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The Age
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Looking for something to read? Here are 10 new books
This week's book reviews range from a fictionalised account of a cult leader and cosy crime, to Tasmania's Indigenous past and a history (and possible future) of artificial intelligence. Happy reading! FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK This Is Not a Game Kelly Mullen Century, $34.99 You already know a book called This Is Not a Game will totally be a game, right? If you're not sleuth enough to work that out, sight unseen, Kelly Mullen's clever murder mystery might not be for you. It's a blackly funny take on the locked-room subgenre – the locked room in this case being a palatial abode on an island on Lake Huron (complete with drawbridge and moat), the guests trapped there in the middle of an epic snowstorm. Lusty, super-rich widow Jane Ireland has invited a diverse company for a charity auction, and she's stabbed to death before the night is out. Two of the guests – crotchety grandmother Mimi, and her granddaughter Addie – transform into an unlikely detective duo, unravelling a sordid web of taboo sex, intrigue and blackmail, sifting through an overabundance of suspects as clues and corpses mount. Mullen has created a ludic play on classic Agatha Christie-style crime fiction, more fun for being gossipy and backbiting and full of witty one-liners. The Bearcat delves into the formative years of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who led the Family, a cabal that followed a hodge-podge of Eastern religion and Christianity and believed Anne's claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Nonfiction accounts and documentaries have laid bare lurid details of child abuse – Anne illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s, dyed their hair peroxide blonde like hers and some were administered LSD as part of their indoctrination. Georgia Rose Phillips focuses on Anne – born Evelyn – as a girl and young woman, her own childhood in the 1920s and the traumatic experiences that drew her to harm others later in life. Phillips does have a gift for striking phrases and imagery, but there are gaps and inconsistencies in this reimagining that jar with what we know of the history. As a result, The Bearcat isn't entirely persuasive either as historical fiction or as a psychological portrait, though its subject is a fascinating and deeply disturbing figure. Everything Lost, Everything Found Matthew Hooton 4th Estate, $34.99 Memory rises and ebbs in this poignant novel spanning almost a century. Everything Lost, Everything Found follows Jack through an unusual childhood and seven decades later in old age. As a youth, he's drawn into the Brazilian Amazon during the rubber boom, following his parents to Henry Ford's rubber-tree plantation, where his mother dies in a tragic accident and Jack is forced to find his father in the jungle. Recollections of that time resurface unbidden when he's elderly and living in the rust belt in Michigan, Jack swimming in a surfeit of memories as his wife succumbs to dementia. Hooton's novel is an emotive and richly told tale of grief and loss, of family and the haunted halls of memory. I've spent time in the Brazilian Amazon myself, and the evocation of its wild beauty and perils, and the dark industrial history now half-swallowed by nature, is vivid and accurate, adding an exotic layer to this free-flowing and immersive book. The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran Shida Bazyar (trans. Ruth Martin) Scribe, $29.99 Set over four decades – with sections in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution, and every 10 years until the Green Movement protests in 2009 – this novel portrays an Iranian family forced to leave their homeland, capturing a spirit of political resistance as much as the struggle to adapt to life as refugees. It begins with Behsad, an idealistic young communist revolutionary who wants the Shah deposed as much as anyone. He fights for his beliefs and falls in love with the intelligent, equally brave Nahid. Ten years later, Nahid takes up the story from West Germany, having fled when the mullahs seized power. A return to Tehran in 1999 focuses on Nahid's daughter Laleh, her reconnection with a birthplace she misremembers and a family history full of secrets, and finally, there's Laleh's brother, Mo, energised by witnessing the wave of Iranian protests a decade later. Shida Bazyar captures the contradictions of her characters and their predicament with clarity and poise, giving complex and emotionally layered perspectives on exile and return. A Shipwreck in Fiji Nilima Rao Echo, $32.99 A Shipwreck in Fiji is the second in Nilima Rao's series of historical mystery novels set in Fiji in the early 20th century. It follows Sergeant Akal Singh, an unwilling Indian transplant, on his latest adventure. He's been dragooned into investigating reports of Germans – a very long way from the battlefields of World War I – on the island of Ovalau, accompanied by Constable Taviti Tukana, who'll be visiting his uncle, a powerful tribal chief. They're to act as chaperone to two venturesome European sightseers, Mary and Katherine, while checking in on Ovalau's only cop – a teenage recruit with a dramatic temperament. Nothing goes according to plan, and Akal is soon drawn into the apparent murder of a deeply unpopular merchant, and the problem of a group of European sailors held captive by Taviti's uncle. Amid all that clamour, one of the ladies accompanying them has her own agenda to pursue. Rao's novel is a retro delight, with an endearing detective (and sidekick) navigating a web of cultures and trying to resolve island trouble. Fearless Beatrice Faust: Sex, Feminism & Body Politics Judith Brett Text, $36.99 She was a motherless child with a 'visceral hunger for love' who grew up to be a political advocate for the body's appetites and pleasures. A woman dogged by physical ailments who struggled with feelings of worthlessness while projecting a public persona of sexual assurance and intellectual independence. As a 'sceptical feminist' who enjoyed feminine glamour, she found herself at odds with the women's liberation movement even as she campaigned for abortion rights and founded the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972. This nuanced and, at times, poignant biography of Beatrice Faust captures its subject in all her contradictions, illuminating how some of Faust's more perplexing views – on pornography and paedophilia in particular – were shaped by childhood experiences and her supreme sexual confidence. 'She had no trouble saying no, and she didn't always see why other women might.' While clear-sighted about Faust's blind spots and idiosyncrasies, Judith Brett pays tender tribute to the bravery of 'this frail, super-smart woman'. Trouwerner: A Tasmanian Elder's Story of Ancient Wisdom and Hope Aunty Patsy Cameron & Martin Flanagan Magabala Books, $34.99 'Walking through the bush with Patsy is like entering a crowded room when you're a stranger and your companion seems to know everyone.' This classically Flanaganesque observation distils perfectly the spirit of this singular book. Journalist and author Martin Flanagan, a Tasmanian of convict Irish descent, grew up on the myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were extinct. In a searching tale that wends its way through the rugged landscape of Tasmania's past, Indigenous elder and historian Patsy Cameron is his guide. Woven into their conversation is previous Tasmanian governor Kate Warner and the story of her journey into a fuller understanding of Tasmania's Indigenous heritage. At the centre of this quest is the story of Mannalargenna, the warrior leader of Cameron's clan, and his fraught negotiations with George Robinson, the preacher whose mission forced Aboriginal Tasmanians into exile. After contemplating a portrait of Mannalargenna, Flanagan asks, 'He knows who he is. Who are we?' The Shortest History of AI Toby Walsh Black Inc, $27.99 If your brain tends to seize up with fear or incomprehension at the mention of AI, this concise and entertaining history is for you. Right from the playful opening lines, 'Artificial Intelligence began on 18 June 1956. It was a Monday' you know you are in the hands of an assured storyteller. Toby Walsh, an Australian professor of AI and world-leading researcher, is also a sci-fi nerd who's not afraid to judiciously insert himself into the narrative to add personal commentary and underscore just how recent this history is. He acknowledges Alan Turing as the father of modern computing and AI but also pays due to the 19th-century mathematical whizz Ada Lovelace, who was the world's first computer programmer. This history is delivered through the six key ideas that encapsulate how AI has evolved and where it might be heading. The thinking behind these ideas is made accessible through easy-to-follow examples and some amusing 'conversations' with ChatGPT that highlight both its astonishing range and its capacity for bullshit. For Socrates, the unexamined life was not worth living. Freud insisted that we will always be strangers to ourselves. We are, says historian Mark Lilla, in a constant state of hide and seek, torn between the desire to know and the fear of what we might find. Religious injunctions against rule-breaking and curiosity – Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, for example – enact this inner conflict. 'Like all successful bureaucrats, we have learnt to kick the hard problem upstairs,' says Lilla, whose punchy way with words is integral to the pleasure of this work. While he describes his narrative as a ramble rather than a journey with a fixed destination, he has clear polemical targets, as evident in his caricature of mysticism. Even so, his overall contention that 'the harder the truth, the greater the temptation to escape it' rings powerfully true. By exposing the machinery of this inner tug-of-war, Lilla challenges us to confront these impulses in ourselves. Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight David A. Kessler Text, $36.99 David Kessler has struggled with his weight all his life and is now benefiting from the new anti-obesity drugs. But as a medical practitioner and former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, he is at pains to stress that these medications are not a silver bullet. They come with side effects, are helpful for only as long as they are being used and do not address underlying causes. Obesity and its attendant health issues, Kessler says, are on the rise because of highly processed foods that have 'quietly commandeered the reward centres of our brains' and encouraged a form of addiction. In this thorough and educative work, he sets out why it is vital for those in the grip of this addiction to employ a range of methods such as a balanced diet, behavioural therapies and physical activity, as well as weight-loss drugs. He also addresses the potentially harmful messaging of the body-positivity movement, which questions the health benefits of weight reduction. Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine is a sensible and sober guide to lasting change.
Sydney Morning Herald
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Looking for something to read? Here are 10 new books
This week's book reviews range from a fictionalised account of a cult leader and cosy crime, to Tasmania's Indigenous past and a history (and possible future) of artificial intelligence. Happy reading! FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK This Is Not a Game Kelly Mullen Century, $34.99 You already know a book called This Is Not a Game will totally be a game, right? If you're not sleuth enough to work that out, sight unseen, Kelly Mullen's clever murder mystery might not be for you. It's a blackly funny take on the locked-room subgenre – the locked room in this case being a palatial abode on an island on Lake Huron (complete with drawbridge and moat), the guests trapped there in the middle of an epic snowstorm. Lusty, super-rich widow Jane Ireland has invited a diverse company for a charity auction, and she's stabbed to death before the night is out. Two of the guests – crotchety grandmother Mimi, and her granddaughter Addie – transform into an unlikely detective duo, unravelling a sordid web of taboo sex, intrigue and blackmail, sifting through an overabundance of suspects as clues and corpses mount. Mullen has created a ludic play on classic Agatha Christie-style crime fiction, more fun for being gossipy and backbiting and full of witty one-liners. The Bearcat delves into the formative years of notorious cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who led the Family, a cabal that followed a hodge-podge of Eastern religion and Christianity and believed Anne's claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Nonfiction accounts and documentaries have laid bare lurid details of child abuse – Anne illegally adopted children through the 1960s and '70s, dyed their hair peroxide blonde like hers and some were administered LSD as part of their indoctrination. Georgia Rose Phillips focuses on Anne – born Evelyn – as a girl and young woman, her own childhood in the 1920s and the traumatic experiences that drew her to harm others later in life. Phillips does have a gift for striking phrases and imagery, but there are gaps and inconsistencies in this reimagining that jar with what we know of the history. As a result, The Bearcat isn't entirely persuasive either as historical fiction or as a psychological portrait, though its subject is a fascinating and deeply disturbing figure. Everything Lost, Everything Found Matthew Hooton 4th Estate, $34.99 Memory rises and ebbs in this poignant novel spanning almost a century. Everything Lost, Everything Found follows Jack through an unusual childhood and seven decades later in old age. As a youth, he's drawn into the Brazilian Amazon during the rubber boom, following his parents to Henry Ford's rubber-tree plantation, where his mother dies in a tragic accident and Jack is forced to find his father in the jungle. Recollections of that time resurface unbidden when he's elderly and living in the rust belt in Michigan, Jack swimming in a surfeit of memories as his wife succumbs to dementia. Hooton's novel is an emotive and richly told tale of grief and loss, of family and the haunted halls of memory. I've spent time in the Brazilian Amazon myself, and the evocation of its wild beauty and perils, and the dark industrial history now half-swallowed by nature, is vivid and accurate, adding an exotic layer to this free-flowing and immersive book. The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran Shida Bazyar (trans. Ruth Martin) Scribe, $29.99 Set over four decades – with sections in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution, and every 10 years until the Green Movement protests in 2009 – this novel portrays an Iranian family forced to leave their homeland, capturing a spirit of political resistance as much as the struggle to adapt to life as refugees. It begins with Behsad, an idealistic young communist revolutionary who wants the Shah deposed as much as anyone. He fights for his beliefs and falls in love with the intelligent, equally brave Nahid. Ten years later, Nahid takes up the story from West Germany, having fled when the mullahs seized power. A return to Tehran in 1999 focuses on Nahid's daughter Laleh, her reconnection with a birthplace she misremembers and a family history full of secrets, and finally, there's Laleh's brother, Mo, energised by witnessing the wave of Iranian protests a decade later. Shida Bazyar captures the contradictions of her characters and their predicament with clarity and poise, giving complex and emotionally layered perspectives on exile and return. A Shipwreck in Fiji Nilima Rao Echo, $32.99 A Shipwreck in Fiji is the second in Nilima Rao's series of historical mystery novels set in Fiji in the early 20th century. It follows Sergeant Akal Singh, an unwilling Indian transplant, on his latest adventure. He's been dragooned into investigating reports of Germans – a very long way from the battlefields of World War I – on the island of Ovalau, accompanied by Constable Taviti Tukana, who'll be visiting his uncle, a powerful tribal chief. They're to act as chaperone to two venturesome European sightseers, Mary and Katherine, while checking in on Ovalau's only cop – a teenage recruit with a dramatic temperament. Nothing goes according to plan, and Akal is soon drawn into the apparent murder of a deeply unpopular merchant, and the problem of a group of European sailors held captive by Taviti's uncle. Amid all that clamour, one of the ladies accompanying them has her own agenda to pursue. Rao's novel is a retro delight, with an endearing detective (and sidekick) navigating a web of cultures and trying to resolve island trouble. Fearless Beatrice Faust: Sex, Feminism & Body Politics Judith Brett Text, $36.99 She was a motherless child with a 'visceral hunger for love' who grew up to be a political advocate for the body's appetites and pleasures. A woman dogged by physical ailments who struggled with feelings of worthlessness while projecting a public persona of sexual assurance and intellectual independence. As a 'sceptical feminist' who enjoyed feminine glamour, she found herself at odds with the women's liberation movement even as she campaigned for abortion rights and founded the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972. This nuanced and, at times, poignant biography of Beatrice Faust captures its subject in all her contradictions, illuminating how some of Faust's more perplexing views – on pornography and paedophilia in particular – were shaped by childhood experiences and her supreme sexual confidence. 'She had no trouble saying no, and she didn't always see why other women might.' While clear-sighted about Faust's blind spots and idiosyncrasies, Judith Brett pays tender tribute to the bravery of 'this frail, super-smart woman'. Trouwerner: A Tasmanian Elder's Story of Ancient Wisdom and Hope Aunty Patsy Cameron & Martin Flanagan Magabala Books, $34.99 'Walking through the bush with Patsy is like entering a crowded room when you're a stranger and your companion seems to know everyone.' This classically Flanaganesque observation distils perfectly the spirit of this singular book. Journalist and author Martin Flanagan, a Tasmanian of convict Irish descent, grew up on the myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were extinct. In a searching tale that wends its way through the rugged landscape of Tasmania's past, Indigenous elder and historian Patsy Cameron is his guide. Woven into their conversation is previous Tasmanian governor Kate Warner and the story of her journey into a fuller understanding of Tasmania's Indigenous heritage. At the centre of this quest is the story of Mannalargenna, the warrior leader of Cameron's clan, and his fraught negotiations with George Robinson, the preacher whose mission forced Aboriginal Tasmanians into exile. After contemplating a portrait of Mannalargenna, Flanagan asks, 'He knows who he is. Who are we?' The Shortest History of AI Toby Walsh Black Inc, $27.99 If your brain tends to seize up with fear or incomprehension at the mention of AI, this concise and entertaining history is for you. Right from the playful opening lines, 'Artificial Intelligence began on 18 June 1956. It was a Monday' you know you are in the hands of an assured storyteller. Toby Walsh, an Australian professor of AI and world-leading researcher, is also a sci-fi nerd who's not afraid to judiciously insert himself into the narrative to add personal commentary and underscore just how recent this history is. He acknowledges Alan Turing as the father of modern computing and AI but also pays due to the 19th-century mathematical whizz Ada Lovelace, who was the world's first computer programmer. This history is delivered through the six key ideas that encapsulate how AI has evolved and where it might be heading. The thinking behind these ideas is made accessible through easy-to-follow examples and some amusing 'conversations' with ChatGPT that highlight both its astonishing range and its capacity for bullshit. For Socrates, the unexamined life was not worth living. Freud insisted that we will always be strangers to ourselves. We are, says historian Mark Lilla, in a constant state of hide and seek, torn between the desire to know and the fear of what we might find. Religious injunctions against rule-breaking and curiosity – Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, for example – enact this inner conflict. 'Like all successful bureaucrats, we have learnt to kick the hard problem upstairs,' says Lilla, whose punchy way with words is integral to the pleasure of this work. While he describes his narrative as a ramble rather than a journey with a fixed destination, he has clear polemical targets, as evident in his caricature of mysticism. Even so, his overall contention that 'the harder the truth, the greater the temptation to escape it' rings powerfully true. By exposing the machinery of this inner tug-of-war, Lilla challenges us to confront these impulses in ourselves. Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight David A. Kessler Text, $36.99 David Kessler has struggled with his weight all his life and is now benefiting from the new anti-obesity drugs. But as a medical practitioner and former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, he is at pains to stress that these medications are not a silver bullet. They come with side effects, are helpful for only as long as they are being used and do not address underlying causes. Obesity and its attendant health issues, Kessler says, are on the rise because of highly processed foods that have 'quietly commandeered the reward centres of our brains' and encouraged a form of addiction. In this thorough and educative work, he sets out why it is vital for those in the grip of this addiction to employ a range of methods such as a balanced diet, behavioural therapies and physical activity, as well as weight-loss drugs. He also addresses the potentially harmful messaging of the body-positivity movement, which questions the health benefits of weight reduction. Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine is a sensible and sober guide to lasting change.
TimesLIVE
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Taking a bite out of Chimamanda's buttered toast
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 4th Estate When reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest offering Dream Count I was reminded of a favourite scene of mine in one of the Narnia books I read as a child. In the scene, the four siblings who must navigate a talking lion, a witch and a precarious wardrobe are so starved that they start craving buttered toast. One of the blandest foods to crave but at that moment of having no other option, even toast would suffice. I also found myself salivating at the thought of sinking my teeth into warm, crunchy bread that crackled at every bite. That hearty scent of rich butter all washed down with orange juice, hot chocolate or tea. I was also with very few options and immediately became enamoured with the hungry siblings and their plight. To this day, buttered toast is a comfort food I always return to. Not as a breakfast or 'girl dinner' but rather as a bite packed with memories that make me feel warm. In Dream Count, Adichie tells the story of four women interlinked by the same desires. Men. The book was inspired by the passing of Adichie's mother and her curiosity about how she would relate to one of the characters, Kadiotou. While this might be an ensemble, Kadiotou's harrowing story is only a common thread that pops up between the other characters. Specifically Chiamaka, who dominates the tale. She and her best friend Zikora have first-person narration, while Kadiotou and Chiamaka's acerbic cousin, Omelogor, have their experiences narrated to us. Through their journeys, we learn a lot about their lives in the way that Adichie has done in books like Half of a Yellow Sun. Chiamaka is a frustrating mess to whom many reading the pages might relate. You either know of a Chiamaka or you have a friend like her. Something of a Nigerian-born Carrie Bradshaw meets Emma Woodhouse, Chiamaka is a funny mess to follow. Particularly when it comes to her ill-fated relationship with her hotep (term typically used for black men who are Afrocentric to a regressive degree) boyfriend, Darnell. Through dinners and dates, we see how Darnell posits himself as a revolutionary intellectual but continues to disappoint Chiamaka, who places a lot of her self-worth on the men she dates. Even in the relationship's end, where Darnell overreacts about Chiamaka ordering a mimosa in a swanky French restaurant in Paris. She dodges his hysteria and starts a relationship with a married man that dissolves as quickly as it started. However, it does give her insight into interracial dating, but does not remedy the assimilation she has to perform when dating men from different backgrounds. Her confidants, Zikora and Omelogor, act as powerful gal pals who are resolute in their disagreements yet cautious enough not to hurt Chiamaka's feelings. Zikora is a golden child who eventually falls for the good guy type in Kwame, before their relationship fizzles out when both parties fail to effectively communicate their thoughts on her pregnancy. This is where the book shines the most as we get left with Zikora's isolation, her perseverance through a pregnancy she was quietly excited about and concludes with endless attempts to keep in touch with Kwame. In what Adichie describes as an 'unfinished dying', the labour of falling out of love and in connection with her soul mate is heartbreaking and nearly makes the book a literary realism masterpiece were it not for the cracks that start to show. Kadiotou's story is told in third-person narrative because of Adichie's respect for the real-life events it was inspired by. However, Omelogor, who runs a microblog, is also not given the honour of telling her own tale. As one of the more exciting women in terms of her world views, this makes Omelogor an anticlimactic character to read about. With Adichie employing the same linguistics when writing in Zikora and Chiamaka's voices, it often feels like they play big brother over Kadiotou and Omelogor's lives as there are no distinct differences in how she retells each woman's tale. Their passivity also makes them feel like one woman in four different versions of a Marvel multiverse, à la their very own What If series. This is where Adichie becomes a buttered toast author. There are no surprises with butter toast, and neither are there any with Adichie's book. You know what you are going to get: page after page of women pining over men, their mothers pining over grandkids and their female relatives pining over their dowager lives. It is a void obsessed with women who are stereotypes; the flighty columnist, the pregnant, shrewd lawyer, the middle-aged woman obsessed with pornography and the poverty-stricken outlier who is fodder for the haves and the have-nots. Perhaps fuelled by being a member of the queer community, there is nothing new to Dream Count. Nothing profound in its obsession with the mundane and its characters who are not daring enough to try something new. In a failure to explore the feelings an desires of women in their forties to fifties, Dream Count is a perfect read for chick-lit lovers who wish to be affirmed in their beliefs with the promise of excellent prose.
The Age
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
These diaries of Joan Didion should never have been published
DIARIES Notes to John Joan Didion 4th Estate, $34.99 Joan Didion, one of America's sharpest critics on its many myths, had precision in her prose and acuity in her observations. Over a 50-year career, the writer would leverage deep reporting and a declarative style to unmask many of her country's false ideas about itself. Now joining this long output – bookended by essays of detached distance and memoirs of disarming honesty – is a series of journal entries she wrote for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Notes to John is a crude, even aberrant, addition to Didion's published writings, one made at a time of devastating personal crisis. These unnumbered pages (150 in total) were discovered in a personal filing cabinet and summarise therapy sessions she had for more than two years. Starting in 1999, Didion began seeing a psychiatrist at the insistence of her daughter, Quintana, who believed her mother was suffering from depression. Melancholia and anxiety had indeed engulfed Didion, owed largely to Quintana's own worsening alcohol problems and deteriorating mental health. (Quintana died in 2005 aged 39.) The notes show how Didion starts out, like many new to therapy, evasive with 'no concept … of direct conversation'. Over the many months, however, the sessions encourage her to tease out the corrosive issues afflicting her relationships, including the 'two-ness' of parents Didion and Dunne and their over-involvement in Quintana's life. Verbatim quotes from the therapist (sometimes edifying in their own right) are interspersed with frank testimony covering Didion's daily despair. In one session, she starts crying for no obvious reason, with the psychiatrist wondering whether these emotions stem from her being 'afraid [she] couldn't protect' Quintana. Gone is the enigmatic image of writer Joan Didion as she confronts truths of infantilising Quintana long into adulthood and wonders whether her daughter will simply spend a large inheritance from her parents. Nightmares haunt Didion frequently, too, such as one where she sits watching Quintana get inebriated in a windowsill and is simply unable to help. 'She couldn't see me watching her,' she says.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
These diaries of Joan Didion should never have been published
DIARIES Notes to John Joan Didion 4th Estate, $34.99 Joan Didion, one of America's sharpest critics on its many myths, had precision in her prose and acuity in her observations. Over a 50-year career, the writer would leverage deep reporting and a declarative style to unmask many of her country's false ideas about itself. Now joining this long output – bookended by essays of detached distance and memoirs of disarming honesty – is a series of journal entries she wrote for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Notes to John is a crude, even aberrant, addition to Didion's published writings, one made at a time of devastating personal crisis. These unnumbered pages (150 in total) were discovered in a personal filing cabinet and summarise therapy sessions she had for more than two years. Starting in 1999, Didion began seeing a psychiatrist at the insistence of her daughter, Quintana, who believed her mother was suffering from depression. Melancholia and anxiety had indeed engulfed Didion, owed largely to Quintana's own worsening alcohol problems and deteriorating mental health. (Quintana died in 2005 aged 39.) The notes show how Didion starts out, like many new to therapy, evasive with 'no concept … of direct conversation'. Over the many months, however, the sessions encourage her to tease out the corrosive issues afflicting her relationships, including the 'two-ness' of parents Didion and Dunne and their over-involvement in Quintana's life. Verbatim quotes from the therapist (sometimes edifying in their own right) are interspersed with frank testimony covering Didion's daily despair. In one session, she starts crying for no obvious reason, with the psychiatrist wondering whether these emotions stem from her being 'afraid [she] couldn't protect' Quintana. Gone is the enigmatic image of writer Joan Didion as she confronts truths of infantilising Quintana long into adulthood and wonders whether her daughter will simply spend a large inheritance from her parents. Nightmares haunt Didion frequently, too, such as one where she sits watching Quintana get inebriated in a windowsill and is simply unable to help. 'She couldn't see me watching her,' she says.
