Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words; but opportunity will prevail.

Cold. Queen Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011.

Two decent reads this week. First up, Saturday by Ian McEwan is a novel set across a single Saturday (and night) in inner-city London in early-2003 as the city geared itself for large demonstration against the invasion of Iraq. The central character is a 48-year-old neurosurgeon that goes about his day as normal (albeit pondering the meaning of the protest and the geopolitical realities that inspired it). As might be expected, something else happens as well as a violent and troubled stranger penetrates his usually-tranquil world.

This book seemed to divide the critics, and I guess that I can see why. The protagonist lives a blissful, upper middle class existence that appears to chaff with many reviewers. Nonetheless, and despite my decidedly anti-bourgeois tendencies, it didn’t worry me.

Utilising a neurosurgeon as the centrepiece of the story affords McEwan the opportunity to explore core human concepts – happiness, ideology, rationality, love and so on – from a clinical perspective. Moreover, despite the relative harmony of life evident in the narrator; reminders of the fragility of that harmony are ever present. The fact that Perowne (the surgeon) is a rationalist set amongst artists (a famous poet father-in-law; a burgeoning poet daughter; a musician son) also provides plenty of opportunity to explore the foundations of our beliefs and actions.

After some delay in reading him, I am rapidly becoming a McEwan fan. The novel is very nicely constructed, and features some lovely writing. There is a profound attention to detail in Saturday which really does allow him to build the growing sense of disquiet as the novel heads towards its climax and dénouement.

I liked it a lot. Despite a reasonable slow opening third, this really is a gripping read. Highly recommended.

Second up is the latest from another of my favourite contemporary British novelists, Magnus Mills’ A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked in.

Set in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields, once a mighty seafaring power, the novel finds the reader encountering a court that nurses memories of imperial glory and sustains only the vaguest awareness of the lands that surround it. A feudal system remains in place and our central character is the unnamed ‘Principal Composer to the Imperial Court’ – who cannot read or play a note – which affords us a privileged insight into the inner workings of the cabinet, which is preoccupied by the prolonged absence of ‘His Exalted Highness, the Majestic Emperor of the Realms, Dominions, Colonies and Commonwealth of Greater Fallowfields’.

As with all of the Mills oeuvre, this is an odd little book. Greater Fallowfields is a whimsical little place populated by simpleminded folk out of tune with the rest of the world. Think Kafka blended with Andrey Kurkov. I am sure that the peculiar tone of the piece will annoy many readers; I don’t mind it but will confess that at times I struggles to concentrate on the narrative as the story slowly drifted on.

It is not the greatest thing ever written, and the ending was a little hasty for my liking; but ultimately this is a book with an odd sort of charm. If you’re looking for a very ‘British’ kind of writer, Mills is not your man. More Central European in tone, I find his eccentricities endearing rather than maddening. I suspect that many could go either way. Recommended.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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