Acclaimed actress Judi Dench talks all things Shakespeare What started out as a series of conversations destined for the archives at Shakespeare's Globe have turned into a book. It was actor and director Brendan O'Hea's idea to capture Judi Dench's musings on her career, specifically as a Shakespearean actress, but when the recordings were heard by a third party it was suggested they be turned into a book. The Man Who Pays the Rent was Dench and husband Michael Williams' nickname for Shakespeare. The playwright's expansive oeuvre kept them in work. For a book based on a series of conversations, you'd expect something light and frothy. Indeed, it is that. But so much more besides. Dench shows an impressive knowledge and incredible recall of lines, passages, dialogue, poetry and plot lines from the plays. There is also a detailed consideration of character, psychology and motive. Often Dench celebrates the mystery and subtlety of Shakespeare, advising that meaning is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. A broad range of the plays are discussed – tragedies, comedies, histories and the so-called problem plays. Mini in between chapters discuss stagecraft, language and the role of critics. Dench peppers her commentary with amusing stories from her acting career – falls, stumbles, forgotten lines, wardrobe malfunctions. Like all wonderful books on Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays the Rent inspires the reader to return to the plays. A companionable book that mixes serious analysis with jolly, break-a-leg stories from the stage. Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench. Published by Michael Joseph. $36.99 Review by Chris Saliba Three young men who can't return to their home in Libya find comfort in friendship. It's 1984. Khaled has left his politically troubled home in Libya to study in England. At his friend Mustafa's suggestion, they attend a protest against the Libyan regime in London. They wear balaclavas to conceal their identity. To be discovered attending would make returning home next to impossible. They are elated to be doing their bit, trying to liberate their country from dictatorship under Gaddafi. But things take a bad turn when armed men – no doubt regime sympathisers or direct plants – start shooting into the crowd. Khaled is hurt – shot in the chest – and requires hospitalisation. He survives without major injuries or complications, but lives in fear of returning home. He must also keep his attendance at the protest a secret from his family. Another plot involves Khaled's deep admiration for the writer Hosam Zowa, who he later befriends, and who becomes entwined in his circle. Covering the period between 1984 and 2011, the year of Gaddafi's downfall and murder, My Friends speaks in the voice of a middle-aged man looking back on a life separated from home and family. It's a story of dislocation, fear and yearning, written in an elegiac prose that is intimate and personable. Hisham Matar has won many accolades for his writing, and fans will not be disappointed with this heartfelt exploration of loss and exile, one that is also filled with warmth and compassion. My Friends, by Hisham Matar. Published by Viking. $34.99 Review by Chris Saliba Three new employees struggle to find meaning in their roles in this quirky mix of dystopia and comedy by acclaimed Japanese novelist Hiroko Oyamada. Three new hirees join “the factory”, a bland yet mysterious workplace. No one seems to know – or is interested, really – in what the factory produces. It exists almost as a world unto itself, with shops, restaurants and residences within its grounds to service employees. There is an idyllic aspect to the factory, too: it is surrounded by trees and vegetation, almost a little forest. There is also a river. A considerable amount of time is spent discussing in almost surreal fashion the wildlife that lives in the forest. Yoshiko Ushiyama takes on a job shredding documents all day. This is pretty soul destroying work, even though the section she works for is given the snazzy title of “shredder squad”. But basically her days are spent with lacklustre colleagues, pursuing pointless gossip. Yoshiko's brother, whose name we don't learn, gets a job as a proofreader. He reads what appear to be workplace documents, but is utterly bamboozled as to what they all mean, and has a memorable outburst where he declares he has no idea what the factory actually makes. "If these are all factory documents, what the hell is the factory? What's it making?" The most interesting job is that of the moss expert, who is charged with creating a green roof for the factory. This role goes to Yoshio Furufue, an academic. It's another non-job. He basically runs school parties – moss hunts. The real work of the green roofing has already been organised, so he works more as a figurehead, or pointless expert. All of the above characters have stumbled onto their jobs – through the suggestion of employment agencies, former work colleagues or relatives. Hence there's a sense of being adrift and without purpose. Life is comfortable, easy going, with no pressure. Days are spent looking for something useful to do. Actual work appears to be optional. Despite the easygoing atmosphere, all three of the new employees appear on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The Factory is hard to categorise. It's kind of dystopian, with touches of science fiction, but also humorous in a farcical way. It's amusing to watch Hiroko Oyamada's characters, like mice in a maze, trying to figure out what they should be doing. Wrapped around this narrative of workplace dissatisfaction is the beautiful forest, river and its creatures – shags, lizards and coypuses (a semi aquatic rodent) – that at least work efficiently and with purpose. An original, entertaining and out-of-the box take on the drudgery of the modern workplace. The Factory, by Hiroko Oyamada. Published by Granta. $27.99 Review by Chris Saliba L.M. Montgomery, best known for Anne of Green Gables, wrote this uplifting story of a woman who turns her back on polite society in order to find her true self. Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine years old and already considered an old maid by her patronising family. She's teased and infantalised. Unremarkable in the looks department, no one holds out much hope for her. Life is accordingly miserable, for the most part because she's forever trying to fit in and keep everyone around her happy, fulfilling their expectations, rather than her own. When Valancy gets a serious medical diagnosis, she decides she's had enough of living for other people. In an about face that shocks her family she starts giving candid opinions, takes up a housekeeping job with Roaring Abe, the town drunk, and elopes with Barney Snaith, a man with a reputation as a possible jail bird. Everyone is horrified by Valancy's behaviour, and they quickly move to disown her. The only consolation is that she's gone mad. But the truth is, Valancy has never been happier. In the end, through several twists and turns in the plot, the family makes peace with Valancy's decision to marry Barney Snaith, but for quite selfish reasons. The Blue Castle (1926) was published as a novel for adults, but it hardly veers off L.M. Montgomery's formula for children's fiction. Like a lot of the Anne series, the novel hovers somewhere between the two genres. It's an easy-to-read and emotionally satisfying story of liberation from society's shackles. Or more to the point, the shackles we put on ourselves. Montgomery does an excellent job of creating a cast of insipid and self-satisfied family members who hold Valancy back, and the reader will find themselves barracking for the story's heroine. The scenes where Valancy lives with Barney Snaith on his idyllic island display Montgomery's skill for inspiring nature writing. One tastes her freedom in living wild, enjoying life's simple pleasures. A highly entertaining story with a serious message about personal liberation. The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery. Published by Union Square & Co. $19.99 Review by Chris Saliba Following on from Robyn Annear's Adrift in Melbourne, the historian brings more stories – both alarming and entertaining – of Melbourne's early years. In this new history of Melbourne by much loved writer Robyn Annear, the overarching theme is street corners. Before home entertainment – radio, television, the internet – people took to the streets to keep themselves amused. The streets were loud, noisy, crowded, exciting and dangerous. Drunks, chancers, larrikins, sex workers, snake oil merchants and pickpockets, among other unsavoury types, thronged the inner city. Life was lived very much in public in the 19th century, which could create problems such as marauding gangs (the larrikin phenomenon) and street congestion: people hung around street corners in large numbers and simply didn't move on. The sheer volume of people that would turn up for public meetings and flamboyant street performers could easily reach the thousands. Many street corners carried their own pet names and reputations. “Puppy-Dog corner”, as it was known during its heyday, on the corner of Swanston and Collins, was a hangout for foppish young men who liked to ogle passing young women. While Corners of Melbourne ostensibly sticks to street corners as its theme, the book ranges over subjects such as city sanitation (or lack thereof), rudimentary water systems and shoddy buildings, some simply collapsing under their own poor construction. The sections of the book dealing with toilet waste are stomach churning. Human waste (and all sorts of other garbage) was often simply dumped in what are now public parks. Men relieved themselves in alleyways (Melbourne didn't get its first public urinal until 1859) and the urine ran freely in the streets. In summer the smell was intolerable. Robyn Annear brings her usual wit and eye for a cracking good story to Corners. The book is full of characters and incidents gleaned from the newspapers of the day, including The Argus and The Herald. There's never a dull moment in this gritty yet humorous history which manages to truly bring the streets of early Melbourne alive. An interesting place to read about, but one which you may not want to visit! Corners of Melbourne, by Robyn Annear. Published by Text. $35 Review by Chris Saliba The Great Divide: Australia's Housing Mess and How to Fix It: Quarterly Essay 92, by Alan Kohler13/12/2023
Finance journalist Alan Kohler looks at Australia's current housing crisis According to Alan Kohler Australia's housing crisis is some twenty years in the making and is so baked in it will take at least a decade to unravel. And that unravelling will require not the current policy drift, but firm action and consensus from the electorate. As it currently stands, the majority of the electorate either own outright or have a mortgage, meaning any change to the status quo, that is, lower prices, is against their financial interests. Alan Kohler takes two historical views, the longer and the more recent. Australian property in early settler days was pretty much a land grab. Land was often gifted in large slabs by the British Crown. Some simply squatted on land and claimed it as their own, without a murmur from government. Australia was considered terra nullius – it was free for the taking. The shorter historical view, starting around the early 2000s, illustrates how the seeds of the current crisis were sown. A mixture of tax breaks and increased immigration under the Howard Government was rocket fuel to house prices. Everyone was happy – until they weren't. Prices were increasing at a rate of knots; it was money on a loop. Even if you hadn't entered the market, there was cheerful news that once you did, a pot of gold awaited. The results of those twenty years of rampant price increases are now in. What has turned housing into such a wicked problem is how entrenched it has become. It will take years to build our way back to housing affordability. It will also require national focus, of which Kohler says there is little, if any. A brilliantly lucid essay that explains how we arrived at such a mess. The Great Divide: Australia's Housing Mess and How to Fix it: Quarterly Essay 92, by Alan Kohler. Published by Black Inc. $27.99 Review by Chris Saliba A recently bereaved woman decides on a sea change. Zoe and her husband Nick have recently seen their investment portfolio tank, due to stock market volatility. Re-assessing their lives, they decide to sell up their lovingly restored inner city Federation villa and move to the country. Their plan is to vaguely become part of a regional community and shrug off their middle-class entitlement, “tut-tutting at the television and taking expensive holidays.” They start looking online for a country property and come across an old church, cheap as chips and with a view of the vineyards. Zoe's not so keen. The idea of converting the church is more than a little daunting. But Nick is gung-ho. Their plans remain under consideration when Nick is killed in an accident. Suddenly bereaved, Zoe takes the plunge and decides to take on the church herself. It's a way of dealing with her grief, but in many ways she doesn't really know what she's doing. Nevertheless, she starts to make connections with people in the town, especially with an extroverted teacher named Melanie who wants to turn the church into a temporary theatre space. Zoe's new friendships, and the eerie experience of living in the church, help her exorcise some personal demons. The Conversion is an accessible and straight forward story of grief and isolation, of how dramatic changes in life, of location and people and atmosphere, have the power to heal and transform us. Many readers will see themselves in Amanda Lohrey's descriptions of contemporary Australia, its people and customs and attitudes. The dialogue and the narrator's observations are often wryly humourous, leavening the story's gravity with some delightfully lighter moments. A gentle journey into the dark night of the soul, performed with a light but sure touch. The Conversion, by Amanda Lohrey. Published by Text. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba Naomi Klein explores how the internet has upended the way we think. Canadian writer Naomi Klein has spent much of her career investigating capitalism and its effects on society and culture, with a focus on the inequities it creates. Klein felt her work was distinct; readers knew what she stood for. Imagine her surprise when she started noticing online that she was being mixed up with Naomi Wolf, a writer who shot to fame with her feminist treatise The Beauty Myth in 1990. Since then Wolf has had a stellar career, but in recent years has lurched to the far right as a conspiracy theorist. Doppelganger is Naomi Klein's attempt to come to grips with this new age of online extremism. The book explores through literature, history and politics how individuals and even societies have a dark side, an almost evil twin. (Australia often gets a mention, the doctrine of terra nullius seen as a way of denying the existence of First Nations.) If we are honest, according to Klein, we are all vulnerable to this doubling and need only look in the mirror. Doppelganger starts from a flimsy premise, but spins into a fascinating and absorbing book, full of superb analysis and surprising paradoxes. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99 Review by Chris Saliba Young love turns into a healthy obsession in Rose Tremain's autobiographical novel. It's 1950s England, and fifteen-year-old Marianne Clifford has fallen in love with the beautiful Simon Hurst, a few years older than her. Their love blooms like a fresh spring flower, young and vulnerable to precarious conditions. When Simon flunks his exams, his parents send him to Paris. The two young lovers stay in contact, each letter from Simon fuelling an impossible hope that the two will spend their lives together. Then comes the fatal blow: Simon is getting married to a woman he met in Paris. Marianne tries to carry on, but is drowning in an ocean of grief. She marries, but the union is ultimately unsatisfying. Her parents, the brash Colonel and his emotionally absent wife, are no help. When Simon makes a surprise return to England, Marianne knows in her heart she will see him again. But what will be the outcome? Award winning English novelist Rose Tremain has written an authentic story of young heartbreak and its aftermath. Despite the painful subject, the novel is largely entertaining, with comic portraits of the blunt Colonel and Marianne's tell-it-like-it-is Scottish friend Petronella. A perfectly realised, cathartic story about how early love has the power to haunt us through life. Absolutely and Forever, by Rose Tremain. Published by Chatto & Windus. $39.99 Review by Chris Saliba When a family goes missing from a house they had specially built, its architect becomes obsessed with their disappearance. Minoru Aose is an architect, struggling with direction in his life. A recent economic downturn hit him hard, but he managed to find employment with an old friend, Akihiko Okajima. Okajima runs his own design company and it is while working for him that Aose designs the famous Y Residence, built near Mount Asama. It's a prize winning piece of architecture and has been profiled in industry magazines. The building was commissioned by Touta Yoshino and his family. A mystery occurs when the architect Aose discovers the family hasn't moved in at all. The beautiful residence, with its stunning north lighting, has been left empty. Why? Aose starts to inquire as to what has happened to the family. On a visit to the house he discovers it has been broken into, but a beautiful chair by the German designer, Bruno Taut, has been left behind. What could it all mean? As Aose delves deeper into the mystery, more and more layers are revealed, including his own backstory, which involved a peripatetic childhood and the early loss of his father. The many strands of this story are finally woven together and the reader discovers how art and fate can intertwine. Hideo Yokoyama's The North Light is an absorbing, slow moving novel of intrigue and fascination. There are many convoluted plot strands, but Yokoyama skillfully guides the reader through this dizzying labyrinth, making the journey a pleasure. The novel's main themes are about family and place, dislocation and loneliness. The novel also provides a meditation on art, and how it affects us emotionally, often working as a balm for the soul. The detailed descriptions of the Y Residence provides a calming, Zen-like experience in itself. Readers who enjoy immersive, slow-moving mysteries will get many hours of enjoyment out of The North Light. The North Light, by Hideo Yokoyama. Published by Riverrun. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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