Book review: The First Bad Man by Miranda July

To call this book, which is Miranda July's novelistic debut, an unpredictable roller-coaster would be a total understatement. I am fairly sure that I went through more emotions reading this book than possibly anything else I've ever read. During the first few chapters I felt weirded out and mildly confused, then very uncomfortable, then somewhat disgusted, then happy, and finally, at the end of the book, content. 

Cheryl is possibly the strangest character I have ever encountered in a book. To me, it's absolutely wonderful to encounter a very strange female character in a novel, as usually highly-developed or off-the-wall characters are male. I found it immensely refreshing to find a character who is bizarre, a total control freak, and FEMALE. Her voice is at first unsettling and hard to get used to, but eventually I came to love Cheryl and actually found myself identifying with her on some levels. 

We follow Cheryl on her day-to-day journeys in her mundane life as a manager at a company that makes self-defense DVDs. It's clear from the outset that Cheryl is sexually repressed and obsessive-compulsive. In particular, she is obsessed with a man she works with. However, this obsession is partially derailed when her boss's 20-year-old daughter is forced upon her and takes over her home. Clee is another unconventional female character, but even less of a breath of fresh air than Cheryl is. Clee is disgusting, has a foot odour problem, and is unemployed until she finds a crappy job at a supermarket. Clee causes Cheryl's life to spin madly out of control in the most unpredictable ways imaginable; and so the roller-coaster begins. Cheryl's OCD is triggered to the extreme by Clee's vulgarity and nonchalance. Despite being polar opposites, Clee and Cheryl find a bizarre middle ground in role-playing fights from the self-defense DVDs, and the story only gets weirder and more unpredictable from there. 

However, despite the initially unpalatable characters and plot, July's writing is meticulous, and every piece of the puzzle finds its place in the end. This book is hard to get into at first, but if you stick with it, you won't regret it. Four stars out of five.

Book review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Publication date: 19 June, 2014

You might remember Donna Tartt from such masterpieces as The Secret History and The Little Friend. If you do, you are in for both a treat and a surprise. The Goldfinch is another masterpiece, but is written in a style quite different from her previous novels.

The Goldfinch spans the life of Theodore Decker. When the novel begins, Theodore is 13 and his mother is killed in a “terrorist attack” on a museum in New York. Theodore is one of the only survivors, but he complicates matters further for himself when he is convinced by a dying man to steal a painting – his mother's favourite. It is The Goldfinch by Fabritius, and it will haunt him forever as he risks life and limb to protect it. The novel focuses not only on Theodore's life but also the art and antique world.

After his mother's death, and Social Services' attempts to find his father go unanswered, Theodore is left with the wealthy family of a friend. Although he is grieving deeply for his mother, he has stability and is able to follow through on the dying man's wish for him to visit his business partner, Hobie. He also finds Pippa there, another survivor of the attack on the museum. Theodore falls for her but Pippa is soon sent to Texas to live with her aunt.

Eventually, Theodore's deadbeat father comes to claim him, replete with trashy, coke-snorting girlfriend. Although his friend's family had been about to adopt him legally, Theo is whisked off to Vegas and his life spins out of control. He makes one friend, Boris, and the pair binge on drugs and alcohol instead of going to school until Theodore's life takes another twist, and eventually he is hurled into the world of art crime.

Tartt crafts the narrative in such a way that every aspect, every event of Theo's life has immense repercussions later. Her language is rich, descriptive and immersive, and the novel is hard to put down as you are sucked in to Theo's hectic world.

You know, I really hate it when partners say, "I'm not responsible for your happiness."

Actually, you fucking are. Part of committing to a relationship is committing to making the other person as happy as you possibly can and if the other person isn't a dick, they'll do the same for you. I thought that was the whole fucking point of a relationship?!

Anything less is a cop out.

Idk. Maybe I'm just an idealist, and maybe boys are just assholes.

Book Review: Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon

Sonic Youth is one of my top three bands of all time, and Kim Gordon has been one of my heroes and role models since I was a teenager so needless to say, I was ecstatic when I found out she was publishing a memoir.


I was pleased to find that Girl In A Band is much more than a memoir. It's Kim's cry of independence from Thurston Moore, her ex-husband (and bit of a "fuck you" to him too); it's her saying I'm MORE than a girl in a band. Kim is an artist, a feminist, a musician, a writer, an actress and a mother.


Her style of writing is articulate, clear, frank, honest and easy to follow.


The book begins with her childhood and teenage years growing up in California with her father, emotionally distant mother and schizophrenic, bullying brother, which is in many ways the most fascinating part of the book. Kim explains that her relationship with her brother framed who she would become as a woman, a feminist and girlfriend. One of my favourite quotes of hers from the book is about how women innately feel the need to please, to be good, and how her family life really pushed that on her because of her brother.


From the outside, Kim's life may seem charmed, but learning about her brother, Keller, and her family life, you realise the opposite is true. I also hugely empathised with her when she spoke about how hard it was to be a hypersensitive person who had to constantly quash her own emotions, lest she be bullied by her brother just for having them. She explains that this is why, to many people, she comes across as "cold" or "emotionless".


Once Kim gets to the part where she moves to New York, the book moves at a much faster pace as she explains the people she meets that eventually lead her to Thurston and forming Sonic Youth. She says that she finds it hard to write about New York, because "it's hard to write about a love story when you have a broken heart", and it shows. You can see that she finds it easier to discuss her relationship with Thurston through music, so she writes each successive chapter about her favourite songs off each album Sonic Youth made. This style of writing also emphasises Kim's desire to be independent, to be viewed as herself and not just half of the ultimate rock 'n' roll dream couple.


Another one of my favourite moments was when Kim talked about Karen Carpenter. Kim, and Sonic Youth in general, have always had a fascination with Karen, and so have I, so it was great to find out exactly why Kim and the band wrote so many songs about her and covered 'Superstar'. Kim's words about how the music industry and Karen's family destroyed her are really touching and truthful about how horribly sexist the music industry is, and again comes back to Kim's earlier words about women's innate and all-consuming desire to please.


Towards the end of the book, Kim goes into more detail about Thurston's affair and how she found out about it, but she is tasteful and not hateful, never mentioning the woman's name. Kim's strength in this situation is pretty incredible - imagine a 30-year relationship with the father of your only child suddenly ending in an affair. I know I'd have a complete and utter breakdown, and maybe Kim did, but she's never appeared anything other than perfectly composed and a pillar of strength.


Even if you're not a Sonic Youth fan, you will be a Kim Gordon fan after reading this book. My only complaint about it is that it wasn't longer and more in depth, but you can tell that the book is exactly as Kim wanted it to be, it's exactly what she wanted to put out into the world, and it's great. Five stars.

Guess who's having a good morning!

Book Review: So Brilliantly Clever by Peter Graham

“Why could Mother not die? Dozens of people are dying all the time, thousands, so why not Mother?”

These chilling and immortal words of Pauline Parker at age 15 are merely the tip of the iceberg of Peter Graham's investigation into what many people consider to be the most disturbing crime ever committed in New Zealand's history. The murder of Honorah Parker in 1954 has been a constant source of fascination both nationally and internationally and Graham tells the story in great and thorough detail.

Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme seemed like normal 15-year-old girls growing up in 1950s Christchurch, which is why the apparently cold-blooded murder of Pauline's mother seemed so shocking to the entire world. However, Graham's intense and thorough study of the two girls reveals that they both suffered life-threatening illnesses and deeply lonely childhoods as a result. Graham paints such a thorough portrait of what their lives were like that it could almost be easy to see that their disturbed minds were merely a result of their childhoods and the incredibly repressive society they were growing up in, and therefore feel a little sympathy – not for the murder, but the circumstances leading to their state of mind – and it did indeed appear that their minds were one and the same.

Pauline and Juliet's childhoods were almost mirror images of each other. Pauline in hospital alone with a bone disease, Juliet sent off to the Bahamas and the Bay of Islands with life-threatening lung infections. Both suffered loneliness and lost the ability to play and interact with others as normal children would. So naturally, when they met, they had a lot to relate to each other about, and thus began a union that they were completely and utterly desperate not to have broken.

Graham covers the girls' entire lives, and through Pauline's journal entries and testimonies from people who knew them, is able to truly capture how their friendship developed and became more and more intense. Graham explores a number of reasons for their psychosis – they certainly were mentally unwell at the time of the murder, although the courts disagreed – so the reader is able to finish the book having made their own conclusions about what was at the core of the girls' motivation to murder Pauline's mother.

Graham also describes what Pauline and Juliet are like now, and reveals that it actually wasn't a condition of their release that they never meet again – they have apparently just chosen not to. Each are desperate to put their terrible crime and past lives behind them; as desperate as they once were to not be separated. Juliet Hulme is now Anne Perry, a bestselling crime author, and Pauline Parker is now Hilary Nathan, living alone on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.

Peter Graham has clearly done his research in creating this book, and it shows. The book ends with what happened to Pauline and Juliet's families and the lawyers involved in the case, showing how deeply the murder shook New Zealand and how everyone involved struggled to go on afterwards.

Sixty years on and Pauline and Juliet's crime is still an endless source of fascination to people. This book certainly provides a deep insight into their lives, their motivations and what it was like to be a girl in 1950s Christchurch, dealing with class struggles, loneliness, parental neglect, the culmination of these pressures and the chilling and sad aftermath.

My Week Off Facebook

...has been great. I've been a lot more productive at work, a lot happier in general and I've actually been more social.

There haven't been any of those obsessive-compulsive thoughts along the lines of "did anyone like that thing I posted?" No disappointment upon realising no...no one did. And no feeling stupid for having such feelings. No sadness when I see photos of an old group of friends at an event together that I wasn't invited to. Why would I be? We haven't spoken in years. Facebook is now the only thing we have in common.

I'm not sure exactly what it is that makes Facebook so unhealthy and insidious. For me, I think it could be the sheer amount of people and pages bombarding me with constant updates. People I hardly know anymore - former workmates, friends of friends...pages that I liked on a whim and can't remember why.

There's something very depressing about being "connected" to so many people and yet lacking actual social contact because you know "how everyone's doing" - just check their Facebook.

I got sick of engaging in long "debates" with people whom I actually really liked but got mad at me because they misinterpreted something I said or posted, and vice versa. The worst part is that I believe that this kind of negative social interaction is actually nothing more than a boredom-buster for a lot of people.

I got sick of seeing the worst of humanity come out in comments on pages that I didn't even like - Facebook just shoved them at me.

I've learned that my universe is quite small and I actually like it that way. The people who are my real friends have contacted me via telephone, email or text message. They don't rely on Facebook to know how I am - they actually ask me.

More than anything, I don't think I liked the way Facebook reminded me of the past - of people I used to work with or spend a lot of time with, old pictures, things I used to be interested in.

Now that I'm off Facebook, I find it so much easier to live in the moment and be present. When I'm with my friends I'm no longer being annoyed by notifications or obsessively checking to see if I have any - I'm actually engaging with real people in real time. Who'd have thought that that could become a thing of the past, something we have to get used to doing again?

That's all Facebook is. Just a face. People don't say how they really are on Facebook. You should find out. The real people are beyond the screens and we should be engaging with them, if in fact they are our real friends.

I think I might stay off Facebook for good.

"The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it."

- Haruki Murakami, 

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage 

(Dedicated to Adam).

Softer, Softest

(Happy birthday, Courtney).

"I don't know if you can relate, but I've been yearning for a little more than the usual earthly meat and drink lately. That's why I've decided to come out of the broom closet and declare myself a bonafide "brony".

One day after an extreme bout of boredom and a walk through an Echo Park bookstore, I stumbled upon a flyer for a screening of Les Miracles de la Mon Petit Poney. I zipped up my fly and hurried to the show. As I sat and watched in amazement, my shingles came to life and I ran from the theater screaming sincerities about popcorn and salted caramel lip balm. This girl across the street came over and slipped a piece of her broken tongue into my nut butter ganache and I instantly calmed down. Over the minutes she became my very own Rainbow Dash and so I married her. She likes to call me Derpy, which is kinda cute when she's having an orgasm. 

Anyway, I know this is extremely unexpected for all of you. But the fact is, Friendship really IS magic (as long as you can listen to Krautrock while allowing the Eternal Feminine to enter you from behind and offering your martyrdom in the form of confessional projectiles of chocolate rain aimed at the elements of disharmony and the memes of Hell). If you're bored and disillusioned, you should really consider joining the corral and getting with the power puff. You'll be glad you did."

- Eric Erlandson

A Tinker's Cuss by Jim Wilson.

Yesterday morning at 6:30am I arrived to walk Mt Eden Hill in Auckland City. It was dark and misty and there was dew on the ground. These are ideal circumstances for me as Auckland can get mighty hot and I miss the cool and damp mornings of Christchurch and Dunedin. In the car park there was a white Holden Ute which seemed to be surrounded by an air of gloom. I could make out that sitting in the driver’s seat was a bearded bloke about forty years old and he was sitting listening to Scott Walker’s ‘No Regrets’ at a high volume. A feeling of sadness permeated the entire car park and drifted off into the surrounding trees. Darkness settled on darkness and the shadows danced and I imagined for a brief moment that I saw the devil and he looked like Gregg Allman. The whole scenario was like being at a Nick Cave concert except a lot cheaper. The guy running the lights was a lot better too. I suspect that sadness is a lot more exciting to people than hope and it definitely sells more records. Sadness can be a powerful marketing tool as most people understand and identify with it clearly, but I think that Scott Walker lives every inch of his sadness and I too find that very appealing. There is something incredibly genuine about Scott Walker who resisted the star machine and went his own way and on a pushbike, too. I stood off in the distance and watched the Holden Ute just in case the situation was going to get worse. A man, once he’s started to listen to Scott Walker at 6.30am, is capable of doing just about anything and a number of these actions can be very destructive. Yet, the Buddhists tell us that we are all merely stuck on a wheel and that our feelings will change, that we are in a cycle called ‘Samsara’ and that our feelings of sadness/suffering (‘Dukkha’) can be eliminated. I have a number of friends who study, intently, old Robert Mitchum and Sal Mineo movies in order that their Dukkha stays, but that’s a whole other story. Some of them make great art and music and they are wildly rewarded for this. So it’s in their best interests to stay stuck in the despair. You never want to interrupt that despair as it is a comfortable old coat to them like Gogol would have worn. Then, I have acquaintances who vigorously mine politics and the awful and pitiful side of life and they get fifty likes on Facebook and so they set about getting even more depressed for the intermittent reinforcement. I find Facebook to be a cruel and wicked joke on humanity and I long for the dear old days of the Grand Old Opry and the Hank Williams brand of genuine sadness and enormous talent. At some stage back then the notion of hope became a prevailing wind and I too bought an old Volkswagen Kombi and enjoyed the good life. Whereas I find Facebook to be a massive machine which is grinding the sensitive down into the dirt. I had a friend last week telling me via an angry and frustrated Facebook message that he was drinking Tequilla and unless I unfriended his former wife then he was going to unfriend me. He used the word ‘Goddamn’ and said he would give me ‘One more day!’ He’s a great musician and a genuinely good bloke who, for a moment, was at the end of his tether. We’ve all been there Bubba. I hear talk all around the camp fire of people being hurt via Facebook and of bullying and ‘obtuse’ comments. I long for the days when you could only fit twenty five people into a Volkswagen Kombi, a full p.a. system and a half pound in the glove box and you knew what everyone was genuinely thinking. You tied the drum kit to the roof and everyone knew the drummer was best when he hung off the side mirror with his feet dragging on the ground. Boy, I’ve met some… Don’t get the idea that I’m saying if one acts in a certain way then one’s sadness will disappear. I would never say that. I spent a long time trying to over-ride my sadness and in the end it came home to me like a steam locomotive down the end of a tunnel on the Oamaru line. It was just like when I was a kid and a boy called Keith Jopp died in the bed next to me at Dunedin Public Hospital. I saw him drift away and if you want fucking sadness then this is it. But I try not to dwell on it or to make gains out of it. I find one of the choices that really helps to cancel out sadness is kindness. I really like George Saunders as a writer as he can string together many nutty and joyous ideas in a single sentence. He also writes about the dark and perverse side of the American Dream in a way that has me hanging on to my ass in case it falls off. The only writers who make me laugh as hard or get me thinking more are Barry Hannah and Thomas Pynchon. Then, when I want to really be in my cups, I always read William Faulkner. My dad read William Faulkner and managed to stay sad for the last twenty years of his life. But, by God, I love my dad so and I miss him every day. George Saunders talks about the ‘failure of kindnesses’. These are times in his life when he was faced with a chance to be kind and just didn’t do it for one reason or another (anxiety, fear etc). Times when he could have said something kind to someone and this could have made a real difference. In an interview, he describes being kind as ‘our greatest ecstasy’ and this I know to be true. Sometimes I sit and think about the people along the way who have been incredibly kind to me and I feel the incredible flow of warmth that George Saunders speaks of. Unfortunately, like a lot of people, I can get stuck in the groove of thinking of the people who haven’t been warm to me and next thing I’m reading William Faulkner again… but I try to arrest the process by thinking of the nurse in the hospital who helped calm me after Keith Jopp died, of my dad buying me a typewriter when I was ten and Miss Johnstone at Arthur Street Primary School in Dunedin who told me when I was a kid that I could write. I would respectfully point out that sadness is distinctly different from depression and I have suffered from clinical depression at least twice in my life and it’s no picnic and ‘jollying up’ becomes a hated notion, object, and item. People who tell depressed people to just be happy deserve a visit from Omar Little. Omar has a code and it’s one I also believe in. Anyway, what happened in the car park at Mt Eden is that the bloke’s girlfriend came screaming up the hill (maybe he made a call) and slammed to a halt beside him in her little Toyota. My work was now done and so I left. They might have been parting, I don’t know, but when I came back down the hill 45 minutes later they were standing in a park with their arms around each other. Actually, they may have been brother and sister. I don’t know and, hell, stranger things have happened at sea. It’s love, comfort, and kindness that keep us all going. And there is nothing quite as powerful as reaching out to another human being even though he may be the drummer. The Scott Walker moments in life keep me going. Om Shanti!

"You're nothing to me until you're everything."

This is just the best.

The curious wanderings of Batman through the American Southwest by Remi Noel.