Wayne Macauley
Author of The Cook
About the Author
Wayne Macauley is an author who will be featured at the Mudgee Readers' Festival 2015. (Bowker Author Biography)
Works by Wayne Macauley
The Plains: Text Classics 1 copy
Cook, The 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Places of residence
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Occupations
- novelist
short-story writer
teacher - Organizations
- University of Melbourne
Members
Reviews
Recently shortlisted for the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, Simpson Returns is Wayne Macauley's sixth novel. Here on the blog I've reviewed Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe (2004); The Cook (2011); rel="nofollow" target="_top">Demons (2014); Some Tests (2017); and I have Caravan Story (2007) on the TBR somewhere too. If I had to pick a favourite it would be a toss-up between The Cook and Some Tests, but all these novels are disconcertingly relevant satires that nail modern pretensions and preoccupations in a refreshingly original way. In this new book Simpson Returns Macauley uses the national myth about Simpson and his Donkey to take aim at our platitudes about egalitarianism...
The iconic Gallipoli stretcher-bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick was so beloved by former Prime Minister John Howard that his image graced a poster about values to be taught to all children. Presumably Howard did not know that, as Mark Baker reports at the SMH in 2013, this embodiment of mateship and heroism was a knockabout 22-year-old Englishman who enlisted in the First AIF under his middle name to hide the fact that he was a deserter from the merchant navy. A parliamentary enquiry was set up to deal with persistent calls for Simpson to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, but it found in 2013, that most of what is said about Simpson is a lie, and although he was brave, he was no braver than the other stretcher-bearers whose deeds have faded into anonymity.
Macauley's Simpson is a nice enough fellow all the same, it's just that—like his namesake at Gallipoli—he's a mere band-aid in the great scheme of things.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/12/12/simpson-returns-by-wayne-macauley/… (more)
The iconic Gallipoli stretcher-bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick was so beloved by former Prime Minister John Howard that his image graced a poster about values to be taught to all children. Presumably Howard did not know that, as Mark Baker reports at the SMH in 2013, this embodiment of mateship and heroism was a knockabout 22-year-old Englishman who enlisted in the First AIF under his middle name to hide the fact that he was a deserter from the merchant navy. A parliamentary enquiry was set up to deal with persistent calls for Simpson to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, but it found in 2013, that most of what is said about Simpson is a lie, and although he was brave, he was no braver than the other stretcher-bearers whose deeds have faded into anonymity.
Macauley's Simpson is a nice enough fellow all the same, it's just that—like his namesake at Gallipoli—he's a mere band-aid in the great scheme of things.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/12/12/simpson-returns-by-wayne-macauley/… (more)
Wayne Macauley is an entertaining satirist who mercilessly exposes Australian follies, and I like his novels very much. I’ve read Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe (2004, satirising our obsession with home ownership); The Cook (2011, it parodies foodies); Demons (2014, which exposes the inane narcissism of middle-class Melbourne ); and I have Caravan Story (2007) somewhere on the TBR. (Links are to my reviews). Macauley’s latest target, in Some Tests, is the medicalization of normal life…
Beth is a nice, ordinary woman with a husband and a couple of kids, living in an ordinary Melbourne suburb. She works in aged care, and David, her husband is an accountant. They are muddling through life as most people do, planning a renovation that they can’t really afford, occasionally worrying about infidelity without apparent cause, and coping with the vagaries of parenthood. Until one day when Beth wakes up not feeling very well, and David calls in a locum because their usual doctor isn’t available.
The locum’s diagnosis is a bit vague, but Beth is feeling seedy so she agrees to go for some tests. And from this innocuous beginning, she finds herself on a merry-go-round of doctors and specialists and referrals, with a patient file that grows ever larger but never records a diagnosis.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/23/some-tests-by-wayne-macauley/… (more)
Beth is a nice, ordinary woman with a husband and a couple of kids, living in an ordinary Melbourne suburb. She works in aged care, and David, her husband is an accountant. They are muddling through life as most people do, planning a renovation that they can’t really afford, occasionally worrying about infidelity without apparent cause, and coping with the vagaries of parenthood. Until one day when Beth wakes up not feeling very well, and David calls in a locum because their usual doctor isn’t available.
The locum’s diagnosis is a bit vague, but Beth is feeling seedy so she agrees to go for some tests. And from this innocuous beginning, she finds herself on a merry-go-round of doctors and specialists and referrals, with a patient file that grows ever larger but never records a diagnosis.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/06/23/some-tests-by-wayne-macauley/… (more)
Wayne Macauley is the author of The Cook, a dark and funny satire which I read and reviewed a year or so ago just as Macauley was starting to gain an international profile, but I have had Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe and Caravan Story on my TBR for ages. I bought them when I heard that Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe was included in Year 12 reading lists and I was intrigued by the title.
I enjoyed The Cook but I found that Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe was a more thought-provoking book. I finished it two books ago and (apart from the fact that I’ve been AWOL online this week due to some pressing commitments) this absurdist novella’s been swirling around in my brain bothering me ever since I finished it at half past one in the morning on Monday night (which hasn’t helped with the pressing commitments). Like The Cook, Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe is a satire, one which attacks the sacrosanct Great Australian Home Ownership Dream, and Macauley uses lashings of black humour to make his point. It’s deeply unsettling.
Narrated by Bram, the story takes the reader to a strange alternative society that has formed in a satellite housing development marooned beyond the outskirts of Melbourne. Originally planned as a model suburb, the development stalled because a promised freeway and fuel subsidy failed to materialise, so the car-dependant projected population never materialised either. Before long nearly all of the residents leave because the place is unliveable: no transport links, miles from anywhere, and almost nothing in the way of amenities such as parks, schools, medical services, shops or eateries so there are no local jobs to be had.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2013/02/23/blueprints-for-a-barbed-wire-canoe-by-wayne-...… (more)
I enjoyed The Cook but I found that Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe was a more thought-provoking book. I finished it two books ago and (apart from the fact that I’ve been AWOL online this week due to some pressing commitments) this absurdist novella’s been swirling around in my brain bothering me ever since I finished it at half past one in the morning on Monday night (which hasn’t helped with the pressing commitments). Like The Cook, Blueprints for a Barbed-wire Canoe is a satire, one which attacks the sacrosanct Great Australian Home Ownership Dream, and Macauley uses lashings of black humour to make his point. It’s deeply unsettling.
Narrated by Bram, the story takes the reader to a strange alternative society that has formed in a satellite housing development marooned beyond the outskirts of Melbourne. Originally planned as a model suburb, the development stalled because a promised freeway and fuel subsidy failed to materialise, so the car-dependant projected population never materialised either. Before long nearly all of the residents leave because the place is unliveable: no transport links, miles from anywhere, and almost nothing in the way of amenities such as parks, schools, medical services, shops or eateries so there are no local jobs to be had.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2013/02/23/blueprints-for-a-barbed-wire-canoe-by-wayne-...… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 9
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 133
- Popularity
- #152,660
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 9
- ISBNs
- 31
(You can see my review of the others here.)
Nominated for the Readings Prize, Caravan Story was first published in 2007, but reissued in 2012 by Text Publishing. This novella skewers the commodification of 'culture' in Australia, deftly exposing the way that it's only the arts administrators who can make a living in this country, and not the artists, actors, writers and musicians on whose work they depend...
This is the blurb from the Text website:
One morning, the narrator, (whose name is Wayne) is asleep with his girlfriend in a squat, when he's woken by a bulldozer which has begun demolishing the house. Unperturbed, he makes love to her quietly and goes back to sleep, only to wake up later in a nightmare. Along with a crowd of other unsuccessful arts-funding applicants, he is expelled from the city by caravan, and ends up in a sports oval repurposed as a caravan park, where Polly the sexy arts administrator pulls them all into line. The actors are hived off into one group, the artists are another; there's a group of musicians, and then there are the writers. Polly knows that the writers are going to be difficult because they are the only group for whom she has to set up a game to help them break the ice...
Wayne can see that his partner is having a fine old time with the actors, when Polly comes back to marshall the writers into order. She provides them with a list of topics to write about, with instructions to choose a second preference in case their first choice is taken, and Wayne selects 'A Short History of Laburnum', a suburb not far from where he grew up. (This is typical of the kind of lame subject that writers (or arts administrators) without much experience of reading tend to think will be interesting to other readers. I am pretty sure that the only people conceivably interested in the history of Laburnam are people who live/d there. And even then, there won't be many of them.)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/26/caravan-story-by-wayne-macauley/… (more)