If you are going to read Lionel Shriver’s latest novel, brace yourself. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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It looks as if the insured bushfire victims who lost their homes will have to pay rent on temporary shelters provided by the government. They will have to pay from $40 to $100 per week (provided by their insurance policies). This rent will only be charged after a period of three months of living rent free. But those homeowners who were not insured will be bailed out by the government. So what would Aesop and La Fontaine have made of this situation?

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While watching the BBC news on TV this morning, we held the following conversation.

“I didn’t know that lobsters could live for 140 years.”

“Course they can’t. Where did you hear that?”

“On the BBC right now. The ticker tape thingy at the bottom said that one hundred and forty year old lobster was released from a restaurant in New York.”

“Can’t be true,” says husband. “What they mean is that 140 lobsters who were one year old were released.”

“How could 140 lobsters fit into a tank in a New York restaurant? Must have been some big tank, don’t you think? Besides, why would that make it into the news amidst Gaza conflict, earthquake in Costa Rica and quarrels over halted Gas supplies from Russia through the Ukraine?”

Further discussions along the lines of what I thought I had read and husband being adamant that I had got it wrong.

“OK then, let’s wait until the ticker tape comes around again and we’ll read it together this time.”

But you know how things are in life. Just as it was the turn of the lobster story again, some commercial break interrupted the news. So my husband got out of bed and looked up the BBC news site on the internet.

“Well?”

“Yep,” the husband confirmed. “Apparently, a restaurant in New York had this 140 year old lobster in its tank for two weeks and some animal rights activists petitioned to liberate it.”

“Good for them,” I beamed.

I never did like any animals to be in cages. I even hate the idea of circuses and zoos and don’t get me started on pet canaries in cages and dogs and cats in the confines of apartment buildings.

“So how did they know it was 140 years old?”

“They can tell by its weight.”

Husband tried to get back to reading his newspaper. Not for long though…

” Hmmm. Must be a guesstimation. Cause it can’t be like telling how old a tree is on account of the number of rings. Couldn’t this particular lobster be obese rather than old? I wonder why human beings shrink as they get very old then? And another thing, why do ticker tape announcements disappear just when you want to read them again?”

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Popular travel writer and social commentator, Bill Bryson, said he had difficulty writing about Australia in his book “Downunder” because he likes this country. He said it was much easier to criticise than to praise. After you have said that something is good, that’s about it. As it turns out, Bryson’s admiration for Australia resulted in a book that was less humorous and certainly not as entertaining as his previous works.

In the same way that Bryson could not do his usual acerbic shtick in “Downunder”, I’m having trouble writing about “Notes on a Scandal”. I liked it too much to pick it to bits.

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Last year I wrote a sceptical review of “Suite Française” by Irene Nemirovsky which was not well received by readers from Amazon.com. In it I questioned whether the novel had any value as an account of the Holocaust. I am sticking to my claim and now I have support from a new publication about Nemirovsky. So it is with some vindication and a feeling of “I told you so” that I am now posting the original review which sparked an outrage in some circles.

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There is nothing light and frivolous about Tim Winton’s novel, “Dirt Music”. I know he’s Australian and I know that he wins awards, but I had to struggle through this book. Winton’s motto appears to be “to make a short story long”. One almost wonders if he were paid by the word.

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Mark Steyn can be described as the Paul Revere of the modern age. While the West sleeps, Islamic nations have been slowly infiltrating the U.S, Europe, Australia and Canada.

Steyn regards Europe as a lost cause which did not notice that Muslims were multiplying much faster than Europeans so that the most popular name for newborn babes in Europe is Mohammad. He regards this change in demography, the aging population of Europe and its low birth rate as being extremely dangerous to the future of our Western culture.

He encourages us all to change that demography by having more children.

He also warns us that Muslim fundamentalists mean business when they declare they hate the West and want to destroy it.

What is going on France right now with the Muslim youth riots, must be terrifying to the French population. This is the second round of riots since 2005 and it was Sarkozy’s tough stance against the first round of riots that brought him to power.

Most European countries are becoming more right wing because of the threat caused by the changing demographics. Steyn has conceded defeat in Europe but I hope that the youths will embrace education and work and then perhaps they won’t feel so angry.

If truth be told, however, a higher education is no guarantee that the youths will be happy to assimilate. The 9/11 bombers were educated, after all. The latest would-be bombers in England were doctors.

if the Muslim youths continue their vendetta, then they will not win friends in France or anywhere else in Europe. You can’t force people to like you if you are bashing them up and burning their property, can you?

“America Alone” is similar in theme to Melanie Phillips’ “Londonistan” but is much more pertinent and interesting to read.
Steyn has a brilliantly effective and humorous style that belies the seriousness of his topic.

In one sentence his message is “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

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I had never heard of Douglas Kennedy the author, but that’s not so surprising when I have already confessed to being a literary snob. I like books that make me laugh or make me think or both at once, if possible. Kennedy’s “Temptation” offers neither humour nor thought, but the Book Club chose it for this month’s selection and since I am nothing if not compliant I read it. The best thing about it is that it makes no demands on the reader. “Temptation” is very, very, very, easy to read. That probably accounts for its popularity.

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My book club encourages me to read books which I would not normally choose. This is a good thing in itself because it broadens my experiences. By nature, I am a classicist and enjoy Victorian and Edwardian literature simply because it has style and excellent characterisation. And because I am a literary snob.

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One of the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read is Lionel Shriver’s “We need to talk about Kevin”. I can’t imagine that fifty years ago it would have dared to be published, let alone win the Orange Prize for Literature.

So it’s a credit to today’s more candid society that Shriver could have written a book about a parent-child relationship that isn’t total bliss. Whilst the novel is described as taboo-breaking, gutsy and startling, which means that most people would have had some reservations about the theme of not really liking one’s child, the author has excused herself to some extent by making her child a sort of Damien Omen character and that is a kind of cop-out, in my opinion.

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