Readings.com.au: Matthew Condon

Brisbane

I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it, this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you keep it with you, and measure all other light by it. If you live away from it, then step back into it, it is the first thing that tells you you’re home.

In this book, the third in a series on Australian cities in which leading Australian authors write about their home city, novelist and journalist Matthew Condon rediscovers the city of his childhood, Brisbane. Having returned there after many years, Condon takes the reader on a unique and personal journey through contemporary Brisbane, unearthing its history—sometimes literally—and painting a portrait of the contemporary transformation of the city.

The Trout Opera

No extra details available for this item.

The Motorcycle Cafe

There was no funeral for my son. I remember it was just a small service in the chapel at the back of the hospital. The chapel wasn't even as big as the waiting room for the fathers and relatives. It had a wooden cross on the wall and chairs facing the cross. They had to telephone for a priest. It didn't take long for him to arrive and then it was just me and the matron and the priest. A couple of my best mates waited outside because they were still in their overalls. they took their hats off though because they had them in their hands when I came out.

The people at the hospital didn't let me see Frieda for what seemed like a long time. The whole thing was not real for me because I expected the child for so long and then there was nothing to hold or see in the cribs with the other babies. Everyone said to have some time off work but I didn't want to. i think if my son and how he would have been a man now. He could've ridden with me or raced with my mate's sons. I only have a piece of paper typed on an old machine because some of the letters are crooked. It has his name on it. They asked me what we were going to call him and they put his name on the paper. I can take it out and read it any time I want. Jim Baker - stillborn.

The Motorcycle Cafe is a mosaic portrait of a fascinating man going through the motions of an ordinary life. George Baker had fled the England of his birth to begin a new life in Australia, but he could not abandon his memories and emotions. Years after his death, many of his character traits reappear in his grandson, who must learn to live with a legacy that is both rewarding and disturbing.

The Trout Opera

The Trout Opera - more than ten years in the writing - is a stunning epic novel that encompasses twentieth-century Australia. Opening with a Christmas pageant on the banks of the Snowy River in 1906 and ending with the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, it is the story of simple rabbiter and farm hand Wilfred Lampe who, at the end of his long life, is unwittingly swept up into an international spectacle. On the way he discovers a great-niece, the wild and troubled young Aurora, whom he never knew existed, and together they take an unlikely road trip that changes their lives. Wilfred, who has only ever left Dalgety once in almost a hundred years, comes face to face with contemporary Australia, and Aurora, enmeshed in the complex social problems of a modern nation, is taught how to repair her damaged life. This dazzling story - marvellously broad in its telling and superbly crafted - is about the changing nature of the Australian character, finding the source of human decency in a mad world, history, war, romance, murder, bushfires, drugs, the fragile and resilient nature of the environment and the art of fly fishing. It's the story of a man who has experienced the tumultuous reverberations of Australian history while never moving from his birthplace on the Snowy, and it asks, what constitutes a meaningful life?

The Pillow Fight

The gripping story of Luke, an easy-going deep-sea diver who likes to please everyone, and the strong-willed, beautiful Charlotte with whom he falls in love. On their wedding night she picks a fight with Luke in their hotel room and he ends up with a black eye that lasts well into their honeymoon. The novel unfolds with flashbacks to that night, when Luke finds himself questioning whether he's just ruined his life, and forwards again to their honeymoon, where Charlotte's moods veer wildly from loving to livid. When this novel was first published, Carmel Bird described it as 'The chilling calibration of a violent marriage told with wistful compassion and an erotic charge.'

The Lulu Magnet

Then he turned on the clock and heard the first thing anyone or anything said to him in his thirties. 'Good morning. You have 394,200 hours left to live.' From 'The Death Clock', Poppies

He closed his eyes and remembered the bottle of bourbon disappear out the driver's window as he gunned the car at over 160kph, saw it explode in a million shards and droplets in the rear vision mirror, and the black crows skipping towards it, towards the site of the explosion, before it all disappeared behind him in a silver haze of heat. From "The Abattoir Party', Poppies

I can't quite understand this, being only five, but the less obvious my mother tries to make my lazy eye by disguising it with the pink patch, the more it stands out. The bold black patch, though, seems to make the problem disappear. Suddenly I am the Pirate Boy. Yo-ho-ho. From 'The Eleven Movements of the Pirate Boy', Ticking

I went to what I thought was a meeting of the No Aircraft Noise Party, but it had nothing to do with the No Aircraft Noise Party. It was literally a No Aircraft Noise party. A fancy dress party. A fancy dress party with an aircraft theme. There were three huge walking triangular sandwiches, complete with crusts and a frill of lettuce. There were five sick bags, a half-dozen Emu Homestead Anzac cookies sachets, two captains, a smattering of stewards, one elaborately dressed purser, a silver coffee pot, a colourful group of orange juice containers, a few boarding passes, two bulky beverage trolleys in the corner next to the jukebox, and a gathering of miniature spirit bottles. On the dining room table someone had ingeniously rigged up an automatic Lazy Susan that looked like a tiny luggage carousel. It carried snacks around on an endless circuit. And then there was The Banana Queen. From View From the Bar Italia: An Entertainment

A Night At The Pink Poodle

Icarus is a penthouse salesman on the Gold Coast. In his early thirties and at the top of his profession, he revels in the trappings of his success: the luxury apartment at Parthenon Place overlooking the endless rolling surf, the red Mustang convertible, the gorgeous beautician girlfriend. His life couldn't be more perfect. or could it? This is the story of the rise and fall and redemption of a modern-day Icarus, and is the final word on that strangely unsettling and gloriously tacky place we call the Gold Coast. Matt Condon's reputation as one of our most original and talented writers was set once and for all with the publication of this novel.