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.

Wigfield

Oh happy happy joy joy. Read this immediately, it's a romp. Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert & Paul Dinello serve up a souffle of crack cracks. Come to Wigfield, with its three mayors, nine titty bars, and mysterious fires and gruesome deaths too numerous to enumerate. Our guide to Wigfield, Russell Hokes, races to write 50,000 words (as required by his reluctant publisher) before the damn Dam explodes in a shower of concrete and well-placed fireworks.

Thanks to Colonel Colonel for pointing us in the direction of Wigfield, the Can-Do Town that Just May Not.

Due Preparations For The Plague

Here is an uneasy meld of a thriller with the drama of the abandoned child, or in this case, children. A plane is highjacked and all the hostages eventually killed, excepting the children who are offloaded*.

With this one, I really don't know what I think. I would relish hearing the views of any of you who have read it.

Jeanette Turner Hospital is such a great writer, that the strength of the prose alone carried me along. It's a good story, while disturbing. The thriller aspect works only to a certain degree. But I found I didn't really connect with or care for any of the characters - maybe that is deliberate & we are supposed to regard the events dispassionately. Maybe. I like the idea of interconnectedness, and so I enjoyed that aspect of the book. There is a set piece in an underground bunker filled with nerve gas. This section I found poignant and genuinely thrilling, & the part where I was emotionally involved. However, when I finished reading I laid the book down with a "meh".

Anyone else read it?

*This is not a spoiler as we discover this in the first chapter.

Atonement

I came late to Ian McEwan. I read Enduring Love last year & was enraptured. I bought The Innocent (paying retail price!) and was left gasping for breath (in a good way.) Each McEwan I read become my favourite, and so it is with Atonement. The story is involved and the characters complex, yet he writes with such utter simplicity. This is a superb book on the nature of ourselves as flawed human beings. I cried at the end - not only for the lives of these imaginary people (ain't it strange?) but also because the book was finished & I would never again read it for the first time.

After finishing Atonement, I picked up and put aside four books after reading a page or two. I was restless & hungry for more transporting writing. Luckily I've landed on Blndsight by Maurice Gee, a delicious follow-on.