This project could bring Miéville’s challenging work closer to readers.
Old science fiction legend China Miéville hasn’t published a novel in 12 years. The Book of Elsewhere is a strange collaboration. The author has a backstory for Keanu Reeves’ BRZRKR Comics. It is about an immortal superhero, B, who longs for mortality but cannot die, and so becomes an ultra-brutal avenger who roams through prehistory and history, Highlanders-like, killing and maiming and doing things that make warriors of legends. Miéville is somewhat hampered by the adolescent wish-fulfillment of the premise, but offers more than just a fig leaf as far as lore goes. The author teases out the existential aspect of the hero’s dilemma admirably, and his talent for speculative fiction gives the time-jumping carnage more historical and intellectual flavor than it perhaps deserves. It wouldn’t be bad if The Book of Elsewhere made Miéville’s more sophisticated and innovative weird fiction known to a wider readership.
Non-fiction selection of the week
Tiny
Louise Southerden, Hardie Grant, $34.99
“Tiny” is the story of building a home while a relationship falls apart.
At a time when the prospect of home ownership has become unaffordable for many, the tiny house offers an affordable, more environmentally friendly way to live. Travel writer Louise Southerden had been on the road for decades when the pandemic put an end to her wanderings. Inspired by a cabin she had visited in Norway, she began dreaming of her own tiny house in northern New South Wales. Inextricably linked to this story is the slow dissolution of her relationship with her partner Max, with whom she is building the house. The depth of love on both sides makes for an elegiac narrative full of longing and eventual acceptance. The sadness is offset by the joy of designing, acquiring the skills and creating a home. This beautifully crafted work reveals much about the gender dynamics of such collaboration, while offering inspiration for all who share this dream.
Spirit of wild creatures
Steve Biddulph, Macmillan, $36.99
Steve Biddulph offers techniques to help us understand ourselves better.
For millennia, meditation teachers have exhorted us to tune into the physical sensations that underlie and often control our thoughts and feelings. Neuroscience is now catching up, recognizing the role of the right hemisphere of the brain, which Steve Biddulph calls the “wild creature mind.” Unlike the left, this hemisphere has no words and speaks to us through felt sensations. “It’s like an animal guardian, a guide through everything from danger to deep love and trust.” Many mental health symptoms, such as anxiety, depression and traumatic stress, he says, are caused by us losing touch with this dimension of our experience. But really, this is a book for everyone, as it offers science-based and easy-to-apply techniques for understanding ourselves better. It’s lively, engaging and peppered with case studies to illustrate the difference tapping into the wild mind makes.
John Berger and I
Nikos Papastergiadis, Giramondo, $32.95
A book about friendship, life on the farm and the author’s self-discovery.
“Whatever you do, don’t visit him in the village, there are pigs and shit everywhere!” Nikos Papastergiadis ignored this playful advice from Edward Said and spent many fruitful summers on the French farm of his graduate student, the art critic and author John Berger. Their budding friendship is explored in this collection of impressionistic reflections on time spent with Berger, Berger’s writings, and Papastergiadis’ own background, growing up in a bookless home as the child of Greek immigrants in Australia. For Papastergiadis, it is also a process of self-discovery, as he is drawn to the kind of peasant life his parents left behind. A recurring theme in Berger’s work, he says, is “the loss and love of home.” This book offers lovers of Berger’s work an intimate encounter with the man and his way of living in the world.
When police officers are criminals
Ed., Veronica Gorrie, writer, $36.99
Shocking essays reveal how some police officers punish those they are supposed to protect.
After hours of abusing Jacinta Ryan, her partner, a police officer, threatened her, saying: “If I call the police now, you’ll be placed in a committal and you’ll lose custody of our children.” Maria Markovska, whose partner choked her unconscious, says: “As a sworn member of Victoria Police, my police officer perpetrator is a protected species.” Further complicating things for victims is the fact that domestic violence is the most common crime committed by police. This feeling of having no one to turn to and living in fear of the police is all too familiar to Indigenous people. When Jacky Sansbury was in high school, police raided his home several times a week and regularly beat and locked up his father. These harrowing testimonies and contextual essays reveal how some in the police and justice system continue to intimidate and punish those they are supposed to protect.
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