One language among many

About the author

Lia Hills

Lia Hills is an award-winning poet, novelist and translator, born and raised in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is the author of the novels The...

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Non-fictionDiē was the best driver I knew. ‘When you drive, you stare at everything but see nothing. You’re inexperienced,’ he lectured. ‘When I drive, I stare at nothing – I can chat, I can sing. But I see everything. Parking spaces, jaywalkers with a death wish, doggies and kitties. And for hours at time, without breaking concentration. It’s like meditation.’ Diē’s love language included showing me footage of near-miss traffic incidents on WeChat. Each trip of ours decreased my risk of appearing in his feed. These hours became the most time we had ever spent together.

Home is a long way away

Non-fictionThe Australian housing market is a wealth-generating machine, not a home-generating machine. So much is wrong with the current situation. No doubt you see it too; everybody seems to on some level. That’s why we keep hearing about the ‘Australian housing crisis’. I can see it, and I proudly consider myself an old-school capitalist, with a preference for free enterprise, fair competition, private property rights and the chance to make an occasional profit. We now find ourselves with a de facto caste system in Australia: the home owners relative to the home renters. Both groups need homes, but there is a marked wealth division between those collecting passive income on houses they own and those living solely on direct income who are forever chasing a rising market.

Shelf life

Non-fictionEarly in his career, Charles Dickens notably underestimated the reputational risk of library-shelf browsing when he invited the critic George Henry Lewes home for tea. Over steaming cups, Lewes eyed naff triple-decker novels and bland travel books, ‘all obviously the presentation copies from authors and publishers’. He recalled the experience in a waspish elegy published shortly after Dickens’ death: ‘A man’s library expresses much of his hidden life, I did not expect to find a bookworm, nor even a student, in the marvellous “Boz” but nevertheless this collection of books was a shock.’