Familiar place, familiar crime: ‘Pheasant’s Nest’ by Louise Milligan
Louise Milligan will be known to many Australians as an award winning investigative journalist and author of non-fiction books; Pheasant’s Nest is her debut novel. It opens on a stretch of road very familiar to me, and I’m sure to others who have driven the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra, or further south to Melbourne.
In this opening scene, the protagonist Kate Delaney is tied up on the back seat of a man’s car heading north from Melbourne. The man has committed a violent sexual assault and kidnapping and is now on the run with his victim.
The rest of the novel plays out as the clock ticks down: will it end with Kate’s murder or with rescue?
The narrative zips between Kate’s thoughts as she lies helpless and afraid in the car, to the panic and fear of her devoted boyfriend Liam and her best friend Sylvia, and to the two detectives in charge of the investigation.
I appreciated this aspect of the novel very much. Hearing what is in Kate’s head allows readers to see her as a person with a career (journalism, unsuprisingly), friends, family and a full, largely happy life. Of course she is terrified, too, because having covered plenty of crime cases as a journalist, she knows there is limited time for police to track down her assailant. Her fear feels very real.
What we also hear are her less serious thoughts: her reflections on her past, her career and colleagues, her lover and her friends. Some of these are actually very funny – unexpectedly in a crime novel like this. I particularly enjoyed the quite pointed but hilarious descriptions of the evangelical church ‘JoyChurch’ located in Sydney’s northwest ‘aspirational affluence belt,’ and the completely fake and probably corrupt couple at its centre.
The PTSD suffered by the NSW detective who has seen too many crimes and too many acts of self destruction also ring very true. He has held onto his compassion despite it all, but at great personal cost. His character speaks to the hard job we give police officers and their need for greater resourcing and personal support.
The other characters are also quite special; Liam and Sylvia as they head north to NSW to be closer to Kate (even though no one is sure exactly where she is) are beautifully drawn, as are some of the minor characters.
It’s a well paced and unfortunately very believable novel. We see too many headlines about women being attacked either by an intimate partner, a casual date, or a random person, to think that the crime at the centre of this story is not all-too-familiar in real life.
The author describes the stretch of road through the Southern Highlands of NSW in all its creepy detail. Anyone who followed the Ivan Milat serial killing cases in the Belanglo Forest there, or is aware of how many suicides have occured at the eponymous Pheasant’s Nest Bridge, will recognise the sensation of vague threat that driving through here can evoke.
Pheasant’s Nest is crime fiction with something important to say. It will be enjoyed by readers who don’t like too much gruesome detail but who appreciate familiar and believable characters and places in their fiction. It is published by Allen & Unwin in 2024.
The ‘other’ indigenous Australians: ‘Growing up Torres Strait Islander in Australia’ Edited by Samantha Faulkner
The ‘Growing Up’ series is a fabulous suite of books published by Black Inc Books, each of which ‘captures the diversity of our nation in moving and revelatory ways.‘ (Black Inc Books)
NB: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that the book contains names and images of, as well as writing by, people who have died.
Previous titles in the series include: Growing Up Asian, Growing Up Aboriginal, Growing Up In Country Australia, Growing Up Queer…all designed to allow for the sharing of lived experiences by people who make up today’s Australia.
This latest edition is a collection of short pieces by Australians with Torres Strait Islander heritage – sometimes referred to as ‘the other Indigenous Australians.’
The Torres Strait Islands are located between the tip of Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland, and the coast of Papua New Guinea. Torres Strait Islanders have a unique culture and a fascinating history. They are traditionally a sea-faring (or salt water) people, though of course in the past hundred years or so many have moved south to live on mainland Australia.
The pieces in this volume, educed by poet and author Samantha Faulkner, include stories about well-known people (such as Eddie Koiki Mabo, whose High Court challenge overturned the lie of ‘terra nullius’) or actor Aaron Fa’Aoso. It also includes names I was unfamiliar with. Young and older people. Those living in Torres Strait Island communities and those who have never been there, having lived all their lives on the mainland.
The stories say a lot about how culture and language are maintained, how precious childhood memories can fuel pride in culture, the many barriers that faced Islanders in the past and those encountered today, and how cross-cultural influences have contributed to the rich tapestry of Australian life: many contributors have ancestry that also includes mainland Australian First Nations, Malay, Japanese, Filipino, among others.
Together they paint a picture of the extraordinary depth and range of spiritual beliefs, languages, dance and other cultural practices that make up the vibrancy of the Torres Strait Island people.
If, like many Australians, you had never heard of or knew much about this corner of Australia, or its people, grab a copy of this book and learn! It’s a great read and very accessible. I’d love to see a copy in every public and school library across Australia.
Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia is published by Black Inc Books in 2024.
Taut: ’17 Years Later’ by J.P. Pomare
J.P.Pomare – Kiwi-born Australian author – writes taut, twisty crime thrillers. 17 Years Later is definitely that, imbued with a sense of darkness and with questions about the mystery at its heart: who really killed the Primrose family seventeen years ago?
Set in a small town on New Zealand’s North Island, the narrative is told from several different perspectives and voices.
There is Bill Kareama, the Primrose’s live-in private chef, delighted to be offered this amazing chance to kick-start his career and make good money while cooking for the wealthy family. When the shocking murders of Simon Primrose, his wife Gwen, daughter Elle and son Chester are discovered, Bill is the prime suspect – in large part due to the fact that the murder weapon is one of his chef’s knives. We hear Bill’s own account of the events leading up to his arrest, the trial and his imprisonment.
Into the town of Cambridge arrives Sloane Abbott, a successful journalist with a popular true-crime podcast. She is determined to investigate the crime because she has heard stories about how the original investigation failed to seriously consider any other suspects and overlooked evidence. Did Bill and the Primrose family receive justice? If not, seventeen years is a long time for the wrong man to be imprisoned. And troublingly, is it possible that here a killer still at large?
We hear from Fleur, the French au pair, who shares a cottage on the Primrose estate with Bill. What is her role in the family and why does she stay with them, given that the children no longer really need a nanny?
TK was Bill’s psychologist who devoted years of his life to finding the truth about what happened. He is dragged unwillingly back into the mystery by Sloane’s dogged persistence.
All of these characters are well drawn, as is the setting of a regional New Zealand town where many of the locals just want to forget the whole thing. There are plenty of twists and an action-packed ending; the story unravelling between the various players, keeping me guessing to the end.
I was engrossed by 17 Years Later and gobbled it up quickly. A very satisfying read.
17 Years Later is published by Hachette Australia in July 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for a copy to read and review.
Art + History + Crime = ‘The Engraver’s Secret’ by Lisa Medved
This first novel by Australian author Lisa Medved shines with historical detail and the beauty of the artworks which are the main subject of the plotlines – two plotlines, as it is a dual timeline novel.
The modern-day story features art historian Charlotte, recently arrived in Antwerp in Belgium. Recovering from the death of her beloved mother, Charlotte has just landed her dream job at the university, and hopes to do more research on her artistic hero, Rubens, while in the city where he created so many of his famous works in the seventeenth century.
She is also nursing a secret: an unwelcome last minute disclosure by her mother about the identity of her father – a man she had been led to believe was ‘no good’ and long dead.
While at the university, she discovers a clue that could lead to a ground-breaking discovery about Ruben’s work, and his relationship with the eponymous engraver who worked in his studio for many years.
This is where the second timeline comes in. It’s the story of Antonia, a teenaged girl living in Antwerp in the 1620’s, the daughter of the engraver, Lucas Vosterman. Raised by her father to pursue academic and artistic interests, she later finds that the options available to a young woman are much more limited. And like Charlotte, Antonia is the recipient of an unwelcome admission by her father – a secret that she must carry to her grave.
As Charlotte sets off on a quest to find the centuries-old clues that could establish her career as an art historian, she experiences the serious consequences of the competition and professional jealousy amongst her colleagues at the university.
Meanwhile, as Antonia deals with her own heartbreak and the barriers to leading a fulfilled life as an independent woman, she must struggle with the consequences of her father’s behaviour:
I owed him my gratitude and loyalty, yet something inside me – my ingrained stubbornness, whispers of doubt, a yearning for independence – stopped me from fully submitting to his will. How can I remain loyal to my family and stay true to myself?
The Engraver’s Secret p 371Underlying both stories is the relationship between the two protagonists and their fathers, and the constraints imposed by the times and places in which they live.
I loved the mysteries at the heart of the novel; the wonderful detail provided of seventeenth century life and culture in (what was then) the Spanish Hapsburg Empire; the descriptions of the beautiful artworks and their creators. The author has a background in both art and history and her knowledge and love of these subjects inform the book in a natural and accessible way. As always I enjoyed reading about places and historical periods that I know relatively little about; it always makes me want to know more.
But most of all I enjoyed the very human dilemmas of the two women and the relationships at the heart of their stories.
The author’s next book will be set in Vienna and feature the artist Gustav Klimt. I can’t wait to read that one!
You can find out more about Lisa Medved and her work here.
The Engraver’s Secret is published by HarperCollins Australia in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
As I sit down to write this review, it is leading up to ANZAC Day in Australia, an annual day of commemoration of those who served in military campaigns in Australia’s name. Up until recently, those who served as medical staff and nurses in wartime seem to have been ‘add-ons’ in our military histories.
Take the story of Sister Vivian Bullwinkle. Her name should come easily to Australians thinking about their nation’s involvement in war, like Simpson and his donkey in the ANZAC story, or ‘Weary’ Dunlop in WWII.
There is now a statue of Sister Vivian in the grounds of the Australian National War Memorial. But when it was unveiled in 2023 – last year! – it was the first statue of a woman at the memorial.
I’ll move on from my bewilderment at why it took such a long time to recognise this woman, and onto Grantlee Kieza’s story of her life. What a tale it is.
Vivian Bullwinkle completed her nursing and midwifery training at Broken Hill Hospital in the 1930s. Then came the announcement in September 1939 that Australia was at war with Germany. From the Melbourne hospital where she was working, Viv enlisted as an army nurse. By 1941 she was on her way to Singapore, where she would face the new enemy of the war, Japan.
The book includes vivid descriptions of the rapid and vicious attacks on Malaya and Singapore by Japanese troops. On reading these pages I had a sense of the fear that must have been in every heart, knowing that the Japanese were moving south at a rapid rate, killing anyone who stood in their way. I also felt anger at the apparent lack of preparation on the part of Allied authorities; the complacent belief of Western superiority which was then prevalent, certainly worked in favour of the Japanese. Rumours began spreading about the merciless nature of the Japanese soldiers.
On a personal note, an uncle of mine was involved in that first encounter with the Japanese on Singapore Island; he was reported missing, presumed dead; a fate confirmed by the Australian Army at the war’s end. His mother and siblings never got over the loss of smiling, kind, lovable Ernest Harvey Newton, known as ‘Snow’ to his family. Learning about the cruelty inflicted on those who survived encounters with the Japanese, perhaps Snow’s fate was preferable. Who can say? All I know is that the whole thing was an shocking savagery that should never have happened.
Eventually the nurses were evacuated from Singapore; it is telling that they apparently felt great reluctance and shame to be leaving the sick and wounded soldiers they’d been caring for. The author paints an appalling picture of the chaos and desperation of a defeated Singapore. The nauseating smell of death and raw sewage, oil fires and explosions, terrified civilians climbing over each other in their panic.
Worse was to come for Sister Vivian and her comrades. Put aboard the Vyner Brooke, formerly a royal yacht of Sarawak, over two hundred people endured a terrifying voyage from Singapore heading for the relative safety of the Indonesian islands not yet occupied by Japanese. The stories of those on board are poignant: sixty-five Australian nursing sisters, including one who was seven months’ pregnant; a family of Polish Jews who had fled to the assumed safety of Singapore only to find themselves refugees once again; and many women and children.
The ship was bombed by Japanese aircraft and went down off the coast of Bangka Island near Sumatra. Viv and her nursing colleagues tried to assist the wounded and terrified civilians, before the inevitable order to abandon ship as it broke up underneath them.
But Viv had never learnt to swim.
Somehow, she survived, with the aid of a life jacket and an upturned lifeboat, despite continued bombing from above and the threat of sharks below. She stumbled onto a beach where she recovered enough to find other survivors washed up on the island by the strong currents. At least twelve nurses had died in the water that night. With no food, shelter, and with many needing urgent medical care, the survivors agreed that they had to surrender to the Japanese and hope that the rumours they’d heard about the Japanese taking no prisoners were not true.
What follows is a story of unbelievable cruelty, even sadism, by some of the Japanese they encounter. Men and women alike were coldly gunned down or bayoneted on Radji Beach, left to bleed out in the shallow water or drift off on the tide. Twenty-one of Viv’s nursing companions were murdered that day.
Amazingly, after being hit through her middle by a machine gun and left in the water, Viv did not die. Some instinct told her not to show that she was alive, and even though she couldn’t swim, she allowed herself to float until the men with guns were satisfied that they had killed everyone. Eventually she was taken to a prison camp where she was reunited with others of her nursing sister colleagues.
Moved from camp to camp, starved, with no medical care, minimal fresh water, no way to preserve their hygiene and health, beaten and abused…this was the experience of nurses and civilian refugees on Bangka Island and Sumatra for three and a half years. They survived by caring for each other, pooling any resources they could scrounge, making efforts to raise the spirits of their companions, burying the dead as one by one, women began to succumb to the ravages of malnutrition, tropical diseases and mistreatment by their captors.
It’s a terrible story of unimaginable hardship and suffering. As I read, I often wondered ‘What would I do in this situation? Could I endure it? Would I have survived?’
It’s also about stoicism, bravery, sacrifice and the comradeship that we often hear about amongst soldiers, but is less often applied to those who care for the sick and wounded.
Of course the war did end, Japan surrendered, and the prisoners were eventually found and returned to Australia. We should remember that in the midst of their suffering, none of the nurses knew what would happen. They had no way of knowing what the eventual outcome of the war – and their fates – would be.
After the war, Viv’s strength of spirit, her compassion and her pride in the nursing profession, did not abate. She devoted the rest of her working life to improving the standing and professionalism of nursing in Australia, as well as speaking at many memorials and events where she kept the memory of her dead sisters alive.
And in 1975, aged nearly sixty, she played an instrumental role as one of twelve nursing volunteers in Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of orphaned babies and children from South Vietnam, aboard a chartered Qantas jet from then Saigon to Sydney.
I was so happy to learn that just a year or so later, she married and was able to enjoy more than twenty years with husband Frank Statham.
Sister Viv is a gripping account of a woman who endured great suffering but went on to live a full and productive life in spite of her awful wartime experiences. Grantlee Kieza has written a biography worthy of this truly remarkable Australian.
Sister Viv is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Lives of crime: ‘Sanctuary’ by Gary Disher
Gary Disher writes the kind of crime stories I like best: ones that focus on the people more than the crimes. He manages to show the how and why of the crimes committed, sure; but also the impact on both perpetrators and victims. This is meaningful fiction, not showcasing crime for its own sake, but to say something about humans and why they do the things they do.
Sanctuary is unusual for this genre in that the workings of the world of law enforcement are of minimal importance to the narrative. It centres on several people whose stories overlap, though for much of the book we don’t necessarily know how or why.
There is Grace, formerly known as Anita, who grew up in an unlovely and unloving foster home, along with Adam. They become a team involved in petty crime, just the two of them against a hostile world, until Anita meets a man who teaches her the tricks of a higher level criminal life. When she decides she has had enough of this man’s cruelty and control, she becomes Grace and continues her life of crime alone.
But Adam harbours a grudge and when they inadvertently cross paths on a ‘job’, she runs again, fearful of what he might do.
So begins a series of intricate and well planned moves; staying several steps ahead, constantly checking on surrounds and on people, distrusting of others, always looking for an escape, adopting a series of disguises.
Disher vividly conjures the loneliness and insecurity of this life, and we feel some sympathy for Grace as she tries to adopt another way of being, the kind of ‘legitimate’ and ordinary life that she now longs for. It takes enormous mental and physical energy to live like this. I was reminded of Maxwell Smart in the 1960’s cold-war spoof series Get Smart, in which he often says of the ‘baddies’: If only they could use their cleverness for niceness instead of nastiness.
Through the viewpoint of another character we are given insight into the mind of someone who indulges in digital stalking and illegal surveillance of people. It’s an unpleasant place and I was always relieved to move onto another scene, away from this sordid and rage-filled character’s world view. But I am very aware that sadly, technology has provided increased opportunities for people like this to frighten and hurt others.
The tension mounts as the trajectories of Grace, Adam and other characters head towards collision, with complications cleverly woven in.
The resolution does not tie everything up in a neat bow; that would be unrealistic and too tidy. But we are left with a hope that perhaps, at some future time, Grace and Adam can find a more satisfying way of being in their world.
Sanctuary is published by Text Publishing in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an early review copy.
Fitting end to trilogy: ‘The Settlement’ by Jock Serong
The Settlement is the conclusion to a trilogy of historical fiction novels by award-winning Aussie author Jock Serong. Set in early colonial times in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) the three books tell the uncomfortable story of the violence of the colonial project, the evil manifested by those involved, and the defiance of the island’s First Nations.
I can’t recommend the first (Preservation) and second (The Burning Island) highly enough. If you enjoy both historical and crime fiction these novels are for you.
The Settlement again moves forward in time to the 1830’s, where we meet the real-life George Augustus Robinson, the evangelistic character who took it upon himself to try to solve the problem of spiraling conflict between First Nations people and the settlers in Van Diemen’s Land.
The so-called ‘Black Line’ – a very expensive and (for the British authorities at least) completely unsuccessful attempt to corral and capture Aboriginal people to eliminate the problem, had been a failure. Robinson convinced the authorities to allow him to locate and meet with the leaders of the groups posing a threat to white settlement, with the aim of convincing them to quit their homelands and move to a settlement on an island in the northeast.
So the ill-fated and eponymous settlement of ‘Wybalenna’ on Flinders Island was established.
The narrative moves between key characters: Robinson himself, and other historical figures including leading First Nations figure Mannalargenna, among others; and fictional characters such as two Aboriginal orphans, Whelk and Pipi. A sympathetic, if powerless and conflicted character is the settlement’s Storekeeper, who wrestles with his conscience and his own personal issues throughout the novel.
Robinson himself, now called the settlement’s Commandant, also struggles with the morality of his actions, but always manages to hide behind his religious beliefs and expediency, with an eye to his future position and legacy. He becomes an illustration of the moral blankness at the heart of colonisation.
The chilling character of the Catechist is a remake, of sorts, of the evil figures from the first two books. I heard the author in an interview describe this recurring / reincarnated character as embodying the evils of colonialism and the violence inherent in it. Or, as described in this novel, as an embodiment of the place, the hands and face of an otherwise formless despair. (p108)
The scenes involving the death and funeral of Mannalargenna are almost unbearable, lifted only by the strength and dignity of the man’s spirit even as his body fails, and beautifully conveyed:
Mannalargenna cared little for displays of suffering. He continued to use the grease on his skin and the ochre in the short tufts of his hair, in defiance of the Commandant’s wishes. He persisted in adorning himself in other ways, and in speaking language. Far from rendering him an alien in their midst, it made aliens of his captors. Like a holed and smoking ship of war, he would slide beneath the waves imperious.
The Settlement p174-175Jock Serong has again woven a dark story around the equally dark bones of historical fact. He has cemented his place as one of my favourite Australian contemporary authors.
The Settlement was published by Text Publishing in August 2023.
Tale of two cities: ‘Edenglassie’ by Melissa Lucashenko
It felt quite appropriate that I was finishing this new book by Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko just as the annual public holiday of ‘Australia Day’ (also known as Invasion Day or Survival Day) dawned.
Given that the day is supposedly Australia’s national day, but is held on January 26th, the day that Governor Phillip planted the British flag on a Sydney beach and claimed the place for the British, it raises many questions of the kind also found within this novel.
When does colonisation of a place end – if it ever does?
Has the modern nation of Australia moved beyond its undeniably racist beginnings?
Who has the right to tell whose stories?
Can we see vestiges of the past in our current cities and landscapes? What lies beneath the concrete and tall buildings?
Can past hurts ever be healed?Edenglassie was a name used briefly in the early years of colonisation for part of what is now the city of Brisbane. The novel has two timelines: a current day one, and a second narrative taking place in 1855, just a few decades after the first British convicts, guards and settlers established a settlement there.
Mulanyin is a kippa, a young Yugambeh man from the coastal region around Nerang, who has been living at Edenglassie, gone through ceremony there, fallen for a young woman, Nita, and plans to marry her, save enough money to buy a boat and return to his saltwater home. He’s received good advice from his elders, especially his Big Father, who warns him: Think hard before you pick up the things of the dagai, especially those that seem entirely pleasurable.
He is hot headed and must learn to control his impulses, especially when he sees wrongdoing against his fellows or himself. He comes to learn that while the Law imposes bonds and obligations that chafe, it also binds all Goorie people together and protects them and their civilisation. There is a lot of information given here about some of the precepts of Aboriginal culture: the importance and purpose of ceremony, the intricate rules of kinship and marriage, the careful tending and protection of natural resources.
It is effortlessly woven in with Mulanyin’s story, as is the language scattered liberally throughout. We learn that jarjums are children, jalgany is an Aboriginal woman, pullen pullen is a space set aside for ceremonial combat. There is no glossary – we get the meaning from context and repetition throughout the novel; the best way to learn.
The mid-nineteenth century was a time of increased tension and conflict in areas of Australia where European settlers were pushing further, taking more land, squeezing the First peoples out of home and livelihood. Inevitably Mulanyin is caught up in some of this with tragic consequences for his people.
His story carries through, indirectly to begin with, into the modern-day narrative. This is actually where the novel opens, in 2024, with an elderly woman known as ‘Granny Eddie Blanket’ suffering a fall in the city that sees her in hospital for most of the rest of the novel.
Granny Eddie is a formidable woman in her nineties, with a granddaughter, Winona, who is a strong activist. A young doctor, Johnny, provides care while exploring with Winona his own search for his indigenous ancestors. While a white journalist plies Granny Eddie with questions, hoping for a story on ‘Queensland’s Oldest Aboriginal Woman.’
Through sometimes heated discussion we hear debate on issues like cultural appropriation, ‘wannabe blackfellas’, government hypocrisy, does DNA make you Aboriginal? contemporary blak activism… This part of the narrative is both hard-hitting and frequently very funny, often at the same time.
Granny Eddie chastises Winona for her scorn at Dr Johnny’s attempts to get closer to indigenous ancestry:
‘I can’t come at it, Gran,’ she finally muttered. ‘It just feels all wrong. Invasive.’
Edenglassie p148
“Yeah, I know it does,’ Granny nodded. ‘But believe me, girl. You’re thinking like a whitefella when ya close him out. That’s not our way. We bring people in, we bring our Mob home, and we care about em. We teach em how to behave proper way. So, you just knock orf and be nice to him!’
But what if they’re the same mob that stole our Home in the first place, Winona burned to retort. What if they’re white, Nan.
But instead, she sat down and shut her gob and stayed ning, just like a real Goorie must do when growled by her Elder.Last year I hear Melissa Lucashenko interviewed in which she described how it is for an Aboriginal person walking around modern Australia, aware of all the history under their feet; the ancestors’ birthplaces and burial sites, the places that once nurtured whole communities and were nurtured in return. Edenglassie is a novel that helps white Australians catch a glimpse of what was there before the dispossession and the violence and theft that came with invasion and colonisation.
And, we can get a tiny glimpse into the way that ancestors’ stories and teachings are carried though into modern day lives.
Edenglassie was published by UQP in October 2023.
‘Question 7’ by Richard Flanagan
As I began to think about describing this book, I struggled to come up with a name for its form. Is it memoir? Non-fiction? Narrative non-fiction? Something else entirely…or all of the above?
The publisher, Penguin Books Australia, offered this:
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
Penguin Random HouseReaders of two of Flanagan’s earlier works, Death of a River Guide (1994) and The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) will recognise two occurrences referred to in this, his latest work. One is his near-drowning when he was a river guide on Tasmania’s wild Franklin River. The other is his father’s ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war, first on the Burma ‘Death Railway’ and later, as a slave worker in a Japanese coal mine.
These traumatic experiences are woven together with reflections on his own childhood in rural Tasmania in the 1960s and 70s, his family (especially his parents), Tasmania’s beginnings as a far-flung outpost of the British Empire and the resulting attempt to exterminate the island’s First Peoples, and the historic seeds of the process of scientific conjecture, discovery and work that culminated in the explosion of the first atomic bombs over Japan, which finally brought World War II to an end.
On this last point, there is quite a lot made of the romance between the famous (and married) author HG Wells with another writer, Rebecca West in the early 1900’s, as Flanagan follows the normally unseen path that led from an affair between writers to the spark of an idea that resulted in the atom bomb.
Unlikely? No more so than any other ‘coincidences’ of life. This author’s genius allows his readers to follow a wandering pathway between events, people and places, and see them as he does. As a reader, I had to trust that this was a writer who knew what he was doing, who could guide me along a seemingly disconnected series of events and thoughts and bring me through to the other side. In the end it all made perfect sense, even within the context of the chaos and ultimate meaninglessness of so much of the world.
The result is like an artwork: a tightly bound, circular structure in which each apparently disparate element affects and shapes all the others.
And the title?
It comes from a quote by Anton Checkov in which he is sending up the kind of school mathematics problems I always loathed:
Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3am in order to reach station B at 11pm; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7pm. Who loves longer, a man or a woman?
Question 7, loc 9%There are almost unbearably poignant moments, especially those concerning his parents; sadness for the lost world of his childhood; anger at certain cynical aspects of the publishing world, deep respect for the written word combined with a wry understanding that the words of a book are never the book, the soul of it is everything. (loc 58%)
There are so many snippets of prose that are beautiful or brilliant, too many to make choosing a quote an easy task. Here is just one:
My mother and father had a similar gift, of stitching together torn fragments into some harmony amidst the melee of daily life. My mother and my father in their stories and jokes, in their generosity and kindness to others, asserted the necessary illusion their lives might mean something in the endless tumult of this meaningless universe. For them to live, love had to exist, the love they valued above all other things; they lived that love and they fought for that love and defended that love. With the passing of time this illusion became their hard-won truth. It was a form of magic and they were magicians. In my vanity, I had always thought of them as naive. Only now writing these words do I finally see the naivete was all mine.
Question 7 (ebook version) loc. 67%Question 7 was published by Penguin Random House in October 2023.
