Jo Case

This highly ambitious first novel exists within a fine web of literary influences and allusions. The publisher invites comparisons to The Secret History, Donna Tartt’s novel set in a university Classics department. The novel’s narrator, Julia, a student enthralled by the glamorous, moneyed family of a classmate, echoes that of Brideshead Revisited. Self-conscious references to detective noir and nineteenth-century romance novels abound. All of these comparisons have some merit, but another takes precedence, not only flavouring the text, but providing a skeleton for the characters and plot 

Malcolm Knox told Kill Your Darlings in 2012 that with The Life (2011), his celebrated surfing novel set on the Gold Coast, he wanted to write a historical novel about the Australian coastline and ‘that moment when one person could live right on the coast on our most treasured waterfront places, and then all of a sudden they couldn’t’. In Bluebird, set on a northern beach a ferry ride from ‘Ocean City’, this brutally undemocratic transformation is promoted from a minor theme to the engine that drives the highbrow soap-opera narrative.

Sonya Hartnett writes for all ages, her work spanning children’s picture books to novels for young adults and adult readers. Her adult novels have been widely acclaimed; Of a Boy (2002) won the Age Book of the Year award and has been canonised as a Penguin Classic. In many ways, though, her pedigree as a much-awarded children’s writer has always characterised her career.

The last decade has seen a significant growth both in the number of motherhood memoirs and in books about autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Australia is no exception to this trend, and Jo Case, in Boomer & Me, makes a contribution to both fields. As someone who has written a motherhood memoir about autism, I am a sympathetic reviewer but might also be considered too close to the topic. I have certainly read many memoirs about autism and Asperger’s in the ten years since my own son was diagnosed. I was pleased, then, to find that Case’s memoir offered two interesting points of departure from other Australian motherhood memoirs and Asperger’s stories. It is also well-written and engaging, as expected from Case, who is a literary reviewer and a former deputy editor of ABR.

In 2013, Asperger’s Syndrome will no longer officially exist – according to the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American psychiatric manual used as a diagnostic bible around the world. Ironically, just as it begins its slow fade from the cultural landscape, Asperger’s attracts its own romantic comedy. The Rosie Project joins Toni Jordan’s Addition in this fledgling genre – the (screwball) romance of difference. In Bridget Jones’s Diary, the heroine knows that she has found her man when he declares that he likes her ‘just as you are’. Addition, with its obsessive-compulsive counting heroine, expanded the boundary of what that essential, loveable self can encompass; so does The Rosie Project, with its self-described ‘differently wired’ hero, Professor Don Tillman.

The heroine of All That I Am reflects that an author’s published books ‘preserve the fossil imprint on the world of that particular soul at that particular time’. In her début novel – based on real characters and events – acclaimed non-fiction author Anna Funder (Stasiland, 2003) has preserved the imprint of a particular group of souls at a vitally important historical moment. A beautifully executed blend of historical fiction and psychological thriller, it follows the lives of a London-based network of activist refugees from Hitler’s Germany.

In January this year the New York Times ran a controversial review article titled ‘The Problem with Memoirs’, in which staffer Neil Genzlinger praised ‘the lost art of shutting up’. He heaped scorn on ‘our current age of oversharing’ and on the accompanying glut of memoirs on every imaginable aspect of human experience. But he reserved particular scorn for what he identified as the latest trendy topic: ‘books by parents, siblings and teachers of people with autism.’ He advised, ‘If you’re jumping on a bandwagon, make sure you have better credentials than the people already on it.’