Act of Grace

by Anna Krien

The exhilarating debut novel from the award-winning author of Night Games.

Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD and white-knuckling life. In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.

These characters' worlds intertwine across time and place, in a brilliant story of fear and sacrifice, trauma and survival, and what people will do to outrun the shadows. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and cultural reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation bestows upon the next, and the potential for transformation.

This is a searing, powerful and utterly original work by an exceptional Australian writer. It will leave you changed.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Australia, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Historical, Novels

318 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

About the author

Anna Krien is the author of Night Games: Sex, power and sport, which won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, Into the
Woods: The battle for Tasmania’s forests and Us and Them: On the importance of animals (Quarterly Essay 45). Anna’s work has been
published in the Monthly, the Age, the Big Issue, The Best Australian Essays, Griffith REVIEW, Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging, Colors, Frankie and Dazed & Confused.

Reviews

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award.

Toohey, a veteran of three tours of Iraq, has brought more home with him this time than just the multiple pieces of shrapnel that are still lodged in his neck from a suicide bomber.

In Iraq Toohey shot at a car whose driver never slowed down after being signalled to do so. The bullet hit and killed a baby. The characters that the narrative revolves around are all affected by that single bullet and it leads to the novel’s title.

An “act of grace” is a cash payment to civilians killed or injured by the Commonwealth of Australia. The Commonwealth, in paying the civilian or members of their family, bears responsibility for the loss.

Toohey is crippled by PTSD. He cannot hold down a job and is prone to anger and violence, finding it almost impossible to return to normal civilian life after his third time in Iraq. The shrapnel in his neck is the least of his problems. It is the mental damage he has suffered that is the real danger to not just himself, but his wife and son. His violence and anger eventually driving them both from his life.

Robbie is a young teenager who is torn between two cultures. Her father, Danny, who is suffering from early dementia, is aboriginal, while her mother, Claire is white. Danny was one of the Stolen Generation and this fact has only added to Robbie’s anguish and search for cultural identity.

Robbie’s sense of not belonging even extends to her family. Her brother, Otis, looks like their mother, his skin lighter, and Robbie feels that her father loved her brother more because of this. The only thing that Robbie has inherited from her father is her deep hatred of “the system”. Hating it while not understanding why. She is drowning in feelings of worthlessness, clinging desperately to shards of self-respect. She looks for ways to numb the pain, she starts chroming with her friend at school. With her father’s dementia worsening slowly, Robbie’s relationship with her mother cannot take the strain and Robbie turns to a life of drugs and petty crime not just to escape, but to “stick it” to the system.

Nasim is a young girl in Iraq who belongs to one of the lucky families favoured by Saddam Hussein. Her mother a celebrated poet, and a woman who loves her country, starts helping Saddam with his poetry. Nasim notices that each time her mother returns from her sessions with Saddam she grows angrier. Nasim meets Uday, Saddam’s son, while riding Saddam’s prized horses. She dreams of becoming a princess, and her dreams are strengthened when Uday gifts her Husam, her favourite horse. However, once this is done, she is no longer invited to Saddam’s stables to ride. Three months later her father is arrested and charged with speaking against the regime. Six months later he returns with three fingers missing. When one of her mother’s best friends writes a poem against Saddam her parents are killed. Nasim too young to understand what has happened is forced into a life of slavery and prostitution. When the Americans invade and one of the other prostitutes is killed Nasim steals her passport and identity and flees Iraq, escaping to Australia as a refugee.

The separate narratives will eventually intertwine, and join like separate threads of string, with characters moving from their own narrative into another. And it is not just about the central characters themselves, but their families and how they are all affected. Each of the characters, and family, face problems, cultural, physical, mental. There is violence in all three families. And while their problems differ, sometimes dramatically, they all have one problem in common and that is the conflict of identity.

Toohey feels he no longer belongs to civilian life. He has lost his identity as a soldier, but cannot seem to make the transition back to a life of peace, a life without conflict, without the constant threat of danger. He confronts his demons with anger and violence. Alienating himself from his wife and son. His wife leaving him and Gerry, his son, moving to America.

Robbie is lost, searching for her true identity. She has been brought up in a non-indigenous Australian culture. But as she finds out more about her father and the Stolen Generation. She realises that she does have a home, an identity within the indigenous community, and heritage to claim.

Nasim knows where her identity belongs, but she has been displaced and feels lost in an alien culture that she does not understand.

This brings us to another theme explored by this novel. The difference of cultures. Not just between countries, but within countries, and how these cultures affect individual identity. How an individual identifies another countries culture, sometimes mistakenly. Gerry, since a young boy at school has identified American culture with cowboys after becoming obsessed with the cowboy tour brochures that his teacher showed him in class. When he does travel to America, escaping his father, he finds that his conception of this culture is far from reality. Nazim thinks that things in Australia will be perfect, and yet upon arriving realises she does not understand the culture at all.

It makes you stop and think of the many and varied cultures that exist on this planet and our general lack of knowledge and tolerance of cultures that are not our own. In the beginning of the novel Toohey is telling of how they were given instructions on how to treat and respect Iraqi culture. He laughs at the part where they are told not to praise something, say an object, too much, or the Iraqi civilian will feel obliged to gift him the object. Instead of respecting this culture the soldiers take advantage of it, scoring free gifts.

This is Anna’s fictional debut and she has written a wonderful novel. 4 Stars.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had lots of interesting threads, but they didn't really come together for me - the stories deflect off each other, but the connections feel tangential and the broader themes didn't entirely hit home. Krien is a lovely writer, but some of the structural decisions were a bit disorienting - time and perspective jumps that didn't click in my brain.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know, I know, I'm hard to please...
I want stimulating books that tackle important contemporary issues...but...
I just don't want them all in the one book.
There are three strands to this novel. This is the blurb:

Iraqi aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Australia, decades later, Gerry is in fear of his tyrannical father, Toohey, who has returned from the Iraq War bearing the physical and psychological scars of conflict. Meanwhile, Robbie is dealing with her own father's dementia when the past enters the present.
These characters' worlds intertwine in a brilliant narrative of guilt and reckoning, trauma and survival. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance- the damage that one generation passes on to the next, and the potential for transformation.

And these are the issues that bubble up:
family violence
Stolen Generation dislocation
Islamophobia
discrimination against cross-dressers
prostitution
early onset dementia
racism from both sides towards Indigenous Australians with European heritage
PTSD after military tours of Iraq
refugees with real histories of torture and trauma but fake identities
Aboriginal children with foetal alcohol syndrome
the climbing of Uluru debate
Mexicans trying to cross the US border
brutal US prisons
the Aboriginal flag on West Gate Bridge debate

To read the rest of my review and see links to opinions different to mine please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/10/30/a...

[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter covering a returned Australian soldier driving through the outback with his family is as gritty as it gets. It's a fine piece of writing.
The book has three streams loosely connected with a lot going on. There is the returned soldier with anger issues, PTSD and an inability to connect with his son. There is the Iraqi pianist who is raped by Saddam Hussein's son, escapes and comes to Australia where she connects with a young aboriginal woman. This woman forms the final stream and covers dementia, racism, aboriginal beliefs, and social problems of the youth living in the outback.
I think the common link is with people who can't connect with the "norms" of society. They are angry, afraid, tired, frustrated but they show the uniqueness of each individual.
This is a harsh book. Not every chapter works but overall it makes an impact.

[Laura Tee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening of this book is startling in its perceptive detail and skillful development of conflict.

From the first chapter, I was completely captivated by an early scene when Toohey and Jean host Jean's sister, Bron, to dinner, and Toohey - recently returned from the Iraq War - boasts of exploiting cultural training to manipulate Iraqis out of their possessions for a laugh. The "icy silence" that follows is perfectly constructed by Krien; you can almost see Bron torn between her sense of cultural sensitivity - and the need to object to this behaviour - and her awareness of the psychological trauma Toohey must have experienced as a soldier, and therefore, the leniency and patience that she owes to him as someone psychologically scarred. In this subtle and nuanced way, Krien opens up a dialogue with her reader, and asks challenging questions about how we should challenge prejudice and racism, and how we can do so without shaming and embittering people with their own demons - people with their own causes for bitterness and displaced anger. Or, in the case of the fearful Jean, people who are in 'survival mode' every day, and will condone violence so long as it is projected against someone other than themselves.

The next chapter introduces new - equally interesting and academic - questions about the nature of race, reconciliation, identity and trauma. But so too do chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on.

On their own, each chapter is intelligent, interesting, challenging, perceptive and well-written, but as a narrative, there is just too much here. Not only were there too many ideas to do justice to, but there are too many characters who disappeared after I'd become engrossed in their story. Jean - for example - who offers her point of view on her partner, Toohey's, violence, disappears from the remainder of the book. Perhaps this is a comment on her silence and voicelessness as a woman who is the victim of violence, but I had been so invested in her journey!

Even more so with Nasim whose portrait of Iraq is traumatising. Her story could have been a book of its own, but, as it was, I was left wanting so much more.

In my experience, books that span generations, sweep across continents, and peek into the consciousness of a number of characters, try to achieve too much. And, in doing so, they alienate their readers because there is no one character, moment, or idea, to truly connect with. Unfortunately, this book was no exception, even though Krien managed to make me care so deeply for Gerry, Jean, Robbie and Nasim at their introduction.

It seems that Krien has plenty to say and I want to read it. But, I want to be able to process each idea, one at a time.

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read this ahead of my talk about it next week at Murcutt’s @mpavilion and holy moly Anna Krien did not come to play. It’s even better on a second read.

[Tundra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an outstanding debut novel and represents the growth and direction of Australian contemporary writing. The diversity of voices, landscapes and social issues are realistic and well crafted. As each of the early chapters follows a different character in unrelated locations and circumstances I did have to check to confirm that I wasn’t reading a book of short stories. It was a bit disorientating and it took me awhile to sink into the next ‘story’. As the book progressed and characters were revisited over unidentified timespans the overall picture began to emerge. This book examines how trauma and grief associated with war, and the loss of connection to place and people impacts on individuals, families and communities. The topic of early onset dementia was also handled well as it explored survivors guilt and the helplessness of the condition.

[the_wistful_reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

ACT OF GRACE ~ Anna Krien

This is a novel with race, identity and belonging at its core. We meet Australian soldier Toohey, ruthless, bitter and spiteful, after three tours in Iraq. His wife Jean and son Gerry have to master the art of walking on eggshells around Toohey's explosive temper. He can't hold down a job and seems to quarrel with everyone. Gerry grows up having to deal with the effects of his childhood.

Nasim is an Iraqi girl with a promising talent as a pianist. Her parents are secular, her mother a famous poet. They make fun of how the Iraqi Shia women dress and pet their husbands. As a young girl, Nasim doesn't understand why her mother is not pleased when Saddam Hussein comes to hear her play the piano or perform poetry, or when he lets Nasim ride his horses. When Nasim's parents fall from favour, it has devastating consequences and the path her life takes is dark indeed.

Then there is Robbie. Her father was adopted as a child - a "lost child" of an aboriginal mother. He tells Robbie if someone asks why she's a little darker in complexion, she should say she's Italian. When her father is diagnosed with early dementia, Robbie goes off the rails a while in her teens but later finds herself being an artist, looking for her roots.

What I really liked about this novel was theme of identity and belonging, how colonialism has affected society and the focus on how it still suppresses the indigenous peoples in Australia and the US, how their culture and existence are told to stay in the shadows except for when occasionally being asked to come out and play. And it's about immigration and the effects of war.

Many of the characters are difficult to like, some are awful, some seem to have more heart. My problem with this book is that it has too many issues crammed in and thus not able to do each subject justice. The introduction to each characters is thorough and I felt I got to know them, but then it became patchy as the story moved on. Trigger warning: drugs, prostitution, language.

[Elanor Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't sure whether to rate this book two or three stars, but it's been a year since I finished it and pretty much all I remember was that I disliked it, so two stars it is.

I remember the book was ugly. Characters were horrible to each other with no redemption. The landscape was twisted and broken. Everything about the book was just ugly and unpleasant. While it was often described well, perhaps even well-written, there was nothing to relieve the unrelenting ugliness of the book, making it just an unpleasant read.

I also remember there was no through-plotline. The book follows a series of loosely connected characters, but their connections are all tenuous at best. I typically love stories that are woven together out of a series of other stories... but these didn't really hold together at all. I kept going, hoping that something would come out of this novel in the end, but nothing ever did.

I believe the book was well-written and that the characters and situations were realistic and interesting. Overall, however, the total lack of plot meant that the book was dull, and the ugliness of the characters and settings meant that I was glad when it was over.

[Shirley Bateman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a difficult read. Admittedly, I was feeling off colour when I started it but some parts really turned my stomach. For me, there were too many narrative threads that over complicated the story. I really wanted to like this but I didn’t enjoy it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quality intertwining of separate stories to deliver a satisfactory whole, with common reference points adding interest across the different story arcs. I like the way in which the main characters were drawn and the complexities that dictated their actions and experiences without judgement or justification felt authentic. The treatment of current moral and cultural issues relevant to modern Australian life as an added layer was good too. I also appreciated the end of the book. Life often doesn't finish neatly. I think Krien's passion and concern for issues that was well documented in her previous non-fiction work has translated nicely into this novel.

[BrutallyHonest · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know how I feel about this book....

[Steven Kolber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide ranging, lovingly presented and superb - winding and complex but not confusingly so.

[Grace Aristotle · Rating 4 out of 5]

my habit of buying any book with Grace in the title has finally paid off because this is a good book!

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read. Lots of different threads, all vividly painted. It feels towards the end like you're healing somewhere major, but in fact it's more of a snapshot of our times and our nation. Which is good in itself, but maybe the pacing gives a false impression. Anyway, recommended.

[Jenny Cooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story of four individuals who have each lost their way in the world and are having to come to terms with a new future which they must forge for themselves. Toohey is an Australian soldier who returns from a tour of duty in Iraq with PTSD and a bitter and twisted view of the world. His son, Gerry, is desperate to escape from the confines of life with his tyrannical father. Nasim is a pianist who found favour with Sadam Hussein and his son, but when things turned sour found herself in grave danger. The final character is Robbie who is based in Australia and has to cope on a daily basis with her father’s dementia.

This book was easy enough to read and, as individuals, some of the people featured in the book had quite interesting experiences. Bizarrely I also loved the picture of the horse on the front cover of the paperback.

Sadly, the plus points about this book were, in my view outweighed by the things that didn’t quite work. One major issue is that all four character threads are slightly offset chronologically and this makes the book as a whole both disorienting and confusing as the story moves not only from one individual to another but also jumps between timeframes. In addition it also travels between continents so there were just too many variables and not enough stability.

It was easy enough to read, but just not very good overall. It was disjointed and may as well have been short stories as the strands didn’t really converge except tangentially. The best way I can describe the ending is by using our book group as an analogy (in actual fact we did read this in the book group book and three of the people didn’t manage to finish it). Imagine taking three or four random people from the book group, writing a book in which the stories of their lives are told (everyone has a story to tell) and then reaching the climax of the book, the final denouement, in which all is revealed and to our amazement these three people all meet each other by joining the same book group. This is a little bit like the way I viewed the ending of Act of Grace. Perhaps I’m being slightly unfair, but even so…

Despite the fact that a number of people in the book group didn’t finish the book, I cannot honestly say that it was particularly bad, it just wasn’t particularly good either.

[Heather Boundy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accolades for this novel include the words 'brilliant' and 'electrifying' and I agree with these sentiments. Krien has become renowned for her investigative journalism in non-fiction books such as Night Games and Into the Woods; she applies the same meticulously researched detail in this novel, but with added compassion and great narrative style. Easy to read, but at the same times haunting and confronting she doesn't hold back when detailing the horrors of war and its aftermath on all those involved. Families are destroyed and relationships may take generations to recover. A wonderful read!

[Vannessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very accomplished author, Krien deftly brings together a number of characters and settings to raise themes of trust, intergenerational trauma, reconciliation, survival and a common humanity. From Iraq, Uluru to the streets of inner city Melbourne, Krien takes us on a journey tracing the life trajectories of three families. The characters are strongly and convincingly drawn. This is such a beautifully crafted, well-structured novel.

[Evan Micheals · Rating 2 out of 5]

Messy and unfulfilling

I became a fan of Anna Krien when I read ‘Night Games’. What I liked about Night Games was that Krein ‘steel manned’ a number of perspectives, and you finished the book not knowing what Anna really thought. She was happy to reflect nuance and the messiness of sex and consent to sex. Nobody asks for sex like they ask for a cup of tea. It is not acceptable to walk up to a stranger and ask for sex, you can ask for a cup of tea. I read all I could find that she had written and then forgot about her. I recently was reminded of her and looked to see what else she had written in the past five years.

The was Krien’s first (and only) work of fiction and I do not often read fiction. I found a book unsure of its identity and purpose. Her writing style in unnecessarily long winded, using a paragraph when a sentence would have done. She keeps her most redeeming quality of her writing of not ignoring the ugliness that she sees and explores this complexity. A lot of the time I was thinking ‘Don’t bore is, get to the chorus’ to borrow from Roxette, as I waited for Krien to make her point. Shane Parrish wrote ‘The writer chasing popularity loses what made their voice worth hearing’, and I felt this book was lost between capturing the zeitgeist and her description of all the ugly and complex parts.

I felt she wrote about violence, both domestic and military, in a romantic way that would be foreign to my friends who performed that service depicted by Toohey. She wrote about violence with an observers perspective and I suspect she has not been a participant and can only imagine what it would be like to be involved in violence (maybe I am wrong). This lead to a number of questions: Why did Toohey never meet anyone that could accommodate his intimidation and threats? Toohey always ‘got away’ with violence, which annoyed me, as that does not happen in reality. If you are impulsively violent, you eventually come across someone who can competently cope with your aggression (and get humbled in the process, sometimes publicly). Her perspectives of Jean and Toohey were hard to follow, and Jean’s relationship with her sister Bron was not allowed to develop (which could have been interesting). The sum was that I found the narrative is disorganised.

Danny has difficulty in responding the to racism of low expectations and what James Belich described as the white archetype (Aboriginal’s are innocent in the Rousseauian manner) of Indigenous people. Danny is supposed to be grateful for the accommodations that Champagne Socialist Mrs ‘Fucking’ Eckersley gives to him with a patronising spirit, making assumptions of Danny’s Aboriginalness in the same spirit of low expectations (but the opposite side of the coin) as calling him a black bastard. Mrs ‘Fucking’ Eckersley treats Danny as a concept, not a person in the same manner as a traditional racist. They both see him as Aboriginal, before being an individual. Danny could become overtly angry at a traditional racist and have social justification, not so for Mrs ‘Fucking’ Eckersley and other Champagne Socailists, where Danny’s anger has to be internalised.

Nasim is the most interesting character. Nasim comments that there are too many refugees being allowed into Australia and fears they will bring their hate with them. Robbie is quick to remind Nasim that she was a refugee herself. This is reflected in the phenomena of Immigrants being some of the biggest supporters of Trump and I am guessing the Liberal Party of Australia. They know how bad things can get. There is more difference within groups, than between groups. It is Krien’s ability to acknowledge nuance that is her biggest talent. I found interesting the contrast in how Nasim (deference and respect) responded to the Police compared to Robbie (dismissive and entitled). Nasim is the ultimate survivor and refuses to be a victim of her circumstance. Nasim observed “Here (In Australia), a victim must be pure to stay a victim” (p 213). Nasim is never a victim and not willing to stay ‘pure’ to remain in this role. She knows this will lead her become dependant on others and she wants to be the author of her own destiny. Why pointlessly antagonise even a ‘racist’ Police Officer?

On finishing this book I wondered if Krien the writing equivalent of a ‘one hit wonder’? She drew on aspect of most of her past writing of non-fiction. If she had of added a subplot of ambiguous sex between a Tasmanian eco-activisit and a club footballer, she would have had the full house. Her strength is the quality of her characters, flawed humans who struggle to understand the world. Her weakness is developing a narrative structure and plot that finds itself coming together in a satisfactory end. The things I like about Krien as a non-fiction writer may make her unsuitable for writing fiction. I really wanted to like this book so I could maintain my love affair with Anna Krien’s writing. Love affairs end when it becomes messy and unfulfilling. Maybe that is the point as that is how I would describe this book.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Act of Grace (Black Inc Books 2019) demonstrates author Anna Krien’s ability to flex her fiction muscle after years of training in non-fiction and journalism. The result is a literary fiction novel that feels authentically grounded in fact, with characters so real that they could be your neighbours or those you read about in the media.
An Act of Grace is a compensatory payment paid by allied forces to victims of collateral damage during wartime. In this novel, an Act of Grace payment is made to an Iraqi woman after a tragic incident leaves her bereft. But while this token gesture may make the top brass feel better about the accident, it leaves Toohey, the soldier involved in the event, feeling angry and betrayed. What does the payment say about his actions? He returns from the war psychologically broken with PTSD and physically damaged, suffering from a cloud of minute pieces of shrapnel that take years to work their way out of his skin. His wife and especially his son, Gerry, bear the brunt of his abuse, and the relationship between the two men is a study in familial dynamics and family violence.
There are two other main narratives followed in the book and while each at first appears completely separate, as the book draws to its conclusion, the different threads begin to knit together. Years earlier, a young Iraqi girl, Nasim, is a promising pianist and a lover of horses, with a famous poet for a mother and a gentle and supportive father. But when her family is first embraced by Saddam Hussein, and then falls out of favour both with him and his psychopathic son, they are faced with terrible choices and a search for escape. The third main character is Australian woman Robbie, dealing with her father’s dementia, the demons from her past, and revelations about her family history.
This is a book about the legacy of intergenerational trauma, the perils of forced migration and racism, and the tragic and lingering after-effects of war and conflict. It explores nationalism, sacrifice, loyalty, emotional debt, refugees and asylum seekers, Australia’s own dark colonial history and what people will do in order to survive. It is also an examination of men and violence – sown throughout the book like breadcrumbs are various instances of angry men, violent men, men feeling impugned and disrespected, men who enjoy control, men who demand acquiescence, men who are emotionally or physically absent or damaged.
Krien is a very talented writer and Act of Grace is beautifully crafted. She somehow manages to provide a broad, sweeping overview of world events and historically significant incidents, but also depicts small, intimate moments of human nature and relationships, everything underlaid with political and cultural significance. This is intelligent and clever writing; it is thought-provoking; and it asks the reader to keep up with the fast-moving plots lines and connect the dots between the three narrative trails. From large-scale acts of war and terrorism to one person’s traumatic memories; from mass protests and activism to one character’s small acts of revenge; from shattering flashes of life-changing incidents to the daily paper cuts of living with abuse – Krien manages to combine them all into a tale that is compelling, moving and tender, full of viciousness and violence, forgiveness and forgetting, loss and grief, escape and freedom. If you appreciated Simon Cleary’s The War Artist, this book will resonate.

[lyny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very powerfully written book, but difficult to read because of its vividness and grim accounts of various aspects of life, especially the first three or four chapters. It initially reads like short stories, but eventually the stories come back to the same people, and some interlinking of their lives. It brings together a focus on indigenous Australians and Iraq under Saddam Hussain, including the experiences and actions of Australian soldiers and its impact on their lives after they are back. And also the politics of enviromentalism, left versus right politics, domestic violence, and the long lasting impacts of families over time, both in genetic inheritance and relationally. The book opens with Jean and Toohey and their young son Gerry in the outback during a mouse plague (some of these scenes definitely not easy to read). Toohey was a soldier in Iraq and saw atrocities and committed ills – especially the shooting of a baby in its mother’s arms – and he is now subject to bursts of violence against Jean and Gerry, and a lot of irritation with the world, especially Australia and its soft lefty opinions. Next we are in Iraq and the story of Nassim, child of cultured parents, a piano player and an academic, who lead an urbane life, frequently entertaining others – until they get swept into and later out of Saddam’s circle, and the tension and cruelties of his reign. Those who die and who are tortured are vividly rendered, with the central character seeing it all and eventually escaping to Australia via some forged papers. And a third chapter introduces a family, with an Aboriginal father, Danny, a mother Claire and daughter Robbie and son Otis, seen through the eyes of Robbie, as her father suffers cultural patronizing from the private school where he works as a cleaner, and later succumbs to dementia at an early age, with Robbie’s anger being taken out on her mother and as delinquency. All three stories continue to play through and intertwine, with later chapters, each skipping ahead as their lives enter new phases. The writing is understated yet vivid and extremely powerful throughout.

[Claire (Silver Linings and Pages) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"More than 20,000 Aborigines were killed in Australia’s frontier war, thousands more displaced, then displaced again, kept on the fringe of townships, starved, had their children, their children’s children, taken away, their cultural links severed. Many still face inequitable hardship and poverty today.”
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I read this several months ago, but still remembered some episodes very vividly when I came to draft this post last night. It is a debut for this Australian author, who has a high profile as an investigative journalist and essayist. She is an excellent, empathetic storyteller, and I was often carried along but it is a very ambitious, bold book with a huge amount going on. It’s about fear, sacrifice, trauma and survival, intertwining four narratives across time and continents. There’s Australian soldier Toohey, who has returned from the Iraq War injured and dealing with PTSD; aspiring pianist Nasim who had fallen from favour with Saddam Hussein leading to her flight to safety; Robbie in Melbourne at the turn of the Millennium facing her aboriginal father’s dementia and family silences, and Gerry trying to seek refuge and healing from his father Toohey’s rage and tyranny.
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I found most of the characters brittle and unlikeable, yet all of them have experienced deep trauma and suffering, so I understand that they would be hardened. I’d have preferred to focus on just one or two of the characters as this novel covers so many big, serious themes: race, skin colour, cultural appropriation, heritage, PTSD, domestic abuse, drugs and complicity for starters. However I’ve learned from reading it, and subsequently disappeared down some rabbit holes to discover more about Aboriginal heritage, such as Dreamtime, Uluru and the “Sorry rocks” (souvenirs posted back by remorseful tourists) episode was interesting.
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Thank you @serpentstail for this gifted copy. It’s given me plenty of food for thought.Published 6 August.
3.5/5🌟

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of several threads which read as captivating short stories at the start, with eventual connections slowly revealing themselves. Themes of trauma, place and belonging, generational reverberations of traumas, and the buzz of self realisation.

The title refers to a payment made by the Australian government to try and compensate an unfortunate death at the hands of a soldier, during the Iraq invasion. The chapter where this happens will be a lasting created imagery for me, and then the rippling events down years and people leave so much to think about. The impacts of acts of war and moments of horror.

The stories and development of Gerry, Robbie, Nasim, and Toohey were full in such concise chapters - they were compelling. Several very memorable moments, among the complete book.

But like many reviewers of this one, the many, many threads were a bit much for me, really. Each could easily have been their own book, and the writing pulling you in to each one leaves you engaged and invested - and then the switch again. So many issues spanned across these stories and characters.

From refugees and Aboriginal issues in Australia, to PTSD impacts of returned soldiers. Standing Rock and Native American protest against a pipeline construction across native land. Threads of the stolen generation, inadequate health outcomes for Aboriginal Australians, to early onset dementia. Insights and detailed trauma from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the torture and sexual violence that was prevalent and ripped apart that country. To complex family relationships and dynamic. There was a lot going on, a lot to process!

[Letícia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little torn over whether I should rate this book three or four stars. Enjoyment-wise it was certainly a 4 star read. I thought all of the characters were complicated and interesting and really drove my reading experience because I was curious about them and their stories. I liked the diversity in opinion and background, for me it reflected my experience of growing up in Australia although I definitely related to Robbie the most and her experience with her father being sick.

For me what detracted from my reading experience was the lack of plot driving the story. It read like a memoir of four mostly unconnected characters over a long span of time. Especially frustrating was that there would be shifts in perspective and even jumps in time (up to 5 years) with very little signposting. I think the book would have benefitted with more clear character names at the beginning of chapters and notes when large jumps of time were made- perhaps a little note on the location as well (for example Bagdad 10 years ago Nasim).

Still, the interesting characters and engaging writing style meant that I really enjoyed this book and overall would recommend it to people, especially those who want to learn more about Australia. There were some profound insights into the experiences of minorities and Gerry's storyline for me was a highlight showing how people are capable of learning and change. Although sometimes disjointed, overall an excellent book and I recommend it highly.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book because it covers so many important topics, but sadly I didn't.

The first chapter was engrossing, powerful and harrowing. Toohey is a returned soldier from Iraq, with shrapnel still in his neck. He's traumatised and abusive to his wife and young son.

From there, we meet Nasim, an Iraqi whose family was in favour, and then severely out of favour with Saddam and his family. And then Robbie, whose Dad is part of the stolen generation and suffering from early onset dementia. Robbie looks like she's heading towards a life of addiction but we jump forward to her responsibly working on art projects in the NT and befriending Nasim in Melbourne.

It's almost like short stories but the characters reappear years or decades after we last left them (Toohey's son, Gerry, travels to America as a young adult and ends up caught up in the Native American land rights movement and illegal border crossings from Mexico).

It's too much, but at the same time I found some of the chapters very boring. I think because I'd lost all investment in the characters - I didn't know where they were in time anymore and what had happened in the big gaps.

So much potential but maybe would have been better as two or three separate books.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

'When she saw men and women lay their cheeks on watermelons like children about to fall asleep, gently drumming the thick rind with their palms, the recollection was sharp...she had managed to source some of her mother's chapbooks...It was one of her earlier collections: In the marketplace, Nhour Amin had written, we listen to watermelons like lovers, a husband's ear pressed to her wife's pregnant stomach.'

An 'act of grace' payment is a special gift of money from the Commonwealth. It is a last resort payment to persons who may have been unfairly disadvantaged by the Commonwealth but have no legal claim against it.

The word grace is defined as mercy, clemency and pardon.

In the first chapter we read a circumstance were an individual is granted an 'act of Grace' payment. The story then expands and we met characters who open up two other narrative threads, making up three individual (with the lens shifting amongst these threads) and intertwined stories.

Each story plays with the meaning of grace. The abuse of governments against there people. Who gets grace and who doesn't? Also the grace we show or don't show each other. I fell into the flow of this novel and enjoyed the people and places it opened up to me.

[Susan Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a brilliant book. I wished she didn't lay the horror on quite as much as she did in the chapters on Nasim's trauma in Iraq, and I wished it was a happier ending for Nasim at the end of the book. Also the book did encompass a huge range of social issues, not just the overarching themes of identity, inter-generational trauma, racism and the refugee experience - we also learnt about foetal alcohol syndrome, sorry rocks, debates about flag flying, climbing Uluru, anti-fossil fuel / native Indian rights campaigns in the USA, prejudice against cross-dressers, domestic violence, prostitution, early-onset dementia etc. Maybe there were just a few too many issues. The violence seemed a bit overdone at times (eg. did she really have to go to such extremes in writing about chicken farms and shooting of sick dogs?). But the characters and the writing were so good that I found it gripping and insightful.

[Louise Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt agitated reading this book. So much of it turned my stomach, reminding me of human beings I'd rather not know and the current meanness and ugliness of politics in this country.

I liked that the primary setting of the novel was Melbourne. I liked the author's insight into the human condition, her descriptive powers and her use of language. I liked the author's structural attempt to connect all the strands of the story by the end of the book. But there were so many strands and I often felt disoriented as to who was speaking, what year we were in, how these people connected, etc.

Because the book raised important issues that need to be faced I gave the book four stars although I teetered on the brink of a three star rating as my response to feeling overwhelmed by all the issues raised in the book.

[Sandy Sexton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a complex book, which perhaps tries to do too much. Many many issues are raised, and at times I felt the author had left me behind. I was still pondering the experiences of a character when the book leapt on without me. To give me time to catch up, I had to put the novel aside for days at a time. This isn't a bad thing - just an indication that this book gives plenty to think about. Very rich.
At the end I was left worrying and wondering about many of the people who had moved on, out of the pages Krien had penned. This was a little frustrating - but reflects life. Despite social media, people come in and out of our lives and we are left wondering, "Whatever happened to so and so?"
This is a novel worth a second read and further study.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book as I am all in favour of writing about who we are now and what is happening in our world. But somehow, despite sharing the author's deep rancour over our involvement in the calamitous Iraq war, I just couldn't get motivated by it. It seemed disjointed, but individual pages, scenes, sequences were really well written and true to life. Perhaps it was because I was reading it at the height of the bushfire emergency that I didn't have the concentration power, but I think it was more than that, though I'm having trouble putting my finger on how it could have been improved.