Best of 2025 … so far: The savage suburbia of Helen Garner: ‘I wanted to dong Martin Amis with a bat'
This week, from March: over 50 years, she has become one of the most revered writers in Australia. Is she finally going to get worldwide recognition?
By Sophie Elmhirst. Read by Nicolette Chin
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Look up: five hopeful novels about the climate crisis
'Can literature be a tool to encourage something better – creating eco-topia on the page, so it might be imagined off it?' asks the novelist Sarah Hall in this weekend's Guardian magazine. Climate fiction – or 'cli-fi' – continues to grow as a genre in its own right; the first Climate fiction prize was awarded this year. And while the roots of environmental fiction are in apocalypse and despair, these five writers are moving beyond dystopia to hopeful possibilities. Powers was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer for this love letter to the arboreal world. Mimicking the interlinked canopy and undergrowth of the forest, he weaves the stories of nine core characters whose lives are deeply connected to trees. Olivia and Nick, for example, set up camp in a giant redwood for a year to prevent it from being cut down. They connect with other characters over their environmental activism, with one tragic consequence. But ultimately the novel is a homage to the resilience of humans and trees. In Ghosh's globetrotting novel inspired by Bengali legends, environmental destruction surfaces again and again: climate change-induced migration, wildfires, beached dolphins. This is no dystopia, but climate realism. Yet the novel feels fundamentally hopeful, with Ghosh nodding to cross-cultural cooperation as a means of facing climate destruction. Two female characters, marine biologist Piya and historian Cinta, also fortify us. 'I don't think my book is climate fiction at all,' said Ghosh in a 2019 interview. 'It's actually a reality that in hard circumstances humans often discover joy and faith.' Originally published in 1993, Parable of the Sower is set between 2024 and 2027 in a California bordering on anarchy, marked by economic breakdown and climate change. The narrator, Lauren Olamina, suffers from hyperempathy syndrome, meaning she feels the pain of others acutely. She creates a new religion, Earthseed, which posits that humans have the power to 'shape God' and enact change. Verses from Earthseed's book of scripture are scattered throughout the novel: 'Belief initiates and guides action – or it does nothing.' Escaping an unhappy marriage on a failing Appalachian farm, Dellarobia is en route to meet her would-be lover when she is stopped in her tracks by a sea of orange monarch butterflies, set off their migratory course by climate change. Dellarobia's discovery draws an entomologist to the area, and with his help she undergoes a metamorphosis of her own. This slim novel, published in 2021, is set on a utopian moon, Panga, following a destructive 'Factory Age'. Humanity has since deindustrialised, transitioning to agrarian, sustainable living. Our protagonist, non-binary tea monk Dex, travels between Panga's villages in their wagon, offering personalised brews and a listening ear to troubled residents. But soon, Dex craves quiet, and journeys into the wilderness, where they strike up a friendship with a robot, Splendid Speckled Mosscap, who is looking to answer the question: 'What do humans need?' This cosy novella slots into the 'hopepunk' subgenre of speculative fiction for its optimistic exploration of life's meaning and humanity's relationship to nature and technology.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Inside Yahoo Serious' Hollywood downfall, from having the world at his feet in a $3 million mansion with his glamourous wife, to living out of his car at age 72
In 1988, an unknown bloke with a strange name from Australia's coal-mining heartland became the toast of Hollywood. Yahoo Serious blazed to international success with his film Young Einstein - which he directed and starred in - making $20 million at the box office. His professional relationship with his movie-making collaborator Lulu Pinkus - herself an acclaimed Australian actress and artist - had blossomed into romance. They married in 1989. Yahoo was on top of the world, with US media describing him as 'the next big thing from Down Under'. Which makes it all the more shocking that almost 40 years later, he is understood to be homeless in Sydney after being evicted for illegally squatting in a Palm Beach mansion. The 72-year-old was forced to flee with his Jack Russell terrier Jingle after police were called to help his landlord kick him out last Tuesday. Serious left an array of items behind in his ageing BMW sedan, which lies abandoned outside the Barrenjoey Road home, including a box of Jingle's medication, Ugg boots, a length of rope, an esky, and a cooking pan. It's understood he may still be on the city's northern beaches, given his longtime affinity for the area. In much better times, the then Mr and Mrs Serious owned a stunning house on Norma Road, which overlooked the postcard-perfect biscuit-coloured sands of Palm and Whale beaches. The four-bedroom, three-bathroom home featured a pool with a stunning vista over the Pacific Ocean, which the couple sold in 2011 for $3.1 million. It's now estimated to be worth $5.8 million. Ms Pinkus and Serious split in 2007, after working together on Einstein, Reckless Kelly (1993) and Mr Accident (2000). On his website, Yahoo described Lulu as 'My partner in everything. She is an extremely versatile artist. Lulu works so silently that few people are aware that every character and every scene is so enriched by her critical eye and deft touch.' They divorced in 2010. It's not known why they split, but it appears to mark the beginning of Serious' downward spiral. Ms Pinkus has fared far better since the divorce, moving to a waterfront apartment overlooking Sydney's Double Bay, which she bought for $1.5 million in 2011. Today, it would be worth around $2.9 million. He once lived on Palm Beach's Norma Road, with stunning views over the Pacific Ocean She was not at home when Daily Mail approached her for comment on Tuesday. Serious, apparently attached to the northern beaches, rented an apartment in Avalon, which he was evicted from in 2020 for not paying rent - and was ordered to pay his landlord $15,000 in arrears. Not long after, he was homeless and living out of his car with his dog at Palm Beach, using its public shower block for his ablutions, when kindhearted local Margie Charlton took pity on the ageing former star. She told the Daily Mail in June that she invited him to live in the granny flat at the home of Palm Beach resident Charles Phillip Porter, for whom she held power of attorney. Ms Charlton, who lived in nearby Avalon, explained that while she took care of Mr Porter's cooking and cleaning, she wanted someone around to keep an eye on her ageing charge when she wasn't there. She said it was made clear to Serious that the offer only stood until Mr Porter was moved to a nursing home when his dementia advanced so far that living in his mansion was no longer feasible. She would then need Serious to vacate the property so she could sell it to help with Mr Porter's care. But when the time came, Serious not only refused to leave - he had moved from the basement into the main house. This kick-started an ugly battle between Serious and Ms Charlton in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which came to a head earlier this month. Serious was ordered to leave by August 4, and after an altercation between him and Ms Charlton on August 5 - in which he claimed she was being violent, which Ms Charlton vehemently denies - police turfed him out. In the days before his eviction, Serious claimed he was not squatting, but 'surviving'. It is understood he has been receiving treatment for Lymphoma, and indeed in the past year has appeared a shadow of his former self. 'I'm greatly improving, I was very close to death very recently … I just, I'm coming good but I'm having trouble with just, recall of day to day things,' he said during his tribunal appearance. In 2016, he underwent debilitating hip surgery. A quirky website registered to Serious in 2000 - the same year he tried and failed to sue the search engine Yahoo! for trademark infringement -provides an insight into his chaotic mind. After growing up as Greg Pead in NSW's Cardiff, near Newcastle, he explained on his site why he changed his name by deed poll in 1980. 'Each day there are a million choices to be made starting with what you put on your toast. You're born with a name but so what?' he said. 'You can choose every other aspect of your life, so why not your name?' In an undated interview posted to his site, Serious said he sees himself as, 'Nasty, untrustworthy, rude, unreliable, and childish'. A perhaps foreboding sentence uttered years before he left a trail of furious landlords in his wake. Now, grave fears are held for Serious and his dog Jingle's wellbeing. When he was forced to leave the Barrenjoey Road home, Sydney was suffering through days of cold rainstorms. Neighbours did not know where the fallen Hollywood star and his faithful dog went after being kicked out, and his car remained untouched a week after the eviction. A Daily Mail search of the Palm Beach area - where he once enjoyed prime position in the home he shared with Lulu - turned up no sign of Serious or Jingle.
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Jodie Whittaker is far too good for this contrived Aussie thriller
You'd be forgiven for thinking you've seen something like this before, as the Australia-set thrillers have been coming to our screens thick and fast recently (see also The Last Anniversary, The Secrets She Keeps, Apples Never Fall). This one, which had a brief showing on Paramount+ in 2023 but is now on ITV1, stars former Doctor Who lead Jodie Whittaker. Sadly it's so lacklustre that Whittaker might wish that she'd opted to eat kangaroo genitalia on I'm a Celebrity with Ant and Dec instead. Since hanging up her sonic screwdriver, Whittaker has spread her wings in eclectic roles. She played an imprisoned single mother in gut-punch BBC drama Time and was the standout star of Netflix's factual drama Toxic Town. Here she loses her native Yorkshire tones to adopt an Australian accent. I'm no expert in Antipodean linguistics, but she does a decent job. Set on the stunning New South Wales coast, One Night follows three women – Tess (Whittaker), Simone (Nicole da Silva) and Hat (Yael Stone) – who remain haunted by a harrowing event during their teens. Twenty years later, Simone writes a thinly disguised novel about that fateful night. It reopens wounds in cathartic ways. There's the germ of an interesting drama here about trauma and truth, justice and healing. But whenever it looks about to emerge, it gets bogged down in repetitive flashbacks or clichéd contrivances. Supporting characters are uniformly ghastly – either leering small-town gangsters, spoilt kids or self-serving adults. Worst of all, there's a fatal flaw at the heart of the story. Simone stole Tess's tragedy for her own gain, yet we're supposed to sympathise as she makes her friend's pain all about her. Stretched out over six episodes, One Night moves with all the urgency of an asthmatic koala. With its ocean views and high-flying female friends, it's a try-hard Sydney spin on Big Little Lies. Whittaker is rawly convincing as a sexual assault victim whose repressed memories come bubbling to the surface. Tess is a mass of body issues: bulimic, covered in tattoos, prone to pulling her hair out. There's a wordless scene in the finale where Whittaker acts her socks off with facial expressions alone. It's just a shame the script isn't in the same league as her performance. One Night is available now on ITVX and begins on ITV1 on Saturday 16 August at 9.30pm
