The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

I always appreciate a non-stereotypical grandmother in fiction and Jean, the protagonist of “The Animals in That Country”, is foul-mouthed, hard drinking and sexual. She also adores her granddaughter Kimberly who is the only human with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Her colleagues at the zoo where she gives guided tours don't think of Jean as a real ranger. She's estranged from her son. She's blocked from posting on certain websites. And her occasional lover is more devoted to his boyfriend. So it's only natural she feels a connection with the animals she cares for. She humorously makes up voices for them while guessing what the beasts are thinking and establishes what she believes to be a special kinship with a dingo named Sue. A mysterious disease quickly spreads across Australia that causes a pinkness in the eye and humans to hear everything that living creatures communicate. Life at the zoo is upturned. People go mad being bombarded with the thoughts of animals and most distance themselves from them as much as possible. When Kimberly's infected father takes her away to discover what whales are really saying, Jean sets out on a road trip to retrieve her alongside her companion Sue. This makes for a highly unique buddy journey as Jean gradually becomes more attuned to the surprising things that all the animals around her are really thinking and saying.

Gradually the text of the story becomes more populated by the animal speech which is a kind of garbled poetry mixed with a heavy dose of profanity. Though it seems like complete gibberish at first it gradually takes on more meaning and I enjoyed how this novel challenges the reader to enter the mindset of other species. Most often we project human consciousness onto animals when wondering what they're thinking but it's more likely that the pattern of their minds is very different from our own. Naturally, if we could actually hear everything the creatures around us are thinking we'd be more aware of the way we are dominating and abusing them. But this novel doesn't romanticise animal consciousness either. The creatures Jean hears are often selfish, crude or tedious. While this makes McKay's debut a really unique novel it also becomes quite confusing to follow the narrative of Jean's episodic journey. However, I was particularly struck by the emotional poignancy of the end. Though Jean is a feisty character her hard exterior conceals a loneliness dwelling beneath the surface and this becomes evident through the dilemma she's presented with at the story's conclusion. This dystopian novel is thoughtful and unsettling as well as moving in its depiction of alcoholism and alienation.

The Performance by Claire Thomas

Watching the news it's difficult not to be consumed by an ever-present level of anxiety about the state of the world as it suffers from innumerable economic, political and environmental problems. Though it feels like the planet is on the brink of catastrophe, no metaphors for impending disaster are necessary when the ongoing bushfire crisis in Australia means the world is literally burning up around the people who live there. Melbourne writer Claire Thomas has brilliantly dramatised this in her novel “The Performance” where three women from different generations watch a performance of Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days' while a bushfire increases in ferocity not far from the theatre. The narrative revolves between the perspectives of professor Margot, theatre usher Summer and philanthropist Ivy as they watch the play and contemplate the past. Though we get snippets of the performance which is occurring and their reactions to it, what's so engaging is how Thomas captures the real experience of being in the theatre. Of course, this novel takes on an added poignancy and even more meaning reading it now that the global pandemic has caused most theatres to shut over the past year. 

Most of the time the audience is focusing on everything except the play whether it be the self-consciousness which comes from coughing in a quiet theatre, the snores of a nearby audience member or the fleeting thoughts which flash through their minds. This gives a wonderful humour and relatable quality to the story as well as grounding the reader in these characters' moment to moment experiences over the course of the play. It also highlights how we ourselves perform whenever we're in public or interacting with other people whether that be following the conventions of social interaction or making sure we're projecting the correct political values. As the fretful character of Summer who is a 20-something biracial woman in a lesbian relationship reflects: “Performing in the right way each day is exhausting her.”

In the play 'Happy Days' a cheerful woman describes her daily routines and narrates her thoughts while gradually being buried in a mound and this is the perfect vehicle through which to compare these women's experiences. They are each dealing with their own personal crisis while also being aware of the larger environmental threat occurring outside the theatre, yet they are most often preoccupied by what's happening in the moment. It's observed how “The earth is deader and harsher now. We humans, all of us, are stuck on a dead planet with extremes that are more extreme. We humans, all of us, have to distract ourselves with denial and busy business.” Since these women's stories are refracted through the play they're watching the novel makes an artful and moving statement about our impending mortality and how these swirling anxieties give the sensation that we're all steadily being buried alive.

While “The Performance” poignantly expresses this existential threat, the book is also wonderfully playful and oddly comforting as I became increasingly involved in these unique women's compelling stories and their relationships to each other. I was also so impressed with how Thomas cleverly structures the novel as its story neatly takes place over the course of the play and when the intermission occurs the text switches to a dramatic script where the women mingle in the lobby. There's a pleasurable irony to how the only interaction which takes place between the characters is presented like a play at the only time they're not actually watching the play. There's also a quiet beauty to how the author shows that (though we can often get lost in apprehensive mindsets) small moments of kindness and human interaction can make a world of difference: “There have been times in Ivy's life when a single warm sentence from another person has made the difference between wanting to die and not wanting to die that day.” Following these women's affecting moments of connection and disconnection is riveting experience. I'd highly recommend this excellent novel to anyone who is a fan of “Ducks, Newburyport” or “Weather” by Jenny Offill.

Quicksand by Steve Toltz

The antihero of Steve Toltz’s second novel “Quicksand” is a man named Aldo Benjamin whose life is filled with one horrendous mishap following another. He instigates a series of ill-conceived business ideas which leave him impoverished, at various points in his life he’s accused of multiple serious crimes and he’s plagued by horrific health problems which leave him seriously debilitated. The novel begins with Aldo’s lifelong friend Liam explaining how he wants to capture this unfortunate man’s life in a meaningful literary work. This put me in mind of one of the greatest biographies I’ve ever read. The writer Stefan Zweig (whose own fiction has received a resurgence in the past several years) wrote a passionate and mesmerising biography of Honore de Balzac. Zweig was very much a man of high artistic ideals, but Balzac was a man that produced a bounty of inspired literature while seemingly only driven by a desire to become wealthy and establish a place in high society. Balzac attempted a series of get-rich quick schemes and returned to writing as a default to pay off his ever-mounting debts. There is something about a figure of evident genius who is hopelessly impaired by his own misdirected passion which makes him incredibly endearing. Liam observes that “the only people worth watching are those who have reached rock bottom and bounced off it, because they always bounce off into very strange orbits.” This is true of Aldo who is an inspired and original character.

For all the calamity that surrounds him, Aldo has unusual insight making statements which caught me off guard with his uncanny ability for cutting through the matrix of life and humorously overturning assumptions. He has a lot to say about sex and love. At one point “it occurred to me then that love is a decision, and the intensity of that love is more closely related to stubbornness than to genuine or spontaneous feeling.” Aldo hints at how our own desires for what we want can blind us to the person we actually have before us. He engages in long-term intense relationships with two different women, Stella and Mimi, at separate points in his life. These women are fascinating and complex themselves which is so refreshing to read in a narrative that is dominated by such a “male searching for meaning” voice. “Quicksand” also doesn’t shy away from giving a new perspective on difficult subjects such as rape and violence towards women. When his relationships fail Aldo frequents a particular house of prostitution to satisfy his urges and which he feels is safer (both emotionally and health-risk-wise) because he surmises that “Sex with people you like, or are infatuated with, or love, average citizens, that’s where the real danger is.” With his horrendous bad luck, this turns out not to be the case and he finds himself entangled in a morally and legally complex situation on one of his trips.

Aldo also makes grand statements about civilization and how our anxiety over our discontents can be filtered into disaster movies, but gives it an existentialist twist: “All those disaster movies have it wrong. I don’t think strangers do bond together in times of crisis, I think they resent each other’s unfamiliarity as the plane goes down and then burn together in awkward silence.” It’s a terrifying prospect to think that in that moment of greatest crisis our feelings of empathy would be superseded by standard self-centred emotions and social discomfort. Later when contemplating the end of civilization he envisions a gradual falling apart: “i don’t know anything other than that the greatest misconception about the apocalypse is that it is a sudden, brief event. it is not. it is slow. Grindingly slow. it goes for generations.” Aldo embodies a nihilistic perspective that oblivion is preferable to the continuation of life because he has experienced more disappointment and pain than the average person. The novel poignantly captures the terror of being struck down with a debilitating condition: “I hated being estranged from my own body, trapped in enemy territory.” His body becomes an antagonist. It’s with sour feeling that he observes how people respond to his illness. Because “Everyone looks on the bright side for you” Aldo is determined to only look on the dark side. Yet the narrative isn’t as bleak as you’d expect, but contains a lot of Woody Allen-like humour about the human condition such as “I can’t understand why masturbation is called self-abuse. It’s the only nice thing I’ve done for myself all week!”

Frustrated with life, Aldo retreats to a beach where he struggles to surf

One of the fascinating things about this novel is its complex portrayal of a difficult friendship. Aldo and Liam have been friends most of their lives. Liam is a police constable and therefore called upon by Aldo to help him out of many different legal scraps. Hilariously, Liam only became an officer because he went to police academy as research for a novel. He abandoned the novel so decided he might as well become an officer. The relationship between the two men changes over the course of time and their bond shows itself to be robust whilst surprising events occur during the novel. The unique challenges each man faces form a special kind of bond as Liam observes: “We were friends who now had one extra thing in common: We were both at the end of our rope.” It’s difficult to portray a gradually evolving friendship in a novel. While it comes together at the end, Liam is almost completely lost in the second part of the novel where the narrative is completely handed over to Aldo who gives an extended testimony at one of his more serious legal trials.  For me, this is one of the weaker points of the novel particularly when Aldo converses with a totally anonymous voice which feels more like the author making thoughtful statements rather than something which would naturally come out of a character during the course of their journey. It’s still engaging but it detracts somewhat from the emotionally engaging elements of the plot. This is an issue which occurred towards the end of Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” as well. The author’s compelling intelligence seems to take precedence over the pleasures of story. But, in both cases, I don’t think this detracts from the fact that these are extraordinary novels.

It’s admirable the way “Quicksand” eloquently describes many of the discontents we share through a compelling and forcefully original voice. The well-formed critiques of civilization and modern life are framed in such a way that you wonder why these things aren’t being asked all the time. Aldo has all the audacity and humorous force of thought equal to some of literature’s most unusual and memorable characters such as Ignatius J. Reilly of “A Confederacy of Dunces” or Jerome Corcoran in “What I Lived For.” It’s a book which reaches for profundity and quite often achieves it. I’m certain that “Quicksand” is a novel that will stick with me.