Review by Leanne Haire

The Insurmountable Malaise of Man takes us on the journeys of modern day individuals dealing with the powerlessness that confronts them. The protagonist, Man, is faced with an extreme form of non-political powerlessness. His friend, James, and colleague, Jo, experience powerlessness in different and less radical ways. How they experience their powerlessness and how they deal with it form the main theme of the novel.

The concepts of powerlessness are made tangible through the graphic images played out in Man’s mind. Lewis is like a filmmaker with a hand-held video giving us grainy, grim scenes of everyday city life. The narrative provided by Man’s thoughts overlays each scene with his recent awareness of the powerlessness that surrounds the everyday. Man lives with a constant underlying threat that menaces the most banal interaction by exposing the opportunity it provides for terror. A tenet of the novel is that it is only this awareness that distinguishes Man from others –we are all essentially powerless but the patterns and routines we apply to our lives give us a false sense of security and imbue us with a feeling of control.

The novel plots Man’s journey back from isolation, without employment, and friends. We know only that he has experienced a significant trauma and since that time has disconnected himself from his friends and his previous life. The novel reveals the trauma and follows Man as he builds new connections. He starts work, reconnects with one friend from his past, forms a relationship with a female colleague and joins a martial arts club.

The novel starts with Man seeing every situation as one in which his vulnerability and powerlessness is exposed. The most ordinary, routine events which would pass without notice by most can fill Man with dread – he sees potential danger in a pizza delivery; getting ready for his train stop; bumping into a fellow pedestrian.

The themes of powerlessness and separateness are further reinforced by the physical and political settings. The geographical backdrop for the novel is Melbourne, Australia where Man lives in a suburb that is known for its predominantly gay population and sense of a closed community. The temporal location is that of the early years of the twenty-first century, some time after September 11 but in a pre-Rudd Australia with a prime minister who would not say “Sorry”. There is not only the spectre of global terrorism, but the local disenfranchisement of the indigenous. This is further augmented when Man almost perversely takes a job that is considered one of the most oppressive in modern corporate life – the call centre operator.

As Man slowly makes more connections, his focus on the powerlessness he experienced in every situation becomes less.

One question posed by the novel is around the appropriateness of physical violence as a means of regaining power. Have modern societies really evolved in ways that make the use of violence redundant, or is there such a primal, biological inevitability that we will resort to the use of physical power when we perceive there is no other power available to us…and is this acceptable?

Three different scenes are presented that explore this question. The first is the violence James perpetrates on his wife’s lover, where the violence is almost a reflexive reaction and one he later deeply regrets. The second is where Man uses his martial arts skills and by physically assaulting Jo’s stalker, is able to scare him away. His motivation to use violence at this stage is to prove to himself that he does not have to be afraid. The motivation to protect his girlfriend is quite secondary and although it provided the initial impetus to visit her, is lost at the time he decides to attack. The final scene takes place in a grimy, alleyway in South Yarra where Man becomes aware of three men about to attack a woman. In this case, his motivation is to protect the female and not to overcome any sense of personal anxiety. It is as if Lewis is suggesting that there is a place for violence but only when there is no other power available and where the application of it is not about mitigating a sense of individual powerlessness.

Their stories are credible and Lewis tells them in a way that is totally engaging. I read the book in one sitting.

Reading this novel is very much like watching a Tarantino film complete with sound track. The naming of each chapter by quoting or misquoting a line from a song makes it impossible for the reader not to hear that song for at least the first few lines of each chapter.

Lewis sustains the film-like quality of the novel to the end through a witty epilogue, which reads like the rolling credits at the end of a film.

Despite what may seem like a bleak topic, the novel is highly entertaining with threads of black humour throughout. There is fun in the names Man gives to customers on each call; the irony in the juxtaposition of the musical references in the chapter sub-titles with the story told and with the philosophy espoused by Master Kay, founder of the martial arts school.

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