‘The worship of ignorance. It’s an excuse, that’s all it is. It’s the excuse of rednecks and backwaters and corrupt governments the world over. The saddest thing is that people believe it. They get used to it. They accept whatever leftovers they’re given. And meanwhile the bastards at the top keep scooping the heart out of the place.”

 

Blind, Geilston Bay. March 2021.

Last Drinks by Andrew McGahan

A great example of a novel being driven by a character burdened by minimal character. In George Verney, disgraced journalist and former (forgettable) hanger-on of a few slippery and shady characters that constituted the outer circle of the corrupt elite governing Queensland in the crooked Bjelke-Petersen era.

In framing the story around reformed alcoholic Verney, McGahan constructs a nailbiter of a story that unravels from both directions. Moving backwards and forwards through time and memory - and hazy recollections at that - Verney is drawn back into the world that he fled as it crumbled a decade earlier with the Fitzgerald Inquiry. If you're too young to remember that event, the Inquiry's official title was "the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct", which will give you a sense as to what Verney was fleeing.

An indictment on Queensland, this is a dark and bitter book. Dominated by the cloudy memories of nights of long drinking, the stench of booze, vomit and piss, it is quite hard going. George is a loser used by losers who were themselves used by the losers who exploited the losers that constituted the Queensland public for thirty years. Somewhere in that, the winners adjusted and remain in place at the top of the whole grubby pile.

All of which makes George's struggles all the more depressing. As you'd expect in a book frequented by alcoholics, there's a lot of repetition and denial here. This does help establish his character and is a critical element to driving the plot along.

Ultimately, this is a political thriller/ murder mystery with an indecisive and weak man at the centre of the narrative, even though he is very much on the puzzle's outer periphery. It is this aspect that I respect most of the book. Most authors would be tempted to give George more substance or vigour, but to my mind, it would corrupt one of the very points of the book: that the weak are easily corrupted.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2