MixedSydney Morning Herald (AU)There are a great many of these conflicts, lifted from the history books and Rushdie is bogged by chronology. An awful lot of people come and go in 247 years and many are viewed at the same middle-distance focal length, discouraging emotional engagement. The result is a sometimes plodding read, with fatuous asides from the author explaining the poet’s intentions or omissions. As a result, the narrative can wilt with fatigue ... This longevity does, however, allow for an examination of the impermanence of both good and bad regimes.
Michelle de Kretser
PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Depending on which end of the reversible book you start at, you are either plunged into the slightly noirish reminiscences of an Asian Australian woman looking back on her time as a trainee teacher in France, or a dystopian satire about an Asian couple negotiating Australian values and aspirations in a Melbourne of the near future ... In the nostalgia-tinged half of Scary Monsters, De Kretser explores the exuberance, inventiveness, energy and silliness of youth, the intensity of friendships, the lustful longings for intimacy and the manner in which young women are forced to negotiate ever-present threats ... De Kretser’s satire is close to the bone ... We can choose which \'novel\' to read first, and it doesn’t really matter which: discontinuity is built into the very structure of Scary Monsters. Such dislocation is echoed by the lives of migrants. But the author is also making a wider literary point: that novels don’t have to contain continuous narratives, or demonstrate a consistency of style. In De Kretser’s writing, plot lines often thin to the point of vanishing, and lives are not joined up. We, the readers, can join the dots if we choose ... Some may find this aspect of the novel irritating; for others, it will be invigorating. Michelle de Kretser excels at wrongfooting her readers. Scary Monsters is a provocative and exhilarating game of snakes and ladders.
Chloe Hooper
PositiveThe Australian Book Review (AUS)In The Arsonist, Hooper reignites the memories of those cataclysmic events with relentless, devastating effect. Her focus is on one fire, deliberately lit, an 82,000-acre flare-up on the outskirts of Churchill in Central Gippsland ... The message in The Arsonist is muted, its lessons diffuse ... The Arsonist may not provide answers, but it asks disquieting questions. Bearing witness, it reminds us of the victims and the terror, the senselessness of a flame tossed onto a forest floor, and the awful silence of a landscape razed by fire.
