Peter Timms

Asking for Trouble is deceptively simple. Set mostly in 1950s Melbourne, the novel starts out with a crusty old narrator called Harry Bascombe reluctantly agreeing to be interviewed for a TV series investigating old crimes, and then it launches into his memories of childhood. I loved reading this, because this was the Melbourne that existed ten years before our family migrated here. I’ve been here so long now that people just assume I remember Menzies and the Olympic Games and the arrival of TV, but no, that was all before my time and so the rich domestic historical detail was a delight to read.

But even as I enjoyed the childhood dramas – the teachers good and bad, the friendships and the bullying, and the mysterious business of making sense of the adult world around Harry – my readerly brain was reminding me that there had been a crime, one noteworthy enough to interest a journalist over half a century later. The pages whizzed by, (and if there were clues I missed them entirely) until suddenly the book took a darker turn with the death of Harry’s mother in a car accident. Amid the nostalgia, this brought me up short: I had almost forgotten how many people used to die on our roads every year. Victoria’s 2016 road toll was 291 – a terrible number for all those who loved the victims and a number that doesn’t reveal the extend of trauma among the injured – but still an astonishing reduction from 1034 in 1969, the year that The Sun News-Pictorial ran one of the most effective newspaper campaigns waged in Australia. Declare War on 1034 was the slogan and it led to .05 blood-alcohol laws, random breath testing and compulsory seatbelts, and by being effective, changed the mindset that road deaths were inevitable. Since then we now target speed, drug-affected driving and fatigue, and our goal is a road toll of zero. So it was disquieting to see how everybody in Harry’s world just accepts a violent death in a road crash, and Harry, big-noting himself among his friends, knows so much about road deaths that he is able to describe his mother’s death convincingly even though he wasn’t there.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/05/11/asking-for-trouble-by-peter-timms/… (meer)

I like most of Australia’s capital cities, but – as many Australians do – I have a special fondness for Hobart. We like it because it is beautiful, intimate in scale and rich in interesting things to do and see. No other capital city lets tourists share such a wealth of treasures without much need of a car; though you need one to explore Mt Wellington, from a B&B in Battery Point I have spent half a dozen happy weekends mooching about on foot in the Salamanca district and the CBD while The Spouse attended conferences, and we were then able to walk to splendid restaurants without fear of a breathalyser to spoil our pleasure in the wine list. Hobart has all of a capital city’s amenities without the traffic, crowds and pollution. You can go to museums and art galleries; concerts and plays; historical tours and markets; and all of it tucked beside the charm of Constitution Dock and under the brooding majesty of Mt Wellington.

Peter Timms’ In Search of Hobart (2009) was the first contribution to the New South City Series; it was followed in due course by Brisbane by Matthew Condon and Sydney by Delia Falconer. I bought Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham when it came out in 2011 and Adelaide by Kerryn Goldsworthy in 2012. Others in the series are Canberra, Alice Springs, Perth and Darwin. My guess is that these books are very popular with tourists: they are compact reading, and can be read between cities on board the plane.

Timms’ is a recent convert to Hobart’s charms: he originally hails from Melbourne but has adopted Hobart as home and his affection for the city shows. Still, he has a criticism or two to offer, but he includes anecdotes and interviews with fellow-Hobartians so there is a diversity of opinion. His own background is as an art curator and critic of note, and – as you’d expect – he has some cross things to say about some of Hobart’s more recent architectural developments.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/02/18/in-search-of-hobart-by-peter-timms-read-by-d...… (meer)