Hello Darkness

by Sam de Brito

In Ned Jelli's family, journalism and siren-chasing in the news pit of Sydney is in the genes. And everyone knows, you can't escape your genes, or your family. At 39, Ned's life has come full circle and he finds himself back in the news empire where he started his career at 19. And for a lost boy like Ned, where 20 years have been spent eddying around the same small course of Bondi, babes, and booze, this is the final sign he's going nowhere fast.

Held back by his own fear and loathing, and searching for the perfect woman to fill the black hole where his heart should be, Ned continues the fatal and often fatally funny trajectory he began in The Lost Boys.

Set among the newsrooms of Sydney, Hello Darkness is a sharp, demonic expose of the world of journalism from an insider, exploring the cost of being less than you hoped you would, and wishing for what is beyond your reach.

308 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2011

Reviews

[Angus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t understand the hubbub over the purported misogynistic slant of this novel or its supposed fixation on sex and toilet functions. This territory has already been covered by many a famous author, from James Joyce to Charles Bukowski. In fact, Sam’s style reminds me a lot of the contemporary French novelist Michel Houellebecq whose horny male heroes and scathingly honest views on sex and the opposite sex make Ned look like a feminist new-wave wimp. The main difference between Michel Houellebecq and Sam de Brito is that Houellebecq is feted as a national icon in his country whereas Sam gets slapped with the label of dickhead-lit by dickhead critics. I must admit that ‘Hello Darkness’ is not a perfect novel and that the plot is a little on the paper-thin side, but I didn’t read it for that. I was actually curious to see what Sam had to say about life on the inside of a Murdoch newspaper(s). The Sunday Observer is obviously the Sunday Telegraph where Sam apparently worked before blogging for the Herald. He doesn’t disappoint. The depressingly humorous picture he paints of these journo haunts makes the rest of the novel all worth it, sexist remarks and all. Incidentally, while trawling the Internet for research material on Rupert Murdoch I happened to stumble across a novel just released on Amazon.com that appears to cover similar ground as ‘Hello Darkness’, albeit in a more mainstream style. It’s called ‘Suction’ by someone called Tony McGowan and takes place on a Sydney Murdoch newspaper during the tabloid wars of the late eighties. Waiting for it to be released on Kindle so I can compare the two novels.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

THe first half of this book almost made me want to put it down. Whereas the lost boys was flawed it gripped emotionally. The protagonist Ned Jelli in this is a man whose skin you feel uncomfortable in, then again so does he. Perhaps this is de Brito's greatest strength a real character full of self-loathing and disappointment.

The second half of the book gallops and entangles stopping rather than ending..much like life.

There is much to dislike but more to like in Hello Darkness.