Shell, by Kristina Olsson

The rather beautiful cover in tones of peach shows a smudgy image of the Opera House, viewed from the sea with gulls swooping around it. There have been some rave reviews of this book, but it turns out that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Sydney in 1965; the Opera House is under construction and its architect is courting controversy; Vietnam is heating up and the Federal Government has introduce conscription, with protests growing. Pearl Keogh is a journalist, hauled up by her bootstraps from struggle street – yada yada yada. Despite the clichés she is quite a fascinating character. Her career has been sidelined by her politics (communist); she is racked by guilt about her younger brothers who ran away from an orphanage after the death of their mother. Her drip-fed backstory is interesting; her current motivation and decisions are interesting. It is a pity her story ends abruptly, with no sense of what she will do next. Axel Lindquist is a Swedish glassworker obsessed with Jorn Utzon, whom he has never met despite working on his opus dei. He becomes a borderline stalker as he attempts to get into his hero’s mind. They are an unlikely couple, brought together for the device of the story and for no other discernable reason. The writing style is changeable and frustrating. Past events are referred to in an allusive and elusive manner, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. An example of where it works is with the reasons Pearl’s brothers ran away. It is clear abuse was involved without any need to detail it. An example of where it doesn’t is with Axel’s glasswork; there is no sense of what he is actually creating – and therefore why he is on the project at all – until the very end. This contributes to his lack of substance as a character. Some of the language is overblown, with passages that could be considered poetic, but often read like strings of words on a page with little meaning. Similarly, there are several lists of Sydney harbourside suburbs for no clear reason other than as a tribute to the city.