The headline described them as ‘Pungent Observations on the Twists of Modern Life’. Pungent? Well, yes. She pulls no punches, does Tegan Bennett Daylight, with some of her descriptiveness – the death of a friend; the truly awful taste of that diabolical elixir we all drank back in our formative years (Brandivino); the fragility of friendship as we first attempt to reject individuality to be accepted by the herd. And one could not fault the writing.

The headline capped a review by critic and editor Peter Pierce. He lauds the author of these ten tales for being a ‘…morally astute, technically adroit, anti-formulaic and unsentimental practitioner of the short story craft.’ Tegan BD is all that, but for me there was something missing. Perhaps Pierce summed it up when he stated the collection exhibits ‘…virtuous skills but no flashiness throughout.’ He intended it as a compliment, but is that what it needed to have more of an impact on this reader – a dollop of flashiness?

I initially discovered this writer some time ago. I cannot recall which of her previous novels (‘Bombora’, ‘What Falls Away’, ‘Safety’) it was – too many years have passed and I cannot locate the record. It may have been the first listed as I have a vague recollection it centred around surfing. I do know I liked it very much and made a mental note to watch out for future publications. But sadly, they have been a while in the making. ‘Bombora’ was twenty years ago – it won the Vogel. ‘Safety’, almost a decade.

The stories in her latest reportedly did contain linkages with past books. And in some the characters make repeat appearances. They are slices of life taken from various stages of the journey we all make – childhood and through the teens to adulthood. A few characters are seen, as from above, in multiple stages. Conclusions, deliberately, are sometimes open to more possibility for, after all, that is life. They’re not sewn up neatly as a package. Just when this peruser was getting to know a protagonist and settling in, though, often a tale would terminate and we were on to the next. But I will say that with what the author has started here there is plenty of fodder for an extension into the longer form. There are novels awaiting within, Ms Daylight.

Despite the coolness of her observations, for me, this offering did not fully satisfy. Talent abounds – that’s easy to discern – and I do trust it is not another decade before the next title is placed on a shelf in a book store to tempt me.

The author’s website = http://teganbennettdaylight.com/

‘Is there anyone left who isn’t totally in love with Magda Szubanski?’ Well, yes in fact. Me. It is not that I dislike her. How could anyone do that after reading ‘Reckoning’? It’s just that, apart from her role as Sharon in the beloved ‘Kath and Kim’, she hasn’t been on my radar much. I have never seen ‘Babe’, nor her various shows (‘The D Generation’, ‘Fast Forward’, ‘Big Girl’s Blouse’) on the small screen. And yes, before you ask, I have nothing against females who make their living by making us laugh in one way or another. I very much love Kitty Flanagan, Fiona O’Loughlin, Denise Scott, Hannah Gadsby, Celia Pacquola – the list goes on. But later, in a review I found on-line, is the following statement, ‘Anyone who doesn’t adore Magda Szubanski the clown will be awed by Szubanski the A-grade non-fiction writer.’ Well, again I wouldn’t perhaps use the word ‘awed’ in this context, but there’s no doubt her memoir is totally deserving of all the accolades it has garnered to date. This lady has decided literary chops. But I am in ‘awe’ of her for another reason. It’s for her bravery, a few years back, when she came out on ‘The Project’. To do so was all class – and the supportive reaction of the bulk of the Australian public shows that we, as a nation, are ready for the next step. Come on Mr Turnbull.

I also suspect, given time, the striking initial line to her memoir will be recognised as one of the best opening hooks in Aussie lit. ‘If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.’ Her father, indeed, casts a giant shadow over this tome, as he does the author’s life. And he was a good man – a good man carrying the burden of memory. As a Polish freedom fighter he did back to the Nazis what they did in spades to everyone else.

Yep, some of the stuff in ‘Reckoning’ is pretty grim, but overall the book’s tone is uplifting – even inspiring in places. Magda’s spirit shines through, even when it seems the odds are stacked against her. And she has had some real battles to wage too – failed projects, her weight issues, her sexuality. Maybe the latter two shouldn’t be such, but sadly, in today’s media climate, they are – particularly for those in the spotlight. All are elaborated on frankly, but there are tales of levity as well. There is much of interest for this particular reader in her recallings – the contrast in her twin visits to Warsaw between pre the end of the Cold War and post. I enjoyed her taking us behind the scenes of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ – I have often wondered about the mechanics of putting together that wonderful show. But it’s the concluding chapters that are the most intensely moving of the whole exercise – especially the description of her final unpacking of what made her father tick.

For a first-timer ‘Reckoning’ is an achievement. It holds interest throughout and is a book this scribe looked forward to returning to after daily impediments intruded. And I concur with the final sentence of that aforementioned on-line review, ‘Let’s hope the books keep coming.’

It looks as though I was born just at the right time – lived my life when the living was, relatively speaking, easy – at least for those of us lucky enough not to be a citizen of a third world country. My generation missed the most traumatic events of the last century, saw the Cold War off without nuclear catastrophe, then ushered in the digital age – for better or worse. That being said, we also did just enough to bugger up our planet for the generations that follow. But then, we will be gone before the real crunch hits. Our ineptitude and our belief in deforestation, dirty coal and petrol guzzling machines is now certainly starting to make our atmosphere an unhappy place. And it’s already paying us back for that. Those who come after us will need to clean up our mess if humanity is to survive in a manner we’ve grown accustomed to on our planet. Or find a way to cope with a very altered environment. They’ll be able to do that, won’t they?

Will those gifted scientists, following the not so gifted ones who were like a wrecking ball for the Earth over the last five decades or so, be able to find a way to suck all that deleterious CO2 out of the sky? Will they find somewhere safe then to put it all – or perhaps even make something useful to humankind out of it?

Tim Flannery thinks that those brainiacs who are working on it now and down the track; the politicians in charge presently and into the future; as well as a more environmentally savvy general populace will have the combined nous to do this. Fingers crossed. There is much to be optimistic about, as reflected in ‘Atmosphere of Hope’. In general, though, it does make for some pretty depressing reading. Everything will have to go exactly right. At least, since the tome was written, there has been the hoped for positive outcomes from Paris. The two world leaders who were road-blocking progress for all they were worth – our own head-in-the-sand man Abbott and his mate, Canada’s Harper, have both been consigned to the dustbin of history. In Trudeau and Turnbull we at least have guys who think that the science has got it right.

Yes, Flannery reports, this science is on the march, starting to grapple and make some headway with the solutions required. And the greed of the vested interests in the ways of the past? Well, it is now being shown as what it truly has been all along – profit at all costs to benefit a small minority to the detriment of the masses. Despite this, it will still be touch and go.

I must admit, reading this, some of that aforementioned science had me glassy eyed with the plethora of figures Flannery used to make his various cases. He did his best to put it all in layman’s terms, but my difficulties with it didn’t detract from the impact his writings had on this reader. Some sections I truly found engrossing reading, such as the chapter entitled ‘The Great Disconnect’, discussing the gap between where the politicians are at as compared to those endeavouring to save us all. It is narrowing, but there’s still work to be done. And what’s to be done includes this – and it’s sobering. ‘The latest research…(has) found that more than 80 percent of known coal reserves, 33 percent of oil and 50 percent of gas must stay in the ground if we are to remain within budget.’ to get the emissions down to the Paris limits. Can you see the multi-nationals out there, plundering the Earth’s resources, laying down and taking that? Well, it’ll have to happen.

Geo-engineering seems to be the great hope – but it comes at a ginormous cost in monetary terms – and maybe also in the experimentation to get it right. It seems there are plenty of theories around to cool the planet by this means – from space sunshades to all buildings having white roofs. These range from sensible, no-brainer actions to those worthy of Dr Strangelove. Flannery examines the more plausible of these, declares some to be viable – but the cost, the cost. ‘Drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is, at the moment, an extraordinarily complex process involving mind-blowing quantum mechanics.’ But the Aussie climatologist is hoping that where there’s a will, there is also a way. He takes us through some models for this.

Yep, it seems, there is hope. It’s all not lost – but sadly he has given up on the Great Barrier Reef. He reckons it is gone for all money. As for many of the species we share this planet with, mega-numbers are on a quick path to extinction in the wild. They’ll find it impossible to adapt to the changes besetting them in the time they have left. We are already seeing it – think polar bears, orangutans, frogs. The list is long and salutary.

Yes, I am glad I read this book. I feel more informed and even a little more optimistic than beforehand. I have a fair grasp on the challenges ahead thanks to Tim F. I know the planet will survive the onslaught we have made on its checks and balances – and hopefully humankind will too, in one form or another.

‘…, that day the storyteller and the listener were in an unlikely type of tuning, on either side of the roadside fire, as clouds went by seeking the east, and airy florets of moisture anointed them as they passed, the solid ground they were on as brief a reprieve as life itself from the sea of deeper time.’

Wesley Cress was camped by a King Island roadside, escaping the past by going to the unknown. She came cycling by, an ex-wild child, now wild-woman, giving Wes a future. But before all that could occur, he had a story to tell, but to only her. Yes, only her. And the island itself, this foreign bit of Tasmania? ‘…: the mist rises from the strait to meet the lenticular hovering like a halo above the swatch of land. The result is a sticky density of a dream. You can see the motion of the mist like a sculptured thing, the light too, streaming past as you cut the wood, or pouring down the gullies with the mobility of solid water itself…’

I recall, once upon a time, a Charles – at least that was his name as I remember it. He left uni to go a-teaching and his first appointment was Currie – or it could have been Grassy. He was only intending to stay awhile. But stayed a lifetime – the place hooked him. Such outliers sometimes do. He was drawn to its wildness and otherness. A certain place has hooked me too, being drawn to it by a beloved son. Not as isolated maybe, but isolated enough. I know the feeling. It happens. And this and more happened to Wesley.

And Gregory Day is some storyteller too. He’s been likened to Winton and called our best writer of nature. But I think he is more akin to Miller myself. Day is best known for his gong garnering ‘The Patron Saint of Eels’ from back in ’06. ‘Archipelago of Souls’ is my first Day – and hopefully not my last.

The writer had a story he wanted to tell. It had been hovering around in his mind for a while but he needed a fulcrum to pin it down. He wanted to construct a tale involving our nation’s conflict experience – not by any stretch a novel notion. It was not to be about Gallipoli or Kokoda, but more ‘… the Australian male psyche in relation to trauma and war…’ In his travels, as a younger man, Day had visited and fallen in love with Crete, its people and the fact that so many cafés had, on their white-washed walls, old tattered images of Aussie serviceman arm in arm with local resistance fighters. He, as an Australian, was embraced by the natives. His German travelling companion – not so much. And that actual World War 2 campaign, in itself, was unusual. It was an unseemly, chaotic affair with the Nazis drifting down from above.

Still he needed that nub. It came with a tale he was told of the British evacuation from Crete. One of the ships, the Imperial, lost its steering. All the troops were taken off and the ship was sunk by friendly fire to stop it falling into enemy hands. Only trouble was there were a few Australian soldiers, below decks, comatose from the drink. They drowned. Now Day had the trigger for Wes to behave the way he did. His hero missed the evacuation because he was busy with a local lass behind a wall. He was thus stranded on the Mediterranean island.

The author’s narrative alternates between Crete and events on King. Essentially it deals with what the lone soldier had to do to survive – that is murder, man and beast. He assists, at various stages, in attacks against the invaders by the Cretan guerillas. This results in the Germans trying to counter through the auspices of repeated atrocity. It’s not pretty reading. It’s been likened to Flanagan’s ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’, but decidedly, for this reader, doesn’t have nearly the same impact. That being stated, some of what half-addled Wes does to ensure he stays living is truly terrible – and in some cases, terribly futile. But on the Bass Strait island time is on his side to try and come to terms with it all.

Leonie Fermoy, a generationally entrenched islander, has some forgetting to do too. She is wayward and perhaps she is a tad mad as well. Before Wes can convince her to love him he must unburden himself – open out to her the darker side that shrouds his mind. He’s hoping the King Island weather will leach it all out of him and that she’ll take care of the rest. Tentatively, in fits and starts, the pair come together – and the telling of it is terrific wordsmithery.

Gregory Day lives on a spot just sixty-four kilometres north of the Bass Strait island he writes about in this tome. He’s a frequent visitor and he loves the place – is transfixed by it. And I have been too, these days, by the aforementioned location of my son’s residence – by a place also attuned to the briny. We are so lucky that our island, in the southern seas, affords such bolt holes where nature is in balance with the incursions of mankind. Wes found it led to his salvation.