'Round Ireland with a Fridge' - Tony Hawks

It's a famous book, made huge by its unlikely premise: hitchhiking around the emerald isle with a bulky kitchen appliance. Author Tony Hawks is a comedian by trade and it is perhaps telling of his demeanour that he came to the journey by way of a bet; as in, somewhere between the ninth and tenth round of beers the gauntlet of 'bet you 100 quid you couldn't do it' was thrown down. Whether or not there's anything further to be derived about his character by the fact that said fridge cost more than the bet is something the reader can make up their own mind about.

The absurdity and perceived impossibility of his journey are assuaged somewhat by, firstly, the size of his fridge (think of the kind squeezed into a hotel cupboard) and, secondly, by his regular phone-ins to a morning radio show, which prompt some drivers to call him up and arrange to collect him from a pre-arranged spot. We've seen the emergence of 'flashpacking'; in the late 90s Hawks pioneered swishhiking (not to be confused with the far more effortful swisshiking - rather more bergs involved in the latter).

The book is certainly funny. In its initial stages, particularly, as Hawks describes preparations for the journey and reactions of his English countrymen, he can prompt snickering, snorting and the odd guffaw (a discussion with HRH Prince Charles is certainly worth a chuckle). His occasional musing about a religion or spiritual cause based on the philosophy of his quest and beliefs is at times both diverting and worth a few moments' cogitation. Further, there are moments of notable lyricism: 'With caution I stood by the boat's siderail and viewed the sea respectfully, a little confused by its jet black, inky colour and its refusal to reflect the blue sky above it.'

It's a fun and original story, told by someone confident in the art of engaging an audience with tales to get them laughing. On occasion, Hawks falls into the comedian's trap of milking a joke for too long, of going for one more laugh when he could have quit when ahead. Some recollections seem only to be in there for him to get a laugh, rather than to help flesh out detail of the trip. Given the genre, that's justified to an extent, but it's more forgiveable when those extra jokes are delivered with a little more panache. This next point isn't necessarily Hawks fault: the book is terribly edited. If a comma between a subject and its verb gets your hackles up do not attempt to read through any chapters of this book. It may be a personal sensitivity, but this reviewer also struggled to countenance Hawks's attitude to women. Too frequently he picks out a 'pretty' girl from a group as the one he 'fancies most'. His repartee after a successful encounter with a woman from New Zealand in Wexford is disrespectful to say the least.

It's important of course to keep in mind the book's genre and market. It falls into the category of travel writing where the idea of writing a book about one's experiences comes well after the crazy idea that led to the adventure in the first place. It's not a market craving travel literature, but instead laughter and enjoyment from another person's idea of fun. And to that end it meets its mark spot on: it is fun and diverting and it was a crazy idea, which begs further investigation from the reader to find out how it was done. Leave your prejudices and higher expectations at the contents page, and you're guaranteed an enjoyable read.

'Monkey Grip' - Helen Garner

Rathdowne St, Studley Park, St Georges Rd, Queen Vic Markets. Helen Garner's novel turns Carlton and its surrounds into a significant character, one within a melange of personalities, all of whom drift, meet, collide and separate in her chaotic, rambling novel of 1977. The chaos does not apply to Garner's language, which even in this, her first novel, already shows the level of control that allowed her to almost invent a genre with Joe Cinque's Consolation close to 20 years later. Instead it invades the lives of her characters. Drugs, alcohol, sex and relationships are their preoccupations. Children are regarded in the same manner as adults and the grown-ups act with the recklessness of kids. Much of the novel deals with notions of love: of how much is enough to hold together a disastrous relationship; of how hard it is to let go of something that was once wonderful.

The novel focuses is on Nora, a 30-something mother to primary-school-age Grace (at the time of publication Garner was 35 and her daughter, Alice Garner, 8)) and her volatile relationship with Javo, a heroin addict. The storytelling is purely linear, tracing a period of just over a year, often taking note of the seasons and effects of the weather; however, it jumps, or flits, from scene to scene. Often the location or content of a conversation is seemingly insignificant, yet it is part of a bigger composition: the very deliberate rendering of a lifestyle and a community intrinsically attached to its part of the city and the earth. Garner has said that a lot of the content grew directly from her diaries from the time (and it is often noted, and grieved, by those who have interviewed her about her latest novel, The Spare Room, that she later burnt many of her diaries). It absolutely has that feel of snippets of information scribbled down about what felt important at the time, often under the influence of drugs, alcohol, friendship or emotion.

It is warming to read something so local, something so reverent about a small patch of a much bigger town. Further, it is prudent to bear in mind that this novel is thirty years old, written by a woman, and makes no effort to pretty-up its origins, nor the free-spirited lifestyle of its characters. From a contemporary perspective, it is also fascinating to go back to the beginning of the career of someone who has altered the shape of Australian literature.

'The Day We Had Hitler Home' - Rodney Hall

Odd title; odd premise. The launching pad of this novel is the imagined tale of a twenty-year-old Adolf Hitler, blinded from gas bombs, stumbling into the wrong queue at the end of World War I and thereby arriving by steamer in 1919 to a welcome-home function for returning soldiers in remote, coastal NSW. This does not extrapolate into a novel encompassing a dreamt-up history for the German dictator, however. Rather, Hitler's presence sets into motion life-changing events for the story's main character, Audrey McNeil.

The story commences with Audrey half-naked and half-asleep but fully aware that she is being filmed by her brother-in-law, Immanuel. Her concern over his motives is kept alive throughout the novel's ten-year timespan. In McEwanesque style, the first chapters deal with Audrey awakening to an adult, but crippingly naive, sexuality over the course of a morning. Just as Shakespeare's Titania fell for the ass-headed Bottom under the influence of a love-potion, Audrey's compulsion to manifest her womanhood fixates her upon the bandaged Hitler. With her brother-in-law's help, she spirits him away in a plane to prevent his detection, and the family's punishment for harbouring a German.

The pages describing this plane-ride are laden with metaphor, description and multiple meanings. Immanuel, Audrey and Adolf fly squeezed into a open-air biplane; the tension in the air is as tight as cockpit space and, while verbal communication would be impossible, so much passes between the three characters - while their lifepaths will be utterly distinct, each is set in motion through this adventure. Audrey plays off these two unlikely suitors in her first dalliance with flirting; Hitler suddenly awakes to his situation; and Immanuel grapples with demons that are not revealed until many years later. As they fly north to German New Guinea, landing frequently along the Australian coast, all manner of traditional, ephemeral journeys are evoked - the personal journey from childhood to adulthood; a nation's development from colony to country; the progression of attraction to love. When they land at Rabaul, the evocation of the forest and natives is pure Conrad. Audrey's journey continues even further as she escapes to Munich; the novel jumps soon after to her life ten years hence and the rise of national socialism.

Such is the scope of this novel that every theme is multi-faceted. Life as it can be visualised and recorded is represented through the visual medium of the camera. Audrey is gifted the Aeroscope camera on which Immanuel had filmed her sleeping and she records her world through its lens ceaselessly. The entire novel is a verbal iteration of the film Audrey splices together from this footage: each chapter begins with staging directions before shifting to Audrey's first person perspective (effectively functioning as a voiceover). Her story encapsulates the history of two nations - Australia and Germany - at critical stages of development, as well as eternal problems of love and origin. Both history and origin, by virtue of being in the past, can only be retold. Perspectives in the retelling can be limitless, however, and although in this novel we view events through the eyes of just one protagonist, our focus is inevitably split as we are invited to witness it through the dual medium of words and jumpy, silent footage.

It would seem an unlikely fit with the themes already discussed, but much of this novel is in fact about integration and race. In the 1960s, Rodney Hall was extremely active in campaigning for the rights of indigenous Australians to choose or reject assimilation. Particularly in the closing passages of this novel, the truth of the colonists' treatment of indigenous inhabitants of Australia is expressed bluntly: 'We pushed them off it and just about wiped them out, we British...Was there ever any race so nearly exterminated?' Throughout the novel characters are treated according to their origins: rich or poor; legitimate or bastard; native or foreign; fascist or socialist; black or white. Hall's work has been described as creating a 'metaphysical history' of Australia and, in this novel in particular, he places Australia, with great effect, in the context of the world it grew up in. Much is made of Billy Hughes being a signatory to the Versailles Peace Treaty - many countries felt Australia was not yet 'mature' enough to take part in such a significant event (America was a key opponent, an interesting parallel to national and international views of our current involvement in Iraq). Audrey leaves Germany, unable to cope with the danger of a tragic relationship with a Senegalese man as much as with her own disgust at political developments, as Hitler is coming to power. Society-wide intolerance has been an inexcusable feature of too many governments and cultures.

Hall is phenomenally accomplished as a writer. One critic compares him favourably to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While Hall has twice won the Miles Franklin award, his work is better known overseas than in Australia. He is a meticulous wordsmith, never taking the easy option with a description, but instead consistently finding astonishing metaphors to evoke his meaning. His narrative is not without quirks, however. Consider these two samples: 'One night I dreamed that I had my tonsils out...and that it wasn't the first time' (to close a chapter) and 'The harbour, tilted for the ocean to flow over its lip, is a drumskin of twilight'. The first is an example of his ability to craft sentences and scenes through words too slippery to pin them down to a meaning. The second is not an isolated case of capturing a beautiful landscape with words arguably more picturesque than that which they describe.

'The Graduate' - Charles Webb

Before Dustin Hoffman ogled Anne Bancroft, before Simon and Garfunkel wrote one of the sixties' catchiest choruses, and long before Abe Simpson pounded the glass and cried 'Mrs Bouvier!', The Graduate existed only as a slender, debut novel by Charles Webb.

When Benjamin Braddock returns to his commodious family home after finishing college with exceptional results, he finds himself entirely disaffected with his situation. His parents are suffocatingly proud of his achievements, but also excruciatingly out of touch with the thoughts Ben foments over days on the sunlounge and nights in front of the TV. Only two characters in this novel - Ben and Elaine Robinson - are of college age. All others are adults of his parents' age. His mother and father organise dinners and parties where Ben is exhibited in a fashion similar to what they expect him to do with his new sportscar (a graduation gift). Ben labours under a claustrophobic lack of options. For his parents and their friends there is no choice to be made: he will of course take up a teaching scholarship. For Ben, his choices are limited to acquiescence or rebellion. In his narrow cultural corridor of upstanding, upper-class West-coast American citizens of the 1960s, that rebellion needs to be overblown to be effective.

It begins with a concerted effort at doing nothing - sleeping til afternoon, sunbathing for hours, drinking lashings of beer and bourbon while watching random TV shows. Then, enter Mrs Robinson.

The affair between them makes up but a short part of the novel: the crux of the story is really not about their relationship but instead about the challenges of identity that Webb found in his post-college situation. Given that this is a mid-sixties novel, and the relationship is between a 21-year-old man and a much older, married woman, the lack of sordidness in the description of the affair is as good an indication as any of the crispness of Webb's style. Lack is in fact the defining motif of his writing. The majority of questions posed in dialogue, for example, lack a question mark: the speakers lack either enthusiasm or any genuine interest in the answer.

There is a very high proportion of dialogue throughout the novel, and little exposition. Within the conversations one speaker's turn rarely extends beyond a line. The novel maintains a rapidity that lends an urgency to what are often banal, unfulfilled exchanges. This sustained technique tells the reader a lot about Ben's outlook and attitude to the future. So much about his character is revealed through conversation, yet all of his interactions are filled with miscommunications and a lack of understanding. When Ben pursues Elaine, Mrs Robinson's daughter to Berkeley, their unlikely affection for one another - never presented in any truly romantic setting - is plausible since every other interaction has been so falsified.

Ben is not a particularly likeable character; his redeeming features are few. However, his apathy and disaffection are presented against some particularly loathsome, self-interested adult characters. This doesn't necessarily absolve him of the effects of his behavious, but it does emphasise the assumptions made by many about what makes one successful or even worthy. Ben wants to take a better path; for him the 'road less travelled'. We aren't taken far enough along that road to know if he succeeds but wherever he ends up at least he is taking self-awareness, rather than purely self-interest, along with him.

'Slaughterhouse Five' - Kurt Vonnegut

An American man, Billy Pilgrim, who experienced the Dresden fire bombing of 1945 while a prisoner of war (incarcerated at the town's abbatoir in Slaughterhouse 5) is taken by aliens from the planet of Tralfamadore, who explain to him the infinity of time and allow him to travel back and forth through the events of his life. So it goes. This is the premise of Kurt Vonnegut's extraordinary, seminal novel from 1965.

Vonnegut himself witnessed the firestorm in Dresden. Tellingly, the first few pages of this novel are from a different narrator's perspective. It is clear that this work is in many ways autobiographical, notwithstanding the fact that so many of its strengths come from fictional techniques, most notably those borrowed from science fiction: time travel and alien life. The novel even features a character, Kilgore Trout, who is a frustrated science fiction writer, read almost exclusively by one of the casualties Billy meets in a war hospital.

The novel is extremely satirical, evoking the kind of black humour at the human condition and our preoccupations that is often only created through experience of war (cf Heller's Catch 22). When Billy meets the Tralfamadorians they explain that the human way of looking at time and events is the same as looking at the world through a tiny peephole. They understand that all things that will happen have happened, and when a Tralfamadorian sees a dead creature they know they have simply seen it at a bad moment, since it is simultaneously being born and living every moment of its life.

This concept forms a compelling contrast when it is set against the Dresden fire bombing. (Current historians put the death toll from this event at around 40,000, whereas Vonnegut reports it, as many did in the years after the event, at around 135,000.) Vonnegut employs the refrain 'so it goes' after every mention of someone's death. With World War II as a background for the story it is repeated often. It is most effective for the reader when they have read the refrain before they even realise that the narrator has just described a death: at such moments the Tralfamadorians' belief seems apt indeed.

Humour is slotted into the novel at various levels. The meetings and connections between many of the characters are improbable in our consciousness, but entirely likely to the Tralfamadorians. Having to explain notions in the book through the two perspectives provides ample opportunity to look at human pre-occupations and assumptions with a humourous intent. The zoo set up on the Tralfamdorian planet to house Billy and a porn-star imported from earth as his companion is a less-than-subtle poke at our race's obsession with superiority. One of Kilgour Trout's novels reinvents Jesus as a far less likeable guy, with fewer friends in 'high places', to prove the point that 'before you kill somebody' you should 'make absolutely sure he isn't well connected'.

Frequently, the action or purpose of a passage is filtered through several voices before it reaches the reader. In the above example the novel's narrator recounts what a character tells Billy about what he has read in a book. This technique could be interpreted in any number of ways. It invokes the mess of noise that surrounds so many people in their urban living; it reflects the crassness of the media and their distance from the purity of a story; it enunciates the difficulty in obtaining the truth of an event when every witness carries a different perspective. It is also the technique of someone unable to deal with an event in their past: many characters suspect this is Billy's problem when he pontificates on the existence of aliens, and many have paralleled this with Vonnegut and his difficulty in dealing with what he witnessed in the war.

The plot, with its multiple narrative voices, occasional full page illustrations, and science fiction techniques, is quite implausible. Yet it is set against a true event that, 60 years after taking place, has never been unequivocally explained. The themes of existence and meaning that permeate the book, however, are entirely relevant. These heavy themes are not buried beneath inaccessible prose, though there are undoubtedly many readers who find the novel too fractured to elicit any coherent message. Alternatively, however, one can see this as a novel devoid of artifice; one that, without becoming crass or overblown, disregards niceties and proprieties to tell a pure story.

'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' - Marina Lewycka

Is this novel's title an accurate description of its contents? Yes and no. It does feature a character who is writing a book of the same name, and portions of that book are featured as he reads sections of his masterwork to his family. That family is Ukrainian, though the novel is set in England, where they have lived since fleeing the communist regime in the former Soviet Union.

The novel's title, if it were taken literally, would suggest a dry tome of technical explanations; perhaps even an undecipherable dissertation if it were in fact written in Ukrainian. Instead, this novel is especially warm, poignant and at moments quite funny. Its surface story is that of two middle-aged sisters, Nadia and Vera, dealing with their 84-year-old father deciding to marry a 36-year-old Ukrainian woman, Valentina, who is clearly on a misguided hunt for the untold riches she believes her 'westernised' husband to possess. There is a great deal of intercultural and intergender humour and plenty of absurdity in the story. Just as the title is a furphy to its contents, however, so is the superficial story only one layer, overlying its deeper concerns.

Nadia is the younger of the sisters by ten years, a 'Peace Time Baby', born in England after her family has fled. Her sister Vera is a 'War Baby' who endured both isolation from and internment with her parents during the German occupation. As Nadia and Vera re-establish their fraught relationship in an effort to thwart their money-grabbing stepmother, Nadia begins to probe the family history, to uncover the reasons for the rifts and sore points amongst them. Through this avenue, as well as via excerpts from the old man's tractor treatise, the reader is given an empathetic history of the Ukraine and the troubles it has experienced during and after World War II.

Of particular focus is the transition from communism to capitalism. This is dealt with amusingly through Valentina's assumptions about the free, capitalist wonderland of England (insisting on purchasing a 'prestigious' gas stove, rather than a 'peasant' electric cooker for example). The 'Short History of Tractors' puts the transition into a more economic context, relating capitalism and its availability of funds to over-expansion of agriculture, consequent damage to farming land, and the 1929 stockmarket crash. More philosophically, however, the effects of both systems are shown as we learn more about the family's history, of what they endured in the Ukraine, what still haunts them in their new home in England and what they feel capable of making of their lives.

If the content and themes sound a bit heavy and preachy, the style alleviates any notion of an academic slog. The book is very much a story, not a treatise, related using a large proportion of dialogue (with the rendition of the Ukranian's stilted English particularly effective). Valentina's shenanigans are frequently giggle-worthy and the main narrator, Nadia, elucidates the corollary affection and exasperation inherent in caring for an aging parent. Although there are serious themes - fraught family relationships, finances in despair, consequences of terrible conflict - the style remains decenct and gentle. The narrative is broken several times a page with line-breaks, which can make it a little jerky when one expects the blank to represent a break between scenes, rather than just an aside.

Lewycka's style neither trivialises the brutality her character's history nor over-emphasises it: family squabbles, many of which are a product of war-time events, are dealt with in equal accord to international ones.

'Mister Pip' - Lloyd Jones

Mister Pip brings a new reading to an old, classic story, in a highly unlikely setting. The native residents of a small, Bougainvillean island are cut off during the civil war that beset the region in the 1990s. The white residents - nearly all of whom are there due to the presence of the mine at Panguna - have left, except for Mr Watts, an enigmatic Englishman, married to Grace, a native of the island. He takes over as teacher for the local school and begins to read to the students from Great Expectations.

This layered, beautiful novel uses this scenario to craft interweaving notions of storytelling, belonging, identity and conflict. The protagonist is 15-year-old Matilda, and Jones demonstrates considerable skill in so credibly maintaining her perspective as believable and engaging for the reader. While the language is in no way similar to Dickens', there are parallels to be drawn between her story and Pip's: they both lack a father; their lives begin in a closed circle of acquaintance; and they are both given the opportunity, via unexpected means, to move beyond their upbringing to new experiences.

The most worthwhile comparisons and correlations in the novel, however, are not nearly so superficial. Dickens' story is retold multiple times throughout the book and each time is allowed to take on a gravity appropriate to its audience. It shows a fitting reverence for the power of a true classic to engage with and bear relevance for its reader/recipient - whether solitary or as part of an audience - no matter how far removed they are from its source; even so far as the war-torn, sparse Solomon Islands are from hectic Victorian England.

As the endurance of Dickens' story demonstrates, Matilda is not alone in finding herself drawn to Pip. Her connection places a gentle emphasis on the biases we often show towards whom and what we dedicate our concern. Pip's world is removed by centuries and massive cultural shifts from our current consciousness, but, as part of the literary canon, is regardless still integral to many curriculums. In this novel, however, he is presented to us within the context of a far more recent and, for Australasian readers, less geographically removed conflict. Throughout the storyline of Mister Pip, several characters confront and make extremely difficult decisions. What moral decisions do we make when we choose with whom we empathise? The moral high ground is as clear in this novel as it ever can be during war: citizens hold it over the antagonists, but between the opposing sides the military high ground is often far clearer than the moral.

Yet the novel is anything but polemical. Instead the narrative takes the reader on a languid journey, which turns quite brutal at times, yet maintains a steadiness of pace that allows each audience member to uncover their own layers and analogies. Although a theme of the novel is interpretation, both of language and meaning, there is one extremely cumbersome plot shift towards the end of the book, which snapped me momentarily from my languid reverie; I was able to resume it, however, and felt fulfilled at the novel's conclusion.

Addendum: Given the point in the final paragraph about plot shift, I was interested by some comments made by Lloyd Jones in an article in A2 (in The Age), ahead of his appearance at the Melbourne Writers' Festival. To quote directly:

'Jones...is especially suspicious of narrative. When he began Mister Pip, he intended to write a book with no narrative at all..."I was trying to avoid narrative because, when you write it, sometimes it's like a runaway bloody thing, it's voracious, it just wants more of itself," he says...in [earlier novel] Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance Jones slips the rope by refusing to fulfill our expectations of what a fictional narrative will deliver...As readers, we want omniscience; as a writer, Jones refuses to allow it.'

I couldn't shake the jolt of that plot jump - like how your hands keep tingling after your bike tyre hits a pothole at speed - and wondered why it hadn't been smoothed out. From these statements, however, it's clearer that for Jones such a jump is not a negative issue in a novel's progression; absolute congruity is the product of a 'manufactured' story. I still argue that the novel would be improved by way of some roadfill, but having heard Jones' opinion I can surmise that even if it had been flagged by an editor, correcting it would not necessarily have been his priority in the finished product.

'The Sound of One Hand Clapping' - Richard Flanagan

The Sound of One Hand Clapping etches the story of Sonja Buloh and her destructive, catastrophic relationship with her father, Bojan. The novel oscillates between two timeframes. The earlier location stretches from mid-fifties to mid-sixties, and is set amongst a group of European immigrants working on a hydro-electric site in Tasmania, during which time Sonja's mother leaves her three-year-old daughter one snowy night, never to be heard of again. In 1989, Sonja returns to Tasmania, after 23 years of her own unbroken estrangement from her father.

The novel is heavy, very heavy, on motifs and imagery. It is a rare piece in that the central relationship is between father and daughter. The exchanges between Sonja and Bojan are frequently brutal, both physically and emotionally. Despite the anger, spite, and unbearable miscommunications, however, a bond remains. Just as Bojan and his workmates cannot separate themselves from their respective homelands, despite thoughts of their former homes conjuring images of torture and war, nor can he and his daughter ultimately extricate themselves from one another.

Bojan lives a rootless life, as he fails to integrate himself into the Australian culture. Sonja, similarly, marches through a life deliberately devoid of a significant relationship with another man. Each grip instead onto aspects of the land. For Bojan, water and wood are constant motifs. His emotions are dammed, just as is the river where he was laying concrete when his wife disappeared. He crafts his feelings into wooden furniture, made from Huon pine, an elusive, almost inexplicably strong material, forged in the wilds of an island that has broken many willing and unwilling refugees. Sonja returns herself to the earth, either physically at the site of the camp where she grew up, or in dreams where she imagines the feel of blades of grass on her body.

The images are well-chosen, but many of Flanagan's techniques in this book are overblown and his style overwritten. There is an excessive use of adjectives throughout the novel: "The noise manifested itself as flesh in the form of a large, brown-uniformed woman slashing through the green curtain"; "A pair of translucent plastic gloves peeled off and fell into the alligator mouth of a bright yellow bin". At times, too, the similes are cliched, but then Flanagan redeems himself with something wonderful, for example rain on a window "like tears" is followed by a sunrise "like a rainbow trout". Sometimes extended descriptions lose their perspective: a character sees a raindrop fall on a tulip from some distance; or rain changing from soothing to oppressing within a passage. In the sections set in the past, Flanagan often begins with generic stories, describing repeated events, which then morph into a recount of a specific event that has bearing on the tale, a particularly frustrating technique.

While it is overwritten, the novel is not poorly written. It evokes a place - Tasmania - that remains mysterious even for many who live in the same country. It takes that powerful force of isolation and chaos that Tasmania holds - the island that offered prisons within prisons, an island of "wild, mad [weather], its reason lost somewhere out in the aching emptiness of the fish-fat sea" - and thrusts it upon characters whose lives have seen too much turmoil to have the strength to try and tame their new home. All of the relationships in this novel are fraught, often with an excess of affection that remains dammed as unnaturally as the Tasmanian river.

See also by Richard Flanagan: 'The Unknown Terrorist'

'Adverbs' - Daniel Handler'

It has been some time between book reviews. I would struggle to draw parallels between the last book I reviewed, a novel of teen angst, and this one, Daniel Handler's intriguing, innovative and inscrutable collection of stories, 'Adverbs'.

The book is a collection of explorations on the topic of love. In each story, a way of loving is examined - to love 'immediately', 'particularly' or 'wrongly' - and hence the book's title. The stories are loosely linked, with characters from earlier stories appearing strongly or tangentially in later ones. There is an overarching narrative voice: that of the author. One of the later stories is entitled 'Truly' and in this piece the writer speaks to the reader directly, giving details about writing the book and his personal experiences. Keeping track of each of the characters had been proving a challenge and suddenly, so far in, the author informs us that there are multiple Steves throughout the book, multiple Andreas. Just because two characters have the same name, doesn't mean they are the same character. What the reader should be looking for, he asserts, are the birds.

The stories are all founded on this level of irony. Can one love ironically? I think not, but one can undoubtedly discuss it ironically. Literature is, in fact, full of couples who are in love but spend most of their dialogue saying one thing when the audience knows they mean another. Handler, on the other hand, is masterful at saying exactly what he means in ways that I would postulate no one has thought of before. Why note someone as simply good-looking when they could be 'as handsome as a new truck'?

I am on record as being sceptical of books that come overly recommended. This one does not have international bestseller splashed all over the front, which, frankly, is not a surprise, since it is very far from the poorly thought out, overly accessible narratives that normally top the lists. What is does have is commendations from Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers. It could be a dissertation on the modern relevance of Handler's alter-ego, Lemony Snicket, and Jim Carrey's handling of one of her characters and I'd still crave to read it.

'Saving Francesca' - Melina Marchetta

Melina Marchetta is the author of one of the best-received Young Adult novels by an Australia writer, Looking for Alibrandi. Her second novel, Saving Francesca, published 11 years after that debut, draws on many of the earlier novel's fundamentals. The title character, at 16 a year younger than Marchetta's first heroine, is an Italian-Australian school student attending an inner-city Sydney, strictly religious high school. She has family issues, complex and sometimes conflicting friendships and, although she starts out with no such intention, strong feelings for a brooding member of the opposite sex.

Both books centre around identity. In the earlier text this search was strongly rooted in culture, in the sub-groups that make up the Australian milieu. The identity issues in Saving Francesca are less concrete. Francesca is a teenager brought up in a modern household, with a (sometimes embarassingly) emancipated mother and an unfailingly optimistic father. She dearly loves her younger brother. In the year on which the novel focusses however, she has been taken from the girls' school and group of friends to which she was acclimatised, to start Year 11 at a boys' school as part of its first intake of girls.

The friendships at the two schools polarise Francesca's identity crisis. She is a strong, dramatic and articulate young lady, but for the sake of acceptance had made herself into something else at her former school. Yet within that pretence she had certainty and a group in which she felt placed. Now, starting again, she remakes herself, this time into a more introverted form.

It is a canny way of highlighting the despair and discomfort of adolescence. It also runs well alongside Francesca's mother's depression, as an adult also struggles to meet the peg-and-hole expectations of her community.

The themes are strong, but on occasion the language is clunky, too obscure to make a powerful emotional statement. It can sound somewhat like teenage poetry: full of powerful words and analogies but somehow the adjectives and nouns don't quite gel so the precise intent is lost to the reader. It is also a victim of the curse for writing for youth: anyone who has been young knows how awkward most conversations are, yet the writer has time to craft, hone and select the exact way to evoke that hit-and-miss. The inevitable juxtaposition was better handled in Looking for Alibrandi.

However, like Richard Flanagan, this book is proud of its birthplace. It's from Sydney, and more specifically the Inner West: Annandale, Leichhardt, Broadway Shopping Centre. That's important because right there is a reality in which any reader, teenager or not, can find some identity. The teenagers in this book are entrusted with mature topices: they talk about history, politics and women's rights. That respect may just help a teenage reader feel more confident in who they are.

'Ireland' - Frank Delaney

Historical fiction comes in various guises. At times the balance between the two elements - history and a story - is uneven, resulting in a novel overly-concerned with dates and analysis; or, in the opposite case fact is so far removed from the story that the only relevance of 'history' is that the book is set in the past.

When I saw this book in the country of its title, I expected the balance to sit on the side of history. Something along the lines of a Robert Hughes epic, perhaps. The reality was quite different, however. Delaney hits upon an engaging and enticing way of entwining fiction and factual details of Ireland's past. His cause is helped by the Irish culture itself, as it is one of storytelling, the crux of this novel.

Ronan O'Mara is nine years old the first time he sees the Storyteller. Tall, in cap and boots, this man wanders 1950s Ireland receiving board and food from villagers in exchange for his entrancing stories about Ireland's history. The visit changes Ronan's life, which from then on is dedicated to two pursuits: finding the Storyteller again and his own study of history, which takes him to Trinity College in Dublin. Alongside this runs the emerging story of Ronan's own family history, which harbours secrets he never suspected.

The Storyteller keeps in touch with Ronan through occasional visits and, more frequently, through letters or stories told by other people who have known and heard him. Ronan's eccentric history lecturer also fills in part of the story with passionately delivered lectures. The stories flow through the historical record from the majesty of the Architect of Newgrange, to the coming of Strongbow, the battles of Brian of Boru, the famine and the climax of Connolly, Pearce and their followers' bravery and sacrifice for Irish indepedence in the Easter 1916 uprising.

Delaney makes effective use of the Storyteller's tool - language - to subtly distinguish between the exposition and the tales, and also on occasion to differentiate style when someone is recounting a story they have heard. Notably, the stories, no matter how apocryphal or mythologised, contain fact: normally the year, date and sometimes even day of the week or time that a centuries-old event took place. Within the modern day elements of the novel, the timeframe can shift, for example jumping forward to explain a consequence, then back into the chronology of Ronan's life. This effect is a necessity when one recounts a history, whether of a man or a country: events and consequences do not always step along a perfectly linear path.

Delaney mentions several times that the art of storytelling is a native trait of the Irish. Whether their skill comes from the depth of material available in their past, or if this historical richness is a result of it being kept alive through verbal tradition is hard to know. Delaney certainly possesses great skill in his country's national artform and in this novel does a great service to any reader wishing to be truly entertained and informed.

'Making Laws for Clouds' - Nick Earls

Nick Earls writes about Australian males. More specifically, Australian males who live in Queensland, face relationship insecurities, are blessed with wit and humour, and who meet captivating women with whom to share their riposte.

It's a good formula and one that, since the publication of Zigzag Street in 1996, has made good on Who Weekly's claim to 'Buy a Nick Earls novel and never be sad again'. The one non-constant in his universal male protagonist is age: in Earls' adult fiction his characters may be going through crises in their mid-twenties or early thirties. In his young adult fiction they deal with late teenage angst.

Making Laws for Clouds fits into the latter group. Kane is 18 and working for Caloundra Council to help support his family: his mother has turned to rum and television since his father left and his fourteen-year-old brother has a sensitive stomach and a fairly simplistic outlook. Kane meets Tanika on the bus that takes both their families to church each Sunday, which is the focus of their social activities. Their relationship teeters between teenage lust and adult responsibility.

As always, there is plenty of dialogue. Earls' characters tend to be fairly verbose; not always in a lengthy way, more that he employs poetic licence to allow his characters to frequently bounce the kind of quips and retorts off one another that one would associate with a rare, hilarious night out. Since they invariably find themselves in the early stages of a relationship, there is also a lot of rambling to cover awkward moments, eyebrow-raising from the females, and valiant attempts to 'dig oneself out of a hole'. It's all part of what makes Earls' novels so genuinely funny.
Philosophising is saved for the exposition. When musing to themselves, Earls' characters reveal a penchant for metaphysics, such as the discussion that explains the novel's title, and the author himself a flair for poetic description. As Kane and Tanika sit on the beach they listen to waves "Breaking up and piling up and thinning out and running to nothing, up the sand and shells, ending in a rush, disappearing in that last noise, like a long breath out".

Earls shares more than a first name with English author Nick Hornby. Both (though Hornby has diversified more in his later works) focus on flawed men, but embed the exploration in very everyday situations. They rarely come to a perfect resolution at the end of the novel: they do normally end in a relationship, but the male protagonist retains his flaws and uncertainties. Therein lies the novels' cohesiveness - our lives don't nestle into 300 pages either - and their worth, as they can teach us where to look for humour and positivity and that perfection is not the only recipe for happiness.

'The Unknown Terrorist' - Richard Flanagan

This is a novel that opens brilliantly and provokingly, then maintains a compelling level of dramatic and intellectual tension. At every plot development the reader is affronted simultaneously by the idiocy of Flanagan's public, as well as the fact that in the very recognisable and believable world that Flanagan has created, such idiocy is entirely plausible.

The novel is set in Sydney, slightly into the future, but within this decade. Flanagan writes Sydney in a way few Australian authors do. In American and British fiction it is common to feature a globally-known city such as New York or London as another character, with its own moods and by giving locales by name only, rather than swerving from the story to explain their significance. This is how Sydney is presented in The Unknown Terrorist: Kings Cross and its Coke sign, Mardi Gras, street names and landmarks. So too recent Australian events, such as the Cronulla riots and the Beaconsfield miners.

Such familiarity creates authenticity. Flanagan brings it down to even finer detail, introducing thinly-disguised media and political figures to push along the furore and bloodlust around a nationwide obsession with the search for the eponymous figure, who in reality is a 25-year-old female victim of circumstance. Most prominent is the character of Richard Cody, a very nasty Ray Martin clone. His boss is Mr Frith, head of media conglomerate Six. The cloning act is so recognisable that Cody is at one point mistaken by a character for Ray Martin. Therefore, Martin himself exists as part of the fictional world, although we know him to be real. Does this make the real Australia more imaginary or this fictional representation more real?

This constant blurring of identity is consistent throughout the novel. Nearly every character has multiple names, the main character being endowed with three: her nickname the Doll (shortened from Russian Doll due to her layers of character); her pole-dancing name of Krystal; and her real name, Gina Davies, itself a smooth blend of Euro-Anglo descent. The whole premise of the novel spins around a case of mistaken identity and the media's ability to convince the public to believe in a truth through bludgeoning repetition and insinuation, rather than through any element of truth.

Truth, in Flanagan's Australia, is as bendable as identity. Cody sees the "art" of journalism as "to use the truths you could discover to tell the story you believed to matter". There was a time when belief could mean truth, at least a personal one, but in this world those with enough media power feel comfortable turning their beliefs not only into an accepted truth, but one that actively incites racial hatred and a mass cry for vilification. The Doll is at one point actually confronted when she finds out someone hasn't lied: "It now seemed too stupid to be true - that who someone said they were, was, more or less, who they were".

Amongst all this hate, dishonesty, xenophobia and greed is an ongoing theme of love. The novel's first line - "The idea that love is not enough is a particularly painful one" - is a preface to an extraordinary, contemporary religious statement. Each of the main characters learns the truth of this opening salvo. Love is not enough to save a marriage, a life or an ideal. Rather than believing in and loving our country, we prefer to be swayed to believe in terrorism, to validate what we have by believing someone would want to destroy it.

This is absolutely the best Australian novel I have read. Flanagan gives Australia the respect denied to it by the novel's characters by representing it with such unashamed familiarity. The novel is extremely pertinent, placed utterly within the context of the ongoing period that will come to define the War on Terror. That war is being fought within the pages of this book, but not by soldiers of democracy against radical fundamentalists. Instead our fear has inculcated a country to believe the worst, to prostrate ourself for both information and redemption in front of a media who created the context for our fear in the first place. The novel is bold, confronting, incredibly revealing and almost faultlessly crafted.

'In My Skin' - Kate Holden

Kate Holden writes a fortnightly column for The Age's A2 weekend supplement, in which her perceptiveness, intelligence and alluring grasp of English are always apparent. Her subject matter is observational, whether of Melbourne culture or affairs of the heart, and regularly provides an uplifiting start to a Saturday morning. Personally, she is even more inspiring as a graduate of the writing course I'm currently undertaking, the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing.

In My Skin, her memoir, is an account of her journey from a reserved, innocent University graduate of literature and anthropology, to a heroin addict of five years, who entered into prostitution to support her habit. There are two critical, inescapable elements to the book: its beauty, and its honesty. Her writing style is extraordinarily eloquent. Smells, colours, emotions and people come alive for the reader as she writes about them. For a very large part of the book the people she is writing about are her fellow sex workers and the men paying them. Her honesty in relating stories from the sex industry, as well as the decisions and actions she took to lead her to drug addiction, is confronting and unrelenting.

Significantly, this is not a memoir of regret, seeking pity. Rather it is an explanation, even a vindication, of one woman's choices and how the industry she chose to be a part of should be regarded. I thought of Frank Bascombe, in The Sportswriter, who pondered often about what a $100 hooker would do for his situation. That is how prostitutes are most commonly represented in literature: as a commodity, an ignominious salve for men; an inexcusable career choice for women. Holden, however, is adamant in casting it as a profession, of which the better members will always conduct themselves honourably. It is a paying job, one she takes as seriously as anything conducted in daylight hours, in suits, in offices. The women who choose this role - and this itself is a key point, that not every prostitute is forced into it, for some it is a conscious, informed decision as to a means to earn the money they need - are not to be pitied nor, even worse, vilified. As with any supply and demand business, prostitution cannot exist without custom, and it is the men who go to brothels to treat women deploringly who are to be looked down upon.

The memoir can be graphic and, if sex work is an area the reader is uncomfortable with, it can become suffocating as Holden describes her role. She mentions that she never felt fear as a sex worker and recounts some of her worst customers. It is a demonstration of the hard inner self that this journey allowed her to find that she is able to describe some of the worst clients as just part of her job.

Especially touching in the memoir is the role of her family: not only in their stoicism in remaining in their daughter's life, but also their strength at the times when they had to cut her loose. Their humour and grace as Holden gradually climbs out of her darker self is heartbreakingly commendable.

This memoir is not only brave, it is insightful, proud and beautiful.

'The Sportswriter' - Richard Ford

The eloquence and dreamy philosophising of Independence Day had led me to seek out the two other novels that bookend Ford's trilogy of the musing Frank Bascombe. The Sportswriter, the earliest, was hailed at its release as a masterly and remarkable work, significant to the future of American literature. Which indeed it is, but it is a testament to Ford's ongoing development that the second novel is in fact superior to this earlier, worthwhile and intelligently written work.
Very early in the novel Ford displays his skill for beautiful turns of phrase: discussing his routines with his recently divorced wife he indicates he sought only "the normal applauseless life of us all". Meeting his ex-wife in a graveyard on their deceased son's birthday, she asks if he plans to re-marry. Frank immediately notes in response that he smells the chlorine of a suburban swimming pool. Rather than digress on the mental makeup of his character, this note from Ford reveals what we need to know about the character's attitude: the details he notices tell us that he will treat any relationship intellectually, immediately putting him at odds with the notion of marriage, an irony heightened by the fact that it is his estranged wife asking him the question.

Two of the key themes of the novel and Frank's musings are love and mystery. Many women feature in the novel: his ex-wife, current lover and other interests, and past girlfriends. He considers and discusses at length the "love" he feels for Vicki, his current girlfriend. This is not stomach-butterfly love, however. It is the love of having that person in his life, the love of what she would contribute and what it would mean he had achieved. There is indeed a yawning gap between the first feelings of interest for a person, and that of being truly in love, and for many of us it is difficult to pinpoint or verbalise where we lie on that spectrum. Ford is brave enough to take his protagonist there and try to locate him within that scale.

He muses as well on the difference between realism and factualism: on the one hand accepting things as they are and on the other over-analysing the circumstances leading to an event. The latter morphs into the notion of mystery, something Frank is at pains to preserve. To that end he cannot retain a college teaching position as the lecturers inevitably remove mystery from literature by dissecting and defining it. As Frank moves through a thinking man's version of Nick Hornby's About a Boy - calling up several old girlfriends for their comfort and familiarity - we realise that love - for people dead and alive, for lovers past and present, for places and possessions ordered from catalogues - is the most mysterious of entities, too shrouded to be simplified as a consequence of romance.

For all the philosophising on relationships and Frank's ability to commit to them in various guises, the attitude to women in this 20-year-old novel is not always welcome. Their arses are commented on in preference to their personalities and in relationships they can be disenfranchised, serving only Frank's purposes. It's interesting that when talking to his 83-year-old lady neighbour, he feels compelled to "watch his age", to not appear too immature, when he has just spent a weekend in Detroit comfortable in his superiority in age and education over Vicki.

Frank Bascombe is written as a man intensely aware of his relationships with men and women around him, and is a character placed irretrievably in a certain circumference on the American East Coast. His openness of philosophy, however, allows readers of diverse background, location age and of both genders to share his intellectual journey.

'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' - Alexander McCall Smith

McCall Smith achieves a rare thing in modern literature: a writing style that is both intellectual and diverting. The Ladies' Detective Agency has moments of extraordinary, deadpan humour but also philosophises on the nature of what makes us happy and contented. Death and abuse are also encountered, but with reality rather than sensationalism. That reality is also applied to the imagery of Botswana, which threads through the novel as an extra character.

There is a notable rhythm to the words in the novel which allow the reader to hear them with the undulations of an African accent. There are also interesting perspective switches: the novel is primarily told through the eyes and thoughts of Mme Ramotswe but every so often, when necessary, a different character is given the first person, or the third person focus. This isn't cumbersome, rather it simply provides the reader with the imagery and information they need to fully appreciate the story. There is an insousiance to the chapter headings (for example, 'Mma Ramotswe Thinks about the Land while Driving her Tiny White Van to Francistown) that puts me in mind of A.A.Milne. Similarly, when discussing the novel with a friend, we came up with the word 'comfy' to describe the writing style: it is not only accessible, but particularly welcoming and comforting.

'31 Songs' - Nick Hornby

When you've set the benchmark for a modern genre, it seems reasonable to publish a book of your personal digressions on a topic integral to your novelistic style. In Nick Hornby's case, that topic is popular culture, or more specifically in this case, pop music. Here are 31 songs that mean more than just a bit, songs that have defined moments but, more than that, have stayed with Hornby over time and have often transformed to take on new meanings. His musical knowledge is aptly demonstrated. He is a man who listens on many levels, hearing the subtlety in pop music that one reads into literature or looks for in art.

Right from the start, this isn't a concept that is going to please everyone. In 'High Fidelity' each of Rob's Top 5 lists is laid out there in a fictional context: just like his record-shop mates the reader is free to criticise or nod sagely in agreement. Here though, Hornby is putting his favourites out in the real world. There's no fantasy or other characters to hide behind. And, if you have never had a relationship with a song that lasted longer than its three-and-a-half minute duration, then the book's appeal would be lost to you by the time you're halfway through the introduction.

If, however, your record collection has played a significant role in your emotional development, then there's always the problem of personal taste. I hit my first taste obstacle with just the third song of the book and my immediate response was, momentarily, to wonder how I could go further and trust the taste of a man publicly proclaiming his satisfaction with this particular songstress (granted, with only one specific song of hers). Such disagreements are inevitable, but are also in fact part of the point that Hornby is trying to make. These songs are about him: he is relating his inner self and experiences through what these songs mean to him, rather than using up his, his publisher's and the reader's time simply expounding on what he likes. It's not the choice of songs that are most relevant, it's what Hornby reveals about himself in describing why each song is included. That level of honesty and philosophy, combined with his music knowledge, make this a worthwhile exploration.

'Once While Travelling' - Tony and Maureen Wheeler

This is the history of the publishing giant that is Lonely Planet. Now over 30 years old, the company progressed slowly enough towards its current status that this book is primarily concerned with developments, experiments, trial and error: their global success was not cemented until the last third of their history.

Its strength lies in its multi-level appeal. Nearly anyone who has travelled has used a Lonely Planet guide and its fascinating to learn both how the company grew and to get to know the people who started it. There is a strong business element to the book: it is both inspiring and informative as for the first 15 years or so this was a very small, personal operation. There are also a lot of travel tales, from the Wheeler's utterly exhaustive trips around the world, with descriptions and anecdotes from every continent. Furthermore, Tony and Maureen Wheeler are extremely endearing people so the biography element of the book is just as engaging as the business and travel aspects.

Having read multiple large-print-run works of literature of late with typos and inconsistencies it was a relief to read something so well edited. This is not entirely surprising, since Tony managed the publishing side of Lonely Planet for many years and is an experienced editor. That's not to say it's flawless - there are some overly-colloquial sentences that are hard to interpret on the first read and hence appear as mistakes, and the chronology does jump a little bit. This is inevitable though and does not lessen the reading experience: in business the consequences of one decision may not be felt for several years, so on various occasions an event is initially summarised and then explained more fully at the appropriate stage later in the book.

What is so endearing about this book is its truth. The Wheelers must have been asked thousands of times how Lonely Planet started and grew, and here they have a reference that allows them to say 'If you really want to know, read this!' Importantly it gives a clear idea of how the business grew (and at times retreated), without miring in too much detail, rather than leapfrogging from success to success. It doesn't skirt around hard times or bad decisions. Having bought my first Lonely Planet in 2003 I was intrigued to learn that it was at this time, with profits in 8 figures, that the company went through some of its hardest times.

The account is neither verbose, self-indulgent, nor contrarily self-effacing. The company is a global brand and it would ring falsely if the authors pretended it was anything other than that. While not ignoring the extent of their success, the more detailed chapters focus on the development of the company, during which the Wheeler's knew everyone who worked for them and celebrated every staff member's birthday, a tradition I have no doubt they would carry on if their size allowed!

'The Secret River', Kate Grenville

Of recently-released fiction, this was the novel I was most keen to read. It was Australian, it dealt with history, it was from an admired publishing house (Text) and it had been decorated with multiple awards. Such a build-up can lead to disappointment, but I don't think it was my expectations that gave me a confused response to this book.

The first part of the book is concerned with the London life of William Thornhill: his childhood, marriage to Sal and the lead- up to when a robbery, necessary to keep his young family in food, goes wrong and he is sentenced to transportation to Australia. After some time in the new colony the Thornhills settle upriver on the Hawkesbury and the core of the book is concerned with their struggle and that of other 'emancipists' to establish themselves on the land that they were encouraged to claim and work in order to help the colony prosper.

This land, of course, contrary to British decree, was not unoccupied. The relationship between the settlers and the indigenous inhabitants was never peaceful and from the beginning showed the worst in white culture. Some of the conversations in the book about the 'natives' are sickening. Not because of any graphic detail, however, but for the undisguised ignorance and unforgivable presumption being shown on the part of the settlers.

It was with this theme that I struggled. The novel has no real narrative voice: it is historical fiction that has come down on the fiction side of the fence, in that it purely retells a story as it is presumed to have happened. Therefore there is no moderator when the settlers accuse the Aborigines of 'thieving' their land, when they declare that as the natives have never worked the land, never broken a sweat over it, they therefore have absolutely no entitlement to it.

For the most part these were simple men that settled on the Hawkesbury. The majority came from poor stock in England and they were all there because of an injust legal system that cared little for the non-gentry. To a man they acted unconscionably to the indigenous population. I can postulate it was due to the power rush of having a class beneath them, but that is flawed since firstly nothing should excuse their actions, and secondly the native race was in fact far advanced.

But all of this did happen - native land was stolen, vital crops were destroyed and many, many indigenous people were savagely killed. I struggled with this not being commented on, with it simply being presented as the historical fact. Which, unless Grenville had written a textbook, was the mode in which it needed to be presented. I was further disturbed by how little removed the Australian descendants, or modern citizens of the Empire, are from these people and that while the purveyors of such ignorance and presumption have gone on to 'prosper', a culture with so much respect for and knowledge of our brutal, beautiful land, has been all but destroyed.

The writing itself is very fluid, the story ebbing and flowing as do the waters of the Thames and Hawkesbury Rivers. There are some rudimentary metaphors employed: Sydney Harbour is described at one point with 'shafts of sunlight sen[ding] pale fingers into its glassy green depths'. The metaphor is straightforward, but there is balance in the sentence. Oftentimes a metaphor is given - once they are living off the land these tend to feature darkness and the air - then a literal explanation immediately follows. Some descriptions are repeated, for example as the settlers and their slaves get used to their new life they more than once approach a confronting subject with a tone that is described as deliberately light and commonplace. I felt there were one or two continuity issues towards the end of the book as well.

This lightness of style was the crux of the contradictions I felt while reading it: it stopped me from feeling the force of the book's dedication to a cultural tragedy. The story was of too great import for the tone, for the casual way atrocities were planned, said and done. But this was the reality of the situation and, disturbingly, that reality is not far enough into the past.

'On Chesil Beach', Ian McEwan

Much has been written about Ian McEwan's latest, published this year, principally that it is a) very short (in my version 166 pages), b) that it didn't win the Booker Prize and c) whether or not its premise and resolution are plausible.

Briefly, the novella commences with a virginal British couple in their early twenties, Edward and Florence, at a hotel in Dorset on their wedding night. It is 1962, 'a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible'. The book recounts how they met, touches on their families' backgrounds and returns between each digression to their awkward hotel suite. It is not a plot of action, rather a dual character study, irremovable from the time period. As Edward says, as they finally reach the pure white bed, the only things standing in their way are 'the tail end of religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all'.

The book is short on dialogue, long on description, characterisation and observation. With its length, it is best appreciated in a single sitting - set aside a time and go cover to cover, allowing a cohesive reading that gels the key events, telling background and unforeseen outcome.

Sex is of course a key theme of the novella, but it is played out around the main characters, rather than by them. An extraordinary paragraph on just the third page involves the Dorset flora in a dumbplay of consummation. Florence, as a violinist, is given her passionate outlet through performance. The bias of perspective in the novella falls to Edward, which I found a little isolating, until on second read I noticed more closely the language used to describe Florence's playing.

There is an enormous amount squeezed into these 160-odd pages: two lifetimes and an entire conservative national culture at its cusp before the sexual revolution. The sweep of emotions and concepts is contrasted with the sharpness of the couple's final conversation in Part Five. It's a dramatic change and I think that making the jump with the author is the hardest task for the reader. Previously the novel has relied almost entirely on observation; the majority of that in hindsight. Now we face a conversation where the participants say none of the things they mean, but inform the audience through their interior monologues of what their counterpart cannot know. This exchange is the early 1960s: an educated man and woman unable to express themselves about intimacies, when they can, and are expected to, comment on the Soviet Union or identify birds by their song.