A Long Way From Home, by Peter Carey

March has been a great month for me – I am lucky to have read so many stunning books in four weeks, and Peter Carey’s latest story is so good that I have to include it in this month’s great reads, for that it was it is: a truly great read; a riotous comedy on the surface, and a stark, unforgiving indictment of Australian Colonialism beneath.

Irene Bobs narrates alternate chapters: in 1953 she is most happily married to her diminutive husband Titch, ‘the best car salesman in West Victoria’; she is fiercely protective of little Titch, especially in regard to his tyrant of a father, a loudmouth blowhard who has abused and belittled Titch all his young life: well, that’s not going to happen anymore, especially when she and Titch have a chance to take on the new GMHolden franchise by entering a Holden in the Redex Trial, a make-or-break car race circumnavigating Australia.

Irene is a crash-hot driver, taught by her husband; she will be the co-driver even though women are not recognised as such in the race (The Little Woman should be at home with the kids) but their neighbour and navigator Willie Bachhuber will satisfy official regulations. Out from under the hated fatherly thumb at last! Until the hated father turns up at the starting line in Sydney: he’s not going to let his pathetic little son steal any kind of a march on him - the scene is set for treachery most foul.

Neighbour Willie narrates the story as well; he is tall, blonde and Aryan, raised as a Lutheran by German missionary parents and has already experienced racist abuse in the few years after the war ended, but that is the least of his concerns: he has left his wife because she presented him with a black child, proof positive of adultery that he never suspected, and his job as a school teacher has been terminated for losing his temper at being called a ‘Balt’ and hanging the guilty boy out of a high window until he apologised. Yes, it’s time for him to go on a long road trip too.

Well. There’s nothing like a long car journey to make or break relationships and the Redex Car Trial is no different: what began as the prospect of adventure, excitement and a test of stamina and inner strength, ends in grief, disillusionment and the time-worn revelation that people are never what they seem, particularly when ancestry and degrees of ‘blackness’ are the subject.

Peter Carey loves his country, but he casts a pitiless and clinical eye on its shameful Colonial past and the unspeakable crimes perpetrated by Pastoralists against the aboriginal inhabitants, the first dwellers in the great Red land of Australia. No-one escapes his truth; nor should they: nothing is hidden under the rug in this story. Mr Carey has twice won the Booker Prize – ‘A Long Way Home’ is a worthy contender for more honours.

SIX STARS!!

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Conclave, by Robert Harris

‘Conclave. From the Latin con clavis: ‘with a key.’ ‘ and the term for the meeting of Cardinals, the Princes of the Catholic church gathered together to elect a new Pope.

It is hard to imagine that such an event could provide the basis of a thriller, but Robert Harris has done just that: his latest novel cannot be described any other way, for it is as suspenseful and shocking – particularly at the end, as it should be – as any thriller worthy of the name.

Mr Harris sets his plot in Rome a few years hence: the Holy Father has died of a heart attack and, after the pomp and magnificence of his funeral obsequies have been completed, it is time to convene all those eligible to select his successor. Papal tradition must be observed at all times: when the cardinals are locked in the Sistine Chapel to vote they do so in absolute secrecy; their voting papers and any notes they make are burnt when they leave the chapel in the evening. A Papal Election must to be seen to be utterly scrupulous and above reproach, one hundred and twenty of Catholicism’s finest advocates voting according to God’s wishes.

Except that as the hours wear on, it becomes clear that there are men of ambition hiding behind piety and humility – Jacobo Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals and Convenor of each increasingly tense meeting in the Sistine Chapel is appalled to discover that the whole process is just as riven with factions, innuendo and scandal as any secular election. He is a good man – and an honest one as he admits that the late Holy Father would not accept his resignation from office ‘because we need managers’. He feels slighted. Surely his religious career of more than fifty years has elevated him into higher realms than a ‘manager’. Nevertheless, he decides to make the best possible job of ‘managing’ the selection of the next Pope, but is not above allowing himself a cynical smirk as he reviews the front-running candidates:

The current Camerlengo (Chamberlain) of the Holy See, Cardinal Joseph Tremblay, a French-Canadian very conscious of his film-star looks and perfectly coiffed silvery hair; Cardinal Joshua Ayedemi, a mighty Nigerian with a powerful physique and a bass-baritone voice to match, and the African continent’s great hope to be the first black Pope, and Lomeli’s own personal preference, Cardinal Aldo Bellini, Secretary of State. Lomeli prays fervently that the right man will be chosen for the huge task of leading the Church and more than a billion Catholics with courage and honesty, but as voting progresses and stalemates occur it becomes plain that God is not going to make the choice easy for the 118 cardinals.

An added complication is the late arrival of a mysterious Filipino cardinal appointed secretly by the late Pope: Cardinal Vincent Benitez, Archbishop of Baghdad is unknown to everyone, but his credentials are impeccable; he has as much right to vote – and be considered for Pontiff – as every other man in the room. It appears that the Late Holy Father is controlling events even beyond the grave, especially when Lomeli starts reluctantly investigating scandalous rumours connected to various candidates and is horrified at what he finds: the love of God comes a poor second to the love of power.

Mr Harris propelled me at lightning speed through the twists and turns of his masterly plot; the grandeur of St Peter’s, great bastion of Christendom has never been more eloquently portrayed and his characters are all too recognisable for the men they are, rather than the paragons they desire to be.

FIVE STARS

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Munich, by Robert Harris

Mr Harris is well known for constructing thrillers out of historical events, the outcomes of which are already known (see ‘Conclave’ review below), and he repeats the process with ‘Munich’, a fictitious account of the last-ditch talks held in that Southern German city between Dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in an effort to avoid another World War.

Chamberlain wants to avoid war at any cost, for Britain is woefully underprepared for conflict; Hitler has been rearming for years; he wants to give Germans ‘Lebensraum’, room to spread out, and the ideal way to do that is to invade his neighbours – all of whom are allied with each other, or with Britain. Diplomacy seems not to be working effectively; the Devil is indeed in the detail and Chamberlain’s ‘Politics of appeasement’ are feared to be ineffectual. Leaping into this explosive mix are those who would depose Hitler, some by any means – they are ardent German Nationalists but not Nazis, even though they belong to the Party (the Politics of Expedience!), they don’t want their country plunged into another crippling conflict not twenty years after the last one: the Austrian Corporal has to go.

To that end one of a secret band of plotters smuggles into England compelling proof of Hitler’s plans for war, giving the lie to the public perception that the Reich Chancellor desires peace in Europe if only the Sudetenland, rightfully Germany’s is returned from Czechoslovakia.

The secret papers have been delivered to Hugh Legat, a minor diplomat in the British Foreign Office, at the behest of an old friend from Oxford days, Paul Von Hartmann; he wants Hugh to warn his superiors of Hitler’s perfidy, and Mr Harris is such a competent writer that he can invest suspense into every hour of the factual events that are now history: the reader sits in Hitler’s apartment with Chamberlain and Mussolini, all the time trying to prod Chamberlain into seeing what a liar Hitler is, that he has no intention of ever honouring any promises he might make, and that war is as inevitable as the sunrise.

There are some interesting character studies in ‘Munich’, particularly Mr Harris’s interpretation of Mr Chamberlain: ‘ how odd that a man so fundamentally shy should thrust himself into public life and fight his way to the top’, a politician savvy and shrewd enough to know that his pact with Hitler was on very shaky ground, so ‘ more than half of next year’s government expenditure would be devoted to arms’, for Hitler would be sure the cross the line eventually. Britain must make hay while the sun shines - despite the ringing assurance of ‘peace for our time’ the heady relief that the entire country feels is only temporary.

And the rest is History.

FIVE STARS

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