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A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists
It is 1997 in San Francisco and Simon and Sarah have been sent on a quest to see America: they must stand at least once in every 25-foot square of the country. Decades later, in an Australian city that has fallen on hard times, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River, living on small change from odd jobs, ersatz vodka and memories. She's sick of being hot, dirty, broke and alone.
Caddy's future changes shape when her friend, Ray, stumbles across some well-worn maps, including one of San Francisco, and their lives connect with those of teenagers Simon and Sarah in ways that are unexpected and profound.
A meditation on happiness – where and in what place and with who we can find our centre, a perceptive vision of where our world is headed, and a testament to the power of memory and imagination, this is the best of novels: both highly original and eminently readable.
Caddy's future changes shape when her friend, Ray, stumbles across some well-worn maps, including one of San Francisco, and their lives connect with those of teenagers Simon and Sarah in ways that are unexpected and profound.
A meditation on happiness – where and in what place and with who we can find our centre, a perceptive vision of where our world is headed, and a testament to the power of memory and imagination, this is the best of novels: both highly original and eminently readable.
318 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2013
7 people are currently reading
622 people want to read
About the author
Jane Rawson
14 books144 followersJane grew up in Canberra and travelled via San Francisco and Melbourne to Tasmania, where she works as a writer for a conservation organisation. Her first novel, A Wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, won the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award and her second novel, From the Wreck, won the Aurealis Award and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She is also the author of a non-fiction guide to surviving and living with climate change called The Handbook and a novella, Formaldehyde, which won the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize. You can read her essays in Living with the Anthropocene; Fire, Flood, Plague; and Reading like an Australian Writer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
November 8, 2015
This was a huge pile-up of genres and I loved it so much: dystopian-futurism, humour, time travel, fantasy with touches of YA.
It was like the Aussie Feminist love-child of a Douglas Adams novel: set in a pre-complete Apocalypse year 2030 Melbourne and Macedon, Caddy Jalibeel's husband, Harry, cat and home have been dead and gone for two years (incinerated in an oil storage explosion that took out most of Yarraville) and she's been living in a humpy made out of junk by the Maribyrnong River ever since (until floods wash that away, too, and she's homeless and having to do odd jobs and be a part-time hooker just to survive). In her free time she writes a story about two teens in 1997, Simon and Sarah, aiming to see every 25-foot square of America because that's what their dead parents would have wanted them to do. Thanks to some crazy maps that Caddy's Koori friend Ray buys off a peacekeeper shipping out of Melbourne, Caddy and Ray stumble upon "The Gap" (not the store) and worlds real and imaginary begin to collide.
I'm not going to say much more because the sheer delight of this book (which is told in the first person and third person from various "real" and imaginary friend perspectives) is just going with it.
But one passage really stood out for me. It seemed like a definition of "true love" which was one of the realer and truer definitions I've seen in fiction, anywhere. Look away if you can't handle profanity:
"People talk about great passions and they make it sound like it should be a tumult of fighting and declarations of undying love followed by public rooting and accusations of infidelity and then more declarations of how one would die without the other. It's bullshit. I'm telling you, it's bullshit! Seriously, that fucker Heathcliff and everyone like him? They can get fucked. You know what it's really like? It's quiet and calm and steady and it doesn't change that much from one day to the next. It's always there. You can count on it. You can know that when you get home in the evening, someone will be there and he'll love you. He might not tell you right away or anything, but he does. He loves you.
So that's how it was. And now it's gone. I don't even know why I'm still here. It won't come back....statistically, there won't be something else for me like I had with Harry, I don't even want it. There was me and him and it wasn't magical or like anything you'd see on TV, it was just love. Kind and real and every single day. Every fucking single day, and I never had to doubt it, ever."
It was like the Aussie Feminist love-child of a Douglas Adams novel: set in a pre-complete Apocalypse year 2030 Melbourne and Macedon, Caddy Jalibeel's husband, Harry, cat and home have been dead and gone for two years (incinerated in an oil storage explosion that took out most of Yarraville) and she's been living in a humpy made out of junk by the Maribyrnong River ever since (until floods wash that away, too, and she's homeless and having to do odd jobs and be a part-time hooker just to survive). In her free time she writes a story about two teens in 1997, Simon and Sarah, aiming to see every 25-foot square of America because that's what their dead parents would have wanted them to do. Thanks to some crazy maps that Caddy's Koori friend Ray buys off a peacekeeper shipping out of Melbourne, Caddy and Ray stumble upon "The Gap" (not the store) and worlds real and imaginary begin to collide.
I'm not going to say much more because the sheer delight of this book (which is told in the first person and third person from various "real" and imaginary friend perspectives) is just going with it.
But one passage really stood out for me. It seemed like a definition of "true love" which was one of the realer and truer definitions I've seen in fiction, anywhere. Look away if you can't handle profanity:
"People talk about great passions and they make it sound like it should be a tumult of fighting and declarations of undying love followed by public rooting and accusations of infidelity and then more declarations of how one would die without the other. It's bullshit. I'm telling you, it's bullshit! Seriously, that fucker Heathcliff and everyone like him? They can get fucked. You know what it's really like? It's quiet and calm and steady and it doesn't change that much from one day to the next. It's always there. You can count on it. You can know that when you get home in the evening, someone will be there and he'll love you. He might not tell you right away or anything, but he does. He loves you.
So that's how it was. And now it's gone. I don't even know why I'm still here. It won't come back....statistically, there won't be something else for me like I had with Harry, I don't even want it. There was me and him and it wasn't magical or like anything you'd see on TV, it was just love. Kind and real and every single day. Every fucking single day, and I never had to doubt it, ever."
August 6, 2016
This review also appeared on Joe Follansbee's blog.
I remember a lecture in a college philosophy class about a medieval scholastic who wrote that if you can imagine something, it’s possible for it to become real. The artist Picasso took the idea a step further by declaring, “Everything you can imagine is real.” But what happens if you imagine something, and then destroy it, like a painting or essay that won’t come together? Does it exist somewhere, but only partly? That’s among the questions author Jane Rawson asks in her novel A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists. Thwarted desires to finish the undone lie at the heart of this charming, if puzzling work.
Rawson tells the story of Caddy, a 30-something Australian widow of Harry, a man killed in a horrific accident that destroys her physical home and her emotional life. She lives on the streets of a 2030 Melbourne ravaged by a warming climate that magnifies the extremes of rich and poor, leaving Caddy living in a shack, surrounded by an odd assortment of friends. She’s also a writer, working on a story as she barters her body for food and water. In a fit of frustration, she throws the unfinished story away.
Meanwhile, Caddy’s friend Ray discovers a way to travel by jumping into the gap created in the creases of old maps. Via a fanciful bureaucracy known as Suspended Imaginums, a kind of cosmic storage unit for abandoned pipe dreams, located next to the Unmade Lists office of the title, Ray discovers two travelers driven to see every inch of 1997 America, or rather every 25-foot square of it. These travelers live a dream they cannot achieve in a human lifetime. It parallels Caddy’s own unfulfilled life.
In psychobabble, “unfinished business” refers to emotional work left incomplete. You forget to say “thank you.” You wished you had said “I love you.” You choose not to say “goodbye” when you knew a relationship was done. Business is often left undone when a loved one suddenly dies, and in the most tragic cases, the one left behind imagines that the lost person is still alive and will return. Caddy takes this to an extreme with her husband Harry. Rawson often makes Caddy’s journey unnecessarily complicated, leaving the reader scratching his head. But life is full of inexplicable bits we have to accept, or the wrong turns become a spiral into madness.
I remember a lecture in a college philosophy class about a medieval scholastic who wrote that if you can imagine something, it’s possible for it to become real. The artist Picasso took the idea a step further by declaring, “Everything you can imagine is real.” But what happens if you imagine something, and then destroy it, like a painting or essay that won’t come together? Does it exist somewhere, but only partly? That’s among the questions author Jane Rawson asks in her novel A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists. Thwarted desires to finish the undone lie at the heart of this charming, if puzzling work.
Rawson tells the story of Caddy, a 30-something Australian widow of Harry, a man killed in a horrific accident that destroys her physical home and her emotional life. She lives on the streets of a 2030 Melbourne ravaged by a warming climate that magnifies the extremes of rich and poor, leaving Caddy living in a shack, surrounded by an odd assortment of friends. She’s also a writer, working on a story as she barters her body for food and water. In a fit of frustration, she throws the unfinished story away.
Meanwhile, Caddy’s friend Ray discovers a way to travel by jumping into the gap created in the creases of old maps. Via a fanciful bureaucracy known as Suspended Imaginums, a kind of cosmic storage unit for abandoned pipe dreams, located next to the Unmade Lists office of the title, Ray discovers two travelers driven to see every inch of 1997 America, or rather every 25-foot square of it. These travelers live a dream they cannot achieve in a human lifetime. It parallels Caddy’s own unfulfilled life.
In psychobabble, “unfinished business” refers to emotional work left incomplete. You forget to say “thank you.” You wished you had said “I love you.” You choose not to say “goodbye” when you knew a relationship was done. Business is often left undone when a loved one suddenly dies, and in the most tragic cases, the one left behind imagines that the lost person is still alive and will return. Caddy takes this to an extreme with her husband Harry. Rawson often makes Caddy’s journey unnecessarily complicated, leaving the reader scratching his head. But life is full of inexplicable bits we have to accept, or the wrong turns become a spiral into madness.
May 19, 2022
This book was named Australia's most underrated book in 2014 and a read is well rewarded. I was drawn to it when I heard that many publishers rejected it on the grounds 'too weird even for us'.
It is a dystopian tale set in a 2030 Melbourne feeling the ravages of climate change; where most of the western suburbs and the West Gate Bridge were decimated by the explosion of oil refineries; and where the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically. The rich live a comfortable air-conditioned life and still go to the races; the poor live in humpies where they can - along the flood prone river bank or as refugees in Melbourne's gardens. The divide is managed by a UN peace-keeping force. The protagonist, Caddy, lost both her parents in the great heatwave of 2014 and her husband in the explosion. She now shifts as well as she can in the city.
Despite all this, the book is also funny and defies easy categorisation.
Transport in Melbourne is totally disrupted and Caddy considers it a fluke when she strikes a day with trains actually running and she only has to wait a couple of hours for the next Flinders Street train. Caddy's friend Ray buys some maps and discovers that they provide a fast cross-Melbourne travel route - literally. By visiting certain points on the map (the first with a nod to Picnic is at Hanging Rock) he can move across Victoria through some kind of hole in space-time. However, after a couple of trips, he unexpectedly falls into 'the gap' of the map creases and enters a strange world of "suspended imaginums" - where the product of people's imaginations go when abandoned. There he meets Simon and Sarah, two characters from a book Caddy was working on before despair caused her to toss the manuscript in the river.
If you like Jasper Fforde or Douglas Adams, this book is for you.
It is a dystopian tale set in a 2030 Melbourne feeling the ravages of climate change; where most of the western suburbs and the West Gate Bridge were decimated by the explosion of oil refineries; and where the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically. The rich live a comfortable air-conditioned life and still go to the races; the poor live in humpies where they can - along the flood prone river bank or as refugees in Melbourne's gardens. The divide is managed by a UN peace-keeping force. The protagonist, Caddy, lost both her parents in the great heatwave of 2014 and her husband in the explosion. She now shifts as well as she can in the city.
Despite all this, the book is also funny and defies easy categorisation.
Transport in Melbourne is totally disrupted and Caddy considers it a fluke when she strikes a day with trains actually running and she only has to wait a couple of hours for the next Flinders Street train. Caddy's friend Ray buys some maps and discovers that they provide a fast cross-Melbourne travel route - literally. By visiting certain points on the map (the first with a nod to Picnic is at Hanging Rock) he can move across Victoria through some kind of hole in space-time. However, after a couple of trips, he unexpectedly falls into 'the gap' of the map creases and enters a strange world of "suspended imaginums" - where the product of people's imaginations go when abandoned. There he meets Simon and Sarah, two characters from a book Caddy was working on before despair caused her to toss the manuscript in the river.
If you like Jasper Fforde or Douglas Adams, this book is for you.
July 5, 2013
I like dystopian fiction, as long as it's funny. And this is funny. It's also smart and sobering and thought-provoking. It sits comfortably in an unusual space between sci-fi, fantasy and magic realism, allowing characters the freedom to cross literal and figurative boundaries while always retaining a strong grip on the humanness of it all.
The novel moves fluidly between points of view in a way that can be (richly) disorienting. Disorientation is an important part of the characters' experience, and rather than distracting, I found this device pushed me further into the story-world and helped me identify with the protagonists. Across the board, I appreciated the fact that literary devices were used effectively and unpretentiously.
Some big themes are tackled here - the meaning of home, the perils of climate change, the nature of imagination - and they're successfully woven together by the humanity at the core of the book. Because ultimately (like all the best stories) this is a tale of love and loss. And it's a story told with disarming honesty and rare insight.
The novel moves fluidly between points of view in a way that can be (richly) disorienting. Disorientation is an important part of the characters' experience, and rather than distracting, I found this device pushed me further into the story-world and helped me identify with the protagonists. Across the board, I appreciated the fact that literary devices were used effectively and unpretentiously.
Some big themes are tackled here - the meaning of home, the perils of climate change, the nature of imagination - and they're successfully woven together by the humanity at the core of the book. Because ultimately (like all the best stories) this is a tale of love and loss. And it's a story told with disarming honesty and rare insight.
May 24, 2014
Melbourne will never quite seem the same after a wrong turn at the office of unmade lists. The ruined shanty-town Melbourne of this dystopia still has traffic and transport problems. Which Ray friend of Caddy, the heroine of this dream-like story, thinks he may have found a mysterious solution to in the form of some well-worn maps. But the story, well it has its own paths to travel - and I recommend going along with them for the ride. Neither science fiction nor fantasy this novel is lively, imaginative and very original. A great read.
March 22, 2016
An interesting debut; it started good as a dystopian novel then did a major shift 100 pages in which left me confused and struggling for a while to catch up with the events. Being a Melbournian, the scenes set in Melbourne were fun instantly recognising many places mentioned (and I had a chuckle over the reference to who the President of Australia is). The scenes set in San Francisco weren't as successful and felt the whole urban fantasy aspect of teh novel was less successful. Still a book that I enjoyed
December 7, 2017
The premise of the book is what happens when you imagine something then it becomes real. In this David Mitchell like mix of a dystopian environmental disaster with humour and time travel, Caddy lives in 2030 Melbourne where resources are very limited, water is at a premium and there is a massive gulf between the rich and the majority of people. Some of the humour is a but juvenile but it is a creative way of warning of things to come.
October 3, 2019
A lovely take on Dystopian Science Fiction!
July 26, 2014
I picked up this book looking for science fiction. It literally had SF written all over its cover. Admittedly, this stood for San Francisco, but the blurb gave me hope. And I wasn’t disappointed.
Over the first 50 pages or so, Rawson shows us Melbourne 2030, a city transformed by climate change. This is very well realised, a burg like some of those found in Ethiopia or Pakistan — an attractive destination for refugees, but requiring international aid and emergency support. I was particularly impressed by how Rawson foregrounds the economic situation of her characters. Life has not become a battle of tooth and claw, but of nickel and dime. And if everyone seems friendly and relaxed, that’s surely because there is a certain ease in knowing you’re all going to die soon.
Then everything changes. The novel becomes elusive. This isn’t one for people who like building elaboration and danger. Or genre reassurance. Yet this isn’t a difficult novel. Rawson has a light touch, fluid prose, and charming characters to carry you through whatever strangeness you perceive.
This could all get tiresomely symbolic , but Rawson keeps the material honest (and honestly material), letting the reader draw their own conclusions. I was put in mind of — its affinities with and oppositions to — a number of other novels (and The Matrix), but probably what it most felt like was a more genial yet more doomed version of M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing.
But remember: I picked up this book looking for science fiction, and I found it. If you’re of a different reading temperament, you'll probably find something else. I recommend giving it a look.
Over the first 50 pages or so, Rawson shows us Melbourne 2030, a city transformed by climate change. This is very well realised, a burg like some of those found in Ethiopia or Pakistan — an attractive destination for refugees, but requiring international aid and emergency support. I was particularly impressed by how Rawson foregrounds the economic situation of her characters. Life has not become a battle of tooth and claw, but of nickel and dime. And if everyone seems friendly and relaxed, that’s surely because there is a certain ease in knowing you’re all going to die soon.
Then everything changes. The novel becomes elusive. This isn’t one for people who like building elaboration and danger. Or genre reassurance. Yet this isn’t a difficult novel. Rawson has a light touch, fluid prose, and charming characters to carry you through whatever strangeness you perceive.
This could all get tiresomely symbolic , but Rawson keeps the material honest (and honestly material), letting the reader draw their own conclusions. I was put in mind of — its affinities with and oppositions to — a number of other novels (and The Matrix), but probably what it most felt like was a more genial yet more doomed version of M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing.
But remember: I picked up this book looking for science fiction, and I found it. If you’re of a different reading temperament, you'll probably find something else. I recommend giving it a look.
March 16, 2014
Australian author Jane Rawson has a gem of a book here. A fantasy about time travel, parallel universes, friendship, and the fine line between imagination and reality. All done with a good dose of humor.
Caddy is on the streets after the loss of her husband. Her friend, Ray, buys some maps from a visiting soldier, hoping to sell them on for a profit, until he realizes he can step into the worn creases on the maps into other worlds.
The environmental message which runs through this book is very clear. In the last chapter, the message is chilling.
Caddy is on the streets after the loss of her husband. Her friend, Ray, buys some maps from a visiting soldier, hoping to sell them on for a profit, until he realizes he can step into the worn creases on the maps into other worlds.
The environmental message which runs through this book is very clear. In the last chapter, the message is chilling.
November 26, 2014
I'm not sure what I think of this one. Duty to finish was a factor until half-way, and it became interesting around 60%, which peaked at about 75%, but then dropped right off before ending well enough. Some nice ideas, but hard to parse metaphysically, and I'm not sure I care enough to try.
January 24, 2020
Wow! I have absolutely no idea how to describe this book except that it's an insane journey through a dystopian Melbourne, an imaginary past and possible alternatives.
This book snagged me from the first sentence, made me cry at a description of true love, kept me engaged with its crazy plotting and made me despair at how real our possible future looked. I came to care about all the characters, real or imaginary (both?), and missed my morning train because I couldn't put the book down.
The plot is truly strange (and I've read Jasper Fforde). It careens around like an out-of-control car, one minute a love story, the next a sci fi, skips into teen fiction, then fantasy, a warning about climate change, a mystery... But maybe that's the point. The randomness of everything.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as the author's first published novel it's a tour de force.
This book snagged me from the first sentence, made me cry at a description of true love, kept me engaged with its crazy plotting and made me despair at how real our possible future looked. I came to care about all the characters, real or imaginary (both?), and missed my morning train because I couldn't put the book down.
The plot is truly strange (and I've read Jasper Fforde). It careens around like an out-of-control car, one minute a love story, the next a sci fi, skips into teen fiction, then fantasy, a warning about climate change, a mystery... But maybe that's the point. The randomness of everything.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as the author's first published novel it's a tour de force.
February 25, 2020
This book was really cool. It was interesting reading about a near future Melbourne in a climate change dystopia. There were also elements of time travel, meta-book - in - a-book stuff, and strange surrealism. I recommend to fans of spec fic.
May 25, 2018
I really enjoyed this, especially being local to where it is set. Rawson has such an original and inventive mind, I was locked in immediately. The humour is a great foil for the dystopian bleakness, and the characters are engaging.
December 4, 2016
this book unfortunately collided with a few things that rub me a little the wrong way but also will make any reader (me included) think and that's a good thing :
1) I read "Move Over Michelangelo" by Sarah Boxer abt the "new age" of the woman artist where the author describes relief to find paintings on exhibit by women artists who didn't remind her of male painters . hmm, ok and reflects that women work more with fragments, impermanence, she reaches back to the 70's quoting Lippard about how women made work that was more transitive, unfinished tinged with uncertainty and anxiety .
2) I saw Adelaide Johnson's sculpture of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the US Capitol Bldg - a carrara mable block out of which rises busts of the 19th-century suffragettes who lobbied & organized and protested to help American women get the vote - it was described by a docent as purposely unfinished to show potential for another figure looming behind the three finished busts because the "womens' problem" still needs more champions. I also found out that In 1921, Congress ordered its inscription removed which once said: " Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen, declared herself an entity to be reckoned.''
Apparently in more recent times before its appearance upstairs among the heroically posed full figure statues of males on pedestals some Congressional representatives said the statue was too ugly and without enough historical significance to warrant the cost of moving it [up] to the Rotunda.
3) I know Oakland of 1997 doesn't suck . I know SF of 1997 is not defined by tacos .
So where does that leave the office of unmade lists and it's protagonist ? Caddy frustrates me, her story feels a bit like form over substance, disjoint, even gimmicky without reaching higher, her imaginums have too many loose ends - some of the ones readers care about most are left unfinished .
So yeah, all that frustrating stuff, it's going on here but I am in no doubt that it is art, or that gender influences it, or abt why it leaves the reader feeling they didn't get enough.
1) I read "Move Over Michelangelo" by Sarah Boxer abt the "new age" of the woman artist where the author describes relief to find paintings on exhibit by women artists who didn't remind her of male painters . hmm, ok and reflects that women work more with fragments, impermanence, she reaches back to the 70's quoting Lippard about how women made work that was more transitive, unfinished tinged with uncertainty and anxiety .
2) I saw Adelaide Johnson's sculpture of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the US Capitol Bldg - a carrara mable block out of which rises busts of the 19th-century suffragettes who lobbied & organized and protested to help American women get the vote - it was described by a docent as purposely unfinished to show potential for another figure looming behind the three finished busts because the "womens' problem" still needs more champions. I also found out that In 1921, Congress ordered its inscription removed which once said: " Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen, declared herself an entity to be reckoned.''
Apparently in more recent times before its appearance upstairs among the heroically posed full figure statues of males on pedestals some Congressional representatives said the statue was too ugly and without enough historical significance to warrant the cost of moving it [up] to the Rotunda.
3) I know Oakland of 1997 doesn't suck . I know SF of 1997 is not defined by tacos .
So where does that leave the office of unmade lists and it's protagonist ? Caddy frustrates me, her story feels a bit like form over substance, disjoint, even gimmicky without reaching higher, her imaginums have too many loose ends - some of the ones readers care about most are left unfinished .
So yeah, all that frustrating stuff, it's going on here but I am in no doubt that it is art, or that gender influences it, or abt why it leaves the reader feeling they didn't get enough.
August 6, 2014
A fascinating novel combining a dystopic view of Melbourne's future, with an odd fantasy-imbued narrative. The most impressive facet of the book is the portrayal of Melbourne in 2030 - a burnt out, overheated mess of a city, where trains run once or twice a day at best, people camp in Flagstaff gardens and large swathes of the Western suburbs have been destroyed by massive industrial fires. The book is partly about Caddy's survival in this brutal world and, to be honest, I'd have been happy if that had been the whole story. The shift into fantasy is handled smoothly though and the interactions between Caddy and characters she imagined are mind-bending and fun. There's a lot to take in here, and I'm not quite sure that the resolution really works, but it's a fun and intriguing ride and one I'd definitely recommend.
August 17, 2021
I think it just shows how long I have been living outside of Australia that it took me some persistence to get back into the idiom. Sent to me by Gavan, probably a favorite of his because the Doggies survive some kind of chemical accident apocalypse. I'm no longer familiar enough with Melbourne to get all the references but that isn't what's important for this book (and I hate books with maps or where maps are necessary). A wonderful, moving take on post-apocalyptic and fantasy. Elements of Neil Gaimen (Neverwhere - truly outstanding) in the impossible trips from one place to another and one dimension to another.
Never give up on your imaginings - you may end up living them.
Never give up on your imaginings - you may end up living them.
July 28, 2013
I loved this! Made me laugh and cry, and think about the past, present and future, all at once. I couldn't put it down, but didn't want to get to the end of the book because I wanted it to keep going. Can't wait to see what Jane Rawson comes up with next.
February 20, 2016
The gradually unwinding tale of a dystopian Melbourne was enthralling – and then along came time travel and parallel universes, and I felt like I'd failed an IQ test. Certainly a unique read, but it fell short for me when the fantasy aspects lead the writing.
August 10, 2013
Disappointing. I was excited about a book set in my local area, but I thought it was disjointed and it just didn't grab me
August 23, 2017
Unexpectedly fun, given that it's set post-climate-change-disaster
October 29, 2017
When I started this book it reminded me of Gold Fame Citrus: both dystopian novels set in a city destroyed by people and climate, featuring young untethered female protagonists with their male partners-in-crime, drifting around their city, just surviving, scavenging and making infuriating decisions. There are also parallels with the literary writing style.
Then things changed. Firstly, I wasn’t expecting the sci-fi turn, and I had mixed feelings about it. The book doesn’t make sense, and I chose to just not think about it rather than interrogate the intricacies as some other reads have done. Secondly, the protagonist Caddy is trying to make the best of her bad situation, and is quite clever and courageous in their own way - unlike Luz from Gold Fame Citrus who is excruciatingly vapid. I don’t identify with Caddy but she has integrity and depth.
The speed of this story is also good, although it becomes increasingly confusing until the last few pages when there is some semblance of resolution. It’s unclear whether there are complex internal rules I didn’t understand or it’s intentionally chaotic and paradoxical - probably a bit of both.
As other readers have mentioned, it’s also interesting for people who live in Melbourne to see a dystopian variation of their city. I used to live right near where Caddy’s settlement was, and found it eerie to read the scenes set in 2030 overlaid with the current reality.
If you want an easy paperback to read on a plane or while you’re sick in bed, probably try something else, but if you like Australian literary dystopian sci-fi, this is a good read.
Then things changed. Firstly, I wasn’t expecting the sci-fi turn, and I had mixed feelings about it. The book doesn’t make sense, and I chose to just not think about it rather than interrogate the intricacies as some other reads have done. Secondly, the protagonist Caddy is trying to make the best of her bad situation, and is quite clever and courageous in their own way - unlike Luz from Gold Fame Citrus who is excruciatingly vapid. I don’t identify with Caddy but she has integrity and depth.
The speed of this story is also good, although it becomes increasingly confusing until the last few pages when there is some semblance of resolution. It’s unclear whether there are complex internal rules I didn’t understand or it’s intentionally chaotic and paradoxical - probably a bit of both.
As other readers have mentioned, it’s also interesting for people who live in Melbourne to see a dystopian variation of their city. I used to live right near where Caddy’s settlement was, and found it eerie to read the scenes set in 2030 overlaid with the current reality.
If you want an easy paperback to read on a plane or while you’re sick in bed, probably try something else, but if you like Australian literary dystopian sci-fi, this is a good read.
January 8, 2018
The weirdest thing happened when I put down Jane Rawson’s debut novel, A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists: I started imagining things! This is weird because I’m not a particularly imaginative or fanciful person, so it must have been this book that did it. Let me explain …
First though, I need to say that I’ve been keen to read this book for some time. It started with the cover. I tend not to focus a lot on covers but some do grab me. This one, with its chequerboard of maps, is both eye-catching and intriguing. Then there’s the title. As a librarian/archivist, I’m drawn to organisation and lists but don’t mind a little anarchy every now and then. Is that what’s going on here, I wondered? And finally, there’s its MUBA award win last year. So it came down to a case of three strikes and you’re out – or, more accurately, in – and I bought the book. Well, what a read, because …
A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists is a very unusual book. For my full review, please see: https://whisperinggums.com/2015/04/21...
First though, I need to say that I’ve been keen to read this book for some time. It started with the cover. I tend not to focus a lot on covers but some do grab me. This one, with its chequerboard of maps, is both eye-catching and intriguing. Then there’s the title. As a librarian/archivist, I’m drawn to organisation and lists but don’t mind a little anarchy every now and then. Is that what’s going on here, I wondered? And finally, there’s its MUBA award win last year. So it came down to a case of three strikes and you’re out – or, more accurately, in – and I bought the book. Well, what a read, because …
A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists is a very unusual book. For my full review, please see: https://whisperinggums.com/2015/04/21...
January 7, 2018
Jane Rawson's debut novel
A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists
is one of the most unusual novels I have read. The descriptor ‘wacky’ applies to both the Narnia-like storyline and the dystopian climate change future version of Melbourne featured within it. Unfortunately, far less suspension of belief need be applied to the latter. But the climate is not the only thing that is dry in this novel, the humour woven into Rawson’s narrative is also wonderfully so.
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This review counts towards my participation in the Aussie Author Challenge 2018.
This review counts towards my participation in the Aussie Author Challenge 2018.
September 22, 2015
I loved this book which was a big relief because I met the author and she rocked and it would have been very awkward if I didn’t like the book. I read it in March and should have reviewed it then, straight away. Rawson’s novel is so unique it has remained fresh in my mind. (And I tend to rave about it and recommend it to everyone so I have been talking about it for months!) This book manages to be original without being pretentious, moving without being sentimental, speculative without being clichéd, environmental without being preachy and futuristic in a very gritty and believable way. What Jane Rawson has achieved with this book is an incredibly skilful writing feat which delights at every – wrong or right – turn.
Melbourne in the near future – a future affected by climate change – is the main setting for the book. With Caddie’s home destroyed by fire, a fire which took the life of her husband Harry, she joins the thousands of displaced people that populate the city. The evocation of a future Melbourne seething with heat and thronging with homeless people was so believable I can still see the images in my head and I was afraid to catch the train to North Melbourne station in case I found large groups of people living there. Being from Melbourne the sense of place touched a raw nerve.
Caddie is a terrifically tough character trying to survive the disastrous times with a broken heart, turning a few tricks for money; doing whatever she can to get by. She is resourceful in both practical and mental ways. She is grieving deeply for Harry. Rawson describes their relationship so honestly, that the sense of grief is palpable.
“Harry was Caddy’s settling down. She settled into him like a pillow on the couch, a blanket pulled over her, and footy on the TV, falling asleep by three-quarter time on a Friday night. He was knowing that everything would be OK; he was kissing goodbye for a little too long before heading out to work; he was waking up on Sunday morning with plans for each day-by-day, for the little things that build a wall around two people and keep them safe.”
Her grief for Harry underpins the narrative but never overwhelms it.
“So that's how it was. And now it's gone. I don't even know why I'm still here. It won't come back....statistically, there won't be something else for me like I had with Harry, I don't even want it. There was me and him and it wasn't magical or like anything you'd see on TV, it was just love. Kind and real and every single day. Every fucking single day, and I never had to doubt it, ever."
Caddie’s dry humour, self-deprecating manner and street smarts cover most of her emotions. Her friend Ray, a Koori with a talent for black market racketeering has discovered something strange. It’s a map that when you stand in certain places (like Hanging Rock - a lovely reference to Joan Lindsay’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock”) and fold the map you can slip through space the location on the other side of the crease. Ray is naturally trying to think of a way to monetise it. Caddie and Ray explore the powers of the map and discover another place, “the gap” – a nether world –where there is a cloakroom for the shadows of the dead, the place for lost lids and pens and an office for unmade lists and most amazingly, the suspended imaginarium – a place for all things imagined and abandoned. It is in the Suspended Imaginarium that Caddie’s unfinished and abandoned novel exists – it’s setting is 1997 San Francisco - and it’s the story of Simon and Sarah who are on a quest to see America in a very specific way. They must stand in every 25 foot square of the country. It was something begun with their parents and a legacy they have continued.
Got all that? Yes it’s whacky but bloody marvellous in how it’s written. The story plays out with the real world hot and disintegrating in contrast to another world limited by the boundaries of imagination, existing bubble like in the ideas already thought. What can pass between these worlds and where would Caddie rather exist? What will she find in the gap?
The tensions between reality and imagination and the limitations of both play out in the novel with heart breaking poignancy and dry humour. The novel is utterly original in its premise and told with such expert tone and language. The passage which described how this map that is a portal to a nether world came into existence is so thoroughly amazing and well written that I stopped and re-read it several times.
In “Wrong Turn and the Office of Unmade Lists” Rawson tenderly explores a raw grief, but is never awash with sentimentality. The internal logic of this universe is so wonderfully detailed and consistent that the reader is firmly planted in this future Melbourne. The speculative tangents that spring from Rawson’s mind have a solidity to them – a testament to the honesty of her language and characters. Somehow Rawson can straddle worlds at once Python-esque and absurd but touchingly and devastatingly real and within it display the fragility of the human experience when faced with loss, change and environmental disaster.
Rawson manages to move you without any sense of emotional manipulation, manages to be absurd yet always true to the universe of the book, manages to be dryly witty but never dismissively so. There is tenderness shown to all characters and an interplay of worlds that in their un-reality only serve to heighten the reality of Caddie’s situation. Rawson taps into our connection with place and how it affects our happiness, the power of the imagination and escapism and the importance of storytelling for resilience and the fragility of human nature when faced with loss. Have I told you how I loved this book?
January 15, 2020
Not a very engaging start, but the story picked up a about a third of the way in. I appreciated the creative title and the main concept was creative and thought provoking. The let-down, however, was that I found none of the characters likeable. In order to be properly invested in a novel I have to care about the characters. Unfortunately, Rawson's characters seemed much less mature than their ages, and their dialogue was unnatural, making it uncomfortable to read.
To summarise, 'A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists' contains a storyline with great potential, undermined by irritating and unlikeable characters.
To summarise, 'A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists' contains a storyline with great potential, undermined by irritating and unlikeable characters.
July 26, 2017
This isn't the most well-written book I've ever read but I really enjoyed it. The characters were great, it had an interesting plot and there was a lot of humour mixed in amongst all the doom and gloom. It was also a really unique idea. I absolutely loved the descriptions of Melbourne in the future, particularly as I once lived in Flemington and have also spent a lot of time in the Macedon Ranges. My one quibble is that the book could do with more editing, particularly towards the end, and the entire thing didn't seem to have been proofread properly.
November 18, 2017
I tried, oh how I tried, to enjoy this book. Seemed to me that the writer wasn't quite certain about what type of book she was writing: comic, dystopian, sci-fi - all of the above? Set in a future Melbourne that was just close enough to the present to be a plausible result of current national and international policy trends, the story turns in on itself and folds time back. But after a while, it all got rather silly and, although I persevered, I gave a sigh of relief at the end.
December 6, 2018
3.5 rounded up.
While it did have some cool ideas the execution was a little tiresome in places. Loved reading all the local place names and the inside jokes.
It felt like a Doctor Who episode in parts.
It made me think about what would I imagine if I could imagine a world into existence.
The jokes about the boring world because not a great writer were also pretty self deprecating and funny.
While it did have some cool ideas the execution was a little tiresome in places. Loved reading all the local place names and the inside jokes.
It felt like a Doctor Who episode in parts.
It made me think about what would I imagine if I could imagine a world into existence.
The jokes about the boring world because not a great writer were also pretty self deprecating and funny.
May 5, 2019
This reads very much like a first novel that needed a firmer editing hand. There are far too many spoken sentences where people use the full name or nickname of the person they’re talking to, and it’s unbelievably grating. I appreciate the effort and I like the idea of Australian futuristic setting, but unfortunately so did the author.
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