The democratisation of publishing is irreversible and as revolutionary as the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s. Six hundred years later, any one can publish, and any one can post reviews, all of which are available to be read instantly and simultaneously around the globe. What is one to do with such power? Discern.
Reading is personal. Hence, I'll declare my prejudices. The works of Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac are in the league of single ply toilet paper. As for 50 shades of Grey, you might as well wipe yourself with a newspaper. You get the drift. The good art of writing has been hijacked since WWII by charlatans, mirrored by a reading public with the attention span of a fruit fly.
More prejudice. I prefer the fertile prose of Fowles to the sterile one of Hemingway. Give me Nietzsche and Schopenhauer any day over the arid minimalist.
East is a self-published work, among the over 500,000 (and growing) self-published books every year. Self-published books now account for over 40% of e-book revenue.
The author, Peri Hoskins, is on record as a fan of Hemingway, Bukowski, and Kerouac. Fortunately, this fact did not influence my approach to the book. Nor was I overly concerned with the lack of plot, nor with the style of simple short sentences (which tends to stifle flow and have a stilted feel). I would have liked more integration, unification, and synthesis.
The value of East lies not so much in its subject matter as in the author's reflections. The journey has nothing to teach us, in the sense that it is essentially just another man in search of discovery in a particular place and time, a theme repeated throughout the millennia of human history.
However, the book is a powerful tool for those interested in deep qualitative psychology. The author is authentic as they come. And brave. He has effectively volunteered to lie on Freud's public couch. Vince's soul is there for all to see. His inner self is exposed with no spin. His idiosyncratic observations of the myriad of characters (family, long standing friends, acquaintances, and strangers) touching his life is refreshing and essentially a reflection on Vince's own character. It is here that Vince gives us more than he thinks (or intended).
East does not pretend to rise to the genius of Nicholas' journey in John Fowles' The Magus, or to have Fowles' beautiful, pregnant prose; nor does it pretend to possess Orwell's timeless treatment of topic (for example, as expressed in 1984 and Animal Farm). What East does is expose the naked spirit of a man in need of self-discovery.
I give the book 5 stars, although I'd like to impose a half star penalty. It's obvious that the journey takes place in Australia, and it's a journey West! Yet, the author reverses the direction to East. I found this artificial imposition irritating, being familiar with the Australian landscape. It serves no useful purpose and is counterproductive to those in the know. Others may beg to differ. But, that is the joy of reading.
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![East: A Novel (Vince Osbourne Series Book 1) by [Peri Hoskins]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fXKABYGML._SY346_.jpg)
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C. Pitsch
An adventurous journey out to the east of Australia and back
Reviewed in Germany on August 17, 2016
