Terror Australis

WEEKENDER PAGE 36

ON THE SHELF

EDITED BY ELVIRA SPROGIS

AFTERMorris GleitzmanPenguin, $19.99This is the last book,though thirdchronologically, inGleitzman’spowerful seriesabout a Jewish boy’s struggle tosurvive in Nazi-occupied Poland. Theprevious three books are: Once, Thenand Now. In After, World War II is in itsfinal stages but its horrors are stillomnipresent. In Felix, Gleitzman hascreated a smart, loyal and bravecharacter for children to cherish.

Stacey Dombkins

TOUGHWayne Grogan has carved out a singular niche for himself withhis gritty style, writes IAN KIRKWOOD.

TALES

REDEEMED: Terror Australis, by Wayne Grogan, published by Deep Line Books, $24.95, or$6.95 as a Google eBook. PICTURE: DARREN PATEMAN

BOOKS

T error Australis is Wayne Grogan’s fifthbook – four novels, one volume ofprose poetry – and it continues to tread

the path of redemption from addiction that ishome ground for this singular artist.

Grogan, who spent time in Newcastle beforeleaving the wharves to become a full-timewriter, is a very good novelist. The characters inhis books are alive. His language is bold,original and often arresting.

This is not flip-through material. There aresentences here that take a second and eventhird reading. Not because they are difficult todigest, but because they stick in the brain andtheir originality deserves more than onepassing glance.

To Grogan, the Botany Bay wharves are ‘‘hugestacks of containers broken over by floatingclouds of petrol fumes’’ . A ‘‘grub in a beaniewith an Adam’s apple like a tomahawk’’ is indeep conversation with ‘‘another soiler’’. Theson of a famous crim was so inept with his fistshe ‘‘couldn’t knock a drunken sheila off a toiletbowl’’. And on it goes.

Much of Grogan’s output traverses a WilliamS. Burroughs-like affection for the langour ofthe smackie’s life, and he is utterly convincingin describing the grubby horror of life on thenod.

Plotwise, Terror Australis follows a booksellerand reformed junkie, Rory, as he gumshoes thenether reaches of Sydney for the fallendaughter of a moneyed family, “a beautiful girlfallen in the trashy reaches of the Sydneyheroin underworld’’. She turns up, but notbefore Rory, who is also a rapist in remission,uncovers an Islamic terror plot and tries, butfails, to seduce the near menopausal book

buyer and confidant who hiredhim to find her friend’s absentdaughter in the first place.

As I have said, Grogan’s languageis never less than arresting. I foundit a hard book to put down,although – and I hate to say this –sections of the plot worked lesswell than others.

Grogan says his main thrust – and I use theword deliberately – in Terror Australis is thestill-present influence of our convict past as atrigger and a reason for a national attitude ofsexualised violence towards women.

As he quotes from Germaine Greer at thestart of proceedings: ‘‘Women have very littleidea of how much men hate them.’’

In this regard, his rapist creation Rory, whomarks his territory with surreptitious pissings

wherever he goes, is a disturbing piece ofwork. He is obsessed with Ivan Milat and‘‘butchering ends brought to young bodies’’,trawling through online dating services fornew conquests he then terrorises withblindfolds, backhanders and worse. If FiftyShades of Grey is bondage lite, then this is thereal McCoy at street level. Crime fiction as highart.

While Grogan is hardly the first writer totread this path, he is carving out a singularniche for himself in Australian literary circles,mixing an unusually potent sense of grammarwith a clear eye for convincing detail.

His first novel, Junkie Pilgrim, setting thetone for the material to follow, traversedaddiction and corruption in the now familiarsettings of Kings Cross and the Sydneywaterfront.

Vale Byron Bay told a tale of the smart setheading north to the border;Heavy Allies was about the NuganHand Bank, a choice real-life sliceof Australian history centering onthe 1960s and ’70s links betweenthe heroin trade and the CIA viaKings Cross and the GoldenTriangle.

Jim Morrison Jesus Complex isprose poetry, a la the Lizard Kinghimself, as Grogan channels hisinner Doors leader out into the‘‘stoned immaculate’’ netherreaches of the imagination.

Like many writers, Grogan struggles to makea full time living despite the critical acclaim hiswork has received. A second-hand book seller– like Rory in Terror Australis – Grogan writesnot so much because he can, but because hehas to. Because the alternative, as Rory says, isto ‘‘stand in reflection with a van behind mefull of books I don’t have much confidence in,purchased for too much . . .’’

Much better, for us as readers, that hecontinues to write.

PETERO: My storyPetero Civonicevawith Larry Writer,Pan MacMillan,$34.99Big Petero’s lifestory is prettymuch as youwould expect –straight up and down with no frills.Civoniceva achieved everything rugbyleague had to offer, winning grandfinals and State of Origin series andplaying in more Test matches than anyAustralian forward. He has been anunderstated character.

Robert Dillon

MRS ROBINSON’SDISGRACE: ThePrivate Diary of aVictorian LadyKate Summerscale,BloomsburyAn 1800s trial of acouple in theEnglish middleclasses seeking a divorce is the premiseof this story. Isabella Robinson isaccused of adultery and her mostintimate secrets, recorded in a diary,are read out as evidence. The authortakes a rather staid and factualapproach to the writing.

Jacqui Jones