Lost For Words

We need a bit of joy today, wouldn't you say? The marvelous Hugh Lunn gives us these words to live by.

Whack oh the diddley-oh! (my late father John used this expression & the alternate Whack oh the duck!)

When things were going along swimmingly, everything is tickety-boo or everything's hunky-dory.

He's happy as a sand boy, she's over the moon, I'm pleased as Punch (that well known wife- crocodile- & cop-beater)

When a man was tickled pink at the sight of a woman, he would report to his mates "My word she was beaut" or "By crickey she was a looker" or "My word she was good-oh."

So my feiends, I wish for you a day that is crackerjack, a real doozey, and that soon we're all be living the life of Riley.

Noise, The Proposition, Look Both Ways

For some reason this week I haven't been reading my books at all. Lots of newspapers & magazines (I am a magazine fiend) and of course the interwebs.

I have also been watching a lot of Australian films on DVD. I try to see them in the cinema, but a few have gotten past me for various reasons, so I'm having a fest at home.

See these:

Noise, written and directed by Matt Saville. This has just been released, and I saw it at the cinema. It is a wonderful brooding meditation, compelling, wrenching, ambiguous as our lives are.

The Propostion, written by Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) and directed by John Hillcoat. I was reluctant to see this film for a long time because I knew it was extrememly violent. But the evocation of Australia & Australianess elevated this "Western" to a more thoughtful realm. Though set Back Then, the film talks of the Australian character today, and our uneasy relationship to the land we inhabit.

Look Both Ways, written and directed by Sarah Watt. This is a quiet and compelling film, treating grief, inarticulacy, and the strange ways of strange loves. Beautiful.

The Restraint of Beasts

If you're after bone-dry wit, writing of surpassing economy, and all you need to know about burying bodies standing up in post holes, this is the book for you. Set in the cut-throat world of professional fencing, and featuring Magnus Mills' trademark odd shaggy specimens of Modern Man as characters, this book is a chilling joy, a creepy treat, an hilarious tragedy.

Then read All Quiet On The Orient Express. You won't be sorry.

Child of My Heart

Many years ago I read and thoroughly enjoyed Alice McDermott's Charming Billy. Now, many years later, I have read Child of My Heart. So you don't have to.

I'm not a big fan of sweetness and sentimentality. And I had an immediate antipathy to this book. But in despite of that, I plugged on.

The story isn't bad; children in the off-season in the Hamptons, the main character, the older girl, budding into adolescence.

But the problem with this book - and it is a large & ultimately insurmountable one - is that the narrator "I" character should have been the observed "she" character. In other words, if the writer wants to have a pretty, charming, beloved character, it's far better to have her observed by another ("she was pretty, charming and beloved") rather than be the narrator ("I am pretty, charming and beloved. Everybody thinks so.") Unless, of course, the narrator turns out to be unreliable, or their smug self-satisfaction is to be devastated by a rude awakening. How I longed for a very rude awakening. But the book continued sweet, sentimental & self-satisfied to the end.

Oh, and a kid dies in the book. Cheap.

Really lovely cover, though.