This will hurt me...

Shag on a rock or a cormorant on a pontoon? Bellerive Beach, Hobart, March 2021. Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Humanity by Slavoj Žižek Žižek is a funny bugger. This is more a collection of essays with a loose connective thread than a consolidated and coherent thesis. I very much enjoyed (perhaps not the right word) those elements exploring the breakdown of any ideological consensus. For mine, Žižek accurately identifies the failures of the left to reconcile with those most disaffected by prevailing neoliberal globalism that has seen an immense benefit to the few at the expense of the many. Conversely, I have no interest at all in those sections exploring the revolutionary potential of Hollywood musicals or his musing on the #MeToo movement. On that, while he is closure to the mark when it comes to Weinstein, masculine ideology and the dominant power structures at play in sexual dynamics, his resistance to the embrace of active consent did read a little too ...

  Seagull on a chimney (I know, I know, it's serious), Hobart, March 2021. Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish   by Richard Flanagan Where to start with this odd beast? We start with a caution that our (initial) narrator cannot be trusted. From here, we enter into his reconstruction of a text that our untrustworthy narrator warns is one of another unreliable narrator. Master Gould (sic) is most insistent in his testimony that the reader cannot trust his account. In this remarkable and peculiar novel, Flanagan explores the nature of memory, history and the very grand stories that individuals and nations console themselves. What is 'true' much depends upon who is asking and what is it they wish to hear. In this, the history of Van Diemen's Land presents exceptional fodder. More succinctly, it is a tale of a bullshitter. The narrator is a bullshitter in love with bullshitting. In that, he understands that bullshit is all that we can ever have. From here, the r...

Jen all at sea. Little Howrah Beach, Hobart. March 2021. A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu This one is a very dark and - at times - quite disturbing book. I initially found it quite difficult to find my groove with the story and connect with the central narrator. She is aware of the difficulty that her personality radiates in her interpersonal interactions with others, which extends out to the reader. Her intense loneliness only exacerbates this. That said, as we learn more about Jena's backstory and the sources of her trauma, I found myself softening towards her and wishing that she'd end the self-harming behaviour and look ahead instead of behind. The pivot for me was in exiting the odious Mark's gravitational pull and heading off to New York. It is here that Jessie Tu really flexes her creative muscles and (partially) frees Jena from her torpor. From here, I found the book much more engaging, and I was keen to see where things would lead. Filled with vivid...