Share-household Hell

It all depends. If living in an old, run-down Queenslander peopled with ten eccentric, loveable losers on government benefits is your idea of heaven, then John Birmingham’s new book, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, (the sequel to his 1994 bestseller He Died with a Falafel in His Hand), could be the realisation of your most fervent desires. For the rest of us, the lives of the characters in Birmingham’s latest offering roughly approximate hell on earth. I’m talking about people who are grungier than anyone in Andrew McGahan’s Praise, people who are sleazier and more devious than any of Matt Condon’s characters, in fact, I’m talking about something not unlike The Young Ones crossed with Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and set in contemporary Brisbane. These people are frightening; these people are going nowhere fast; these people are hopeless. They’re bludgers, losers, freaks, mistakes ... But worst of all, these people are us, you and me. Because we’ve all done it, we’ve all had disastrous experiences sharing houses and lived to tell the tale – we’re all somewhere on that long road to recovery from Share-Household-Hell. That being said, it must be noted that Birmingham’s novel is full of compassion for his characters, regardless of the fact that these are some of the most serious casualties the Lucky Country has yet produced. Even when it comes to a character like Jabba the Hutt –Jabba is an incurable television addict who spends so much time watching television that his ‘butt hair’ has ‘fused’ with the ‘mouldering fabric’ of the brown couch – Birmingham’s mockery is underpinned with respect. Thus, when the television is stolen by the repulsive Jordan (a kind of epiphany of the flatmate-from-hell-syndrome guaranteed to make your skin crawl), the reader can’t help but feel sorry for poor Jabba, who tries to compensate for his loss by shoveling spoonfuls of Froot Loops into his mouth and staring at the empty corner where his Sony used to be. Ultimately, it’s Birmingham-the-author’s unshakeable compassion for, and Birmingham-the-character’s camaraderie with, these major losers that makes the whole nightmarish fiasco so much fun. The plot is extremely complex. Structurally it has more in common with a soap opera than with other novels. Events unfold chaotically with one drama unfolding on top of another. Just like a soap, it’s impossible to boil down what happens in the novel into one basic story-line: imagine trying to do this with an entire series of Friends or The Young Ones or any other soap and you’ll see my point. Basically though, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco is about a share household whose existence is under threat. But this is where the simplicity ends. There are at least four major threats (and many others besides). The first is caused by Jordon (an Asian bisexual undercover-cop/criminal with some very, very perverse sexual tastes) who steals their rent and valuables. The second is because they’re protecting Decoy, who’s on the run from a violent dyke gang from Melbourne. The third threat is also thanks to Jordon who falsely claimed a whole lot of extra money from the DSS and now the whole household is under investigation and their benefits have been cut off. And the final threat is posed by the yuppies who own the house and who take advantage of the fact that they’re late with their rent to evict them so they can knock the house down and begin construction on a row of townhouses. The rest of the novel is about the flatmates’ numerous desperate attempts to raise money and regain control of their lives. It goes without saying that any effort on their part has to fit in with their exhausting party schedule – naturally everybody drinks to excess and takes too many drugs. But the appearance of a giant-sized poster of Pauline Hanson on their street is what finally hammers the point home: for John Birmingham and his flatmates, the writing’s clearly on the wall. Shape up, or ship out. But success is dependent on everyone doing their bit. Leaving the weekly box of organic vegies to decompose in its recycled cardboard box, Taylor the cabbie and bosom buddie, Elroy (who drives a milk van), cruise the local Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, scavenging untouched pieces of the Colonel’s finest from plates on recently deserted tables (kids and teenagers plates, JB reports, give the highest yield). Their food needs taken care of, Stacey, a truly nineties woman indulging her maternal instincts by hanging with the wrong crowd, drops into the local radical socialist greenie centre for advice on how to answer the intrusive questionnaires the DSS have dropped into their mailbox. Coming up with the rent requires emergency measures: first Stacey’s brother, Gay Phil, tracks Jordan down through the Brisbane nightclub scene and the whole household convoys to Jordan’s to steal back all their stuff (plus enough of Jordan’s other stolen goods to pay their rent). When they’re still short, outsiders Fingers (a professional gambler) and Flinthart (a kind of Kenneth Brannagh on acid) come to the rescue and at last peace is restored – though not in the way anyone expects it. Birmingham possesses a wonderful, grungy comic talent and many of the scenarios will make you laugh out loud. As an extra bonus, the novel is illustrated to boot (these are the sort of illustrations you wonder about for a few seconds before you realise you really don’t want to know). While some may find it a little long and meandering, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco is a breath of fresh air in a somewhat stultified literary environment. [Note: this is paradoxical, given the amount of bad air that blows around on its pages.]

Justine Ettler

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