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WORK TITLE: On the Java Ridge
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Port Fairy
STATE: VIC
COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY: Australian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2015134186 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015134186 |
| HEADING: | Serong, Jock |
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| 001 | 9982168 |
| 005 | 20151008073604.0 |
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| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca10289312 |
| 040 | __ |a ViW-L |b eng |e rda |c ViW-L |
| 100 | 1_ |a Serong, Jock |
| 370 | __ |e Victoria |2 naf |
| 374 | __ |a Lawyers |2 lcsh |
| 670 | __ |a Quota, 2015 |b t.p. (Jock Serong; lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria; a lawyer and features writer) |
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Lilly; children: four.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Criminal lawyer, features writer, editor, teacher. Great Ocean Quarterly, editor.
AWARDS:Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel, 2015, for Quota.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Surfing World, Australian Surf Business, Guardian, and Slow Living. Writer for surf magazines, papers, and websites, and wrote a screenplay that was bought by a production company.
SIDELIGHTS
Australian Jock Serong is a writer and editor who lives and works on the southwest coast of Victoria. He is editor of Great Ocean Quarterly and a feature writer who has published articles in various periodicals, such as Surfing World, Australian Surf Business, Guardian, and Slow Living. Formerly a lawyer, Serong was partner in a law firm and taught law, which he eventually gave up to write full time.
Quota
Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel, Serong’s 2015 book Quota is an atmospheric murder mystery set on the remote Australian coastal town of Dauphin. After lawyer Charlie Jardim has a career meltdown and his girlfriend dumps him, he reluctantly accepts a job investigating a murder on the coast. At least the sea air will do him good. As he looks into the victim’s illegal activity in the abalone trade and drug trade, Jardim uncovers secrets and divided loyalties. Serong infuses a sense of place in his debut crime thriller filled with courtroom drama and uncooperative witnesses.
According to Karen Chisholm online at Reviewing the Evidence, “We have pitch-perfect dialogue, and a strong sense of place about this small town in particular. The characters there are particularly believable and even allowing for the slightly off-camera nature of Jardim, actually quite likeable (a bonus).” On the Salty Popcorn website, a contributor reported: “Where Quota finds its point of difference and its real strength is the compelling local flavour. The story borrows a lot from Serong’s own life… The process Charlie goes through of gradually unwinding and adjusting to the town’s pace of life feels authentic.”
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Serong next wrote the suspenseful The Rules of Backyard Cricket in 2017. In the story, middle-aged bad boy and former cricket sports star Darren Keefe is in the boot of a car with a bullet in his knee. He unfolds the plot explaining how he got into this predicament. Darren and his older brother Wally are sons of a fiercely independent but poor single mother in the western suburbs. The boys play cricket and become stars with Darren who drinks and parties too much, and Wally as the level headed one. In a television interview, Darren cries and begs for forgiveness but it’s just a ploy using media manipulation. Serong addresses the perils of celebrity, toxic sports culture, and privilege that lead Darren to the bottom.
In an interview with Matt Neal online at Standard, Serong explained the themes he incorporated into the book. It’s about “men and Australiana and sport, but on the other is…about family and brothers and in a subtle way it’s a story about women. I wanted to think critically about men and sport and how those men behave in the public arena, to look at how it is that happens and why as a society do we encourage it,” Serong said. Online at Criminal Element, reviewer Doreen Sheridan noted: “The novel speaks to the place organized sports has in the modern zeitgeist, displaying unpalatable truths both about society’s fascination with the subject and with the kind of masculinity it both encourages and discards when the players can no longer entertain.”
“The novel progresses, slowly and steadily, like a tactical battle against a good opposition test team,” declared a writer on the AustCrime website. The writer added: “There’s a lot about the tensions between the brothers that come from them simply being brothers, and then there’s that which comes from the intricacies of the cricket world.” Praising the book for its ear for language and understanding of how everyday people find themselves in a heap of trouble, Sue Turnbull reported in Sydney Morning Herald: “Beautifully written and acutely observed, The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a noir tour de force.” In the sad yet touching tale, “There is, as might be expected, quite a lot of cricket in this genre-bending crime story, as well as a wealth of rumination on the family ties that bind,” added Turnbull.
On the Java Ridge
Serong’s next book, On the Java Ridge, concerns Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers, set in the near future. It’s an election year and Minister for Border Integrity Cassius Calvert has instituted a new immigration declaration, that no unauthorized vessels in Australian waters will receive maritime assistance and that the protection of northern waters has been outsourced to private sector partners, the Core Resolve Security, thereby preventing oversight by the public. As a storm closes in, unfortunately, two vessels are in distress looking for help: the Java Ridge, full of surfing tourists, and the Takalar, full of refugees fleeing the Talaban, including nine-year-old Roya and her pregnant mother. Java Ridge skipper Isi Natoli helps the refugees the best she can.
Adrian McKinty declared in the Sydney Morning Herald that Serong should channel Clive Cussler or Iain Banks to move the plot along. “But this is only a minor quibble—how it all gets resolved in the third act is nicely done and I enjoyed jumping between the very different points of view that Serong uses to tell his taut and impressive third novel,” said McKinty. Commenting on Serong’s political message in the book, Mark Rubbo explained on the Readings website: “The reader is taken on a journey that will leave them exhilarated, angry and compulsively engaged. It marks Serong as one of the great exponents of tense, totally engaging narrative fiction.”
In a review on the AustCrime website, Robert Goodman remarked: “Serong has crafted an incredibly tense novel. He does not pull any punches in the plight of the refugees and the surfing party… And their subsequent search for safety is nerve wracking. At the same time, the machinations that sit behind their potential for rescue, make this a political thriller as much as a survival thriller.” A Better Reading reviewer commented: “Each character is treated with sensitivity and empathy, a reminder of the power of storytelling to evoke far more than reality. Serong’s romanticist attraction to landscape… rivals characterisation as his greatest writerly quality.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2018, review of On the Java Ridge.
ONLINE
ABC, http://www.abc.net.au (August 4, 2014), review of Quota.
AustCrime, http://www.austcrimefiction.org/ (August 18, 2016), review of The Rules of Backyard Cricket; (August 11, 2017), Robert Goodman, review of On the Java Ridge.
Better Reading, http://www.betterreading.com.au/ (August 29, 2017), review of On the Java Ridge.
Booksellers, https://booksellersnz.wordpress.com (August 10, 2017), review of On the Java Ridge.
Criminal Element, https://www.criminalelement.com/ (May 16, 2017), Doreen Sheridan, review of The Rules of Backyard Cricket.
Readings, https://www.readings.com.au/ (July 25, 2017), Mark Rubbo, review of On the Java Ridge.
Reviewing the Evidence, http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/ (June 1, 2015), Karen Chisholm, review of Quota.
Salty Popcorn, https://saltypopcorn.com.au/quota/ (July 6, 2016), review of Quota.
Standard, https://www.standard.net.au/ (September 1, 2018), Matt Neal, author interview.
Sydney Morning Herald Online, https://www.smh.com.au/ (July 10, 2014), review of Quota; (August 27, 2016), Sue Turnbull, review of The Rules of Backyard Cricket; (September 4, 2017), Adrian McKinty, review of On the Java Ridge.
Swellnet, http://www.swellnet.com (July 17, 2014), review of Quota.
Jock Serong
Jock Serong is the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly, and writes for Australian magazines including Surfing World, Australian Surf Business and Slow. He's the author of a forthcoming novel, Quota (Text Publishing), and he lives and writes in western Victoria.
Jock Serong
Jock Serong’s debut novel Quota won the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. In 2016, his second novel, The Rules of Backyard Cricket was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. His third novel, On the Java Ridge was published in 2017. Formerly a lawyer, Jock is now a feature writer and was the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He lives with his wife and four children in Port Fairy, Victoria.
Jock Serong
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Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria, Australia. He has worked as a criminal lawyer, and as founding editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. Jock currently teaches law and writes feature stories for publications such as Surfing World, Tracks, The Guardian, Slow and Coastalwatch.com. His first novel, Quota, won the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. His most recent book is The Rules of Backyard Cricket.
Jock's third novel, On the Java Ridge, concerns Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. It will be released by Text Publishing in August 2017.
Port Fairy author Jock Serong goes from lawyer to The Rules Of Backyard Cricket
MATT NEAL
BY his own description, Jock Serong is “a pretty conventional person”.
THE WRITE STUFF: Port Fairy's Jock Serong has followed up his award-winning novel Quota with a new book called The Rules Of Backyard Cricket. Picture: Rob Gunstone
THE WRITE STUFF: Port Fairy's Jock Serong has followed up his award-winning novel Quota with a new book called The Rules Of Backyard Cricket. Picture: Rob Gunstone
He surprised himself when he finished high school and got an offer to study law, and rather than question whether it was what he really wanted to do with his life, he accepted the offer because it seemed like the conventional thing to do.
“I’d been sick towards the end of school so I didn’t expect to do very well (but) I got an offer to law school,” he said.
“I thought ‘law’s a good career, I should go and do that’.”
He got his “lawyer ticket”, spent a couple of “thoroughly miserable” years stuck “in Melbourne in a glass box in a tower” before moving to Port Fairy for a couple of years.
“I got a map out and thought ‘I want to be on the coast and want to be in a small town’,” he said.
Work opportunities then took him to Western Australia and back to Melbourne before returning to Port Fairy to raise a family in 2004.
Nine years later, Serong was a successful criminal lawyer and partner at a law firm when he decided to chuck it in and try his hand at becoming a writer. Onlookers must have been puzzled – this was far from the “conventional” thing to do.
But for Serong, the career change from lawyer to author was an attempt to scratch an itch that had been there for sometime and slowly growing in intensity.
“When I was at school I used to write fiction and loved writing fiction,” he said.
“But I was always very embarrassed about it.”
At age 37 he filed an article for a surfing magazine, which led to more articles. Around the same time, he spotted a notice at the Port Fairy supermarket advertising a writer’s group.
Serong joined and began writing short stories, exercising muscles he hadn’t used since school.
“After a few months of that I started putting the bits and pieces together and I realised I was essentially telling the same story with different characters and different settings,” he said.
“I thought ‘if I linked these together, made these the same person, there’s a novel in it’. That was a breakthrough moment. It felt audacious at the time.
“It’s difficult to acknowledge to yourself that you could think like an artist or be an artist … but once you give yourself the leeway it opens up other ways of thinking.”
That novel would become Quota – the award-winning book that would lead to him making a massive career change.
“It was a very gradual thing,” Serong said of him quitting law.
“It was quite difficult because I was partner at the firm and work at the time was quite demanding. We had four small children and I was writing quite a bit of feature stuff in surf media. I was writing a novel at night and weekends.
“All these things were building up and I had a feeling I wasn’t doing any of them very well.
“Something had to give and once I acknowledged that something had to give, it was just a question of what.”
He said there was no “lightbulb moment” that triggered the switch, but two things happened that pushed Serong to make a decision.
One was being asked to edit a new magazine called Great Ocean Quarterly (which is now sadly defunct) and the other was being offered a contract to publish Quota.
With the support and encouragement of his wife Lilly, Serong handed in his resignation and began the piecemeal existence of a writer.
He wrote articles for surf magazines, papers and websites, picked up some teaching and editing work, and wrote a screenplay that was bought by a production company.
“The big thing you let go of is certainty,” he said.
“If you consider yourself a writer as a vocation, part of what you want to do is be versatile and try your hand at different things. It’s really varied – that’s the appeal and the curse.
“I’ve been through all sorts of angst about whether it was the right thing to do and how the hell are we going to get through. But I believe that once you decide something significant about your life, there’s no longer a right or wrong decision – just a decision and you have to carry it out and try not to do too much looking back.”
Thankfully Quota was a moderate success – “it did well enough, and then I was confident I was on the right track,” Serong said.
It’s about a city lawyer being disorientated in a country town – something Serong admits is “probably autobiographical” – as the lawyer tries get to the truth behind a murder cover-up. Quota won the Australian Crime Writers Association’s Award for best debut novel.
“I was seriously surprised by the award,” he said.
“I know people say that all the time but it shocked the hell out of me. The morning after … I started thinking about things differently – that at last there was a reward at the end of the struggle.
“Winning an award changes some things but not everything. It meant (publishing house) Text were able to re-issue the book with the little gong on the front (and) it's often mentioned as a publicity line or it’s a line in the reviews for the second book.
“Realistically, for the reading public, they pick up a book and if it looks interesting they’ll buy it. But awards are really important for the industry and writers – it puts someone like me in the position where I’ve got a peg to climb on. Unlike other industries, there’s not a lot of validation for what you do other than hoping your sales are good. With everything you do it puts a little bit of scaffold under yourself so you can do the next thing.”
The next thing for Serong is his second novel, The Rules Of Backyard Cricket. It was released earlier this week and tells of Darren Keefe, “an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety”, who winds up bound and gagged in the boot of a car, his life flashing before his eyes.
The author said that on one hand the book is about “men and Australiana and sport, but on the other is … about family and brothers and in a subtle way it’s a story about women”.
“I wanted to think critically about men and sport and how those men behave in the public arena, to look at how it is that happens and why as a society do we encourage it,” Serong said.
“I can think of a few incidents I’ve seen in the media – and I have to be careful not to name anyone – but you see these incidents and then you can’t believe that person, that they’ve done that, and now they’re propped up in a suit as a commentator.
“The media’s ability to rehabilitate someone whose disgraced themselves amazes me. I was interested in that process.
“But The Rules Of Backyard Cricket started with the title – I liked that as a title – and I wondered what that story was.
“And at the time I started driving the Geelong road a lot and I started thinking about what it would be like if you were in the boot … on a death sentence – it would be a really obvious opportunity to reflect on a lifetime.
“Then it was a process of thinking about the three things – the title of The Rules Of Backyard Cricket and a doomed person in a boot, and somewhere in there sporting celebrities, and it all came together as a story.”
The release of The Rules Of Backyard Cricket is exciting for the author but after so much waiting there is “a curious sense of anticlimax”, he said.
“You wait for it to come out for a year and you start hanging out for that date, then the date arrives and it’s just another day,” Serong said.
While there will be plenty of public events and appearances to promote the new book, Serong’s mind is already on his next one.
“It’s moving away from crime – it’s a move into something more political,” he said.
“It looks at asylum seekers in a fairly unusual way. One of the reasons I’m doing it is the asylum seeker debate in Australia has been thrashed out in the media for years and people have dug their trenches and good journalism is failing to move people.
“I think what happens next is fiction gets involved – books and films – in working away on changing people’s opinions.”
While his first two books have been very different from each other, they’ve shared a criminal element – something Serong plans to leave behind on book three.
“When I wrote Quota, I didn’t think of it as a crime book, but I guess it’s a natural instinct to hang on to things you know,” he said, referring to his legal background.
“And The Rules Of Backyard Cricket draws on things I remember from my childhood.
“But I don’t consider myself to be a genre writer. And Text have never put any pressure on me (to only write crime).”
His screenplay The Ship Thieves is also floating around the film industry, and the film rights to Quota have already been sold.
In the meantime, Serong will be at the Ex Libris Festival of Words in Port Fairy on September 10 to officially launch The Rules Of Backyard Cricket as well as host a panel featuring Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist.
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Players on sticky wicket in fine Australian noir
The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia).
(Aug. 27, 2016): Arts and Entertainment: p29. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited http://www.smh.com.au/
Full Text:
Byline: REVIEW BY SUE TURNBULL The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Jock Serong
TEXT, $29.99
Black Teeth
ZANE LOVITT
TEXT, $29.99
The Rules of Backyard Cricket begins with a body in the boot on its way to Melbourne. The body, however, is still very much alive, despite a bullet hole in the knee. Former ace cricketer Darren Keefe is about to regale us with his entire life story as he hurtles towards his inevitable fate. As Darren wryly observes from his vantage point through the missing driver's side tail-light, there has to be some distraction to pass the time because "whether you're crawling home from Christmas with the aunts, or waiting to be shot dead and incinerated by gangsters, the Geelong Road turns out to be just as boring".
But boring it is not, this second crime novel by Ned Kelly Award winner Jock Serong. Funny, sad and oddly touching it most certainly is. The family saga of the Keefe brothers, growing up in the western suburbs with a disappearing father and a fiercely protective mother, is also riveting.
From the moment we meet the young Darren and Wally in their Altona backyard, with the
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severed foot of the apricot tree as their stumps, and Sam the overweight staffy as the random close-in fieldsman teaching the brothers a thing or two about focus, it's hard to look away.
There is, as might be expected, quite a lot of cricket in this genre-bending crime story, as well as a wealth of rumination on the family ties that bind. There are also some acute observations about the perils of celebrity. As older brother Wally works his way to the cricketing top, the more likeable but unpredictable Darren is on a slippery slide to the bottom. This culminates in the kind of accidental tragedy involving drugs and young women that is all too familiar from the screaming headlines.
Darren, always wise after the event, observes that in a tabloid world "a fallen sportsman of any hue" rapidly becomes "a sinkhole for righteous indignation". Meanwhile, the television interview in which Darren confesses, cries and effectively redeems himself constitutes a brilliantly observed study in cynical media manipulation. Watch and learn.
Darren is by no means all bad. On the contrary, he is disarming in his grace under pressure, his surprising innocence, and in his Herculean efforts to free himself from the boot while offering a poignant rear-view account of his misadventures in the world of competitive sport where the stakes are just too high.
Beautifully written and acutely observed, The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a noir tour de force. As is Black Teeth, Zane Lovitt's second venture into the realm of Australian noir. Like Serong's, Lovitt's central character is a young man struggling to unravel the conundrum of his past, while caught in the predicament of a panic-inducing present.
Jason John Ginaff, although he has many aliases, is a self-employed internet researcher, who has recently lost his mother and is keen to locate the father he never knew. But that's not where this crime novel begins. Lovitt wants the reader off-guard and on the alert, switching voice and focus, sometimes in mid-paragraph, as Jason drifts into snapshot memories of his beloved mother's final days.
Black Teeth begins with an encounter, narrated in the third person, between a young man in a suit and tie selling life insurance, and a young man in a too-short jumper and oversize tracksuit pants in a decaying house. Rudy Alamein wants to buy a policy on the understanding that it will be paid out, even if he happens to commit suicide 13 months hence. It's a weird scenario, made even weirder by such minute observations as the hundreds of chewed off nail clippings, like "tiny shavings" of "parmesan cheese", strewn across the "dull blue cotton tablecloth" where the two men sit.
Cut to the first-person narrative of Jason, experiencing yet another panic attack on the witness stand in the County Court as he testifies in the case of a man who is claiming wrongful dismissal from a company that has hired Jason to undertake internet background checks on its employees. There's no mystery to what Jason does, although he is clearly a talented computer geek. The plaintiff has already shot himself in the foot by claiming to be a Rhodes scholar. It would help if he could spell.
There's a lot of attention to language here. One of the more arcane pleasures of Black Teeth is the
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encounter with such neologisms as "norp-tier", "betacuck", "grawlixed" and the activity of "trolling random e-celebs for keks and such". Fear not, it all makes a weird kind of sense in context.
Both Lovitt and Serong have an attentive ear for language and a nuanced understanding of how quite ordinary extraordinary people may find themselves up to their necks in trouble. This is original Australian crime fiction of the first order.
REVIEW BY SUE TURNBULL
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Players on sticky wicket in fine Australian noir." Sydney Morning Herald [Sydney, Australia],
27 Aug. 2016, p. 29. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A461616612/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6290c400. Accessed 9 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461616612
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On the Java Ridge
Publishers Weekly.
265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p41. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"On the Java Ridge." Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 41. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852246/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=81d24a8c. Accessed 9 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852246
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On the Java Ridge. Publishers Weekly, 00000019, 4/30/2018, Vol. 265, Issue 18
In this exciting thriller from Australian author Serong (The Rules of Backyard Cricket), Cassius Calvert, federal minister of border integrity in Canberra, announces a tough immigration policy days before national elections. No unauthorized boats, even those in distress, entering Australian waters will be given maritime assistance. Meanwhile, two such ships are approaching Australia: the Takalar, which is transporting refugees, and the Java Ridge, which is owned by a charter company taking surfers on holiday. Aboard the Takalar is a nine-year-old girl, Roya, who is fleeing the Taliban and has witnessed more tragedy than most adults. After a storm drives the two vessels to seek shelter on an island, Cassius prepares to meet the threat they pose with "remote measures" by the government's "private sector partners, Core Resolve." Meanwhile, Cassius must also deal with acute headaches of undetermined cause and his unsatisfactory long-distance relationship with his nine-year-old son, Rory. Serong does a masterly job building tension. Readers will have a tough time putting this one down. (June)
Review: The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong
By Doreen Sheridan
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Jock Serong
May 16, 2017
The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong is a novel of suspense about family, sport, celebrity, rivalry, masculinity and the high price of getting everything you want.
I was devastated by the ending of this book but not, perhaps, how Jock Serong wanted. As a mom and as a sports fan, it was very hard to accept what happened in the final scene of this intelligent, gripping noir thriller—a story of two brothers who grow up to be sports stars but lose themselves in the process. I was just so mad at Darren, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t how I was supposed to feel.
Darren is our narrator, the younger brother, the bad boy. Wally is the more contained and composed older brother. Raised single-handedly by their beloved mother when their footballer father ups stick and disappears, the Keefe boys spend endless hours practicing cricket in their Melbourne backyard, a setting for bonding and battling both. The boys are laser-focused on becoming professional cricketers, but poverty too often gets in the way. Their mother does her best, but the boys are happy to do what’s necessary otherwise, pilfering tennis balls that have gone rocketing out of the nearby ladies’ tennis courts to use for cricket, in a passage that also serves to illuminate the differences between them:
Morally, to [Wally], the theft of the balls was excused by sporting necessity: a matter of subsistence. He could rationalise it that way, and liberating the odd Slazenger from the ladies was a whole lot different than, for example, badging their cars. Which was something I did without regret.
And right there you have an essential distinction between the Keefe brothers. I would do these things for the sheer joy of it. Busting free, sending my blood roaring in the knowledge I’d flouted the rules and disappointed expectations. The problem for me is that the more times you do it and the more you get caught, the lower the expectations become. Correspondingly, the lesser the thrill.
The brothers are both immensely talented, but as they get older, their career trajectories begin to diverge. Wild child Darren runs with a rough, hedonistic crowd, whereas Wally is his sober, upright opposite, settling down early with a wife and daughter. The sordid history that leads to Darren being thrown into a car boot, a bullet through his knee and on his way to certain death as The Rules of Backyard Cricket begins, shows how the brothers’ lives, though different, are inextricably intertwined.
Again, as a sports fan and a mother, this was a really hard book for me to process. It reads very quickly, with solid prose and convincing dialog. The Keefe family dynamics are riveting and heartbreaking. I’ve never been a cricket fan—and alas, this book likely won’t persuade me otherwise—but I both enjoy watching professional sports and reading about them, which is partly why this speech Darren is given by a match-fixing criminal actually hurt me in the heart:
‘Do you know I heard the Pope the other day going on about corruption in sport. The fucking Pope. Goes to show, doesn’t it? Sport goes to the heart of everything. If you can reach inside it and fuck with its innards, you’re actually messing with society, Daz. How ‘bout that? Bigger than drugs. Bigger than hookers and porn, because people shy away, they can smell the desperation. But the same people will go on consuming sport long after they know it’s rotten to the core. They’re insatiable. And it levels people like me with people like you. Cos you can play it, see, or you could. But I can play it. And I can keep playing it long after your thumb takes you out of it, or some other guy’s knee goes, or his back goes. It’s a whole-of-life career for me.’
The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a must-read for sports fans, even if, like me, you don’t understand this particular sport. The novel speaks to the place organized sports has in the modern zeitgeist, displaying unpalatable truths both about society’s fascination with the subject and with the kind of masculinity it both encourages and discards when the players can no longer entertain. I like to think that things are getting better (I mean, even the Pope has weighed in!), and books like this will definitely help push it in the right direction.
Above all, though, this is a damn fine noir thriller. I don’t necessarily believe what Darren was told regarding his niece towards the end there, but that sort of ambiguity—the inability to believe what anyone, even the narrator, claims—is the hallmark of the genre. I wanted both to shake Darren and to hug him. He’s going to haunt me for as long as the truths laid out in this book will, which is going to be for a very long time.
Filed Under:
2018 Edgar Awards
Doreen Sheridan
Jock Serong
Review
Review - The Rules of Backyard Cricket, Jock Serong
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Author Name:
Jock Serong
Author's Home Country:
Australia
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Book Title:
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
ISBN:
9781911231035
Year of Publication:
2016
Publisher:
Text Publishing
Publisher Website:
Text Publishing - The Rules of Backyard Cricket (link is external)
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Category:
Crime Fiction
Location:
Australia
HideBook Synopsis
It starts in a suburban backyard with Darren Keefe and his older brother, sons of a fierce and gutsy single mother. The endless glow of summer, the bottomless fury of contest. All the love and hatred in two small bodies poured into the rules of a made-up game.
Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. No surprise that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety—one of those men who’s always got away with things and just keeps getting.
Until the day we meet him, middle aged, in the boot of a car. Gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in his knee. Everything pointing towards a shallow grave.
HideBook Review
When Jock Serong's debut novel QUOTA was released it was the first crime fiction book I could recall using over-permit limit Abalone catches as a central theme. The incorporation of crime and cricket therefore shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise in his second novel, THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET. If both of these books are anything to go by, this is an author with a keen eye for an unusual but extremely workable scenario.
The depiction of cricket, from the Keefe brother's backyard contests, through to their District, State and ultimately Australian representation is brilliant. The careful use of tactics everywhere, the effects of micro-waving tennis balls for the backyard form, everything about the all consuming nature of the game and it's subtleties is gloriously depicted. The way that this sport provides a way forward for the two sons of a fierce single mother, her involvement, her constant presence behind them, and the dawning realisation that Darren comes to, of the sacrifices that their mother must have made, are perfect.
Which does not sit well with the opening of this novel - starting as it does with a trussed up Darren in the boot of a car, at night, being driven somewhere to pay a hefty price for something. As the novel starts to switch backwards and forwards through the boy's childhood, and Darren's current predicament, a picture starts to emerge of two different and yet similar brothers. Darren's always been a bit of a loose canon. A fierce player, erratic and undisciplined, he had potential and yet, ending up in the boot of a car has some sort of inevitability about it. The older brother, Wally, is a quieter, more reflective boy and man. A less flashy cricketer, he's still good enough to follow the same trajectory. Wally's the brother who makes it to Australian Captain. He's got the big house, the travelling lifestyle, the testimonial dinner on retirement. Darren was the one always in trouble for breaking team rules, the one with nothing much to fall back on when injury takes away his big chance at cricketing fame and fortune.
There's a lot about the tensions between the brothers that come from them simply being brothers, and then there's that which comes from the intricacies of the cricket world. The difference between being a respected Test Player, and a bit of a one-trick showman in the shorter forms for example. Then there's the question marks over the game itself rearing their ugly heads as the two men are stepping away from the game.
All the way along there's Darren's voice - looking back at their childhood and the lives that they lived, and at his present - in that boot with its inevitable sense of doom, approached with determination and a calm level-headedness that's somehow apt. Darren might have been a mercurial customer in his youth, but he's no fool, and he's not prepared to lie in that boot and take what's coming to him without an argument.
Really, everything in THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET is brilliant. As the novel progresses, slowly and steadily, like a tactical battle against a good opposition test team, Darren works his way through his options, playing the timeframe, working the percentages. He's also calmly analysing what got him into this situation, and, as in any good cricket game, sometimes you can see the moves being played out, and sometimes they come straight out of the back of the bowler's hand.
For a cricket obsessed reader, fond of the assertion that test cricket is a metaphor for life, THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET made me wonder about that just for a moment. Darren, Wally and their mum used the game as a way out of a difficult background, something that gave them a chance of a better future. What they got was more like a rain-affected draw, in the final game of a tied five day test series. For this reader though, THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET was nearly as good as 5 nil whitewash, home series defeat of the old enemy.
Submitted 1 year 11 months ago by Karen.
Thursday, August 18, 2016 - 5:20pm
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The Rules Of Backyard Cricket By Jock Serong
Contributor: Bob Cornwell
Sep 2, 2016
Those mavericks of mainstream crime or thriller fiction, Peter Temple say, John Lawton, or the shape-shifting Megan Abbott, heighten the language of our genre and stretch its boundaries. With this terrific second novel, Jock Serong may soon be in that number. He does have form. Like Temple, his highly wrought and unconventional first novel Quota, won the Australian Ned Kelly Award for best debut.
Suburban Melbourne, 1976: “two small boys shoulder-lit by the late sun of daylight saving, are playing cricket”. Backyard cricket that is: Darren, Daz the younger, Wally 19 months older, the stumps a sawn-off apricot tree long past its best, cut off by their Mum at “exactly at bail-height”, mid-on’s the veggie patch, a neighbour’s fence the shortest boundary. Then there are the rules, the rituals, the rivalry between the two indivisible Keefe brothers: “an independent republic of rage and obsession.”
Not a ‘crime’ novel then. Except that, in fact, the book opens many years later, with one of the brothers, a bullet in his knee, cable-tied in a cramped car boot, scrabbling against all odds to escape almost certain death at the hands of at least two silent thugs. “They’ll torch the car”, the car-boot occupant muses, “these people have a strong sense of genre.”
Tension then, from the off, but a tension additionally tinged with regret, a sense of the “past slipping away…gone and unrecoverable.” The narrator (first person, unreliable?), it is soon clear, is Darren. First the family background as Dad fades from the family circle, the idolised Mum as the breadwinner (a bartender in the pubs of Melbourne), soaking up cricket lore as her sons improve their skills on the back of Bradman and Jeff Thomson. Then the first steps into the broader world of cricket, first played in public as part of a local (Catholic) church team, the first blood spilt on the field, the first lesson in sportsmanship (ignored), the first taste of fame. And an early fixture (on a turf wicket!) gives the brothers their first taste of class-based on-field and off-field intimidation. They see off both with the assistance of a genial giant by the name of Craig Wearne.
If you are not a cricket fan, you may have by now moved on to the next review. That would be a mistake. The book is about to get even more intense – and progressively darker. The brothers are growing apart. Wally grows in seriousness and dedication, he marries, there is a daughter. Eventually he will become captain of Australia. Darren never quite reaches those dizzy heights. He takes after his risk-taking mother, he’s in it first for the joy, then for the thrills which feature both on and off the field of play. He becomes reckless, the first cracks in the facade, both personal and professional, are about to appear. The consequences in both arenas will be catastrophic.
Serong writes pithy, pin-sharp dialogue, his prose (in my opinion, an advance from Quota) is both perceptive and pared down. He is memorable not only about cricket (Serong confesses to “thousands of hours” in the backyard with his brothers) but about childhood and the loyalties and tensions of family life. Then when the book moves into the more public sphere, he writes well about the many temptations that surround, not just cricket, but any professional sportsman. He is revealing too about the process, having transgressed, of expiation through media and PR, the life as a peripheral personality lived in the shadow of someone apparently more substantial.
And, like Peter Temple, as the revelations accelerate, Serong is able to combine both narrative pace and those extra moments of humanity that a character needs to become real. Darren, for instance, impetuous but perhaps excessively naive, acquires a further and perhaps necessary depth as he reacts to the deteriorating medical condition of his beloved mother. Finally the book is expertly plotted, and its noirish climax with its dark drama and its final twists, is devastating.
Get out and buy this book; it is the best new novel I’ve read this year.
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Text Publishing 9781922253798 (ebook, 20 August 2016); 9781911231035 (UK paperback, 28 October 2016
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
by Jock Serong
Darren Keefe and his brother are international cricket stars – but Darren can always find trouble and someone wants him dead.
Review
Darren Keefe has ‘trouble’ tattooed in his forehead. He’s an outstanding cricketer, but his ability to start a row in an empty stadium ensures he’s the bad boy of Australian cricket. His older brother Wally, by comparison, is the golden boy of the sport.
Jock Serong’s wonderfully-named book is an object lesson in making the reader care about an ostensibly unsympathetic character. Darren’s not an out-and-out baddie, you understand – just someone who has an unerring ability to make wrong calls and hook up with the wrong people. He’s clearly brassed the wrong person off big-time, as the book opens with Darren tied up in the boot of a car with a bullet in the knee and all too aware of what his likely fate is.
Darren is oddly likeable – brutally honest and well aware of his own shortcomings. His chaotic life is in stark contrast to Wally’s textbook life with respectable wife and cute daughter, and the ultimate position as captain of Australia.
At the heart of the book is the relationship between the brothers. The boys learned their cricketing trade in the back garden, fiercely encouraged by their single mother Pamela. And their rivalry continues into adulthood as they progress through the different levels of cricket up to the ultimate goal – representing their country.
Serong is an elegant writer who can move effortlessly from laugh out-loud funny to elegiac to downright touching. Darren’s laconic voice leaps off every page, in particular in the descriptions of the boys growing up and competing fiercely in the back garden where they are sworn enemies – but they have each other’s backs when they progress to club level and take on opponents much older than themselves.
Those of us who played back garden cricket and remember how seriously it was taken by all concerned will lap up every single run and wicket in this book. Even if you’re not a sports fan, there’s much to hook you with laidback storytelling and a picaresque cast. Serong keeps the tension high with that central conceit of a man racing towards a sticky end – and there’s a twist in the tail that I didn’t see coming.
The Rules of Backyard Cricket is an unusual crime novel, but one of the best I’ve read this year. Baggy green caps off to Jock Serong!
Reviewed 12 November 2016 by Sharon Wheeler
Sharon Wheeler is a recovering sports writer who now lectures in journalism and PR, and works as a freelance writer and editor.
There has been much first-rate nonfiction Australian writing about cricket. A recent standout is Golden Boy, Christian Ryan’s biography of former Test captain and unfulfilled prodigy Kim Hughes. This is one of the books acknowledged by Serong in The Rules of Backyard Cricket, which has the distinction of joining a much smaller group of top-notch cricket novels. The most recent predecessor (and the gap in years emphasises the previous point) is Malcolm Knox’s A Private Man (2004). One of Knox’s characters was Test cricketer Chris Brand, whose relations with his two brothers are vexed. In Serong’s novel, the media relishes the supposed difference between the Keefe brothers from Altona in Melbourne’s west, who have been brought up by a battling barmaid single mother. The responsible one, Wally, becomes Australia’s Test captain while Darren, the younger brother, is a larrikin who never quite squanders his talent.
Darren clarifies his difference from Wally: “It’s only at the end of a day’s play that our lives diverge: his to puritanism, mine to the piss.”
For the most part, the novel is related in a ghastly present and also in retrospect — by Darren, from the boot of a car on the way to his execution by criminals who blame him for match fixes gone wrong and for fear that he may testify against them. His journey to reach the boot has been colourful.
Serong is excellent on the progress of the brothers through the ranks of junior cricket (including a memorable Eastern v Western Suburbs Schoolboys match ended by the dust storm of February 1983), to district, Sheffield Shield and international teams. The figure of Shane Warne is summoned by Darren Keefe, as are the Waugh twins by the fictional brothers.
Serong’s novel becomes darker than any actual careers (except perhaps that of disgraced South African captain Hansie Cronje) as the betting and other scandals are distilled into rueful wisdom by Darren: “A fallen sportsman of any hue is a sinkhole for righteous indignation.” The portrait of Keefe’s mother is one of the most affecting in a book that convincingly imagines all those figures involved in the game beyond the pitch. For a journalist this is the story of the Fall of the House of Keefe: Serong gives us something stranger and more disquieting.
Review - QUOTA, Jock Serong
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Author Name:
Jock Serong
Author's Home Country:
Australia
HidePublication Details
Book Title:
Quota
ISBN:
9781922147936
Year of Publication:
2014
Publisher:
Text Publishing
Publisher Website:
Text Publishing - Quota (link is external)
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Category:
Crime Fiction
HideBook Synopsis
'What do you want me to say, Your Honour? Could you have cocked this thing up any worse? Bloody helpless kid and you know she's back out on the street now. You know it, don't you? You're known throughout the state as a heartless old prick and a drunk, and seeing I've gone this far, your daughter-in-law's appointment to the court is widely viewed as a grubby political payoff. She's got about as much ability as you have...'
CHARLIE JARDIM has just trashed his legal career in a spectacular courtroom meltdown, and his fiancee has finally left him. When an old friend slings him a prosecution brief that will take him to the remote coastal town of Dauphin, Charlie reluctantly agrees that the sea air might be good for him.
The case is a murder. The victim was involved in the illegal abalone trade and the even more illegal drug trade. and the witnesses aren't talking.
And as Dauphin closes ranks around him, Charlie is about to find his interest in the law powerfully reignited.
HideBook Review
In great timing, Reviewing the Evidence have just published my review of the winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly for Best First Crime Fiction.
It's not unknown for crime fiction followers to point out that the genre frequently explores the rights and wrongs of society and human behaviour.
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=10407 (link is external)
Submitted 2 years 11 months ago by Karen.
Monday, August 24, 2015 - 10:15am
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QUOTA
by Jock Serong
Text Publishing, August 2015
304 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1922147931
Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada
It's not unknown for crime fiction followers to point out that the genre frequently explores the rights and wrongs of society and human behaviour. Because of that it's reasonable to expect that the settings and central subject matter may have unlimited scope, but I think this is the first book I can recall that gets into the question of over-permit limit Abalone catches, as well as the more predictable drug smuggling. The storyline of QUOTA centres on a dispute between two families in a small coastal town and the murder of Patrick Lanegan's brother on a fishing boat, just offshore, late at night.
Within the setting of a small fishing village in regional Victoria there are the haves (the Murchisons) and the have-nots (the Lanegans). There's a sense of entitlement about the haves that make them particularly ruthless, and the instigators of much of the trouble that both families now find themselves in when the Murchisons are implicated in the death of a Lanegan. Despite the question marks over both families behaviour there is much that is sympathetic about the Lanegans making them easy for a reader to connect with. Which seems to affect big city lawyer / fish out of water character Charlie Jardim as well. Seconded to this case as a last ditch hurrah for his legal career, which is borderline terminal after a massive eruption at a Judge during a Court hearing, it's through the kindness of friends that Jardim finds himself briefed as junior for the prosecution. When this role takes him to the fishing village of Dauphin on the basis that he and Senior Counsel feel that there's something not quite right about Lanegan's statement, even the getting there is fraught with the problem that many city drivers find when they head to the bush. Kangaroos are frequently big, and hitting them is extremely problematic for the kangaroo and drivers. Once on the spot, as he starts to understand the Lanegan's situation and find out more about their lives, there is something about them and this odd little town that he connects with.
Jardim is wonderfully dry, and surprisingly taciturn given that aforementioned courtroom outburst. He's damaged obviously by his past (there are fleeting references to a brother who has died), but in many ways QUOTA isn't a novel solely devoted to building Jardim's character and background. He's also romantically entwined with a woman who is particularly driven. Which, with all the will in the world, you could never say about Jardim. Their relationship, even allowing for opposites attracting, seems to befuddle Jardim almost as much as it might a reader, but again, the vagaries of his personal life are not explored in minute detail. Because there is much that's sketchy, withdrawn about Jardim, he could befuddle readers, even be a little off-putting. He'd be a tricky sort of bloke to know - fictionally or in real-life - and somehow that makes him all the more intriguing and baffling.
QUOTA is a look at small town life in Australia, as well as something of an investigation into the class differences that might not be mentioned, but do exist here - frequently to do with money and influence. It's also a courtroom drama and whilst Jardim continues in his role as investigator and seeker of truth, once the action switches to the courtroom his influence diminishes and senior Defence and Prosecution Counsel take over. Here much of Jardim's activities in Dauphin come in for some scrutiny and the novel really does give the reader a view of the verbal and tactical games that make up much of a criminal trial.
As is frequently the case though, this author is definitely writing about a world that he knows (a lawyer himself, living in a smallish seaside town in Victoria), but that doesn't always translate to something believable. In QUOTA however we have pitch-perfect dialogue, and a strong sense of place about this small town in particular. The characters there are particularly believable and even allowing for the slightly off-camera nature of Jardim, actually quite likeable (a bonus). All of these elements combine to make for a very engaging, and extremely realistic debut novel.
QUOTA was awarded the 2015 Ned Kelly prize for Best First Fiction.
§ Karen Chisholm has been reading crime fiction since she could hold a book upright. When not reading she builds websites and pretends to be a farmer. Her website, AustCrimeFiction has been covering fiction from Australia and New Zealand since 2006: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/
Reviewed by Karen Chisholm, June 2015
Quota | Jock Serong
July 6, 2016
|In Book, Kate Dawes, Crime, Text Publishing, Australian
|By saltypopcorn
I really want to read this one after editing Kernel Kate’s review. QUOTA sounds like an Australian BROADCHURCH. A blend of courtroom drama, closed off witnesses and that oddness about small fishing towns that want to keep to themselves, and of course, crime. QUOTA is out now from the fine folks at Text Publishing, you will find it in most book stores or you can obtain it HERE. Please also note it was the Winner of the Ned Kelly Awards for Best First Crime Novel, 2015. Enjoy Kate’s review as I email her asking for this review book back – I need a good crime novel!! All the best…………..JK.
BY KATE DAWES:
QUOTA PLOT:
A small Australian fishing town, a Melbourne lawyer who’s just blown it with an in court meltdown, and a murder with the key witnesses refusing to tell the truth. QUOTA, from Jock Serong, takes us on a thrilling trip to country Victoria and into the murky world of illegal fishing and murder.
Lawyer Charlie Jardim has blown it. Up before a judge he has nothing but contempt for he lets loose and tells the judge exactly what he thinks of him. Cited for contempt of court he is sure his career is over. To top things off his fiancee has had enough and calls it quits. Returning to his chambers and thinking about packing up and quitting law altogether Charlie is surprised to discover he still has one friend left when a prosecution brief arrives at his door. Charlie’s old friend and something of a mentor, Harlan Weir SC, has thrown him a lifeline. As soon as Charlie starts reading he is hooked.
Quota Jock Serong Author imageQuota | Jock Serong | Author image courtesy of The Standard
DEAL GONE WRONG?:
In the costal town of Darphin a few hours from Melbourne a burning boat with a body on board has been found washed up on the reef. The local police have arrested a suspect and the case has landed on Weir, and now Charlie’s desks. But something isn’t right. According to the victim’s brother, Matthew Lanegan, the dead man and the two accused became involved in illegally trading over-quota abalone and once they had proven themselves, drugs. This appears to be just a deal gone wrong.
As soon as reading through the statements collected by the police Charlie can see something in this story doesn’t add up. Proposing to Harlan he drive down there to check things out he realises this was Harlan’s plan all along. Before he knows it Charlie is off on a semi voluntary weekend away leaving his career and relationship troubles behind him.
BAD START:
Charlie’s trip gets off to an ominously bad start. He hits a kangaroo in the dusk light before he even reaches town and realising he hasn’t quite killed it is forced to put it out of its misery. If being a big city lawyer wasn’t enough to inspire the distrust of the locals arriving at the local pub dishevelled, shaken and splattered with blood certainly is. With local suspicion running high Charlie seems to have an impossible task ahead of him in gaining some trust and getting the real story of what happened that night.
Lucky for Charlie there is one person in the town who seems to like him; affable, all knowing bar tender Len. Stuck in Darphin at least until his car has been repaired Charlie sets to work but will anyone in the town open up to him about what they know and more importantly why are they hiding it in the first place?
GENRE:
QUOTA in some ways is a typical crime thriller. A closed society, distrustful of outsiders, perhaps due to its remoteness which is not extreme by Australian geographic standards but enough to close them off. A murder between likely candidates who were involved in illegal dealings at the time. A secret that no one will reveal until our intrepid investigator befriends the locals and gets to the bottom of things. Where QUOTA finds its point of difference and its real strength is the compelling local flavour. The story borrows a lot from Serong’s own life, having been a barrister in Melbourne and relocated to Port Fairy, also a costal town three and a half hours away. The process Charlie goes through of gradually unwinding and adjusting to the town’s pace of life feels authentic.
Quota Book Cover image
IN CONCLUSION:
It’s easy to draw comparisons between fictional crime-solving lawyers. They seem to pervade the modern crime fiction genre. Regardless of how much hands on investigation lawyers actually do we’ve always got a hard-boiled wannabe detective like Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason or a smooth talking show stopper such as THE LINCOLN LAWYER himself, Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller. Smart, tricky and always slightly the wrong side of the rules there is no shortage of lawyers ready to try anything to get their clients off.
Charlie Jardim however doesn’t compete with all these larger than life characters. He is refreshingly normal. Slightly damaged, going through a hard time and a little bit of a fish out of water. Rather than trying to outsmart everyone or trick them in to confessing by revealing sensational evidence he just shows up, has a few drinks and waits for everyone to stop hating him enough to get them talking and hopefully telling the truth.
A great Australian debut and worth a look for crime fiction lovers. I’m hoping we will see another novel from Serong soon and maybe even the continuing adventures of Charlie Jardim.
4 Pops
ABOUT YOUR REVIEWER:
Having always loved stories one of Kernel Kate’s most frequent childhood memories was her parents telling her in the early hours that it was way too late to still be reading and to go to sleep, but she would always sneak in the end of the chapter. Her love of stories led to a career in movies as well as remaining an avid reader of everything from novels to academic papers and junk mail. She makes a perfect reading machine fit to the Salty Cob.
** All images courtesy of various sources on Google or direct from the publisher or distributor – credit has been given to photographers where known – images will be removed on request.
Book Review Courtroom Drama crime fiction crime novel Crime Thriller illegal fishing Jock Serong Kate Dawes Quota Book Review Text Publishing
Quota by Jock Serong
Stu Nettle
The Depth Test
Thursday, 17 July 2014
9781922147936.jpgVictoria's south-west coast is to Victorians what the outback is to the rest of Australia. Yeah, that statement is a gross generalisation but the thought hit me while reading Quota by Jock Serong and I think I might run with it. After all, it's not inaccurate, just a little overblown. Like the outback, Victoria's south-west coast is sparsely populated, the countryside time-worn, and the space – angry ocean in Victoria, endless desert in the outback - provides the abyss that “stares back into you.” All these elements are visited and used to affect in Quota.
Serong is the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly, a feature writer at Surfing World and Coastalwatch, and now a first time novelist. It's said that when a writer attempts their first book they go to what they know and that much is true for Serong. He has 17 years experience as a lawyer and calls upon it for this novel which you'll find in the crime fiction department. “The law of the sea is unforgiving” is the book's tag line.
The story is set in Dauphin, a fictional town on Victoria's south-west coast. A murder has occurred in the small abalone fishing community and Charlie Jardim, a Melbourne prosecuting lawyer is sent to investigate. Though he may be a big drinking lawyer who holes up at the local bar the difference between Charlie's city cultivated ways, his unyielding faith in reason and deferrence to the law, provides the foil for Serong to explore small town politics and the limited reach of the judiciary.
Told in a mix of first person narrative, court room transcripts, and newspaper accounts the story develops steadily, though as it unfurls allegiances and motives among the town folk are never made completely clear. Serong is careful not to evoke undue reader sympathy for any of the main players even as their characters are being rendered with humane depth.
“Legal writing is exacting, but it's exacting in the opposite direction [to writing fiction],” said Serong in an interview with Swellnet last year. “What you're trying to do when you write legally is suppress the human instinct and strive for great accuracy and objectivity. And when you write fiction you generally head in the other direction.”
There are many excellent and exacting passages of writing in Quota. Passages when the writing process flows from penetrating observation to articulate conveyance, none more so than the court scene toward which the novel inexorably heads. It's here that Serong is absolutely in his element and his writing shows, it's rich with nuanced observation of people in pressured situations and the theatrics of those who understand court room rules and customs. Consequently it's here that Serong's human instinct flourishes.
Quota is published by Text Publishing.
Jock Serong's debut crime novel Quota
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Monday 4 August 2014 10:05AM (view full episode)
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Quota is a gritty and humane crime story set in a lonely town on the wild south-western coast of Victoria.
One dark night, a fishing boat catches fire on the waters a short way out to sea. When police recover the boat, they discover the burnt body of a knock-about fisherman named Matthew Loneghan. His loyal younger brother Patrick has witnessed the murder. But now he claims he wasn't even there. So why is this key witness lying? That's the question which brings barrister Charlie Jardim to this grim little town at the windswept end of the earth.
Quota is a first novel from former-lawyer Jock Serong, who now lives with his wife and children in the Victorian coastal town, Port Fairy.
Jock is also the founder and editor of the new Great Ocean Quarterly, a high-quality magazine featuring photographs and writing focussed on life on the Australian coast.
Justice measures up down by the beach
By Reviewer: Owen Richardson
10 July 2014 — 5:49pm
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Fiction
Quota
JOCK SERONG
Text, $29.99
It has been noticed that in the past few years Australian crime fiction has been moving to the country and in some cases this also involves a sea change. There is more than one broken shore: Jock Serong’s debut novel revolves around a fishing town memorably called Dauphin.
Well-detailed: Quota by Jock Serong.
Well-detailed: Quota by Jock Serong.
We open in Melbourne, where our lawyer hero, Charlie Jardim, loses his temper with a mean-spirited judge and subsequently spends a couple of nights in the cells for contempt. Fines and misconduct charges follow; his commercial lawyer girlfriend dumps him. A prosecution QC and old friend throws him a lifeline by making him junior counsel in a murder case, and when one of the witnesses proves uncooperative Jardim goes down to Dauphin to try to talk him around.
A burnt-out boat with a corpse on board is at the centre of the case, and the quota of the title refers to the amount of abalone that fishermen are allowed to catch each year. It’s a quota that some of them lucratively ignore, along with the drug laws, and all that dodgy money leads to quarrels and worse. On opposing sides of this fatal row are the Murchisons, who own every other going concern around, and the Lanegans, the town battlers, too tough to be tagged as losers, but knocked around pretty hard all the same.
Serong’s prose is evocative, his dialogue convincing, and the atmosphere of small-town life pungently suggested: there’s the mouldering pub and the ancient Chinese restaurant, the feuds and influence-peddling, the neglect and decline that seems more and more the popular image of rural Australia.
The finale is a tense, well-detailed courtroom scene. Serong’s background as a lawyer has given him a fine sense of the rhythms of attack and defence, and a willingness to acknowledge the messiness and ultimate inconclusiveness of the trial system, where not every loose end is tied up and the truth itself can go missing. Justice may be served, in the end, but not by the law.
With so much for going for it, it is a shame the book is too obedient at times to the genre trappings that accepting readers call conventions, and the less tolerant call cliches. Not only is Jardim a rebel-type who flirts with unorthodox methods, he also comes pre-installed with damage in the form of a dead older brother. (Will someone ever be daring and create a crime fiction hero who is a colourless, well-adjusted prig?) Still, what Serong has to offer outweighs Quota’s more routine elements.
On the Java Ridge review: Jock Serong plunges into politics and refugee policy
By Adrian McKinty
4 September 2017 — 11:47am
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FICTION
On the Java Ridge
JOCK SERONG
Text, $29.99
Jock Serong has quickly established himself as one of Australia's most arresting and original crime-writing talents. Quota won the Best First Novel at the 2015 Ned Kelly Awards and last year's The Rules of Backyard Cricket was deadpan, dark and funny.
On the Java Ridge, by Jock Serong.
On the Java Ridge, by Jock Serong.
Photo: Supplied
On the Java Ridge is something of a change of pace – a polyphonic, polemical sea story about Australia's refugee policy. While not as breezy as his previous two novels, you've got to admire Serong's ambition and his willingness to move out of his noir comfort zone.
Set in the near future the book begins by introducing us to Cassius Calvert, the Australian minister for "Border Integrity". Calvert is a charming rogue with no real moral compass to speak of. His main gift seems to be the ability to give press conferences in Orwellian doublespeak and keep a straight face while doing it.
On the eve of a federal election, a naval rating has been killed boarding a people-smuggling boat. In response a new hardline refugee policy has been rushed through cabinet. Calvert tells a shocked Canberra press corps that Australia will henceforth be outsourcing the protection of northern waters to its new private sector partners: Core Resolve Security.
Meanwhile a metaphoric and literal storm is brewing in the Timor Sea. On the not-so-good ship Takalar, a nine-year-old Hazara Afghani girl, Roya, and her pregnant mother are attempting the last crossing from Indonesia to Australia before the new regime comes into force. On the Ashmore Reef, not too far away from the Takalar, we meet Isi Natoli, the skipper of a gorgeous traditional Bugis Phinisi, named the Java Ridge, leading a group of intrepid surf tourists in a quest to find the perfect Indian Ocean wave. Wise to the ways of the sea, she finds a sheltered lagoon for her yacht before the onset of a typhoon.
During the night Isi hears the sounds of a ship in distress; the Takalar has foundered on the reef. The lagoon is full of bodies and a few survivors, including Roya. Observing the traditional laws of the ocean but not the new policy of the Australian government, Isi uses the Java Ridge to rescue whom she can.
At this point the novel takes a slightly fantastical left turn but the cynical games that get played out by Canberra and the Core Resolve goons are certainly not outside the realms of possibility.
Isi is resourceful and brave but Calvert is the character with the most growth to do and his arc is endearing and entertaining. A confrontation with the Prime Minister – alas, not called Brutus – allows both men to deploy the full array of Australian parliamentary vernacular and profanity.
At times On the Java Ridge courts the didacticism of late period John le Carre when really Serong needs to channel someone such as Clive Cussler or Iain Banks to move the plot along. But this is only a minor quibble – how it all gets resolved in the third act is nicely done and I enjoyed jumping between the very different points of view that Serong uses to tell his taut and impressive third novel.
Adrian McKinty's Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly last week won the Ned Kelly award for best Australian crime novel.
Review - On the Java Ridge, Jock Serong
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Author Name:
Jock Serong
Author's Home Country:
Australia
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Book Title:
On the Java Ridge
ISBN:
9781925498394
Year of Publication:
2017
Publisher:
Text Publishing
Publisher Website:
Text Publishing - On the Java Ridge (link is external)
Review Originally Published At:
http://pilebythebed.com (link is external)
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Category:
Crime Fiction
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Amid the furious ocean there was no human sound on deck: some people standing, watching the wave, but no one capable of words.
On the Java Ridge, skipper Isi Natoli and a group of Australian surf tourists are anchored beside an idyllic reef off the Indonesian island of Dana.
In the Canberra office of Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, a Federal election looms and (not coincidentally) a hardline new policy is being announced regarding maritime assistance to asylum-seeker vessels in distress.
A few kilometres away from Dana, the Takalar is having engine trouble. Among the passengers fleeing from persecution are Roya and her mother, and Roya’s unborn sister.
The storm now closing in on the Takalar and the Java Ridge will mean catastrophe for them all.
HideBook Review
Jock Serong seems to determined to shine a light on every dodgy part of Australian culture. In his Ned Kelly Award winning debut Quota it was the illegal abalone and drug trades in a small coastal town. In his follow up, The Rules of Backyard Cricket it was corruption in professional sport. And now, in On The Java Ridge, he takes on Australia’s border protection attitudes, policies and practices.
The Java Ridge is a tour boat for rich Australian surfers. Built to represent an Indonesian fishing vessel, it is taking seven surfers out to remote Indonesian Islands in search of perfect waves. At the same time, people smuggling boat the Takalar has left Indonesia, its passengers, including ten year old Roya, hoping to find refuge in Australia. The two crews come together when the Takalar is wrecked on the fringing reef of a tiny island where the surfers have made camp.
Serong has crafted an incredibly tense novel. He does not pull any punches in the plight of the refugees and the surfing party, both thrown into disarray by the wreck and dealing with significant injury and death. And their subsequent search for safety is nerve wracking. At the same time, the machinations that sit behind their potential for rescue, make this a political thriller as much as a survival thriller.
Serong takes on the Australian Government’s propensity to contract out its security problems, still playing out in reports from offshore detention centres. In On the Java Ridge, the Australian Government has contracted itself out dealing with refugee boats while they are still at sea from the Navy to an uncontrolled and deniable third party called Core Resolve. Serong focusses on Cassius Calvert MP, the Minister for Border Integrity, one week out from an election, learning what it means to lose control of operations in order to have plausible deniability. And in particular his involvement in the one-upmanship around the dispassion for refugees:
“Even if the opposition tipped them out they’d have to adopt the same policy – any change of government represented an escalation where boats were concerned.”
On the Java Ridge is an angry book. And that anger comes out in some fairly strong polemic and confronting action. But it is also a powerful and nail-bitingly suspenseful one. Serong instills real understanding of all of his characters, including Calvert, which makes following them through their various travails, victories and setbacks sometimes hard to bear. But at times it can be something else entirely with an almost lyrical feel for the sea, its beauty, dangers and its moods. They way Serong manages to mesh these elements in On the Java Ridge continues to show why he is one of the Australia’s most exciting writers.
Submitted 12 months 3 days ago by Robert Goodman.
Friday, August 11, 2017 - 1:51pm
All Reviews of Books by this Author
On the Java Ridge by Jock Serong
Reviewed by Mark Rubbo
25 Jul 2017
Jock Serong’s books don’t shy away from tackling topics that affect contemporary society and in On the Java Ridge, although this doesn’t dominate the narrative, they are there. In Quota, it was the ethics of the legal system; in The Rules of Backyard Cricket it was the corruption of professional sport – and in this third novel, it’s the growing tendency of governments to outsource their responsibilities to private companies, preventing any real oversight by the media or the public.
It’s the near future and the nation is a week out from a divisive election when the Border Integrity Minister announces the government will outsource the protection of northern waters to ‘our private sector partners, Core Resolve’. No longer will the Navy board or rescue vessels that make it into Australian waters; that’s for Core Resolve to deal with. Up north, not far from Ashmore Reef, an Australian boat on a surfing tour of the Indonesian archipelago pulls into a sheltered lagoon before the onset of a terrible storm. During the night and through the storm, skipper Isi Natoli hears distant cries for help, as a boatload of asylum seekers flounders on the reef encircling the lagoon. In the morning, the lagoon is full of their bodies and the tourists set about trying to rescue the few survivors. The fate of both the survivors and their saviours is now inextricably linked to the games being played out in Canberra; as far as the world is concerned, the disaster and all those affected ‘disappear’.
Make no mistake, On the Java Ridge is no polemic; the reader is taken on a journey that will leave them exhilarated, angry and compulsively engaged. It marks Serong as one of the great exponents of tense, totally engaging narrative fiction, combining strong plots with complex and interesting characters whose predicaments we can all identify with.
Book Review:On the Java Ridge, by Jock Serong
Posted on August 10, 2017
Available in bookshops nationwide.
cv_on_the_java_ridge.jpgThere’s something disturbingly satisfying about those rare novels that deliver an upper-cut to your gut. If you’re a masochist like me when it comes to novels, pick up On the Java Ridge.
Literary award-winning Jock Serong packs a punch on board the Java Ridge, an authentic Indonesian phinisi that ferries Australian tourists to remote surfing spots in the Savu Sea. Against the better judgement of Australian skipper Isi Natoli, a group of excited tourists plunge into the reef of uninhabited Dana Island, having spotted virgin surf. Outnumbered, Isi is forced to concede to the tourists’ demands for epic swells and anchors the Java Ridge in the island’s sheltered lagoon. After an idyllic afternoon among the waves, the group set up camp on the shore. With a tropical storm brewing to the north, they hope for a dry night ahead.
Hundreds of kilometres away, the Takalar has also set sail. On board is young Roya and her pregnant mother. They are now only an ocean away from the Promised Land, Australia, after fleeing persecution in Iraq. As the only survivors of their family, Roya, her mother, and her unborn sister have journeyed long and far in search of safety and a new life. Unbeknownst to both the Java Ridge skipper Isi Natoli and the asylum-seekers on board the Takalar, the notoriously refugee-unfriendly Australian government is on the eve of a general election and is relentless in preventing any last minute immigration scandals.
When the Takalar’s engine runs of its mounts and capsizes on the reef of tainted Dana Island, Roya and her mother come face to face with a watery reaper. Dozens lose their lives to the swirling Savu Sea. Yet despite the stormy skies Roya and her mother’s stars align, and they are pulled to safety by the Java Ridge’s skipper, Isi. Woken by the screams for help, identifiable in any language, the Australian tourists rescue as many people from the doomed Takalar as they can. A make-shift triage operation is set up on the island as the Takalar sinks to the ocean floor. Grappling with few supplies and needing urgent medical attention, Isi decides to load the Australians and asylum-seekers alike onto the Java Ridge and set sail for Australia.
Meanwhile in Canberra, the Minister for Border Integrity, Cassius Calvert, is beginning to make some ugly discoveries. Placed minister as a pawn, Cassius is self-absorbed and incompetent. The government has recently announced a new hard-line anti-asylum seeker policy that has the potential to cause public outcry. With the general election looming, it is vital that voters don’t scare. As Cassius starts to realise the grisly nature of the very policy he signed off on, his ineptitude proves him to be perfectly primed not to be able to prevent impending disaster. All the while, the Java Ridge chugs nearer.
Serong has a knack for creating characters the reader will invest in, and it is thanks to this skill that On the Java Ridge gets the reader eating out of the palm of one hand, and then delivers a sucker-punch with the other. Throughout the journey, we are subtly but expertly invited into the rationale of each character, resulting in some of the best understood and cared-for characters I’ve ever read (yes – even deplorable Cassius).
On the Java Ridge is a politically poignant thriller that is hugely relevant as developed nations grapple with the influx of uncontrolled migration. While certain governments draw international criticism on their hard-line immigration policies, there is a simultaneous rise in the popularity of notions such as those carried in the hashtag #RefugeesWelcome aimed against such policies. On the Java Ridge pushes readers to question how far their governments would go, and how far they would allow their governments to go in order to protect their borders. Serong’s novel is a timely reminder that we are all human, and just how easily we can lose touch with that shared identity.
Reviewed by Abbie Treloar
On the Java Ridge
by Jock Serong
Published by Text Publishing
ISBN 9781925498394
This entry was posted in Book review, International Fiction and tagged asylum seekers, Australia, immigration policy, Jock Serong, On the Java Ridge, refugees, Text Publishing by booksellersnz. Bookmark the permalink.
On the Java Ridge by Jock Serong
August 29, 2017
on-the-java-ridgeOne of the greatest things about Australian literature is its ability to continually surprise and reinvent itself – in voice, subject matter, and timeliness. In Jock Serong’s On the Java Ridge, a range of familiar and exciting characters wrestle against the damp reality of the present, finding themselves dreaming of a better life in myriad personal ways.
The story begins with familiar political rhetoric: weeks before the Federal election, a proud Australian politician greets the flashing cameras and live streaming video to announce that from now on no unidentified vessels in Australian territorial waters will be offered any form of maritime assistance.
From there, Jock Serong takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey that excavates the heart of the differing perspectives of asylum seekers.
On the legendary Java Ridge, a group of Australian tourists keen on surfing anchor themselves off the coast of Indonesia, near an enchanting reef. For Isi, steering the Java Ridge is just a job made harder by defiant, carefree surfers with no regard for the preservation of the reefs they want to surf amongst.
In the meantime, young Roya documents the experience of fleeing Indonesia for Australia on an overcrowded boat called the Takalar, where tensions run high, water becomes low in supply, and some asylum seekers have travelled from as far as Afghanistan. As more and more necessities start dwindling, people begin to understand what it takes to stay alive, and they turn on the ferryman, their misfortune, and each other.
In the safety of Canberra, Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, has pledged himself to a new severe policy regarding efforts of the Australian maritime patrol to assist asylum seekers in distress – and it’s not favourable for those truly in need, out at sea, and yet is doing wonders for the upcoming federal election on the horizon.
The micro-worlds upon the Takalar and Java Ridge are catapulted into disaster when a looming storm descends on both ships – putting politician Cassius’ resolve to stay idle in the face of catastrophe to the test.
Since it tackles some important contemporary concerns, such as refugee policy in Australia, one of this novel’s greatest feats is entering the minds of all players involved with grace. We hear the stories of politicians in Canberra, laidback tourists on a surfing tour around Indonesia, and those unfortunate enough to be fleeing their homelands on overcrowded, under-equipped, and – most significantly – unwelcomed boats.
Each character is treated with sensitivity and empathy, a reminder of the power of storytelling to evoke far more than reality. Serong’s romanticist attraction to landscape, which is powerful enough to creep up on the unsuspecting reader and surprise with its keen-eyed observations of beauty, rivals characterisation as his greatest writerly quality. On the Java Ridge is a political thriller with a twist of romanticism, a modern telling of voyages at sea that ring true and exhilarate all at once. Serong is another rising Aussie star we’ll be watching very closely.
Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, and The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2017.
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Extract here: https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/on-the-java-ridge-an-extract-of-political-bastardry