Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

By Anita Sethi

I’ve just finished chairing the Southbank Book Club on the Booker Prize-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey which provoked some fascinating responses, veering from loving to loathing.  The novel is written in a challenging style, stripped of punctuation marks such as the comma, and switching between perspectives and tenses (Ned, for example, refers to himself alternately in the third and first-person).

“The past is not dead. it is not even past” – William Faulkner.

This is the epigraph to the compelling novel which delves into the terrain of both the personal and historical past, unflinchingly examining the psychological effects of systemic violence.

The novel raised some fascinating discussion about the the relationship between fiction and history, and the extent to which history is itself a version of “stories”, ever challenged and re-written.  To what extent the “True” in the title is highly ironic was at the heart of the conversation as was how fiction can paradoxically reach a greater truth than fact.

We explored why Carey might have chosen such a tricksy and experimental style and its virtues and vices and also examined other novels which use an ‘epistolary’ structure and how the form of the letter can provide intimacy of narrative voice, whilst also discussing how important it was that one letter extract was based on a real letter found in the Mitchell Library, Melbourne whilst others were works of the author’s imagination.

There were also some people present from Australia itself and a lively discussion was had about literary representations of Australian landscape and the individual’s place in the vastness of the universe; the night sky, for example, is a recurring motif, as are horses which gallop through the narrative.  A previous Book Club I chaired this year was on the excellent “The Secret River” by Kate Grenville and it was interesting to compare and contrast the two authors’ depictions of Australian history and their varying stylistic approaches.

We also had some of our youngest Book Club attendees so far, an 11 year old girl and 16 year old boy accompanied by their mother (the youngest Book Club attendee so far has been a toddler, in the session last Summer on Minaret by Leila Aboulela, whilst the oldest has been in their 90s reflecting the diverse audience Book Club attracts).  The 16 year old was looking to expand his reading into a more adult terrain and his mother was keen for suggestions.  Book Club members also recommended The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon and Submarine by Joe Dunthorne.

Book Club this evening definitely whetted attendee’s appetite to delve into Peter Carey’s new novel, The Chemistry of Tears (published by Faber & Faber), an inventive account of both contemporary and Victorian London which explores the story of an extraordinary automaton built in the 19th century – the slick engine of the novel will certainly keep the reader turning the pages.

The next Book Club will be Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: 9th May, 6:30pm.

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