Books, songs & films: January 31

Last week’s reading:

• My first Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, is a refreshing revelation. Moore’s highly individualistic writing style, all quirky similes and metaphors, laced with lyricism, is nothing like what I tend to read. As with other stylistic writers like Cormac McCarthy, I found the going slow because I needed to roll the paragraphs and sentences around in my mouth, but the reward was a very rich experience. The tale of a female college student, babysitting an adopted mixed-race child, develops slowly but then plunges into multiple tragedies. Our punning, acerbic heroine Tassie reminded me, rather incongruously, of the lead in Juno, and I liked her a lot. Moore modulates her prose, moving from humour to lyrical anomie. Highly recommended

Last week’s music:

• My Morning Jacket is a band I’ve skirted around, never really taking a good look at their emo-labelled albums. Jim James’s powerful presence in Monsters Of Folk persuaded me to get hold of the latest Jacket CD, Evil Urges. Well, it’s a mixed bag. Literally: reflective songs with James in falsetto voice, as in Monsters of Folk, beguiled me, but there are a number of stylistically offbeat songs, including one that sounds like Prince, that I could barely listen to. Perhaps Evil Urges represents a band undergoing democratic songwriting at the end of its life, perhaps all their albums are so eclectic, but the end result in my ears was negative.

Last week’s movies:

• The Road was one of the last decade’s finest novels, an apocalyptic father-son tale rendered palpable by amazing writing. It seemed impossible that anyone could convert Cormac McCarthy’s book into a worthy movie, but John Hillcoat has done just that by substituting a stunning visual backdrop of a grey, denuded, dying world for prose. There’s a touch more sentimentalism in the film than in the book, including a Nick Cave/Warren Ellis soundtrack that is surprisingly emotional, but somehow that tweaked outlook did not shatter the existential impact. Vigo Mortenson as the father and Kodi Smit-McPhee as son are rivetting, and Robert Duvall makes a remarkable short appearance. Surely The Road will be the peak of 2010′s filmic offerings.

Current reading/listening/viewing:

• Fiction: Blood Moon/Garry Disher; Spud – The Madness Continues/John van de Ruit; Bad Things Happen/Harry Dolan; Generosity: An Enhancement/Richard Powers; The Long Fall/Walter Mosley.
• Music:  Magic Neighbor/Lisa Germano; Truelove’s Gutter/Richard Hawley
• Planned movies: Bright Star might end up being a DVD but I would like to see Up in the Air on the big screen

New stuff to track down and then read/hear/see:

• Charlie Huston is one of those newly lauded thriller authors I haven’t tried. Sleepless, his new one in an apocalyptic setting, seems just the one to correct that deficiency.
• David Honeybone, founder of that wonderful crime fiction zine Crime Factory, recently recommended Stuart Neville’s The Twelve. When David recommends something, it’s seriously worthwhile
• A fresh slab of movies seem to be hitting the Melbourne cinemas. Who could forget the classic UK thriller series Edge of Darkness, but do we really want to see Mel Gibson in an American version? I’ll wait for reviews. Two others will be worthwhile: A Single Man and Shutter Island (based on Dennis Lehane’s fine book)