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Emma Tom has written five books. The most recent
is Bali: Paradise Lost? - a blackly humorous
look at Australia’s relationship with an island
that - despite the simplistic surf, sand and sun
clichés - has never been much like paradise.
Bali: Paradise Lost? is published by Pluto
Press as part of a new series of creative non-fiction
writing on contemporary issues called NOW. |
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| Bali:
Paradise Lost? |
Widow burning, opium abuse, slave
trading, royal corruption involving live rhinoceros
rituals.... Bali's history is a fascinating place
to visit but you probably wouldn't want to live
there. Now, in the 21st century, boobs and bikinis
face off with Indonesian shariah law on an island
which remains a mass of quirky contradictions. In
this book, you'll watch a roadside cremation, dine
on "beep sate" and "prog's legs",
meet the pirate DVD trader from Perth who emerges
from the Balinese mountains like Marlon Brando from
Apocalypse Now, discover what the Indonesian censors
have done with Brokeback Mountain, meet prisoners
on death row in Kerobokan Prison and enjoy a sunset
campari at an upmarket bar which - since the 2002
and 2005 Bali bombings - has armed guards with automatic
weapons and sniffer dogs, as well as snipers on
the roof.
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| Something
About Mary |
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| Something About Mary
is possibly the only royal biography to
contain more jokes than dates. It also has a couple
of big, important messages. One of these is: Be
careful what you wish for. Especially if your wish
is to become a famous fairy tale princess. In Emma
Tom’s experience, aspiring princesses tend
to imagine every moment will be spent skipping gaily
round a crystal palace sprinkling gold and silver
fairy dust and singing “tra la la, I’m
so rich and happy and thin”. The bad news
is that if your experience is anything like HRHCPM
of D’s, there may also be a private investigator
parked outside your house going through the rubbish
bin and doing her or his business into a Tupperware
container. |
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| This is one of many
things they don’t tell you in the fairy tales. |
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| Evidence |
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| The book Emma Tom wrote
before Something About Mary is called Evidence.
It is an excruciatingly autobiographical novel about
being a miserable 14-year-old in rural suburbia
and wondering whether it is better to pass or fail
The Frigid Test. Someone also gets burned alive.
Emma Tom wrote Evidence with some help from her
government in the form of an Australian Council
grant. |
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Read Extract |
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| Babewatch |
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| Emma Tom’s second book is called
Babewatch. It is a PGR-rated collection of non-fiction
for rocking young girls and boys. Emma Tom’s
favourite bit in Babewatch is a series of bluffers’
guides to cars, postmodernism, cricket, children
and the economy. |
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| The other piece she still really
likes is about the time she became a cheerleader
for the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs for a month. |
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Read Extract |
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| Deadset |
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Emma Tom’s
first book took about 100 years to write and is
a slapstick crime novel narrated by a dead school
girl. Deadset is not what you’d call an easy
read, though a journalist once compared it to White
Noise by Don DeLillo which Emma Tom thinks is one
of the nicest things anyone could ever say about
a book. Two other fans of Deadset were Irvine Welsh
(the guy who wrote Trainspotting) and the judges
for the 1998 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for
Asia and the South Pacific (who gave it a prize
for Best First Novel). Probably the only way to
get this book is to buy it directly from Emma Tom
who’s still got a few copies of it up in her
attic. |
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Read Extract |
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