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Running Dogs
Even the Jordan children - Petra, Isaak and Paul - can feel it coming, shaking the edges of their privileged, protected expat world.
Years later, Diana, an Australian development worker, moves to Jakarta and becomes entwined in the powerful Jordans' adult lives. As the monsoon descends, and the Jordans begin to fall apart, Diana sinks into the half-light of their past, where rumour and religion define the contours of the real, and the rules of the game change according to who is playing.
Set in a global city of poverty, beauty, corruption and extreme wealth, Running Dogs is a novel about power and responsibility; about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive, and the damage they can do.
Years later, Diana, an Australian development worker, moves to Jakarta and becomes entwined in the powerful Jordans' adult lives. As the monsoon descends, and the Jordans begin to fall apart, Diana sinks into the half-light of their past, where rumour and religion define the contours of the real, and the rules of the game change according to who is playing.
Set in a global city of poverty, beauty, corruption and extreme wealth, Running Dogs is a novel about power and responsibility; about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive, and the damage they can do.
- GenresFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 2012
29 people want to read
About the author
Ruby J. Murray
6 books13 followersI’m an Australian author, journalist, and word-slinger.
I'm currently based in California's Bay Area, where I'm the Head of Content and Communications at MICRO.
I've appeared regularly as a moderator and panelist at venues and events including The Wheeler Centre, the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Women of Letters, the Melbourne Free University, the Future Writer’s Festival, the World Matters Festival, and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia.
I'm currently based in California's Bay Area, where I'm the Head of Content and Communications at MICRO.
I've appeared regularly as a moderator and panelist at venues and events including The Wheeler Centre, the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Women of Letters, the Melbourne Free University, the Future Writer’s Festival, the World Matters Festival, and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 9, 2012
Despite Indonesia’s proximity and its intense, at times turbulent relationship with Australia, relatively few Australian novels are set there, with the notable exception of Christopher Koch’s 1978 award winning The Year of Living Dangerously [made into one of my all-time favourite movies by Peter Weir].
Is this because, as the Australian character in Ruby J Murray’s Running Dogs suggests, when it comes to Jakarta, let alone the whole country, ‘Looking to see the city for what it was, its actual scale, required too much from her’?
Murray, who has spent significant time in Indonesia, rises to the challenge, producing in Running Dogs a complex and engaging debut novel that brings Indonesia to life without trying to explain it.
The story moves between the end of President Suharto’s 31 year rule in 1997-98, and the present day. The 1990s story is told by the Jordan children, Petra and Isaak, whose Indonesian mother has died, leaving them with a wealthy, brutal American father, his damaged second wife, a younger half-brother Paul, and the nanny Mbak Nana.
The present day narrator is Diana, an Australian who accepts an aid posting to Jakarta in the hope of reconnecting with Petra, whom she’d befriended six years earlier in Melbourne. Reunited with Petra and introduced to her brothers, Diana becomes more than a spectator in the unravelling of a family whose obscene wealth and privilege may protect them from justice but not from revenge.
A violent denouement is prefigured in the opening—a body in a hotel room with a bullet in the head—but the narrative is neither linear nor predictable. We are plunged into streets teaming with anti-Suharto protestors, and shipped to luxurious private islands. We accompany Diana on a disastrous donor tour to an orphanage, and Petra to an equally cringe-worthy fancy dress party where her stepmother is complimented for the ‘nice gesture’ of dressing the children as Indonesians.
‘Jakarta beat me,’ Diana laments towards the end of Running Dogs. ‘Jakarta is much older than you are,’ her Indonesian friend counters. ‘Jakarta knows things we don’t know.’
Murray’s novel is a welcome opportunity to get to know Jakarta a little better.
Is this because, as the Australian character in Ruby J Murray’s Running Dogs suggests, when it comes to Jakarta, let alone the whole country, ‘Looking to see the city for what it was, its actual scale, required too much from her’?
Murray, who has spent significant time in Indonesia, rises to the challenge, producing in Running Dogs a complex and engaging debut novel that brings Indonesia to life without trying to explain it.
The story moves between the end of President Suharto’s 31 year rule in 1997-98, and the present day. The 1990s story is told by the Jordan children, Petra and Isaak, whose Indonesian mother has died, leaving them with a wealthy, brutal American father, his damaged second wife, a younger half-brother Paul, and the nanny Mbak Nana.
The present day narrator is Diana, an Australian who accepts an aid posting to Jakarta in the hope of reconnecting with Petra, whom she’d befriended six years earlier in Melbourne. Reunited with Petra and introduced to her brothers, Diana becomes more than a spectator in the unravelling of a family whose obscene wealth and privilege may protect them from justice but not from revenge.
A violent denouement is prefigured in the opening—a body in a hotel room with a bullet in the head—but the narrative is neither linear nor predictable. We are plunged into streets teaming with anti-Suharto protestors, and shipped to luxurious private islands. We accompany Diana on a disastrous donor tour to an orphanage, and Petra to an equally cringe-worthy fancy dress party where her stepmother is complimented for the ‘nice gesture’ of dressing the children as Indonesians.
‘Jakarta beat me,’ Diana laments towards the end of Running Dogs. ‘Jakarta is much older than you are,’ her Indonesian friend counters. ‘Jakarta knows things we don’t know.’
Murray’s novel is a welcome opportunity to get to know Jakarta a little better.
December 27, 2018
This book is almost 4 star but Ms Murray just doesn't quite pull it off. There are layers of complexity - corruption, domestic violence, mixed marriages - and layers of time but in the end, there isn't enough depth to some of the key characters.
March 6, 2017
A disturbing mystery set in Indonesia. The sound of the language used will stay with me for a while. Also includes real and horrible environmental implications.
March 12, 2017
A great cover but a largely forgettable book that tries - and doesn't quite succeed - in merging two stories. We have the Jordans, an ex-pat family living in Jakarta at the time of the overthrow of the Suharto government, and a contemporary story nearly 20 years later as Diana, a young Australian woman, takes a post with an International Disaster Response Coalition based in Jakarta. Diana had met Petra, one of the Jordans, some years earlier.
The Jordan mother, it seems, had been Indonesian and the kids had never really questioned their identity. They felt Indonesian but the Indonesian population did not think the same way - hence they fled during the troubled times. Now Petra had returned and Diana thought it would be nice to reconnect.
What follows is a choppy novel flitting backwards and forwards in time - much to the confusion of the reader. The characters are not easily distinguishable and never quite come alive - particularly Diana. There is a Cook's tour of corruption and compromise within the voluntary sector; some intrigue and murder but it never really gets suspenseful. All we learn is that aid workers are not always driven by altruism (we knew that) and that civil wars can cause people to redefine their national identity - of have it redefined for them.
Running Dogs has a lot of, er, running around. But these dogs seem to be chasing their tails.
The Jordan mother, it seems, had been Indonesian and the kids had never really questioned their identity. They felt Indonesian but the Indonesian population did not think the same way - hence they fled during the troubled times. Now Petra had returned and Diana thought it would be nice to reconnect.
What follows is a choppy novel flitting backwards and forwards in time - much to the confusion of the reader. The characters are not easily distinguishable and never quite come alive - particularly Diana. There is a Cook's tour of corruption and compromise within the voluntary sector; some intrigue and murder but it never really gets suspenseful. All we learn is that aid workers are not always driven by altruism (we knew that) and that civil wars can cause people to redefine their national identity - of have it redefined for them.
Running Dogs has a lot of, er, running around. But these dogs seem to be chasing their tails.
July 17, 2021
I'm not finishing it, mostly because of her way to put conversation blended with the narrative, without the universally-accepted rule quotation mark.
May 1, 2024
Interesting
January 20, 2016
It has to be synchronicity, doesn’t it? Our Prime Minister Julia Gillard addresses the Lowy Institute about the government’s White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century and how we all need to become more Asia literate – and I discover a terrific new novel set in Indonesia which offers an enjoyable way of learning more about our near neighbour. Ruby J Murray’s debut novel is called Running Dogs, and it’s set in the cataclysm of the 1997-8 democratic revolution and the subsequent Reformasi phase. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Christopher Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously, (also set in Indonesia) because there is a similar sense of momentous events taking place and impacting on individuals. Things seem to be out-of-control in a way that is completely unfamiliar to readers who live in a stable society like Australia. The title foreshadows that there are unprincipled protagonists and while it doesn’t take long to figure out who they might be, the interest in this novel lies in the way that the author has used her familiarity with Indonesian history and politics to weave an intricate domestic drama that kept me reading it well into the night …
Petra and Diana are childhood friends meeting up again in adult life, and the story is structured in two time periods, Reformasi in the present and the tumultuous lead-up to the revolution which toppled Suharto in 1997 when Petra was only 12. Diana, a misfit expat now working for an aid organisation, has come to Jakarta to Do Good Deeds but also to catch up with Petra, with whom she went to school in Melbourne. Now a leading socialite, the lovely Petra is obscenely wealthy thanks to her father’s business interests, which are still thriving in Indonesia’s democracy. As the Balinese Ketut puts it, Indonesia had a revolution in 1998 to change things, but people like the Jordans still own half Indonesia’s forests. The Tan Po conglomerate (for whom Jordan is a ‘running dog’) can even get laws changed so that they can acquire more land, only to sell it back to Indonesia. And the next generation is complicit: Petra is a translator and negotiator for her father, and her brother Isaak is an economist for one of their banks. (Yes, they own more than one, and four or five private islands too.) But Diana is blind to all of this; her fascination with Petra is equal only to her naïvete. Petra holds her in thrall…
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/10/30/ru...
Petra and Diana are childhood friends meeting up again in adult life, and the story is structured in two time periods, Reformasi in the present and the tumultuous lead-up to the revolution which toppled Suharto in 1997 when Petra was only 12. Diana, a misfit expat now working for an aid organisation, has come to Jakarta to Do Good Deeds but also to catch up with Petra, with whom she went to school in Melbourne. Now a leading socialite, the lovely Petra is obscenely wealthy thanks to her father’s business interests, which are still thriving in Indonesia’s democracy. As the Balinese Ketut puts it, Indonesia had a revolution in 1998 to change things, but people like the Jordans still own half Indonesia’s forests. The Tan Po conglomerate (for whom Jordan is a ‘running dog’) can even get laws changed so that they can acquire more land, only to sell it back to Indonesia. And the next generation is complicit: Petra is a translator and negotiator for her father, and her brother Isaak is an economist for one of their banks. (Yes, they own more than one, and four or five private islands too.) But Diana is blind to all of this; her fascination with Petra is equal only to her naïvete. Petra holds her in thrall…
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/10/30/ru...
July 23, 2012
This is a great debut novel for teenagers by Australian author Ruby J. Murray. Diana is a foreign aid worker in Jakarta, on her first posting. While there, she meets an old university friend, Petra, and becomes involved in her ife and in the lives of her two brothers, who are the children of rich American business man, Richard Jordan.
The story is told in alternating chapters set in the present day, with episodes from the Jordan children's past. Through these dual stories we learn that the rich sophistocation that characterizes the lives of the Jordan family in the present day story is only a vener hiding the brutality of Richard Jordan. The author builds up the sense of menace that surrounds the Jordan children to create a novel of intense suspense, as Petra and her brothers attempt to come to terms with their dysfunctional father. Athough the ending was perhaps a bit rushed, this is gripping novel, full of the atmosphere of Jakarta.
The story is told in alternating chapters set in the present day, with episodes from the Jordan children's past. Through these dual stories we learn that the rich sophistocation that characterizes the lives of the Jordan family in the present day story is only a vener hiding the brutality of Richard Jordan. The author builds up the sense of menace that surrounds the Jordan children to create a novel of intense suspense, as Petra and her brothers attempt to come to terms with their dysfunctional father. Athough the ending was perhaps a bit rushed, this is gripping novel, full of the atmosphere of Jakarta.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 4, 2012
Disappointing. The book switches between two perspectives, one from Diana, the Australian aid-worker in present-day Jakarta, and the other form the Jordan family in the late 1990s. Diana feels like nothing more than a plot device - she has very little character, almost no backgroud, and seems rather one-dimensional. The book would have worked better, perhaps, if it had been written purely from the Jordans' point of view - Diana adds nothing to the book nor its story.
The book is also filled with too many phrases in Indonesian. Although I am an Indonesian-speaker and can understand everything that is written, the phrases Ruby Murray uses in Indonesian do not add to the story - phrases such as 'hati-hati', which are easily translatable and will only alienate non-Indonesian speakers who read Murray's book.
The book is also filled with too many phrases in Indonesian. Although I am an Indonesian-speaker and can understand everything that is written, the phrases Ruby Murray uses in Indonesian do not add to the story - phrases such as 'hati-hati', which are easily translatable and will only alienate non-Indonesian speakers who read Murray's book.
December 22, 2012
Interesting concept, touching on the inscrutable nature of Indonesian politics. The style teased the reader with intimations of conspiracies. In the end, I would have liked a good Graham Greene style dialogue about the relation between Australia and Indonesia at some point. But I certainly look forward to her second novel.
September 11, 2012
Grace interviewed Melbourne author Ruby J Murray about her debut novel Running Dogs, politics and rebellion in Indonesia, expat life, fairy tales and mythology. Originally broadcast on 23/08/2012.
August 14, 2012
Three and a half stars.
An impressive debut. An intriguing glimpse into the lives of the wealthy expat community in Indonesia, interwoven with local mythology and politics.
An impressive debut. An intriguing glimpse into the lives of the wealthy expat community in Indonesia, interwoven with local mythology and politics.
May 12, 2012
Tense and compelling, a page-turner.
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December 7, 2018An english novel about Jakarta? I'm in...there are too few english writers in this area. However even with the occasional drops of Bahasa this book ended up in the recycle bin.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews