Letter to George Clooney (Debra Adelaide, Pan Macmillan)

I’ve been a fan of Debra Adelaide’s writing since The Hotel Albatross was published in the mid 90s. Her last novel, The Household Guide to Dying, was a wonderfully touching take on dying, simultaneously intense and affecting, and very funny, which was quite a feat. Her new collection of stories, Letter to George Clooney, has, as the title story implies, a striking originality and verve to it, and an arresting variety. Almost all the stories are rooted in everyday Australia, but it’s a take-off point. A razor-sharp wit and a clear-eyed intelligence lift all of them into another realm. ‘Writing (in) the New Millennium’  and ‘Glory in the Flower’ are wickedly funny exposes of the foibles and fallacies of a contemporary ‘writing industry’ and ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ brilliantly counterpoints the absurdities of those cryptic LRB personals with a muse on signs observed from and within a commuter train. It’s a tribute to Adelaide’s touch and timing that we move from light to dark, from mundane to extraordinary seamlessly, but nothing in the collection prepares us for the title story, quite rightly left to last. The quiet control of present life is transformed into the nightmare of terror and abuse of the past, making a deliberate mockery of the whimsy implied in the title. It’s a knockout story to end a fine collection. 

David Gaunt is the co-owner of Gleebooks in Sydney

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews