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Best Australian Fiction of the 21st Century: #3 The Turning, The Slap, Gould’s Book of Fish and The Boat

November 17

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Angela Meyer on The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (2008)

The Slap is a fiery, brutally honest snapshot of Howard-era suburban Australia. A man slaps another person’s child at a barbeque, and the narrative branches out into the lives of several characters who were present. From teenagers to aged immigrants, and many middle-aged characters in between. Tsiolkas has said he wanted to critically interpret his generation – their values, their contradictions, the effect of their mistakes. His characters are unlikeable, because 'we became so unlikeable' in that era, Tsiolkas has said. Themes include racism (and reverse-racism), crossing the line (in many circumstances), new conservatism, domestic violence, adultery, the family, home, surfaces and secrets, notions of honour, generationalism, lust, eroticism, homoeroticism, lies and half-truths, the institution of marriage, parent/child relationships, feminism, work vs motherhood, suppressed rage, pedophilia, drugs, teenagers, and a society of 'entitlement' and overprotectiveness.

The characters are perceptively drawn. How does Tsiolkas know what it’s like to be a teenage girl, for example, or an old man? Because somehow he does. The only thing that really overlaps chapter to chapter is a kind of rage. In some characters it springs from stubbornness and assuredness, in others, from confusion. Reading the book is part-epiphanic, part-assuring. Tsiolkas spoke to a deep part of me, the part that swears inside my head when someone is taking too long in the line in front of me, where sometimes words pop into my head that aren’t said aloud. The novel never goes into right and wrong – everyone is an asshole, everyone is weak in some way, everyone stinks with human failure; but the experience of reading The Slap, by the end, is a most exhilarating and enriching one.

Angela Meyer blogs for Crikey at Literary Minded. She is also a fiction writer, and is currently the acting editor of Bookseller + Publisher magazine.

Michael Giacometti on Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish by Richard Flanagan (2001)

I was working as a bushwalking and river guide in 2001. Having rafted the Franklin, hiked through Tasmania’s remote southwest, and read Flanagan’s previous novels (Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping), I eagerly anticipated Gould’s Book of Fish. The hardcover edition was evocative: colour plates, copies (read forgeries) of Gould’s fishy watercolours; dense prose, like the sassafras and myrtle covering the wet rainforest of the region; richly coloured type in greens, blues, purples, browns & black.

It is the tale of William Buelow Gould – liar, forger, artist, fish, prisoner at the notorious hell on earth Sarah Island – whose ‘name is a song which will be sung’. Or is it? The Book of Gould’s paintings and journal, discovered by chance in a Hobart junk shop, is rejected by scholars as a forgery (and not even a very good one) but could, if published as a novel, win literary prizes! When the Book disappears one drunken night, leaving only a puddle on the bar, lazily mopped up by the bartender, it demands to be rewritten, recreated, reinvented.

The recreated tale plunges the reader into the reflective waters of history: into a world where words, once committed to paper, cannot be trusted; where fiction and forgery are synonymous because historical records cannot be repudiated or validated; where even the entire universe can be reimagined, a simulacrum. Reading the novel is like entering the labyrinthine layers of Tlön – an invented universe of the esteemed author Jorge Luis Borges – and the Book, a hrönir, a recreation of a recreation of a … – an aberration of the original, so distorted it may be more accurate than what really happened.

So unfolds the tale of silly Billy Gould, unreliable narrator of this Great Vandemonian novel, the surreal and farcical history of Tasmania and Europe. But ‘what are books anyway but unreliable fairy tales’ says Billy. It is easier to reimagine the world than own up to what really happened, the new story being better than the sorry truth. (The slaughter of Aborigines; the bestial treatment of prisoners; the callousness of colonial society; the idiotic industry; and on and on.)

Smell fishy? Don’t trust me – love and liberty can be found in its depths.

Michael Giacometti is an emerging writer and contributor to Meanjin. He manages the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre in Alice Springs.

Chris Flynn on The Boat by Nam Le (2008)

The exaltation of an Australian short-story collection may seem like a rare publishing event, but it is not without precedent. Peter Carey’s The Fat Man in History received considerable praise upon its release in 1972, but Nam Le’s collection The Boat is a uniquely modern example of how instantly accessible great writing can be in the digital world. Le’s ability to convey personal stories alongside grand fiction has earned him the respect and reputation as one of the finest living short-form writers around.

Le uncorks a vintage collection with an instantly fascinating peek into his family history as his father visits him in Iowa, where Le is trying to complete his final story for the fabled writer’s workshop. His consummate writing skill pulls you into the narrative and sets you up for a stirring collection but it is the subsequent story of Colombian hitmen that really seals the deal. In total contrast to the opening story, Le shows us he can step completely outside of himself, a rare skill for a debut writer. Those two stories alone are career defining, but Le delivers five more equally stunning tales to establish The Boat as the best short story collection of the 21st Century so far, Australian or otherwise.

Chris Flynn is editor of Torpedo.

James Bradley on The Turning by Tim Winton (2004)

Sometime around the turn of the century (and perhaps not coincidentally, his 40th birthday), Tim Winton's fiction seemed to turn inwards, abandoning the sprawling landscapes and thematic expansiveness of his Miles Franklin Award-winning Dirt Music for a journey back to his fictional roots in the small towns of Western Australia's Great Southern region, and the fictional Angelus. This is territory he had explored before, yet in the stories gathered together in The Turning, the allegorical landscapes of his earlier work, are counterpointed by a bleak and often confronting portrait of a world and a way of life already lost to economic and social change, a place where the dignity of work has been replaced by unemployment and disillusionment, and where the disfiguring effects of drugs are eroding the few bonds of community that remain. Unlike Winton's novels, which often seem to chafe against the narrative demands of the form, the stories in The Turning are distinguished by their power and concision. Ragged, often almost deliberately ugly, their rough-hewn exteriors belie the sophistication of their craft, and the tensile strength of Winton's prose.

James Bradley is the author of Wrack, The Deep Field and The Resurrectionist. He can be found at cityoftongeus.com

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Comments

by TF
17 Nov 09 at 11:08

I haven't read Gould’s Book of Fish. I now plan to, with thanks to Michael Giacometti.

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by Maree Kimberley
17 Nov 09 at 21:51

I think The Slap is overrated. It's interesting that Angela felt the characters were perceptively drawn. Apart from the grandfather and the young gay teen I found them mostly one dimensional. The teenage girl, in particular, was for me totally off the mark. I agree with her that mostly every character 'stinks with human failure' but reading about self-obsessed arseholes is not really my thing, I guess. I just found them boring.

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