The Summer Exercises

by Ross Gibson

A civilian chaplain records whispered confessions and low urgings, writing in a notebook during his summer tenure at Sydney's Central Street Police Station. His 'Summer Exercises' are habitual - five times a day. His terseness can generate feelings so sharp that sometimes a great notion gets pared clean with a meager swatch of syllables. In constructing this notebook of a sharp observer, author Ross Gibson builds a world - Sydney, Australia in 1946 - sordid and bruised after decades of depredations. --- This work of fiction was inspired by 175 carefully selected black and white photographs from the collection at Sydney's Justice & Police Museum, taken during the years immediately after World War II. These photographs (many included in the book), were generated by the New South Wales Police in the course of their investigations between 1945 and 1960. They form a visual reference for this richly imagined and experimental storytelling to take place. Anchored in the realities of the 1940s, along with Sydney police investigative procedure, The Summer Exercises is an artistic re-invention of history as it happened.

270 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2008

Reviews

[arjuna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a sort of prose poem inspired by Sydney police photography of the 1940s, and accompanied by/illustrated with same - telling a story of dispossession, sadism and murder through the eyes of a young chaplain and the detectives with whom he spends time as a form of religious discipline. At times awkward to read, but lyrical, salient, evocative and engaging nonetheless; an interesting and vivid picture of a dazed, punch-drunk and irrevocably altered city in the aftermath of war. Unusual and thoroughly recommended, very flavoursome.

[An · Rating 5 out of 5]

um yes sydney is great but such a feeling is indelibly stained by the growing clamour of the voices once silenced for ‘peace’

[Jonathan Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently re-reading this extraordinary novel – perhaps the main inspiration for my own Push Process – and hoping to write something in due course for Neglected Books about it.