BOOKS & WORDS
Autumn book reviews by Mark Laurie of South Seas Books, Port Elliot.
letters for inmates as an alternative to a shivving or being beaten with a sock full of batteries. He is also unwillingly subject to the forcefully applied and pithily expressed editorial control of his cellmate, Garry. A darkly humorous satire of the bi-partisan horrors of present-day Australian politics, it quite naturally references our ambivalence to water polo, the destructive power of decaying prawns, the barely noticeable effects of LSD on the political classes, Chiko Rolls, aqua phobia, Trump and the dawning menace of sentient PlayStations. The answer to all of this, of course, lies with a three-word slogan involving ‘growth’ and ‘sharks’. Author Martin McKenzie-Murray worked as a speechwriter himself before turning to journalism, notably as The Saturday Paper’s chief correspondent. This is his first work of fiction.
The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray Published by Scribe ISBN 9781925713831 $24.99 In his fictional memoir, Toby Beaverbrook writes of his idealism having been utterly destroyed by the all-too-immediate realisation that Australian politics operates far from the nobility of Churchill’s oratory and The West Wing’s smoothly competent liberal democracy. Turning rogue, he has brought his own serve of fear and loathing to Canberra as a gonzo speechwriter. He becomes increasingly inventive in his desire to be fired rather than resign and be forced to repay his relocation fee from Perth, that notorious incubator of policy and political purity. It has landed him in prison where his talents find him writing
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A Treacherous Country by K.M. Kruimink Published by Allen & Unwin ISBN 9781760877408 $29.99 The third son of minor English nobility searches for a lost woman in colonial Tasmania while simultaneously seeking to find and prove himself to another at home. As he travels, buffeted by experiences in this strange new place, he reflects on his life and family in England. In an inversion of the traditional frontier story, many of those he meets on this new edge of the civilised world are in some ways kinder, less grasping and more thoughtful than those at the centre of the family and tradition he has left behind, even as his trusting naivety meets with opportunism and villainy. In the quest for survival in a new land, the treachery of the title lies not in any particular country or in countries at all. It lies, rather, in those inhabiting them. More a literary work than historical fiction, this Vogel prize-winning debut novel by a young author is difficult to classify, although a lightly Gothic period piece leavened by sensitivity and wit represents my attempt to do so. In a further inversion of the frontier story tradition, the book is imbued with both feminine and feminist sensibilities while deftly avoiding the colonial trope of a menacing Australian bush. Its ending is a beautifully delivered ode to the bargain between freedom and responsibility, and to the immutable link between past and future.
