Ice Crash: Antarctica, Lynda Engler

Showing all posts about fiction

Ice Crash: Antarctica, Lynda Engler

11 February 2022

Ice Crash: Antarctica, by Lynda Engler, book cover

American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson is among writers who are hopeful fiction featuring climate change, and the consequences of global warming, will play a part in changing the perceptions of people who still don’t take the worldwide environmental crisis seriously.

For instance his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future, paints a bleak picture of a planet in deep trouble, but also presents a pathway through the turmoil, towards a positive future. Ice Crash: Antarctica (published by Amazon, February 15, 2022), by North Carolina based American author Lynda Engler, is another work of fiction taking on the topic of climate change, coupled with a series of devastating natural disasters.

Here, an earthquake in Antarctica pushes the Thwaites glacier, also known as the doomsday glacier into the ocean, bringing about a sudden and catastrophic rise in sea levels. Kathryn, a seismologist working in Antarctica, who has been alarmed by the unusual seismic activity, becomes trapped at McMurdo Station, by a succession of earthquakes.

Her husband and son meanwhile, who are in Boston, and her daughter who is in Florida, need to evacuate as sharply rising sea waters, and a series of tsunamis, bring devastation to the continental United States, and other nations around the globe.

The Truth about Faking It, Cassie Hamer

10 February 2022

The Truth about Faking It, by Cassie Hamer, book cover

The first rule of lying is not be caught out. But to lie frequently, or compulsively, means you either need to have a good memory, or hope that no one ever uncovers the truth. And webs of deceit are at the heart of The Truth about Faking It (published by HarperCollins Publishers, May 2022), the third novel by Sydney based Australian author Cassie Hamer.

Lies run through Ellen’s family. Her daughter Natasha, a composed television news reader, and grand-daughter Georgie, the producer of a reality TV show, are accomplished at concealing the truth, and their feelings. Ellen isn’t half bad either. Despite being married to David, she has been seeing the well-off Kenneth, on the side. But when the accident prone David dies in a boating accident in Thailand, having travelled there with his elusive and seldom heard of brother, Ellen, Natasha, and Georgie, smell a rat.

Something is not quite right about the whole affair, and the three women decide to delve further into the circumstances surrounding David’s demise. But in doing so, in exposing the truth of what happened to David, they risk lifting the lid on their own sordid lies and deceptions. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…

Cooper Not Out, by Justin Smith

1 February 2022

It’s a funny old game cricket, some days a player’s skill sees them soar to heights not seen before, other day’s fortune roundly turns on even the best. Then there’s Roy Cooper, a police sergeant who’s been a member of the rural Australian Penguin Hill Cricket Club for years. He’s never scored a century, nor for that matter, gone much passed double figures.

Nor has he ever taken a wicket, let alone a hat-trick, or a ten wicket haul. But as local schoolgirl Cassie Midwinter discovers, Roy has a claim to fame, one seemingly overlooked by the statistics mad doyens of the game: he has not once been dismissed while playing. After decades at the crease, Roy has never been bowled, stumped, caught, nor run-out.

It is a feat Cassie brings to the attention of a renowned cricket writer known as Don Garrett, who thinks the national men’s cricket team could benefit from Roy’s talents. Australia are being trounced by the West Indies in the 1984 summer test series, and Don sets about bringing Roy’s achievement to the notice of the team selectors, in Cooper Not Out (published by Penguin Books Australia, 18 January 2022), by Melbourne based writer and journalist Justin Smith.

Will the unthinkable happen? Will a life-long club player find himself pacing onto the pitch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in a bid to reverse the fortunes of the men’s test team? It might seem like a pipe dream, but as they say, it’s a funny old game. But Roy isn’t the only one with unnoticed accomplishments, and there’s much more to Don, the sports writer, than meets the eye.

Colm Tóibín appointed as Irish fiction laureate

28 January 2022

Irish novelist and writer Colm Tóibín has been named the new laureate for Irish fiction, a role intended to encourage readers to engage with high quality fiction.

The three-year role is intended to “acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life”, as well as to encourage new writers, and engagement with “high quality Irish fiction”.

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Colm Toibin, fiction, literature

Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman

21 January 2022

Writing that difficult second novel, it might be what many authors consider to be a good problem. Their debut novel has been published, an epic achievement, and now they have the opportunity to write another book. What aspiring novelist wouldn’t want to be in such a situation?

Cali, an author residing in the NSW Blue Mountains may be such a person, in Burnt Out (published by HarperCollins Publishers, January 2022) the debut novel of Australian author Victoria Brookman. Cali’s struggling to write her second novel, in fact she was meant to have turned in the manuscript long ago. In reality she hasn’t even started work on it. But for the moment that’s the least of her worries.

Her home has been destroyed by a bush fire, likewise her possessions, and to top it off her husband has left her. But Cali sees an opportunity amid the turmoil. Speaking to a television news crew, she tells them her manuscript was also incinerated, and goes onto chide politicians and well-off Australians for their inaction in response to the devastating bush fires. Her words immediately strike a chord nationwide.

After seeing her on-air rant, a billionaire offers her a place to stay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, so she can “re-write” the novel. But will Cali overcome her second book syndrome, or will she find herself overwhelmed by the lies she keep telling everyone, including herself?

Case Study, by Graeme Macrae Burnet

14 January 2022

If Case Study (published by Text Publishing, 19 October 2021), the fourth novel of Glasgow based Scottish author Graeme Macrae Burnet, were a movie — and who knows, it might yet be — based upon video or film clips, it would be called a found footage story. The found footage technique is commonly seen in horror films, but it be could argued there’s elements of horror in Burnet’s latest work.

The literary equivalent of found footage is epistolary, where a story is told through a series of letters, or other written works, of which Case Study is an example. Martin Grey, who lives in present day Clacton-on-Sea, contacts the author after finding five diaries written by his cousin some fifty years earlier, under the pen name Rebecca Smyth. The journals detail her dealings with Collins Braithwaite, a therapist, who is remembered for his unconventional practise methods.

Rebecca’s sister Veronica, who had been a patient of Braithwaite’s for two years, killed herself, and Rebecca has no doubt the therapist was responsible. After creating a fictitious identity, and new persona for herself, Rebecca likewise becomes a patient of Braithwaite, in order to find out more about him. As the author reads the journals though, he comes to realise the intrinsically straight-laced journal writer was becoming ever more delusional, as she increasingly wrapped herself up in her free-spirited alter-ego.

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

7 January 2022

Where are we in time? Where is the motion of the cosmos taking us? Forwards or backwards? Possibly though, you feel you’re stuck in neutral, moving nowhere, yet keenly aware of each passing minute. The strange times we live in have left many of us displaced and confused.

Sea of Tranquility (published by Pan Macmillan Australia, May 2022), the sixth novel of Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel, may well be a microcosm of our pandemic dominated epoch. Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective living in the twenty-fifth century, is asked to investigate a suspected anomaly in time.

But his search for answers is far from straightforward. The detective finds a young man, Edwin St. Andrew, who claims to be the son of a noble British family, who lived in the early twentieth century. And then there is Olive Llewelyn, an author unable to travel home because of a pandemic, who apparently lives in the twenty-third century.

What brings Edwin and Olive to the present day, and how? But is everything as it really seems to be in this usual world? Are Edwin and Olive who they claim to be, or is something else at play? Might the detective have stumbled upon some sort of switch junction in time, explaining the presence of Edwin and Olive?

A short story about the Trailhead ant colony

31 December 2021

The life and times of the Trailhead ant colony, which thrived for some twenty years, in this work of fiction written in 2010 by American biologist and writer E. O. Wilson, who died on 26 December 2021.

But now a second crisis arose. The candidate royals began to quarrel among themselves for control. They converged on the brood chambers and jostled for position there. They struggled to climb on top of their rivals. The winners in these encounters seized their opponents’ legs and antennae and dragged them away.

I don’t know if it’s a childhood fascination I had with ants, but this depiction of the fictitious Trailhead Colony reads like a family drama set in a royal household.

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E. O. Wilson, fiction

The Good Child, by S.C. Karakaltsas

23 December 2021

Tom’s a con artist. He might have been the big-wig at a major Australian financial institution, but he’s still a shyster. He’s fleeced thousands of people of their life savings and other assets. But he’s been found out, caught, and is due to have his day in court. Although not directly victim, two other women are caught up in Tom’s web of deception. His seventy-two year old mother, Lucille, and Quin, a former colleague who played a part in enabling Tom.

Lucille and Quin meet on a train bound for Melbourne. Both are en route to Tom’s trial, but at first neither realises who the other is. Lucille is devastated by Tom’s illicit activities. But that’s not all. She’s lost everything. She has no savings, no home, and on top of that, she feels responsible for everything that has happened. Perhaps if she had been less lenient on her son, not so overprotective, things might have turned out differently?

The Good Child (published by Karadie Publishing, 15 November 2021) is the fourth book from Melbourne based Australian author S.C. Karakaltsas. Told from the perspectives of Lucille and Quin, The Good Child poses the oft asked question, if you could say something to your younger self, warn them, tell them to turn left instead of right, would you try? But fanciful thinking is of little help. Both women need to find a way through this quagmire in the here and now.

Open Water, by Caleb Azumah Nelson

22 December 2021

Two people meet in a bar in London. Both are young, both are Black British, and both are artists. She is a dancer, he a photographer. The attraction is instant, and as the two spend ever more time together, their bond only grows. They also connect through shared experiences as people of colour in a place where they are in a minority. Although both were awarded scholarships to private British schools, both felt excluded, and unable to completely fit in.

Despite the passionate love they discover in each other, he hides a trauma, one he struggles to resolve. Partly, perhaps, because he still encounters the violence and fear he previously endured. Every day the two come face to face with racism and vilification on the streets of London. But his struggle, one he cannot articulate even to her, causes him to withdraw, to hide behind silence. She is devastated by the apparent rejection, left reeling and confused.

Open Water (published by Penguin Books Australia, February 2021) is the debut novel of London based British-Ghanaian author and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson. Written in the second person, with prose that is sometimes described as poetic, Open Water is perhaps more of novella, weighing in at about one-hundred and sixty pages. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the word count detracts from the story’s impact.

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