Ellison, Ralph T. Invisible Man. New York Knopf Doubleday, 1995. (Paperback)

The narrator, unnamed, starts giving the impression that all his life to that time had been in the shadow of African American history, making him an “invisible man”. His grandfather told him to “overcome em with yeses,  undermine ‘em with grins, agree em to death and destruction.`     He tells Norton, a white philanthropist, about the incestuous “fieldnigger” family of the Truebloods. Norton has his own problems and they visit The Golden Day, a black brothel for war veterans, to normalise their behaviour. To his dismay, the narrator sees black doctors, teachers, lawyers and businessmen, the black bourgeoisie he aspires to. Further he is expelled from college.

He finds work in the optic paints factory, but is injured in an explosion. In hospital he Overhears talk that he is to be given a lobotomy and he discharges himself. Returning to Harlem he is asked to be the spokesman for a group being evicted from their homes. He is mythified as a stud by one of the white “sisters. Eventually he becomes disillusioned with the group, becoming something of a “Don Quixote” complete with “horse and shield”. Later he takes to wearing dark glasses and is mistaken for Bliss Proteus Rinehart, a numbers man, lover, clergyman and politician. At the end he burns his high school diploma and other letters of recommendation to “free’ himself. His final message – “who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you. Brother Jack, the leader of the Black Brotherhood appoints the narrator “the new Booker T. Washington” and the novel did in fact win The National Book Award. The humour and irony as well as its lyrical style make it one of the great books, commenting on life in the United States.It was first published in 1952.

Carey, Peter. Oscar & Lucinda. London: Faber & Faber, 2011.

Oscar Hopkins follows in his father’s footstep to read for the Anglican ministry    at Oxford University.While there IanWardley-Fish takes him to the racetrack Oscar devises an elaborate betting system and is able money to his mentor the impoverished Anglican minister Hugh Stratton.  Oscar becomes a school teacher, but to save himself from the vice of gambling joins a mission to Australia.

On   the     same  ship   is Lucinda, who  is  returning to 
Australia   after  studying  glass  manufacture.   Lucinda
  inherited a farm in Australia and bought a glass factory
 in Sydney. She ran it with the assistance of Dennis Hasset, who knows about glass,   and  Jimmy  d’Abbs  her  accountant. Lucinda  often visited d’Abbs house to gamble. On the ship Oscar and  Lucinda  spend  the night playing cards.  The next  time they  meet  is in Sydney, where there  association continues, with most  unexpected consequences.

This novel won the Booker Prize in 1988 and three literary prizes the next year. The novel shows the eccentricity and relative integrity of Oscar and Lucinda, who are isolated from so-called respectable society. It is a moving story with many unexpected twists and turns.

Jolley, Elizabeth. Cabin Fever. Scoresby, VIC.: Penguin, 2011,

Vera White is sitting on the 24^th floor of a hotel in New York waiting to present a paper to a conference on the “Perspectives of Moral Insanity”. Vera is a psychiatric nurse and appears to be suffering from some of the conditions being presented to the conference. Her mind flashes back to various significant events in her life. She remembers her parents, her friends at her first hospital, her first lover, and people she worked with while trying to raise her daughter. Her jobs included assisting in a home for new mothers, working in a boarding school and then working as a live-in housekeeper for a 58 year old professor. One comes to admire Vera’s courage, determination , naivety and humour.

The skill of the author in telling the story in fragments of recollection allows the reader to enhance the experience with their own speculation and recollection.  This book won the “Australian Literature Society Gold Medal”

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006.

John Steinbeck had an interest in incidences and history overall. He wrote “The Grapes of Wrath”  after collecting notes from migrant workers.  In fact he travelled from Oklahoma to California working and living alongside migrant workers. The book was published in 1939 and one of the great  films  made from it soon after. The novel caused anger amongst the establishment as it was seen as an expose on capitalist excesses or at least an attack on the “American dream”. 

In the story Tom Joad, Jr is released from prison in Oklahoma, where he was sent for killing a man in self-defence. His family is moving to California since their living  has been ruined by land banks, weather, and machine farming. Returning migrants tell the Joads conditions are even worse in California. However they continue their journey to the west coast. In California the remain ing family, the grandparents died on the journey, go to a Hooterville, i.e. a camp for migrants. When they ask to see a work contractor’s licence he calls the police. Tom is involved in a fight and has to escape. The family eventually find work on a farm by breaking a picket line. Tom is again in trouble, and has to leave. He says he will help oppressed workers elsewhere. The family move on and the novel describes how the people, without money manage to survive.

The book is moving , thought-provoking and written in lyrical style. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is Steinbeck’s most famous novel. However at almost 500 pages it is only for avid readers.

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. Drop City. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. (Paperback)

T. Coraghessan Boyle often presents the idea that civilisation is a primitive struggle of survival of the fittest. However in Drop City Boyles writing is satirical and also comical as characters resist acknowledging their ineptitude. Drop City is a commune on a ranch in Sonoma County, California in the 1960’s.  Norm Sender espouses “Voluntary Primitivism”. Star comes from another commune and tells how life lit her up day and night.  In fact there are few to look after the ranch and drug and alcohol abuse are widespread. Drop City is a haven for the self-interested. Star’s boyfriend supports free sex at the moment he chooses and looks for exotic meals cooked by others.

Drop City is juxtaposed  with the lifestyle of  Sess  Harder, a trapper in Alaska , who grows his own crops and keeps stores for winter. Sess is wooing Pamela McCoon, an Anchorage native, who is culling the locals to find the fittest “survivor”. Norm is facing eviction in California and so moves to land owned by his uncle in Alaska, where Sess has settled. Some of the commune move with Norm. In fact the goals of all participants is to live a life in harmony with nature. Boyle depicts idealists  with their heads in the clouds. However there is gentler comedy here than Boyle’s usual satire.

Hesse, Hermann.  Steppenwolf. London: Penguin. 2011

Steppenwolf is one of Hermann Hesse’s most famous novels. It is close to his real life apart from the surrealism. The hallucinations are probably a good way of describing his thoughts, since he had been visiting psychiatrists for years. One might even say his own life was even more  extreme than the story in the novel, and the story is toned down for public acceptance. Even then, the novel caused an uproar in his country for asking questions about normal bourgeois existence. However in 1946 Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

When Harry Haller disappears from his  apartment, the landlord’s nephew finds a manuscript telling about a Steppenwolf. This is Hallers story. After being chased out of his house by his mad wife, and not able to do his profession, Haller sees himself as a steppenwolf, half a man living up to bourgeois expectations and half a wolf from the steps, following his basic instincts and desires. When rambling around the city at night Haller buys a “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” from a hawker. Haller realises he is made up of many selves.

After visiting a Professor and his wife, representing the bourgeois, Haller is feeling depressed and visits the Black Eagle Tavern, as his wolf self. He meets a young woman named Hermine, who makes gentle fun of his preoccupation with Motzart and Indian myths,and the fact he cannot even dance. He meets her again for dinner, and she tells him she will make him love her enough to kill her, since she is not happy with her life. Since Haller had contemplated suicide he did not find this strange. Hermine teaches him to dance then introduces    Haller to the most beautiful girl in the club. The story continues becoming more hallucinatory towards the end.

Coelho, Paulo. The Alchemist. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. (Paperback)

In  Andalusa,  Spain, a shepherd boy sleeps in an   abandoned church with a sycamore tree growing inside. He continues his journey to sell his wool but  stops in Tarifa  to  ask a fortune teller about a recurring dream. A child transports him to the pyramids where he says there is hidden treasure. The fortune teller tells him to follow his dreams.

After many adventures including meeting an alchemist who gives him gold to return to Spain, he realises his fortune was in Spain all the time. This is a fable with several messages. The   writing   style   lyrical,    and  the  novel  provokes   is

 thoughtfulness   and  reflection. Santiago  has  become   a  modern classic, and the author is one of the most widely read in South America. It is a story for teenagers as well as adults.