LITERARY FICTION
FIRST PERSON by Richard Flanagan
(Chatto £18.99) RICHARD FLANAGAN was the surprise winner of the 2014 Booker Prize for The Narrow Road To The Deep North, which drew on his father’s time as a prisoner of war in Burma.
Here, the Tasmanian fictionalises an episode from his time as a new author. In Nineties Australia, Kif dreams of writing a great literary novel but has a growing family to feed — and he’s just lost his job as a doorman.
His luck turns when he finds himself hired to ghostwrite the memoir of notorious fraudster Heidl, who’s maddeningly coy about what he’s been up to; embezzlement, sure, but did he orchestrate coups for the CIA?
This is a smart, slippery novel pitched somewhere between book-world satire, psychological thriller and state-of-Australia analysis.
While the mystery can seem overly opaque and the set-up far-fetched, there’s some electric tension in the drama of whether Heidl will spill his secrets in time for Kif to meet his impossible deadline and hit pay dirt.
MOTHER LAND by Paul Theroux
(Hamish Hamilton £20) THE death of Paul Theroux’s mother two years ago at the age of 103 was perhaps the catalyst for this punishingly long novel narrated by Jay, a Theroux-like travel writer under the thumb of a tyrannical, bookburning matriarch. She ignores his achievements and plays him off against his six equally browbeaten siblings even as she approaches 100.
Theroux tries to keep the tone light — Jay quips that to understand his mother’s mind you can read ‘any biography of Stalin or Mao Tse-tung’ — but a lifetime of family in-fighting can be tricky to portray without sounding petty, and you sense Theroux struggling to ignite what must have seemed pretty combustible material.
Part of the book’s problem is its bagginess — apparently Theroux cut 25,000 words, but he could easily have cut more. The emotional permafrost thaws a bit by the end, but the overall flavour is a self-aggrandising wallow.
THE RESTORER by Michael Sala
(Text £10.99) I HAD never heard of Michael Sala before, but I’ll seek out his debut, The Last Thread, after reading this stark, disturbing tale on the difficult topic of domestic violence.
It starts when Roy and Maryanne, a couple in New South Wales, get back together after a year’s split and decide to change cities (his idea). While he busies himself with DIY on the fixer-upper he’s found, Maryanne’s work as nurse funds the move.
At first, any sign of strain shows only through their children: while 15-yearold Freya’s grades fall away at her new school, eight-year-old Daniel is forgetful and nervous.
Some overcooked symbolism in the form of a looming earthquake is a rare lapse in Sala’s direct and unfussy storytelling, which builds to a horrifying climax as the propulsive narration toggles between Maryanne and Freya’s points of view.
What’s most persuasive is how subtly he portrays the unexpected, sometimes unpalatable psychology of Roy’s victims, trapped in a nightmare they hoped to leave behind.