Peter Polites

Auteur de Down The Hume

3+ oeuvres 40 utilisateurs 2 critiques

Œuvres de Peter Polites

Populaires Récent

Down The Hume (2017) 23 exemplaires

The Pillars (2019) 9 exemplaires

God Forgets About the Poor (2023) 8 exemplaires

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Oeuvres associées

Sydney Noir (2018) — Contributeur — 30 exemplaires

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The pillars par Peter Polites

The Pillars is fascinating. For a start, its moneyed milieu certainly redefines 'disadvantage' in Western Sydney. It features a Greek-Australian wannabe writer called Pano, whose lovestruck interest in upwardly mobile Kane leads him to (a) get involved in lobbying against a mosque being built across the road from the swanky apartment they share, and (b) ghostwriting a bio of a wealthy property developer.

Although Pano and Kane engage in a fair bit of (graphically described) energetic sex, being lovestruck is hampered by Kane's insistence that Pano refer to him as the landowner, not a flatmate. The lobbying involves various dubious strategies, including Pano pretending to be Muslim so that the local newspaper can feature his objections. The bio involves hanging out with a flashy character called Basil and confronting the dilemmas of any ghost writer who discovers that his subject is Not a Nice Person at all.

What was most fascinating for me was the issue of branding and behavioural codes. Pano is incredibly attentive to brands, clothing styles and decor codes. He has worked hard on his own subservience to brands as an entrée to the kind of social status he aspires to, and he is amazingly observant about the ways women in his community style their bodies and clothes for different occasions.

For the first meeting of the committee to oppose the mosque, Pano prepares the nibbles.

On one side of a blue-and-gold Jonathan Adler Versailles-style serving platter I arranged quartered cucumber sandwiches with the points upwards. On the other side of the platter were baked halal samosas for Wally. I put the culturally appropriate platter on the table and arranged tall green bottles of mineral water around it.

I made catering suggestions for the meeting, keen to show Kane I could host. Perhaps nuts and seeds in bowls, next to haloumi and feta with slices of Greek sourdough. But Kane's tastes extended only to the range of foods he grew up with. My ideas were too out there. When he said the words 'too out there', I no longer tried to advocate my people's cuisine. As a serf in the house, I deferred to the landowner. (p.24)

Lorna was the first to arrive.

As I was wiping a few crumbs off the edge of the platter, the doorbell chimed, and Kane opened the door. Before Lorna stepped into the house, she looked down the hallway and saw me standing in the kitchen. Her hair was freshly straightened and she wore a cold-shoulder fuchsia blouse made from a shiny material. The blouse draped over her body, showing her décolletage, collarbones as refined as an alloy. She wore selvedge denim jeans in a loose boyfriend style with gold stitching. One her feet were Adidas Originals three stripes. Her look could be called suburban exceptionalism — an outfit suitable for a trip to the supermarket or enjoying a glass of moscato at book club. (p.25)

Another guest, Wally, is also faking ethnicity for acceptance, but he errs by asking what country the (rainbow) flag in the hallway belonged to. Pano tells him

... it was from one of those Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe. Wally praised the flag's brightness and I mentioned how much I liked the clean lines of Scandi furniture. (p.26)

The Pillars is full of moments like this which will have your lips twitching in amusement...

Lorna, suffering the fog of new motherhood is their PR agent, with previous experience of a rugby team called the Deities...

The Deities were the heart of Western Sydney, its real mascots, godlike and always in the news for sexual assaults, cocaine bust-ups and forcing abortions on the model girlfriends they met through social media. (p.28)

Lorna trains these men for camera interviews by telling them to pretend that they were apologising to their mums.

TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/09/18/the-pillars-2019-by-peter-polites/… (plus d'informations)

Signalé

anzlitlovers | Sep 18, 2023 |

Down The Hume

My generous response to this book would be: if you have a protagonist who can't write, don't make them the narrator of your book. The prose in this novel is just ugly. Lots of sentences are ungrammatical, usually because they're missing a subject. Words are used incorrectly and many of the metaphors are just bad (a bus has never slithered through an industrial estate in the history of buses and industrial estates). Bux, the narrator, is narrow-minded, petty and charmless. It's never quite clear why I should choose to spend time with him. Beyond this, the story is fine, the setting fine and the dialogue ok, although it's hard to be entirely sure because some of it is in Greek. I didn't bother to translate the greek sentences. The characterisation is weak; I never understood why Bux does what he does. The actions of the other characters are mostly unmotivated, although I didn't have much reason to ponder on them anyway.

My ungenerous response to this book would be: if you can't write, don't become a novelist. I suspect that Polites didn't choose an ugly narrative voice, but that he has no ear. There were sentences and metaphors that I just can't believe someone who values good writing would leave in a final draft.

The comparisons with [b:Loaded|1208928|Loaded|Christos Tsiolkas|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327806213l/1208928._SY75_.jpg|1197295] are apt - I also didn't enjoy that due to its unlikeable first person narrator and ugly prose. The great gay Greek Australian novel is still yet to be written, as is the great gay Australian novel.… (plus d'informations)

Signalé

robfwalter | Jul 31, 2023 |

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