Transactions

by Neil Boyack

185 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Social realism? This is about ordinary people and about ordinary lives minus gloss. I don't like to use words like battlers or strugglers or lower or disadvantaged classes as they are labels which carry with them a load of other adjectives which could be equally applied to the moneyed and respectable in a way that judgemental people refer to respectable. There is a strong tinge of bleakness in the lives of the characters in these stories which hinges on the satirical - and yet they are experiences which are neither rare nor strange, just the sad things that happen to all of us, either colouring or adding depth to our dreams, depending more of who you are as reader and how you look at it than being a useful statement about the human condition. I searched for a favourite phrase but each time I found something suggesting something valuable it was spoiled by a reference to blackness beneath finger nails or something else subtly ridiculing the character - but I still haven't worked out if that is something coming from me as the reader, or put in deliberately to malign, quietly. I read a quote somewhere about how for each story there are countless interpretations, that it is a different story for each reader, and I ended up feeling the same about this. I really liked it. For all my doubts it read in the end as a series of sympathetic portrayals of ordinary people in Australia as it is today, filled with dreams and hopes of how their lives might unfold and deeply committed to the path they are on, but there being a slight dissonance between that and reality. My doubt is because I am not sure about the dissonance, whether there is kindness there, or the poison of a patronizing onlooker. These are definitely not easy lives nor conventionally attractive characters, but as I read they were alive and full fleshed in my head, recognizable fellow human beings. Because I liked them I have to acknowledge that the writer who created these people (or knew them and re-created them on the page) meant this to happen. Final comment? each evening I put it down with regret as I had to sleep, and I wish I had another of his books.