Robert Lukins

If anything in this review raises issues for you,
help is available at White Ribbon Australia.
To learn to recognise the signs of coercive control and how to get help, visit Relationships Australia.



It only took a day and a half to read Robert Lukin's new novel Loveland—I couldn't put it down.

The last time I read a novel as harrowing in its depiction of coercive control was The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower. In that novel two sisters fall prey to a vile man called Felix who terrorises his wife and her sister into anticipating his every wish, for fear of punishment. The younger can do nothing but watch, entrapped herself by the other's compliance.

In Lukin's novel, May grows up in Australia as an indifferent witness to her widowed grandmother's pathological meekness without recognising that she has inherited the same vulnerability. It is not until Casey dies, and her mother Rosie inherits Casey's small property in Nebraska, that May finds the means to transcend her own submission to the vile man she refers to as 'the husband'.

As in real life where coercive control hides behind closed doors and the pretence of a satisfactory marriage, most of the violence in Loveland is off-stage.

We just become how and who we are and no-one is beyond that. He had been handsome and charming, but when she looked back it was never enough. The story could never explain itself. She came to realise that the marks on her body were not the worst of it. There is physical pain and it is unbearable in the moment but the moment is at least brief. It was the unending struggle for air. This was the worst of of it and the thing that never passed. The fear that stole her every breath. (p.43)

The intergenerational poverty is muted too as we see in May's sceptical response to the executor who explains about the inheritance...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/03/19/loveland-by-robert-lukins/… (altro)

We join Radford in England in 1962 when he is sent to Goodwin Manor, a home for troubled boys. The boys aren't required to disclose the events leading up to their arrival at Goodwin Manor, but I hoped their backstories would be slowly revealed throughout the novel. Alas, this isn't the case. In fact, we don't even get the backstory of the main character, Radford.

I was ready for a bootcamp style campus novel for delinquents and troublemakers, but Goodwin Manor is not a structured boarding school environment with a schedule designed to turn bad boys good again. Instead it offers the boys an opportunity to work through their issues via the process of friendship.

I adjusted my expectations and began to hope for an inspiring novel about wayward boys desperate for learning and mentorship reminiscent of Dead Poet’s Society, however didn't find that either.

As we observe the boys interacting with eachother and Radford becoming friends with West, I desperately wanted to give the school some structure. Teddy's oversight felt painfully inadequate and I wanted to crack out a timetable of lessons and chores for the boys. The seemingly complete lack of any regime irked me, but was that the point?

I wished there had been more inspiring adult figures in the lives of the boys at Goodwin Manor and I also wanted to see what happened when one of the boys returned home. Furthermore, I desired evidence of an improvement in the behaviour and wellbeing of the boys who'd spent the most time at Goodwin Manor.

Unfortunately, the reader is deprived of character backstories and thereby any evidence of individual growth, development or recovery. There was also much that was never explained. How did the boys get the money for cigarettes and booze and what was with the chicken coop?

The Everlasting Sunday is a literary novel by an Australian author that has won a swag of awards (see below). It's a coming-of-age novel about friendship, self, rejection, love, grief and hope but ultimately I found it too wanting for my tastes.… (altro)

Goodwin Manor is a place of last resorts, a place for the outcasts of society, young males that have erred that once too many. Situated far from anything, the boys are mostly left to their own devices. Tutors come and go. Edward Wilson (Teddy to the boys) is the overseer; he is tired and withdrawn most of the time only intervening when the situation gets out of hand. Teddy has underlying problems of his own. Lilly, the cook, is a motherly figure demanding respect but also full of kindness.

The story is set in the winter of 1962. England’s bleakest winter for 82 years.

Radford arrives unceremoniously dropped off by his uncle and is quickly taken under the wing of the charismatic West. There is much introspection and confidences shared between the two in their late-night smoking sessions. All the characters seem to be at a place in time they would rather not be.
Much like a boarding school the boys sneak out at night to smoke and drink alcohol. There were no rules and the boys had their own methods of punishment when warranted and found things to keep them occupied. Radford at first tries to make sense of the hierarchy and happenings in the Manor.
”Each day had brought not a sense of understanding but an understanding not to search for sense.”

Winter has its own role in this novel, becoming a character as it watches and waits placing scorn on humans trying to live in its mightiest moments.
”These boys imagining themselves conquering miles, they pushed only deeper into the trap. Winter wondered who would miss them.......Yes, it could bury them now........ Winter would watch on for now. There was no risk of missing its chance, for Winter always returned.”

Lukin’s prose are lyrical and haunting with an underlying empathy and they give a mystical quality to the story.

Occasionally you come across a book that your words cannot describe the way it is written and how it makes you feel. The Everlasting Sunday is such a book.

The Everlasting Sunday is an atmospheric tale of rejection, friendship, bonding and survival.… (altro)

The Everlasting Sunday is the debut novel of Melbourne author Robert Lukin who has previously been published in the usual Australian literary magazines – but the novel is British to its freezing winter bootstraps. It is set in 1962 during an epic winter storm in the north, and the cold gets into the bones as only a British winter can. (I remember it from my childhood. Vividly).

17-year-old Radford is sent to Goodwin Manor from London, for some reason unspecified except that he has been ‘found by trouble’. Diffident, lonely and angry in a subterranean way, Radford is also suicidal, but the low-key anti-authoritarian approach of the administrator Edward ‘Teddy’ Wilson offers a kind of balm, albeit a tentative one because all the other boys have been ‘found by trouble’ too.

There are no rules at the Manor, only customs of the laissez-faire variety, and lessons such as they are, are laid back too. They are rather like those of the 1970s in progressive schools where children turned up at lessons if and when they felt like it, relying on the skill of remarkable teachers to entice and maintain attendance. Radford (who is bright) goes to some classes but not many, chiefly only engaged by lessons in electronics taught by an unremarkable teacher called Manny.

But school is the least important aspect of Radford’s life at the Manor...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/06/24/the-everlasting-sunday-by-robert-lukins-book...… (altro)