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by Boomert - A Nest of Occasionals by Tony Martin 12 Jan 2010
Tony Martin’s Lolly Scramble was free-flowing brilliance. The follow up, A Nest of Occasionals, is rewarding if you stick with it. Occasionals will appeal to fans of D-Generation or Martin/Molloy, as it prompts similar embarrassing fits of public laughter. But while the early stories are earnest and telling, funny is only their second language. With better editing, Occasionals could have been the subtly moving, amusingly told story of a guy whose life is more than a career. Or a book of hilarious true stories. For me, it’s a shame his editors didn’t lead Martin in one or the other direction. The stories are often hidden behind awkward sentence structure, oblique references that I did not get (or had to backtrack to understand), and a plethora of four-letter words which, out of place as they were, reminded me of a friend who at the age of 75 suddenly lost the ability to recognise socially appropriate language. Yes, weirdly elaborate sentences and unique word use are what makes Martin great. But apparently it’s a fine line. As Martin quips, ‘... the first rule of creative writing: save all your good words for the dirty bits.’ In the end, he got it the wrong way around.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (October 2009, Vol 89, No. 3) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Author Biography: Tony Martin
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