Australian Penthouse

Madam Lash
Sam Everingham
Allen & Unwin

Some stories write themselves. They unfold seamlessly, with all the hills and all the valleys shifting in to place without a struggle or a strain.  And though it seems the miasma of tall tales linked to the fabulous Madam Lash would fall in to that category, it is just not so. When left to its own devices, Gretel Pinniger’s (Madam Lash) story comes out all wrong. The arcs are too big, the inclines too steep. People confuse Gretel with her creation. People exploit Gretel to get to Madam Lash, and they exploit Madam Lash to get to their audience. Then, after the spectacle of the alien amongst the peasants has evanesced, and all the novelty has slipped away, they leave two thirds of the story untold.

Sam Everingham’s book doesn’t walk out at intermission. Though the thread of reality tying Gretel Pinniger to this world at times becomes tenuous and waifishly thin, he follows that thread through to its end.

Madam Lash chronicles the saga that created the masterpiece. It’s the first story I’ve seen on Gretel that makes sense: it begins with an introverted, isolated child and ends with an introverted, isolated woman. It documents the amazing things she was able to pull off in her heyday, as well as the failures she, and those she inflicted them on, managed to endure.

It doesn’t do the done thing–the easy thing–of painting her as an entertaining sideshow, and making that the story. It is a quieter look at Gretel, possessed of more empathy, and it shows us that her spectacular, strange exterior is just the obvious symptom of a fractured, battered interior. It strips back all the bullshit and the theatrics and shows us a picture of a woman who never found the acceptances she craved, who was rarely taken or approached as a whole and who gave so much to wind up alone. It is incredibly sad, and sadder still because she seems oblivious to that.

Everingham does a remarkable job of sketching the outline of Gretel’s tragedy with understated prose, and allowing her words and those of the people she surrounded herself with to animate the rest. His approach captures the delirious realm Gretel has lived in all these years, and in doing so allows us to finally gain some understanding of the woman in leather.

In short, I love Gretel Pinniger, and I love Madam Lash, and this book taught me how.

War
Sebastian Junger
Harper Collins

Sebastian Junger is stunningly successful in his effort to capture and convey what life in a combat unit is truly like, what true brotherhood is, and how taking on the role of protector ignites a primitive clarity inside a man, a clarity that makes men effective in battle but can also leave them at sea when they return to “civilised” society.

For soldiers on the thin edge, “life skills” consist of staying alive and protecting your men, not owning an iPhone or writing an office job C.V. War examines the feelings of contentment that come from understanding your reason for living, your responsibilities—stripped back to absolute basics of life or death—as much as it charts a year-in-the-life of the modern American soldier.

Junger spent 12 months with the 30 men of the US Army’s 2nd battalion at the pointy end of the stick—Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, where just getting out your bunk might get you killed, and where reliance on the watchfulness of your fellow soldiers is as essential as breathing.  “For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly,” explains Junger.

The incredible bond between men at war began to take shape after the advent of the machine gun in WWI, when an inevitable shift in soldiers’ psyches transferred blind loyalty from the brass and its decisions made from afar to absolute loyalty to the men on the ground and the split decisions they make in battle.

“For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly”

Says Junger: “Combat obscures your fate…and from that unknown is born a desperate bond between the men.  That bond is the core experience of combat and the only thing you can absolutely count on… The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”

“Civilians balk at recognizing that one of the most traumatic things about combat is having to give it up,” says Junger. “War is so obviously evil and wrong that the idea that there could be anything good to it feels like a profanity.  And yet throughout history, men… have come home to find themselves desperately missing what should have been the worst experience of their lives.  To a combat vet, the civilian world can seem frivolous and dull, with very little at stake and all the wrong people in power.”

“In the civilian world almost nothing has lasting consequences, so you can blunder through life in a kind of daze.  You never have to take inventory of the things in your possession and you never have to calculate the ways in which mundane circumstances can play out—can, in fact, kill you.  As a result you lose a sense of the importance of things… Back home mundane details have the power to destroy you, but the cause and effect are often spread so far apart that you don’t even make the connection; [in combat] that connection was impossible to ignore.”

War is much more than just another book about strategy, about conflict, about killing; it is a book that honestly, accurately and entertainingly provides a high-definition glimpse into the mind of the combat soldier.  Gripping stuff.

War by Sebastian Junger (Harper Collins) is available in bookstores now.

DEEPER THAN DEAD

Tami Hoag

Orion

IT’S 1985: A woman’s body is found, half-buried, in parkland by four 10-year-olds. The sleepy California town is shaken by the news that the murdered woman’s lips are glued shut; her eardrums pierced and her eyes blinded.

Continue reading “Reviews – Books: Deeper Than Dead by Tami Hoag” »

The Informant: A True Story
Kurt Eichenwald
Scribe

Review:  Suzan Ryan

FORGET the coy “A true story…based on a tattle tale” cover line, this book is 100 per cent documentary.  The Informant reveals, step-by-step, one of the greatest corporate anti-trust cases in American history, exposed by one of the most fascinating and despicable individuals you will ever read about.

When Dr Mark Whitacre contacted the FBI about international price-fixing at Archer Daniels Midland—one of the world’s most influential and politically connected companies—nobody knew (or cared) about lysine, citric acid or corn syrup, until they realised that these elements form the basis of the majority of food products available in the modern supermarket, hence the company’s trademark, ‘Supermarket to the World’.

But Whitacre had many secrets of his own, deluding himself into believing that his life mirrored that of Mitch McDeere—the lead character in John Grisham novel The Firm—leading the FBI on a wild-goose chase of false leads, fake kidnappings, embezzled funds and doctored tapes that almost derailed one of the largest and most important court cases of the modern era.

Australian Penthouse interviews author and journalist Jack Marx about his book Australian Tragic… a look at some dark stories in Australian history

By Kate Hutchinson

Continue reading “Jack of all Tragedies” »

Allen and Unwin and Australian Penthouse are offering 5 readers the chance to own a copy of copies of Inside Their Minds: Australian Criminals by Rochelle Jackson (RRP $29.95). Click on the link for the winners! Continue reading “WINNERS: Win an Aussie true crime book!” »

The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood
Joe Eszterhas
St Martin’s Press

Review:  Suzan Ryan

Outspoken, belligerent, insightful, indiscreet and undeniably talented, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas is the man behind some of Hollywood’s most expensive scripts and highest-grossing movies—such as Flashdance, Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct.

He is also a man with a quick temper and a low threshold for idiots; making him a poor fit with the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) vacuities of the people involved with Hollywood’s movie machine. Eszterhas is almost too eager to speak his mind, no matter the cost.

For the famed screenwriter, retaining ownership of your dignity in a town where weak character is king and integrity is an affect available for sale by-the-hour, is essential to not blowing out your brains at the end of the day.

The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood is a tell-all tome that is as much about keeping the faith as it is as about the art of scriptwriting (i.e. don’t let the bastards see you blink). It is wickedly humorous, painfully revealing, scathingly vituperative, and honest (despite the author’s clearly hurt feelings perpetually colouring his comments).

You don’t have to be interested in the art of screenwriting to fall in love with this book; possessing a modicum of integrity, a cynical sense of humour, and a distaste for the malignant narcissism of most people, is sufficient.

Allan & Barbara Pease have written 15 best-sellers, and sold more than 25 million copies of their many relationship books. Kate Hutchinson speaks to Allan Pease about infatuation, ‘high’ hormones, and the couple’s new book, Why Men Want Sex & Women Need Love… Continue reading “Interview: How To Find ‘The One’” »