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Some Tests
It begins with the normally healthy Beth—aged-care worker, wife of David, mother of Lettie and em—feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. ‘There are a few things here that aren’t quite right,’ says Dr Yi, ‘and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter.’ Beth is sent on to Dr Twoomey for more tests. Then to another specialist, and another…Referral after referral sees her bumped from suburb to suburb, bewildered, joining busloads of people all clutching white envelopes and hoping for answers. But what is actually wrong with Beth—is anything, in fact, wrong with her? And what strange forces are at work in the system? As the novel reaches its stunning climax, we realise how strange these forces are. Unnerving and brilliant, Some Tests is about waking up one morning and finding your ordinary life changed forever. Wayne Macauley is the author of the acclaimed novels Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe , Caravan Story, The Cook and Demons . The Cook was shortlisted for a Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. ‘Macauley has published some of the most memorable fiction going in this country. His books and stories are satirical fables in which the properties are recognisably contemporary and Australian…His narratives [can] take off into the bizarre without ever losing their cool.’ The Age ‘A darkly surreal tale of how illness of any kind turns a person’s world inside out—and a philosophical lament at the alienating effects of modern medical systems. This is Macauley at his brilliant, poetic best, using the fable form to broadcast an existential wake-up call to his readers, asking us to reconsider how we live and die—but at the same time, as the best art does, reminding us that we do not suffer alone.’ Ceridwen Dovey ‘ Some Tests is a completely unique offering among the recent spate of books about illness, death and Western medicine. With eerie touches of strangeness that quickly progress to the surreal, Macauley turns the mundane consultation into utterly compelling reading. You will never see a waiting room the same way.’ Readings ‘Despite its subject matter, humour and warmth are woven into the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life.’ Otago Daily Times ‘The novel raises timely and important questions.’ SA Weekend ‘Unnerving and brilliant.’ Outthere ‘Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much.’ ANZ Lit Lovers ‘In his new novel, Some Tests …There is an anger here transformed into bemusement, which in turn finds a darker, more surreal form…Though Macauley’s allegorical prowess remains undimmed, this is perhaps the most straightforward and direct book he’s written…[A] compelling style…The shock of the familiar, vividly portrayed.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘Wayne Macauley’s eclectic new novel, Some Tests , tackles the topic of death in a surreal way.’ Guardian ‘For something that’s built on such a high concept idea, Macauley manages to bring a lot of tension out of the narrative. Its clear goals and problems are refreshing, the prose itself clear and unadorned—Macauley has a gift for rendering tedium in a very readable fashion.’ Kill Your Darlings ‘If there’s a test really worth taking, a choice really worth making, it’s to read Some Tests , and all of Macauley’s writing, and see where you end up.’ Australian
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 29, 2017
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90 people want to read
About the author
Wayne Macauley
12 books16 followersWayne Macauley is the author of the highly acclaimed novels: Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and, most recently, The Cook, which was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. His new book Demons will be available in August 2014. He lives in Melbourne.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 25, 2017
Some Tests is the fifth novel by Australian author, Wayne Macauley. At thirty-seven, Beth Own is happily married mother of two young daughters. She has a nice house on Blossom Street in Heatherdale and works in aged care. On Monday afternoon, Beth is feeling a little off colour, feeling something is not quite right, so she leaves work early.
David takes care of Lettie and Gem and, when Beth feels no better the following morning, and unable to get an appointment with their usual GP, organises a locum to visit. After his examination, the locum tells Beth she needs to go for some tests. At first Beth wonders if staying in bed for a day would have proved sufficient to restore her usual vigour, but in her “not quite right” state, finds herself deferring to those who obviously know what is best for her health.
Beth embarks on a trek through the bewildering world of medical tests, one of seemingly a parade of patients all needing some tests, all subject to the dizzying effect of the rarefied atmosphere encountered at the consulting rooms of medical specialists. Beth’s continued acceptance is reminiscent of Stockholm Syndrome, and for anyone who has encountered the mystique of this realm, with its jargon, its inadequacy of explanation, its feeling of loss of control, this will strike a chord.
Macauley populates his tale with believable characters (although you may want to give Beth a good shake and tell her to get a grip, until you remember her judgement is probably off because she’s a bit unwell), and, ghosts and a slightly bizarre ending notwithstanding, he certainly gets the reader thinking about where to draw the line with those tests, and how well- or ill-equipped we might be to determine that. Ceridwen Dovey says this novel is “darkly surreal” and there is no description more succinct or more wholly apt. Thought-provoking.
David takes care of Lettie and Gem and, when Beth feels no better the following morning, and unable to get an appointment with their usual GP, organises a locum to visit. After his examination, the locum tells Beth she needs to go for some tests. At first Beth wonders if staying in bed for a day would have proved sufficient to restore her usual vigour, but in her “not quite right” state, finds herself deferring to those who obviously know what is best for her health.
Beth embarks on a trek through the bewildering world of medical tests, one of seemingly a parade of patients all needing some tests, all subject to the dizzying effect of the rarefied atmosphere encountered at the consulting rooms of medical specialists. Beth’s continued acceptance is reminiscent of Stockholm Syndrome, and for anyone who has encountered the mystique of this realm, with its jargon, its inadequacy of explanation, its feeling of loss of control, this will strike a chord.
Macauley populates his tale with believable characters (although you may want to give Beth a good shake and tell her to get a grip, until you remember her judgement is probably off because she’s a bit unwell), and, ghosts and a slightly bizarre ending notwithstanding, he certainly gets the reader thinking about where to draw the line with those tests, and how well- or ill-equipped we might be to determine that. Ceridwen Dovey says this novel is “darkly surreal” and there is no description more succinct or more wholly apt. Thought-provoking.
December 5, 2017
‘Macauley has published some of the most memorable fiction going in this country. His books and stories are satirical fables in which the properties are recognisably contemporary and Australian…His narratives [can] take off into the bizarre without ever losing their cool.’
Age
‘Some Tests is a completely unique offering among the recent spate of books about illness, death and Western medicine. With eerie touches of strangeness that quickly progress to the surreal, Macauley turns the mundane consultation into utterly compelling reading. You will never see a waiting room the same way.’
Readings
‘Wayne Macauley is an Australian original. He writes in a tradition of dystopian satire – associated most famously with George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – but in a stripped-back and absurdist style. His work is a mixture of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee (in allegorical mode), though Macauley’s fictional worlds are always set in Melbourne or greater Victoria. The meaning or relevance of his dystopian satires are to be found locally too, in our country’s follies.’
Saturday Paper
‘Despite its subject matter, humour and warmth are woven into the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life.’
Otago Daily Times
‘The novel raises timely and important questions.’
SA Weekend
‘Unnerving and brilliant.’
Outthere
‘Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much.’
ANZ Lit Lovers
‘To write fiction about sickness and its attendant uncertainty is to risk many dire traps: didacticism, speechifying, the needlessly graphic. In his new novel, Some Tests, Wayne Macauley has deftly avoided every one…There is an anger here transformed into bemusement, which in turn finds a darker, more surreal form…Though Macauley’s allegorical prowess remains undimmed, this is perhaps the most straightforward and direct book he’s written…[A] compelling style…The shock of the familiar, vividly portrayed.’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘Wayne Macauley’s eclectic new novel, Some Tests, tackles the topic of death in a surreal way.’
Guardian
‘For something that’s built on such a high concept idea, Macauley manages to bring a lot of tension out of the narrative. Its clear goals and problems are refreshing, the prose itself clear and unadorned—Macauley has a gift for rendering tedium in a very readable fashion.’
Kill Your Darlings
‘If there’s a test really worth taking, a choice really worth making, it’s to read Some Tests, and all of Macauley’s writing, and see where you end up.’
Australian
‘Some Tests is neither a didactic nor an angry book. It’s actually very funny…[It] is ultimately a strange novel, amusing and very often frightening. And also, potentially, instructive.’
Sydney Review of Books
‘A subtle and quietly moving novel about illness and death. Macauley’s stylised and artfully paced narrative, which gradually takes on a dreamlike quality, is a fine example of his ability to evoke the inchoate sense of dissatisfaction and existential disquiet that lurks beneath the surface of contemporary life.’
James Ley, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
‘A cut black gem of a book: beautiful, compact, and sinister.’
Andrew Fuhrmann, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
Age
‘Some Tests is a completely unique offering among the recent spate of books about illness, death and Western medicine. With eerie touches of strangeness that quickly progress to the surreal, Macauley turns the mundane consultation into utterly compelling reading. You will never see a waiting room the same way.’
Readings
‘Wayne Macauley is an Australian original. He writes in a tradition of dystopian satire – associated most famously with George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – but in a stripped-back and absurdist style. His work is a mixture of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and J. M. Coetzee (in allegorical mode), though Macauley’s fictional worlds are always set in Melbourne or greater Victoria. The meaning or relevance of his dystopian satires are to be found locally too, in our country’s follies.’
Saturday Paper
‘Despite its subject matter, humour and warmth are woven into the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life.’
Otago Daily Times
‘The novel raises timely and important questions.’
SA Weekend
‘Unnerving and brilliant.’
Outthere
‘Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much.’
ANZ Lit Lovers
‘To write fiction about sickness and its attendant uncertainty is to risk many dire traps: didacticism, speechifying, the needlessly graphic. In his new novel, Some Tests, Wayne Macauley has deftly avoided every one…There is an anger here transformed into bemusement, which in turn finds a darker, more surreal form…Though Macauley’s allegorical prowess remains undimmed, this is perhaps the most straightforward and direct book he’s written…[A] compelling style…The shock of the familiar, vividly portrayed.’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘Wayne Macauley’s eclectic new novel, Some Tests, tackles the topic of death in a surreal way.’
Guardian
‘For something that’s built on such a high concept idea, Macauley manages to bring a lot of tension out of the narrative. Its clear goals and problems are refreshing, the prose itself clear and unadorned—Macauley has a gift for rendering tedium in a very readable fashion.’
Kill Your Darlings
‘If there’s a test really worth taking, a choice really worth making, it’s to read Some Tests, and all of Macauley’s writing, and see where you end up.’
Australian
‘Some Tests is neither a didactic nor an angry book. It’s actually very funny…[It] is ultimately a strange novel, amusing and very often frightening. And also, potentially, instructive.’
Sydney Review of Books
‘A subtle and quietly moving novel about illness and death. Macauley’s stylised and artfully paced narrative, which gradually takes on a dreamlike quality, is a fine example of his ability to evoke the inchoate sense of dissatisfaction and existential disquiet that lurks beneath the surface of contemporary life.’
James Ley, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
‘A cut black gem of a book: beautiful, compact, and sinister.’
Andrew Fuhrmann, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review
December 27, 2017
Not my cup of tea - journey without an end, problem without a solution, unlikable protagonist.
June 7, 2017
I love Wayne Macauley's fiction. His books are always full of ideas and questions. And he never explores or answers them how you expect him to. Beth is feeling 'a bit off' and is quickly referred from doctor to doctor for some tests. Through Beth, Macauley takes a scalpel to medical advancements and the seemingly endless cycle of tests and diagnoses available. After all, 'the more faults we look for, the more we find.' His critique of the medical and pharmaceutical industries is timely and subtle. Expect some disorientation as Beth attempts to understand the new world she finds herself in. The ending is unexpected and perfect.
April 23, 2019
A few years ago, I decided to get to the bottom of my frequent migraine headaches. It was the beginning of an eight month process of tests (mostly 'ruling things out'), visits to four doctors, and various medications and procedures. My experience ended with an iron infusion which ultimately made all the difference to my migraines, however, there were moments on this medical merry-go-round when I thought I was wasting my time and money.
Wayne Macauley captures this exact situation in his strange novel, Some Tests .
It begins with the normally healthy Beth - aged-care worker, wife to a man with house renovation plans, mother of two young girls - who wakes one morning feeling a little 'off-colour'. Her husband calls the locum, who in turn sends her off to the slightly odd Dr Yi for some tests.
And so unfolds Beth's absurd journey to six doctors and a pharmacist, as she's shunted around suburban Melbourne from Box Hill to Heidelberg, Epping to Gladstone Park and so on.
While the story began as something quite ordinary - a contemporary lit novel - I quickly realised that it was something else entirely (Dystopian? Satire?). I am loath to reveal more about the plot because the most interesting aspect of this book is the slow unfolding of meaning for the reader, as Beth faces the difficulties of listening to her instincts, in light of 'expert' advice.
Did I enjoy this book? Not particularly - it went in a completely different direction (genre) to what I had anticipated. That said, it provides lots to think about in terms of death and dying; our need for a diagnosis; and the power of medicine and the role of medical practitioners. My thoughts turned to the upcoming Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation in Victoria. Without debating the legislation, it does force us to consider the value of death and what a 'good death' might look like.
2.5/5 Plenty to discuss for book groups.
Wayne Macauley captures this exact situation in his strange novel, Some Tests .
It begins with the normally healthy Beth - aged-care worker, wife to a man with house renovation plans, mother of two young girls - who wakes one morning feeling a little 'off-colour'. Her husband calls the locum, who in turn sends her off to the slightly odd Dr Yi for some tests.
‘There are a few things here that aren’t quite right,’ says Dr Yi, ‘and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that can lead us to the bigger wrongs that matter.’
And so unfolds Beth's absurd journey to six doctors and a pharmacist, as she's shunted around suburban Melbourne from Box Hill to Heidelberg, Epping to Gladstone Park and so on.
What looks wrong now in this test may turn out later to be nothing wrong at all. That happens. But we have to be sure. You understand. Medicine is often about seeking assurance, for the patient and the practitioner. What one net doesn't catch, another will: we're always tightening our nets.
While the story began as something quite ordinary - a contemporary lit novel - I quickly realised that it was something else entirely (Dystopian? Satire?). I am loath to reveal more about the plot because the most interesting aspect of this book is the slow unfolding of meaning for the reader, as Beth faces the difficulties of listening to her instincts, in light of 'expert' advice.
You will need scripts too, she said. I'm not lying when I say your overall picture is a little worrying. Have you spoken to your loved ones? But first I'll give you a letter for Fatima at CommPharm, then one for Dr Panchal. I could send you to Fiedler but I think straight to Panchal is best.
Did I enjoy this book? Not particularly - it went in a completely different direction (genre) to what I had anticipated. That said, it provides lots to think about in terms of death and dying; our need for a diagnosis; and the power of medicine and the role of medical practitioners. My thoughts turned to the upcoming Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation in Victoria. Without debating the legislation, it does force us to consider the value of death and what a 'good death' might look like.
It runs on disenchantment, that's the fuel - disenchantment with all those systems and institutions that people have blindly followed to now. If you can take back control of Death, Beth, you can take back anything, really.
2.5/5 Plenty to discuss for book groups.
June 22, 2017
Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much. I’ve read Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe (2004, satirising our obsession with home ownership); The Cook (2011, it parodies foodies); Demons (2014, which exposes the inane narcissism of middle-class Melbourne ); and I have Caravan Story (2007) somewhere on the TBR. (Links are to my reviews). Macauley’s latest target, in Some Tests, is the medicalization of normal life…
Beth is a nice, ordinary woman with a husband and a couple of kids, living in an ordinary Melbourne suburb. She works in aged care, and David, her husband is an accountant. They are muddling through life as most people do, planning a renovation that they can’t really afford, occasionally worrying about infidelity without apparent cause, and coping with the vagaries of parenthood. Until one day when Beth wakes up not feeling very well, and David calls in a locum because their usual doctor isn’t available.
The locum’s diagnosis is a bit vague, but Beth is feeling seedy so she agrees to go for some tests. And from this innocuous beginning, she finds herself on a merry-go-round of doctors and specialists and referrals, with a patient file that grows ever larger but never records a diagnosis.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/23/s...
Beth is a nice, ordinary woman with a husband and a couple of kids, living in an ordinary Melbourne suburb. She works in aged care, and David, her husband is an accountant. They are muddling through life as most people do, planning a renovation that they can’t really afford, occasionally worrying about infidelity without apparent cause, and coping with the vagaries of parenthood. Until one day when Beth wakes up not feeling very well, and David calls in a locum because their usual doctor isn’t available.
The locum’s diagnosis is a bit vague, but Beth is feeling seedy so she agrees to go for some tests. And from this innocuous beginning, she finds herself on a merry-go-round of doctors and specialists and referrals, with a patient file that grows ever larger but never records a diagnosis.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/23/s...
July 20, 2018
2.5 probably. I've loved some of Macauley's older books, so I was surprised how much of a chore I found this. It's surreal and unsettling, as you'd expect, but the main character didn't connect with me at all, and the writing was so unadorned as to be a bit dull. Having sat on this for a day or so I'm getting more out of the book - he's tackling big topics like death, illness, and how to approach them - but I didn't enjoy the actual process of reading it all that much.
July 22, 2017
Well, by the time I was half way through this book I felt thoroughly creeped out. Elements of it are uncomfortably close to reality for many people (like being passed from one practitioner to another without understanding why). Towards the end it became evident what was really going on - and I'm not going to spoil the story for you. If you enjoy dystopian stories you'll likely enjoy this book.
June 2, 2017
Beth Own (not Owen, as I read it for about two-thirds of the book!) wakes up one morning not feeling particularly well, and decides to stay in bed. Her husband calls in a locum doctor who sends her off for some tests. And the next doctor sends her off for more tests, and so it goes. Until she discovers that she’s been pulled off the grid, as it were, and is being cared for (and tested) by a kind of underground medical movement which treats its patients as individuals and not as numbers.
For the first fifty pages or so, the book seems to be taking Beth from one set of tests to another, with no relief for the character or the reader. But gradually we realise the book is a kind of allegory about health systems, and our views on death. On the surface the book seems to be a straightforward story, but increasingly we become aware of a quiet fantastical element.
In spite of its subject matter, humour and warmth underlie the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life. For me the ending didn’t quite match the rest of the book, but perhaps others may see its meaning(s) more clearly.
For the first fifty pages or so, the book seems to be taking Beth from one set of tests to another, with no relief for the character or the reader. But gradually we realise the book is a kind of allegory about health systems, and our views on death. On the surface the book seems to be a straightforward story, but increasingly we become aware of a quiet fantastical element.
In spite of its subject matter, humour and warmth underlie the deceptively uncomplicated writing. There’s a large range of characters, but Macauley gives each of the important ones definition and life. For me the ending didn’t quite match the rest of the book, but perhaps others may see its meaning(s) more clearly.
July 1, 2017
This another unusual book. A woman feels a little unwell - her husband gets a doctor in. She is to have some tests. It doesn't take very long for the reader to think that, like the woman's health, 'there's something not quite right'. At first, like Beth, I fought a bit, wondered where it was going, but then the writing became mesmerising, soporific without sending me to sleep. I followed her up hill and down dale, meeting so many people , moving through so many places. The author says he was influenced a bit by Kafka but I found his work just the opposite of that faceless, nameless style of writing. I loved my little trip on buses, all numbered, around many suburbs of Melbourne, then into country Victoria. There's a radiance to this world, it's full of warmth and kindness, Beth is showered with it. There is a lot to absorb about living, a little bit about dying too. I liked it a lot.
September 26, 2017
Anyone who has been for “some tests” might feel an immediate connection with this novel. One of the best elements in it is the detailed descriptions of the waiting rooms in doctor's surgeries, each a little different but the same (I could write at length here about my arguments with receptionists about the tyranny of daytime TV in these locations but it is a distraction from the novel).
The feelings of waiting, of uncertainty and powerlessness are really effectively evoked though the experiences of Beth, the main character, who feels a bit crappy and decides to go home sick. “…in an act of delicious indulgence – “in the quiet of the afternoon she drew the bedroom curtains and slid under the covers”. She lets her husband collect their daughters from school and do the evening chores. After her family is asleep, she creeps out of bed and takes a glass of wine outside. “She wasn’t that sick”, she admits, and yet reflecting on the cycle of life and observing the night sky, she begins to feel a mortal anxiety. It’s funny, she thought, when you stop to think. There was a little clock inside ticking. She looked up at the moon. There were dark spots on it. My god, she thought, you’ve come to take me. It was a thought so clear and yet so preposterous that she had to look around quickly to make sure no one had heard. The moon has come to take me away.” (https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2...)
If her husband had not called in a locum doctor to her bedside the next morning, there would be no novel. But he does and the doctor sends her for some tests; a riff that is repeated and repeated as Beth is sent further into the strangeness of Melbourne’s outer suburbs visiting doctor after doctor. The metaphor is there of course; as you seek to understand what is wrong with your body, the terrain seems more and more untravelled and out of control, but it’s not delivered in any heavy handed way.
In fact, a couple of things make it work. The reader is forced to travel with Beth in a kind of hypnotic fugue. While exasperated by her passivity, I was also caught up in the surreal nature of what she was experiencing. As one reviewer says: “I don’t think it’s an accident that Beth’s tests press ever outwards from her nice suburban home towards places like this: places that are the opposite of milestones. Her tests drag her through suburbs she’s never visited, and then onto the arterial roads she might not have ever registered, and then through the dull green and flat plains that buffer the greater city. Her tests occur in faceless bungalows, ugly roadside squat brick buildings, repurposed factory outlets, in all the places easily ignored, places not rewarded with the status of a destination. She takes bus routes known only by their cryptic numbers. She courses through the veins of a system, a giant one, a terrible one, one no one really understands.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/some-...) If you want to get a sense of the locations of these surgeries and medical locations, you can google Dream Haven Court Epping as just one example.
The second thing that makes the novel work is the ambiguity of the experiences that Beth has. As she seemingly sleepwalks from appointment to appointment, she is treated with increasing levels of kindness from strangers. She is increasingly distanced from her domestic life by choice; she throws away her mobile phone (the horror!) and rejects reconnection with her husband and children. But she is able to put herself in the hands of strangers and they treat her quite well.
This novel could be said to be about a lot of things: about death, about the nature of happiness, about powerlessness. It might be about “advances in medical technology that create a gruelling cycle of increased testing, increased diagnoses, increased treatment, increased false hope and then further testing. He queries the point at which we should accept death, and how that should be done. There’s the politics of the patient–doctor relationship, the socioeconomic inequalities of the health system, and how illness can sometimes be a haven in which we hide from our lives. This conceptual cacophony beautifully mirrors the disorienting journey we face when confronted by the unsettling nature of illness, the logistics and politics of the health system, or death itself.” (https://www.readings.com.au/review/so...)
One reviewer talks about unhappiness: “Beth’s unhappiness is borne of want, yes, but not an extravagant kind – not the consumerist, aspirational kind often lambasted in modern novels. Beth’s life is like the edgelands she travels, a stretch between one milestone and the next, an expanse that is neither defined by its remoteness nor its closeness, by its happiness or unhappiness. Her life is thoroughly in-between. Her life is neither a noble struggle nor an orgy of excess. It’s just a keeping on, keeping on. Most of us live like this.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/some-...)
Another says: “All of Macauley’s critically underappreciated novels are often and largely about the battle of a single individual against the absolute impossibility of trying to take control of life. In Some Tests we are continually reminded that the modern world of endless choice is one giant illusion. Embracing these seeming choices, seeing them as a kind of salvation, is in fact just climbing into moment-to-moment imprisonment, making it easier for the jailer — that is, yourself.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...)
It’s not an enjoyable read so much as it’s intriguing, annoying and thought-provoking.
The feelings of waiting, of uncertainty and powerlessness are really effectively evoked though the experiences of Beth, the main character, who feels a bit crappy and decides to go home sick. “…in an act of delicious indulgence – “in the quiet of the afternoon she drew the bedroom curtains and slid under the covers”. She lets her husband collect their daughters from school and do the evening chores. After her family is asleep, she creeps out of bed and takes a glass of wine outside. “She wasn’t that sick”, she admits, and yet reflecting on the cycle of life and observing the night sky, she begins to feel a mortal anxiety. It’s funny, she thought, when you stop to think. There was a little clock inside ticking. She looked up at the moon. There were dark spots on it. My god, she thought, you’ve come to take me. It was a thought so clear and yet so preposterous that she had to look around quickly to make sure no one had heard. The moon has come to take me away.” (https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2...)
If her husband had not called in a locum doctor to her bedside the next morning, there would be no novel. But he does and the doctor sends her for some tests; a riff that is repeated and repeated as Beth is sent further into the strangeness of Melbourne’s outer suburbs visiting doctor after doctor. The metaphor is there of course; as you seek to understand what is wrong with your body, the terrain seems more and more untravelled and out of control, but it’s not delivered in any heavy handed way.
In fact, a couple of things make it work. The reader is forced to travel with Beth in a kind of hypnotic fugue. While exasperated by her passivity, I was also caught up in the surreal nature of what she was experiencing. As one reviewer says: “I don’t think it’s an accident that Beth’s tests press ever outwards from her nice suburban home towards places like this: places that are the opposite of milestones. Her tests drag her through suburbs she’s never visited, and then onto the arterial roads she might not have ever registered, and then through the dull green and flat plains that buffer the greater city. Her tests occur in faceless bungalows, ugly roadside squat brick buildings, repurposed factory outlets, in all the places easily ignored, places not rewarded with the status of a destination. She takes bus routes known only by their cryptic numbers. She courses through the veins of a system, a giant one, a terrible one, one no one really understands.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/some-...) If you want to get a sense of the locations of these surgeries and medical locations, you can google Dream Haven Court Epping as just one example.
The second thing that makes the novel work is the ambiguity of the experiences that Beth has. As she seemingly sleepwalks from appointment to appointment, she is treated with increasing levels of kindness from strangers. She is increasingly distanced from her domestic life by choice; she throws away her mobile phone (the horror!) and rejects reconnection with her husband and children. But she is able to put herself in the hands of strangers and they treat her quite well.
This novel could be said to be about a lot of things: about death, about the nature of happiness, about powerlessness. It might be about “advances in medical technology that create a gruelling cycle of increased testing, increased diagnoses, increased treatment, increased false hope and then further testing. He queries the point at which we should accept death, and how that should be done. There’s the politics of the patient–doctor relationship, the socioeconomic inequalities of the health system, and how illness can sometimes be a haven in which we hide from our lives. This conceptual cacophony beautifully mirrors the disorienting journey we face when confronted by the unsettling nature of illness, the logistics and politics of the health system, or death itself.” (https://www.readings.com.au/review/so...)
One reviewer talks about unhappiness: “Beth’s unhappiness is borne of want, yes, but not an extravagant kind – not the consumerist, aspirational kind often lambasted in modern novels. Beth’s life is like the edgelands she travels, a stretch between one milestone and the next, an expanse that is neither defined by its remoteness nor its closeness, by its happiness or unhappiness. Her life is thoroughly in-between. Her life is neither a noble struggle nor an orgy of excess. It’s just a keeping on, keeping on. Most of us live like this.” (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/some-...)
Another says: “All of Macauley’s critically underappreciated novels are often and largely about the battle of a single individual against the absolute impossibility of trying to take control of life. In Some Tests we are continually reminded that the modern world of endless choice is one giant illusion. Embracing these seeming choices, seeing them as a kind of salvation, is in fact just climbing into moment-to-moment imprisonment, making it easier for the jailer — that is, yourself.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...)
It’s not an enjoyable read so much as it’s intriguing, annoying and thought-provoking.
November 3, 2017
Wayne Macauley is one of Australia’s greatest ironists. He writes from within the great bubble of Australian society in order to reveal the soapiness of that bubble. Some Tests is Macauleyan irony in its purest form, and the soapiness is everywhere.
Some Tests is also Macauley’s most Kafkaesque work, a comparison which Macauley himself could not complain of, for Kafka runs thick through all his work since his adaptation of “The Hunger Artist” in the early 80s.
Some Tests is in fact a kind of mirroring of Kafka’s The Trial. His heroine, Beth Own, a nemesis of Joseph K.: Macauley changes the sex of the protagonist; the personality is inverted; K. is arrogant and pseudo-cynical, but Beth is polite and complacent; where K. struggles to resolve the procedure against him, Beth Own has a passive, existential acceptance of what is going forward. But the most disturbing thing (for Australians) about this comparison, is that Macauley makes his Kafkaesque style work just as well in the Melbourne suburbs as it does in Kafka’s Prague; and it makes just as much sense in 2017 as it did in 1915.
But how can that be? What similarities can there possibly be between Melbourne in 2017 and Prague in 1915?
Of course, the central theme – death – is universal. It is not an Australian question but the human condition that is under scrutiny here. Some Tests brings the death theme that is in The Trial right into the foreground. Kafka’s universe is grey whereas Some Tests is full of pastel-toned primary colours. There is always an arrogant tension in The Trial where everything seems utterly incomprehensible, and everyone appears hell-bent on making everything more difficult and complicated than it should be, but Some Tests is tuned with the sweetest, polite people, full of understanding and always helpful. Yes, things are moving in an illogical manner, and things do seem more complicated than it should be, but the Australian bubble is a very soapy place with as many illogical trials as Kafka’s universe, and that is what Macauley’s irony reveals.
Yet perhaps the greatest unifying element between The Trial and Some Tests, is the ubiquitous nihilism that permeates both suburban Melbourne and bureaucratic Prague. Both K. and Beth are looking for an explanation and both Kafka and Macauley know that such an explanation is impossible in a system that is deeply nihilistic.
Macauley is also focussing on society within the biopolitical world, as Foucault called it, in which the State controls not only our social life but takes possession of our control over our physical bodies as well. Of course, biopolitics wasn’t invented by Foucault, he just put a term to the phenomenon, and Kafka’s society suffered from the same malaise on different levels, but the idea of biopolitics is probably more unsettling in the so-called democratic world and the perfect societies like Melbourne’s suburbia.
In the sense of perfection, Some Tests turns Melbourne into a new set for Huxley’s Brave New World. Australia is the lucky country, think Australians, but there is something existentially wrong in the Utopia they live in. So wrong that the Utopia is really a Dystopia. The suburbs of Some Tests sits at Fukuyama’s The End of History and Beth Own is a personification of Nietzsche’s Last Men. Beth’s world is a polite and nice place to be in, but nothing else. Struggle is not really struggle anymore, for there is no authentic purpose behind the struggle, and that creates an existential vacuum that turns the paradise into a purgatory. Beth Own has a lovely family, but that is not enough. She is really biding her time until death comes. She might as well get it over and done with as quickly as possible. Within the nihilistic scenario, we have to think of Beth Own as happy with her fate.
Some Tests is also Macauley’s most Kafkaesque work, a comparison which Macauley himself could not complain of, for Kafka runs thick through all his work since his adaptation of “The Hunger Artist” in the early 80s.
Some Tests is in fact a kind of mirroring of Kafka’s The Trial. His heroine, Beth Own, a nemesis of Joseph K.: Macauley changes the sex of the protagonist; the personality is inverted; K. is arrogant and pseudo-cynical, but Beth is polite and complacent; where K. struggles to resolve the procedure against him, Beth Own has a passive, existential acceptance of what is going forward. But the most disturbing thing (for Australians) about this comparison, is that Macauley makes his Kafkaesque style work just as well in the Melbourne suburbs as it does in Kafka’s Prague; and it makes just as much sense in 2017 as it did in 1915.
But how can that be? What similarities can there possibly be between Melbourne in 2017 and Prague in 1915?
Of course, the central theme – death – is universal. It is not an Australian question but the human condition that is under scrutiny here. Some Tests brings the death theme that is in The Trial right into the foreground. Kafka’s universe is grey whereas Some Tests is full of pastel-toned primary colours. There is always an arrogant tension in The Trial where everything seems utterly incomprehensible, and everyone appears hell-bent on making everything more difficult and complicated than it should be, but Some Tests is tuned with the sweetest, polite people, full of understanding and always helpful. Yes, things are moving in an illogical manner, and things do seem more complicated than it should be, but the Australian bubble is a very soapy place with as many illogical trials as Kafka’s universe, and that is what Macauley’s irony reveals.
Yet perhaps the greatest unifying element between The Trial and Some Tests, is the ubiquitous nihilism that permeates both suburban Melbourne and bureaucratic Prague. Both K. and Beth are looking for an explanation and both Kafka and Macauley know that such an explanation is impossible in a system that is deeply nihilistic.
Macauley is also focussing on society within the biopolitical world, as Foucault called it, in which the State controls not only our social life but takes possession of our control over our physical bodies as well. Of course, biopolitics wasn’t invented by Foucault, he just put a term to the phenomenon, and Kafka’s society suffered from the same malaise on different levels, but the idea of biopolitics is probably more unsettling in the so-called democratic world and the perfect societies like Melbourne’s suburbia.
In the sense of perfection, Some Tests turns Melbourne into a new set for Huxley’s Brave New World. Australia is the lucky country, think Australians, but there is something existentially wrong in the Utopia they live in. So wrong that the Utopia is really a Dystopia. The suburbs of Some Tests sits at Fukuyama’s The End of History and Beth Own is a personification of Nietzsche’s Last Men. Beth’s world is a polite and nice place to be in, but nothing else. Struggle is not really struggle anymore, for there is no authentic purpose behind the struggle, and that creates an existential vacuum that turns the paradise into a purgatory. Beth Own has a lovely family, but that is not enough. She is really biding her time until death comes. She might as well get it over and done with as quickly as possible. Within the nihilistic scenario, we have to think of Beth Own as happy with her fate.
June 15, 2018
Some Tests is a pretty weird book that defies definition.
Beth Own is a 37 year old mother, wife and aged-care worker who feels a little under the weather. So her husband persuades her to see the doctor. Beth’s regular doctor is not there, and the locum doctor decides to send Beth off for some tests just to conform that there’s nothing wrong. But Dr Yi decides to refer Beth off for more tests, which in turn lead to more tests.
Initially this is a fairly conventional journey around Melbourne’s northern suburbs. Box Hill, to Heidelberg, via Greensborough to Epping… The medical mystery tour comes with high and unpredictable price tags, small portions of which may be reclaimed under Medicare. The doctors presume Beth has health insurance (she doesn’t) which would cover the fees (which it wouldn’t, even if Beth had it). Anyone who has set foot in an Australian health care setting will identify with the almost incidental meeting with the doctor, bookended by form-filling and card swiping.
But when Beth pleads poverty after being referred for yet more tests, things get surreal. We go via Meadow Heights out into Regional Victoria, visiting ever more improbable healthcare settings that seem to operate under the radar of the official system. Staffed by volunteers, they aim to subvert the venality of the major health insurers and big pharma. There are similarities to Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad.
And throughout the journey, nobody bothers to tell Beth what might be wrong with her. The specialists specialties are unknown; the nature of the tests is never disclosed. By the end of the journey, the actual nature of any disorder – if there is even a disorder at all – has become irrelevant. It is the journey that matters, not the original reason for travel. Always there is the option to go back into the mainstream system, but it’s never an option that could ever be viable.
Some Tests is all about the surreal comedy, masking a serious commentary on Australia’s incomprehensible healthcare system and some thought-provoking questions about life itself. Why do we even bother with health when the end will always be death? And there are some wonderful images, especially of a public bus system run for – and exclusively used by – healthcare patients getting from one office or surgery or hospital to another, clutching letters of referral and x-ray scans. The grotty and dingy surgeries are so true to life.
The main deficit in this is the lack of characterisation. The reader cannot really care about Beth because there is no depth to her. She is an everyman placeholder, but there’s nothing to bond to. If anything, the doctors are allowed more character in their fleeting appearances than Beth is allowed across the whole novel. Colson Whitehead engaged us in his Underground Railroad – every bit as surreal and stylised as Wayne Macauley’s healthcare system – by making the reader bond with Cora, feeling her peril and celebrating her victories. Some Tests could have done something similar, even at the expense of making this rather short novel a bit longer. Nevertheless, the novel is a good read, does cover new ground and may well leave some lasting imagery.
Solid 4 stars, but could have been 5…
Beth Own is a 37 year old mother, wife and aged-care worker who feels a little under the weather. So her husband persuades her to see the doctor. Beth’s regular doctor is not there, and the locum doctor decides to send Beth off for some tests just to conform that there’s nothing wrong. But Dr Yi decides to refer Beth off for more tests, which in turn lead to more tests.
Initially this is a fairly conventional journey around Melbourne’s northern suburbs. Box Hill, to Heidelberg, via Greensborough to Epping… The medical mystery tour comes with high and unpredictable price tags, small portions of which may be reclaimed under Medicare. The doctors presume Beth has health insurance (she doesn’t) which would cover the fees (which it wouldn’t, even if Beth had it). Anyone who has set foot in an Australian health care setting will identify with the almost incidental meeting with the doctor, bookended by form-filling and card swiping.
But when Beth pleads poverty after being referred for yet more tests, things get surreal. We go via Meadow Heights out into Regional Victoria, visiting ever more improbable healthcare settings that seem to operate under the radar of the official system. Staffed by volunteers, they aim to subvert the venality of the major health insurers and big pharma. There are similarities to Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad.
And throughout the journey, nobody bothers to tell Beth what might be wrong with her. The specialists specialties are unknown; the nature of the tests is never disclosed. By the end of the journey, the actual nature of any disorder – if there is even a disorder at all – has become irrelevant. It is the journey that matters, not the original reason for travel. Always there is the option to go back into the mainstream system, but it’s never an option that could ever be viable.
Some Tests is all about the surreal comedy, masking a serious commentary on Australia’s incomprehensible healthcare system and some thought-provoking questions about life itself. Why do we even bother with health when the end will always be death? And there are some wonderful images, especially of a public bus system run for – and exclusively used by – healthcare patients getting from one office or surgery or hospital to another, clutching letters of referral and x-ray scans. The grotty and dingy surgeries are so true to life.
The main deficit in this is the lack of characterisation. The reader cannot really care about Beth because there is no depth to her. She is an everyman placeholder, but there’s nothing to bond to. If anything, the doctors are allowed more character in their fleeting appearances than Beth is allowed across the whole novel. Colson Whitehead engaged us in his Underground Railroad – every bit as surreal and stylised as Wayne Macauley’s healthcare system – by making the reader bond with Cora, feeling her peril and celebrating her victories. Some Tests could have done something similar, even at the expense of making this rather short novel a bit longer. Nevertheless, the novel is a good read, does cover new ground and may well leave some lasting imagery.
Solid 4 stars, but could have been 5…
January 23, 2022
‘The tests these days are infinite ...’
Meet the Owns. Beth is thirty-seven years old and works in aged care. She is married to David, an accountant and they and their two daughters, Lettie, and Gem, live in a nice house on Blossom Street in Heatherdale, a suburb of Melbourne. Average, ordinary suburban happiness about to be unsettled.
It all begins when Beth Own goes home early from work one Monday afternoon feeling unwell. When she wakes up the next morning not feeling any better, her husband David, unable to make an appointment with their usual GP, calls a locum doctor to make a home visit. The locum sends Beth to Doctor Yi for some tests.
And thus begins Beth’s trip on the medical merry-go-round. She is referred from one doctor to another: tests, referrals, bus journeys with others all in search of answers. Beth’s medical file expands, but she is no closer to learning what (if anything) is wrong with her. Test after test. Referral after referral. Will Beth receive any answers? Where will it end?
So, when does satire become reality, or should that be the other way around? Until the very end, I had a vision of Beth caught in an endless loop of doctor, test, doctor, test. Will she ever see her husband and children again? Just where should Beth draw a line? I mean, all this medical attention and associated tests is enough to make anyone sick.
This is the second book by Wayne Macauley I have read, and I loved it. It’s clever, it’s funny and just a lit bit scary.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Meet the Owns. Beth is thirty-seven years old and works in aged care. She is married to David, an accountant and they and their two daughters, Lettie, and Gem, live in a nice house on Blossom Street in Heatherdale, a suburb of Melbourne. Average, ordinary suburban happiness about to be unsettled.
It all begins when Beth Own goes home early from work one Monday afternoon feeling unwell. When she wakes up the next morning not feeling any better, her husband David, unable to make an appointment with their usual GP, calls a locum doctor to make a home visit. The locum sends Beth to Doctor Yi for some tests.
And thus begins Beth’s trip on the medical merry-go-round. She is referred from one doctor to another: tests, referrals, bus journeys with others all in search of answers. Beth’s medical file expands, but she is no closer to learning what (if anything) is wrong with her. Test after test. Referral after referral. Will Beth receive any answers? Where will it end?
So, when does satire become reality, or should that be the other way around? Until the very end, I had a vision of Beth caught in an endless loop of doctor, test, doctor, test. Will she ever see her husband and children again? Just where should Beth draw a line? I mean, all this medical attention and associated tests is enough to make anyone sick.
This is the second book by Wayne Macauley I have read, and I loved it. It’s clever, it’s funny and just a lit bit scary.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
February 10, 2018
This would've made an awesome, spooky short story. As it is, the last 50 pages just drag even though things may finally be becoming clearer. Or not. The endless descriptions of Doctor's surgeries becomes a chore to get through, & I really started feeling the boredom of endless waiting. I hate Doctor's surgeries without at least a trashy magazine less than 2 year old & if the Doctor keeps me waiting beyond the end of the magazine, then I may start banging my head against the wall.
I guess it is supposed to be about how endless medical tests can make us feel like a nobody, with person after person reassuring us how important we are before they go do it all again with someone else. How long do we go on testing for? And for what?
I don't know, this is speculative fiction, not quite science fiction, in the vein of Margaret Atwood. I will read some more of this author's work, hopefully he has written a book of short stories, as I think they would be his forte.
I guess it is supposed to be about how endless medical tests can make us feel like a nobody, with person after person reassuring us how important we are before they go do it all again with someone else. How long do we go on testing for? And for what?
I don't know, this is speculative fiction, not quite science fiction, in the vein of Margaret Atwood. I will read some more of this author's work, hopefully he has written a book of short stories, as I think they would be his forte.
June 23, 2018
Wow, I'm a little speechless. This book completely surprised me in more than one way. I genuinely wasn't expecting the writing style nor the overall emotional toll this book would have on me.
I did spend a while contemplating whether to give it a 3 or a 4/5 but decided on the latter simply because of how enthralled I was. I finished the entire book in less than 24 hours! That being said, I can understand why this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. The writing style is incredibly stilted at points and the plot can be confusing/frustrating. For me however, I enjoyed how whimsical and surreal the novel gradually became without much explanation. Again, completely taking me by surprise.
This novel left me with a myriad of emotions and will definitely stick with me for a long time!
I did spend a while contemplating whether to give it a 3 or a 4/5 but decided on the latter simply because of how enthralled I was. I finished the entire book in less than 24 hours! That being said, I can understand why this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. The writing style is incredibly stilted at points and the plot can be confusing/frustrating. For me however, I enjoyed how whimsical and surreal the novel gradually became without much explanation. Again, completely taking me by surprise.
This novel left me with a myriad of emotions and will definitely stick with me for a long time!
April 28, 2018
A bit abstract in that there’s no depth to the characters.
Beth isn’t really diagnosed with a particular disease...she’s just sent from doctor to specialist & no one will tell her what is wrong.
I would like to have known her ailment & hf she had a chance of recovery.
Overall an easy read which I enjoyed
Beth isn’t really diagnosed with a particular disease...she’s just sent from doctor to specialist & no one will tell her what is wrong.
I would like to have known her ailment & hf she had a chance of recovery.
Overall an easy read which I enjoyed
February 16, 2023
It's an eerie tale.
I thought of Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a man discovers he is a cockroach. Macauley has taken an experience or idea to the nth degree.
My issue was its credibility. For me, not really.
There has to be something else to allow me to suspend disbelief.
This is a novel that I was gifted.
I thought of Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a man discovers he is a cockroach. Macauley has taken an experience or idea to the nth degree.
My issue was its credibility. For me, not really.
There has to be something else to allow me to suspend disbelief.
This is a novel that I was gifted.
August 27, 2017
Perplexing and finely honed, this dystopian fiction is not without brightness and humour. It reads a little like a parable, with an interesting philosophical idea just beyond grasp. I really enjoyed the way we're taken step by step into a maddeningly plausible near future.
October 21, 2017
This book starts in the everyday but soon takes us somewhere else, yet not very far away from normal. Anyone who has been in the medical system will empathise with Beth’s journey and may relish its conclusion.
December 30, 2018
Existential story about navigating the health system. I love the cover art - it's the best part of the book.
May 27, 2020
Look I’ve had a great run this year with weird literature, for lack of a better term, but I did not love this.
wish-list
May 23, 2018Miles Franklin longlist 2018
Peter Carey – A Long Way from Home (Penguin Random House)
Felicity Castagna – No More Boats (Giramondo Publishing)
Michelle de Kretser – The Life To Come (Allen & Unwin)
Lia Hills – The Crying Place (Allen & Unwin)
Eva Hornung – The Last Garden (Text Publishing)
Wayne Macauley – Some Tests (Text Publishing)
Catherine McKinnon – Storyland (Harper Collins Publishing)
Gerald Murnane – Border Districts (Giramondo Publishing)
Jane Rawson – From The Wreck (Transit Lounge)
Michael Sala – The Restorer (Text Publishing)
Kim Scott – Taboo (Picador Australia/Pan Macmillan Australia)
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews