Bookmarks: Jock Serong wins the Staunch Prize
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No violence, please, we’re Staunch
The Staunch prize was set up by screenwriter Bridget Lawless in Britain to award writers of crime fiction “in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”. It has its supporters – and its detractors. Scottish writer Val McDermid, for example, says she won’t stop writing about acts of violence against women until they no longer occur; she writes about them partly to draw attention to that very violence and misogyny. This week Australian novelist Jock Serong, best known perhaps for The Rules of Backyard Cricket, was the inaugural winner for his novel On Java Ridge, which has at its heart the horrors of Australia’s refugee policy. Serong said he was shovelling in breakfast cereal when he heard and “nearly fell off my chair”. His novel is not a conventional thriller. It grew out of an image Serong had in his mind of a woman surfing a coral reef – Serong’s an enthusiastic surfer and edited Great Ocean Quarterly during its brief but stylish life – and “I built outwards from there”. He wasn’t thinking particularly about gender when he wrote the book – it turned into a fierce critique of Australian policy and attitudes towards asylum seekers. Although he won a Ned Kelly award for his first novel, Quota, Serong doesn’t really consider himself a crime writer. His latest novel, Preservation, is historical fiction about the survivors of the wreck of the Sydney Cove in 1797 on the Preservation Isles just off Tasmania.
Jock Serong. Credit:Rob Gunstone
Dumping Tom Cruise
The biggest cheer for Lee Child during for his visits to Australia last week came when he talked about Tom Cruise. He was oh-so careful to say what a great guy Cruise was and how much he liked him. He pointed out that Cruise was an executive producer on the first two Reacher films and had decided to play the 6ft 5in tough guy himself. Of course Child fans – there are legions of them – were horrified the diminutive star didn’t match Reacher’s strapping physique, and when it was put to Child that he had dumped Cruise, the audience delivered a huge round of applause. Now Child wants his fans to suggest a big credible alternative – he could even be an unknown – for a series on the small screen.
Article source: http://smh.com.au/national/bali-volcano-anxious-wait-for-australians-amid-mount-agung-eruption-threat-20170925-gyok7q.html
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