Review: V2 by Robert Harris

Given his proclivity for audaciously varying his recipe — his books have spanned Ancient Rome, the early 1900s, WWII, the present day and beyond — Robert Harris’ latest, “V2”, is comparatively unenterprising in scope, but a certain crowd pleaser nonetheless.

This is a crisp, unpretentious thriller set in the dying weeks of the Second World War, when the Nazi’s launched their erratic V2 rockets at Britain in a final act of desperation, the writing of their defeat already on the wall. It’s taut, compelling, and laced with the historical detail Harris’ legion of fans expect, but its narrative is mired in an inexorable sense of predicability.

Set over five helter-skelter days, “V2” features two parallel perspectives: Dr Rudi Graf, a friend and collaborator of Wernher von Braun, the head of the Nazi rocket program; and Kay Caton-Walsh of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who is tasked with extrapolating the parabolic curve of the rockets back to their launch points so the RAF squadrons have targets. The novel ping-pongs back and forth between these two characters, detailing snippets of their backstory, and exposing the tumultuousness of their lives.

Graf struggles to reconcile the fact his life’s work to build a space rocket has been hijacked by the Nazis to create weapons of mass destruction. He is a decent man forced into doing evil. Caton-Walsh is desperate to find a meaningful role in the war effort, and uses the fallout of her illicit affair with a married superior to land herself a role at RAF Medmenham in Belgium, where she boards with a Dutch family, and is warned about remnant Nazi sympathisers in the village.

The architecture of the novel reads like a lit fuse burning to the explosive consequences of Graf and Caton-Walsh finally meeting. When they do, it’s disappointingly anticlimactic, and more of a coda. But despite falling short of his spellbinding best, “V2” is brilliantly cinematic and breathlessly entertaining. Robert Harris tells these type of stories with tremendous verve and expertise, and his talent shows no sign of diminishing.

ISBN: 9781786331410
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 320
Published: 15th September 2020
Publisher: Cornerstone

Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine

In his graphic memoir “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist,” Adrian Tomine uses a series of autobiographical anecdotes that stretch from childhood to the present day to examine his journey from self-published comic book wunderkind to internationally regarded, award-winning cartoonist.

But this is not a glorious, rags-to-riches tale about an artist who made it. Tomine casts a brutal, cynical, and totally unforgiving lens on his ascendance to comic book “stardom.” He is so self-effacing, you want to wrap him in a hug, tell him it’s okay, he’s forgiven, because actually there’s nothing to forgive: every creative person dogfights with humility and hubris. Through wonderfully simple black-and-white art work that evokes the full spectrum of human emotion, and easy layouts that make panel transitions a breeze, Tomine presents the ever-present fear of failure and uncertainty that governed his creative and personal life.

“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist” is an essential companion to every creative’s library, and a deeply personal work from one of comic’s singular voices. In a career full of highlights, this one’s the standout.

ISBN: 9781770463950
ISBN-10: 177046395X
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 168
Published: 21st July 2020
Publisher: DRAWN & QUARTERLY
Dimensions (cm): 21.59 x 13.97 x 1.91
Weight (kg): 0.45

Review: Smokehouse by Melissa Manning

**Originally a 2020 release, the publication of “Smokehouse” has been pushed back to 2021**

“Smokehouse,” Melissa Manning’s superb debut collection of intertwined short stories, takes a novel’s worth of emotional density, strips away all the fat, and crushes what’s left into ten masterfully poignant tales. Two titular pieces (that would comprise an amazing novella all on their own) bookend eight vignettes set mostly in southern Tasmania.

Hollywood has engendered a cinematic scope to the life-changing moments that shape our lives, but “Smokehouse” evocates these turning points in far more realistic and subtle fashion. The characters in each of Manning’s stories endure a transformative experience. For Nora, in “Smokehouse: Part One” it’s her husband’s decision to move their family to the coastal town of Kettering, on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel opposite Bruny Island. Dissatisfied with the trajectory of her life, and disenfranchised by her marriage, it is here she meets Ollie, and begins a relationship that obliterates the life she had. “Smokehouse: Part Two” explores this relationship many years later, as a neurodegenerative disease unthreads the happy tapestry they’ve knitted together.

In “Nao,” the death of a Japanese woman’s adoptive mother resurrects her childhood memories, and unlocks long-concealed grief and trauma. In “Faal,” Gurj arrives at a restaurant for his blind date “carrying the wight of low expectations.” Before the night is over, Graham has leaned across the table and kissed Gurj full on the lips, sealing their fate. And on it goes, Manning delicately and affectingly memorializing the manner in which the places we live and the people we meet shape our destinies.

Manning demonstrates unerring control of her craft. The length of the stories in this collection varies, but their richness does not.

Format: Paperback
Publication: 30 Mar 2021
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
ISBN: 9780702263026

Review: Casino by Peter Corris

After turning down the job as head of security at the new Sydney casino, private investigator Cliff Hardy recommends Scot Galvani for the role, and moves on with his life, flattered by the offer, but a stickler for his unshackled lifestyle, which doesn’t allow for the structure of 9-5 office hours, or the wearing of a suit. When Galvani is murdered weeks later, his wife Gina hires Hardy to investigate.

Published in 1994, “Casino” is the eighteenth instalment in the Cliff Hardy series, and one of my favourites; its elements a perfect cocktail for my particular crime fiction proclivities. The plot is straightforward, as they all are, but peppered with a cast of nefarious villains and love interests, and bolstered by Hardy’s snide insights into Sydney in the early nineties. Hardy loves his city, that’s obvious, but can see beyond its sheen, and has trudged through its mud.

Cliff Hardy exists on the softer side of the hardboiled spectrum. Oh, he can rough ‘em up like the best of ‘em, and isn’t afraid to crack a few heads, but it’s always a last resort, when his actions have been reduced to a singular course. He identifies and marinates on his own personality flaws. Jealousy, and a sexual attraction to Vita Drewe, threaten to destroy his (relatively) long-term relationship with Glen Withers; and Hardy knows he drinks too much (by the cask, in fact) but doesn’t view it as a fatal flaw; not yet, at least. He is perfectly imperfect: the kind of hero readers follow to hell and back.

Every undiscovered Corris novel I dig up at second hand bookshops is a treat. I’ve maybe half a dozen to go, and (so far) I have resisted the urge to “cheat” and acquire them online.

Paperback : 216 pages
ISBN-10 : 9781760110208
ISBN-13 : 978-1760110208
Publisher : Allen & Unwin (19 November 2014)

Review: Tell Me Lies by J.P. Pomare

J.P. Pomare’s “Tell Me Lies” is a spellbinding psychological thriller that was originally penned as an Audible Original. I can’t tell you whether its prose form has been edited or expanded upon in any way. What I can tell you is that it’s slick and twisty, constructed like a Michael Robotham novel on speed, but forsaking none of the psychological acuity.

I won’t go into plot details. The less you know, the more you’ll enjoy the ride: Pomare’s plot twists explode like percussion grenades. But its opening hook is genius. Psychologist Margot Scott — who lives a tranquil life with her husband and two kids, essentially the epitomised lifestyle of the Australian dream — approaches one of her clients on a busy Melbourne train platform. As the train approaches, she makes a fatal decision. She shoves her client onto the tracks. We then smash-cut to a month earlier, and learn what has led to that moment: the (almost) complete destruction of Margot’s personal and professional life.

“Tell Me Lies” uses the tricks of the thriller trade well, but why it really works is that it withholds essential information from the reader until Pomare is ready. What I admired most about the novel is how tightly constructed it is. It’s conventional in the sense that Pomare is not reinventing anything; but he’s polishing its requisite elements to a perfect sheen.

ISBN: 9781869718169
ISBN-10: 186971816X
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 272
Available: 29th December 2020

Review: The Iron Tiger by Jack Higgins

Sometimes I think people get the wrong impression when I call a novel “great airplane reading,” which is how I’d label Jack Higgins’ 1966 thriller “The Iron Tiger.” It’s not a derisive comment, rather (I hope) emblematic of a book’s particular style: something that’s intended to be swallowed quickly, that might not exactly live long in the memory, but annihilates hours; which is all you want it for.

“The Iron Tiger” is a thriller of another era, when potboilers were somewhat more fashionable and marketable. I’m not sure you could tell the same story today; at least not without fleshing out its non-white characters, and giving them more agency. Higgins’ novel creaks because of its reliance on archaic ideals, in which the white outsider — in this case ex-Navy pilot Jack Drummond — is the British hero who must rise to the occasion to lead a rag-tag group of survivors out of the (fictional) India-China border country of Balpur, through dangerous, mountainous terrain, to the Indian border, while hunted by the Red Chinese army.

The book clocks in at less than two-hundred pages. Character development is minimal; bar the opening chapters, which provide a couple of evocative descriptions of India, the writing is sparse. The action goes down smooth, but doesn’t exactly get the blood pumping; despite the perilousness of their situation, the characters never really feel in jeopardy. But these scenes slide noiselessly into gear and the result is lightweight, page-turning fun.

Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 0330307193
ISBN-13 : 978-0330307192
Publisher : PAN BOOKS; New Ed Edition (January 1, 1989)

Review: The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “The Doors of Eden” is a compulsive and extraordinarily entertaining labyrinth of parallel Earths and alternate dimensions threaded together with endearingly human (and non-human) characters. Punctuated with frenetic action scenes and interspersed with fascinating evolutionary histories of the multiverse’s “other” Earths, this is blockbuster science-fiction writing, as smart as it is exhilarating.

The premise is magnificently uncomplicated: interdimensional cracks are forming in the multiverse. Earths are overlapping; “a pick-and-mix of realities slopping together,” which is causing chaos, and signifies the end of all things. Nothing is safe. Everything is unravelling. Unless a conglomeration of the multiverse’s greatest minds can find a solution.

The cast is suitably diverse: you’ve got Lee Pryor and her girlfriend Elsinore “Mal” Mallory; transgender genius theoretical mathematician Kay Amal Khan; MI5 agent Julian Sabreur (more office administrator than 007); ex-army, now private security goon Lucas May, and his villainous boss; and a whole host of others, who snake in and out of story, which shifts seamlessly between their perspectives, building towards an epically intricate finale. Leaving room for a sequel, perhaps? I’d be down for more.

The science of “The Doors of Eden” stayed just the right side of palatable. Hard science fiction scares me a lot of the time. But despite its complexity and immensity, Tchaikovsky never tries to outsmart the reader. He’s got big ideas, but he understands his role as a storyteller. This is a breathless sci-fi masterclass.

ISBN: 9781509865895
Format: Trade Paperback
Pub Date: 25/08/2020
Imprint: Tor UK
Pages: 608
Price: $32.99

Review: Real Life by Brandon Taylor

“Is this all his life is meant to be, the accumulation of other people’s pain?”

It’s hard to describe Brandon Taylor’s Booker-longlisted “Real Life” in a way that conveys its brilliance without making it sound archetypal. It’s one of those novels that defies its plot description through its execution, its greatness stemming from its specificity of character. Ostensibly it’s the coming-of-age story of a college student named Wallace. That Wallace is black, and gay, is significant; so too that events transpire over one weekend. I think what makes “Real Life” truly special is that although Wallace’s struggles are universal, Taylor’s novel doesn’t set out to achieve a universal statement. This is Wallace’s truth; the honest portrayal of his character is what makes his story more than a mere “campus novel.”

Hailing from Alabama, where he grew up poor and abused, Wallace is a graduate student in the Midwest, who keenly monitors his genetic experiments on nematodes (multicellular insects) with little time in his life for anything else, let alone a potential boyfriend — Miller — who’s not actually certain he’s gay, and has some repressed anger issues. Wallace is burdened by his own traumatic past, and continues to struggle with the “whiteness” of his college world, and the bubbling undercurrent of racism that permeates his every moment; it’s the subtle infractions that seem to cause the most damage. Taylor colours Wallace’s world with friends who feel fully-realised and three-dimensional, despite our brief dalliances with them. Their dynamics vary depending on who is present and who is missing from their gatherings.

“Real Life” is a story about the complexity of trauma, forgiveness and prejudice, and a searing snapshot of white middle-class. I was mesmerised.

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Daunt Books
Published: 4 August 2020
Pages: 336
ISBN: 978191154774

Review: State Highway One by Sam Coley

After the sudden death of his parents, Alex returns home from Dubai to New Zealand, where he and his twin sister Amy set off on a road trip down State Highway 1, which runs the length of both main islands. They hope to heal old wounds and revive their familial bond. Alex also hopes to reconnect with his home.

“State Highway One” settles into the rhythms of the road trip novel, with lots of beautifully-evocated drive-by-scenery, soul-search talks during long stretches across the blacktop, and unpredictable encounters with locals and fellow road warriors.

The narrative regularly cuts back in time to present readers with glimpses of the Alex’s adolescence. As the queer son of famous film directors, Alex never wanted for anything tangible; but Alex and Amy’s was a youth deprived of paternal love, and their unconventional upbringing, which saw them basically raise themselves, has warped their relationship; twisted it into something possibly unsalvageable.

The moment he could, Alex fled New Zealand for Dubai, taking up an internship and cutting all ties with his family. His specific reason for this, the catalyst for his departure, is hinted at but never explicitly stated until the novel’s climax, which adds an unexpected layer of suspense. But what ultimately elevates “State Highway One” above the cascade of fiction about homecomings is Sam Coley’s handling of repressed grief and trauma; an undercurrent that spills over into Alex’s every day. It’s a poignant, powerful excavation and Coley belies his status as a debut novelist by not providing an easy, aesthetic resolution. Real life doesn’t work that way.

ISBN: 9781869714260
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Imprint: Hachette
Publish Date: 25-Aug-2020
Country of Publication: New Zealand

Review: Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

“I would be lying,” narrates Antara in Avni Doshi’s brilliant Booker long-listed debut, “if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” Which reminded me of Sofia in Deborah Levy’s “Hot Milk,” when she intones, “My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.”

Levy fans, I think, will find much to enjoy in “Burnt Sugar.” This is novel of great emotional complexity, which challenges assumptions about motherhood and memory, as Antara manages the cognitive decline of her mother Tara, and struggles to reign in her burning resentment about a childhood suffused with neglect. It’s a book about love and anger, twisted like the double helix of a DNA strand.

Set in Pune, India, “Burnt Sugar” is Antara’s retelling of her tumultuous history with her mother. In her youth, Tara abandoned her loveless marriage to join an ashram, quickly married its leader, then endured a period of time as a beggar, and spent years chasing the affection of an artist — all with Antara as an unwanted passenger, who is adamant her mother never cared for her, and is infuriated that she must now demonstrate a kindness that was never bestowed upon her.

The question beating at the novel’s heart is whether Antara’s chronicle is the truth, or an edited version; her interpretation rather than an actual representation. And therefore is her anger righteous or misplaced? “Maybe she doesn’t remember because it never happened,” Antara’s grandmother suggests. The subjectivity and fragility of memory pulsates in every scene.

Doshi shows herself to be a forensically-brave writer who refuses to provide easy answers in this intensely disquieting, exquisite excavation of a relationship between a mother and daughter.

ISBN: 9780241441510
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 240
Published: 14th August 2020
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd