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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In Gunk Baby, we join Leen just as she opens an ear-cleaning and massage salon at the Topic Heights Shopping Complex. Soon she starts to notice increasingly odd behaviour around her, and also it seems that managers of other stores are being killed off. In nonstop prose, Gunk Baby takes aim at orientalism and the Zen movement, violence, fashion, and middle-class boredom.'
Source: Publisher's catalogue.
Notes
-
Epigraph :
One who knows does not speak;
one who speaks does not know.
Block the openings;
Shut the doors.
Blunt the sharpness;
Untangle the knots;
Soften the glare;
Let your wheels move only along old ruts.
This is known as a mysterious sameness.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Book Two, LVI)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Megan Cheong Reviews Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 27 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel'After the deliquescent dream of Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby is a wake-up call from a silent number in the small hours of the morning. Leen lives in the fictional outer suburb of Par Mars, a typical sprawl of shopping centres, housing estates, and units fronted by flat open lawns. Yet just beneath all the grass and concrete runs an undertow of surveillance and violence that feels both strange and strangely familiar.' (Introduction)
-
Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau Review : A Dystopic Portrait of Post-industrial Alienation
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 23 April 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel -
Books Roundup: Car Crash, As Beautiful as Any Other, Flock, Gunk Baby
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , May 2021;
— Review of Car Crash : A Memoir 2021 single work autobiography ; As Beautiful As Any Other : A Memoir of My Body 2021 single work autobiography ; Flock : First Nations Stories Then and Now 2021 anthology prose ; Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel -
Jamie Marina Lau, Gunk Baby
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 1-7 May 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel'A “non-place”, as Marc Augé describes in his 1995 essay-turned-book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, is a venue whose uniformity of design makes it indistinguishable from another, regardless of where you are in the world. One can think of shopping centres, supermarkets and airports as non-places, although more recently we can also include cafes, Airbnbs and social media profiles. In Augé’s view, a non-place is a “supermodernism” that has emerged out of globalisation, resulting in “places of memory” that are unbroken chains. These places become so familiar they eventually become socially estranging.' (Introduction)
-
Jamie Marina Lau, Gunk Baby
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 1-7 May 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel'A “non-place”, as Marc Augé describes in his 1995 essay-turned-book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, is a venue whose uniformity of design makes it indistinguishable from another, regardless of where you are in the world. One can think of shopping centres, supermarkets and airports as non-places, although more recently we can also include cafes, Airbnbs and social media profiles. In Augé’s view, a non-place is a “supermodernism” that has emerged out of globalisation, resulting in “places of memory” that are unbroken chains. These places become so familiar they eventually become socially estranging.' (Introduction)
-
Books Roundup: Car Crash, As Beautiful as Any Other, Flock, Gunk Baby
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , May 2021;
— Review of Car Crash : A Memoir 2021 single work autobiography ; As Beautiful As Any Other : A Memoir of My Body 2021 single work autobiography ; Flock : First Nations Stories Then and Now 2021 anthology prose ; Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel -
Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau Review : A Dystopic Portrait of Post-industrial Alienation
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 23 April 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel -
Megan Cheong Reviews Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 27 2021;
— Review of Gunk Baby 2020 single work novel'After the deliquescent dream of Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby is a wake-up call from a silent number in the small hours of the morning. Leen lives in the fictional outer suburb of Par Mars, a typical sprawl of shopping centres, housing estates, and units fronted by flat open lawns. Yet just beneath all the grass and concrete runs an undertow of surveillance and violence that feels both strange and strangely familiar.' (Introduction)