Sunday, March 12, 2006

"Nine Hours North" - Tim Sinclair


Nine hours north of everything I knew, of all my life that's made sense so far . . . Things stopped making sense from the moment Adam arrived in Japan - the conservative job, the shoebox apartment and the growing weight of his relationship with Sarah.
By the time Marianne arrives, he's been battery-caged for so long it all seems normal - but then she changes everything . . .

A bittersweet novel about finding the strength to move forward.

Nine hours north has just been released this February, published by Penguin and I must confess to be very excited about this book, not only because I know the author (albeit tangentially) as he is the son of my 1st year Biology lecturer *and* the husband of a dear friend of mine who I went to HS with, but also because it's the debut novel by a young Australian - Adelaidean no less!, AND because it's a verse novel. Remember Vickram Seth's 'The Golden Gate' or Matt Rubenstein's 'Solstice' or Dorothy Porter's wonderful 'The Monkey's Mask' and 'What a piece of work'?? Great verse novels, in a genre which is slimly populated but satisfying to read.

I think it's incredibly brave to be a writer, and even more brave to be a poet. Poetry! Who does that these days, when everything is meant to be useful and contribute to production of bright and shiny things that you can eat or wear or drive or renovate? For that reason alone I am committed to buying the work of contemporary poets / poetic fiction (I just made that genre up) writers - good to support the dreamers, so we remember how to dream.

Anyway, this book is set in Japan, characters are early twenties Australians teaching English as part of a youthful adventure away from home post-uni. They are in a relationship but things are getting weary. Captures those few years (longer??) when the acting out of a working life feels like playing dress ups, it can be done with irony, it is still so new, and uni life still feels so close. When you just know that you will never wear a suit and be old and be boring. The interesting thing about their relationship is that they seem to be developing quite different attitudes to their life, about what is important and how to live it.

I must confess that parts were uncomfortable reading for me in terms of candid insight into the mind of a male partner who is increasingly dissatisfied a few years into a relationship - I think I was a bit defensive about his judgement about Sarah. I did also wonder if it was going to be a 2-D 'my girlfriend's so boring I need a wild adventure' story - but it wasn't, it didn't end up being this, the characters fleshed out with much more realistic too-ings and fro-ings of feeling. It effectively built up tension as you wonder what will happen to topple the domestic order. It rolls along, with cycling becoming a theme of the book - Adam and Sarah united in their use of bikes for commuting to work and also as the mode of travel they choose for their long-planned touring holiday around Japan.

Definitely worth a read, and may especially apppeal to those who are into bikes, who have had a 'coming of age' relationship, have visited Japan, who have been confused about their feelings for someone, and who like wry, simply stated poetry. Proof that poetry doesn't have to be abstract and fey and hard to access. Buy a copy! Give a copy to a friend! :)

Authors website

"Olivo Oliva" - Phillipe Poloni

Turns out my local library service runs this you beaut service called 'Book Express' for city commuter types. A stall at the train station complete with network accessed laptop, a friendly and informative person on the other side of the stall, and a bunch of books and audio books to borrow. All this between 5.30ish and 7ish am. And me lugging a laptop and some reading for work but glad of any excuse not to do that and be immersed in fiction instead. Sipping coffee, reading, it’s almost like being on a moving café rather than a mode of transport. Almost.

I borrowed a couple, one was “Olio Oliva” by Phillipe Poloni (1997 Stoddart publishing). Read it that day, was one of those sparsely type fonted slim books that you just whip through (especially when you are on your derrière for 4 hours with no distractions).

It starts with the relationship between an olive tree and its olives. Describes the anguish of an olive wanting to be free of the tree, the trees contempt for its ‘droppings’, the tree as patriarch. The gist of the story then is boy meets girl, boy beds girl, olive tree drops olive from great heights into the steamy sea of lovemaking below, girl has olivish baby. Sounds a bit like ‘Leolo’ that Italian movie where conception takes place in the back of a tomato truck? Yes, I thought that too. It’s all about the olive in Sicily, the role of landowners versus the landless poor, resentment, fear of losing hold of power, and ultimately revenge. The writing was lovely, sparse and poetic, translated from the Italian by David Homel. It did remind me of Calvino in some of its language but perhaps that is just due to the meandering, observational, dreamy nature of the writing, and the playing with words - or maybe it’s just that these are probably the only Italian authors I’ve read (that’s a bit tragic – so anglocentric in what I read…). It captured a very languid feeling of a slow, hot, worn out Sicily rather well, and gave an interesting picture of the successive waves of invaders that have moved through that part of the world, and the layering of culture and religion that takes place as a result.

Characters? The sicario in the new country. Some quirky ancient craftsmen accompanied by a donkey, who has his own bank account and gets paid the lions share of their fee. Hunchbacked moralists who guard over unwed mothers in crumbling ruins. The patriarch who is superstitious and ruthless in protecting his empire. Some of these characters reminded me of people from Loius de Berniers novels – they are irrational and contradictory and flawed and colourful.

This is a bit like a gentle, lazy, loping fairy tale, which doesn’t deliver much in the way of ‘action’, and everything that happens has already been foretold at the start. Even the end is a kind of poetic anticlimax. However, this is entirely in keeping with the setting of the tale, and what it says are the characteristics of that place – so this kind of works.

It made me want to go lie under an olive tree and eat pasta and drink wine.

The young olive tree had a soul. It was possessed of a memory. A kind of heredity. Awkwardly, it paraded the military pride of its ancestors. Poor little tree! It was but a simple domesticated olive producer among the million of other domesticated Mediterranean copies, all planted in rigorously straight rows. No more petalism! Doric temples a thing of the past! Polytheist ceremonies accompanied by chanting and pungent Levantine incense – all obsolete. Its leaf would no longer serve as a model for those early Christian mosaicists who decorated their catacombs, late at night, illuminated by the oil of its fruit. All that had happened, long ago… All that belonged to another time. The scion was a heraldic tree no more, but the object of intensive rationalised agriculture. And the haughty olive tree knew nothing of that!’ (p.4)

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.
--Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) English author