Melbourne just not very novel

The time to read books is on public transport, of course. (Who has the time otherwise?) Little One and I are in Brisbane for the school holidays, and we’ve used so much PT that I’ve caught up. Just finished David Marr’s His Master’s Voice and Clive Hamilton’s Silencing Dissent and Frank McCourt’s memoir, Teacher Man (all good). Re-read, for the third time, Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer (brilliant). Caught up on two issues of The Monthly (okay) and The American Scholar (always tremendous).

Running out of material, I visited The Avid Reader in West End. Its co-owner, Fiona, is usually excellent at finding exactly what you want. “I want a memoir,” I said. She suggested a few. Nah. How about this, then? She presented A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka.

It’s a novel. My fiction-reading days are over. (The last novel I enjoyed was Mark Haddon’s wonderful The curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I rarely enjoy fiction.)

But the praise plastered over the cover was superfluous. “Outstanding”, “Splendid”, “Hilarious” “Remarkable”, “Rare”, “Enthralling”, yadda yadda yadda. These reviews were from reputable sources like The Times Literary Supplement. The book was shortlisted for prizes. I bought it.

It was competent and fairly engaging, but annoying. Its high drama, big characters and heavy-handed humour shat me. Its narrative devices were obvious and in your face, treating you like a mug. I was always aware of the author devising the darned thing in order to be clever.

Which got me thinking about the spate of cringeworthy, self-conscious novels (with the exception of Andrew McGahan’s Praise) written ABOUT BRISBANE. Including stuff by Nick Earls, Venero Armanno, and an artless novel by a woman (forget her name) that I won at this event and promptly donated to the school fete. Since the late 80s, there have been heaps of Brisbane novels.

I was wondering if Melbourne novels were as poor, but I can’t think of any. Sure, there have been novels set in Melbourne (Garner, Tsiolkas, Hardy, etc), but try as I might to think about a novel largely about Melbourne, I can’t. This may well say more about my ignorance than the state of things, and I’m happy to be shouted at if I’m wrong, but I’m venturing a theory. Melburnians don’t need novels about Melbourne; but post-Bjelke, Brisbane folk need novels about Brisbane.