Author: rlsmithwriting

Book review: Cutters End by Margaret Hickey

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Debut outback noir set in South Australian, Cutters End, by author and playwright Margaret Hickey is a dual time line police procedural mystery.

DI Mark Ariti is recalled from long service leave to reinvestigate a cold case in the remote country town of Cutters End. He is aided by the cheerful and detail oriented local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur. Ariti is from the area himself and soon discovers a personal connection to two of the witnesses – an old girlfriend and her best friend from school, who share a long buried secret.

Ingrid laughed. ‘Haven’t done much hitching, have you, Mark? And it would be different for a man. For a woman, there’s always the pressure to entertain, be funny, make them feel like they’re pleased to have picked you up.’

The investigation revolves around a death on New Year’s Eve in 1989, in the scrub off the Stuart Highway 300km south of Cutters End. The incident was initially believed to be due to a car accident. The man who died was something of a local hero due to having saved a girl and her mother from drowning in floodwaters. The girl grew up to be a celebrity and used her influence to initiate a relook at the case, claiming the original investigation was botched.

Ariti’s digging unearths the disappearance of a number of women in the same area around the same time, and soon there are multiple deaths to investigate.

Two hours into the trip, driving in the police lease car on the highway heading east, Mark clipped a roo on his side window. The grey body ramming his car gave a sickening thud and for a split second he thought he’d hit a women wearing a beige suit. The roo jumped wildly into the middle of the road and he braked, heart pumping. Natalie Merchant crooned. The roo stood, stunned, before lurching into a nearby paddock. 

While Ariti investigates, he is also trying to coparent and repair his relationship with his wife following indiscretions by both of them. Revisiting his past gives him pause for much contemplation about life and more broadly, about purpose in work, and ageing.

The outback has a reputation for quirky eccentric characters and Hickey milks the trope in Cutters End. In typical police procedural and cold case style there is a slow build up in Cutter End, as well as plenty of twists, layers and a climatic conclusion.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

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Jodi Picoult is a fascinating author. She’s prolific, and a master of the moral dilemma. Unafraid to tackle any issue in popular fiction her stories have shone a light on racism, abortion rights, gun control, and gay rights. She has also penned several issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series. Picoult is highly popular but has received little critical acclaim, and has even been the subject of book bans in Florida.

My father taught me that beekeeping is both a burden and a privilege. You don’t bother the bees unless they need your help, and you help them when they need it. It’s a feudal relationship: protection in return for a percentage of the fruits of their labors.

Apart from liking the title of Mad Honey, it’s a cleverly written, easy to read suspenseful story packed with subplots and surprise twists. Mad Honey is a collaboration with Jennifer Finley Boylan.

Sometimes, making the world a better place just involves creating space for the people who are already in it.

Olivia McAfee fled her outwardly perfect life with her son after her cardiothoracic surgeon partner’s violence put them at risk. They moved to live back in a small town where Olivia grew up, taking over the family home she inherited and her father’s beekeeping business. Olivia’s son, Asher goes to the local school and life is peaceful until Asher is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Lily. Suddenly Olivia finds herself having to defend her son’s freedom, whilst managing a niggling worry that he could be like his father.

I think there is a reason they call it falling in love. It’s the moment, at the top of the roller coaster, when your heart hangs in your throat. It’s the time between when you jump from the cliff and when you hit the ocean. It’s the realization that there’s no ground beneath your feet when you miss a step on the ladder, when the branch of the tree breaks, when you roll over and run out of mattress.

Here’s what they do not tell you about falling in love: there’s not always a soft landing beneath you.

Mad Honey has great character development and is written in first person between the points of view of Olivia and Lily. It is a story about the impacts of family violence, gender, the fluidity of nature, and the importance of acceptance. And it includes lots of information about bees – I enjoyed learning about beekeeping.

Book review: Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar

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The story opens with a man approaching two young girls over the fence at their kindergarten. One girl leaves with the stranger, the other does not. The one who is left is destined to spend her life wondering what happened to her friend who was never seen again.

The long ago man had a sloping walk with deep biting steps and an exaggerated spring that to Till now suggests someone unencumbered by regret and lifted up by small pleasures and anticipations. She has never forgotten it.

Fast forward and Till, the girl left behind is now 23. It is just after the COVID lockdowns, and walking the streets of Brunswick, Till notices how others are watchful and cautious of each other, a state that has existed in her since her friends disappearance. Till decides to leave town with her dog and heads west, driven by her trauma.

At the time Till began her journey to the town that became her home, she didn’t know exactly where she was headed, much less how long it would take.

Till finds herself in a sparsely populated town called Wirowrie and settles there to restore an abandoned railway station. She gradually gets to know the local residents, but a lingering menace hovers in the background as Till struggles with her sense of identity.

Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar is a story about identity, loss and redemption and evokes Gothic fiction as the story slides across time and space, driven by Till’s hyper-vigilance and anxiety.

Book review: The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

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When his family discover that six year old Denny Wallace has become lost in the South Australian Flinder Ranges in September 1883, the farming community join forces to look for him. The story takes place over the seven days of searching, the questions of whether he will be found and in what state permeate. 

Failure is a stooped, pale figure with an open mouth and swollen eyes.

McFarlane introduces a swathe of characters in crisscrossing storylines – the local police officer Robert and his new German wife Minna, Swedish artist and his English wife bess, the well meaning but hapless local priest Mr. Daniels, Aboriginal man Billy Rough, Denny’s tough teenage sister Cissy who insists on joining the search, and Denny himself who’s fear and deteriorating state cause him hallucinations and contribute to him staying lost.

For now he studies what he thinks may be his final true desert sunset. The sky burns and leaps, it gilds and candles—every drenched inch of it, until the sun falls below the ranges. Then the sky darkens. The red returns, stealthy now, with green above and lilac higher still. It deepens into purple. Here’s the strange new cloud, hovering in its own grey light. Then night comes in, black and blue and grey and white, and the moon in its green bag swings heavy over the red nation of the ranges.

As each new character’s perspective is introduced the story deepens and becomes more textured with layers of detail unfolding. The evocative danger and beauty of the outback provides a backdrop to the drama as it unfolds.

Poetically crafted literary fiction with themes including belonging and unbelonging, colonialism, isolation, gender roles.

Book review: Liane Moriarty

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Apples Never Fall is Liane Moriarty’s ninth adult novel. She’s also known for Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, both adapted for television.

Aging tennis star couple Joy and Stan Delaney have been married for 50 years. The couple have a passionate marriage as well as a few lingering resentments, including that none of their children became tennis stars. Now retired after selling their tennis business the couple lack purpose. Their four adult children – laid back Logan, blue haired Amy, flashy Troy and migraine suffering Brooke – are all independent but childless and Joy really wants to be a grandmother.

Each time she fell out of love with him, he saw it happen and waited it out. He never stopped loving her, even those times when he felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her, even in that bad year when they talked about separating, he’d just gone along with it, waiting for her to come back to him, thanking God and his dad up above each time she did.

When a young woman turns up at their door distressed and bruised, Joy and Stan take her in. Supposedly escaping an abusive boyfriend, Savannah ingratiates herself with the aging couple. Joy’s own children are unsettled by the young woman.

We’re all on our own. Even when you’re surrounded by people, or sharing a bed with a loving lover, you’re alone.

Then the day before her 70th birthday, Joy disappears, her phone is found under the marital bed and Savannah is nowhere to be found. Stan becomes a suspect due to unusual scratches on his face, despite his protestations they were caused by a hedge. Two of their children think Stan is innocent, two are not so sure. The police need to find out what really happened and the family are frustrating to deal with.

She found that the less she thought, the more often she found simple truths appearing right in front of her.

The story gradually unfolds as Moriarty takes the reader back and forth in time revealing the very three dimensional character’s secrets, regrets and hopes. Apples Never Fall is a family saga filled with bickering, alignments, competitiveness, failed expectations and small resentments. An especially good story for tennis fans.

As her grandfather used to say, “Never spoil a good story with the facts.

Comedy review: Meaty Sue’s Big Farma

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Sunny Youngsmith returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with their new solo show, Meaty Sue’s Big Farma. It’s a sketch comedy with the bogan of the abattoir, Meaty Sue. Join them on this pork-tacular adventure.

Youngsmith delivers a serve of meaty madness as Sue, leading the audience on a behind the scenes jaunt of the family’s meat processing business – an ‘abattour’.

There’s music, there’s dancing, there’s gloves (!), and Big Farma may not be who we thought they were.

You’ll get an original peek into the strange and surreal goings on at the farm that will help you affirm your vegetarian choices in this beefy comedy of errors.

The show is a riotous roller coaster ride as Sunny brings to life the awkward, loveable and very vegan friendly Meaty Sue.

You can get a peek at Meaty Sue’s Big Farma absurdity and a have a pre-show giggle on Instagram.

The Butterly Club in Carson Place is an old favourite of mine as a performance venue. Intimate and quirky – they host some great shows and make very tasty cocktails. I can also recommend Little Ramen Bar west up Little Collins if you’d like a bite before or after the show.

Meaty Sue’s Big Farma runs till 21st April as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival – grab a ticket from The Butterfly Club.

It reminds me of a sign I saw in the window of a country town butcher years ago: Private bodies catered for…

Comedy review: The John Wilkes Booth

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Get to Doubletree by Hilton early for a drink at the bar and to soak up the atmosphere before riding the elevator up to level 1 and being shown to a private room by a French waiter. It’s a French restaurant of sorts – Rue de Toilette in West Heidelberg.

A tall stetson wearing dude wearing black walks in carrying a briefcase and is shown to a booth with plush red velvet seats. Clint (Lachie Gough) is an oil man, or so he says.

Before long all hell breaks loose in this Fawlty Towers meets Lano and Woodley kill or be killed comedy sketch by Alex Donnelly and Lachie Gough who riff off each other and the audience to deliver a laugh out loud high energy comedy show.

Donnelly as Marcel is a conscientious, chaotic and clumsily murderous French waiter. During a gun slinging stand-off the two discover they work for the same agency and have been sent to assassinate each other.

What to do when you’re a ruthless killer with hurt feelings – carry out orders or buck the system?

The John Wilkes Booth is packed full of word play, physical comedy, improvisation and a very clever twist at the end. It is clear that Gough and Donnelly enjoy working together and it brings a natural fluidity to their performance. A polished show of slapstick comedy that will have you guffawing in your seat.

The John Wilkes Booth is showing at Doubletree by Hilton in Flinders Street just across from Flinders Streeet Station until 21st April. Tickets can be purchases from Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Book review: The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia

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Just the title of Sofia Segovia’s novel The Murmur of Bees brings to mind a low hum that evokes the vision of bees flitting around my orange tree blossom.

In life, only potential was free.

An infant is discovered abandoned under a bridge cloaked in a humming blanket of bees. The Morales family take him in and he grows up in the close proximity of his bees to have extraordinary insight. Simonopio never speaks because his cleft palate means no one (except his young brother) can understand his mumbling, but he can see the future and uses this knowledge to help his adopted family.

Without his bees, he could not see or hear beyond the hills. Without them, he could not see behind him or observe the world from above when he chose to do so. In their absence, Simonopio could not smell the exquisite aroma of the pollen, just as the bees did. Without the bees swarming around him, coming and going, the information he received from the world was linear; while with them, from the moment he had begun to feel sensation, he had grown accustomed to perceiving the world as it was: a sphere.

In one instance it is by feigning illness to draw attention to himself and save the Morales from the Spanish flu, in another a handful of orange blossom he presents as a gift save the families agricultural land. When danger comes, he calls on his bees to help him protect those he loves.

Sometimes the soul must be allowed to rest, kept away from the things that hurt it.

The Murmur of Bees, set around the city of Linares in Mexico and translated to English by Simon Bruni is steeped in magical realism. The story offers insight into the political and cultural history of Mexico and the impact of the Spanish flue.

There are class struggles, complex family relations, evil, tragedy, grief and redemption. It is a story to fall gently into and be immersed in Segovia’s beautiful prose and transported to Mexico in 1918

Book review: Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan

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Anyone who grew up in the 70s will relate to Toto Among the Murderers written by Welsh-New Zealand author Sally J Morgan. A group of young creatives live on the margins in the rough district of Leeds – smoking dope, hanging out in alternative pubs with anarchists, experimenting with relationships and hitching rides to get around.

My mother has dreams of an orderly daughter, and if I cut my hair that would splendidly realise it. I, however, draw the line at being shorn like a sheep for the sake of her delusions.

The novel opens as flame haired Toto and her friend Nel move into a dilapidated rental house opposite a brothel run by a violent pimp. Toto soon befriends one of the sex workers called Janice.

I laugh bitterly. ‘We think we’re living in some French film, but we’re not: we’re in bloody Sheffield.’

Toto is chaotic, wild and reckless. She hitches everywhere despite the news being filled with random attacks on women. She has a set of rules she rides by to keep herself safe. Her friend Nel is dating a guy called Simon who is beautiful but sometime nasty and violent.

Toto and Nel are at an age of experimentation their naivety gets them into trouble, and fear, grit and determination get them out of it.

They look at me blankly. I am the object of gossip in a provincial art school, I’m being held captive, without access to my boots, by a woman who is giving me the best sex ever, but whom I may not actually like.

The close, thoughtful friendships that run through the story sit within a general sense of foreboding that crescendo’s when Toto is hitchhiking in a remote area.

Why does the dark seem so complete tonight? I can’t stand lying next to Callie any more. Her arm trails out of the bed and she is snoring like something hard has stuck in her throat. The petals of my heart?

Toto Among the Murderers is a coming of age story with themes that will be remarkably familiar to women who grew up around the time the story is set. This beautifully written, edgy and moving novel won the 2022 Portico Prize.

Comedy review: The Titwitchez School of Titcraft & Boobery

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The Titwitchez School of Titcraft & Boobery, on as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, is cabaret meets burlesque meets vaudeville meets drag delivered by a troop of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming actors.

This high energy unconventional school of life is an hour of unbridled guileless fun riffing off good and evil, feminism, transphobia and boobs. Comedy coven duo Emily White and Liv Bell lead the absurdity with tightly choreographed upbeat moves. They are joined onstage by a different set of characters each night – opening night included Darmanatrix who loves a bourbon, a barbecue and a chair dance, Lucy Seale the rollerskating mosquito, and Nicola Pohl the beatboxing janitor whose sweeping was accompanied by an extraordinary range of facial expressions. Oh, and there is an option for a bit of audience participation if you like your moment in the spotlight.

Titwitchez’s is a late show starting at 10.30, but Carlton is such a great spot for a night out that I made an evening of it and caught Ethan Coen’s latest film at the Nova, grabbed a bite to eat at D.O.C then a coffee at Brunette’s before the show. The venue, Motley Bauhaus also has a great little bar if you like a tipple before a giggle.

The Titwitchez School of Titcraft & Boobery is showing at the Motley Bauhaus till April 26th, so there’s plenty of time to grab a ticket for this raucous ride.