Robin Baker (3)

When I first heard about the phenomenon of NA (New Adult) fiction I thought it was a joke…a satirical take on the whole YA explosion. But it’s a thing. Apparently. One I thought pretty bloody unnecessary until I read CHASING THE SUN. Now I suspect today’s twenty-somethings really do need their own special category of reading material because this tale written by someone in that age group about people who are, at least ostensibly, in that age group whose lives consist of clubbing, killing and surviving perpetual ennui is so entirely foreign to me that it may as well be in another language.

It is narrated, with stultifyingly dull and clichéd dialogue peppered with words like ‘dude’ and ‘cool’ and ‘baby’, by a chap known as Honda. Honda Civic. He provides Feng Shui consultations for the rich and gormless but deliberately tells them to do exactly the things that will ensure their household energies will never be harmonious. But Honda’s real focus is on finding people to kill. He goes clubbing with his friends Grace, Dante, Johnnie and the other one whose name I forget where they take drugs, pick up people and kill them.

The twist? They’re all vampires (though that actual word is not, I think, ever used).

Which, I assume, explains why the dead have no names or personalities. They are ‘the blonde’ and ‘the footballer’ or ‘the backpackers’ and their lives, and deaths, mean as much to Honda and his pals as the squashing of an ant does to normal humans. Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. Johnnie (Walker…get it?) comes up to Honda in a club one night and as they high five each other says

“What’s black and blue and hates sex?…The Asian kid I’ve got tied up in the back of my car…”

Trust me, your reaction to that joke (?) is gonna be a pretty good indicator of your reaction to the whole book.

The other thing that will have an influence on your reaction to the book is the depth of your personal knowledge of vampire lore. Mine is very shallow and so quite a few things that happened here made no sense at all to me. I was not however interested enough to google their meaning. I don’t really mean to sound dismissive and I truly don’t believe that characters in fiction have to be likeable to be readable or interesting. But surely they have to show at least a flicker of engagement with their world if the reader is supposed to become ensnared by it for long enough to get to the end of the tale? The people populating this world were bored with it from page one and I just couldn’t see why I should be more interested in it than they were. Perhaps I was meant to find drama in the fact that the hunters became the hunted but I really couldn’t because…well…vampires aren’t real and I know that.

After what seemed like an extremely long time to me but was probably only 50 or so pages of the clubbing, killing and sitting around being bored shtick Honda is hired to undertake the Feng Shui of a new club called Immortality being built by someone with an even more mysterious air than the gang of five. Independently of that a vampire, not one of this particular gang but someone they know, is killed. All of this leads Honda to a change in his life, one that can basically be boiled down to him learning, after several hundred years or whatever, that time flies. Who knew?

And so we come to the point of this review which is that I have added another item to the list. The list of things my 13 year-old self promised she would never do. Work in an office. Get into the left lane 5 kilometres before needing to actually turn left and despite the presence of a convoy of slow-moving vehicles. Vote for a conservative candidate. And, now, complain about young people. I assume to them this book is funny. Or ironic. Or wish fulfilment. Or some combination thereof but to me (for the record I’m 45) it’s just…nothingness. Despite being sold as a comic thriller it read more like mild and rather dull horror. But if you’re twenty something and you’ve read it could you explain it to me?… (mehr)

When I was a little girl my grandmother always used to say to me ... you'll understand the generation gap when you get to my age. Frankly I thought she was barking, so if she was alive now I would be apologising furiously for the scepticism. And it's not just that modern music has no lyrics and all sounds the same these days ;), it's increasingly becoming the occasional book that makes me realise that I may not necessarily "get" what's going on with the younger generations.

Of course that feeling's not helped by the premise of CHASING THE SUN. "A twisted tale about Feng Shui, vampires, drinking, pet psychiatry, genocide, belief and mortality". But hey, I've read vampire novels recently that I liked - why not this one?

I have to say CHASING THE SUN did not start out well. Whilst I realise that the voice was probably very authentic, that low level, disengaged, not bothered sort of style drove me utterly and completely nuts. It was just too cool to sweat, which I know is realistic, but would you buy a give a damn card please. I also realise that to get these books you have to accept that vampires live amongst us, hanging out at nightclubs, picking up mostly women, using abusing and casually discarding bodies... but don't get me started on the morgue attendant side of things. What I don't quite get about CHASING THE SUN is the level of disengagement from the acts exhibited.

To my mind reading fiction is entertaining, enlightening, informative, amusing, life-changing or just flat out good old time wasting in the very best sense of the words - a chance to escape and disappear into better, interesting or different worlds. But it has to be engaging, believable and preferably not overtly manipulative or derivative. With CHASING THE SUN I absolutely got that the voice wasn't one I would find all that engaging, and the whole premise wasn't believable which should have been okay. I was happy that our central character at some stage did meet a young child and her mother, and undergo some sort of transformation, and yet, somehow the whole package was creepy, convenient, and way too disconnected for my liking.

Part of that was undoubtedly the lack of engagement with cause and effect. Given that most of my reading choices are at the darker end of the Crime Fiction spectrum there's nothing new in violence, victim exploitation or killer disconnection. But in good examples there is something else - there's an attempt at explanation, analysis or understanding, there's justice or retribution if you're into that sort of thing. There's even resolution in some cases. But the level of disengagement, the total and absolute lack of empathy and emotional maturity alongside the nothingness of the outcome ... was too simplistic, too dismissive, almost too easy a way out.

I can see that there's a real attempt at humour at the base of the storyline of this book, but try as I might I couldn't find it funny. The central character wasn't somebody I ever warmed to, and whilst I don't want to approve of every character in a book - in this one I never even got a glimmer of understanding or acceptance. For some reason something about CHASING THE SUN just creeped me out and I suspect that had a lot to do with what seemed like a real life current problem. Lack of empathy, lack of engagement, lack of consequences. It might be that this a book for a different generation, or for more welded-on fans of the uber-cool urban vampire thing.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/chasing-sun-robin-baker… (mehr)

Killing Richard Dawson is narrated by a uni student with a tragic back story now living alone with his Gran. He's visited once a fortnight by a young social worker who checks on his Gran's welfare as well as his own, although he's been keeping his real thoughts and emotions well hidden from her for years.

Lonely as a child until he met his best friend George, the narrator has never had much luck pursuing girls or socialising. He makes a friend at University - calling her Fatty Mel - and soon falls into a wider group of friends who go to nightclubs, get drunk and hang out. He is depressed, directionless and unmotivated until he meets Jade, a turning point in the book.

The friends belong to Generation Y, and whilst we've all heard countless stereotypes of Gen Y, this conversation between the narrator and his friend Beau on page 160 really stuck with me:

"Why can't we fix it? If we're all so depressed, why can't we do something to change?"

Beau shrugs. "Because we're all so fucking lazy? I mean, where do you start? Changing the world isn't easy. It's a scary thought. Most people would much rather bury their head in the sand and wait for it to fix itself."

And there you have it, although Beau's answer can apply to anyone too lazy to change.

Back to the story, and Robin Baker brings a fresh new voice to Australian writing. In one particular beach scene it was set up so logically I believed the outcome was 100% predictable until the joke was on me, the author flipping the plot on its head. Similarly, I had a feeling I knew what was happening with a particular character during the novel and then wham, towards the end I found myself scrambling back through the pages scouring for clues.

When it was all over, I turned straight back to re-read Chapter One - which serves as a prologue - with an entirely new appreciation.

Killing Richard Dawson is the exploration of a young man with a sympathetic and difficult past trying to find his place in the world, depressed, confused and falling in love. It's dark, it's surprising and it's strangely comic.… (mehr)