Scan barcode
esshgee's review against another edition
2.0
Disappointing. I was excited about a book set in my local area, but I thought it was disjointed and it just didn't grab me
tonyriver's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fascinating book. It is odd and certainly needs you to keep n the ball while reading it. A Nicky written book with interesting characters and purposely unbelievable happenings, including make believe people - or are they, dead being resurrected - or are they?
Probably not for people who like a predictable trajectory and realism, but a find I the fantasy Sci Fi realm.
Probably not for people who like a predictable trajectory and realism, but a find I the fantasy Sci Fi realm.
damopedro's review against another edition
5.0
It's a wild and crazy world that Rawson has constructed here. I can see why Tom Robbins name gets mentioned on the back page. It's that kind of book. A madcap ride through future Melbourne. Not a nice Melbourne either. Recognisable but a bit gone to shit too. Most of all, this book had heart and humour which helps you accept all the weirdness you're asked to swallow. Loved it.
davidscrimshaw's review against another edition
5.0
This starts out as a dystopian story about a woman in Australia just barely coping at obtaining the necessities of life while suffering unbearable grief from losing her husband. And then it gets very weird.
girlfriday4's review
3.0
It's great to read sci fi by an Australian author and I loved how inclusive and multicultural the book was, with one of the main characters being Aboriginal and the story populated with people of all different backgrounds.
The central ideas of fictional characters coming to life, and magical objects that transport through time and space aren't particularly new, but I liked the spin Rawson gives them - quirky, but still emotionally real.
The book is 'Cli Fi' (climate change fiction) but it is far from being disaster porn. Rawson's vision of a post apocalyptic Melbourne - apparently under UN control - is compelling and believable, but written with a light touch. It's so easy to get depressed by climate change that it's refreshing to read a book that reminds us that in spite of the very real threat it poses, ultimately it's human resilience and connection to each other that will get us through hard times. This is the kind of book that shows why SF is important, people!
It's also very funny in places, especially when we arrive in the realm of the Office of Unmade Lists, where I was strongly reminded of the best of Monty Python.
I'm looking forward to whatever Rawson comes up with next.
The central ideas of fictional characters coming to life, and magical objects that transport through time and space aren't particularly new, but I liked the spin Rawson gives them - quirky, but still emotionally real.
The book is 'Cli Fi' (climate change fiction) but it is far from being disaster porn. Rawson's vision of a post apocalyptic Melbourne - apparently under UN control - is compelling and believable, but written with a light touch. It's so easy to get depressed by climate change that it's refreshing to read a book that reminds us that in spite of the very real threat it poses, ultimately it's human resilience and connection to each other that will get us through hard times. This is the kind of book that shows why SF is important, people!
It's also very funny in places, especially when we arrive in the realm of the Office of Unmade Lists, where I was strongly reminded of the best of Monty Python.
I'm looking forward to whatever Rawson comes up with next.
steph_84's review against another edition
3.0
When I started this book it reminded me of Gold Fame Citrus: both dystopian novels set in a city destroyed by people and climate, featuring young untethered female protagonists with their male partners-in-crime, drifting around their city, just surviving, scavenging and making infuriating decisions. There are also parallels with the literary writing style.
Then things changed. Firstly, I wasn’t expecting the sci-fi turn, and I had mixed feelings about it. The book doesn’t make sense, and I chose to just not think about it rather than interrogate the intricacies as some other reads have done. Secondly, the protagonist Caddy is trying to make the best of her bad situation, and is quite clever and courageous in their own way - unlike Luz from Gold Fame Citrus who is excruciatingly vapid. I don’t identify with Caddy but she has integrity and depth.
The speed of this story is also good, although it becomes increasingly confusing until the last few pages when there is some semblance of resolution. It’s unclear whether there are complex internal rules I didn’t understand or it’s intentionally chaotic and paradoxical - probably a bit of both.
As other readers have mentioned, it’s also interesting for people who live in Melbourne to see a dystopian variation of their city. I used to live right near where Caddy’s settlement was, and found it eerie to read the scenes set in 2030 overlaid with the current reality.
If you want an easy paperback to read on a plane or while you’re sick in bed, probably try something else, but if you like Australian literary dystopian sci-fi, this is a good read.
Then things changed. Firstly, I wasn’t expecting the sci-fi turn, and I had mixed feelings about it. The book doesn’t make sense, and I chose to just not think about it rather than interrogate the intricacies as some other reads have done. Secondly, the protagonist Caddy is trying to make the best of her bad situation, and is quite clever and courageous in their own way - unlike Luz from Gold Fame Citrus who is excruciatingly vapid. I don’t identify with Caddy but she has integrity and depth.
The speed of this story is also good, although it becomes increasingly confusing until the last few pages when there is some semblance of resolution. It’s unclear whether there are complex internal rules I didn’t understand or it’s intentionally chaotic and paradoxical - probably a bit of both.
As other readers have mentioned, it’s also interesting for people who live in Melbourne to see a dystopian variation of their city. I used to live right near where Caddy’s settlement was, and found it eerie to read the scenes set in 2030 overlaid with the current reality.
If you want an easy paperback to read on a plane or while you’re sick in bed, probably try something else, but if you like Australian literary dystopian sci-fi, this is a good read.
waywardfancy's review
4.0
I loved this book which was a big relief because I met the author and she rocked and it would have been very awkward if I didn’t like the book. I read it in March and should have reviewed it then, straight away. Rawson’s novel is so unique it has remained fresh in my mind. (And I tend to rave about it and recommend it to everyone so I have been talking about it for months!) This book manages to be original without being pretentious, moving without being sentimental, speculative without being clichéd, environmental without being preachy and futuristic in a very gritty and believable way. What Jane Rawson has achieved with this book is an incredibly skilful writing feat which delights at every – wrong or right – turn.
Melbourne in the near future – a future affected by climate change – is the main setting for the book. With Caddie’s home destroyed by fire, a fire which took the life of her husband Harry, she joins the thousands of displaced people that populate the city. The evocation of a future Melbourne seething with heat and thronging with homeless people was so believable I can still see the images in my head and I was afraid to catch the train to North Melbourne station in case I found large groups of people living there. Being from Melbourne the sense of place touched a raw nerve.
Caddie is a terrifically tough character trying to survive the disastrous times with a broken heart, turning a few tricks for money; doing whatever she can to get by. She is resourceful in both practical and mental ways. She is grieving deeply for Harry. Rawson describes their relationship so honestly, that the sense of grief is palpable.
“Harry was Caddy’s settling down. She settled into him like a pillow on the couch, a blanket pulled over her, and footy on the TV, falling asleep by three-quarter time on a Friday night. He was knowing that everything would be OK; he was kissing goodbye for a little too long before heading out to work; he was waking up on Sunday morning with plans for each day-by-day, for the little things that build a wall around two people and keep them safe.”
Her grief for Harry underpins the narrative but never overwhelms it.
“So that's how it was. And now it's gone. I don't even know why I'm still here. It won't come back....statistically, there won't be something else for me like I had with Harry, I don't even want it. There was me and him and it wasn't magical or like anything you'd see on TV, it was just love. Kind and real and every single day. Every fucking single day, and I never had to doubt it, ever."
Caddie’s dry humour, self-deprecating manner and street smarts cover most of her emotions. Her friend Ray, a Koori with a talent for black market racketeering has discovered something strange. It’s a map that when you stand in certain places (like Hanging Rock - a lovely reference to Joan Lindsay’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”) and fold the map you can slip through space the location on the other side of the crease. Ray is naturally trying to think of a way to monetise it. Caddie and Ray explore the powers of the map and discover another place, “the gap” – a nether world –where there is a cloakroom for the shadows of the dead, the place for lost lids and pens and an office for unmade lists and most amazingly, the suspended imaginarium – a place for all things imagined and abandoned. It is in the Suspended Imaginarium that Caddie’s unfinished and abandoned novel exists – it’s setting is 1997 San Francisco - and it’s the story of Simon and Sarah who are on a quest to see America in a very specific way. They must stand in every 25 foot square of the country. It was something begun with their parents and a legacy they have continued.
Got all that? Yes it’s whacky but bloody marvellous in how it’s written. The story plays out with the real world hot and disintegrating in contrast to another world limited by the boundaries of imagination, existing bubble like in the ideas already thought. What can pass between these worlds and where would Caddie rather exist? What will she find in the gap?
The tensions between reality and imagination and the limitations of both play out in the novel with heart breaking poignancy and dry humour. The novel is utterly original in its premise and told with such expert tone and language. The passage which described how this map that is a portal to a nether world came into existence is so thoroughly amazing and well written that I stopped and re-read it several times.
In “Wrong Turn and the Office of Unmade Lists” Rawson tenderly explores a raw grief, but is never awash with sentimentality. The internal logic of this universe is so wonderfully detailed and consistent that the reader is firmly planted in this future Melbourne. The speculative tangents that spring from Rawson’s mind have a solidity to them – a testament to the honesty of her language and characters. Somehow Rawson can straddle worlds at once Python-esque and absurd but touchingly and devastatingly real and within it display the fragility of the human experience when faced with loss, change and environmental disaster.
Rawson manages to move you without any sense of emotional manipulation, manages to be absurd yet always true to the universe of the book, manages to be dryly witty but never dismissively so. There is tenderness shown to all characters and an interplay of worlds that in their un-reality only serve to heighten the reality of Caddie’s situation. Rawson taps into our connection with place and how it affects our happiness, the power of the imagination and escapism and the importance of storytelling for resilience and the fragility of human nature when faced with loss. Have I told you how I loved this book?
divadrax's review
3.0
I'm not sure what I think of this one. Duty to finish was a factor until half-way, and it became interesting around 60%, which peaked at about 75%, but then dropped right off before ending well enough. Some nice ideas, but hard to parse metaphysically, and I'm not sure I care enough to try.