The tragic 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic has intrigued and fascinated me for as long as I can remember. At age ten or eleven I found a battered copy of the late Clive Cussler’s 1976 novel Raise the Titanic!, in a box of books left out on the street, and then a short time later saw the 1953 film of the vessel’s sinking, although all I recall of that now is its haunting ending.
While it’s been sometime since I watched or read anything Titanic related, The Midnight Watch (published by Penguin Books Australia, February 2017), by Sydney based Australian former ship’s officer, and lawyer, turned teacher and writer David Dyer, recently caught my eye. The story is a fictionalised recounting of events on board the SS Californian, one of the ships in the vicinity of the ill-fated Titanic as it was sinking.
While the captain and senior officers of the Californian were aware the Titanic was in distress – it fired numerous distress flares into the night – they chose to keep their distance, even though they were close enough to see the stricken vessel. Why the Californian stayed put is a question The Midnight Watch attempts to resolve, and it is difficult not to wonder how many lives might have been saved had it rendered assistance.
Titane, the latest feature from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, has been described by the BBC as the most shocking film of 2021. Yes, that make me look too.
As a child, Alexia is badly injured in a car accident, and needs a titanium plate fitted in her head. On her release from hospital she snubs her parents and instead hugs their car. From there Alexia develops what could only be called an obsession with cars, one eventually resulting in her becoming pregnant to… a car.
Life can become routine and monotonous. The day-in and the day-out. Often it happens gradually, creeps up from behind, you’re simply too busy to notice. You settle into a pattern, kid yourself you’re content, and believe it. It’s called getting into the zone; the comfort zone. And there you might stay, until something comes along and shakes you out of your self-induced stupor.
Ethel owns a guesthouse in rural Ireland, but leaves its management to Liv, one of her daughters, in The Ghostlights (published by Legend Press, September 2021), the second novel by Cork based Irish writer Gráinne Murphy. Meanwhile her other daughter, Marianne, who is disillusioned with life, returns from Dublin, for some time out. Her homecoming coincides with the arrival of a guest, a man named Fred.
A few days later, Fred is found drowned in a nearby pond, his death a suicide. The tragedy brings the local community together, but the demise of the elderly guest takes a toll on Ethel, Liv, and Marianne. While their neighbours mourn Fred’s passing, the three women find themselves pondering their relationships, their place in the scheme of things, some poor life decisions, and just where it is that they are going.
Lock the doors, lower the blinds, switch off your phone, we’re flying below the radar now. All because it’s Banned Books Week, and, well, who wants to be caught in possession of literary contraband? Not that I thought for a second I might be violating statutes by reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood.
Attempts to keep To Kill a Mockingbird out of circulation didn’t surprise me. I expect in 1960, when first published, it may have offended some sensibilities, but efforts to prohibit the title are far more recent. The Handmaid’s Tale, meanwhile, has likewise been challenged or banned since its release in 1985, for content deemed to be vulgar, violent, and sexually explicit.
Other books to receive similar treatment include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, and, yes, evenFear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson. Yet I read each blissfully ignorant of the controversy they once stirred up, or still are. For that, I’m eternally thankful to live in the time and place I do.
Update: for the daring: banned book bingo by Keeping Up With The Penguins.
American young adult author Kelly Quindlen knew she wanted to write from the age of six. In comparison, I was a late bloomer. My English teacher in my final year of high school told me he thought my essays were a notch or two above the rest of the class, and suggested I consider a career involving writing. Maybe you could call the Oblong Obsession project another step towards that aspiration.
Maybe then it’s apt I’m writing today about She Drives Me Crazy (published by Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan, April 2021). Quindlen’s third novel is framed around two high-schoolers, Scottie and Irene, who begin fake dating despite barely liking each other. But Scottie is desperate to get back at her toxic ex-girlfriend, Tally, and being seen at the beautiful Irene’s side is the perfect way to bring this about.
Meanwhile, the cash-strapped Irene is happy to take money from Scottie to go along with the charade. But as can happen when apparent polar opposites, with a disdain for each other, are pushed together, the pair begin to develop feelings for each other. But will that be enough? Can Scottie get over Tally? The road is never smooth though, as was the case for the rom-com stories of the 1980s and 90s, which She Drives Me Crazy pays homage to.
This is what having an oblong obsession is all about. Float is short film by Brooklyn, New York, based American photographer Aundre Larrow, filmed entirely on the new iPhone 13, using its much lauded Cinematic mode. For better or worse, I think a whole new age of filmmaking is upon us.
The Paper Palace (published by Viking/Penguin Books Australia, July 2021), is the debut novel of American author Miranda Cowley Heller. Set in Cape Cod, at the ramshackle yet charming old holiday house where Elle has gathered with her family since she was a child, her late summer reverie is abruptly shattered by a spur of the moment fling with, Jonas, her childhood love.
Despite being happily married to Peter for decades, Elle has always carried a torch for Jonas, but over the next twenty-four hours must decide what she wants. Stay with Peter, her beloved husband, or run off with Jonas, whom she could have been with were it not for a tragic incident many years earlier. As Elle ponders her predicament, she finds herself recalling her childhood, and her parent’s far from happy marriage.
The past is riddled with secrets and transgressions, while the present is convoluted by mature adults still lacking in the ability to communicate clearly. The Paper Palace has polarised readers with depictions of rape, sexual assault, and incest, atrocities of which children are the victims, while manifesting the lifelong damage and impact of this abuse.
If you feel you’re trapped in a dead-end office job, then maybe English rock band Radiohead’s latest offering, If You Say The Word won’t be for you. On the other hand, this is Radiohead, how could you not like If You Say The Word?
Even though the track premiered yesterday, Friday 24 September, it’d been sitting – in one form or another – in the recording studio for near on two decades. The single is included on Kid Amnesiae, which is a re-issue of Radiohead’s 2000 album, Kid A, and Amnesiac, a year later.
I hope the film is as good as the trailer. Nightmare Alley, by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water), arrives in cinemas in December. Australians Cate Blanchett and Toni Collette lead the talented cast that also includes Rooney Mara, Bradley Cooper, and Willem Dafoe. del Toro says this is not a remake of the 1947 movie of the same name, but instead his adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s novel. Roll on December.
