Almost a Mirror

by Kirsten Krauth

Shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize Like fireflies to the light, Mona, Benny and Jimmy are drawn into the elegantly wasted orbit of the Crystal Ballroom and the post-punk scene of 80s Melbourne, a world that includes Nick Cave and Dodge, a photographer pushing his art to the edge. With precision and richness Kirsten Krauth hauntingly evokes the power of music to infuse our lives, while diving deep into loss, beauty, innocence and agency. Filled with unforgettable characters, the novel is above all about the shapes that love can take and the many ways we express tenderness throughout a lifetime. As it moves between the Blue Mountains and Melbourne, Sydney and Castlemaine, Almost a Mirror reflects on the healing power of creativity and the everyday sacredness of family and friendship in the face of unexpected tragedy.

Genres: Fiction, Music, Australia

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2020

About the author

ALMOST A MIRROR, my new novel, is out now.

https://www.readings.com.au/products/...

Penguin Literary Prize 2019 shortlist

What we make of memories and what they make of us.

Like fireflies to the light, Mona, Benny and Jimmy are drawn into the elegantly wasted orbit of the Crystal Ballroom and the post-punk scene of 80s Melbourne, a world that includes Nick Cave and Dodge, a photographer pushing his art to the edge.

With precision and richness Kirsten Krauth hauntingly evokes the power of music to infuse our lives, while diving deep into loss, beauty, innocence and agency. Filled with unforgettable characters, the novel is above all about the shapes that love can take and the many ways we express tenderness throughout a lifetime.

As it moves between the Blue Mountains and Melbourne, Sydney and Castlemaine, Almost a Mirror reflects on the healing power of creativity and the everyday sacredness of family and friendship in the face of unexpected tragedy.

‘Kirsten Krauth is a damn fine writer of amazing insight and empathy. I don’t believe there’s any character she couldn’t get me to empathise with, any story she couldn’t make me care deeply about.’
EMILY MAGUIRE

‘Imagine a perfect pop song covered by a hard-core punk band – Almost a Mirror will get stuck in your head in just the same way. A fierce, elegiac dissection of nostalgia, longing and loss, the novel fearlessly explores the true Janus face of art: creation and destruction, rebirth and ecstatic annihilation, trauma and remaking. The poised restraint of Kirsten Krauth’s prose makes everything else out there seem overwritten.’
KIRSTEN TRANTER

My first novel just_a_girl was published in June 2013 to wonderful critical and popular response.

Reviews

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Almost a Mirror is unique and has a few quirky printing adornments - for lack of a better word - that I appreciated.

The novel is centred around a few people, who were into the Melbourne 80s music scene. The Crystal Ballroom is a character of sorts as well.

This creative novel is written in a vignette style, which I enjoyed, for the most part. There was a bit too much jumping back and forth and between POVs, I couldn't quite see the logic to the way the chapters were put together - it's as if Krauth had written some chapters, put them into a hat and then pulled them out to assemble the novel.

Despite its imperfections, this novel showcased the author's talent, so I'll be keen to read whatever she writes next.

NB: I enjoyed listening to the Spotify playlist. Each chapter is named after a song from the 80s.

[Adrian Deans · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things that most annoys me about reviews is the reviewer complaining about what the book was not, or what the author got wrong. Does it never occur to such reviewers that the author, just maybe, knew exactly what s/he was doing, and didn’t want to do the obvious thing…the predictable thing…the comfortable rehash of trope and theme. Maybe the author wanted to do something else?

This is the second of Kirsten Krauth’s books and neither are predictable. They do share certain qualities, however, in that they are both beautifully written, strongly evocative of time and place, challenge bourgeois mores and require more than usual attention and engagement to plumb their deeper textures. Deeper engagement = deeper immersion.

I loved the premise for Almost a Mirror – even though my own post-punk experience was spent in Sydney. I read the blurb and knew immediately this would be a book for me despite the different locales. It absolutely reeked of reminiscence – beer, sweat, smoke, rot and rising damp.

Reading some other reviews, I perceived some dissatisfaction with the non-linear story and some other elements which, if included, would have rendered the book more immediately gratifying, but also more ordinary.

As I suggested at the start, the author must be trusted to know what s/he’s doing and her art must be allowed to mirror her own intentions – not the expectations of readers more accustomed to escapist rides.

Kirsten Krauth is different.

4.5 stars.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In brief ★★★★½

Almost A Mirror is a deeply moving, thoughtful reflection on music, bodies, sexuality and loss, told partly against the backdrop of 1980s Melbourne. Krauth uses perfectly crafted vignettes, full of sensuality, to move the reader through the haze of the past and into the late 2010s. It's a striking window into entangled lives and forms a story that will stay with me. Readers should note triggers for suicide, drug use, abortion and ambiguity around child sexual abuse.

Mona, Jimmy and, separately, Benat, grow up around Melbourne's Crystal Ballroom, a grungy live music venue in the 80s that played host to the likes of Nick Cave. We move around in time as we come to understand their relationships, and the joys and tragedies they confront over the years. I don't want to say too much, as the non-linear unfurling plot is one of this novel's delights, best discovered by reading. What I will say is that the structure plays with experimental forms, but never too much, and I adored that creativity and the way it interplays with events.

Written as part of Krauth's PhD, Almost A Mirror also plays with the idea of memory; the slippery nature of it, the sharpness it can have, and the ache of it. There is nostalgia, but nothing in this tale is saccharine. Krauth also explores various artforms, particularly music, but also photography - both of which tie closely to memory. The chapter titles are song names, and these culminate into a moving collection to form the soundtrack of Mona's life.

Mona is a wonderful character, made real through such physical details and sensuous descriptions. She forms the axis of the novel, and explorations of motherhood also pivot around her, shaping the story.

I take my hat off to Krauth for her creativity and sensitivity in crafting this tale - the perfect combination of melancholy, short chapters and the ability to transport that I am seeking in literature right now.

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like taking too many drugs and passing out on the piss-soaked floor of a dingy punk club, watching the light refracting through the broken shards of an old, overhanging chandelier. Which, in case you're wondering, is a beautiful thing.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written and thought provoking book about memories and loss and ultimately how lives change. A mixed tape of music left to Mona by Jimmy after he dies is the prompt to each chapter and the subsequent memories of growing up in the punk era in Melbourne in the 80's. I enjoyed listening to the music while reading and found it easy to immerse myself in memories of Melbourne in that era.

[Miss Nessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this today in the mail and finished it this evening...

As a Melbourne girl - growing up in the 90s and being a huge music fan, this resonated for me on a number of levels.
The book itself is about the 80s Melbourne music scene but the history, stories, "characters" was still big in the 90s.
It brought back memories... of clubbing, gigs, friendship, growing up, first love, bands, mixtapes, dreams, dressing up and for those of us who were huge music fans - just how music shaped your everyday and permeates your memories!
I love how the chapters are named for songs - very chuffed to note that Kirsten has create a listening list; that will enhance the pleasure of reading the book.

Occasionally I felt disconnected from the story due to the structure of the narrative - I felt I missed things. That it dipped in and out of time quickly and I would lose my sense of where I was and who the characters were and in what time they were in.
However, the structure felt like a person "remembering" - that memories, feelings, flashbacks happen haphazardly and not necessarily in order.
I think once you get into the groove of the storytelling, get to know the characters more and know that time will jump, that you adjust.

The book itself has evoked this strong sense of wanting to go back and explore. To listen to the music, watch old clips, look through the photo album, look at memorabilia, tap into your memories, stories and even get you chatting, sharing and swapping stories with old friends.
That is a powerful, visceral response.

Unfortunately releasing a book during this pandemic is not easy but I wonder if this unexpected time may be the perfect time?
You have the luxury of being able to take the book further - to indulge your memories (wherever you grew up a lot of music is of that time)
You have more time to reflect, remember and relive... that having access to technology - gives you the chance to listen to music, create your own Spotify lists, movies, watch old clips, reminisce...
Nick Cave and the Birthday Party feature strongly in the story and recently Nick and the band had a 24 hour live streaming on their youtube channel Bad Seeds teevee...
On Facebook, a group has exploded - Sound As Ever (Australian Indie 90-99) - the posts have been fast and furious, a rich trove of memorabilia, memories, stories.
Kirsten has unexpectedly tapped into a feeling, a time, a greater Community sense of wanting to connect with one another, share our stories and preserve our history.
Music is one very powerful way for us to do this.

Of course it is more than just about music - it is about people, Motherhood, love, loss, Family - but I guess for myself, my immediate and visceral reaction has been the music.

After I put the book down, I rifled through my drawer, found my mixed tapes and have already contacted a friend who compiled one just for me... the tape featuring the very era written about in this book...

It feels perfect that it is named after a Rowland S. Howard lyric... a Birthday Party song that is iconic, beautiful, haunting, melodic and evocative.
This book will sit with me for a while to come... I love it when a book or story floats around me connecting me to other parts of my life and the greater world - and prompts a longing to know more and set me off on a learning adventure.

[inta]

I couldn’t finish this book

[Maggins McMurray · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful to read it finally in book form. Outstanding.

[Mel Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes sense to learn that this book began as a PhD project, because it's very conceptual in approach: a series of fragments that experiment with form (some more successfully than others) and play with chronology. The overall approach is of trying to capture in prose a musical experience – the kind of analog emotions experienced intensely when listening to favourite songs, and then fixed for posterity by a mixtape playlist.

Each chapter represents a moment in time and a song, and the fragments are told from several different perspectives. I'd been expecting it to be much more closely focused on the Seaview Hotel/Crystal Ballroom post-punk scene in St Kilda; but it's really more about how the echoes of that scene were felt by people just slightly too young to have been its full participants.

The earliest segments are narrated by Benny, a wide-eyed teen suburbanite whose older brother Guy is living in junkie squalor in the hotel. Benny is fascinated by the performativity of the Crystal Ballroom scene and the charisma of Nick Cave and Rowland S Howard. He starts a band and yearns to be famous; but his barely remembered flare of (fictional) '80s new-wave pop success is ultimately less satisfying than his later career as an instrument maker.

But most of the book is dedicated to the extremely Gen-X love affair between Moira, the permissively parented daughter of bolshy lesbian Kaz, and Jimmy, the lost son of a mentally ill mother whom Kaz takes under her wing. Both Moira and Jimmy fall into the orbit of Dodge, an art photographer with a case of the Bill Hensons. They go to gigs, take drugs, have sex. Moira has an abortion. Later, they travel to Europe, settle in Sydney, and Moira becomes pregnant again; but Jimmy can't settle down.

To be honest, I couldn't really get on board with their love-for-the-ages because Jimmy reminded me so much of the various hapless musos my friends have dated over the years – perpetually boyish, bewildered drummers and bassists and DJs and so on. You don't marry those kinds of men. You don't have kids with them. You have your debaucherous youth with them and experiment with your own identity, and then you grow up and leave them to their bumbling with younger women who'll still tolerate their nonsense.

Jimmy seems doomed, predestined to flame out early – but how much is that a narrative he's carefully constructed like a mixtape, based on subcultural fatalism? When a grief-stricken and very pregnant Moira returns home to her mother in Castlemaine, memories of her shared youth with Jimmy are everywhere… but she finds a new sense of comfort and purpose with Benny (who now prefers his Basque birth name Beñat) and in parenting her son Rowland.

The long cultural afterlife of the Ballroom scene looms over them all, like the chandelier on the cover, which gave the venue its name. Krauth depicts the Ballroom as a grotesque place of decay and dilapidation: a kind of Dante's Inferno where you could witness a groupie's onstage strangulation or a bikie funeral, where a Birthday Party videoclip shoot descends into an orgy at a toxic-waste dump, and where needles and syringes are hospitably rinsed in toilet bowls for the next person to use. It doesn't feel like a cradle for music and style as much as a grave.

So, what I liked here is the acknowledgment that even the most mainstream pop, of the kind consumed by sensation-seeking teenagers like Moira, also sprang from this scene. There's an early scene of Flinders Street Station photobooth oral sex between Moira and a member of her favourite band, and a late scene where Moira visits some outer-suburban beer barn where Beñat is playing his old hits alongside a weary roster of former pop idols who are still lust objects for women now in their forties. For everyone here, the real lust is for their own youths, which they hope to recapture through the music.

Loss reverberates through this book – Moira's grief for Jimmy, and adults' grief for the times and places that felt special and formative but that exist now only in memory. Moira starts an art project using Polaroid photos, and there's an almost fetishistic focus throughout the book on analog material history: the care of making, keeping or even destroying talismanic objects. In the final scene, Moira teaches her digital-native son how to use a tape player, and there's so much unspoken. I really liked this ending.

The prose has that same energy of intense analog crafting and selection, and again I wonder if this is what happens when you write a novel as a PhD project – the iterative researching and experimenting and polishing, and the search for pellucid images and phrases, shiny as the crystals in a ballroom chandelier. The writing here is beautiful, and I can appreciate this book as a work of craft. But I'm a little too young for it to really get me in the feels, as lived experience.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost a Mirror (Transit Lounge Publishing 2020) by Kirsten Krauth is a highly literary celebration of the eighties and its music, while exploring loss, grief, drugs, memories, art and finding your place in the world. This book was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and it’s easy to see why. The language is deeply evocative. Every sentence and each paragraph is a vignette of seemingly simple words strung together into a complex image so that somehow the sum is more than the parts. Krauth doles out a few well-chosen words and phrases that depict a powerful picture, and she does this again and again.
Mirrors feature throughout the novel and their meanings range from memories to reflection, from seeing what is really there to vanishing, from absorbing light to truth-telling, from revealing life’s ugliness to refracting its beauty.
This is a story about sex and death, about drugs and love. But most of all, it is about music. The songs of the eighties head each chapter and are diffused through every paragraph. References to eighties bands abound. There is an Almost a Mirror Spotify soundtrack that you can listen to while reading the book. Krauth also uses some interesting literary devices (text written almost in poetic form; the structure including the occasional visual element).
There are a couple of scenes in the book related to birthing – abortion, the birth process – and also to parenting – the challenges of motherhood, the early days of post-birth fog and the feeling of being unmoored – that are depicted in excruciatingly familiar detail.
For anyone who lived through the eighties, especially if that was when you spent your adolescence or your young adult years, this novel will be a siren call pulling you back to that heady time. And music, photography and pop culture aficionados will be drawn to this story like moths to a flame.
This novel will not be for everyone: while there is a through narrative, it is disjointed and chaotic, with each chapter occurring in a different year. This jumping back and forth in time and characters sometimes makes it difficult to keep track of where and when we are in the story. But while it won’t be for everyone, for some readers it will be absolutely EVERYTHING. Its rich and evocative literary language and its devotion to music will, I suspect, gain an almost cult-like audience. And its message about innocence, and the loss of innocence as we grow older, will resonate.

[Saige · Rating 5 out of 5]

I toyed around with five stars and thought four? No. Because this does deserve a five from me. Why? Because Krauth is an author to watch. She is an author with a voice. She is an author to read. Her prose finds sharp sad beauty in minutely observed detail and a love of people.
Krauth is a Dickens of our age and she is writing books that deserve to stand in the future, as classics. As someone not from Melbourne, not even Australian, I found myself drawn into Krath's world of rebellious characters. I am with these people, I join the parties, hear the music, and take a stranger home.
Krauth's almost memoir is peopled with people whose courage lies in being brilliant in their own way, and whose brilliance led them far from mediocre lives. The picture isn't always pretty, it lives on the edge of danger, but there is a history here, and Krauth dances us through it in style. Rock and Roll "perfume for the soul". The book is accompanied by a podcast. I recommend both.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in two days. It’s not an an ‘easy read’, and that is partly why I loved it. It irks me to see other reviewers complaining that the story is non-linear and quotation marks aren’t used. Heaven forbid we should have to re-read a paragraph, or even go back and read a previous chapter to see if there is a connection to what we have just read. That is what makes this book special. There has been so much thought put into how the chapters tie together, so much so that there is a playlist to go with the chapters! (You can find reference to that at the very end of the book - I would recommend reading that first). I loved it.

[Steve Coates · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful novel that captures the joy of coming of age in a world shaped by music, and the bittersweet perils of nostalgia. In spare, clear-eyed prose this novel explores art, love, sexuality, loss and parenthood in a series of vignettes that play with a variety of forms. Structured as a mixtape - each chapter a different song - the book is alive with the music of 1980s Melbourne, both post-punk (a great section brings alive the chaos of filming the Birthday Party's iconic Nick The Stripper music video) and pop. For maximum immersion read it with the playlist.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times a bit literary for me. And the jumping between times did get a bit confusing. But overall, a really good read. Loved all the description of bands from the 80s and 90s. Great chapter on the filming of The Birthday Party's Nick the Stripper video - or film clip as we called it in those days. Brought back some great memories of the Prince of Wales, the Espy and other venues I haunted back in the day. Downloaded the Spotify playlist and have been enjoying the songs from the chapter titles too.

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel is set against the backdrop of the Australian music scene of the eighties. Throughout, music is the catalyst connecting people, but it is also what permeates memories and holds emotions, a way to recapture the past. Analogue photography also features in two veins, as a means to hold onto moments in time, and in a much more sinister guise. Told in a non-linear fashion, jumping back and forth in time, the story is about adolescence, coming of age, relationships, loss and grief and how these shape lives.

[Susanne (Pages of Crime) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so wanted to love this book, the era and the music are so familiar for me, but unfortunately it didn't quite meet my expectations. Written in a very choppy vignette style I found it to be a little disjointed at times. The choice to not use quotation marks for the dialogue didn't sit well with me either. Overall it was disappointing but I can see that many people would love this journey down a specific era of Australian music.

[Lucrezia Amnesia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m conflicted because I absolutely love that era of music and the crystal ballroom scene, however the book was very hard to follow for the most part. I found myself re-reading parts multiple times in order to make sense of things, and I struggled to emotionally connect with the characters. I think the absence of quotation marks for dialogue added to this. That aside, the book was very beautiful in parts, and you can tell a lot of research went into the historical accuracy of it.

[Thunderhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this novel was made for me. Title taken from The Boys Next Door song? Check. Set in 1980s Australia? Check. Partially set at the Crystal Ballroom in Melbourne? Check. Chapters named after each song on a mixtape? Check. I adored this exploration of coming of age in the 1980s music scene, and how what happens at that age can go on to impact the rest of your life.

[Tania Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirsten Krauth is a beautiful prose stylist and ALMOST A MIRROR is a very fine book, about memory, reflections (literal and metaphorical), loss, love, family and music. It came out at the start of Melbourne lockdown, so make sure you haven’t missed it — especially if you were a fan of Australian music in the 80s. Don’t read ahead, but such a great last line …

[Stella · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at page 69.

A shame really, the subject matter is great but I dislike the way it is written. I cannot bring myself to keep reading, the tone and the stylization is truly a nightmare to me. Maybe I'll pick it up again some day but for now it will remain in my bookshelf to look pretty and do nothing else.

2 stars for the benefit of the doubt, i guess.

[zoë ౨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow I felt equally disconnected and connected to the characters in this novel. Loved the way the author has entwined real music and real locations to the overall story - I guess this is what helped me connect with the characters.

[Lisa]

It's not the book, it's me. I'm the wrong era for this one...

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, moody book which will linger with me. As a bonus, there's an accompanying playlist on spotify.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit hard to get the hang of at the start, but thought provoking and enjoyable by the end.

[Roxanne Millar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely read. I love the way Australian authors write. The language gives me the feels.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were so many interesting things in this book but I found it too fragmented and abstract to really get a grip on it.

[Colette Godfrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4&1/2 stars - loved the premise, format and themes. High nostalgic value for me.

[Leonie Recz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conflicted. I found it hard to follow, the constant time changes, narrator changes, mood optics. Still I wanted to understand more so had to keep reading.

[lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

The intimacies of a place, it’s sound and it’s people.