Overall it is very good though there is a drabness about the suburban life. It's like as if for the author to go back to the suburb of his childhood is a dank place of mold he didn't want to go to again. ( )

>One of the aspects of getting older that's a bit eerie, is finding that part of your life has become 'the olden days'. Initially, my idea of 'the olden days' was that era when my parents were children and young adults, a time that they would evoke with nostalgia (or otherwise). Then, emerging with self-mockery but solidifying into nostalgia (or not), 'the olden days' become the years of my own child- and young adulthood. But what's really spooky is when the years of The Offspring's child-and young adulthood have become 'the olden days'.

Though they'll enjoy it just as much, I suspect that the generation after mine will read Stephen Orr's new autobiographical novel somewhat differently to me. This Excellent Machine was a revelation, because The Offspring was (just like his parents) immune to popular culture. So whereas most parents were dragged into 1980s culture by their children, I wasn't. Orr's book is a 'foreign country' to me. It's like reading about a tourist attraction you missed seeing while you were on a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Orr is one of my favourite authors: I've read all but one of his seven novels, and he is a genius with characterisation and setting. In This Excellent Machine Clem Whelan is the central character, trapped in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 and wondering what to do with his life. When he quizzes his mother once again about his long-absent, best-forgotten father, he knows the script even before they start, and eventually he recognises the pattern:

I'd had enough. She was like a mower starting on a very big paddock. (p.85)

*Ouch!*

There is a conspiracy of silence about this absent father. Clem lives in a close-knit street in a working-class suburb of Adelaide. (Only, most people are not working, except in backyard ventures or casual, pointless jobs. The 1980s was when people started to find out what globalisation really meant). Everyone knows everyone else, and people rarely move away so the neighbours remember Clem's birth and early childhood. And they remember his father, but they keep schtum about it too. Clem has reached the age where he needs to know, mainly because he is in search of a mentor to guide him through his difficult last year at school. He's not sure it's going to be worth it, and his teachers, ground down because of the hopelessness of their students' future, aren't much help. Pop's advice is to knuckle down but Clem thinks it might be too late...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/04/30/this-excellent-machine-by-stephen-orr/ ( )