Tag: literary fiction

Attempts to Draw Jesus, by Stephen Orr

Being without a job means being aimless. For Rolly, living in Adelaide, it means retracing familiar routes, watching people, applying for jobs he does’t want. For Jack, living in a small country town, it means being nobody. The two have never met, but when they both answer the same ad and apply for jobs as jackaroos, their lives come together.

Neither boy has any experience of Outback life, but both have plenty of will and nothing to lose. This is an experience they hope will make them into something.

Attempts to Draw Jesus, the first novel for Adelaide author Stephen Orr, is partly based on the story of Simon Amos and James Annetts, two young boys who took on jackaroo work in the 1980s and were subsequently found dead in the Great Sandy Desert. This is not, however, a non-fiction piece. Instead, Orr gets inside the heads of his own characters, whose lives do overlap those of Amos and Annetts, to show the motivations, the emotions and the growth of his characters. He also leads them through a journey of self-discovery which makes the novel more uplifting than the newspaper articles which reported the real-life event.

Orr also creates adventures and friends for the pair, rich in their diversity and in the various ways they touch the lives of Jack and Rolly.

Attempts to Draw Jesus is an insightful and richly developed novel.

Attempts to Draw Jesus, by Stephen Orr
Allen & Unwin, 2002

Carrion Colony, by Richard King

We are here to etch the faint name of England upon the dust.

Set in the early nineteenth century, Carrion Colony explores the beginnings of white Australia in the mythical colony of Old and New Bridgeford. As they adapt to life in this harsh and alien clime, officers and convicts are stretched beyond belief just to survive.

Among the characters are a doctor so terrified by the native flora, he is determined to eradicate it, a madman who has been isolated on a rock in the middle of the bay and a Governor who chooses to exercise his medical skills only when it suits, among other flawed and eccentric characters.

This is a colony where mayhem and violence are the norm, where there is nothing too far fetched to be considered a legitimate part – for everything in this colony is far fetched.

Richard King, winner of the 1995 Vogel Literary Award, exercises his skills as an absurdist writer. Unfortunately, he is perhaps too absurd, for in its efforts to be clever it becomes too clever for the average reader.

This is a novel where plot and character are pushed aside in the pursuit of art. Perhaps one needs to be finely schooled in the art of the absurd to truly enjoy it.

Carrion Colony, by Richard King
Allen & Unwin, 2002

Believers in Love, by Alan Clay

Sax is exhausted, from lack of sleep, and from hiding from the vast whirl of experience. Then in one day he meets Zoe and takes his daughter Sarah to Bondi beach to build a sandcastle. Both events change his future.

Sax and Sarah are discovered on Bondi beach and whisked off to build a sandcastle for a festival in New Zealand. This adventure seems set to launch them on other, equally as exciting adventures, along with Zoe and Adam, the festival organiser.

Not all adventures are exciting, however, as Sarah finds out. Her Dad and Zoe are getting closer, and her fairy, Firefly, isn’t always there when she’s needed. For Sax and Zoe there’s the confusion of their feelings for each other, and the discovery that not every project goes as planned. For Adam, the knowledge that politics is not always fair lands him in Australia with the others.

Believers in Love, the third offering by quirky Australian novelist, Alan Clay, is about love, laughter and life. The story is liberally interspersed by anecdotes taking an alternate look at life, sometimes foorm the point of view of the book’s characters, other times from beyond, but always with a depth which gives pause to the reader before the story continues.

This is not just a story; this is an exploration of emotion and philosophy.

Alan Clay grew up in New Zealand, studied clown in Sweden and for the past ten years has resided in Sydney, where he runs Playspace Studio, Sydney’s Physical Theatre Studio.

Believers in Love, By Alan Clay
Artmedia Publishing, 2001

The Artist is a Thief

Jean-Loup’s task seems simple. A Melbourne-based financial advisor, he has been sent by ATSIC to Mission Hole Community to conduct an audit of its art centre. But Jean-Loup soon realises that nothing in this community is as simple as it appears.

The community’s most noted artist is Margaret Thatcher Gandarrway, whose works have achieved international recognition and attracted high prices. But something disturbing has happened. At the unveiling of her latest painting, the picture was found slashed and with the words “the artist is a thief” scrawled across it. The shock of this act and the implications of the message has sent shock waves around the art community. Is Margaret Thatcher Gandarrway a thief? And what exactly is it she has stolen?

When Jean-Loup Wild arrives at the community to investigate the running of the arts centre and to try to reinstate its credibility following these events, he meets with unexpected obstacles and opposition. On his first night in the community he comes across the murdered corpse of the person most likely to help in his investigation. No one else in the community even wants to talk to him, let alone help him.

Not only is the investigation proving difficult, but Jean-Loup has to face personal conflicts as well. he has a personal link to the community – his mysterious older sister Duchess whose history he would like to trace and who is partially the reason for his accepting this job. He also finds himself increasingly attracted to Petra, the beautiful Aboriginal woman who helps him in his investigations.

As he confronts his past, Jean-Loup must also confront the present. He must try to unravel the mystery of the murder, the elusive Margaret Thatcher Gandarrway, and the message on the painting, whilst working on a playing field where everyone but him seems to know the rules. Whilst piecing together the puzzle he gets to know himself and the society in which he live son a more intimate level than ever before.

The Artist is a Thief, winner of the The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, is a philosophical detective novel with a difference, sure to provoke thought as it entertains.

The Artist is a Thief, by Stephen Gray
Allen & Unwin, 2001.

The Water Underneath, by Kate Lyons

When a young woman and her baby go missing, gossip abounds in the small mining town where she lives. Twenty years later, the local lake yields human bones. The woman’s daughter, Ruth, returns to the town of her birth, ostensibly to see her dying Uncle Frank. He has carried secrets through those two decades which have rendered him a shadow of the man he once was.

The Water Underneath, by Kate Lyons, is a superb piece of literature. Its style, coupled with its water and journeying motifs, lend it satisfactory tones of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing. The gripping mystery of the disappearance and the family’s history is seen through the eyes of three women of different generations who, while not close, share the common bond of their love for Frank, the man at the head of the family.

The Water Underneath, Lyons’ first novel, was a deserving runner-up in the 1999 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award. It paints a vivid picture of the town and countryside in which it is set – both the physical surrounds and the social backdrop to the tale – at the same time exploring some of the issues which have divided Australian society.

This is a story which will grip you with its mystery and its believability from start to finish.

The Water Underneath, by Kate Lyons
Published by Allen & Unwin, 2001