Sarah’s Last Wish: a chilling glimpse into forced medicine

I have found this book very difficult to read, because it is so well written.  It is the subject of the book that has gripped me by the throat and made breathing difficult.  Eve Hillary is a masterful storyteller and this book is a fine tribute to a courageous girl and her family and a powerful condemnation of professional incompetence and negligence, unethical behaviour and bureaucratic excesses.

Sarah died, aged thirteen, on 25 October 2004, the victim of a system which was originally set up to support children like her.  It is arguable that the system hastened her death.  It is not arguable that the system utterly failed her and her family.

Sarah developed an extremely rare and aggressive cancer that is believed to be incurable, yet she was forced by the Department of Community Services (DoCS) in NSW to undergo chemotherapy, against her expressed wishes and those of her family.  Eve Hillary, knew Sarah and her family and writes the account of the litany of lies, misrepresentation, incompetence, callousness, self-interest and bloody-mindedness with restrained passion and unrestrained compassion.  The book documents a system gone wrong and the fight put up by Sarah and her family to resist its power.

One could expect a government department which has been set up to protect children from harm to fulfil this function where a child truly is at risk of harm, including possibly removing the child from her parents’ control if necessary to prevent further harm.  But to force a girl who has a recurring ‘incurable’ cancer to undergo useless (often fatal) chemotherapy is beyond the pale.  The DoCS behaviour and actions and the draconian Supreme Court orders they were able to secure, were made possible by misrepresentations and a raft of deliberate lies told by oncologists and other doctors, and these doctors’ refusal to give Sarah’s family any meaningful medical reports, which would have allowed the family to attempt to secure a different outcome.

When a government department is given almost unfettered powers, there needs to be a system in place to ensure that those powers are not used unnecessarily or arbitrarily.  There is no imaginable reason in the case of Sarah that DoCS would need to tap phones, break into private houses, steal letters and personal documents and subject the entire family to overt and covert surveillance.  That these things happened is an indication of a government department gone feral.

Case workers in DoCS even used the threat of removing Sarah’s five siblings to get the parents to obey their orders; orders which, through decisions in the NSW Supreme Court, had the force of law.  This overbearing approach was also adopted by most of the doctors and nurses ‘looking after’ Sarah and by supposedly independent social workers and lawyers.

The family was also badly served by their own barrister, who refused to speak up on father Mark’s requests to put matters to the Supreme Court judge, including the fact that the oncologists had consistently failed to give Sarah’s parents the medical files the Court had ordered them to hand over.  In relation to this last failure, the barrister said to Mark that she would not pursue the issue “against such respectable parties”.  In later Court hearings, Mark felt compelled to represent Sarah’s interests himself, apart from the fact that this useless barrister was costing him an unaffordable $5000 per day.

In 2003 it was Eve Hillary’s decision to write a journalistic article about what had been going on – especially in relation to the forced chemotherapy, bogus emergency splenectomy and refusal of the hospital to feed Sarah an adequate diet – that started changing things for Sarah and the family, but only marginally and too late to give Sarah the opportunity to pursue a course of treatment (of her choice) which may have afforded her a longer life.  Eve’s decision to make these events public cost her the medical clinic she had set up, where Sarah received the only decent medical attention she had during her illness.  The clinic was forced to close through actions of the NSW authorities, because of Eve’s temerity in helping Sarah and her family stand up to DoCS.

If the Australian place names (and people’s names) had been left blank, most readers of this book would assume that this terrible, bleak story, if actually true, had taken place in some foreign country which was under the yoke of a tin-pot dictator.  The story is true and took place, recently, in Australia, which we would like to think is a free society that honours and protects individual rights and freedoms and where forcing unwanted medication on an intelligent and lucid girl would be impossible.  We would also be horrified to think that medical and other professionals would deliberately lie with apparently no regard for the effects these lies would have on the health of an individual.

There is a sense by the end of the book that Sarah may not have died in vain, as she had a wonderful effect on many people she interacted with and there is some positive change in the attitude of DoCS and it is less likely that another child in NSW will be forced to go through the horrors that Sarah and her family experienced.  But the suffering forced on Sarah is inexcusable and cannot be ameliorated in hindsight just because its exposure may bring changes.  It should never have happened.

The DoCS bloody-minded pursuit of Sarah amounted to cruel and inhumane treatment, if not actually torture.  This is also true of the hospitals’ consistent refusal of adequate pain relief, their failure to discus palliative care, their refusal of an adequate diet, their psychological and emotional tormenting and their deliberate lying and hiding of facts.

This remarkable account is also about: the love and internal strength of a family subjected to the worst excesses of a State bureaucracy; the tenacity of a father in doing everything he can to try and protect his daughter; a small number of health professionals and others who stuck out their necks at the risk of their own freedom and livelihoods; the relative safety, efficacy and benefits of injectable nutrient therapies, including high-dose intravenous vitamin C, as an adjunct to other common therapies and in palliative care; and the amazing maturity and clarity of a pre-teen girl dealing with a life-threatening illness and at the same time faced with a hostile world she could not understand.

The lunacy of the DoCS attitudes and actions is illustrated by the cost to the taxpayer of pursuing forced medical treatment for one girl.  Eve Hillary says in the book:

“In the past 18 months the child protection department had spent over a million dollars and diverted an army of case-workers just to prevent one 11-year-old child from having a cancer treatment personalised to her needs, while over 80 children in NSW, who had been reported to DoCS, had died of genuine abuse and neglect.”

Although reading this book can easily be an ordeal, I suggest everyone should make the effort.  It is not just a difficult-to-take account of injustice and heartache – it is a wake-up call to all of us that governments and government departments can easily take away everything we treasure and hold sacred, including our privacy, our freedoms and our rights.  Their doing so and their reasons for it must always be questioned and challenged.

I also recommend you read Ken Crispin’s recent book, The Quest for Justice (Scribe, 2010), especially his last chapter.  When you’ve read Sarah’s Last Wish, I recommend you stay informed about the issues raised, by subscribing to up-to-date information through www.sarahs-last-wish.com

© 2010 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan [dot] spijer [at] gmail [dot] com>]

The Quest for Justice

This is above all a thoughtful work.  The author assumes the reader to be intelligent and he treats the reader with respect.  It is not a dispassionate book – Ken Crispin’s hopes and aspirations for society are clearly stated.  He also expresses little patience with those who would impose their prejudices and bigotry on others.

The excellent introduction (22 pp) is essential reading, as it clearly summarises what the entire book is about.  It could well stand alone as an essay on the subject and, on its own, would be valuable for high school legal studies students as well as those commencing a law degree.  The introduction sets the tone for the book as well as introducing the author to us.  I wish more authors of non-fiction would go to this trouble to take the reader by the hand and say, “This is what I am going to write about and these are some of the conclusions I will come to and here are some of the arguments.”

Ken Crispin has been a barrister and a judge, rising to the pinnacle in the latter career as president of the Court of Appeal in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory).  On the evidence of this book, he would have been a fair and compassionate judge, with a keen sense of history and the role of the law in a civilised society.  He would also have experienced the frustration of having to pass judgement on the basis of laws he did not agree with.

I need to declare that I was trained as a lawyer and spent much of my time in practice working with and for people who were considered and who considered themselves as being the victims of inequalities in society and of unfair laws.  I bring that background and my tendency to become angry at injustice to the reading of this book.

Although the five chapters build on each other, each can be read on its own, as each clearly discusses the issues, gives historical background, gives arguments for and against propositions and makes it clear where the author stands.  Thus, in the first chapter – ‘The Law: does it reflect our values?’ – Ken Crispin sets out some of the origins of our current (Australian) legal system and laws, and tussles with the issue of whether our laws should reflect a moral position or simply set rules to try and keep citizens safe from harm and from interference in their pursuits.  He asks questions about the nature of rights and to what extent the State should be allowed to curtail those rights and their expression.  There is also the question of whether laws should simply express the wishes of the majority, or take account of the needs and aspirations of minorities.

Ken Crispin is critical of the tendency for politicians to make ever more laws in order to be seen to be doing something in response to those who clamour for something to be done about it.  He mentions some of the ludicrous outcomes of this and points out that often the existing laws are more than adequate to deal with new situations.  He also clearly tackles the huge disparities between people’s perceptions and realities in such areas as how much crime involves violence and how many people, once charged with an offence, are subsequently acquitted.

In Chapter 2 – ‘Our system of Justice: is it just or just adversarial?’ – the author continues his analysis of the working of the Courts as instruments of our society.  While admitting that the adversarial system is not perfect, he is of the opinion that it works well as a test of the available evidence.  He enjoys pointing out how much better it is than trial by combat or trial by water (if you float you are guilty, if you sink you are innocent).  In this chapter, Ken Crispin discusses issues of the nature of truth, legal ethics, problems of evidence and the costs to society and individuals (financial and emotional) in getting it right.  He argues that there need to be some compromises, because the cost of pursuing absolute truth (even if it were possible) would be prohibitively expensive.

He spends a substantial part of this chapter examining issues around prejudice (and pre-judging) and perceptions (often formed by inaccurate or lazy journalism) that too many people who are guilty of a crime are getting off on technicalities.  This theme of bad reporting, allied with cynical political ambitions, comes up again and again in the book.  People’s perceptions, when surveyed, have little resemblance to the actual situation: in the state of the law and its ability to cover possible criminal activity; in the amount of violence perpetrated against people; in the rate of convictions; in the severity of sentences; and in the costs to individuals and society of taking away from judges the discretion to deal with each case in the best way, taking all known factors into account.

Issues relating to sentencing are dealt with very clearly in the third chapter – ‘Sentencing: have we lost our way?’  Again, much of the blame for people’s misconceptions is laid at the feet of the media and over-zealous politicians.  The author deals clearly with even the most difficult questions, including capital punishment, preventative detention and sentencing people with mental illness.  He is open about where his own preferences lie.  He is against mandatory sentencing and against capital punishment; the former because it precludes judges from making just decisions in the light of the evidence in and the circumstances of individual cases and the latter as being hypocritical (the idea that killing someone teaches people not to kill) and fraught with error (the number of condemned people subsequently found to have been wrongly convicted).

The real value of this book lies in the fourth and fifth chapters – ‘The War on Drugs: are our strategies sound?’ and ‘The War on Terror: or a surrender of rights?’  In these Ken Crispin launches into a critical appraisal of what is wrong with our approach to both.  The first three chapters are important, in that they give us an insight into how the author thinks about the role of the law, justice, the media and law-makers, as well as giving essential context and information about the history and workings of our legal system, with comparisons to the USA and the UK.

The main thrust of Ken Crispin’s writing about the use and abuse of drugs, is that personal use should be treated as a social issue, and a medical one when use leads to harm, as is the case in a growing number of countries.  He argues that decriminalisation of personal use would take supply out of the hands of criminals and stem much of the flow of money currently going to those criminals and to the terrorist organisations they fund.  He calls for an end to the dogma that “this will send the wrong message”.  He quotes the research in other countries that shows the wisdom of decriminalisation and asks politicians to do what is right rather than what is expedient to win elections.  He argues bluntly that prohibition is not effective and he gives evidence to back up those arguments.

In the final chapter, Ken Crispin roundly condemns the governments of Australia, the USA and the UK for steadily and cynically eroding individuals’ rights in the name of preserving them.  He argues that to treat some people as falling outside the law on no more than a suspicion that they may have done something wrong plays into the very hands of the terrorists who would undermine the way of life we enjoy in our ‘free’ societies.  After all, these countries hold themselves up as bastions of human rights and the rule of law and, at least in the case of the USA, would impose these attitudes on other countries.  As the author points out, this is the height of hypocrisy and completely counter-productive.  He also condemns any use of torture, as well as incarceration without an independent and fair trial.

Ken Crispin warns us, in very strong language, to be very careful if we do not want to lose those rights and freedoms we have come to expect and for which so many people have struggled and fought for hundreds of years in order to drag us out of the Dark Ages.  He hopes, as do I, that it is not too late to reverse this trend of erosion of rights and freedoms in the name of protecting our way of life.  As he points out, it is in situations where that way of life is being threatened that we need to staunchly hold on to our nerve and apply our civilised principles fairly and honestly.

© 2010 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan [dot] spijer [at] gmail [dot] com>]

If I loved you, I would tell you this

This is very welcome addition to my short story collections shelf.

It has been said that, while in a novel there is a need for a plot and the development of characters, the short story need be no more than just that: a fragment of life, an interesting tale with a cameo of characters.  Then you come across a writer like Robin Black and you learn that a short story can be a novel in miniature. 

Robin manages to populate a 28-page story (‘The Guide’) with five characters that you get to know, some of whom are developing in the short time-span of the story (a few hours) and she gives us rich context and back story.  I found myself in this opening piece identifying with one of the characters and barracking for another, finding one unsympathetic and another to be empathised with.

In an even shorter second story (‘If I Loved You’), we are thrown into a situation involving neighbours, but we only see one side of the fence.  The voice of the first-person narrator (also the central character) is at first apparently speculative, but is really giving a chilling account of a deteriorating situation.  It gives a glimpse of the all-too-common isolation of suburban existence and the real and imaginary fences that are erected between people.

‘Immortalizing John Parker’ is almost a novella.  Forty pages of beautiful writing, exploring the breakdown of relationships, their perpetuation on different levels, the attempt to freeze them in some way and doing without them.  Clara is a portrait painter and divorced.  Through her eyes and thoughts we are presented with a relationship that ended perhaps through choice, another that ended through sudden death and one that has endured for over fifty years but is slipping away.  Through her art, Clara confronts how we see people and the assumptions we make about them.  Again, the characters are totally believable.

In ‘Harriett Elliott’ Robin Black explores prepubescent girls’ angst, cruelty and bullying, as well as the effects of families breaking up and tensions caused by differences in backgrounds and philosophies.  A lot to pack into one short story.  Oh, and also the love of ritual and revenge.

Only four stories into this collection and it is already a page-turner.  Usually this only happens with a very good novel, but Robin Black is a wonderful storyteller and an excellent writer – a master of the art and the craft.  There are few writers who can pack so much into a short story and not have it be bloated.  Robin Black tells just enough and treats the reader as an intelligent participant in the storytelling process.  This keeps her stories lean, yet gives them substance, gives her characters warmth, makes them totally believable and allows us to relate to them.

‘Gaining Ground’ is in a different style again – it is narrated in the first person in a rough/tough language.  The thread through the whole fourteen pages is ‘So what?’ asked by the female narrator, quoting her ex-husband.  She questions whether there is a connection between her father’s death and the near-electrocution of her daughter.  She thinks there is while her ex would insist the opposite.  This forms a spine throughout the story, with musings arising from this (including her meditations on her ex) forming the vertebrae and ribs.

“There shouldn’t have been mice in late June.  Not inside.”  So begins ‘Tableau Vivant’.  It’s a rollicking narrative of an older woman, describing her life by describing the cottage in the country she and her ailing, older husband have moved to, as a metaphor for what her life has come to.  It is a rich account told with economy.  For instance: “She found the scarf in the closet of the large guest room where her daughter, Brooke, was to stay that night.”  Many writers would have used a whole paragraph to give the reader that much information.  Through Brooke’s visit we find out a whole lot more about her mother.  The title of the story describes both its style and its contents.

‘Pine’ is another of Robin Black’s ventures into unveiling family and outside relationships: single mother with teen daughter, possible new man in her life, other ‘soccer mums’.  Like all the other stories in this book, it is finely observed and beautifully written.  Much is said by being left unsaid.  This story also explores belonging and being on the outer, and the cruelty than can mask caring.

In the following story, ‘A land where you used to live’, we are again taken on a journey – physically and emotionally.  It is about the perceived failure of parenting, loss, attempted redemption and reconciliation and how a new relationship may encourage a person to try and mend others.  It is also about the endurance of love and its manifestation in unexpected ways.

The penultimate story is short and tight.  ‘… Divorced, Beheaded, Survived’, like the final, ‘The History of the World’, deals with siblings and death and how people deal with the latter.  Death can be a stain on lives it touches, it can be a release and it can leave people utterly alone.  ‘The History of the World’ is long for a short story and, like some of the others in this collection, is divided into what would be chapters in a novel.  It reads like a novel – character development, back story, issues of relationship, minor characters, life-changing events.

It seems that Robin Black appears to have not published any novels, which is a pity, because they would be rich experiences for the reader, as all of these stories are.  They are not just stories simply told; they are multi-layered, colourful, three-dimensional expositions of life, in all its beauty and terror, love and hate, shame, regret and redemption.  They appeal because they have integrity.  These are not ‘Once upon a time …’ stories.  They are immediate and fresh.  It’s as if the author has created ten rooms and you can open any door and walk straight into the middle of an unfolding scene.

© 2010 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan [dot] spijer [at] gmail [dot] com>]

Etchings Indigenous: Black and Sexy

There is an underlying tension in this collection of work by Aboriginal writers and artists, that reflects the real tension between Aborigines and the wider community in Australia.  This wider community is certainly not homogeneous, with its sometimes disparate ethnic groups, the result of waves of migration from different parts of the world.  I myself was part of such a wave in 1955.  As a society, we manage to eventually feel fairly comfortable with each ‘new’ ethnic group that comes to this country.  We accept the differences or cease to notice them.

But what of the Aborigines who, more than two hundred years ago, witnessed a small invasion of Europeans, an invasion that resulted in the Aborigines being eventually classed as the outsiders?  What must it be like to be made to feel an alien in your own land?  This collection goes some way to answering those questions.  Etchings Indigenous is edgy, with the underlying anger, sadness and frustration of many of the contributors coming through their stories, poetry, art and photography.  Although there is no single philosophy expressed, I was left with a feeling of loss, washed in some cases with hope.

When I arrived from the Netherlands, it was ‘only’ seven or eight generations after the First Fleet had arrived, yet the plight of the original custodians of this land was well and truly entrenched.  At primary school in NSW we learned about this “sorry race” that was “so far behind White society”.  We were taught that by the time we were adults there probably would be few, if any, ‘true’ Aborigines left.

When I was at university (1967 – 1971), I was part of a group raising funds for scholarships for Aborigines to study at university and to give financial support for Aboriginal families to help their children to continue their high school education to even make it possible for them to qualify for university education.  The 1960s and ’70s saw a turning around of attitudes, with the referendum and other symbols of a change in consciousness in Australian society.  Etchings Indigenous reflects much of this, including the fact that many of the contributors have university degrees and some of them teach at universities.

Storytelling is an integral part of Aboriginal culture, irrespective of the many language groups which exist.  As with European, American, Asian and African sagas, myths, fairytales and legends, Aboriginal stories are designed or have evolved to entertain, inform and educate.  The stories in this book are clearly aimed at informing and educating us, the non-Aborigines.  In some cases they also entertain, as in ‘White Ants’ by Ali Cobby Eckermann, in which an old woman gets the better of a bureaucrat who is hedged in by rules and procedures.

Some of the pieces aim mainly to inform, such as the interviews with Nathan Lovett-Murray (with Coral Reeve), John Harding and Kim Kruger (both with Christine Ward), and the reviews by Janelle Moran of music by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and Coral Reeve of music by Corinthian Morgan (Mr Morgz).  Janelle Moran, Coral Reeve and Christine Ward formed the editorial team for Etchings Indigenous.

Janelle Moran also reviews two books: Listen deeply, let these stories in (by Kathleen Kenmarre Wallace with Judy Lovell) and You call it desert – we used to live there (by Pat Lowe with Jimmy Pike).  Both Listen deeply and You call it desert are about loss of traditional lands and heritage and the journey to reclaim them.  Both books also contain photos and/or art which are integral to the telling.

There are contributions included that show us that Aborigines often have to deal with the same issues that beset others in the wider community.  The essay by Jirra Lulla Harvey accompanying Bindi Cole’s photos of the ‘Sista Girls’ shows a world that is both familiar to us and different.  The Sista Girls are Aboriginal men living in Tiwi, who identify themselves as women, often since childhood.  As in our wider community, they find themselves accepted by some (mostly family) and rejected by many.  Their stories are in many cases heartrending and the photos are beautiful.

Some of the work is angry, such as ‘Everyday Heroes’ by John Williams-Mozley:

Where are all the monuments to our heroes
whose words and deeds inspire us?
…
I look around and all I see
are epitaphs to your obscenities,
countless unmarked gravestones,
where huge monuments ought to be.

The effects of the forced and unforced breaking up of families are also explored in story (‘Meeting my Dad’ by Katie Wyatt) and poetry (‘The Highest Branch’ by Jannali Jones).  Tales of loss and heartbreak.  ‘Meeting my Dad’ deals, in part with the consequences of White bosses taking sexual advantage of (in many cases perpetrating rape on) young Black women and the questions surrounding whether to pursue ‘justice’, even if that were available.

While all the written and visual art in Etchings Indigenous is by indigenous people, it is not all identifiably Aboriginal.  ‘Fifty, female and taking flight’, by Shirley Morgan, is about someone discovering the joys of travelling to a foreign country and getting hooked on the experience.  It reads like a travelogue and could have been written by someone from any culture.  This very fact gives power to the whole collection, because it highlights that the works lie along a continuum, with ‘Fifty, female and taking flight’ and ‘Life Resumed’ (anonymous) at one end and the poetry of Brenda Saunders at the other end; the story ‘Distance’ by Tony Birch lies somewhere in the middle.

What of the other stories along the continuum?  Some, like ‘Local Knowledge’ by Barry Cooper and ‘Men’s Camp’ by Henry Dalgetty, illustrate a meeting of cultures.  ‘Distance’, by Tony Birch, seems to be about a man looking for his roots; he could be Aboriginal but we’re not told, allowing the possibility that he is ‘everyman’.  The short soliloquy ‘Up the Road’, by playwright John Harding, deals with the anger about a brother who died at the hands of the police.

The poetry also falls at various points along the continuum and I have mentioned some examples already.  ‘Rainbow of Eternity’, by Nellie Green, includes the following: “I cried as I recalled the Human / Neglect of all those Sacred things / We were meant to Protect …”; it ends with: “Whilst amongst it all, we Stand / Still so hopeful for the Perfect world / We so Desire”.  Dennis Fisher, in ‘What’s Australian?’, asks “Is an Australian a person who speaks a language that comes from another country?”.  He also expresses hope: “I have hope / … that doesn’t come from England” (in ‘Comes From’).  Brenda Saunders in her three poems alludes to the visual arts as giving expression to the country.  Poet and artist Paula Miller-Reeve starts ‘Tread Softly My Friend’ with: “I’ve walked these lands before / through the eyes of my ancestors”.  In her poems, Ali Cobby Eckermann deals with issues of bullying, abuse and alienation.

I found that some of the poems had an immediate impact on me with their very accessible imagery and easy metre.  Others I had to read a number of times in order for their messages to come through to me, but the effort was well worth it.  As with some of the stories, not all the poems seemed essentially Aboriginal.

All this brings up the question for me of ‘What is Aboriginal writing or art?’  Does the ethnicity or provenance of the creator of the work define it as such?  I think the answer lies more in something less easily defined that comes through.  Some of the work in this collection feels as if it is born out of the creators’ immersion in the culture or, at least, out of a strong connection with it.  Other stories come out of a yearning for what has been personally or culturally lost and which will perhaps never be recovered.  And some of it calls from an even greater distance – a wish to be part of that culture, having been brought up outside it.

The posters by Bindi Cole appear to express a complex reality: Aborigines having over the years attempted to take on European culture for the sake of acceptance, or ‘Whites’ having used (more accurately misused) images of Aborigines to indicate an acceptance of the ‘Blacks’ by inserting those images into very non-aboriginal contexts.  This misappropriation of images is also symbolic of Whites’ attitudes that the people themselves could be appropriated to White needs.  The posters (one of which forms the cover of the book) mimic early theatre posters and I find them disturbing, because of the juxtaposition of the images and words used.  ‘Summer is always Black and Sexy’ is one example of this; another is ‘Dante, 50 mysteries of how to breed a race of white Aborigines’.  The artist seems to be pointing to the discomfort of so many Whites around Aborigines and the way they have been treated (and are still being treated).  I can hear these people declaiming that some of their best friends are Aboriginal or, at least, that they know some Aborigines and they’re actually alright.

The book contains some beautiful artwork.  I have mentioned Bindi Cole’s posters and photographs (all in colour).  There is more recognisably Aboriginal art (in black and white) by members of the Centre for Koorie Education at Goulburn Ovens TAFE and the (colour) dot paintings of Nellie Green.  Not being familiar with the traditions behind or the meanings inherent in Aboriginal paintings, some written explanations accompanying these would have helped.  Without this, the paintings are beautiful and interesting but tell me no more than this surface viewing, with a few exceptions where wildlife is portrayed.  On the other hand, the photos (some colour, some monochrome) by Wayne Quilliam, Elizabeth Liddle, Steven Rhall and Bindi Cole are more easily recognisable because I am more familiar with this form of expression, as would most people looking through this book.  It is another example of Aboriginal artists taking up non-traditional art forms which speak more easily to non-Aboriginal viewers.  This is not unique to Aboriginal art.  For instance, I find Japanese theatre difficult to understand (even when translated) as there are traditions I am not privy to.  This is also the case within Western society, where various people do not understand ballet or symphonic music or jazz or rap.

There is much in the poetry and storytelling in Etchings Indigenous that speaks to us because of our shared humanity.  We can feel outrage and sadness or hopelessness, not because we know anything about Aboriginal culture but because we are witness, through these works, of terrible deeds perpetrated by one group of people against another.  The ‘sorry’ speech by Kevin Rudd in the Federal Parliament in February 2008 had little to do with apologising to Aborigines for what we or our predecessors or forebears might have done to them.  It was more an expression of our shared humanity and an attempt to express an understanding.  Etchings Indigenous stimulates our own understanding of that shared humanity.  It is not about a chosen group of Aboriginal artists and writers trying to teach us their culture, but to have us see them as fellow travellers who also bleed when they are pricked.

© 2010 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan [dot] spijer [at] gmail [dot] com>]

Publisher: Melbourne Books, 2007

ISBN: 9781877096952

RRP $24.50,

This is a story that needs to be told again and again.  The avarice and self-serving attitudes of the principle character are depicted graphically and chillingly.  People like Douglas Aspine should be locked up as quickly as possible and ‘re-educated’, before they can do more harm.

There seems to be a general feeling that most CEOs of large companies are primarily interested in their own enrichment and aggrandisement, with the fortunes of the company coming in second and everyone else (employees and the CEO’s own family) coming in a poor third.  There have been a number of excellent non-fiction books and essays in which this has been the theme, but this is the first fictional work I have read which explores it.  The author knows what he is writing about, being a chartered accountant who has worked for years in corporate recoveries and reconstructions.

I expected the protagonist to be a terrible human being and he is, but I hoped for some glimmer of salvation.  I found none.  Douglas Aspine lurches from one disaster to another, although he seems not to notice until well into the book.  As the reader, however, the lurching and the disasters were obvious, even predictable; although I wished they would not occur and I hoped that he would see sense after a while.  This was partly what made this a page-turner – the hope that there would be a turning point leading to a different outcome; the hope for redemption.

Although the inexorable journey of destruction that Aspine seems to be on was excruciating to me, it did not take away from the enjoyment of reading a riveting yarn.  There were, however, some aspects of the book that did diminish my enjoyment; these I would put down to possibly poor editorial intervention.

There are too many instances in the book of the author feeling he needs to take the reader by the hand to explain something that a half-savvy reader does not need to have explained.  For instance: “The shares had come on the market at $2.05, but now… were trading at a measly 40 cents, and a lot of punters had lost over eighty per cent of their initial investment” (my italics).

There were also too many clichés for my liking (“she [had] … legs that never seemed to end”), although the author may argue that this is part of the style.  The style reminds me of genre detective novels, where you expect the right clichés in the right places, but they seem out of place here.  There are also some typographical errors which niggled me and were another example of possibly poor editing.

All in all, I enjoyed the story and felt pulled along by my expectations, my hopes and the bloody-mindedness of the main character.  The ending was a surprise, but everything I had wished for.  I can recommend this book to everyone who hates the current corporate climate and to everyone who needs convincing that it stinks.

[For other books by Peter Ralph visit Corporate Thrillers by Peter Ralph

[First appeared in The Australian Writer, September 2008]

© 2008-10 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]

ISBN: 9781877096660

RRP: $28.59

The reason I’m keen to include this review is that one of my stories is included.

This is the first of what Melbourne Books plans to be an annual publication.

The publisher looked at over a hundred stories and bush poems which had won awards around Australia in the past year and then chose twenty-six of these to showcase some of the best writing being produced in this country.

The stories are a delight to read, ranging from the whimsical to the scary.  All of them are entertaining and many of them are thought-provoking, as short stories should be.  The included poems (in the form of bush verse) are also a pleasure to read.  There is the funny (‘The Dingo Pup’) and the serious (‘The Power of Kokoda’).

The authors showcased here range from the young to the ‘mature’; from those who spend most of their time writing, to those who write occasionally; from first-time winners to writers who have made a habit of winning awards; from previously unpublished to frequently published authors.

Whether they are funny or serious, the stories and poems all touch something in the reader.  They are all the product of excellent storytellers.

All the stories and poems have made it through the rigours of competition and then been further selected to make it into print here.  This is a welcome addition to the other annual anthologies of short stories, poetry and essays which spend months on my bedside table and which I happily dip into.

Melbourne Books has already started looking for stories and poems for the 2009 issue, so enter and win as many competitions as you can, for your chance at being published.

[First appeared in The Australian Writer, September 2008]

© 2008-10 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]

In Conversation

Ben Naparstek

Scribe, Melbourne, 2009

SC, 254 pp, $32.95

ISBN: 978-1-921640-11-7

My expectations of this book were set by the title – I was expecting transcripts of interviews with famous writers.  By the third ‘conversation’ I was disabused of this notion.

These are forty essays, each about a writer who Naparstek met or had correspondence with.  Each piece contains snatches of quotes from the interviews, mixed with comments by Naparstek from a reviewer’s perspective of the writer’s work and quotes from others about the writer and what s/he has produced.  The form works well, especially with writers I knew little or nothing about.

The essays make mention of most of each person’s published output.  Often they contain the creator’s comments on a particular piece and where it fits into their life and total oeuvre.  There are some insights offered into how some of them came to their passion, how they view some of their work (especially early ‘attempts’) and why they keep writing.  To me this aspect of the collection is the most interesting.  Why do people write?  Do they do other things?  How do they take reviews and criticisms?

With almost every piece in this book I was left wanting to know more and wishing Naparstek had made them longer.  Presumably he has more material to draw on.  Another wish is for a good index, which would make the book more accessible for future reference.

Many of the essays will be useful for new and emerging writers looking for ‘advice’.  For instance, Seamus Heaney on poetry (p.31):

“By the time you start to compose, more than half the work has been done.  The crucial part of the business is what happens before you face the empty page …”

The book is divided into fiction and non-fiction writers, although this is partly an artificial categorisation: many writers have produced in both areas and in between and it is a distinction I do not understand. For instance, Umberto Eco has produced much memorable fiction (e.g. his first novel, The Name of the Rose), yet he appears in the non-fiction category.  The division between fiction and non-fiction is not a distinct, straight line; there is also creative non-fiction, which has a foot in both camps, and there is journalism.

In order to absorb enough to be able to write about it, I read the entire book in the space of a few weeks.  This has made it more difficult for me to fully appreciate each essay.  It is probably better to dip in and out of it, skip some, go back from time to time to gain a different slant or for new inspiration.  In Conversation will live in the small collection on the desk where I work.

Putting aside any gripes I have with the book, I need to say that Naparstek is a good writer.  I hope he produces more, although his current post as editor of The Monthly may not leave him much time.  From the perspective of my seventh decade, I feel some envy of Naparstek in the first half of his third, with already eight years of writing under his belt.

In his Preface, Naparstek does talk of the limitations of the form he has chosen:

“… recognising that whatever I wrote would be a deeply subjective telling – like all profiles, an account of a life and its relationship to a body of writing, synthesised from one or two hours of conversation into just 1500 – 2000 words.”

Each essay is essentially a window into aspects of the writer’s life, thoughts, prejudices and ambitions.  Some of them had me taking notes on books to read and some of them had me looking elsewhere for more material on the writer.  The interviews are more than mere reporting, as Naparstek’s own thoughts, impressions and reactions come through, as do some of his prejudices.  This brings an honesty to the book.  Because of its content and structure, this book should offer inspiration, reflection and information to any reader over an extended period.  I recommend you get yourself a copy.

[First appeared in The Australian Writer, December 2009]

© 2009 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]

The Writing Class

Jincy Willett

ISBN: 9781921372117

$32.95

326 pp

Scribe 2008

I found this novel difficult to get into, because I made up my mind half-way through the first page that I didn’t like the style.  It would have been a big mistake, had I given up then – the first few pages are someone’s diary entry and the narrative begins on page five.

This is an intriguing mystery story, bordering on the thriller.  It is not clear until almost at the end, what is going on.  The author uses a creative writing class to bring her disparate characters together and give them life.  All of them turn out to be far from perfect people and they have each come to this class for different and personal reasons.

In the process of unwinding the central theme of the story, Jincy Willett manages to explore themes around writing: questions of style, motivation, expression, frustration, use of grammar and form.  She teaches creative writing herself and this is obvious in her painting of the characters, including that of Amy Gallup, the teacher of this fictional class.

Jincy Willett manages to weave a growing mystery around the central mystery itself, so that we are not sure, until a long way into the novel, whether there really is anything untoward going on or whether it is a figment of some characters’ overactive imaginations.

There were only a few places in the novel where I felt the pace slackened unnecessarily through what felt to me as very American humour.  But then, this is an American novel, set in Southern California and American readers may well react differently.

I found the book a lot of fun to read and experienced increasing reluctance to put it down.  It is very clever in the development of many of the characters and in turning what should have been a run-of-the-mill writing class into a possible murder mystery.

[First published in The Australian Writer, December 2008]

© 2008-09 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]

Eyebabies

David George

ISBN: 9781921325045

$26.95

256 pp

Ilura Press 2008

This is an interesting book with a complex structure.  It is a love story and a psychological thriller.  It is something of a mystery from the enigmatic beginning to the loose end.

The book explores passion, madness and creativity.  It asks questions about how far one should be allowed to go for one’s art and in so doing, it raises issues of exploitation – topical, given the controversies this year around the photographs and activities of Bill Henson.  Also explored is the question of sanity and artistic expression.

The three main characters, Jackie, Katya and Fabrice, are well fleshed out and believable.  I found myself caring about what unfolded and about possible outcomes.  I would like the author to have put a little more meat on a few of the minor characters, but that is a small niggle.

Because David George moves the narrative from character to character and between France, the USA and the Czech Republic, readers need to keep their wits about them.  The shifts in narrative allow the exploration of themes from different perspectives and allow the examination of the main characters’ various motives.

The author asks major questions about love and neediness; truth and fantasy; masks and nakedness; identity and sanity; passion and lust.  He tries to offer answers but avoids giving the answer to any of the questions raised.

When the story goes briefly to the Czech Republic and exposes the reader to the cruelty and excesses of a past totalitarian regime, the issue of one person’s power over another comes to the fore.  This is a neat way of forcing the reader to question some of the principal relationships in the book.

Eyebabies is above all a book about what makes us human and what it is to be civilised, and what happens when we push boundaries.  There are elements in this novel that have the potential to shock – to what extent this happens, very much depends on the reader’s sensibilities, prejudices, upbringing and experience.  To me, that is what makes this a wonderful book.

[First published in The Australian Writer, December 2008]

© 2008-09 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]

Convincing Ground: Learn to fall in love with your country

Bruce Pascoe

Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007

ISBN: 978-085575-549-2

History depends on who writes it and the writing of it creates that history.  On that basis, much of the history of this country is still missing.  Bruce Pascoe has gone some way to correcting this.

Bruce has managed to illuminate important events in the European settlement of what is now Victoria.  Much of it surprised me, having learned my history some forty-five years ago.  While the occasional massacre was mentioned, most of the native people, we were told, died because of introduced diseases.  The killing was to a large extent explained to us as necessary reprisal for thefts and murders perpetrated by the Aborigines and to ‘teach them justice’.  It all seemed very neat and balanced and it was portrayed as inevitable.

Bruce Pascoe begs to differ.  After pointing out that the European settlement around Port Phillip was, in fact, illegal, he shows that many of the official accounts sent to Sydney and London were very different from the same correspondents’ personal diaries and their verbal accounts recorded by family and friends.  The official documents relied on accounts by settlers of the poor state of Aboriginal society and the makeshift nature of their abodes, which were rarely called houses.  Yet, as Bruce points out, the Aborigines in western Victoria built and lived in substantial stone, timber and turf houses, often in extensive villages.  “They were big, complex structures but [modern] Australians know nothing about them.”

A few people, such as James Dawson and his daughter Isabella “…incurred the contempt of fellow colonists” for their unashamed interest in the local people, their culture and their language.  It did not suit the settlers to acknowledge the complexity and sophistication of Aboriginal society because it got in the way of the claim that no-one owned the land.  If you pretend that the people you want to dispossess are of low intelligence and are peripatetic, you can avoid qualms about taking their land.  There was a concerted campaign of destruction by the early colonists, which was so successful that those arriving a few years later saw no evidence of these buildings.

Bruce tells of visiting sites where stone foundations can still be seen.  However, even more than 150 years after the destruction, there is still resistance to the idea of permanent houses constructed by Aborigines.  He recounts the animosity he experienced from members of a local historical society when he enquired about Aboriginal stone structures.

The Aborigines of western Victoria often sustained themselves with abundant fish stocks.  There is still evidence of extensive water races and stone fish traps and Bruce cites contemporary descriptions of these.  “Witnesses to the miles and miles of water races and aquaculture arrangements must have understood the labour involved in the construction and the sophistication of the design.  Those who saw women tending acres of gardens could not have avoided comparison with agricultural practices anywhere.”

Stone houses?  Miles of water races?  Gardens?  Is Bruce Pascoe talking about the same nomadic, simple hunter-gatherers my history teachers spoke of?  They are not the same people, because they are portrayed so differently.  And therein lies the importance of this tempered and scholarly work.

I say it is tempered, as I could discover no bitterness in the telling.  Bruce seems to go out of his way to paint as even-handed a picture of the white settlers as he can.  Yes, he criticises them for their greed and their dishonesty and the atrocities they perpetrated, but at the same time, he places these people and their actions in the context of the world as it was then.  He doesn’t write history with the judgement of today’s sensibilities and moral codes imposed on the people of the early nineteenth century.

What I found most refreshing in this book, was a sense that Bruce Pascoe set out to give us a more accurate picture of how things were and of who did what and then he says to us: these are the facts as I know them; now use them to reach an understanding of the way things are now and let all of that inform your attitudes, your actions and your voice. “…if we persist in hiding from history we will have learnt nothing from those current and previous civilisations… If you can’t own the past you can’t pretend to own the land and all [her] riches…”  Let all this help you learn to fall in love with this country.

This book should be compulsory reading for all teachers and should be on the syllabus of all schools.  Forget about ensuring that every Australian and every aspiring immigrant understand the meaning of Gallipoli.

One of the things this book has done for me is help me understand that history also depends on who reads it.  Why ‘Convincing Ground’?  You will have to read the book.

© 2008-09 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan dot spijer at gmail dot com>]