I’m going to take you on a bit of a wild ride this month, bouncing from title to genre, from setting to risk-taking, and more, so hang onto your hats, because here we go …

Except, oops, I do need to tell you what this is all about. It’s the Six Degrees of Separation monthly “meme” again, of course, and it’s currently hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest). Each month she nominates a book from which we create a chain of seven books, linking one from the other as the spirit moves. Yet, again, I haven’t read the starting book, Emma Donoghue’s Room. However, as usual that didn’t daunt me. At least I can promise to have read all the books I select for my chain.

So, my first link is on the title, and I’m choosing a title with a “room” in it, in this case a “hall” as in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (my review). It was, as I recollect, a somewhat controversial Booker Prize win because it was, shock! horror!, a so-called genre book. To confirm my memory of this I did a bit of a Google search and found this wonderful commentary from The Guardian at the time of its win:

She’s also, by the by, managed to sneak a ‘genre’ novel into the Booker winners’ notoriously literary paddock – and recalibrated the arena of historical fiction in the process. The accusation that this year’s shortlist was weighted too heavily towards the historical has dogged the debate surrounding it, but even those who found Wolf Hall mannered or boggy …  agreed that Mantel’s novel was a far more exciting proposition than the usual ladies-and-lances epics that the genre turns out.

Haha, I’ve always called them “bodice-rippers”, but I love commentator Sarah Crown’s “ladies-and-lances”.

Anyhow, moving right along, it is genre – historical fiction about a real historical figure – that I’m using for my next link, Kate Grenville’s The lieutenant (my review). It’s the second book in Grenville’s Secret River early-contact trilogy and was inspired by astronomer Lieutenant William Dawes, who came to Australia on the First Fleet. He befriended a young indigenous girl and took interest in the local language, which he documented in his notebooks. A good read.

As, it would be unjust to include a non-indigenous writer on first contact without also giving voice to an indigenous author, my next link is to Kim Scott’s Miles Franklin Award winning That deadman dance (my review). While Grenville’s book is set in the first years of the Sydney colony, Scott’s novel is about the establishment of the British colony in southwest Western Australia in the 1820s-1840s. It’s a significant and unforgettable book.

My next link is to another Miles Franklin award-winning book, though that’s not the reason I’m linking it. The link is the setting, Western Australia, and the book is Tim Winton’s Breath (my brief review). I loved this book. I loved its evocation of surfing, which is something I have no desire to do but Winton helped me understand its thrall. I also loved its exploration of male risk-taking behaviour. Tim Winton knows his subject so well.

And now, I’m going to draw a long bow, and move from a book about risk-taking to a book in which the author took big risks, JM Coetzee’s Diary of a bad year (my review). It’s a strange book to read, because it has three (two to begin with) concurrent strands running across the top, middle and bottom of the page, with each strand representing different voices. How do you read such a book? Coetzee is a writer who seeks new ways of confronting us with ideas that he thinks matter. Oh, and note that even though South-African born Coetzee now lives in Australia, he is this month’s non-Australian contribution, because I always like to have at least one.

My last link is perhaps even more spurious. Late in Diary of a bad year, Coetzee refers to his love of Bach. I suggested in my review that the book itself could be seen as pæan to Bach, because its three-part structure, in which each part counterpoints the others, could be seen as a textual representation of Bach’s polyphony. This brings me to Helen Garner’s novella The children’s Bach (my review). There are references to Bach’s music in the book. However, I’m linking again on the structural element because, even though Garner’s narrative is not so formally divided as Coetzee’s, she tells her story about Dexter and Athena and their family tightly, through multiple vignettes which also reflect Bach’s contrapuntal, polyphonic approach to music.

And so, here we are at the end – and somehow, although I’ve linked via various concepts and strayed a few centuries in time, we’ve returned in the end to a story about parents and children.

Have you read Room? And whether or not you have, what would you link to? 

You probably know all about the Six Degrees of Separation monthly “meme” by now, but here’s the gen for newbies. It’s currently hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest), who, each month, nominates a book from which we players create a chain of seven books, linking one from the other as the spirit moves. Unfortunately, once again, I haven’t read the starting book, Nick Hornby’s football fan-book Fever pitch, but our host Kate said (somewhere) that she thought it would be interesting to start with a book about sport – and I’m up for the challenge! As always (to date), I promise I’ve read all the books I select for my chain.

When I said above that I’m up for the challenge I meant it, because I immediately knew what my first link would be, Gerald Murnane’s delightful Something for the pain: A memoir of the turf (my review). It’s another memoir from a writer with passion for a sport. I enjoyed it for two reasons. I learnt a lot about Murnane, and I learnt about a sport I know nothing about – which is one of the joys of reading, isn’t it, learning about subjects you know nothing about?

A sport I know a little about – more as spectator than exponent – is swimming, and it is to a novel about swimming that I’m linking to next, Christos Tsiolkas’ Barracuda (my review). It tells the story of a young potential swimming champion from the “wrong” side of town being offered a scholarship to attend an elite school where he can be coached by a top swimming coach. The book is not so much about swimming as about the meaning of success and failure, and about what makes a good man.

My next link sees me leaving the sport theme to draw on Barracuda’s idea of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks finding himself among the well-to-do. Sonya Hartnett’s Golden boys (my review) is about the reverse. A well-to-do family moves to a poorer neighbourhood and the two sons find themselves having to mix with the sons of a very different world. But, their real challenge is their father, who is the reason the family needed to move. It’s a disturbing book.

My next book is also about fathers and his sons. It was one of my favourite discoveries last year, Stephen Orr’s The hands (my review). Its evocation of a father’s relationship with his sons, and of the relationship between the two brothers, particularly through wonderfully authentic dialogue, impressed me greatly. It is set on a remote South Australian farm and deals with the stresses of modern farming in a dry land, stresses that are exacerbated by the spectre of climate change.

Another novel about farms and climate change that I enjoyed was Alice Robinson’s Anchor point (my review). This one, though, was more about a daughter and her father. Interestingly, in both The hands and Anchor point the mother is absent – albeit for different reasons. And now, because I really should, as I’ve said before, link to at least one non-Australian work, I’m going to conclude with another novel about a missing mother …

Kyung-sook Shin’s 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize winner, Please look after mom (or mother) (my review). Set in South Korea, it tells the story of a mother who goes missing. I loved it for a number of reasons: it’s set in a country whose literature I don’t know; it is told from multiple points of view and in different voices (first, second and third person); and it explores some themes that interest me including city versus country values, the importance of literacy and education, and those universal emotions of guilt and regret.

And so, here we are at the end. This is the first time that all my links have drawn on the content of the books. I don’t think I can link at all back to the first book, but we have played some sports along the way, visited a couple of farms, and got to know a few parents and their children. That’s pretty interesting – at least, I think so.

Have you read Fever pitch? And whether or not you have, what would you link to? 

You probably all know the Six Degrees of Separation monthly “meme” by now, but here’s the info for those of you who haven’t caught up with it yet. It’s currently hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest). Each month, she nominates a book, from which “players” create a chain of six more books, linking one from the other as the spirit moves. Unfortunately, for the third time in a row, I haven’t read the starting book, Lauren Groff’s Fates and furies, but …

Daughter Gums has, so I asked her choose my first link. Her first suggestions were books I haven’t read – and that’s no good because my commitment is to having read all the books I choose for the chain. So then, after some to-ing and fro-ing, she came up with a book I lent her, Ariella Van Luyn’s Treading air (my review). There’s a problem, however, because the best linking point apparently relates to a “reveal” part way through Fates and furies, so I can’t use that. The other link is that both books, writes Daughter Gums, “track a couple’s relationship history from early on (particularly when the woman was quite young) through to the demise (in different forms, though …), both track the relationship through up and down …”. I liked this suggestion not only because it enabled me to highlight a debut Aussie author, but because it lets me link to …

One of my favourite Aussie authors, Thea Astley. Treading air is set in Brisbane and Townsville, and Thea Astley was born in Brisbane, moving to Townsville for a teaching job in her early twenties. Her first novel, Girl with a monkey, is set there, but I’m linking to The multiple effects of rainshadow (my review) which explores the longterm effects of a tragic event which occurred in 1930 on Palm Island, just north of Townsville. This island was where the Australian government “sent” problematic (from the “white” point of view) indigenous Australians, but the tragedy was enacted by the “crazed” white superintendent. It did, however, involve indigenous people in the ensuing “resolution” of the superintendent’s actions, and resulted in a surprisingly just court decision.

My next link is probably obvious, Chloe Hooper’s The tall man (my mini-review), which is about another tragedy on Palm Island. Hooper’s book, though, is a true crime non-fiction work. It chronicles the 2004 death in custody of an indigenous man, Cameron Doomadgee, and the subsequent riot and ongoing unrest concerning the official response through criminal courts, appeals and coronial investigations. Here, though, is not the place to unravel, if we could, the truth of this situation, but Hooper’s book is an excellent read both for her coverage of the subject and as an example of a genre which we, in Australia, see as being championed by Helen Garner.

And now, you probably think that I’ll link to Helen Garner, but that would be poor form I think because, having linked to two books by white (non-indigenous) writers exploring black-white relations in some way, I should (and would like) to link to an indigenous author. So, I’m going to go back, back, way before 1930, to the early nineteenth century settlement by the British of Western Australian – that is, to Kim Scott’s wonderful That deadman dance (my review). In it Scott tells the story of first contact from the local people’s, the Noongar’s, point of view.  His thesis, supported, apparently, by historical evidence, is that the Noongar were willing to work with the newcomers, but of course they were the losers in the end.

I’m going stay with this idea of contact, and link to another indigenous author’s book, Marie Munkara’s Every secret thing (my review). This book, which is more a collection of interconnected stories than a novel, is set in northern Australia and explores the relationship between indigenous people (the “bush mob”) and white people (the “mission mob”). The “bush mob” think they can keep the upper hand, or, at least, maintain their pride and independence. This is a very funny book, but its humour has serious bite. In the end, of course, it’s not the “bush mob” who have the power.

And now, partly because I really should include at least one non-Australian book, I’m going to link to another comic-satire, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of suburbia (my review). It’s a more than appropriate link, in fact, because not only does it have over-the-top humour, like Munkara’s book, it is, also, partly about “other”, in this case about immigrants trying to make their way in England. As narrator Karim says, “to the English we were always wogs and nigs and Pakis and the rest of it”. However, unlike Munkara’s “bush mob”, Karim and his friends do manage to make some self-determining way in the world they find themselves in.

And so, this time I’ve linked mostly on content, with a nod along the way to setting and style. Not knowing Fates and furies, I can’t say whether we’ve ended up anywhere near where we started. Can anyone enlighten me?

And, if not, there’s always my usual question for this meme: where would Fate and furies take you – your first step at least?

Ok, I admit it, I’m hooked on this meme, not only because it’s a fun intellectual challenge to find links between books, but also because it gives me an opportunity to revisit books I’ve read, which helps keep them fresh in my mind. For those who haven’t caught up with this meme, it’s the Six Degrees of Separation monthly “meme”  and it’s currently hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest). Each month, she nominates a book, and then we who play create a chain of seven books, linking one from the other as the spirit moves. Unfortunately, like last month, I haven’t read the starting book, Stieg Larsson’s The girl with the dragon tattoo but I promise I’ve read all the books in my chain!

Now, you might expect me to link Larsson’s The girl with the dragon tattoo to another crime/mystery novel or, perhaps, to another novel by a Swedish author or one set in Sweden, but I’m not going down these paths. This novel, as you may know, was published posthumously – and this is the tack I’m going to take. It has led me straight to Australian poet Dorothy Porter’s collection, The bee hut (my review), which was published after she died from breast cancer. This is one of those books that I don’t need to be reminded of, because its ending is so powerfully generous. She wrote, just two and a half weeks before her death, the following lines: Something in me/despite everything/can’t believe my luck. Now that’s inspiring!

Generosity of spirit – a willingness to view the world positively – is something I prize. If we were all only a little more generous to each other, surely the world would be a better place, or am I naive? Anyhow, one of the most generous books I’ve read since starting this blog was Izzeldin Abuelaish’s memoir I shall not hate (my review). If anyone had a reason to hate, it’s he – he lost three daughters and a niece in an attack on Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces  – and yet he chose the “path of light” over that of “darkness” because he believes in “co-existence, not endless cycles of revenge and retribution”. If he can do it, surely the rest of us can?

Now Izzeldin Abulaish also happens to be a medical doctor, which reminds me of a fictional doctor, Rieux in Albert Camus’ The plague (my review), who, albeit in a different circumstances, evinces generosity of spirit or selflessness. This is a book I’ve read a few times, and will very likely read again, because it’s about people being prepared to take a stand, people who put themselves at risk. Rieux himself talks of people who, by “refusing to bow down to pestilences [whether these be natural or man-made, like, say, Nazism], strive their utmost to be healers.”

And now, to get off this generosity/selflessness bandwagon, albeit it’s a worthy topic to discuss, I’m going to do the more obvious thing and link via the author’s nationality. I haven’t read a lot of French authors on this blog, but one I did read one fairly recently, Pierre Lemaitre’s The great swindle (my review). Its story of France in the aftermath of the First World War is a powerful one, but one of the issues that my reading group discussed when doing this book was its translation. Some felt it was a bit uneven. I didn’t feel that – I felt the author intended an unevenness or jerkiness – but I am always a little bothered about reading translations because there’s a mediator between me and the text.

However, this doesn’t stop me reading translations because they are the only way, given I’m not fluent in multiple languages, that I can read works from non-English writers. Hence, my next link is to another translated work, Sawako Ariyoshi’s The doctor’s wife (my review), which is historical fiction about the Japanese doctor, Hanaoka Seishū (1760-1835) who is purported to be the first to use general anaesthesia to perform surgery. However, as the book’s title suggests, the Ariyoshi’s main concern is not him, but the women in his life, his wife and controlling mother. She explores the competition that occurs between these two women who play a secondary role in the life of the important man.

A recent book which explores the secondary role of women to men is Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things (my review). It’s a very different book, which takes as its starting point the way women’s sexuality is used against them in the support if not furtherance of male power. But it does have a subtext, that we also see in Ariyoshi, to do with ways in which women can be their own worst enemy.

And so, quite unintentionally as I just followed my nose, I see that I have come almost full circle from a novel set in Sweden which reflects misogynistic behaviour to an Australian novel which confronts such behaviour head on! In between we’ve travelled to Australia, the Middle East, France and Japan, and explored, in some at least, the best in human behaviour! Such is the reader’s lot.

Where would The girl with the dragon tattoo take you – your first step at least?

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly “meme” hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest). Each month, she nominates a book, and then those who choose to play create a chain of six books, linking one from the other as the spirit moves. Now, I hadn’t planned to play this time because I haven’t read Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road (nor did I even see the movie), but I need to make an embarrassing confession. I’ve cheated on the last two “memes”. I’ve only done SIX books, not SIX degrees of separation from the chosen book making SEVEN. Where was my brain? Well, wherever it was, I have it back now, so have decided to prove it by playing this time after all …

Yates’ Revolutionary Road is set in suburban America in the 1950s. Wikipedia quotes Yates saying he intended the book to be an “indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price”. It was much like this in Australia too – and it’s understandable given people’s very real memories of World War II – but not everyone dreamed these suburban dreams. There were, for example, the Communists who had a different vision of how life should be. Lesley Lebkovicz’s verse novel The Petrov poems (my review) tells the story of a very different couple to Yates’. They were Soviet intelligence agents posted in Australia, and their lives derailed badly as their spying was uncovered.

There are many places I could go from here, but I’m keen to encourage more people to try verse novels, so I’m going to link by form and choose Ali Cobby Eckermann’s Ruby Moonlight (my review). Like Lebkowicz’s novel, Ruby Moonlight is historical fiction, but set in a very different world. Indigenous author Eckermann tells the story of early contact between indigenous people and white settlers in remote South Australia around 1880. It’s a beautiful (and accessible) read, one that is both uncompromising in identifying the wrongs that have been done, and yet also open to seeing pain and loneliness among the settlers. I do admire such generosity.

Something else I’m keen to encourage is for us (myself included) to read more books by indigenous writers. I’ve read a few here over the years, but the one I’m going to choose is Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and light (my review). This is one of those books which defies definition in terms of its form, but I’m not going to engage in that now. What I want to draw from here is its middle section, “Water”, which is an edgy dystopian story set in the near future. It manages to addresses contemporary political issues regarding environmental degradation and indigenous ownership through a clever story about “plant-people”.

Another edgy dystopian book set in the near future is Jane Rawson’s gorgeously titled, A wrong turn at the office of unmade lists (my review). Actually it shifts a bit between a sort-of imaginary 1997 San Francisco and a 2030 Melbourne, and belongs to that new genre, cli-fi, though it crosses other genres too, including time-travel. It’s a rather mind-bending (as well as genre-bending) read, because Rawson has one of those quick-witted imaginations that can address something very serious while maintaining a playful edge. And I do like playful writers, so next I’m going to choose …

A non-Australian book, to give all my non-Australian readers a bit of a fighting chance with this list. How about Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler question (my review)? I am a bit of a sucker for Jewish humour, and this book, as my family will tell you, really tickled my funny bone. I mean, whoever heard of a Gentile wanting to be a Jew. (Well, yes, we all have I’m sure, but I think you know what I mean …) The book is full of wordplays and jokes, all the while addressing personal concerns like identity, love and loss alongside more political ones to do with issues like Zionism and, more broadly, what it means to be Jewish.

Now, where can that lead me to for my all important SEVENTH book? Well, I think at this point, I might turn serious, not that playful writers like Rawson and Jacobson aren’t serious, because they are, but having raised the Jewish question (ha!) I think I should continue with it. I have read and reviewed some excellent memoirs by Jewish writers, but I think I’m going to go for the jugular and choose Imre Kertesz’s Fateless (or Fatelessnes, depending on your translation) (my review). I say “jugular” because this is one of those books that needs a bit of nutting out; it engages with some fundamental ideas about the human condition, about what is fate, what is freedom.

And so, we have moved from an American couple in the 1950s, through Australia past and future, taking a little side trip back to America, before moving on to contemporary England and ending up in Hungary during World War 2. If my first 6-degrees meme had a certain circularity, this one seems to be rather more linear.

Where would Revolutionary Road take you – your first step at least?

I rather enjoyed playing Kate’s #6Degrees “meme” last month so, while I don’t expect to play every month, November’s starting book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never let me go, was far too tempting to let go! Once again, read on to see why …

I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian Never let me go before I started blogging, and have only reviewed one of his works since then. I’m thrilled, therefore, to have an opportunity to record that although I haven’t read all of his books, I have read most of them, because I enjoy his writing immensely. I particularly like his tone, which often comprises a sort of matter-of-fact, almost emotionless description of things which, we come to realise, are pretty unpleasant. And these things are usually told to us by narrators who, themselves, don’t recognise the truth of what they are seeing/describing (or certainly don’t recognise it fully). They are, in other words, often unreliable.

Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005 (Courtesy: Mariusz Kubik CC-BY-SA 3.0)

I rather like unreliable narrators, partly, I’m sure, because most of us aren’t wonderfully reliable at narrating our lives. We see our own stories from our own perspective and, if we ever see the fuller picture, it’s often in retrospect, don’t you think? So, for my next book I’m going to choose the only Ishiguro book I’ve reviewed here, Nocturnes: Five stories of music and nightfall (my review). This is a collection of short stories, some of them linked. In all of them, as I wrote in my post, “the narrator is either unreliable or in some other way not completely across what is going on. This is the Ishiguro stamp … as is the overall tone of things not being quite right, of potential not being quite achieved, of people still looking for an elusive something but not necessarily knowing quite what that is.”

Now, I could link to another book with an unreliable narrator, but that would get boring, so instead I’ll go with content. As the full title of Nocturnes suggests, the book features music and musicians in most of the stories, with the last story being titled “Cellists”. That reminded me of Emma Ayres’* memoir Cadence: Travels with music (my review) about her bicycle trip from England to Hong Kong. It’s a thoughtful, engaging book in which she reflects on her life as a musician, and her desire, violist that she was, to be a cellist! See the neat link!

Of course, as well as talking about her two main loves, cycling and music, she talks about the places she rides through. One that she fell in love with, despite all the warnings she’d received while planning her trip, was Pakistan, where she was treated with kindness and generosity almost without fail. Her experience of Pakistan brought to mind a book I read for the Man Asian Prize Shadow Jury in 2011, a book that I can’t forget, in fact, Jamil Ahmad’s Wandering falcon (my review). It is set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban and explores life in the multi-tribal region on the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. It highlights what happens when political borders cross tribal lands. The writing evokes the unforgiving landscape and the often brutal justice beautifully. While I don’t remember the details now, its overall impression and theme have stayed with me.

For my next book, I’m not going to link by content or tone, but by author. You see, Jamil Ahmad was a late bloomer. He was born in 1933, but Wandering falcon, his first book, was not published until 2011 (though apparently he wrote the stories in the 1970s). I’ve written a post on late bloomers, so I’m going to choose one of those, but which one? Well, I reckon Marion Halligan, for three reasons: she lives in my city, I love her books, and she’s a stalwart supporter of the arts in the ACT. The last book of hers that I’ve read, though I have a couple on the TBR pile, was Valley of grace (my review). It’s set in Paris, where Halligan lived for several years. It’s a beautiful book and is, as I wrote in my post, Halligan’s “meditation on children – who they are, what they mean to us”.

So, where to from here? This journey from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never let me go (which, interestingly, is about children/young adults) has not been plotted in advance. For my final book, I have a few options: I could stick with an author connection, or return to a content link, or launch into something new. Something new? Yes, why not? I’m thinking book designer, because Valley of grace is really beautiful to hold and to read. It was designed by Sandy Cull, an award-winning book designer who also designed a book I read very recently, Anna Spargo-Ryan’s The paper house (my review). Not only is this book’s cover gorgeous, but its interior design is important, particularly in the increasing use of white space later in the book to convey the main character’s heightening mental illness. (There is a content link with this book, too, as it turns out, because The paper house is about parents and children.)

And, there you have it … another fun, for me anyhow, Six Degrees of Separation Meme. I’m surprised, in a way, where I ended up, because Never let me go is a dystopian novel, and I do read such novels, but somehow I led myself off in another direction! I only have myself to blame.

Anyhow, if you’ve read Never let me go, what book would you choose to link from it?

* Since writing this book, Emma Ayres has transitioned to Eddie Ayres. I’ve used the female pronoun here because he wrote this book as a woman.

I have never played this #6Degrees “meme” before but when Kate (BookasAreMyFavouriteAndBest) announced that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely loud and incredibly close (her response) would be the October starter, I knew I had to do it. Read on to see why …

I have read Extremely loud and incredibly close and as I recollect I enjoyed it. I don’t remember the details now, but I did think that Foer managed well that fine line between warmth and sentimentality. However, the book is memorable to me for another reason, which stems from the fact that one of my online reading groups discussed it. A member of that group had great trouble with the title. It is, after all, not only a bit of a mouthful, but rather abstract, with nothing that you can particularly hang your memory on. Anyhow, in one email my online-bookgroup friend described it as “Foer’s Amazingly and Suddenly (I’m sorry I can’t keep that title straight)”. Every time I think of Foer, I think of her and smile! Hello, Susan!

And this makes me think of other books with long or hard to remember titles. One I’ve reviewed here is Andrew O’Hagan’s The life and opinions of  Maf the dog and of his friend Marilyn Monroe (my review). This book entertained me at the time because of the way it plays with reality, art and the imagination. Maf, the dog, suggests that “we are what we imagine we are: reality itself is the true fiction.” I love this paradoxical way of viewing ourselves, of seeing the artifice in “reality”. However, the point is that while I usually remember Foer’s title, I always have trouble with this one. I had to do a keyword search on my blog to get it exactly. All I knew was that it had “dog” and “Marilyn” in it!

But now, where to go? I could move to a book whose cover design comprises mostly words. There are a few of those around. But I really can’t go past another “life and opinions” book, Laurence Sterne’s The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. It’s been many a decade since I read this book – back in my university days – but its tongue-in-cheek-take-the-reader-along-for-a-ride style, its purporting to be what it isn’t, that is, a biography, was an eye-opener to my young literature-student self. It also introduced me to the picaresque style of novel. This is a style I always look a bit askance at, and yet usually enjoy when I get down to it, because it tends to be satirical – and I’m never averse to a bit of satire.

An Aussie example of the picaresque – though it’s not set in Australia – is Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (my review). The object of Carey’s satire, that “great American experiment, democracy”, seems rather apposite given the current presidential race shenanigans. Donald Trump represents the very values and attitudes – the unquestioning belief in capitalism – which Carey satirises. Another issue Carey questions in this novel is whether “high” art and “total” democracy are mutually exclusive? Do you let the majority decide what art they will support and fund? If or when you do, what art will they choose, he ponders.

Art, the making of it, is also one of Steve Toltz’s targets in his satirical novel Quicksand (my review) but his angle is slightly different. Part of it is the way people plunder the lives of others to make art, and part is an exploration of why we make art. Is life easier with or without art is one of his questions. Protagonist Liam at one stage desires a life “unencumbered by art” whereas art teacher Morell suggests we make art to understand who we are and why we’re here. In the end, though, like many good satires, there’s no simple answer.

But, shock, horror, my first five books are all by men, even though women writers comprise well over 50% of my reading. How did this happen? I’m not sure, but I can’t end without one woman writer! Debra Adelaide’s protagonist, Dove, in The women’s pages (my review) is, like Liam in Quicksand, writing a novel – but Adelaide’s is not a satirical novel. It’s a more personal drama about the urge to write fiction (create art, in other words), about how fiction might illuminate life’s meanings, and about how we tell and use stories.

I’ve come a long way from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely loud and incredibly close, a 9/11 story, and yet not so far really, because both books – Foer’s and Adelaide’s – are about grief and loss, and both, one indirectly the other directly, are about how art might play a role in resolving the tragedies that confront us. That seems to make a rather nice circle, albeit comprising 6° not 360°!

If you’d like to read other responses to this “meme” check out Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) and Jenny Ackland’s (Seraglio).