Word On Books
with Jeremy Fenton
The Biographers Tale
By AS Byatt, Published by Vintage
 The main character in AS Byatt's new novel The Biographer's Tale, Phineas G., has decided that he is going to study the 'messiness of real life'. To do so he will write a biography of a great biographer - endeavouring to track down the dead ends and diversions of one man's existence to put a 'whole life' on the page. In the footsteps of Boswell, as it were.
But whose life is he really studying? And whose tale is this? In a Byatt novel the only certainties are that you can never be sure of safe or expected outcomes.
British writer and critic AS Byatt is the author of a numerous novels (she won the Booker Prize for Possession in 1990), novellas and short story collections, all of which stand out in this day and age of single-layered fiction and dull, laboured language as works of incredible literary merit.
Her books call to mind the great English novelists of two centuries ago (and earlier) - people like Bronte, DaFoe, Swift, and even the master himself, Dickens.
That's not to say that they don't have a modern sensibility about them. In fact quite often the sting in the tail in the work comes through a meeting of worlds: the mannered language and phraseology of the past with the blunt hard-edged reality of today.
In short, Byatt's literary voice continues to be unerring, her passion for the strangeness of life undeniable and her story telling ability vast.
The Biographer's Tale is a beautifully written piece of high-class literature that stands well alongside her other exceptional works.
30 Days in Sydney
By Peter Carey, Published by Bloomsbury
 It has the word gimmick written heavily between the lines. You take a respected publishing imprint, select a well-known author, add the city they know best - then ask them to furnish 50-60,000 words on the subject.
The result being the 'occasional' series, The Writer and the City, from Bloomsbury.
Following Edmund White's exploration of Paris in The Flaneur, this latest book in the series features Peter Carey digesting and regurgitating Sydney after a 30-day visit during April, 2000.
The fact that Carey has made New York his home for around 10 years gives 30 Days an aspect of rediscovery and perspective that makes for interesting reading, as does the fleeting look into the personal history of the author and his friends and family.
Attempting to categorise any city through its relationship to the four elements (which is the task Carey set himself) would challenge the most gifted of writers - but it does seem fitting for the city on the harbour that regularly plays host to huge wind-storms and has bushfires lapping at its margins every couple of years.
Despite 30 Days in Sydney being a somewhat forced feeling affair, there is no denying Carey's gift for words and character development (the deserved acclaim for True History of the Kelly Gang is another testament to his skills.) In this piece, most of the supporting players are (just disguised) living people, and the central character is the world's newest greatest city.
Not quite history and not exactly biography - at least Carey has the courtesy to clearly label 30 Days a "wildly distorted account".
A work mainly for Peter Carey or Sydney fanatics (of which there are probably enough of each to make this book a modest success).
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