Patrick Radden Keefe is one of my automatic-buy authors, so you better believe that when I saw an advance audio copy of his new book, London Falling, available via Libro.fm, I nearly broke a finger in my rush to click “download”.
The story begins in 2019, with 19-year-old Zac Brettler jumping to his death from the balcony of a luxury London apartment. It seems like a simple – if sad – story, but in Patrick Radden Keefe’s telling, it is an epic tale of power, greed, and family.
The London he describes is “the capital of pristine facades”, and the reader is whisked into a world of wealth and privilege built on deceit and exploitation. It’s a world that Zac was desperate to inhabit, unbeknownst to his comfortably-middle-class family. After Zac’s death, his mother and father try to put the pieces together, and discover just how far Zac was willing to go for a taste of the glamorous London life he saw on Instagram.
London Falling is masterfully written, and perfectly paced despite its massive scope and complex web of connections. Through Zac’s story, Patrick Radden Keefe examines the seismic shifts that shape our lives (from Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies, to ethnic cleansing in Uganda, to COVID-19, to the Holocaust), and yet he never abandons the small details that make a story tangible (did you know that, on average, 30 bodies are retrieved from the Thames each year?).
I’ll grant that it’s occasionally tricky to keep track of who is who and what they’re doing in the audio format, but I attribute that more to my being so gripped I kept increasing the playback speed (and refusing to rewind) than any failing on the part of the author. London Falling is an incredible book, a true triumph of reporting and narrative non-fiction, with shades of My Friend Anna, Underbelly, and We Keep The Dead Close. Patrick Radden Keefe is truly going from strength to strength, and I’m already ready to call London Falling one of the best books of the year – if not the decade.
I’m one of the (increasingly) few who still use Twitter – and one of the even fewer who continue to call it that. I know I should delete my account, but I can’t quite bring myself to press the button; it’s like being on the deck of the Titanic with all of my friends as the ship goes down. So, I found myself compelled to pick up this book about the iceberg – Character Limit.
Get Character Limit here (and there’s no limit to the support you can show this site, simply use one of these affiliate links to make a purchase)
Character Limit, published in 2024, tells the story of how Elon Musk “gambled his reputation and billions of dollars on the haphazard acquisition of his favourite toy” (page 5). Naturally, the authors have chosen a Tweet for its epigraph:
The book’s timeline covers all of the key points in Twitter’s history, up until the time of publication – from the platform’s inception, to #GamerGate, to QAnon, to Donald Trump’s suspension and (with Musk now at the helm) reinstatement. And, I don’t mind telling you, it’s every bit as gripping as the most masterfully written high-stakes political thriller.
The access that Conger and Mac have managed to secure to write Character Limit is truly gobsmacking. They mention in the Authors’ Note that many sources spoke to them on the condition of strict anonymity, fearing retribution from Musk for their frankness. By the time you turn the final page, you’ll have no doubt that the anonymous sources’ concerns were completely justified. As well as interviews with insiders, Conger and Mac have used court documents, email trails, and other primary sources to piece together an extremely detailed account of how exactly Musk turned gold to shit.
Prior to reading Character Limit, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Musk must have some inner depths, some reserve of intelligence or insight that we’re simply not privy to as the 99%. After all, he’s pretty much the archetype of the “evil genius” in the public consciousness. This book proves, however, that the Emperor wears no clothes. Musk isn’t smart enough to be evil. His evil is simply a byproduct of his incompetence. He’s a narcissistic middle-aged white man with oodles of unearned wealth and privilege who, on his very best day, sometimes manages to fail up. His only skill (and it’s not one that he’s honed at all well) is finding the right coat-tails to ride upon.
That said, Conger and Mac resist the easy narrative. It really would have been much simpler – not to mention much splashier and clickbait-y – to write the story of Twitter’s destruction as though founder/sometimes-CEO Jack Dorsey was a pure-hearted Robin Hood figure who created a corporate utopia in Silicon Valley, until Evil Elon came along and ruined it all while stroking a white cat in a swivel chair. That’s not the real story, though, and it’s not the one that Conger and Mac tell in Character Limit. Dorsey is, in reality, a much more complex figure, and there were cracks in the foundation of Twitter long before Elon came along with his jackhammer.
What’s more, there are moments in Character Limit – they’re brief, but they’re there – where Musk seems almost pitiable. His pathetic, gnawing need for validation from strangers on the internet clearly eats him alive, and leads to catastrophic decision-making.
Still, those brief windows into Elon Musk’s pathos aren’t enough to taint the delicious taste of schadenfreude as you watch his delusions come crashing down. By the end of Character Limit, he has transformed a $44 billion company into an $11 billion company, alienated just about everyone who has ever worked for or around him, and sunk even deeper into a hell of his own making. It is truly, truly well deserved.
As Zack Ruskin said for The Washington Post, Character Limit is a “telling lesson in the cost of getting everything you want”.
Needless to say, I loved this book. I loved it. I can’t stop talking about it, or thinking about it, or recommending that friends and family read it (even the ones who aren’t on Twitter and think I’m nuts). Even if you have no interest in social media or don’t normally reach for non-fiction books, this one is a must-read.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the deaths of Jai, Tyler, and Bailey Farquharson. The three young boys died after their father drove them into a dam on Father’s Day 2005, and swam away, leaving the brothers to drown. Helen Garner was in her 60s at the time, living in Victoria, and she found herself riveted by the crime – as were most Australians. I distinctly remember watching the news coverage with rapt attention myself, in my high-school dorm room. Garner attended every day of the trial (and subsequent retrial) of Farquharson, with the express intent of writing about how the tragic story concludes.
Get This House Of Grief here (This is an affiliate link, so when you make a purchase, I’ll get a small commission for referring you.)
That’s how she ultimately wrote This House Of Grief, an account of the trials of Robert Farquharson. You’ll find it shelved in the true crime section of your local independent bookstore, but it’s important to know at the outset that this isn’t a story about the crime itself – it’s a day-by-day depiction of what happened as Farquharson was tried and sentenced.
Garner doesn’t pretend to be an expert, or an objective witness to what goes on in the courtroom. She makes room for gut feelings about Farquharson’s guilt, instincts about the way a father “should” behave, and uncertainty about what conclusions can be drawn from the evidence – all of the things that Proper Journalism forbids. Just as important as what the lawyers and judges say and do are Garner’s subjective impressions of what unfolds, her conversations with other attendees in the gallery, and her ruminations over what she sees and hears.
Since when has loving someone meant that you would never want to kill them?
This House Of Grief (Page 4)
It goes without saying that Garner’s prose is gorgeous, stunning, breathtaking. She is one of Australia’s most beloved writers for a reason. She describes a lake as an “elongated teardrop”, a distressed witness as a “brokenhearted boofhead”. She is penetrating, without ever overstating the point. She knows just how much detail to share, to put the reader there with her in the courtroom, without ever overwhelming us with detail or overanalysing its significance.
I normally finish a true crime book – especially one where the perpetrator is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison – feeling energised, with a sense of righteous anger. This House Of Grief left me with an entirely different feeling, one closer to melancholy. Naturally, this feeling is best summed up by Garner herself, in her Epilogue.
If there is any doubt that Robert Farquharson drove into the dam on purpose, it is a doubt no more substantial than a cigarette paper shivering in the wind, no more reasonable than the unanswered prayer that shot through my mind when I first saw the photo of the car being dragged from the black water.
I was lucky enough to pick up Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby’s latest collection of essays, during a week where I desperately needed a laugh. I knew Irby was good for it, having read Wow, No Thank You. I dove in, looking forward to laugh-crying instead of the other kind.
Get Quietly Hostile here. (And I’ll be not-so-quietly grateful if you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one to support this page.)
Irby is all about diffusing the shame of what you like and who you are in the dark when you think no one can see you. In the very first essay in Quietly Hostile, she advises readers to respond to derision with a simple “I like it!”. Not only does it help you affirm your sense of self, it silences (and usually embarrasses) the person who’s trying to shame you for your tastes – each equally important, of course.
Irby – for all her self-deprecation – certainly isn’t shy about telling us what she likes. She happily dedicates a whole essay in Quietly Hostile to her appreciation for the musical works of the terminally-uncool Dave Matthews. In another, she gives the reader a frame-by-frame description of her favourite pornographic film. She waxes rhapsodic about well-stocked bathrooms, high-speed internet, elastic-waist pants, the home shopping network, and getting stoned while watching videos about whales.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine that anything is off-limits to Irby. She tells us things I’d imagine most of us would want to hide from our therapists.
Irby even addresses her role in writing the much-maligned Sex And The City sequel series, And Just Like That. She doesn’t so much give us a behind-the-scenes scoop on the writers room as she does the insane death threats she received as a result of her work on it (the internet is a terrible place). Then, she gives a detailed explanation of how she would “ruin” each episode of the original series if she had written it herself. Yes, you probably need to have re-watched Sex And The City at least a handful of times to truly appreciate this chapter of Quietly Hostile – but I have, and I did.
Above all, my favourite of all the essays in this collection is What If I Died Like Elvis, in which Irby is rushed to hospital in the midst of an anaphylactic allergic reaction. It had me howling with laughter. I went back and re-read it immediately, and quoted all my favourite bits for loved ones. It was just so intensely relatable, I felt like Irby and I might actually be the same person. It turns out we share the impulse to make a joke in any uncomfortable situation, which leads doctors to say things like: “Samantha, you are funny, but you are also in anaphylactic shock. I am trying to clear your airway, please stop joking and tilt your head back,” (page 206).
All in all, Quietly Hostile was exactly what I hoped and needed from Irby. I’d recommend it even to the uninitiated, as it’s a great sample plate of everything that makes her work wonderful fun to read.
Larrimah is a true crime book that is also a love letter to a (very) small town of eccentrics. The titular town is located 500km (310 miles) south of Darwin (for non-Australians, trust me when I tell you that’s the middle of absolutely nowhere), fewer than a dozen people live there (and half of them are banned for life from the local pub), and it’s the scene of one of the strangest and most captivating crimes in recent history.
Get Larrimah here. (If I’m ever lost in the outback, your use of an affiliate link to make a purchase will be of great comfort, I swear.)
To Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson’s credit, they’re very self-aware about their role as privileged outsiders, coming into a remote community that’s rightfully suspicious and skeptical of interlopers who ask too many questions. That’s refreshing to see in a true crime book. Still, it’s easy to see why they just couldn’t stay away from this story. It actually started as a podcast – Lost In Larrimah – for which the journalists won a Walkley Award.
Here’s the rundown: in December 2017, Larrimah resident Paddy Moriarty and his dog, Kellie, left the local pub and drove 800m home on a quad bike. That’s the last time either of them were seen, alive or otherwise. Everyone presumes that Paddy made it home, because his keys, wallet, and hat were found in his quarters, but he and his dog vanished from there without a trace.
It took a few days for anyone to raise the alarm. Paddy and Kellie could’ve been visiting friends, or simply avoiding everyone in Larrimah for reasons best known to themselves. But when no one could account for their whereabouts, near or far, and with summer temperatures surpassing scorching throughout the Territory, Paddy’s neighbours reported him as missing to the closest police station, 70km (43 miles) away.
Graham and Stevenson provide excellent context for the reader to understand what’s so interesting about this disappearance. A team of just three cops police an area the size of Switzerland – except, instead of skiing retreats and chocolate in the middle of Europe, it’s an empty arid desert with blistering temperatures most of the year and filled with the most terrifying wildlife you can imagine. Larrimah locals are close, despite the fact that most of them hate each other. When you live in a region so remote and so dangerous, you’ll inevitably form a kind of community with the only other living souls nearby. For Paddy and Kellie to simply disappear, with no one nearby hearing or seeing a thing, and for no trace of them to be found in the surrounding area… it’s just baffling.
It’s not like no one looked. There were extensive land and air searches for Paddy and Kellie around Larrimah, probably one of the biggest searches the Territory has ever seen, and a $250,000 reward was offered for information as to their whereabouts. After all of the more likely/benign reasons for their disappearance were ruled out (could Paddy have taken Kellie for a walk and had a medical episode? could they have become lost? could they have been attacked by animals? it would appear not), police narrowed their investigation to nefariousness. In 2022, a coroner’s inquest found that Moriarty and his dog were likely killed in December 2017, possibly “in the context of and likely due to an ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbours”, but a cause of death and location of remains could not be determined.
So, someone in Larrimah killed Paddy and Kellie. Who, or why, or how, or where, all remains a mystery.
Graham and Stevenson – and now, their readers – are pulled into the small town politics of Larrimah, the (long, long) history of bad blood between its residents, and the question of what really happened to a man and his dog. It’s surprisingly gripping, despite the lack of concrete evidence and the healthy skepticism with which any normal person would approach a story that includes a blind crocodile named Ray Charles and a witness named Cookie who refuses to put on pants. I’ll tell you now, there’s no satisfying resolution, Graham and Stevenson don’t find Paddy or Kellie and no one confesses to their whereabouts – but Larrimah is still a fascinating read.
COVID lockdowns and border closures interrupted their investigation, and they address this very matter-of-factly (on air and in writing), explaining to the reader how they “made do” – despite the fact that many of the people they needed to speak to live in areas with no mobile reception and are usually reached by calling the local pub on a landline. When they do make it back to Larrimah, and have the opportunity to explore the Territory in person to look for clues you just can’t find on a Zoom call, they uncover more questions than answers.
Larrimah might not delight the true crime purists who need to see a bad guy locked up for life, but it will enthrall anyone with an interest in the outback, tall tales, and/or the search for answers.
