maggie's journey is compelling in its twists and turns. A well rounded, disturbing portrait of the darker side of 1960s Australia. Maggie, by Catherine Johns. Published by Hachette Australia. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba Intimate, introspective stories about a community of cats that look out for their humans. Four cats – Chobi, Kubo, Cookie and Mimi – roam through four human stories about loss, anxiety, loneliness and grief. While each story is a stand alone tale, dealing with an individual's problems and traumas, the cats know each other as a little community and form almost a collective chorus, with the narration swapping between the feline and human. They observe their human owners in trouble – all women, hence the book's title – and try to nudge them in the right direction. The cats hold a bemused view of the human world, with all its frailties and worries, and feel somewhat superior with their no nonsense attitude to the cycle of life and death. She and Her Cat is the debut novel from anime filmmaker Makoto Shinkai (translated by Naruki Nagakawa). It's a sensitive and intimate portrait of vulnerable people, trying to live the best they can but still struggling. The book's bustling urban environment – of trains and busy streets – adds to the atmosphere of quiet alienation. A gentle, oddly soothing novel about how we come to realise the simple joys of life through suffering and adversity. She and Her Cat, by Makoto Shinkai. Published by Doubleday. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba 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 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 When a boy goes missing during a dust storm, mysteriously absorbed into the Australian landscape, a town goes in search of him. 1883, South Australia. The town of Fairly is experiencing a dust storm. The horizon shimmers with the burning colours of red and yellow. A six-year-old boy, Denny Wallace, has gone missing during the storm. A child brought up in the bush, he's seems to have simply wandered off. When the adults find out, the whole town is launched into action. A broad cast of characters – police, Indigenous trackers, Denny's elder sister, Cissy, the boy's father – all work in their own idiosyncratic ways to find the boy. The Sun Walks Down is the second novel from Australian writer Fiona McFarlane. There's little plot to talk of, the story propelled along by the eccentric interactions of a brilliantly drawn cast. There are all sorts here, besides the main cast of family, police and Indigenous trackers. McFarlane throws in a Swedish artist, a prostitute, a mad vicar, some Afghan cameleers, a police seargeant who thinks himself more inspired writer than cop, among others. The evocative, almost poetic descriptions of landscape, flora and fauna give McFarlane's story a rich, satisfying texture. A highly wrought portrait of Australia's alienating landscape, written in an endlessly seductive prose and shot through with delicious irony and sly humour. You won't read a better book this year. The Sun Walks Down, by Fiona McFarlane. Published by Allen & Unwin. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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