The Art of the Engine Driver

The Art of the Engine Driver by Steven Carroll was published in 2001 - Flamingo Press.

It is an Australian novel.

Vic knows

the art of engines

but knows little

of the art of family

Michael is

the engine driver's son

he dreams of beauty

family beauty

in just a snapshot

he was there

walking the night with them

to a party

together

this night

the wreckage of this night

become a mantra

for Michael

he returns
and returns
and returns

in dreams

and wills

another journey

Michael knows the art of cricket

but knows little

he knows little...

GOOD READS REVIEW

The art of the engine driver by Steven Carroll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A book that tantalises and frustrates! Tantalising thumbnails of characters drifting through a season in their lives. The just outside Melbourne setting of the 1950's is like a weigh station - taking stock of past and present before moving on. Initially, the sense of place is beautifully described and quite haunting. The linking thread is an engine driver named Vic who hopes that his steam driving worlds may move on to the electric worlds of the Spirit of Progress. But his driving worlds are overlaid with fractured realities that haunt his dreams. And Vic himself is one of those fractured realities. He and those living in the same street are on their way to an engagement party. Like a Canterbury Tales scenario, these pilgrims bring their stories with them. But the frustrating element is the spasmodic reference to a comet in the skies...perhaps symbolic of an upheaval of life. And when the upheaval comes, the drama seems to confuse, the characters seem to fizzle and maybe peter out. The art of the engine driver seems to become a little weathered.

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Walk In My Shoes

Walk In My Shoes (2004) - Alwyn Evans
(Teacher resources HERE!)


Am I free?

~~~~~~

I can't see Dad's face any more

Self-conscious

I know too much about trauma

New Australian camp worlds are strange

~~~~~

It's not Afghanistan of my childhood

And I'm still a child
To a point
(I sew my own doll's clothes
But I've been connecting with Abdul
For a while now)

~~~~

Do I need Afghanistan?


From a strange world view

Perhaps Afghanistan needs me

To make a difference

~~

Am I free?


I'm working on it

GOOD READS REVIEW

 Walk in My Shoes by Alwyn Evans
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nessa's Afghanistan was a tortured world, a world living the fear of The Terror. And the fear stays alive in her mind, even when her family ventures to the Australian unknown, seeking some kind of freedom and life. Like some ugly Medusa, old realities become nightmares, recurring in jagged, disjointed fragments. But the land of "red dirt and blue sky" heals the thirsting spirit - slowly.

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The Line

The Line (2010) - Teri Hall


 Away
Crossing
 Labor Pools
The Council
Unified States

 Away
Close the door to problems
Mandatory status
Streamlined dystopia
Unified States

Elizabeth Moore
Matriarch of The Property
Vivian
Single mother
Rachel her daughter
Groomed in controlled beliefs
Apprentice orchid keeper

Away
Pathik
Jab
Kinec

Empathy
Stab
Kinetic

Curious gifts arise from
The bombs of change

 Unified States
Close the door to problems
Away

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Line by Teri Hall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Line is like the threatening, divisive prohibition of a Berlin Wall without the visibles of boundary and barbed wire. US - Unified States - alienate those trapped in Away due to Holocaustic circumstance. And Rachel, one of the young Regs, decides to connect with Pathik in the Away world, offering help and seeking answers to her own father's disappearance. The setting is intriguing but tends to dominate the novel. Somehow the questions around Ms Moore's The Property on the US side become a little weathered, verging on repetitive and there's a frustrating urge to get on with some action. We spend too long with the orchids in the greenhouse and too long gazing at digims (photos). There is a sequel called Away. Perhaps this long-winded "prologue" may seem more valid in the sequel.

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A Night in Hell

Jacko is a reporter with a
Tainted reputation
Launching into yesterday's news with a
Healthy dob of skepticism
And some 
Churning
Desperation

Meeting the echoes of
Yesterday's war in a
Small 
Village cemetery


Meeting their context of
Gunfire and
Muddy footprints

Unable to leave one of
His own


Meeting the voices

Hearing their tragedy
Their cursed
Blackened windows and
Closed doors


But he did
Inadvertently manage
To unsmear 
Some window 
To open 
Some door

To bring
Some 
Lost voices

Together

GOODREADS REVIEW

A night in hell by Liam Foxx
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The scenario was intriguing! The ingredients of World War I, a cemetery, the Somme village and a reporter seeking to mend a damaged reputation all waited to be ignited into a reality cloaked in mystery. But somehow the war got in the way. Descriptive detail of old action sounded a little too like many war stories! And the reporter paled back into an inhibited observer. Perhaps that was the author's intention. But somehow the drive of the story seems frayed at the edges and the conclusion doesn't really rescue the original purpose. Perhaps the story spiked with war action may suit male readers more than female.

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Birnam Wood

FICTION - BIRNAM WOOD BY T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
in The New Yorker - September 3, 2012
(Notes/quotes in my Webnotes - begin from the bottom up!)


Existing in a chicken coop lifestyle
Plagued by 
Grim
Cold
Rain

Luxuriating at
Birnam Wood
A Tudor house in a
Lakeside setting

There was really no question of preferred choice
If opportunity 
Begged

But the glitter of luxury
Secreted 
A sticky substance
A kind of Macbeth consequence
Specially formulated for those who could lay no rightful claim of ownership to
Anything

Or
Anyone

The Necklace

The Necklace (1884) ~ Guy de Maupassant


Beauty equalises females
From a male point of view

But an attractive woman
Scourged with the shabbiness of poverty
And longing to shine
Aches for a wardrobe
Beyond her reach

Such a woman was Madame Loisel

One night of giddy 
Ecstatic illusion 
Became
Ten years of squalid debt

A debt 
Bound in
Ironic
Reverse
Illusion

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Necklace and Other Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(This review focuses on The Necklace, originally published in the French newspaper Le Gaulois in 1884.)
The beauty of Madame Loisel was born to poverty. Little did she know that for one night, for one cloud of happiness, she would sink deeper into the bowels of poverty. Diamonds betrayed her; ignorance tainted her dreams and mocked her. A short story that could easily recycle into 21st century social column news.

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The Discovery of the High Lama

The Discovery of the High Lama (2009) by Sushma Joshi (ebook on Short Stories)
The spin of apparent circumstance settles into a life purpose for one and a humbling experience for another.


Dead Rose Tigerbalm in the Insight Bar

So far from the studies of Boston

Strumming lop-sided chords on the guitar

A Kathmandu backwater 

So far from marketed fortunes

A potato stuffed mentality
Ripe for
Chopping boards

And remote
Elusive 
Mongolia

Bigyan thought he was on a quest for
Enlightened
Black belt success

But the Enlightened One decided
Other
Wise

GOODREADS REVIEW

The Discovery of the High Lama by Sushma Joshi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Elusive be "the simple science of inner knowledge" for those burdened with bookish academics; for those who have concocted their own template of superiority. While his "friends" travel to Boston or Australia to seek mercenary, intellectual status, Bigyan, with his black belt in kyo-kushin karate, travels from Kathmandu to Mongolia to compete. He wins a silver medal and stumbles into the delighted welcome of monks. A bizarre, but fascinating sequence of circumstantial scenarios give birth to a multi-faceted awakening.

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