"Coca-Cola birds sing sweetest in the morning" caught my attention in Black Inc's Best Australian Stories 2016 and it reappears in Rubik - part of the kaleidoscopic, discontinuously slipping suite of story-pieces making up this marvellous (first) novel.
Even though it's a very different kind of novel, Rubik brought Our Magic Hour to mind in the specificity (and spot on-ness) of its details and how easily I was able to locate my own experience within it; it's littered with little bits of contemporary Australian-ness and twenty-something lifestyle (which bleeds easily enough into thirty-something...) which translate without any difficulty from its (mostly) Perth setting. In fact, that eye for detail is one of the most impressive aspects of a novel that has many (many aspects, and many impressive ones), doing a lot to bring its short scenes to life; cafes, house party, gallery visits, train rides, school experiences, encounters with strangers - all as if drawn from life.
But Rubik's most striking, and most effective, feature is its structuring into 15 stories which initially seem quite separate, to the extent that they're taking part in entirely different worlds from each other, before the connections emerge between them, at first only tangentially, and by the end, quite thrillingly all fitting together in a way that, without being overly neat or over-determined, is satisfying both narratively and thematically (and symbolically). Resolution in a novel as full of meta- and inter-textuality as this one is, is no easy feat, but Rubik pulls it off, coming together in a way that renders the many intersections meaningful, with form and content knitted together (which ipso facto calls for a degree of openness).
And then there's the command of voice and language in leaping from character to character and from imaginative fancy to fancy (David Mitchell-esque), while maintaining interest within all of the individual stories as well as in the larger mysteries that they set up (not to mention the meta question of how they all fit together), a sharp critique of corporate influence on society along with the occasional raised eyebrow at millennial social mores more generally, the lightness of touch that enables some welcome humour, and the ability to build and sustain mood and pace while leaping all over the place plot-wise (there is indeed a lot of plot going on) - including a piercing poignancy that seeps through the whole.
Inception is invoked, and the (imagined) novel "Seeds of Time" slips through the stories along with many other references, some almost subliminal (cellar door?); and there's an actual Rube Goldberg machine which I think it's safe to assume is both Metaphor and Synecdoche (can it be both at once?). Other things it's concerned with: disappearance, absence, loss; technology; identity - and the interplay between all of them in contemporary life.
Anyway, all told, really exceptional. I haven't read anything that I've liked this much in ages.
***
This also got me thinking about the kinds of (fiction) books that I like - but then I got distracted by wondering which ones I'd actually consider to be my favourites nowadays. Back in 2005 - i.e. basically a lifetime ago - I made a list of my then-favourite books, and it makes for interesting reading now. Anyhow, a list of favourites today would go something like this, in the order - as nearly as I can manage - that I read them (the hatted (^) ones are those that I haven't read for long enough that I'm not sure):
^ Mervyn Peake - The Gormenghast trilogy (*) (1998, 1999ish?)
^ Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum (maybe 1999 or 2000)
Donna Tartt - The Secret History (*) (~2001?) and The Little Friend (*) (2002 or 2003ish I think)
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities (2002)
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49 (*, **) (2002)
^ Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (maybe 2002)
^ John Fowles - The French Lieutenant's Woman (2002, 2003 or thereabouts)
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (*, **) (2004ish?)
Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase (*, **), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (*) and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (all first inhaled over early 2005)
^ Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita (July 2005)
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse (Dec 2005)
^ Andre Gide - The Counterfeiters (*) (Jan 2006)
Siri Hustvedt - What I Loved (Sep 2006) and The Sorrows of an American (*) (Sep 2008)
Scarlett Thomas - PopCo (Jan 2007) and The End of Mr Y (March 2007)
Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (*) (Oct 2008) and The Member of the Wedding (March 2010)
Kira Henehan - Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles (*) (Jan 2011)
Lev Grossman - The Magicians, The Magician King & The Magician's Land (started Nov 2013)
Kate Atkinson - Life After Life (*) (June 2014)
Rebecca Lee - Bobcat and other stories (*) (July 2014)
... to which I'm adding Rubik (June 2017!) despite the obvious risk of this being in some large part 'first flush of enthusiasm' recency bias and so on. Oh well, list in haste, repent at leisure, I guess.
Even though it's a very different kind of novel, Rubik brought Our Magic Hour to mind in the specificity (and spot on-ness) of its details and how easily I was able to locate my own experience within it; it's littered with little bits of contemporary Australian-ness and twenty-something lifestyle (which bleeds easily enough into thirty-something...) which translate without any difficulty from its (mostly) Perth setting. In fact, that eye for detail is one of the most impressive aspects of a novel that has many (many aspects, and many impressive ones), doing a lot to bring its short scenes to life; cafes, house party, gallery visits, train rides, school experiences, encounters with strangers - all as if drawn from life.
But Rubik's most striking, and most effective, feature is its structuring into 15 stories which initially seem quite separate, to the extent that they're taking part in entirely different worlds from each other, before the connections emerge between them, at first only tangentially, and by the end, quite thrillingly all fitting together in a way that, without being overly neat or over-determined, is satisfying both narratively and thematically (and symbolically). Resolution in a novel as full of meta- and inter-textuality as this one is, is no easy feat, but Rubik pulls it off, coming together in a way that renders the many intersections meaningful, with form and content knitted together (which ipso facto calls for a degree of openness).
And then there's the command of voice and language in leaping from character to character and from imaginative fancy to fancy (David Mitchell-esque), while maintaining interest within all of the individual stories as well as in the larger mysteries that they set up (not to mention the meta question of how they all fit together), a sharp critique of corporate influence on society along with the occasional raised eyebrow at millennial social mores more generally, the lightness of touch that enables some welcome humour, and the ability to build and sustain mood and pace while leaping all over the place plot-wise (there is indeed a lot of plot going on) - including a piercing poignancy that seeps through the whole.
Inception is invoked, and the (imagined) novel "Seeds of Time" slips through the stories along with many other references, some almost subliminal (cellar door?); and there's an actual Rube Goldberg machine which I think it's safe to assume is both Metaphor and Synecdoche (can it be both at once?). Other things it's concerned with: disappearance, absence, loss; technology; identity - and the interplay between all of them in contemporary life.
Anyway, all told, really exceptional. I haven't read anything that I've liked this much in ages.
***
This also got me thinking about the kinds of (fiction) books that I like - but then I got distracted by wondering which ones I'd actually consider to be my favourites nowadays. Back in 2005 - i.e. basically a lifetime ago - I made a list of my then-favourite books, and it makes for interesting reading now. Anyhow, a list of favourites today would go something like this, in the order - as nearly as I can manage - that I read them (the hatted (^) ones are those that I haven't read for long enough that I'm not sure):
^ Mervyn Peake - The Gormenghast trilogy (*) (1998, 1999ish?)
^ Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum (maybe 1999 or 2000)
Donna Tartt - The Secret History (*) (~2001?) and The Little Friend (*) (2002 or 2003ish I think)
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities (2002)
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49 (*, **) (2002)
^ Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (maybe 2002)
^ John Fowles - The French Lieutenant's Woman (2002, 2003 or thereabouts)
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (*, **) (2004ish?)
Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase (*, **), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (*) and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (all first inhaled over early 2005)
^ Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita (July 2005)
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse (Dec 2005)
^ Andre Gide - The Counterfeiters (*) (Jan 2006)
Siri Hustvedt - What I Loved (Sep 2006) and The Sorrows of an American (*) (Sep 2008)
Scarlett Thomas - PopCo (Jan 2007) and The End of Mr Y (March 2007)
Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (*) (Oct 2008) and The Member of the Wedding (March 2010)
Kira Henehan - Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles (*) (Jan 2011)
Lev Grossman - The Magicians, The Magician King & The Magician's Land (started Nov 2013)
Kate Atkinson - Life After Life (*) (June 2014)
Rebecca Lee - Bobcat and other stories (*) (July 2014)
... to which I'm adding Rubik (June 2017!) despite the obvious risk of this being in some large part 'first flush of enthusiasm' recency bias and so on. Oh well, list in haste, repent at leisure, I guess.
