Jessica
This is a brilliant, if imperfect, book. It's probably the first time I've come across any work of fiction that depicts an Australia I actually recognise – modern-day Melbourne, a city of migrants and vast, sprawling suburbs, and not the usual rural bush society populated almost entirely by Anglo-Celtic stock. A novel that doesn't pander to nationalist mythologies about this country? Hell yes.
And as a Melburnian, it was refreshing to read a novel where characters catch up for a drink at Federation Square, catch the tram along Smith Street, or grimace at the industrial wasteland that is large parts of Altona, all described as casually as New York writers make reference to the urban geography of New York. I'm not so parochial that I'd like to just read novels about my home city all the time, but it's really nice to see it depicted for once, and so thoroughly and honestly. If anyone ever asked me what the best novel is for getting a sense of Melbourne, until further notice I would say this one.
The story is told through eight chapters, each from the point of view of a different character. It begins with a suburban barbecue in which a man hits someone else's child, but this is only the source of some of the conflict in the book. Every marriage is unhappy, every character is flawed and has their own problems from before the barbecue even happened. The novel is character-driven and intensely focused on relationships and work – i.e., the exact things that people spend the majority of their time focused on – and a lot of people hate it for these reasons. It tells the story of people who, many of them, are not likeable. Even for those who are likeable, they make really bad mistakes; they're not perfect. Basically, this is a novel about the real world, unfair and cruel, where almost everyone is prejudiced and does bad things.
After the first few pages I found it very readable and engrossing, but it's not perfect and the first few pages are some of the worst offenders; if I'd just picked it up idly at a bookstore I would not have bought it, and then I would've missed out on so much. The first pages just describe Hector shitting in great detail, which is a bizarre way to start a book. I don't usually complain about “crudeness”, but the first few (I'd guess three) chapters of this book just seem gratuitously so. After that, they either got better or I stopped noticing. Either way... be warned, but don't let that deter you.
The other thing that can make the book hard to get through at times is the uncompromising, unrelenting depictions of sexism. Most of the men in this book are so sexist that a lot of the other reviewers on this site have whinged it's not believable, which I can only wish was true. Still, Hector's and Harry's chapters are both hard to read on this front, especially Harry's (who in addition to being incredibly sexist, seems to be a fascist who hasn't yet discovered his true self). Connie's chapter is, I think, also powerful as it takes the opposite side, that of the vulnerable eighteen-year-old girl. The scene in which she loses her virginity is perfect, and painful reading in all the right ways (also, amazingly aware considering it was written by a man). The novel depicts domestic violence, emotional abuse within relationships, and just so much, really.
Even if most of the men are hard to like, I was moved by Manolis' chapter, which begins when he reads an obituary in the paper for a friend he had, but fell out of touch with long ago. The chapter is about the ravages of time, the tragedy of losing contact with people who were once your closest friends, and perhaps even about the lack of belonging anywhere – living in Australia with imperfect English, but knowing that the Greece you left no longer exists. It was quite removed from the rest of the novel, but I liked it a lot.
I thought the ending to the novel was jarring and unsatisfactory; mostly, I did not believe that Ritchie was in a frame of mind to attempt suicide, regardless of how much Connie humiliated him, and it seemed mostly a narrative device to get Connie and Ritchie to reconcile after she'd lied to him and he'd betrayed her trust. Relying on what seemed to be a very out-of-character act seemed like a cheat, especially disappointing in a novel where the characterisation was otherwise excellent. For certain characters, the ending seemed too neat and easy, and I was saddened by the endings for others (mostly Rosie, left friendless and moving to a small country town with her drunken, abusive husband when her only crime was being too underconfident to stand up for herself). Not that it's really a bad thing to have a novel where not everyone gets a happy ending... but still, that last chapter was the weakest of them all.
So I'm giving this four stars, because of the flaws I mentioned. This is still a brilliant portrait of modern-day Melbourne though, highly recommended to anyone who hasn't read it already.
This is a brilliant, if imperfect, book. It's probably the first time I've come across any work of fiction that depicts an Australia I actually recognise – modern-day Melbourne, a city of migrants and vast, sprawling suburbs, and not the usual rural bush society populated almost entirely by Anglo-Celtic stock. A novel that doesn't pander to nationalist mythologies about this country? Hell yes.
And as a Melburnian, it was refreshing to read a novel where characters catch up for a drink at Federation Square, catch the tram along Smith Street, or grimace at the industrial wasteland that is large parts of Altona, all described as casually as New York writers make reference to the urban geography of New York. I'm not so parochial that I'd like to just read novels about my home city all the time, but it's really nice to see it depicted for once, and so thoroughly and honestly. If anyone ever asked me what the best novel is for getting a sense of Melbourne, until further notice I would say this one.
The story is told through eight chapters, each from the point of view of a different character. It begins with a suburban barbecue in which a man hits someone else's child, but this is only the source of some of the conflict in the book. Every marriage is unhappy, every character is flawed and has their own problems from before the barbecue even happened. The novel is character-driven and intensely focused on relationships and work – i.e., the exact things that people spend the majority of their time focused on – and a lot of people hate it for these reasons. It tells the story of people who, many of them, are not likeable. Even for those who are likeable, they make really bad mistakes; they're not perfect. Basically, this is a novel about the real world, unfair and cruel, where almost everyone is prejudiced and does bad things.
After the first few pages I found it very readable and engrossing, but it's not perfect and the first few pages are some of the worst offenders; if I'd just picked it up idly at a bookstore I would not have bought it, and then I would've missed out on so much. The first pages just describe Hector shitting in great detail, which is a bizarre way to start a book. I don't usually complain about “crudeness”, but the first few (I'd guess three) chapters of this book just seem gratuitously so. After that, they either got better or I stopped noticing. Either way... be warned, but don't let that deter you.
The other thing that can make the book hard to get through at times is the uncompromising, unrelenting depictions of sexism. Most of the men in this book are so sexist that a lot of the other reviewers on this site have whinged it's not believable, which I can only wish was true. Still, Hector's and Harry's chapters are both hard to read on this front, especially Harry's (who in addition to being incredibly sexist, seems to be a fascist who hasn't yet discovered his true self). Connie's chapter is, I think, also powerful as it takes the opposite side, that of the vulnerable eighteen-year-old girl. The scene in which she loses her virginity is perfect, and painful reading in all the right ways (also, amazingly aware considering it was written by a man). The novel depicts domestic violence, emotional abuse within relationships, and just so much, really.
Even if most of the men are hard to like, I was moved by Manolis' chapter, which begins when he reads an obituary in the paper for a friend he had, but fell out of touch with long ago. The chapter is about the ravages of time, the tragedy of losing contact with people who were once your closest friends, and perhaps even about the lack of belonging anywhere – living in Australia with imperfect English, but knowing that the Greece you left no longer exists. It was quite removed from the rest of the novel, but I liked it a lot.
I thought the ending to the novel was jarring and unsatisfactory; mostly, I did not believe that Ritchie was in a frame of mind to attempt suicide, regardless of how much Connie humiliated him, and it seemed mostly a narrative device to get Connie and Ritchie to reconcile after she'd lied to him and he'd betrayed her trust. Relying on what seemed to be a very out-of-character act seemed like a cheat, especially disappointing in a novel where the characterisation was otherwise excellent. For certain characters, the ending seemed too neat and easy, and I was saddened by the endings for others (mostly Rosie, left friendless and moving to a small country town with her drunken, abusive husband when her only crime was being too underconfident to stand up for herself). Not that it's really a bad thing to have a novel where not everyone gets a happy ending... but still, that last chapter was the weakest of them all.
So I'm giving this four stars, because of the flaws I mentioned. This is still a brilliant portrait of modern-day Melbourne though, highly recommended to anyone who hasn't read it already.