"SINGER RECORDS HIS LIFE’S GRACE NOTES

Known to many as the multi-award winning singer/songwriter from The Hottentots, Carl Cleves displays in Tarab his skill as a natural and masterful storyteller. With wit, intelligence, evocative descriptions, and an infectious curiosity, the author takes us on a remarkable 30-year journey through Africa, Europe, South America, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Australia.

Cleves describes himself as "a searcher and a learner". At the heart of his on-going quest is his love of and insatiable curiosity for music, and a deep understanding that music is not only a universal language, transcending cultures and physical barriers, but a unique expression of the human condition. You do not have to be a musician to be drawn into the extraordinary musical experiences that propel Cleves on his journey. A Sudanese singer unfurls his voice in the courtyard of a private home in Mombassa: "The first phrase was a question, the second an invitation, the third left us with an anxious expectancy, the fourth struck suddenly, the fifth bewitched." The song takes Cleves to a place the Arabs call Tarab, "where poetry and music bestow ecstasy and true bliss upon the lucky one", and inspires him to embark on a perilous overland journey through war-torn southern Sudan. He and his wife find themselves guests in the garrison of an Elvis-loving General before eventually making their way north to Khartoum where the finest singers and musicians in the land stage an unforgettable concert.

Whether it be the intrigue of an Indian harp and violin recital on an island in Lake Titicaca, the haunting laments of Huayno singers in Bolivia, or the search for traditional Senegalese rhythms, the thread of the musician's quest is ever present. But this is much more than a musician's memoir. It is a beautifully written and well-researched narrative revealing the philosophical, political and emotional journey of a man and his guitar traversing different cultures, extraordinary characters, near-death experiences, deep friendships, ill-health, a successful recording career, and perhaps the most enduring terrain of all, parenthood.

Beatrice, his first wife, is his companion through the first half of the book. The young Belgian couple flee their conservative home town to seek broader horizons. Powerful images are woven into these early journeys. Travelling by train from Bulgaria to Istanbul, "Farmhouses were covered up to their roofs with crystals of ice, spirals of black smoke rising from their chimneys, puffing periscopes in a frozen ocean." In Turkey there are "Steambaths in Istanbul, blizzards on the road to Ankara, the song of a Kurdish shepherd at a truckstop outside Ezroum." In Darjeeling "I breathed in the short-wave crackle of the crickets, the crash of wood splintering under the axe and the clang of a copper kettle by the spring."

The author's son Tashi, born in Australia, is his primary companion through the second half of the narrative. As a single parent with a 2-year-old child, Cleves follows his musical wanderlust and spends seven years in South America working as a musician in bars and clubs before becoming a successful band leader in Brazil. Remarkable, and sometimes foolhardy adventures are ever present. When Tashi is not quite four, armed with a "dirty page torn out of an exercise book" that contains some pencil scribbles, father and son set out with a Dutch friend to follow a disused Inca trail to Coroico, a small Bolivian town. The trio travel on foot from the thin, freezing air of the Altiplano into tropical forests 4000 metres below. With Cleves spinning endless tales to keep his son going they negotiate rickety rope bridges over precipitous ravines and loose rubble on steep slopes, finding giant butterflies and the ancient staircases hewn out of the rock face. This expedition inspired one of songs found on the CD (also called Tarab) released in conjunction with the book. Recorded in different countries over a period of decades, the author's music is the perfect accompaniment to his written memoir, illuminating how a songwriter translates his experiences into art.

This is a book to curl up with and be transported to other places and other times. The intimate tone gives the reader the feeling of listening to the melodious lilt of a magical weaver of tales. The rich prose is filled with images that will stay with you long after the last page. In Tarab, Cleves has shown himself to be a writer of great talent in prose as well as in song. More tales will surely follow."
- Laurel Cohn, Byron Echo 8 July 2008.

"We live in an age of faux travel writing. The great adventurers of the past – Wilfred Thesiger, Sir Richard Burton, Eric Newby – have been replaced by clowns who devise shallow rationales and write lame comedies that pass for travel stories. This thought occurred to me as I read this remarkable book by Carl Cleves.

Here is the story of a young Flemish man who turned his back on the security of an affluent middle-class European life and headed off with a young wife and nothing more complex than a desire to experience the richness of the world.

By any measure, Cleves deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Thesiger, Burton and Newby. He is an astute observer (his succinct explanation of the historic forces at play in Darfur and Sudan is exemplary), a passionate participant and a man prepared to undertake interesting, but never crazy, experiences.

His wanderings started almost as an accident. He had accepted a scholarship to study law at Witwatersrand University. On arrival in South Africa he realised he had made the wrong choice. Fortuitously, he changed to musicology, studied African music and headed north with his guitar to experience the music of the continent in all its diversity.

Along the way he deals with deep apartheid-era racism, the harshness of the virtually lawless military forces, smuggling bush babies across borders, almost signs on with a rabid racist who wants to sail across the Indian Ocean and all the time recounts his unique experiences in language so vivid you feel you are travelling with him.

Eventually, Cleves arrives in Australia, forms the world music outfit The Hottentots and, after some time in Sydney, heads for Byron Bay.

Cleves is a rarity. He is a true traveller in an age of holidaymakers and gawpers. He heads out to experience the world and reminds his readers that true travel is about sinking deeply into cultures and allowing unique experiences to change your life. The result is a journey that enriches Cleves and the reader."
- Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Saturday 2 August 2008.

"...Cleve’s memoir is at its most enjoyable when the sheer adventure of his experiences, from the hair raising, sublime and serendipitous takes hold. Belgian born Cleves has done what many travelers only dream of, spent years on the road sharing his love of (arguably) the world’s only common language– music. Romantic love is won and lost along the way but it is Cleves’ passion for music that encourages people to open their hearts and homes to him across the globe."
- Extract of Review by Sally Keighery, CAE Book Groups Program Coordinator

Pick of the Week: "The debut novel from Iranian-born Australian poet Ali Alizadeh is about love in the time of terror. Bahram is a teenage boy from an educated and secular Iranian family. When the Islamic revolution comes, it purges the culture the family has come to embrace. Bahram’s mother must wear a headscarf. Activities such as listening to Western music or reading Western books are fraught with peril. Then Bahram’s uncle, formerly an academic disappears under suspicious circumstances. Despite the fact that Bahram lives in constant fear, the oppressive regime cannot control his heart – and when he meets Fereshteh (Persian for Angel), love blooms. But it is only a matter of time before the lovers’ secret romance is discovered, with disastrous consequences. Alizadeh has written an absorbing romantic tragedy notable for its precise and fiercely felt prose."
- Cameron Woodhead, The Age Saturday 26 July 2008.

"Alizadeh is an Iranian exile who migrated to Australia after his nation’s war with Iraq. He is a poet, translator and playwright. This novel is the story of a bemused child who becomes an angry young man because of Iran’s reversion to fundamentalist Islam. Bahram is too young to understand the change, but he can see the effects on the Westernised middle class. A lefist uncle “disappears”, his mother sinks into depression, and an opportunistic cousin plays the radical game. In his teens, Bahram falls for Fereshteh, as relations between the sexes become increasingly controlled and problematic. War with Iraq starts, an equally dire regime but supported by the West, source of so much pop culture pleasure. Love under the rule of an increasingly “psychotic” regime is dicing with death – and the attachment is achingly, touchingly depicted. It is surely doomed, for Bahram is dispatched to Australia, characterized as “no bloody oil and no filthy mullahs”. He ends up in share-house falafel- land, rootless and seething. The book parallels Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis."
- Lucy Sussex, The Sunday Age Sunday 13 July 2008.

"Anger on the Way to Heaven

IRAN was no place for poets during the Islamic Revolution or its long war with Iraq. And Bahram, the dreamy, poetry-loving teenage son of educated, secular parents, is doomed to be an outsider for ever.

Award-winning poet and playwright Ali Alizadeh, who migrated to Australia at 14, may be blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction in his harrowing but brilliant debut novel.

He tells how the rise of fundamentalism shatters young Bahram's world. A best friend, a Christian, mysteriously disappears, kindly Uncle Behrooz, a leftist academic, is found dead in a ditch behind a Tehran prison and his father becomes distant as he plots the family's escape.

Cousin Abbas, his sporty idol, joins the Revolutionary Guard and patrols Tehran with other thugs to exact brutal punishment for un-Islamic activity. Bahram's mother, sexually abused by Abbas as a "whore" for not wearing a headscarf, is ultimately driven insane. The war brings new suffering as Iraqi rockets rain on Tehran. Bahram is humiliated at school for being a middle-class sissy while less fortunate boys are sent into frontline minefields to die as martyrs in "waves that reach all the way to heaven".

But the constant fear and oppression cannot control Bahram's heart when he finds friendship and innocent love with Fereshteh (Persian for angel). They discuss poetry and fantasise about escaping through Turkey.

However, Abbas foils their plans with tragic consequences and his father decides they are going to Australia, where there is "no bloody oil and no filthy mullahs".

Even after fleeing the ayatollahs, the teenager faces new terrors when he is bullied by racists and accused of being a terrorist.

Bahram's past is revealed as the now rootless, drug-taking, angry young man drives from the Gold Coast to Melbourne to confront Abbas, who has surprisingly turned up in Australia as a spivvy entrepreneur.

Alizadeh has written not only a compelling romantic tragedy but also a powerful, edgy story that depicts Australia's sometimes shameful treatment of immigrants."
- Carlene Ellwood Sunday Tasmanian Hobart Town, Tasmania. 10 August 2008

"Ali Alizadeh's elegaic poem Marco Polo, published in Heat 16 last month, has an almost Conradian savour of words not part of one's mother tongue. Born in Iran, Alizadeh came to Australia when he was 14, earned a PhD here and lives in Turkey. This novel -- about an adolescent who flees Iran with his liberal father, only to confront a cousin, once a Revolutionary Guard and now a spivvy entrepreneur in Melbourne -- has an edgy sense of lived experience that makes it compelling."
- Extract of a review by Miriam Cosic The Australian 31 May 2008.

"Bahram's parents are the very epitome of modern Iran: university educated, secular, progressive. His kindly uncle Behrooz was a progressive academic. But everything changed with Islamic revolution; his mother had been told to wear a scarf over her head and his father to stop wearing his colourful Western ties. His cousin Abbas joins the Islamic army and becomes a pernicious force against his family and the life they had led. After a tirade against the Islamists in front of Abbas, Behrooz strangely disappears. The pressure drives his mother to insanity. The protracted war with Iraq brings new levels of suffering and suspicion. In spite of this, the young Bahram, an outsider, finds friendship and love with Fereshteh (Persian for 'angel'). Their relationship develops secretly, they think, and they fantasise about escaping together. Unknown to them, they are observed by Abbas and their plans are tragically foiled. Alizedeh beautifully and terrifyingly portrays a society in disastrous transition - one can only hope it is just a tragic interlude. The New Angel is a wonderful novel by a highly talented Iranian-born Australian writer. "
- Mark Rubbo Readings Newsletter June 2008.

"Debut novels are often the most interesting to read, and certainly the most interesting to review. Like debut albums, an artist puts their heart and soul into their first novel, and it is the initial work that is often the most personal. After all, the debut novelist never knows when they will be published again, and if the novel is not well received then Andy Warhol's musings of the length of fame may take on a more literal meaning. It really is a case of get it right first time, because, like everyone else, novelists rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.

I suspect that The New Angel is an intensely personal work for its author, and not just because it is his first novel. While he may be new to the novel game, Ali Alizadeh is an accomplished, published and award winning writer already. He writes, performs and edits poetry, holds a PhD, and has also collaborated on an award-winning film. But I suspect it is the subject matter of The New Angel which would hold special significance for Mr Alizadeh.

The New Angel's protagonists are Bahram and Fereshteh, who, like their literary creator, grow up in Iran, and live much of their childhood in conditions of unbelievable fear and violence. They are also a teenage couple who, despite living lives of unimaginable hardship, somehow find the time to meet to meet and fall in love. Much of the novel is set against the Islamic Revolution of the 1980s, and it is against this backdrop that the characters face their biggest tests.

In some respects this is a love story, and because for much of the novel the young lovers are 13 and 14 years old, and because they must face almost insurmountable external barriers to their relationship, comparisons to Romeo and Juliet are inevitable. But it is more than a love story, and is as much about violence and barbarity, religious intolerance, the innocence of childhood, and the horrors of complete helplessness as it is about love and desire. It is a tragedy - a work of fiction set against the background of the unbelievable atrocities committed during the Iran-Iraq War could scarcely be anything else - but the author engages the reader through Bahram, who narrates most of the novel, and what he finds funny we do as well.

Although The New Angel is set in an intensely religious and conservative Islamic country, it is not difficult to relate to the predicament of the characters. Fascism because of religious zeal is not so different to fascism motivated by racial differences, whether perceived or real. One of the characters, for example, would not be out of place if transplanted in whole cloth to Germany in the 30s and 40s. The mistrust and censorship of art, literature and its creators, indiscriminate death caused by technologically superior firepower, family members taking sides against each other, and the pervading fear and uncertainty of not knowing when the authorities are going to come for you. These are all familiar themes to anyone who has lived through a large scale war.

It is a strange and yet auspicious characteristic of human nature, that in such horrific and uncontrollable circumstances such as those in which the characters of The New Angel find themselves, something as poetic, romantic and all-consuming as young love can not only begin, but flourish. The characters of Bahram and Fereshteh at first captivate, then enthral, and in the end, in different ways, become victims of the time in which they lived. It is to the author's credit that a work that seems so personal, so emotional, and so raw, is able to provide such a powerful lesson about the best and worst of humanity."
- Michael Freedman Matilda Literary Weblog: www.middlemiss.org

"Bahram's is the voice of the newly-arrived immigrant, misunderstood and always alien, at home neither in the country he has come from nor the one he now inhabits. Such people are becoming increasingly common in our globalised society, and their outsider voices need to be heard and heeded if the notion of a 'global village' is to ever become a reality.

Ali Alizadeh's debut novel is classified as Fiction, but, like many first novels, it clearly draws on the author's own autobiography. Alizadeh lived in Iran until the age of 14, when he emigrated to Australia, and is thus able to give us the perspective of a young adolescent trying to negotiate not only the usual dizzying array of adolescent issues, but also the effects of the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, and the rise of fundamentalism on his family and community.

A schoolboy is chastised for drawing heroic pictures of 'Ancient Persians defending Iran against Alexander the Great' (p.74). His teacher tells him: 'Ancient Persians were not Muslims. They were Zoroastrian infidels. We can't have this. And why is your Alexander naked? Depictions of nude bodies are absolutely forbidden ... You must draw pictures of our Revolutionary War ...' In his sports class he is humiliated by his teacher for being 'middle class sissy shit!' because he's asthmatic and unathletic while 'Our boys are dying for God' (p.77). Disgusted, the schoolboy leaves the schoolyard and meets a young woman on the bus stop who admires his picture of Alexander. The subsequent sweet but quite innocent relationship between Alizadeh's protagonist, Bahram, and his beautiful friend Fereshteh is a story that would under normal circumstances be about the gentle awakening of young love, but in this social context becomes a story of loss, injustice, death and revenge.

The portrait of Bahram's cousin in Iran, Abbas, is an unforgettable depiction of a young man drunk on the power bestowed on him by a ruling elite. Bahram witnesses Abbas' sexual abuse of his mother, Abbas' aunt, in her own home. Under the guise of enforcing sharia law on a 'shameless' (ie. unveiled) woman, Abbas throws his weight around and Bahram's mother has no choice but to submit, or risk being reported to the authorities as a 'whore'. This abuse of power needs little commentary from the narrator; the horror of the events he witnesses both within his family and in his wider community is self-evident. What is unexpected is that Abbas also ends up in Australia, and the adult Bahram's final confrontation with his cousin forms the novel's denouement.

Interspersed with this narrative is the older Bahram, now living on the Gold Coast-Brisbane stetch of Australia's east coast. As a high school student he experiences racism, bullying, and labels of 'terrorist'. As a young adult he undertakes the typical rite-of-passage long road trip across Australia, but his appearance prompts patrons in an outback pub to suspect him of being an escapee from a refugee detention centre, and they treat him appallingly. These incidents underline the difficulties immigrants face on a daily basis as they attempt to 'assimililate' into a culture that doens't appear to want them.

Bahram's is the voice of the newly-arrived immigrant, misunderstood and always alien, at home neither in the country he has come from nor the one he now inhabits. Such people are becoming increasingly common in our globalised society, and their outsider voices need to be heard and heeded if the notion of a 'global village' is to ever become a reality.

Transit Lounge, though a small publisher, has done a lovely job with this book, which is aesthetically pleasing and well-edited. Some of Alizadeh's earlier poetry publications let him down in this respect, but The New Angel showcases his talent for lyrical prose and is hopefully just the beginning of his prose output. "
- Liz Hall-Downs, www.compulsivereader.com

About the reviewer: Liz Hall-Downs has been reading and performing poetry in public, on TV and radio in Australia and the USA, and publishing in journals, since 1983. She holds a BA from Deakin University (Victoria) with major studies in Professional Writing & Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Some of Liz Hall Down's publications include: Fit of Passion, (with Kim Downs), (Fit of Passion Collective, 1997), Girl With Green Hair, (Papyrus Publishing, 2000), People of the Wetlands, (Brisbane City Council, 1996), Mountains to Mangroves, and Mountains to Mangroves Haiku Cycle, (Brisbane City Council and Queensland Wildlife Preservation Society, 1999), Blackfellas Whitefellas Wetlands, (with B.R. Dionysius and Samuel Wagan Watson), (Brisbane City Council & Boondall Wetlands.

 

"I've just finished reading a new book called The New Angel by Ali Alizadeh which has floored me. There are scenes in this novel that imprint themselves onto the brain, where they tend to reside for days.

The story concerns Bahram, currently living in Australia, who after receiving a phone call from someone in his past, begins to recall his time growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, and of his burgeoning love for Fereshteh (Persian for 'angel'). Much of the novel mirrors Ali Alizadeh's own story and it is the blurring of fact and fiction that makes this book so potent.

Alizadeh's anger at fundamentalism is so heartfelt that it is impossible to engage with the story from a detached distance. The vitriolic tone that seethes through the novel leaves the reader in no doubt the suffocating atmosphere such regimes pose on its citizens. This is not the book to read if looking for cold, objective reportage. This is a man trying to show that no matter where you run the past is always there waiting for its moment before it taps you on the shoulder and despite oppressive circumstances poetry(and all that word entails) and even possibly redemption is attainable. "
- Greg Waldron, Posted by Abbey's Bookshop Thursday May 29 2008, www.abbeybookshop.blogspot.com

"Ali’s New Angel took me on three journeys as I read, and each was rewarding and confronting and moving.

The first was a journey through the most-recent experiences of Bahram, new to this country, who arrives in Australia scarred by what happened in his first home, Iran. We see Australia through the eyes of someone rigid with trauma and loss: “How could I make anything”, the narrator asks, “when everything in the world has been unmade?” (12). I was particularly struck by Ali’s description of a tropical paradise transformed to a still landscape, so like the self frozen in time by trauma.

This journey takes us through the surreal landscapes of the Gold Coast, a shiny world of neon and glass, where new buildings colonise the old, where the traces of colonial atrocities are overwritten by tourist signs. It moves south towards Melbourne, through a world prickling with menace and violent suspicion of the newcomer. The narrator, in these sections, stands between two worlds: the old world is lost to him, and the new is in many ways inaccessible. The complexity of his feelings brought to mind Ali’s poem “Iran”, which ends with the narrator describing himself as “a fickle and shuddering ghost/ rejuvenated and alarmed/ by the mention of the word/ motherland” (Eyes in times of War, p. 85).

The novel took me on a second journey, through the narrator’s memories of his homeland, and the cataclysmic shifts of the late seventies and eighties, with the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. “I remember” chants the beginning of each chapter, and offers us details of Bahram’s childhood, at first not dissimilar to my own, but soon ruptured by religious change, by missiles flattening neighbourhoods and children walking over landmines.

Yet even while streets turn to rubble and the constraints of life tighten, there are the sweet hopes of love between Bahram and his angel, Fereshteh, their poetry and laughter and a sense of a life beyond the destruction.

Tension escalates in both these journeys, and they converge in another cataclysm at the novel’s end, which resonated for me long after I had closed the book.

The combined effect of these two journeys was to spur me to take another, this time through my own memories. The novel’s events are from my own time, so I couldn’t help but think back to my childhood and see what was happening for me then, as a child in England. My experiences of those crucial years couldn’t be more different. Important political events happen around the same dates, but the scale and intensity cannot be compared. In 1979, when the Islamic revolution is unfolding in Iran, Margaret Thatcher comes to power in England. In the early eighties, there is violence in Britain, but where IRA bombs kill a few in London, thousands die when missiles hit urban centres in Iran. In 1982 the UK and Argentina fight over the Falkland Islands and a thousand people are said to have died, whereas at least a million people were killed in the Iraq-Iran War.

Ali’s novel took me on a journey through experiences I had never known. It allowed me to stand in someone else’s shoes for a brief period and try to imagine this other life, its visceral and emotional reality. For me, this is the great power and the gift of fiction. Good fiction draws a reader into the text, blurring the line between the “I” of the character and the “I” of the reader. If the author can create an imaginative bridge between reader and narrator, it allows readers to experience, just for a moment, what this other life might have felt like. Good fiction makes the reader ask: How might I behave, in that situation? How would I have felt? How might I be now?

The answers are not always quick or easy, but books like Ali’s challenge readers to strive to connect our own experiences to those whose lives have been so very different. And this act – of imaginatively putting yourself in the place of another – offers hope for me, because it creates the possibility of greater empathy, a quality so often lacking today. "
- Catherine Padmore, www.catherinepadmore.com author of Sybil’s Cave at the launch of The New Angel at Readings Carlton, Melbourne, Wednesday 16 July 2008.

"The 1980s were shaped by Reaganomics, Thatcherism and a‘‘greed is good’’ excuse to be selfish, but this quietly impressive first novel stays inside a marginalised culture of the time: caravan park long-stay residents,with their self-conscious pride and brooding resentments.

Elsie and Sterling are set in their ways, and sure of their love for each other. Sterling is handsome, enjoying the approval and company of other women, but remains touchingly loyal to Elsie, who works as a barmaid, grieving a brief memory of the baby she was forced to give up by attitudes steeped in 1950s morality. (The chapter epigraphs quoting women’s magazines of the time are cringingly hilarious.)

When a young woman turns up claiming to be her daughter, Elsie is forced to reconcile the past. Recommended."
- Ian MacFarlane, Sunday Canberra Times 2 March 2008.

"Vinyl Inside also enjoys the riddle of love. Like (Toni) Jordan Matthews manages to avoid the customary cynicism that tends these days to come standard with writing about matters of the heart. The book ventures into complex emotional territory but does so with a gentle belief that life’s burdens can shift into more comfortable positions … Matthews’ recreation of Elsie’s family is poignant and the portrait of her bewildered father is exquisite, especially at a time after the birth when Elsie joins him playing lawn bowls. Matthews uses details of consumer culture to draw the lines between different eras: Sterl wears Blue Stratos and her dad wears Old Spice.

Eventually, Elsie’s child, Dania, now an adult comes looking for her birth mother in Splashes. The sorest point of the story is that, in ten years of partnership, Elsie has not been bale to tell Sterl about her child. Sterl wanted kids of his own. But this earthy couple communicates brilliantly about anything that does not matter. They aren’t so good on the big stuff.

Toni Jordan and Rachel Matthews are writers of generous spirit. If sometimes their worlds are less clouded than the real one, the result is anything but disappointment."
- Michael McGirr, The Age 23 February 2008.

 

"An earthy first novel, Vinyl Inside follows Elsie and Sterling as they, well, go nowhere in particular. Touchingly in love, they're living quietly in a caravan park when a blast from Elsie's past -- the daughter she gave up as a teenager -- interrupts their rosy routine.

Rachel Matthews has a nice ear for dialogue and creates a warm and witty little piece of Australiana here.

Sterling and Elsie are the sort of characters other authors make fun of, but Matthews shows them the respect they deserve. In a word: affectionate."
- Claire Sutherland, Herald Sun 5 January 2008.

"Vinyl Inside, Rachel Matthews’ debut novel, is the honest and quietly assertive story of Elsie, a middle-aged woman living a simple life with her long-time partner Sterling (a stud in Speedos), in Splashes, a typically Australian caravan park. Their life rolls along like the dusty highway until one day the daughter Elsie gave away in her teens—a daughter Sterling knew nothing about—tracks her down. What follows is an amusing and idiosyncratic look into relationships and their evolution in the face of Elsie’s haunting and hurtful past.

This tale is readable and enjoyable, but there is a slight sense of awkwardness preventing you from totally believing the story. There is also an overabundance of sidelining subjects that we only skim the surface of. However, some truly touching moments maintain the tale’s appeal.

Matthews delicately explores the idea of what a mother is and should be, and plays with themes of loss, regret and abandonment in an authentic and graceful way. The segments describing Elsie’s youth are particularly beautiful as they capture and convey the intensity and fragility of young womanhood.

Women readers and fans of unique Australian fiction, and of authors like Rebecca Sparrow, will enjoy this story. Vinyl Inside’s whimsical feel and the warm, likeable characters are what will keep readers interested until the surprising and cleverly gentle ending."
- Lucy Meredith, Bookseller and Publisher October 2007.

"In the 1980s Elsie and Sterling live at Splashes, a caravan park.Then, after 20 long years, Elsie's daughter turns up, and there are a whole lot of adjustments to be made. The period, its culture and inocence is brought delightfully to life, and the characters are rich, real and (mostly) lovable. Long ago quotes from Aussie women's mags at the start of each chapter are a reminder of a very different time in our history..."
- Julie Redlich,Woman’s Day 14 January 2008.

"Ida never experiences a climatic triumph, nor an epiphany. Yet her abiding strength and gentle courage see her find wisdom. By incorporating world events into her life’s tablecloth, she domesticates them, revealing ordinary people to be participants and creators of history, not only recipients of it. Perhaps this is a radical and democratic thought, or else proof that the meek and seekers of peace are blessed."
- Steve Gome, Australian Book Review June 2008.

 

"Its greatest strength lies in its protagonist, whose personal journey shows a tender, fragile and hopeful side to humanity. Less a history of the great war and more the history of a woman affected by the great war, this is a gentle, simple and straightforward book."
- Reg Domingo, Good Reading March 2008.

 

"Peter McConnell portrays one woman's life as a microcosm of war. Fortunately for potential readers, Peter McConnell and his publisher have decided to tack "a novel" to the title of his book, otherwise A History of the Great War would almost certainly have been filed neatly away in the non-fiction section. All the same, it's an ambitious title for a modest book. Then again, maybe that was the point.

McConnell's focus is the life of one woman, Ida Mitton. Her story is told against a backdrop of pre and post-World War I and II. As the tumult, destruction and deaths begat by the killing fields are too enormous a topic to deal with, McConnell narrows his approach to just a single individual to show how much damage is caused. Set in sleepy Bairnsdale, the narrative follows prim and mousy Ida as she meets her beloved Ralph, but before the knot is tied, war breaks out.

Ralph enlists because "the Empire needed all its sons and daughters to rally with brave hearts".
Later, injured and shellshocked, the serviceman returns to civilian life with all illusions of the grandeur and majesty of war shattered forever. Ida, meanwhile, copes as all left behind must cope, with stoicism and quiet forbearance.

Despite its subject matter, this is a gentle love story. McConnell forgoes all the grisly details of wholesale massacre, concentrating instead on the small happenings of a small country town.

Hence, there's talk of the making of lace, of horses being shod, and of dancing in woolshed balls."
- Thuy On, The Age 4 February 2008.

"McConnell’s strong imagery of the Gippsland countryside is beguiling and the addition of the character of Ida’s son Edward is a breath of fresh air."
- Katie Horner, Bookseller and Publisher October 2007.

"It is a stylish, sophisticated thriller that is not afraid to take on the big issues … Alice’s quest for her fugitive past and for possible reconciliation with Lucy works marvelously as a personal story of self-discovery while engaging with the public debate that necessarily follows in the wake of scientific advancement."
- Liam Davison, The Australian.

"This is real page turner - you cant’ help but warm to Alice and feel involved in her adventures. Highly recommended for those who like their thrillers served with a twist." ****
- Kabita Dhara, Bookseller and Publisher.

"The Asking Game is a teaser of a novel."
- Thuy On, The Age.

"Intelligent and curiously affecting."
- Ian Mc Farlane, The Canberra Times.

"Like fugitives fleeing an unforgiving city, poets Cyril Wong and Terry Jaensch throw a long lingering look at the site of their banishment, proffering love letters tinged with anger and incomprehension."
- June Cheong, The Sunday Times (Singapore).

"Wong brings a knack for evoking emotion to the project which when combined with Jaensch’s ability to manipulate language and imagery, creates a collection of isolated pieces that form a collective sense of loneliness and searching."
- Megan Smith, Out Magazine (Perth).

"A collaboration between Aussie actor-poet Terry Jaensch and local poet Cyril Wong, Excess Baggage & Claim combines the richness of poetry with the accessibility of narrative … the book best read late at night, is a good choice if you’re looking for poignant , as well as juicy, erotic passages that evoke your past loves."
- Ng Hui Hsien, IS Magazine (Singapore).

"The publication of Excess Baggage & Claim is, for me, a momentous occasion.

Momentous because it represents a personal and artistic triumph for Terry and Cyril, who were introduced by a mutual friend; who corresponded for a year and a half via email as they discussed the project; and who hammered out much of the book's themes, voices and structures in a passionate four months in Singapore, which Terry visited as the result of an Asialink residency.

Momentous because it represents a remarkable cross-cultural fusion - both artistically, and politically. It is an act of creation, and a rejection of the values of Pauline Hanson and others of her ilk - including our own Prime Minister, who in 1988, in opposition, talked openly of too many Asian immigrants spoiling Australia's 'social cohesion'.

Momentous because it explores gay love and desire in a country where, only a decade ago, Cyril's first book was heavily censored by Singapore's National Arts Council because of its prevalence of gay themes.

Just as one of its characters seeks to 'cultivate one authentic self from a series of predictabilities', Cyril and Terry have strived - successfully, in my eyes - to create a work of art which is larger than both of them.

It is a collection of poems which evokes the human spirit's ability to engage with past betrayals we might once have shied away from, considered unspeakable:

'father upon me, whispering:
Don't worry, don't move, this won't hurt, ok?'

It is a collection of poems which do more than touch upon our intimate fears as we 'lie in bed waiting for the dark to lift', and which are about far more than just gay men, gay sex, and one man's romantic love for another.

Excess Baggage & Claim is a dialogue; an affair; an engagement with senses and sensation. It is a revelation. It is both painful and beautiful. It is a romance - flawed, like so many romances - and a romance with literature, a love of words, carefully written and placed."

- Richard Watts, Melbourne launch, fortyfivedownstairs, 4th June 2007.
Full speech available at: http://richard_watts.blogspot.com

"Good short stories are completed in one sitting, yet open up characters, insights and places that entertain and enrich us. Gallois’s collection does this … at her best she is breath-catching. If this engaging collection does not send more Aussies to the subcontinent, very little else will."
- Barbara Baker, Courier Mail.

"This collection of stories is a stylish debut. Gallois writes with clever economy, giving the reader brisk lessons in culture, history and social anomalies, rarely stalling her narrative in the process … The two strongest pieces – The Colour of Coral and Fatherland – are all about yearning, the former for forbidden love, the latter for an unknown father."
- Susan Kurosawa, The Australian.

"The most successful stories are those of muted disappointment: ‘The Colour of Coral’, narrated by an elderly Australian who attempts to reach across the cultural divide between herself and her Indian friend, or ‘Box Wallah’, in which a once-respected gentleman suffers deep humiliation after the departure of the British. Gallois is an acute observer and writes in a clean accessible prose … She draws her characters swiftly and efficiently and their stories are told without authorial judgement. An enjoyable collection."
- Caroline Lurie, Good Reading.

"Her stories are little gems."
- Indian Link.

"There is a refreshing lack of sentimentality and stereotypes in Gallois’s stories. An individual and confident voice, she often challenges assumptions, sometimes distorting the lens through which the West views ‘India’."
- Kabita Dhara, Australian Book Review.

"So many books are described as inspirational. Emails from the Edge is of a different order of magnitude altogether. Haley’s unique personal story aside, it is also an excellent travel book."
- Owen Richardson, The Age.

"Haley writes with engrossing insight, intellect, and wit. Few downers are this uplifting"
- MX.

"The trick all good travel writers manage is to convince the reader that they are travelling along with them. Grumpy Paul Theroux does this superbly and Haley, needing help every step of the way and frequently frustrated, pulls it off too. He does this so well that I, as a soft traveller, breathed a sigh of relief when he leaves behind the trials (and many kindnesses) he encountered in the Middle East and makes it to Europe."
- Peter Corris, The Australian.

"His compelling account “of rolling around the axis of evil post 9/11” is part travelogue, part social commentary and a moving personal memoir of his bravest journey back from a suicide attempt that crippled his body, but not his spirit."
- Herald Sun Sunday Magazine.

"The writing is edgy and oozes honesty, and Haley’s self deprecating sense of humour left me in stitches as he cavorts into dangerous ‘no go’ zones, mistakenly gets arrested as a terrorist in Syria and meets an Osama bin Laden lookalike in a Teheran bazaar. I burnt the midnight oil reading this book. What I most admired were his guts and determination to make the most of what life has to offer – and that is a true inspiration."
- Good Reading.

"an eloquent portrait of how lived experience can inform and alter a person’s intellectual and spiritual alignment … a profound and evocative document of a particular place"
- Kate McFadyen, Australian Book Review.

"its sharp humanitarian edge gives it a bold uniqueness"
- Erin O’Brien, Australian Bookseller and Publisher.

"Material poverty does not mean spiritual poverty, and Kennedy’s sojourn overseas made her see Australia with new critical insight. Sing is evocatively written and recommended if you want to think about the world."
- Lucy Sussex, The Age.

"keenly felt, adeptly recorded detail… a sensual touching evocation of Mexican landscape and nature"
- Mark Thomas, The Canberra Times.

"each poem is a tantalising dream … a tribute from one restless, searching artist to another, yet points to a problem commonly human and genuinely spiritual, with flair—with some fine, assured art."
- Kerry Leves, Overland.

"A book for someone who loves travel and travels with love, poems filled with startling lines and images that move with grace and trueness and some element of gentle ache amid it all, like 'grain broken on the road of chance'. It's this mystery of involvement that Scott celebrates with tenderness and heartfelt surrender ... How close it all feels."
- Mark Mordue, author of 'Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip'.

"Beautiful… obscure… touching…the old superimposed on the new. The poems can be read and reread, in and out of order, as a philosophy on the art of travel and the nature of dislocation."
- Claudia Hyles, The Canberra Times.

"Consistently original and beautifully rendererd….Buy this haunting volume to take on the road and plunge into during moments of solitude."
- Susan Kurosawa,The Australian.

"From money and Khao San Rd to beaches and buddhas, the themes and subject matter are as varied and all-encompassing as the experiences of travelling… a welcome alternative."
- Rosalyn Page, Australian Gourmet Traveller.

"Finely crafted poems of a world closely observed and richly explored … a spiritual journey."
- Paul Grover, Studio.

 

"Gathering our strength, we trekked on down the narrow glacial valley and by early afternoon had made it to the alpine slopes of the Ruinsara Valley.Our camp was a pure delight. The wildflowers had already burst into bloom and yellow fields of anemone spread beyond the camp, while clusters of tiny purple gentians lit up the meadow and clumps of white saxifrage and the delicate mauve and red primulae clung to the banks of the watercourse.

All most readers of good travel books want is a genuinely informative, vicarious experience of the adventures of the writer. This is precisely what Weare has done in this remarkable book.

Weare has a deep knowledge of the Himalaya. He first went there in 1970, is a life member of the Himalaya Club, wrote the first edition of Lonely Planet's Trekking in the Indian Himalaya, led small trekking parties into the mountains from 1976 to 1989 and joined Australian Himalayan Expeditions in 1974. He is uniquely qualified to write about the region.

The story is simple. Weare, who now lives in the NSW Southern Highlands, decided that rather than a short trek leading a group he wanted to take a long trek by himself. He wanted to trek "from the source of the Ganges to the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh. But why stop there, I mused? Why not continue and trek all the way to Kashmir?" He worked out that the journey would involve walking 2500 kilometres, most of it above 5000 metres and crossing at least 20 passes.

He decided it would take five months and that he would not try to break any records. He was a 55-year-old man who enjoyed trekking and he was going to enjoy walking through some of the most amazing countryside on the planet.Almost coincidentally, Weare happens to be a damned fine writer; for those who will never gasp in wonder at the beauty of the Himalaya, this is a superb evocation of an unforgettable experience."
- Bruce Elder,Sydney Morning Herald and The Age 17 November, 2007.

"Garry Weare and the Himalayas had a difficult start. On his first trek there, to Kashmir on the India-Pakistan border in 1973, he was arrested and jailed. It didn't put him off: Weare led walks in the region for 13 years and wrote a Lonely Planet guidebook.

The five-month, 2500km trek on which this book is based was eight years from idea to conception. In May 2003, with a cook and secret stash of rum and whisky, he finally set off from Gaumukh, India, the sacred source of the Ganges, for Gangabal Lake in Kashmir, where the author has a houseboat.

Weare tells his story in a straightforward manner, with none of the high dramas (often imagined) that can accompany this sort of book, and it's all the better for that. It allows the tale to unfold without gloss.

Weare , who lost 15kg during the trip, is English but lives in the NSW southern highlands. You wonder how he could settle down to a normal life after this amazing experience."
- Mark Mordue, author of 'Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip'.