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Absolutely Revolting

December 2003–January 2004, no. 257

Welcome to the December 2003–January 2004 issue of Australian Book Review!

Brent Crosswell reviews Back from the Dead: Peter Hughes’ story of survival and hope after Bali by Patrick Lindsay
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Custom Article Title: Kuta Madness
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Patrick Lindsay’s Back from the Dead, one of the first books published on the Bali bombing, is primarily an evocation of the inferno and its aftermath, through the eyes of those who survived it. There is ‘Peter’s story’ (the author’s central focus), ‘Nashie’s story’, ‘Col’s story’ and so on, all interpolated with extensive quotes, mostly from the victims of the blast. Despite the painfully vernacular tone of the early chapters, this book is a good primer on the terrorist attack and its consequences.
Book 1 Title: Back from the Dead
Book 1 Subtitle: Peter Hughes’ story of survival and hope after Bali
Book Author: Patrick Lindsay
Book 1 Biblio: Random House, $29.95 pb, 259 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Patrick Lindsay’s Back from the Dead, one of the first books published on the Bali bombing, is primarily an evocation of the inferno and its aftermath, through the eyes of those who survived it. There is ‘Peter’s story’ (the author’s central focus), ‘Nashie’s story’, ‘Col’s story’ and so on, all interpolated with extensive quotes, mostly from the victims of the blast. Despite the painfully vernacular tone of the early chapters, this book is a good primer on the terrorist attack and its consequences.

Read more: Brent Crosswell reviews 'Back from the Dead: Peter Hughes’ story of survival and hope after Bali'...

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James Ley reviews Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre
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Contents Category: Fiction
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‘The fucken oozing nakedness, the despair of being such a vulnerable egg-sac of a critter, like, a so-called human being, just sickens me sometimes, especially right now. The Human Condition Mom calls it. Watch out for that fucker.’

The speaker of these lines, fifteen-year-old Vernon Little, is a literary descendant of Huckleberry Finn.
Book 1 Title: Vernon God Little
Book Author: D.B.C. Pierre
Book 1 Biblio: Faber, $29.95 pb, 279 pp, 0571216420
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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‘The fucken oozing nakedness, the despair of being such a vulnerable egg-sac of a critter, like, a so-called human being, just sickens me sometimes, especially right now. The Human Condition Mom calls it. Watch out for that fucker.’

The speaker of these lines, fifteen-year-old Vernon Little, is a literary descendant of Huckleberry Finn. Like Huck, Vernon narrates his story in his own idiosyncratic vernacular, complete with dodgy grammar and malapropisms. As a comic monologue, Vernon God Little is not quite in the same league as Twain’s masterpiece, but much of its appeal springs from the quality of Vernon’s voice, his flashes of insightful cynicism, his erratic flair for metaphor, his crude puns, and the energetic discontent with which he interprets the world. Vernon has a foul mouth and one of the most flagrant cases of anal-fixation in all of literature, but he remains likeable, primarily because he manages to reveal – to the reader, if no one else – that beneath his prickly exterior he is insecure and vulnerable.

Read more: James Ley reviews 'Vernon God Little' by D.B.C. Pierre

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: Spires
Article Subtitle: For L.M.B.
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Then, there were spires in every landscape
Tall, tapering fingers pressed together,
The supplications of early sainthood –

Those that the early painters made
To teach the unlettered, while the spires
Called them to listen and to pray.
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Then, there were spires in every landscape
Tall, tapering fingers pressed together,
The supplications of early sainthood –

Read more: 'Spires' by Rosemary Dobson

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Contents Category: Poem
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Article Title: The Metal Detectors
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He sang of old coins buried beneath the dunes,
to the north of the island, near the old artillery battery.
For forty years he rowed for mullet north, and south,
where the war epic motion picture was shot recently.

To the north of the island, near the old artillery battery
we played hide and seek as kids in acres of bladey-grass.
Where the war epic motion picture was shot recently
no one was allowed within a thousand metres.
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He sang of old coins buried beneath the dunes,
to the north of the island, near the old artillery battery.
For forty years he rowed for mullet north, and south,
where the war epic motion picture was shot recently.

Read more: ‘The Metal Detectors’ by Jaya Savige

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Peter Rose reviews ‘Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself’ by Richard Freadman
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Contents Category: Biography
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Article Title: The Disappointed Man
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Richard Freadman’s first work intended for a non-academic readership is, in his own words, ‘the Son’s Book of the Father’ and thus belongs to a venerable genre. Freadman, whose contribution to our understanding of autobiography has been acute, is well qualified to draw on this tradition in portraying his own father and analysing their relationship. Along the way, he discusses memoirists such as John Stuart Mill, Edmund Gosse and Henry James.

Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself can’t have been an easy book to write. Few family memoirs are, if their authors are honest about their families and themselves. Freadman knows that autobiography is a ‘chancy recollective escapade’. ‘My father,’ he writes, ‘was an extremely, an impressively complex man, and there is no single “key” to a life like this.’
Book 1 Title: Shadow of Doubt
Book 1 Subtitle: My Father and Myself
Book Author: Richard Freadman
Book 1 Biblio: Bystander Press, $24.95 pb, 208 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Richard Freadman’s first work intended for a non-academic readership is, in his own words, ‘the Son’s Book of the Father’ and thus belongs to a venerable genre. Freadman, whose contribution to our understanding of autobiography has been acute, is well qualified to draw on this tradition in portraying his own father and analysing their relationship. Along the way, he discusses memoirists such as John Stuart Mill, Edmund Gosse and Henry James.

Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself can’t have been an easy book to write. Few family memoirs are, if their authors are honest about their families and themselves. Freadman knows that autobiography is a ‘chancy recollective escapade’. ‘My father,’ he writes, ‘was an extremely, an impressively complex man, and there is no single “key” to a life like this.’

Read more: Peter Rose reviews ‘Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself’ by Richard Freadman

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