BETWEENTHELINES HONOURING A HERO

POETRY FICTION VICE VERSA AUTUMN Arjun von Caemmerer, Ali Smith Collective Effort Press, Hamish Hamilton, $29.99 $40 Ali Smith, born in In Vice Versa, Scotland but a resident poet Arjun von of Cambridge, has been Caemmerer makes short-listed for the reference to Erwin Schrodinger and the Booker Prize more than once for her free and theoretical physicist/philosopher’s “thought clever fiction that often replays time – or, in experiment”, which poses a question this case, rearranges it. A wonderful old gay concerning the fate of a cat. In a poem of man, Daniel, is dying, his faculties drawing three fractured parts of words and a line him in and out of memory and the now. drawing, we contemplate the exact moment There is also a girl, or an older woman, a cat exposed to radioactive material in a box who we learn is beloved friend Elizabeth. The sinking of the HMAS Armidale claimed the life of Teddy Sheean, among many others. can be considered dead or alive. With this Their marvellous conversations come to life, curious collection of his new and selected including the moment when he flung away a HONOUR DENIED: TEDDY for Past Acts of Naval and Military Valour poems, von Caemmerer is indulging in not watch to prove time flies. The shifting collage SHEEAN A TASMANIAN HERO inquiry ruled out posthumous awards so just thought experimentation but linguistic of their relationship touches on an esoteric Tom Lewis long after the event, deciding our honours gymnastics. Von Caemmerer says this is a fascination with real-life pop artist Pauline Avonmore Books, $34.95 system “was not established to rectify past poetry that uses language like plasticine, Boty, a gorgeous, once-vibrant pre-feminist injustices”, so the rules should be applied engaging the reader in the service of art radical who is periodically forgotten, early 75 years after his death, “as they were at the time”. Thus, Sheean poetry, medicine, yoga, art, love, music then remembered, then forgotten again. ordinary seaman Teddy Sheean is remains undeservedly short-changed. and friendship. DON KNOWLER PENELOPE DEBELLE Nstill owed due recognition. He died Except for its glorious end, his short life heroically. As the HMAS Armidale sank was unremarkable. He was born at Lower BIOGRAPHY CRIME during an air attack in 1942, the wounded Barrington, the 14th of 16 children, and ALBANESE: TELLING HIS BLOODY PROJECT 18-year-old ignored orders to abandon ship, raised at Latrobe. Initially a farm worker, IT STRAIGHT Graeme Macrae Burnet strapped himself to an Oerlikon gun and he joined the RAN in April 1941 and about Karen Middleton Text Publishing, $19.99 kept firing at Japanese aircraft strafing those six months later got engaged to young Vintage Australia, $34.99 in the water. He destroyed at least one Devonport woman Kath Lapthorne. There is no mystery before he went down with the ship. While the brevity of Sheean’s life means In an era of bland, about what Roderick Yet his extraordinary courage was Honour Denied is not long on biographical made-for-television Macrae has done in this acknowledged only with a Mention in detail, it provides a smorgasbord of politicians, larrikin novel, which shines Despatches, the British Empire’s lowest sidebars, detours, extraneous information, federal Labor MP Anthony “Albo” Albanese a light on life in a 19th-century Scottish award for valour in battle, leading to photos, maps, diagrams, service records, stands out. The former deputy prime highland village but there is a big question demands for a Cross, the highest. appendices, correspondence and digressions minister is an old-style Labor fighter and the mark over why he did it. Seventeen-year-old The problem, author Tom Lewis writes, is on such subjects as naval life, corvettes, son of a working-class single mother from Macrae is on trial for murdering Lachlan that, “in WWII, the MID was one of only two minesweepers and minesweeping, the inner-city . Press gallery journalist and Mackenzie, as well as his daughter Flora awards that could be given posthumously, development of warships and guns at sea, author Karen Middleton reveals a surprising and son Donnie. The first part of the novel the other being the … ”. why the navy carries out surveys and how story about the father Albanese met for the is Macrae’s confession, while the second He points out that because a warship the US approaches gallantry awards. first time in 2009. After becoming pregnant part – which comprises autopsy reports fights as a unit, the worthiness of individual One such digression is a harrowing to an Italian steward she met on a ship to and the testimony of a psychologist – actions for a VC is difficult to determine, so first-person account of how some of England, Albanese’s mother Maryanne provides a shocking twist. The book, which “it’s not surprising that the Victoria Cross Armidale’s crew survived eight days in returned to Sydney and pretended to was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, is for naval personnel has been more difficult the sea before being be a widow. She confided in her son that cleverly structured and instantly immerses to obtain than it is for land forces”. No rescued. Their courage his father was alive, but it was many years the reader in the period while blurring the Australian sailor has received a VC. was also remarkable, but before Albanese decided to try to track lines between fact and fiction. Appreciation Sheean was especially worthy, for his was it was Sheean’s fighting down Carlo in Italy. The book details the for the stilted, formal writing of the 19th a lone act performed when his ship was spirit that became part political career and motivations of a man who century and empathy for the characters no longer a fighting unit – a crucial point of our ethos. Perhaps is still considered a future Labor leader. are, however, up to individual taste. that appears to have been overlooked. Yet that is recognition PETER JEAN IAN ORCHARD Australia’s 2013 Unresolved Recognition enough. ROBERT COX

20 tasweekend FEBRUARY 25-26, 2017