Book Review: Snake Typhoon! by Billie Jones

Snake Typhoon!

Written by: Billie Jones

Published: 2014

Synopsis: When unseasonable weather hits the sunshine city of Brisbane, a freak typhoon terrorizes the citizens. It’s not just any typhoon though, it’s a snake typhoon! And the deadliest snakes in Australia, with venomous fangs are flying straight for Kez.

Kez is the new girl in the office and she’s desperately fighting to prove herself, but what’s a girl to do when faced with a typhoon of snakes coming straight for her helicopter?

These flying diabolical snakes will stop at nothing to kill their victims and Kez only has one option: Figure out how to stop a snake typhoon and save the world... or die trying!
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I like a lot of different genres of films, but the films that give me perhaps the most joy are terrible, terrible B grade action/horror films. There are bad movies and the there are the so-bad-they're-actually-amazing bad movies. Some are filled with A-list stars with a primo budget while others are basically passion projects made by amateur filmmakers with wannabe actors rounding out the cast. The things they all share though, is how wonderfully awful they are. The Room, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, Raging Sharks, Super Mario Brothers are some of the best example of these, and seriously, if you've never seen The Room or Raging Sharks then hop to it, because they will make your ribs crack you'll laugh so hard.

And shockingly, these sorts of films actually turn out to be quite profitable. If you make a bad movie bad enough, you end up with a cult following, midnight screenings across the globe and doors opening where they really shouldn't. Sure they won't land you the Oscar these filmmakers probably think they deserve, but they'll make you into a household name, and sometimes that's good enough. This is why we get the bad bad movies, films like Sharknado and Birdemic, films that set out to be terrible and succeed in being terrible because they are far too self-aware and therefore miss that crucial ingredient that flips them back over to awesome. This is all a very complicated way of introducing the book Snake Typhoon, which falls somewhere in between the so-bad-it's good and bad-bad categories.

I originally accepted this book for review for two reasons. First, the whole premise is an attempt to parody a so-bad-it's-good movie in book form and second, it's set in Brisbane, which is where I'm sitting right now. I will help Brisbane represent itself any way I can. I think the book delivered on both fronts, although since most of the book takes place around the red heart of Australia maybe I should expand my Brissy reppin' to the more general Aussie reppin'. The book utilises a lot of the bad movie tropes; terrible dialogue, clunky transitions, nonsensical plot progression, stereotypical characters, sign-posting for an awful sequel, deus ex machina and unscientific science, but it does these things on purpose. It was a fun and silly read and because of the purposeful attempt to replicate bad movies it was almost impossible to predict where things were going. There were some genuinely good tongue-in-cheek moments, like when the pilot points out to our protagonist Kez that we call typhoons cyclones in Australia, and she shoots back that "Snake Cyclone" doesn't sound as good, or when a character dies Kez is told not to be sad because he "believes in the afterlife". It's over the top and ridiculous and it’s laugh out loud funny at times.

But it isn't all good-bad. Like I mentioned before, when something sets out to parody or replicate the good-bad movie it's usually too self-aware and completely misses the mark. I felt like that was the case here unfortunately. Some of the jokes and bad movie tropes were just too on the nose. Like the sudden shift in romantic interest for Kez or the repeated comments saying things to the effect of "don't worry, we can't die, they need us for the sequel". It takes you out of the moment and forces you to acknowledge that it's a bad-movie imitation rather than just overwhelming you with its nonsensical passion and hilarity.

But if you've always wanted to read your bad movies, and go into this knowing it's a parody of the B-grade movie genre then I think you'll probably have a pretty great time reading it. Kez is a strange protagonist, she kind of feels like the "ugly" version of the female lead in those early 2000s movies like She's All That. She has terrible self-esteem, is nervous about her job but a complete over-achiever, talks too much and seems a little dorky. But as the book goes on she gains more confidence (but probably shouldn't, she makes some terrible judgement calls) and takes charge of the situation. It's completely ridiculous but she's still kind of kick ass, and I'll take my kick ass females where ever I can, bad movie parody or no.

"I Am Compelled Into This Country," Australian Fiction Post 2

Bet you thought I'd forgotten about this series. But how could I possibly deny you lovely folk the literature of my people? I couldn't, not in good conscious, so here you go an entire post about Australian contemporary literary fiction.

Everyone loves a good Carlton dance.

But in truth, this series is more difficult that I'd thought it'd be. Do I just list a bunch of awesome books with mini-synopses? Do I write full reviews for a collection of the ones I've read? Do I write a historical/biographical approach? So that's why this post has been so long in the pipes, it's been written and rewritten about a dozen times and I'm still not sure if it's going to be interesting and/or helpful for any of you. But oh wells, it is what it is. After this I'll be posting a genre fiction post and then a really huge list of books to read and awesome authors. I'll do my best to post the others so there aren't 10,000 years between this and the next post. Scouts honour.

First things first, I need to introduce you to Patrick White.

Guys - Patrick White, Patrick White - guys

So this sunny faced guy right here is the only Australian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was his book The Eye of the Storm which was credited by the Nobel committee as introducing "a new continent into literature". He was also a hell of a grump. At some point early in his career he decided he wanted nothing to do with awards, turning down a bunch of the more prolific Australian titles and didn't even attend when he won the Nobel prize. He was also an openly gay man at a time when it wasn't so great to be an openly gay man in Australia. All in all he was the kind of dude who had no time for your shit, and I love him. David Rice wrote a fantastic piece last year which goes into great detail about White and his books (I recommend Voss as a starting point).

White might seem elitist, fascist even, in his hatred of ordinariness and celebration of a chosen few, but you can feel the compassion and sadness underneath: it wasn't ordinary people he hated, but the cowardice with which people turn their backs on the extraordinary potential of our shared world in order to become ordinary.

Patrick White is sort of the patient zero for Australian literary fiction. Without him you can't have writers like Peter Carey or David Malouf and Australian fiction would be a hell of a lot poorer without these three dudes. Peter Carey is now based in America and a few of his more recent novels have been set in America, but his earlier and most celebrated books are all set in Australia. His 2000 novel The True History of the Kelly Gang is a semi-factual novel told from the perspective of bushranger Ned Kelly. It's HUGE and can be a little tricky to get a hang of the writing style but it's worth the effort. Another of his books, Oscar and Lucinda, was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes in the 1990s, so if you want to skip reading you can always go down that route (BOOOO). David Malouf is a Brisbane author (REPRESENT!) and best known for his short story fiction. His book Remembering Babylon is a striking full-length novel about identity and isolation and is just beautifully written. It's all about a white boy who was abandoned and then raised amongs Indigenous Australians before finding himself back among white settlers and struggling to identify and fit it. It's basically mandatory reading in any Australian fiction class and for good reason.

Bryce Courtenay and Thomas Keneally are probably more commercial and less literary than White, Malouf and Carey but since when is that a marker of greatness? Courtenay is actually South African by birth but emigrated to Australia after studying in England and meeting his to-be wife. You may have heard of his book The Power of One which takes place in South Africa during WW2 but as far as I'm aware none of his other novels, and there are plenty, are readily available overseas. Which is a crying shame because he's an epic storyteller who favours multi-generational bildungsroman narratives. As far as I'm concerned his greatest achievement is Four Fires, a book which meticulously represents 1950s Australia and is just SO GOOD. Thomas Keneally's writing is definitely available overseas, likely due to the fact that he wrote the book that the Spielberg classic film Schindler's List is based on. It was originally published as Schindler's Ark, and the story about how Keneally came to tell Schindler's story is fascinating in its own right and worth a read. Keneally writes a combination of non-fiction and fiction, though regardless of format they typically explore the human condition. His writing isn't limited to Australia (as Schindler's Ark attests) though he's written plenty on our people and culture as well.

Most of Australian literary fiction centres around two things. Either they're studies of family, or they're focused on the Australian landscape-either the bush, coast or suburban environments - or a combination of the two. Two prime examples come to mind. First is Christos Tsiolkas. Tsiolkas tends to focus on the family side of Australian life. His book The Slap (which I still need to read) is about the repercussions of a family friend slapping a child for misbehaving at a barbecue. It's also been made into a television series, which again I still need to watch, but I've heard pretty great things about it.  Tim Winton's books typically take place on the West Australian coast and the environment becomes a critical character in his work.

"The place comes first. If the place isn't interesting to me then I can't feel it. I can't feel any people in it. I can't feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to" (Tim Winton on writing)

Cloudstreet is probably Winton's most well-known and well-regarded novel, and it combines the place and the people to great success. Taking place on (you guessed it) Cloud Street between 1940 and 1960, the book focuses on two specific families and how they contrast and conflict with each other when they move into a house together.

In a sense all Australian fiction is about outsiders. We arrived in a country completely incompatible with our previous way of life. The environment was seen as harsh and aggressive, the weather was fierce and intense, and - save an Indigenous population - we were all alone and far from everyone else. Since then we've alienated and turned against just about every culture/sexuality/religion/race at some point in time, and while we've learnt from our somewhat turbulent history we've still got some ways to go. There has been an increase in migrant fiction here over the past 10 years or so, and it often presents a confronting picture of life in Australia as a migrant. The Eastern Slope Chronicle by Yu Ouyang touches on China's Cultural Revolution, life in Australia, multiculturalism and post-colonialism. Benjamin Law touches on some similar themes in his autobiography The Family Law, but writes it from a much more humourous and intimate perspective. Law has a bit of David Sedaris to his style of storytelling, and his recollections of his wild and crazy family provides a neat glimpse into the lives of an Chinese-Australian family.

There was a brief period of grunge youth writing in the 1980s/1990s that seemed to flourish here in Brisbane. It's hardly unique to Australia - it's the style of writing which you find in books like Trainspotting - but as they're often semi-autobiographical it's a fascinating window into the lives of people my age 20+ years ago. Andrew McGahan's Praise and 1988 (debut book and prequel) and John Birmingham's He Died With A Falafel In his Hand are perfect examples of this trend. They're about distinctly unlikable characters, sharehouse dramas, budding and waning relationships, drugs, alcohol and apathy. They're definitely not for everyone, but I unabashedly love this style of writing and the Gen-X whining so I'll always recommend them.

He Died With A Falafel was made into a movie in the late 1990s, and joined the ranks of the many, many Australian books that make that transition. One of the most famous is the Peter Weir helmed Picnic at Hanging Rock. The 1967 novel by Joan Lindsey is the perfect mix of haunting landscape and girls in white dresses. The book is a light mystery about a series of disappearances during a girl school's day trip to Hanging Rock. The events are left very up in the air, is it dreamtime magic, a rip in the space time continuum, murder? Another fantastic Australian novel that was adapted to screen is Luke Davis' Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction. The film starred the gorgeous Heath Ledger and Geoffrey Rush and was a very condensed interpretation of the book. Both the book and the film are emotionally charged, but the book will tear your heart out and stomp all over it. It covers 10 years in the life and juxtaposes the narrator's (he's never named) turbulent relationships with heroin addiction and his girlfriend Candy, and explores addiction, obsession and loss.

So I realise I look pretty bad right now, what with not mentioning any female authors (Joan Lindsey aside). But hold your horses, because that was intentional.

Australian ladies are wicked good, and deserve some proper space of their own. Sonya Hartnett is the first that comes to mind. She's one of those crazy people who has a book written at 13 and been published at 15 (you know, the type that makes you feel like you're wasting your life) and writes some of the most unsettlingly good stuff I've ever read. She's pretty controversial, you'll find a lot of sex and abuse and incest in her books, which is doubly controversial when you consider many people think of her as a YA author. Personally I think there's a difference about having young protagonists and writing YA, but regardless of that distinction you check out Sleeping Dogs (super bleak and incesty but gorgeous) and Of A Boy (about mysterious neighbours and loneliness).

Thea Astley is another fancy Aussie lady you should read. I've only read It's Raining in Mango, but she's well regarded as a compassionate and delightfully funny writer here in Australia and I've been meaning to read more of her for years. It's Raining in Mango takes place in 19th Century Australia and it's about so much. It's about people (Australian-born and immigrant), sexuality, racism, Australian culture...and it's done well. It's not an easy read, but I think it's a brilliant one if you're looking for some insight into Australia.

Representing the ladies in fiction and non-fiction, is Geraldine Brooks. I haven't read any of her books (for shame Kayleigh!) but from what I gather she's basically an Australian Hilary Mantel, fictionalising real life people and events to tell or add depth to a story that wouldn't be told otherwise. Actually, a few of you who like Little Women probably do know her. She's the author who wrote March, the book about Mr March's absence from the family during the war. Basically, she writes historical fiction with a literary bent and I'm not sure if Brooks has actually written about Australia or Australian history, but she's Australian so that still counts right? And as a final little nod to Australian lady authors I have to mention Hannah Kent. Her debut novel Burial Rites is blowing up internationally so this is an Australian author you can get in with on the ground level. Like Brooks, this isn't actually set in Australia - it's set in Iceland - but who even cares. READ IT.

So this is probably long enough for the time being. Obviously I haven't even gotten close to mentioning all the amazing Australian authors out there but these were the ones who came to my mind first and I'm pretty sure if you give any of them a shot you'll end up finding similar authors recommended to you on Goodreads or wherever, which is what this is all about right? RIGHT?
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Want to see what you've missed so far?

Learning To Love A Sunburnt Country - Australian literature history
Fill Your Ears With Australians - Australian music


*Title quote from Voss by Patrick White

Learning to Love A Sunburnt Country, or Australian Fiction for Newbies.

So last week Laura reviewed one of my favourite books, Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner. Ethel Turner is a bit of a hero of mine. At a time when "Australian" children's books were mostly written by British dudes who had never been to Australia and were always about a recently transplanted English kid who tumbles through the bush and finds himself at the pointy end of an aboriginal's spear and does some Boy's Adventure stuff and ends with a rousing game of cricket. Ms Turner called bullshit on this because Australian children are not like British kids, as she details in the intro to Seven Little Australians.

If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with perhaps a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay down the book immediately and betake yourself to 'Sandford and Merton' or similar standard juvenile works. Not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are. 

In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks may be paragons of virtue, I know little about them. But in Australia a model child is--I say it not without thankfulness--an unknown quantity. It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and the people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits not crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowful history. 

There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief in nature here, and therefore in children.

And in a single introduction an entire national identity was born. Well, we had our national identity pretty well sown up before this book was released in 1894 but it reiterates the most important parts pretty spectacularly. And the book only gets better, so read it please. All of this is a long way of saying that it is thanks to Laura and Alley that I'm writing this post because they both said they were devastated they hadn't read more Australian fiction and were weeping rivers of tears and asking would I please help them? Or at least that's how I remember it happening.

I actually touched on this subject earlier this year in an Armchair BEA post about children's literature. I wrote specifically about picture, children and YA books written by Australians, although not necessarily take place in Australia. So I might use that as a jumping off point, and write a series of posts which cover the early history of fiction in Australia (because it's fascinating), as well as looking at more contemporary authors and culminating with the mother of all lists. I'll try to keep from going overboard but I spent A LOT of time at university studying just this so it's possible I'll go too far (sorry not sorry). Also, because I'm pretty proud of a lot of our female writers (did you know the first novel published in Australia was written by a woman?) it's possible this will be a super biased list and you should probably check out the Australian Gov site for a more complete history.

So even if you only really want to read contemporary Australian books you should probably still read some of the writings of our bush poets. Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson are the two main dudes in this category. You've all heard the song Waltzing Matilda right? Well that's a Banjo Paterson poem and along with The Man From Snowy River is probably one of the most famous Australian bush poems.  Paterson and Lawson were pretty different when it came to their writing, Paterson favoured a romantic approach to working and living in the bush, seeing it as a motivating strength to our national identity while Lawson was more of a realist and tended to be a little bit more political with his poems. If you have some time you should check out the shit they used to throw at each other either through their poems or the articles they wrote for Australian papers. Also, Henry Lawson was the son of noted suffragist and feminist Louisa Lawson which is probably why Henry turned out so damn stellar, and is still considered Australia's greatest writer.

Speaking of feminists and Henry Lawson. Miles Franklin (pseudonym for Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin) is probably one of Australia's most noted female authors. She's best known for her 1901 novel My Brilliant Career which she wrote as a TEENAGER. She then passed it on to Henry Lawson who gave it to his publishers and BOOM. She bequeathed her estate to create the Miles Franklin Literary Award which is THE award to win if you're an Australian author, and a pretty good place to look if you're after books that are about Australia and by Australians. And still speaking of feminists and Henry Lawson, READ BARBARA BAYNTON. She's amazing. She basically grabbed all of the bush poets by the ear and said "what about the ladies huh? How do they fit into this idyllic view of life in the bush?" (except Henry Lawson whose short story The Drover's Wife covered similar ground - told you he was stellar). If you read anything in this list make it her short story The Chosen Vessel, (originally titled The Tramp) which is basically a harrowing gothic-esque short story about a woman alone on a bush homestead who is harassed and threatened by a passing tramp. It's terrifying and reminds me a lot of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. If you want to read more of Baynton (and I suggest you do) get hold of Bush Tales which is a collection of short stories that includes The Chosen Vessel and Squeaker's Mate (equally good and terrifying). This review from ANZ Lit Lovers covers more than I could ever hope to.

 Joseph Furphy writing under the name Tom Collins published the novel Such is Life which remains one of Australia's best known and regarded novels. It's written in the vernacular of the day, so it can be tricky to get into (think Trainspotting) but it's a humourous, realistic (realism being the 19th century genre du jour) novel that presents something of an all encompassing look at the Australian way of life. The title, by the way, comes from Ned Kelly's supposed final words as he was about to be hanged. David Unaipon was 1000 kinds of awesome. Not only was he a writer and an inventor (trivia fans -he's on our $50 note) but he was indigenous. And this is a big deal because he was the first published indigenous writer, and he was responsible for breaking through a lot of the "savage native" stereotypes that existed at the time. He was often referred to as the Australian Leonardo Di Vinci which is a killer compliment to give a scientist.

Ruth Park is technically from New Zealand, however she began writing after she moved to Australia to marry author Darcy Niland. She was a prolific author, owing apparently to the lack of books in her life growing up. Her book Playing Beattie Bow was a favourite of my mums and she passed that down to me as soon as I could read. However I think her book The Harp in the South was probably her most famous novel both in Australia and internationally. And because I'm completely shallow, you should check out her picture because dayum the lady was stunning.

Who else needs mentioning? Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym for Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson) was a novelist best known for her 1910 coming of age novel The Getting of Wisdom. Marcus Clarke's novel For the Term of His Natural Life explored life as a convict in early Australian settlement. May Gibbs wrote the beloved Snugglepot and Cuddlepie children's stories and Dorothy Hewitt was a poet, playwright and novelist followed by controversy. Then of course there is poet Dorothea McKellar whose second verse of her poem My Country gave Bill Bryson the title for his travel book on Australia.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

And I think I'll end this post here, not only because it is already HUGE but because you can find most of these authors online and for free (especially the short story and poetry writers) and the next bunch will necessitate library and book store searches. But hopefully this has been somewhat interesting and you don't feel like I've just regurgitated a bunch of essays at you. This is actually my favourite era of Australian writing because it's so fundamental to the writing of contemporary Australian authors and contemporary Australian society. I don't think people tend to think of Australia as a place for progressive thought especially early in our history (and for the most part, as a country, we weren't) but the most prolific authors from this era were all republicans, nationalists, communists, feminists and were constantly challenging the societal norms of the day. And that's something to be proud of.

Next week I'll look at authors who published after WW2, and I'll follow it with a final post that'll basically just be a list of books to read I think. If any Aussie bloggers are reading let me know if I've missed anything out or gotten any of the details wrong.