Recovering from the surprise that this intellectual giant of the GBTQI world has written a novel which is a crime story starting with a gay death in a sauna, it became of a case of who would be better equipped to produce this read which is, perhaps, given his prior output, surprisingly easy to read. It is also quite amusing to read as he dips into his undoubted substantial knowledge of the world of AIDS organisations, their personnel and their interests. Having had twenty years of personal experience as Secretary for a non-government organisation, I have always been surprised at who gravitates to such an organisation and their background.
Altman swiftly sketches out the backgrounds and interests of the main power brokers involved in organising this particular large-scale AIDS conference in London. They are a mixed bunch with the main character’s own marriage somewhat dubious while surrounded by many individuals who seem content to put the interests of the Conference and a knighthood (perhaps) in the offing to deal with Pomfrey Lister’s corpse as effectively as possible. We all remember the warnings of not to mix Viagra and poppers if there was any possibility of heart problems and the warning bottle of poppers is found with the body in this case, so there is a possible accidental cause . The decision is made by those most directly concerned to remove the body to his home bed, have a compliant Death certificate produced and a speedy cremation. This is completed with only a few murmurs of wonder and doubt mainly from those who have an eye for promotion and advancement or righting perceived wrongs in the laboratory war-field. There is potential for financial malfeasance not least because Pomfrey and his right-hand financial man have found good reason to squirrel extra funds into partial ownership of the very sauna in which he meets his end – the ‘Spartacus’ (Joke!). The focus of potential investigation shifts to a chance encounter with a rather needy second-hand bookseller, Tom, who saw a potential sexual ‘Daddy’ in Pomfrey and just can’t let go. This early section of the book seems very believable whether it is the inner workings and ambitions of a major conference (been there or done that?)or what happens at dear old Hampstead Heath. Anyone familiar with the London book scene and associated other gay locations can also easily navigate. Even Tom’s pursuit of Winston ‘blue Mohawk’ to Brighton can bring back all sorts of memories. It is awonderful and often wryly amusing concoction of the very nearly true.
The plot thickens when Winston, who was a cleaner at Spartacus (unenviable job) was the very person who found not only Pomfrey dead in his cubicle but also a used tube of insulin which could have been employed with deadly intent. He is a somewhat mysterious character whose employment,t thanks to Joe Tripodi who manages the sauna, fluctuates between London and Brighton. What he knows is only gradually revealed to Tom, with whom he is having an on-and-off sexual relationship. He is, however, only one of several characters who are beginning to analyse their relationships with Pomfrey, his Global Trust (which he dominated) and the work on chasing up an HIV vaccine (human or animal testing). Mary, Pomfrey’s wife also has her own complication in that she is inclined to preach abstinence in the face of the pandemic and is using Trust funds to support those organising that approach including African fundamentalists.
So, there is no shortage of candidates who might wish Pomfrey out of the way, but Murder? If you were hoping for an Agatha Christie ending forget it – no such thing. At one point, some of the interested parties gather to draw up a spreadsheet of candidates and whether they point to any one person, but even this is unproductive.
One facet that I enjoyed was the way in which characters in their movements about London whether by chance or organised meetings always seem to find something to eat so be prepared for descriptions of what is available in coffee shops, pubs and restaurants
The story almost fades away at the conclusion. There is nothing definitive about murder or not but the fates and careers of the involved characters (and the Trust) are sketched out quite satisfactorily. I must say, the one character who grew close to me was Tom, whose bookish world and habits and needs I totally understood and I would wish him well in his bookish niche in London or having more fun at Brighton.
I read this book quit fast as it was an easy read with interesting and familiar people and situations. I hope it can be so for any reader.
I apologize for the prolonged preamble to the report on this book but the topic engages me sincerely and deeply.
This novel had an irresistible pull for me as it highlights an experience I have had repeatedly when visiting Tasmania. I have ancestry on the island (from 1803 onwards) that featured a soldier, his convict wife and his family. My research indicates that he was prized (along with his drummer boy son) in dealing with the local bushrangers (again, arguably a European product of British avarice and maladministration). I cannot find any record of his dealings with the local First Nations people, though it is possible given the slide into the Black War. My ‘experience’ is how many times on visits and walks I was struck by the conflict between the beauty of the landscape I was viewing and the horror and inhumanity associated with that place. I had a good friend I visited regularly on the Tasman Peninsula and did walks around Port Arthur as well as the coast down to Tasman Island (say no more for horror, beauty and inhumanity combined). The same could be said for Macquarie Harbour. On one occasion my friend and I flew from Devonport out to Flinders Island in Bass Strait and were rewarded in so many ways by the land and seascape, the people, wildlife, accommodation and food. One place I very much wanted to visit was Wybaleena where I knew a number of the transported Aboriginal people from the mainland (Tasmania) had finished their days, not murdered or shot but allowed to expire in poor health and a totally uncomprehending administration. The day I visited was truly beautiful with Robinson’s chapel sitting in a field of blooming crocuses (see below) it was with some exploration I realised that they were blooming above the graves of so many sad deaths (the site has been explored to locate specific graves).
Likewise, a visit to the adjacent bay (see above) highlighted what beauty these expatriates would have arrived amidst as they mourned their own home land. Others have had the same feeling. If you develop an interest in this topic, I suggest you have a look at Rohan Wilson’s two novels, ‘the Roving Party’ and ‘To Name Those Lost’ which base themselves on that dark history especially in the North and Northeast of Tasmania including the nefarious activities of John Batman who continued his ways with the ‘purchase’ of the location of Melbourne. A review of the latter book is earlier on this blog.
If you are unfamiliar with the rapid land-grabbing that occurred in Tasmania and the total rejection of its original inhabitants as a dangerous pest, I suggest you google it to see how attempts to coexist shifted into all-out attempts to eliminate. In the then-current Christian evangelical tradition, one George Augustus Robinson, a dangerous combination of a government official and self-taught preacher, set out to convince the battered remnants of the aboriginal population after the black wars and an attempt to literally ‘drive’ them like sporting wildlife into one last corral, that they should accept his ‘kindly’ attempts to relocate them elsewhere where he promised they would be ‘on country’ and avoid the depredations of burgeoning settlers, their untouchable animal stock and the demands of English share holders. He succeeded with some groups and notably with the help of one known leader, Mannalargenna. The selected location was at Wybalenna on Flinders Island, largest of the Furneaux group in Bass Strait. There, the complete dissolution of the population took place, a mixture of dispossession, melancholy, ill-health, poor diet and an administration that came to see itself as ‘smoothing the pillow’ of the dying population leading to the claim that only one Aboriginal person survived, Truganinni. Having shared mutton bird (not recommended) with an aboriginal descendant, I can give the lie to that tradition. End of lecture.
Serong’s background has prepared him well for his task, which is the third in a series moving closer to the denouement at Pea Jacket Point on Flinders and includes the death of the sadly duped Mannalargenna (The Man) under the eyes of other principal white characters, the commandant (Robinson), the Catechist, the Doctor and the Storekeeper. Frequently, the only balance to the misery of the situation is provided by his often beautiful descriptions of the environment of which I have already sung my praises.
The book opens in 1831 with an acknowledgement of two young people (Whelk and Pipi) and highlights their treatment by key characters, the vicious Catechist, The Store-keeper and his wife, The Coxswain and the Commandant. It is clear that there are people with a conscious who want to work within their own views on helping the transplanted residents while others are ruled by much more base motives including rapine, writing a saleable journal with promotion prospects and the sale of Aboriginal body parts to those who desire them for their collections. I was intrigued by the names of the two young people as there are whelks native to the Furneaux while Pippis (Eugaries to me) are more widespread (Eugarie Curry for me). They are a good reminder of the links between persons and country.
‘How will it end? His wife had asked him when she first arrived. Will the paddock fill and the people empty? Will there be another paddock after this one, if there are more people coming?’ Her husband, the storekeeper of the settlement, is witness to the grim activities of the governing group. He sees terrible cruelties he is largely powerless to prevent. The paddock she asks about is a cemetery. She is describing genocide, not through the widespread slaughter of Tasmanian Aboriginal people on their traditional lands, which has been the pretext for persuading them to join the community, but through deaths caused by disease and displacement. Paddocks imply farming. Her question highlights the morbid and seemingly perpetual industry of death and colonisation, and its horror’.
There is a moving description of Pipi’s presumed fate at the hands of the catechist and his unmoving wife in his suspicious menagerie of young orphans. The book also introduces two animal characters, the so-called monkey chained on its pole (not even sure if it is a monkey) and its foul treatment linked to Pipi’s maternalism. There is a mysterious black dog that appears regularly almost as a silent observer and source of reproach. The reader becomes acquainted with the physical layout of the settlement and its occupants, their lives and routines especially that of the storekeeper and his estranged wife and the compulsive journal-writing of the Commandant. It is made clear that the unlovely catechist is making the best of his contacts and has hopes for something better. He is even prepared to threaten blackmail to safeguard his position. The Commandant has hopes for a position as Protector of Aborigines for Victoria (given some who got such jobs in Australian states, it would have been a race to the bottom).
The routine, which included the convict who drives his bullocks constantly over a decaying track to ensure a water supply(Sisyphus anyone?), is broken by the news that Mannalargenna is almost certainly dying as have so many before from lung disease. This provokes a constant wailing around the settlement and discussion from the Catechist, Surgeon and Commandant around how to organise a post-mortem, funeral with eulogy and temporary disposition of the body with the possibility of obtaining his much-prized head. The news has spread as there is a fine description of a boatload of ‘seal-wives’ (women either taken, bought or encouraged into marrying sealers, either white or Maori). The leader of the group is Mannalargenna’s sister who is presented as a strong and powerful figure which is hardly surprising as these women became the key link between so many Tasmanian aboriginal lines and the present day. She knows what she wants and expects for her brother and is familiar with the possibility of his dismemberment.
The actual death of Mannalargenna is finely presented as he rages against his part in the dissolution of his world and people and attempts to bargain against the fate of his own head once again receiving the paper-thin promises that have already led to his and his people’s dire situation.
So much of this book reads a bit like history so it is appropriate to point out that Serong is a novelist and the conclusion has a couple of true surprise endings. One relates to Mannalargenna and I didn’t see it coming at all. The second relates to the beloved Whelk. His conclusion is both beautiful and heart-breaking at the same time. It deserves to be represented on film. Serong also has a final broadside for the representatives of Imperial Christianity. Again, I would love to see it on a screen. I cannot recommend this book more warmly even if it might sometimes test your stomach.It is also instructive about human behaviour and, as such, I found myself feeling echoes of Greek tragedy. I can only hope that many readers will reap that Greek benefit of catharsis from its reading.
“‘And there, sir, you have come full circle. You don’t understand why they won’t fight back, and yet you say in their position you’d allow yourself to die. You moved them out of the path of the bullets in Van Diemen’s Land, and they’re no better off; so the next line of justification must be that they seek their own death.’” “‘And there, sir, you have come full circle. You don’t understand why they won’t fight back, and yet you say in their position you’d allow yourself to die. You moved them out of the path of the bullets in Van Diemen’s Land, and they’re no better off; so the next line of justification must be that they seek their own death.’”
I am definitely not a werewolf genre aficionado, but this title did its job in grabbing my attention. ”An American Werewolf in London” was probably my last movie encounter while “What we do in The Shadows” by Taika Waititi (“Wilderperson”?) would be the nearest in the concept of how ‘other’ beings adapt to modern life was explored . “What we do in the Shadows” did the hilarious honours for vampires on both the large and small screens. This title suggests again some unease in the supernatural werewolf condition combined with the restless insecurity of some younger individuals.
It delivers on all counts and while there is plenty to laugh at (at times) it is much more deeply personally obsessed with the worryings of the central character, Brian. Incidentally, Brian has become a werewolf as a consequence of a road rage situation which may serve as a warning to all of us while on the road. He is so many things typical of this novel genre. He is a college dropout. He has come to the inner city ins search of typical inner-urban accommodation. Sound familiar?
“But even in a few short months, the aunties pushing their grocery carts past bodegas and check-cashing shops are being pushed out by thirty-something hipsters on their way to the new farm-to-table ‘concept’, replete with Edison bulbs and sans serif menus.”
He is content with an unchallenging job. (How many times have I read of similar non-werewolf young gay men falling into the same pattern within the restaurant/bar industry?) Brian gradually finds a small number of people he can get along with (Nik the Phillipina bar tend who combines her alcohol dispensing expertise with practice on her flashcards for her next medical exam at which Brian assists)(Darby, who seems to be on a parallel path but is wanting to build a relationship with an attached older customer, florist Abe, who seems genuinely interested in him).
The werewolfing continues but in a more controlled fashion with only an occasional raccoon as his main target and only very occasionally a lone jogger or Grindr disappointment. There is one description of his use of Grinder to get some sexual relief that is quite graphic. Overall looms a malaise, a disappointment in having nowhere to go and no indication of a path to follow. He is clearly a sitting duck for the first person he meets to might display some characteristics of knowing where he wants to go and how to achieve it. Luckily(?) he meets Tyler through his bar work and he seems to fit the bill in all respects with regard to luxurious clothing, money, car and accommodation. Tyler has it all at his mansion supplied by a mysterious father including a dungeon which can be employed for retreat exercising, a spot of real S&M or werewolfing. I must say that I felt I was reading in the past when gay novelists peppered their work with multiple references to clothing brands and ‘insider’ pop music that I knew nothing about.
“‘Good luck,’ Tyler says at the front door, as Brian heads down the steps to the street. ‘Yeah, you too. You got any plans?’ ‘Dungeon. Might put on a face mask. I’m midway through listening to The Fountainhead, so I should get that finished before dawn.’”
That reference to Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ should serve as an alarum for anyone with a decent radar. Tyler is also a werewolf and this cements the relationship as he claims to want to unify ‘all those other werewolves’ out there who need an organization will bring them together and empower them. This requires superior organisation, planning and money and whatever skills Brian can supply which lie mainly in internet development and social world app building. Especially it requires developing our old contemporary friends ‘mindfulness’ and ‘self-awareness’.
“Tyler starts packing up his things. ‘Just keep practicing mindfulness. First step here is to recognize your emotions, let them pass through you. Try not to let people get to you. Remember to breathe.”
By this stage, most aware readers can smell pyramid building from a mile off but Brian’s needs and his desire to be close to Tyler overcome everything and he seems willing to do almost anything for him, Tyler and ‘The Pack’ to succeed and grow. Tyler also senses a lacking need to dominate and control and he tries to develop this in Brian but it only seems to show as a sense of extreme male dominance which is particularly pronounced during intense physical exercise which Brian takes up and practices on himself.
“‘All of a sudden it hit me that I need to explore these synergies. Integrating lupine insights with my professional life and then lending my mentorship and business acumen to the mystical.”
This being an American novel, of course there is going to be a thoroeauian call from Tyler for his now group of adherents to go on an extended hike in the wild and it turns out to be very wild for the typically underprepared Brian. In fact, it is all a bit of a disaster leading to an unplanned violent sexual conclusion and Brian and Tyler being even further apart. The Pack isn’t happening.
“It’s just this philosophy and the pack we’re building here, it requires a certain baseline of masculine energy and aggression. Of course you were going to struggle with it. But I never said it was going to be easy. You just have to work harder at it, toughen up, and you have to be way less emotional if you want to succeed.’”
Tyler concludes that things between he and Brian need to be ended with a lupine battle at the next turn of the moon and so there is a very filmic episode that takes place at the restaurant/battle fortress with the to-be-expected outcome (I, for one, could see it al lhappening on the screen.) The battle ends expectedly with help from an unexpected direction though red herring spotters may have noted an earlier filmic reference.
It all means that ‘the restaurant three’ now has to put things back in order which they manage to do with concluding revelations that tidy an otherwise unpromising situation. Again, this takes place in the home base of their unlikely saviour (once again all very filmic) and finishes on a hopeful note for all concerned and the fate of Brian and those like him (with or without the werewolf tendency).
This novel gives what it advertises. If you are tired, bored or disinterested by the ever-present call to mindfulness and self-help that deafens so much contemporary intercourse, you may find a lot of Brian’s musings a turn-off and start screaming your own version of what you think Brian needs and to be more aware of Tyler’s siren call. I did.
I surprised myself by failing to realise that I had read (and reviewed) in April 2021 on this blog the predecessor of this book. I had been drawn to it by its being listed for group discussion and recognising one co-author (Neil) as a former very active member of the group. I particularly remembered his questioning nature and was not entirely surprised to see him trying his hand as an author. He kindly called me and sent me a .pdf version of the book which makes for easier reading for me.
The earlier book ‘The Day Before You Came’ was very enjoyable set in a time past very familiar to Sydney in the 1980s. The characters were an interesting selection of gay, police and Eastern suburbs glitterati and wannabes including TV and mention of the gathering HIV storm. There is even a Gilbert and Sullivan reference alongside the usual pop music.
The new book (a third has been threatened)continues several of the previous characters especially Stuart Kingston, the interior designer with his links to the TV world, gay venue money and Inspector Carrington, the unusually gay sympathetic policeman and his hunky homophobic(?) police Det Sergeant Reeves.
There are going to be lots of gay locations and sex which is handled rather well. This includes gay sauna, louche luxury swimming pool action and the delicate deflowering of a very willing young man by Stuart who manages to put aside his lusting for the very toothsome bisexual Dex, who featured in the earlier book, when not shifting furniture.
Both books take a critical view of eastern suburbs life and this is no exception. Are the cast of regulars who populate that social scene, some vaguely original (isn’t Lady Fairfax dead), some wildly out of kilter (Mrs Hillman Minx? – my senior uncle would find that hard to accept after he bought a new one so many years ago, also my fellow teacher who drove one from Cloncurry to Brisbane in 1963 through black soil bogs and a huge rain storm from Augathella to Morven that flooded the car and left scars on my luggage for years afterwards). It is almost like a constant review which, in this episode, merges into the Personal Wellness industry , expensive overseas Gurus, and a wildly expensive withdrawal into the Blue Mountains to what felt like the old Hydro Majestic Hotel revived. It has to be said that some of the characters do grow a little, look into themselves and don’t always like what they find-good luck!
The authors want at least two other aspects of the gay life to be included, so A funeral; is used as a starting point to reflect on religion and belief in the gay world and also as an opportunity to present the emotional damage for those who try to be apparently deeply religious while occasionally accepting the pull of their sexual nature as well as the hypocritical damage wrought by attempted Christian conversion of the susceptible andneedy.
There has to be a murder, of course, the first is David Wyatt, who is found bloodied and very battered in a Darlo laneway outside a gay sex venue, the Touchstone sauna. And soon there is more ending with the funeral.
On a more upbeat note, Mardi Gras is about to occur and the authors described well the feverish preparations and the gaudy costumes produced. Stuart is used to track the process of both following and being in the parade while joining some of the floats. His consciousness seems to become somewhat flighty preparing him to enter the giant party space. There it continues to become more and more hyperaware as he tries to deal with his discovery of the lust for Dex and his departure. It seems like Stuart is using the process to sort out his unconscious life andneeds.
The last third of the book is devoted to untangling some of the complicated relationships and their meaning as the cause and agent for the deaths are gradually revealed – no final Agatha Christie reveal and accusation here. There are lots of people and relationships to be sorted and it takes a little while including a sexuality reveal and even a version of that old favourite’ the Cat Came Home’.
All told, another good read, extremely-well set in time, place and charactrisations that will resonate solidly for an Australian reader with ethe possibility of more adventures of Stuart for those who have enjoyed his journey thus far.
I admit to being an Anthony Horowtiz fan and enjoying Midsomer. The English have a knack for combining life in quaint villages and small towns that produce an alarming rate of strange deaths and murders with a linking character digging into these oddities (new and old) to crack the mystery (sometimes with an Agatha Christie ending, sometimes not). This book has the added attraction of being authored by an Anglican priest who knows some of the inside running on small country parishes and their relations with the community including the Lord of the Manor (think Dibley without the jokes). Even the aristocracy under division within the family and the arrival of a potential future chatelaine who has Canadian First Nation ancestry! Thanks to my Mother, I received the Bracknell luxuries of induction into our local Moderately High Church of England (St Albans – you can’t get much more English than that!). In later life, I also had at least two close friends who were Anglican priests who segued into psychology and Counseling. So, I am poised to see what is happening in Upper and Lowers Badsapple starting with plumbing the mysteries of transubstantiation. An indication of what lies ahead?
Coles is still wrestling with the problem of his priesthood and natural being.
In April 2022, Coles announced that he retired from parish duties due to the Church of England allegedly increasingly excluding gay couples, and what he described as its “conservative, punchy and fundamentalist” direction
Coles is most definitely a gay man having come out at 16 to his mother while playing “Glad to be Gay’ four times. He had some privilege in his background attending good schools. He had a strong interest in the arts and music and went through a period when he played with Jimmy Somerville in the Communards! He later discovered theology and became an Anglican priest which has been nil today. Our priest, Daniel, is presented as rector of two combined parishes with a newly-arrived evangelical curate, Chris, who flags his alternative lifestyle in his vehicle, clothing, religious thought and observances and two teenage wannabe Goth children. This is a well-known Anglican divide best represented in this country by the difference between the Diocese of Sydney and pretty much everyone else.
‘“ Oh dear.” There you go. Where’s your fight? Where’s your shaking the dust from your shoes, where are your sheep and your goats, your wheat and your tares? You’re so … Anglican.’ ‘Aren’t you?’ ‘I’m a Bible Christian, Daniel. Aren’t you?
“Chris Biddle was full of conviction, and when he was with him Daniel sometimes felt like a genial Liverpudlian Fabian being hectored by Militant Tendency.”
As a consequence, his writings relate well to the small county towns he knows well, with the odd gay twist. Everything in this village has potential ranging from past histories, occupations and homes. Even vehicles are usually symbolic of their drivers and their use – think Land Rover or Van den Plas. It is to be expected that dogs will play a role in daily lives and we are treated to two miniature dachshunds owned by the Rector and his Mother, (they are Hilda who eventually gives birth, think the church and Cosmo, A well-known Archbishop of Canterbury)
While things begin with the shocking murder and we are treated to the long process of the priest’s mulling over possibilities while carrying out his priestly responsibilities, we are treated to the kinds of inner thoughts of an individual in this situation. I enjoyed so much of the detail in this book ranging from the houses, businesses and the relevant histories of village folk including one Dickensian set of characters, the Talbys, who appear almost magically when someone is in decline and lacks support. They attach themselves limpet-like to the situation, reacting badly to any challenge while pocketing what they can from the present situation and any post-mortem. Make sure you know what a ‘caduceus’ is. I would agree that my past religious and friendship experiences probably gave me more enjoyment from what Daniel was thinking and doing especially when it came to services, litany and choices of readings and hymns. Some readers may have more problems with accessing this.
The story starts with a bang as a teen boy is found with his throat cut Aztec-style on the altar of a disused chapel in a local wartime airfield. There are red herrings aplenty as we are introduced to the locality through the priest’s eye, experiences and memories of a series of murders in the same village just one year ago solved with the assistance of a local detective who seems more than usually friendly (Think Grandchester with homosexual leanings). The final act is heralded by that most English of village events – Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night. There have to be mixed feelings for anyone who thinks about its origins and any relevance to contemporary thinking or behaviour beyond loud noises and colourful displays. Given that events started with the shedding of blood, there is something natural about the cleansing clarity of fire leading to an Agatha Christie drawing room conclusion.
The real conclusion is cleverly left to literally the last line after a trail of hints and suggestions throughout the whole book. This offering is the second in a sequence that now must be extended. I want it!
It must be quite a burden to produce another novel after winning the Booker as Stewart did with ‘Shuggie’ and there has been discussion around whether ‘Mungo’ is better or not and whether he should have found something different to say. He says that ‘Mungo’ was well on the way anyway when ‘Shuggie’ was published so I disregard that line of thought. If anything the two almost bookend one another in time, place, and characterisation. I truly think this one is better than ‘Shuggie’ with the last half and the conclusion deeply and genuinely moving and provocative for me.
The tenement locale, social and political environment is pretty similar though this time the reader is not taken much away from typical Glasgow estate dwelling except for the interwoven expedition to a remote loch (Lamond? In Lochaber which has my family origins).
“I came swannin’ down the dockside in my best school uniform while a tide of men were pushing the other way. They had just been telt they were getting the sack. Their lunch pails were still full.” Hamish stopped his long strides and looked out over the low city. “Grown men wi’ greetin’ faces, and here’s muggins, in a school tie, asking for an apprenticeship. Three hunner and fifty men on the broo and I’m asking for a bus-fare allowance. It was a pure embarrassment.” “I’m sorry.””
This time we have an almost complete young (15-year-old) love story between a ‘Proddy’ and a ‘Fienian’ both with coming out problems in a largely hostile environment. That is not to say that there are people both within and without family environments that want to help and support in ways that they can. However, that seething layer of fear and hostility toward homosexuality is present and drives the boys in different ways. Mungo’s rather horribly well-intentioned elder brother (Hamish) drives him toward conventional hooliganism, theft, and religious-based warfare (if scarcely understood) with to-be-expected consequences. His sometimes-present mother (Mo-Maw) does try when she is present and even sparks the parallel story of a man-making expedition gone very wrong to a rural loch on a ‘boot camp’ experience with two of the most inappropriate individuals one could find at an AA meeting. This reminds me to always consider in these stories that everyone has a background. They may be very flawed from their environment just like Shuggie and Mungo and unable to escape the patterns they have entered into with few, like sister Jodie, can find a way out. The love of mother is omnipresent and almost unviable.
“They kept their chests puffed out until they could be safe in their mammies’ arms again; where they could coorie into her side as she watched television and she would ask, ‘What is all this, eh, what’s with all these cuddles?’ and they would say nothing, desperate to just be boys again, wrapped up safe in her softness.”
“She hadn’t needed to ask if it was about Mo-Maw. Everything about this boy was about his mother. He lived for her in a way that she had never lived for him. It was as though Mo-Maw was a puppeteer, and she had the tangled, knotted strings of him in her hands. She animated every gesture he made: the timid smile, the thrumming nerves, the anxious biting, the worry, the pleasing, the way he made himself smaller in any room he was in, the watchful way he stood on the edge before committing, and the kindness, the big, big love.”
This is not an environment in which to be a suspect loner..
“Poor-Wee-Chickie lived on the ground floor left. It was a door the children all rushed past. A plain brown door like Mungo’s own, that had a sad, degraded look from all the times it had been scrubbed clean of foul graffiti. Someone – a Proddy pal of Ha-Ha’s – had found a half-dead can of spray paint in one of the middens. The wit had spray-painted Child Mahlestur in tall letters on Poor-Wee-Chickie’s door.”
And of Chickie’s own tale ..
“I just didnae have the guts.”
There were warnings for Mungo ..
“I can see exactly what you want and it’s not guid. If yer no careful, you’ll be stuck here with her, with Mo-Maw, for all your days. A wee bachelor living on the third floor with his poor mammy and shuffling about in a cagoule to buy his messages. Suffering Jesus. The best part of your day will be standing outside the butcher’s and talking to the other old wummin about the weather. Then you’ll carry your fish supper home in a string bag and lock every snib behind yourself. And for whut?” “For her.” “Then ye’re as daft as ye look.””
“Jodie wished her brother would cry. It was a luxury she never had. It had been different for her, she had no one to cry to–neither Mo-Maw nor Hamish could have offered any comfort. But Mungo had her. As they crouched behind the communal bin shed she wished that he would cry. She only had to think of Hamish and she could see the rage that built when you never let the hurt out. She knew too many knotted-up men. “You know she’s a liar,don’t you?””
I found the ‘lost’ weekend fascinating in its detail and utterly shocking in what it did to transform Mungo – just not in the way intended. It was a little sad that it was mostly drawn in rather appropriately drab and gloomy colours. I found its conclusion a little weak though perhaps very valuable to balance what had just occurred. The two ‘escorts’ in manhood for Mungo had very interesting names which I would like to comment on in my conclusion. There is some reflection on what an environment he had not experienced before.
“Mungo tilted his head back. He hadn’t noticed, but the sky wasn’t absolutely black after all. There were stars in every corner you could see. Even when he thought he found an empty patch of nothingness his eyes adjusted and the sky filled with frosted stars and then what looked like the cream left by stars. He had never seen the night sky like this before. He had never seen it so cloudless, without the soft orange filter from the lights of the scheme.”
The boy James Jamieson with whom Mungo pairs comes from a background that is not financially broken but he has lost his mother and his father is a classic FIFO worker on the North sea rigs. James could have a relatively easy life and career path ahead of him but knows what he is sexually and is equally tormented and fearful. In his loneliness, he takes to the grand old tradition of keeping pigeons for breeding purposes (and good money) with some learned scams along the way. He builds a refuge dovecot for his birds and himself which Mungo finds and learns to assist. The boys are building an activity that creates a friendship that leads to tentative loving. There is sex that is well presented. I can only assume that in the time presented (’80-90s) there would be less pornographic pressure to perform to some external expectation and it is as sweet as it is real.
“Mungo raised himself on his elbows and kissed James. Even more than the others, it felt like his first proper kiss, clumsy and with too much pressure on his lips. He buried the tip of his nose in James’s cheek and gasped when he felt the secret warmth of James’s tongue. It thrilled him. The tongue tasted sweet like cream and powdered vanilla, and his mouth was hot like burning peat and golden tobacco.”
I cannot know what the author intended but I found the building, roofing, and what the ‘doocot’ represented to be highly symbolic of what was happening to the two youths and their need to break away and create something of their own. What happened on Mungo’s last visit there truly brought me to tears.
I was left with a series of questions such as the names of Mungo’s ‘leaders into manhood’ -Gallowgate, St Christopher, Mungo, and James. There is a statue of St Mungo as the patron saint of Glasgow with his arm raised as in the final moments of the book. There is a Gallowgate road and barracks etched into Glasgow’s history. There is the gesture of killing the pigeon. Was the time by the loch a kind of passion or temptation? Gallowgate was a man who thought a 10-year-old child could want a relationship. There is the relationship between the two men and what they assumed of Mungo. There is a long historic battle at play here with, for me, a kind of final gesture that occurs within a place made sacred for the boys and their hopes that is almost left unsaid at the conclusion.
This would not be the first time I have over-egged a book I like but I can sincerely recommend it even with its occasional flaws.
BCC Library has audiobook, ebook, MP3 and 52 copies.
My dear sainted Mother like most of her generation made sure that (Like Lady Bracknell) every luxury that money could buy, including christening was lavished upon me. Unfortunately my early teen years via Robert G Ingersoll rather destroyed her efforts though not the human and social concerns that came with it. Part of that process involved the rejection of the late Victorian sickly sweet images that were part of the parcel and Tsiolkas has certainly injected a far more realistic (sometimes savagely so) set of images in this amazing book. As a student of Ancient History at Uni, I became much more aware of the brutal nature of life in the times described overpoweringly here as well as the complex nature of the formation of the primitive Christian church, its personnel, internal conflicts, processes and emerging writ (holy and otherwise). More than anyone I have encountered, Tsiolkas drags us back into those issues and those times.
He clearly has had similar experiences including a loving Greek Orthodox Mum, loss of faith and wresting with his sexual nature and coming out in that religious context to a 35 year relationship. He has chosen the illumination of Saul (St Paul) on the road to Damascus as a focal point around which he explores this time and place in a series of segments that are titled Saul I II III and IV, Timothy, Lydia and the fictional Vrasus, a Roman soldier who worships Sol Invictus. Thomas also offers interest across the canvas of these sections as a sometimes almost savage illuminator. Each can be seen as a drilling down into particular events, behaviours and meditations. They occur at appropriate locations mapped at the beginning of the book by Tsiolkas’ partner Wayne Wayne van der Stelt. It is no accident that any gay reader will immediately see a parallel between Saul’s experience and the standard coming out experience. There is, as well, the regularly quoted (Folau) and routinely mis-translated text we have all had to deal with.
“Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Let me quote from some recent Tsiolkias interviews to get his own perspective on what he has tried to do.
“I understand shame,” he says. “I can’t pretend to have had the same experience as Saul, but I understand how core shame is.” There was the terrifying moment of disclosure to his parents. “I had to tell them: ‘I can’t be what you want me to be. I’ve discovered something else that’s so exhilarating and exciting and frightening. I will live my life as a gay man’. And these are people I love, my family. What will they think of me if I challenge them and their beliefs?
“That notion of that radical change in your life – that Damascus moment – is one way of me entering and trying to make sense of Saul’s character. What was it that made this man prepared to forgo family, community, history? That solace in prayer – I think that is what he discovered.”
I believe that Tsiolkas’ hard work has produced a truly remarkable and complex book which has a great deal of lengthily researched detail and some very confronting tales and imagery. I can see that some will attack it on the grounds of finely detailed professional research and his use of fiction while others may find the violence unacceptable. I cannot agree in either case. This is not a history but it certainly evokes time, place, belief, behaviour and sentiment in a way that readers need to understand. The violence, I feel, is a necessary counterweight to what is conventionally presented and necessary to bring the reader closer to important realities – certainly not as gratuitous as ‘The Passion of the Christ’.
There is no gay sex mentioned apart from what occurs in the background in a slave based brutal society where there was little differentiation in the sex of the individual used and probably only in the position. There is an undercurrent of homo-eroticism in Brotherhood that is undeniable but this is hardly news to anyone down the centuries to the masculine Christianity of Arnold that certainly backgrounded my early days.
There are so many insightful key passages and moments that reward understanding with regard to this very early ‘church’ that was feeling its way forward while dealing with the internal personal, doctrinal and organisational difficulties that were emerging in collections of sayings and gospels – not all of which would be recognised by its morphing into an image of the Roman state and those who have repeatedly schismed over the centuries.
As a single example I offer the moment when Able declares to a meeting in Ephesus (87 A.D.) the standard Christian message about turning the other cheek continuing ..
“… Those who do so are beloved of our Father, the Lord of us all”
Sincerely I follow, ‘Truly, it was spoken.’
But the divisions of our fellowship can be seen in the response to my brother’s words. The literate and the citizen, those born Greek, those born in Ephesus, they assent with a nod of their bowed heads. This is the wisdom and profound compassion that has brought them to the Lord. But the refugees, those fleeing from death and war, they abhor these words … As a violent shudder of the earth can carve a perpetual gorge between neighbours, so does Brother Able’s question tear apart our congregation. The success of our grand initiative is marked by how our brother’s demand fortifies one, frightens the other, and is of no consequence to many more.”
I sincerely recommend this book as well worth the time and occasional difficulty in its reading. It is the best thing Tsiolkas has yet produced and I would love to see it on a screen though I would be terrified by its bowdlerisation. I apologise for a longer that usual report. I felt is was merited.
A lot of people will recognise the cover art as ‘The Conversion on the Way to Damascus’ by Caravaggio, another neat reference to his presumed homosexuality.
I am very much of the generation to which Luke Turner refers. I started off with my brother’s battered book of Biggles WWI adventures (Sopwith Camels anyone?)and I did eventually graduate to the WWII material and devoured the popular paperbacks of the post-war years that idolised tales of adventure under fire and the great escapes of the war ( from Bader to Colditz). It was not until many years later that I became aware of other sides of those conflict years. There were veiled references to the men involved in the concert parties that were common to the British and Australian Armies (remember ‘It ain’t half hot, Mum’?).As far as WWII, one of my key media memories has to be the TV American treatment of the theatres of war series such as ‘Victory in the Pacific’ with its effective theme music by Richard Rogers.
As my knowledge and understanding of the GLBTQI world of wartime grew, I became aware of how some relationships formed even under the most extreme circumstances (perhaps even because of it).I must confess the material was often limited in form and often included details of investigations to locate and punish such behaviour. It was also clear, however, that many commanding officers were content to ‘turn a blind eye’ so long as efficiency and morale had not been affected.( Vidal and serving in Silence?: Australian LGBT servicemen and women’ by Noah Riseman, Shirleene Robinson, Graham Willett 2018). My reading of Donald Friend’s memories of his service in Australia and New Guinea were especially enlightening. All of this was all male oriented and it took time for me to become more aware of female involvement though this became more apparent during the witch-hunt years of ‘rooting out’ homosexual behaviour that infected the British, American and Australian military scenes at all levels in the post war years. My main awareness grew from personal contact in my later years with Lesbians who had served.
I took up this book anticipating that there would be coverage of war-time activity but was a little surprised that the author had managed to nest these happenings within his own ‘growing-up’ experiences of modelling what had become famous WWII air force personnel. Luke went further than just this reading to the bomber and spitfire model-building stage and then trying to track down physically where many of the men and their planes were based. His descriptions of his visits to these often now ruined locations were very touching especially when supplemented by the words of so many aircrew before they set off on yet another sortie knowing full well what the odds on their non-return were (55,573 crew out of a total 125,000) as well as the full range of conscientious objectors. The overwhelming majority were straight men though gays were inevitably represented along with those who were still wrestling with their sexual identity. Some I knew of but was particularly taken by the inclusion of the father of one of my all-time English creatives, Derek Jarman. Luke points to..
“more like them, that I have spent the last few years getting to know as I researched this book. Men like Peter de Rome, who, after the war, made gay erotic films on Super8; Micky Burn, the commando who appeared in a documentary about his life as a bisexual man; Colin Spencer, a teenager during the war who, afterwards, would spend his National Service in Germany treating soldiers with VD; Dudley Cave, a gay activist I learned about via a tweet from Peter Tatchell; Dan Billany, who wrote two astonishing novels, one a gay love story set in an Italian POW camp; and Wing Commander Ian Gleed, a pilot whose Mk 1 Hurricane sat in my stash of unbuilt model kits and whose surprising private life was revealed when I searched for information about them”
So there is the potential link as Luke uses this background to look at his own emerging sexuality and how it was affected by these background experiences. I had to agree as a war baby myself who grew up in a world surrounded by those war experiences and seen through the eyes of my father, uncles and their friends. These influences were present in my schooling (Bren guns at cadets), listening to the attitudes of my father and his friends and even in the process of job-hunting. He compares our experiences with the youth of today..
“It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the latest trainers, wasn’t into the music that everyone else liked, was terrible at sport and physically underdeveloped, because I had this history to disappear into. I imagine it’s even harder to be an awkward young man now in the age of ubiquitous pornography, the toned bodies of reality TV, peer pressure of social media, impossible ideals of physical strength and physique. Who needs any of that if you can imagine yourself sitting inside a tank, spitting fire at the world around you?”
I was particularly taken by his remark. “post-war struggles with mental health and PTSD impacted the generations on” I immediately thought of an uncle of mine ( a Rat of Tobruk) who may well have fitted this description and whose early death and that of his son from identical causes. “Britain’s victory had a high psychological price many would argue we’re still paying”.
After numbers of hints beforehand, the author finally settles on a section devoted to looking at the experiences of men who were bisexual, unwaware or not. Certainly, the author comes to that conclusion about himself relating to the Freudian continuum . Once again, he does so by referencing letters, notes and poems of those who survived and those who didn’t.
There, he encountered the usual transvestism and sexual fluidity that so many men wrote about in their memoirs. It was a joke in the camp to say that men would be ‘home before Christmas or homo before Easter’.”
“Whether it was to Dorothy in Loughton or a friend of Dorothy in Warwickshire, men wrote of the very same things.”
The latter portions of the book pursue the author’s personal interest entwined with his musings on the continuing nature of war and how we respond to it viz the Ukraine Vs Russia conflict.
“It is the knowledge that such things have always happened through our human history, that they are happening now, that they will happen again, for they are a part of who we are.”
“History isn’t just packaged away into neat boxes as it is at school, or in TV programmes or popular books. It is with us constantly, evolving and shaping our lives in every second of the present. Without the Second World War, without the most horrendous unimaginable and unrepeatable moments in it, I would never have known my son.”
One key repeated element for the author is his fierce interest in 158 squadron based at Lissett and the fate of its squadron association and eventual creation of a memorial which I found profoundly effective and have included a picture of it in this report in the light of the cost of expanding the Australian War Memorial.
This is a profoundly thoughtful book and I recommend it to anyone wanting to plumb the depths of human sexual behaviour in war time that includes a range of sexualities.
Thank you Yorick Smaal, Gary Wotherspoon, Graham Willett, Ruth Ford, Shirleene Robinson, John Barrett, George Simmers, Noah Riseman, and now Jonathan Butler and so many of the others who have opened up the gay history of Australian Armed Forces. They serve as a counter to those well-remembered years when then RSL spokesperson Bruce Ruxton said ..
“Days earlier Ruxton had told broadcaster Derryn Hinch that if his son was queer he would shoot him, the magazine reported. “ SBS Pride – Ben Winsor 25 Apr 2017
I have a vague memory of a royal personage who expressed a similar sentiment. Ruxton also claimed, “I don’t remember a single one from World War Two.” So clearly some didn’t want to know and those capable of a ferocious response. Butler has exercised these issues with a case within his own family (Warwick Meale – Great uncle?) combined with his own coming out experience more recently to his family and community. The trigger for this process was an old photo beloved by his mother (now sadly departed from a neurodegenerative disorder) which showed a very young boy (Warwick) and his elder sister cross-dressed. I have memories of the same, especially for fancy dress purposes. The photo had an accompanying story of Warwick’s tragic murder as a serviceman (Signaller) in Townsville in WWII and family rumours that he might have been gay.
Warwick had had a conventional exemplary life as a teenager and then shop assistant in Sydney before hostilities (as did the author – spooky!). He trained as a signaller and served under fire in New Guinea. He was encamped with his company in Townsville in 1944 with the war on the improve.
One night, out on the town in Townsville on August 15, 1944, Warwick was separated from his two mates and seemed to be sleeping off his alcohol in a greened space near the underpass for Victoria Bridge across Ross Creek. He was found there later by his mates returning from a TocH dance in a comatose state with evidence of having been bashed and with severe heads wounds from a heavy-duty blacksmith’s hammer. He died of his wounds without gaining consciousness.
There were eventual investigations by military and civilian police personnel -Brisbane sent up the then No1 gun Frank Bischof to investigate to no avail, unlike his ignominious end following the Fitzgerald years. The coroner was likewise unable to unearth anything concrete despite numbers of suspects being looked for, the main being a large white/blond-haired sailor. Butler, in his investigations, found that lack of effective liaison between these two power groups may have stifled any potential investigative success.
There the matter may have remained in the ‘too difficult – not interested’ basket especially there had been whispers that the murdered man was a ‘pervert’. Jonathan Butler wasn’t going to let matters go as he was fascinated by that beloved photo of Warwick and his sister and the fact that he was undergoing his struggles to come out in Launceston, Tasmania in what sounded like 20 years ago. He started in a small way with what was readily available but with the range of resources available via the net has dug deeply into all sorts of detailed documentation carrying out the kind of investigation short-circuited in the past. It is a tale familiar to anyone who has delved into their family tree in more recent years.
At the same time, he tells the tale of his own stirrings and developments especially some of his painful coming-out experiences with his own family. I identified strongly with the tearful ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’ response. He appears to have found the proverbial supportive good man and has a great life ahead despite the painful loss of his mother.
This is not a complex book though the twists and turns of following up leads can get a little tangled at times. It is simply and clearly stated both in terms of his investigative rationale and opening up his own coming out.
I recommend it strongly to all readers both for yet another light shining on wartime sexuality and a fascinatingly similar story by a young man with an unquenchable curiosity.
I have included a photo of those endlessly tiresome fundamental Christians protesting at the recent London Pride 50th anniversary march in keeping with the continuing outrages that occur against LGBTQI presence and a reminder of what the Dr Duncan case stands for in many people’s minds.
Author Tim Reeves actually completed his Honours thesis 30 years ago on the death of Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan and how its response fed into the drive of gay law reform in SA. Much of that detail has been transferred into this book which, as a consequence, is very carefully researched with the data carefully ordered and presented in order to spotlight Duncan’s life and death and the actions of those involved in it at the time and later. An important element is that you will not find confected outrage in these pages. Rather, a reader may come to understand (not forgive) the origin of the behaviours of all involved ranging from the unfortunate victims, possible witnesses, police involvement, and the religious and social attitudes that set the scene for this tragedy.
The story of the investigation of Duncan’s drowning in the Torrens at the site of a well-known beat led, amongst other things, to deep suspicions about the behaviour of the Vice Squad detectives who investigated the offence and who might have been involved in its commission. This process is well explored however unsatisfactory it may have been. I certainly was not aware of the details of that investigative process and its outcomes which were quite unsatisfactory. This not a long book with an appendix of photos that help and a detailed Glossary. It still, for me, had quite a punch.
Duncan was no Turing but there were certain similarities with the existence of two parallel worlds that almost never collided with Duncan being a man, typical of his age, having an existence that appeared almost incredible bland without anything noteworthy apart from his academic record and skills while also clearly knowingly involved in illegal sexual activity that could have a devastating effect if uncovered.
One of the key aspects of the book for me (and its historical context) lies in its relatively non-judgemental exposition of the background influences, so typical of their time, that lay behind individual behaviours of the victims, the investigators, the politicians and other community leaders who reacted in terms of their own conditioning and perceived appropriate advantages. As one who experienced bashing in public places and was well aware of how others of all kinds might respond to me verbalising that in all honesty (including the law), I am acutely aware of so much that transpired in this tale. I comprehend and perhaps understand what happened but remain bitter at how long it took against the odds for some change to arrive.
The role of Scotland Yard in this story is a classic example of ‘buck-passing’ and how to ignore, bury or exhaust findings that powers of the time have been unable to totally suppress. Nothing new there – just a very old avoidance response which continues to this day. Putting anyone in a supervisory role over others sexual behaviour is almost begging for the outcomes seen in vice Squads the world and time over. Money has long been the alternative to a watchhouse stay.
Th bright side of this book lies with the never-ending drive and hard work of reformers to investigate and overturn the laws and mores that persecuted gay men in this respect certainly in SA even when this looked like one step forward and the usual ploy of two backward.
Dr Duncan may not have died in vain but ensuring the protection of individuals and overcoming those who continue to exploit today remains a continuing urgent need.
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