BR: Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)

Amazon Link: Hatchet

Brian, a thirteen year old boy en-route to his father’s home in Canada, survives a plane crash that kills the pilot. Injured, alone, relying on his wits, memories of wilderness survival programs he has seen and hints he has been taught, and with only a hatchet given to his by his mother, he must find food, shelter, inner courage to prevail. He does and his story, though rushed and simply told, is effective.

Brian learns about his environment through observation and error. He notes the day he transitions from the old Brian – a city boy, ill-bred for the hostile wilderness and destined to succumb to his surroundings – to an intuitive, attuned being whom is at-one with nature, able to hunt, interpret, evade.

At the conclusion of the story Brian retrieves the survival pack from the plane, a feat made possible by a violent storm. The pack provides a bounty of equipment, dehydrated food, provisions that would see him survive much longer, if not for the onset of winter, and a fortuitous rescue.

At the beginning of the story the reader is informed that Brian’s parents are divorcing. He focuses on this, replaying the preceding events over in his mind, trying to attribute blame, and to understand it. This aspect of the story seems forced, inserted to strengthen Brian’s character maybe, except to me it felt awkward. The story would have been stronger without it.

In all a quick, entertaining read. ** out of ***** stars.

My novel has a title!

This weekend Em and I work-shopped and I now have a title for my novel. I’m ecstatic! Twenty-Six Days had worked as an interim title however it didn’t encapsulate the tone and theme. The new title does. We were so delighted with what we both achieved (me with a title and she with a clearer structure) that we rewarded ourselves with a night off, and then a day off to go book-shopping. The day off was somewhat unplanned and no fault of Em’s, I was too lazy to get working so we went out instead. Also, I blame the sunshine. Melbourne doled out the most perfect blue sky today. It would have been sinful to have wasted it. So, we trawled several discount second-hand stores for books, even stooping so low as to drop in at the local rubbish tip recycling centre. Our efforts paid off. For under $100 we netted over 40 books. And I even managed to tick one off my wish-list.

On the novel progress front, things are going well. See, how generic a statement is that!? But it is true. I’m feeling comfortable and confident about where my boy is at – although he most definitely is neither comfortable nor confident with his predicament, poor boy. I’m finalizing chapter seven and have a rough sketch of some of the dialogue for chapter eight. I envisage the word-count to run to about 120,000 words which I then will pare back. My estimation skills are sorely lacking though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes 150,000 before I consider it to be ‘done’.

Honestly, I can’t imagine it being finished, though I know that it will be. I can’t imagine not having this character in my head, nor can I imagine how the story will be resolved. I have an outline, a structure, an impression of how the novel will conclude, but not the detail. I can envisage the climax – I can see the two main players, I can even feel the atmosphere but what they will say, how it will play out, what will ultimately happen is unchartered territory. I joke to Em that I’m not even sure that the protag will survive, but I hope he will. I imagine I will write several alternate endings until I hit upon the one that resonates. I’m excited about that, yet in no great hurry to get there. I must cover a lot of ground before I’m ready to tackle the ending.

I feel sure that one day this novel, or a novel that I write, will be published. It no longer feels like a dream, but rather an eventual reality. I have Em to thank for that – for believing in me, for encouraging me, for enabling me to see that my writing has merit. Will I ever make enough money from writing to quit work and write full-time? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d ever want to. As much as I resent work, it offers a valuable mind-switch away from my characters. There’s only so much of my boy I can take at any one time. I love him dearly, but he does my head in.

On our trip to Tasmania this past weekend, we stopped in at a town called Penguin.

I fell in love with the place. It was the first town we stopped in and we watched the sun rise across Bass Strait. I imagined retiring there – having a little house, a dog, some chickens, vegetables, a little writing/reading group and a regular ferry-crossing to the mainland to keep in touch with family and friends. It’s a dream. An expensive, out of reach dream at the moment, but a dream nonetheless. I even bought a small stuffed penguin that is a fabric symbol of this dream. If I ever do this, then I won’t be the first writer to have kicked off from the mainland to take up residence on the Apple Isle. It’s the type of place that invites creativity: quiet, friendly, wild – my kind of paradise.

BR: PAN (Burney Dibble)

John Reynonds, a scientist who is denied peer recognition for a previous achievement, sets out to produce evidence of the difference between two closely related species: humans and chimps. So devoted to his theory, he thinks little of murder and thievery of a newborn child. His conscience, if he ever had one, is lost beneath the need for the adulation of his peers. His wife, spineless and devoted, assists him, encourages him, condones his heinous acts.

They steal a newborn baby girl, a backroom caesarian section on a woman who knows and trusts them. She is told that her baby was stillborn. The baby, Penelope, is raised in complete isolation – ho human interaction, little external stimuli, only gloved hands that teach her sign language and speakers in the walls so she can learn to speak. When the girl is five John goes to Borneo to steal a baby chimpanzee – a newborn male who is stolen from his mother with callous indifference. The baby chimp, Hermes, is raised like a child, allowed free roam of the Reynold’s house, permitted interaction with human children while Penelope is shown videos of chimp interaction.

When Penelope is fifteen and sexually mature Hermes is introduced to her. Several months later she is pregnant. The real story starts here. From this cross-species fertilization Pan is born, a boy who is neither man nor beast, but is both.

From a young age Pan is aware of something being not quite right, but it’s not until he is a teenager that his ‘parents’ reveal the truth. He strikes out on his own, determined to find a way to live and his attempts are understandable and distressing. I wished for him to find peace, and I guess eventually he does.

The latter section of the book had several typographical errors, but more heart and emotional substance than the earlier parts.

This was a quick read, aimed at a younger audience and demonstrative of the importance of ethics in science. I know there are people like John Reynolds out there and while I can loathe them, I can’t deny that human advancement, comfort and health is attributable to their lack of moral obedience. It’s sobering.

Rating: **1/2 out of *****

BR: Happy Baby (Stephen Elliott)

Amazon Link: Happy Baby

Theo started out a regular kid in a big city, yet, thirty years later the boy, who is now a man, is broken, self-loathing, reliant on sadomasochism as an antidote to the torment he feels inside. He invites – seeks out – dominant women and accepts their abuse, their cruelty, each partner more vicious than the last. Why? By the end of the story you will know why, and it'll make sense. You'll wish it didn't.

When we meet Theo, he has just left his last ‘girlfriend’ a woman who burned his hands with a lit cigarette until he screamed because she knew he would not return to her. He is searching for inner peace, love, resolution. It's hard to imagine these are things Theo will ever find.

The story, told in reverse, unfolds like a bleeding rose, slow motion of a life unraveled before it ever began. We learn of Theo’s parent’s in the middle of the book, but do not meet them until almost the last page. Similarly, we experience Theo’s childhood as an orphan in America’s child protection system: a violent, indifferent world where social workers are burned out, children are treated as inmates and protection comes in the form of a sexual predator who rapes Theo in exchange for protection from bashings by older boys. There’s very little joy in this man’s life, the only high points are drug, alcohol or pain induced haze where he can escape the gnawing pain.

The reader is thrust into a world of sadomasochism, sexual deviance, drug abuse, violence -- the dark, murky underbelly of society that many of us wilfully ignore. This is a world I don’t fully comprehend, or even condone, and I found it confronting… yet, as I got to know more of Theo’s life, his personality, the degree to which all independence and self-preservation had been denied him, his choices make sense. I wish they didn't, but they do.

“I want to tell Ambellina something, but I don’t trust her. She squeezes the handcuffs closed on my wrists. She also has a blindfold, which she wraps over my eyes. She runs tape over my mouth and I start to shake my head no and scream but it’s just muffled and she’s telling me to shut up again but I can’t. I knock into the wall. Bang my head against the wall. Everything inside of me is black and rushing forward, stopping in front of that big wad of tape. She pins me with her leg while she chains my ankles. I’m telling myself not to scream but as I struggle the handcuffs get tighter, cutting the circulation to my wrists. I keep screaming strange, muffled sounds into this tape. I can’t control myself. My mouth fills with glue. And she’s slapping me and punching me. “Stop it,” she says, reaching between my legs, squeezing hard, her other fist landing against my eye. “Stop it.” It’s like glass, like a car crash, like being held underwater.

I’m on the floor and Ambellina is on the mattress, my face between her legs when she rips the tape off my mouth. I feel the skin of her thighs. It feels warm and it feels like it is everywhere around me and I’m floating and breathing somehow in this dark pool. “Do you want me to take the blindfold off?” she asks and I whisper no. But it hardly comes out so I shake my head no and she touches my hair. I’m damp. I feel her body moving around me and the dark room. I feel safe. She says something about her child. A girl. She sounds sad but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Something about her husband and her child. She’s very sad about something."

Stephen Elliott weaves wonder with his words, never debasing Theo’s experiences with smut or sentimentality, or distilling them into tawdry melodrama, instead he crafts with careful precision, giving every scene richness and emotion. It came as little surprise to learn that this is a semi-biographical work, this is written by a soul laid bare, and I dare anyone who reads to not understand, to have empathy, to feel anger at the lives that are destroyed by a system that cannot cope. I give thanks that however difficult my life has sometimes been, it could have been much worse.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Beautifully written, meaningful and thought-provoking. A must-read for anyone who cares about the human soul.

New Year's Resolutions

It’s 2008, 19 days in and I shall now record my new year’s resolutions for posterity, or prosperity, or, if I should be so lucky, for both.

This year, I shall achieve the following:

• complete the first draft of my novel (another 80,000+ words)
• write nine (original) short stories (in addition to Iris)
• submit Iris to the Alan Marshall Short Story Award (due Feb 22^nd)
• submit five short stories to competitions.
• enter The Age short story competition (with the best of the ten)
• attend ‘Writers at the Convent’
• read 60 (fiction) books (and blog-review every one of them)
• read 10 (non fiction) books

In case I start thinking this is unachievable, let’s reflect on last year.

Last year I achieved the following:

• wrote 40,000 words (30%) of my novel (including outlining and research)
• completed two original short stories (2000 words each). One is ‘Iris’.
• completed two fan-fiction novellas (one at 22,000 words and another at 28,000)
• completed four short stories (fan-fiction) (3 x 1,500 words and another at 5,000)
• wrote 35,000 words of an incomplete fan-fiction story.
• wrote around 10,000 words of additional material (drafts, excluded scenes etc).
• blog-reviewed many of the books I read.
  

That’s about 150,000 words for 2007, excluding blog entries which in themselves are a form of creative writing. Averaged across the year, that gives me 400 words per day. Wow. That’s surprising given that there were times when I wrote nothing for up to three weeks at a time.

On the reading side of things, I read 30 novels. I also read some non-fiction, some journal articles, newspaper articles (my new form of procrastination), fan-fiction and blog entries, but I don’t count any of that. Isn’t it any wonder I have sore eyes!?

For the novels alone, that’s about 8,700 pages, according to Anobii.com’s calculations, which (at an average of 250 words per page) is 2,175,000 words. Steven Barnes suggests that for every 1,000 words a writer writes, they should have read 10,000. Surprisingly, my stats look pretty good there.

So, if I boost my reading to 60 books a year (double what I did last year), then I should be pumping out 1,000 words a day. Admittedly, this is what Steven Barnes suggests and I’ve always considered it an impossible dream… yet, it seems I’m halfway there. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Em who cajoles, encourages, threatens and inspires me into putting my butt into the chair when I'd much prefer to watch television or stare at drying paint. I only hope I can do the same for her.