4.5★s
Sweeney And The Bicycles is the fifth novel by prize-winning Australian poet and author, Philip Salom. The first time psychiatrist Dr Asha Sen sees Sweeney, he’s outside her house, face painted to avoid recognition, stealing the expensive green bicycle of the patient she’s just seen. Rose had locked her bike, but Sweeney has a way with locks, and an irresistible urge when he sees a beautiful bicycle, especially a fixed-gear model. “For Sweeney, riding away on other people’s bicycles is a realm of bliss.”

He rides it to the Melbourne suburb of Parkville, neatly avoiding CCTV cameras, to the house he inherited from his grandmother, and wheels it through the corridor filled with other bikes he’s taken. Later, he returns to the rooming house where he (mostly) lives. While in prison, Sweeney has suffered a brain injury for which Prisons funds his treatment by a psychiatrist: who else but Dr Asha Sen?

This is how Salom introduces his main three narrators. Further contributions are made by a fellow resident at Sweeney’s rooming house calling himself The Sheriff, an ageing former standover man who stands out the front of the house looking menacing. Once Sweeney has revealed his own prison time, they get on quite well, sharing stories and opinions.

The perspective of Dr Sen’s husband, Bruce Leach is also offered. While Asha sees herself as looking past the face and into the person, this seems quite at odds with her husband’s business: providing Facial Recognition Technology to the government. A future intersection of Bruce’s software with Asha’s new patient seems quite on the cards.

Might Rose, too, encounter Bruce professionally, as her current remit involves the flow of people in public places? Certainly, she is aware of Bruce’s technology, if, perhaps, not the depth of the information gathered.

Rose with her extraordinarily acute eyesight and her look-alike but very different sister, and Sweeney with his facial markings, are not the only intriguing characters in Salom’s quirky cast. Asha’s use of EMDR with Sweeney is an interesting way of revealing his history.

Asha and Bruce have numerous interesting discussions, as do Sweeney and The Sheriff, and various others, that all become part of a social commentary on a range of topical subjects including: the ethics of FRT; the balance between privacy and security; trust in a government whose honesty is in question; Artificial Intelligence’s lack of conscience; and the complexity of bureaucratic forms, to name just a few.

The players all become aware of a disturbing increase in the presence of drones. Rose’s close interaction with one is blackly funny, while Bruce’s ultimate reaction to those CCTV cameras sporting his own software offers a delicious irony. As past traumas are overcome, relationships formed and friendships firmed, the lesson may be that blood relatives don’t always make the best family.

As with Waiting and the Returns, his setting is once again inner-city Melbourne, so residents of the city will enjoy identifying streets and landmarks. And readers of Salom’s earlier novels will recognise, by name or description, those characters from Waiting and The Returns who get a mention.

Salom’s writing style is original and it is clear from his wonderfully poetic prose that this author has more than one string to his bow. An example “Unlike anything else in Parkville stands a blocky building, the single ugly duckling, the cuckoo in this nest of elegant and careful suburb.” The only irritation is the lack of quote marks for speech, which does tend to interrupt the reading flow. Salom’s latest is relevant, thought-provoking and very entertaining
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Transit Lounge Publishing.