Pictures of You: Collected Stories, by Tony Birch

A collection of Tony Birch's stand out stories. 

Having recently won the Age Book of the Year award for Women and Children, and with a substantial body of work now to his name, it feels like the time has come to celebrate writer Tony Birch. Hence the lushly produced Pictures of You, a collection of twenty-two previously published stories.

Birch is a writer who doesn’t stray too far from what he knows. He concentrates on his gritty Fitzroy upbringing, a time when people’s lives played out on the street. It was a time, too, when technology was whatever tools you had on hand, and what you could do with them. In a favourite story, “The Bicycle Thieves”, a foul mouthed neighbor donates a bicycle he cobbled together to some adventure seeking local kids. In other stories Birch tackles his fraught relationship with his father, scenes of domestic violence, terrible working class jobs, the vulnerability of children and the lives of Indigenous people. 

Considering the difficult subject matter of many of Birch’s stories, they should be harrowing to read. Instead they provide warm, sympathetic portraits of people under duress. These are timeless stories written in a simple, unadorned prose, every word compelling.

Pictures of You: Collected Stories, by Tony Birch. Published by U.Q.P. $45

JAN26

Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self, by Alexander Douglas

A philosopher explores notions of identity in this fascinating study.

Philosopher Alexander Douglas was born in Canberra, Australia, and now teaches at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In Against Identity, he explores how we cultivate our identities and how such a pursuit can harm us personally. Not only that, but identity - with clans, nations, social groups, ideologies - leads to social disharmony, conflict, even war. How to break out of this mind set and perhaps find peace? Douglas examines the thought of three philosophers from vastly different times and cultures - Zhuangzi (4th century BCE China), Spinoza (Dutch Enlightenment) and Rene Girard (20th century French theorist).

The overarching theory that Douglas weaves together is that identity is mimetic - we look to others and emulate people we think of as ideal. We imitate identity models. We also like others to emulate us. But identity can never be fixed - our subjective selves change constantly, as does the world around us. The remedy to this is to “embrace all possible identities while being defined by none of them.” That is, accept otherness and the ebb and flow of life, but resist defining ourselves against others. 

​A deeply thought out theory of being presented in lucid, accessible prose.

Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self, by Alexander Douglas. Published by Allen Lane. $45

JAN26

The Adventures of Pongo and Stink, by Lisa Nicol

Two pigs masquerade as dogs, with hilarious results.

Pongo and Stink are two pigs living in the barn at Farmer Nic’s. Life is pretty good, despite the occasional midnight visit from a menacing fox. But Pongo aspires to more. When she sees Farmer Nic’s dog Rollo living it up at the farmhouse, enjoying affectionate pats and scones with jam and cream, she starts to get ideas. She suggests to her good friend Stink that they dress up as dogs. Stink is cautious, and he takes some persuading, but soon enough they find themselves at Mr Waleed’s costume shop, being fitted out. All goes to plan. Farmer Nic is fooled by the costumes and the pigs enjoy all the delights that the farmhouse has to offer. Until that is they are asked to perform real dog tasks, like rounding up sheep. 

Lisa Nicol’s piggy adventure is a zany romp full of delightful improbabilities, where costume sellers speak pig and a farmer doesn’t recognise his own animals wearing fluffy zip up suits. But the story has such a wonderful energy that the reader is happily taken along for the ride. Think Shaun the Sheep meets Roald Dahl. With delightful illustrations by Karen Blair. Warmly recommended!

Ages 6-10.

The Adventures of Pongo and Stink, by Lisa Nicol. Published by Penguin. $19.99

JAN26

Discontent, by Beatriz Serrano

A young woman tries to survive the hypocrisy of the corporate world

​Marisa is a creative director at an advertising agency in Madrid, Spain. Everything, it would seem, is pretty much perfect. A well paying job, nice apartment, all in all a comfortable life. But she is going through an existential crisis. Her job, she knows, only exists to push vulnerable people into buying crappy products, preying on their insecurities. The people she works with -  ambitious, sycophantic, and duplicitous - are stomach turning. They make her feel literally sick. To cope she’s taking a steady stream of tranquilizers. There is one co-worker, however, that she admired. Erika. Sarcastic and ironic, Erika wasn’t the type to bend over backwards to please management, and often dropped zingers that made her attitude plain. But she died suddenly, in mysterious circumstances never explained. Was it suicide? A drug overdose? Misadventure? Rather than investigate too deeply, the superficial office culture moves on. Her death is deemed sad, even tragic, but the bland workday has its own momentum that buries such deaths and disappearances.

One day Marisa gets terrible news. Her manager is organising a team building retreat. She will have to travel and stay with the workmates she can’t stand. The trip goes from bad to worse, until Marisa comes up with a plan to subtly sabotage the whole event. 

Beatriz Serrano is a young writer who has written for BuzzFeed and Vanity Fair. Discontent is narrated in the first person, giving the reader an almost stream-of-consciousness ride through Marisa’s dissatisfied mind. The novel is a rancid comedy, with plenty of excoriating lines about the meaninglessness of modern work. It also provides astute observations on the intersection of feminism and capitalism, and how women have been betrayed by its promise.

A withering critique dressed up as a single-woman-in-the-city story, there is much to enjoy in this often heartfelt book. 

Discontent, by Beatriz Serrano. Published by Harvill/Secker. $34.99

JAN26

The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof, by Annie Schmidt

A network of cats help a journalist break a big news story

​Tibble is a reporter with the Killenthorn Courier, but he is in trouble with his editor. His boss says he writes too many cat themed stories, and needs to write on other topics. The trouble is that Tibble doesn’t have a very forceful personality, the type a journalist needs to ask confronting questions and get the breaking scoop. Then something strange occurs. He is sitting in the town’s Green Square when a dog comes bounding through. Up a nearby tree there are rustling leaves and Tibble presumes a cat has sought refuge, having been chased by the dog. But it turns out to be a woman, not a cat. Her name is Minou. The strange thing is, she actually is a cat that has been mysteriously turned human by eating something from a bin near the Institute for Biochemical research.

Minou is looking for a home, and starts sleeping in a box at Tibble’s apartment. The good news is Minou still speaks cattish, and can communicate with all the local cats, of which there are many posted at all the town’s main spots, like the hotel, church and post office. Soon Tibble is getting great tip offs for articles from this makeshift cat press agency. Trouble brews when the town’s most eminent citizen, Mr Ellmore, a factory owner and professed animal lover, is discovered by the cats to be up to no good. Can Tibble’s pen, with the help of the cats, expose Mr Ellmore?

Annie M. G. Schmidt was a famous Dutch children’s writer. The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof was first published in 1970 and is re-printed here by Pushkin Press, with a translation by David Colmer. Schmdit’s prose is light and breezy, carrying the narrative along at a pleasant clip. The story has a zany tone and much of it requires the suspension of disbelief (for adult readers at least, children will be more sensible). The broad cast of cats is a delight, with some fun names (Ecumenica is the church cat). The best drawn cat character is Tatter, a tough-as-nails street cat who has had umpteen litters and gets into her fair share of scrapes, only to emerge triumphant. There is a vague theme of finding the courage to overcome your fears, but the real thrust of the book is a devotion to nonsense and fun. 

A bright and inventive entertainment that will enchant readers of all ages.

The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof, by Annie Schmidt. Published by Pushkin Children's $19.99

JAN26

Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New, by Troy Bramston

 One of Australia’s most iconic prime ministers is given the thorough biographical treatment.

​
Gough Whitlam was beyond dispute one of Australia’s most significant political figures. He single handedly wrested the Australian Labor Party away from its traditional working class roots and old school socialist ideology, dragging it kicking and screaming into the modern world. In many ways, pre-Whitlam labor resembled today’s One Nation Party: racist and protectionist. Whitlam consigned those policies to the bin, and introduced a far more progressive platform.

​Labor under Whitlam (1972 - 1975) worked at breakneck speed, a government in a hurry to implement its progressive agenda. Labor ended conscription, withdrew from the Vietnam War, introduced medicare and free university education, recognised China, abolished the death penalty and made laws to advance women's rights. That's a snapshot of the Whitlam Government’s achievements - there were many more. 

Serious problems loomed, however. Firstly, Gough himself. A genius, certainly, but also a trainwreck. Vain and conceited, he was not a good reader of people. Hubris allowed him to sleepwalk into bad decisions. Most notably, he made a poor choice in appointing John Kerr as governor-general. Compounding the problem, he refused to acknowledge Kerr’s own unstable personality. Many around Whitlam were begging him to take heed. It was plain to insiders that Kerr’s vanity and insecurity meant he could possibly fire Whitlam. 

Cue the 1975 Senate crisis. The opposition under Liberal Malcolm Fraser used their majority numbers to block money bills (supply). The rationale seemed fair enough, the methods bloody. Fraser’s opposition had no faith that the Whitlam Government could make responsible economic policy. In fact, Labor operatives were involved in an extraordinarily dodgy scheme to raise money from Iraq to fund some of their programs. Whitlam himself had zero interest in economics and merely assumed a growing economy would pay for everything. When the Senate crisis hit, the Labor leader was fully confident that Kerr wouldn’t blink. But blink he did. The rest is history. 

Troy Bramston has written a detailed biography of Whitlam, based on over a hundred interviews. It is a blow by blow chronicle of Labor’s coming to power after twenty-three years in opposition and the “crash or crash through” government it produced. It’s a mixed legacy. Essential reforms that last until this day, but a shockingly incompetent government that was never popular. 

A fine, carefully balanced biography that shows a fatally flawed yet brilliant man.

Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New, by Troy Bramston. Published by HarperCollins. $55

JAN26

The Gods of New York, by Jonathan Mahler

A witty, fast paced roller-coaster ride through 1980s New York.

New York in the 1970s was a city in debt and seemingly terminal decline. Its manufacturing base had been eviscerated. Poverty was endemic and crime at an all time high. New York needed money. Then came the 1980s, and Reaganomics and deregulation. Boom! The town was back in business. It pivoted from old school industry to computerised finance. Digitising stocks and money put them on steroids. People became extremely wealthy.

Gods of New York covers four years at the end of the 80s: 1986-1989. Mayor Ed Koch sought and won an historic third term. But there was much strife afflicting the city - racially motivated violence, the AIDS crisis, high level corruption, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and the mentally unwell living on the streets. For every societal ill there was a charismatic if controversial advocate. The list of such characters is mesmerising: Black activist Reverend Al Sharpton, AIDS crisis agitator Larry Kramer, film maker Spike Lee, disease specialist Anthony Fauci and crime fighting lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to name a few. There are also plenty of less famous characters, such as Joyce Brown, a homeless woman turned celebrity. The city had tried to have her institutionalised, but she fought through the courts to be allowed to return to the street.

Hovering above the city is Donald Trump, a glittering success and a figure of undisputed economic prowess. Throughout the late 80s Trump would back himself into a corner by over investing in the Atlantic City casino scene, just at a time when punters had no money and were pulling in their spending. And yet the banks continued to lend him staggering amounts of money. His debts became so eye-watering that the banks essentially couldn’t let him fail.

Author and journalist Jonathan Mahler does a brilliant job of building a compelling narrative around the events, scandals and crimes of the day. (A lot of time is devoted to harrowing crime cases.) He has a witty style and clever turn of phrase, able to distill the cultural and economic movements of the time into pithy one liners. The picture that emerges of New York is of a place that is terribly fractured and extreme. A city of dreadful poverty, entrenched racism, drug addiction, homelessness and mental illness. Why, one wonders, so many problems in a city that is an economic engine room of the world economy? The book doesn’t end on a cheery note, with Jonathan Mahler asserting that these divisions, between rich and poor, black and white, have only become more entrenched.  

An entertaining and insightful portrait of a complex city. New York may be cruel and unforgiving, but it produces extraordinary people and cultural movements. 

The Gods of New York, by Jonathan Mahler. Published by Hutchinson Heinemann. $36.99

NOV25