Month: September 2012

Ruby Sparks (Movie)

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English: Zoe Kazan attending the premiere of T...

Zoe Kazan 2011 (Photo credit: David Shankbone, using CC-BY 3.0, via Wikipedia)

Because I am a litblogger not a film blogger, I don’t review all the movies I see. When I do review a movie it is usually an Australian one. However, because of a certain synchronicity and because of its subject matter, I can’t resist writing a little about Ruby Sparks.

The synchronicity comes from Anita Heiss‘ statement at last week’s Canberra Readers’ Festival that the good thing about writing fiction is that “you can create the world you want to live in”. She meant this positively, because she is passionate about creating a world in which indigenous Australians are respected for their culture, for their similarity to non-indigenous Australians and for their diversity. In other words, she wants them to be recognised and valued as equal human beings, which should not be too much to ask. But, what if the world you want is not the world you need?

Ruby Sparks is a a delightful but also clever and thoughtful movie about a young man with writer’s block. Calvin, the writer, had a New York Times bestseller with his first book when he was 19 years old, and was hailed as a genius, but ten years later, as the movie begins, he has not produced anything more beyond some short works. This, however, is not his only problem. He is in therapy – not only because of his writer’s block but because his life is not going well. He lives alone (with his dog Scotty who, in an affront to Calvin’s manliness, pees like a “girl dog”) and has not had a romantic relationship for several years. Enter Ruby – first in what seems to be a dream sequence and then in the park. Who is this Ruby, we wonder? It soon dawns on us that Ruby may not be real, that she may be a figment of his imagination, the product of his pen (or, in this case, his manual typewriter). It starts in fact to feel a little like a Pygmalion story …  and, as we move down that path, we are forced to confront how far a writer’s hubris might take him, because gradually Calvin’s sweet neediness starts to take on another look.

And so the movie progresses, teasing us with the “is she or isn’t she real?” question, and forcing us to examine the implications of want versus need . I’m not going to say anything more about the story, though, for fear of spoiling what is a charming but by no means silly movie. I’ll simply say that the movie explores the potential of its plot with humour and warmth, alongside a little darkness – think power and manipulation – which keeps it grounded. It’s gets a little “tricksy” at times, but not incomprehensibly so. The cast – including the well-known (such as Annette Benning, Antonio Banderas and Elliott Gould) and the lesser-known (namely the romantic leads, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan) – do a convincing job. They, particularly Dano and Kazan are, dare I say it, “real” and engaging.

Then, at the end of course, came the credits – which I do like to read. I was delighted to discover another little twist to get our heads around. The script, you see, was written by Zoe Kazan* who plays Ruby who may (or may not be) the product of Calvin’s pen. What is that about art imitating life? (Or, something imitating something, anyhow – my brain is starting to hurt now with the permutations!)

This is not a proper movie review. If it were I’d take the time to talk more about the plot and the role of the other characters; I’d discuss the music (which I loved); and I’d mention the symbolism including the moment when Calivn ditches his typewriter for a laptop.  But, I simply wanted to share a few thoughts about it with people who like to read. If you’re a movie-going reader like me, I recommend you give this film a go … and if you do, come back and tell me what you think. Meanwhile, I wonder what Anita Heiss would think …

* Zoe Kazan has an impressive pedigree. Her grandfather was film director and screenwriter Elia Kazan and her parents are screenwriters.

Monday musings on Australian Literature: Australian Literary Festivals

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I’ve been thinking for some time about writing a Monday Musings on Australia’s Literary Festivals but I have finally been spurred to do it after attending the Canberra Readers’ Festival last weekend. This is partly because I actually managed to attend a festival and partly because the last speaker was Australian literary doyen, Frank Moorhouse, who caught my attention with his statement that literary festivals are really a thing of the last 10-15 years.

Hmm, I thought, is that right? I’ve been aware of literary (and arts) festivals for way longer than that, and I recently read that the Brisbane Writers’ Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. However, I think his main point was that over the last decade or so they have started to make their presence felt. They are multiplying in number, and attendances are increasing significantly. Moorhouse said that last year over half a million people attended literary festivals in Australia and that this number had increased by 10% on the previous year. The Melbourne Writers’ Festival had around 50,000 attendees this year, and around 80,000 have been attending the Sydney Writers’ Festival since 2007. Wow!

Of course, as a librarian, I wanted to know the source of his information, so I went looking. I didn’t find all the figures I wanted, but I did find find some interesting things to share with you:

  • there is an excellent website (which I have seen before) for Australian Literary Festivals, and they have an associated Facebook page. It’s not foolproof – our Canberra Readers’ Festival was not on it – but it’s a start. It has a calendar, which is always useful for holiday planning!
  • bloggers (of course) blog about festivals they attend – which helps spread the word about how great they are (or can be) to attend. And some bloggers provide lists of festivals, such as writer Jason Nahrung, whom I discovered through the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.
  • authors, at least some anyhow, like attending festivals*. Not only do they get to promote their books and engage with readers (through Q&A sessions and book-signings) but they get to meet and talk with other writers! Earlier this year Thomas Keneally said about going to a festival in the USA that “It will be particularly delightful to walk in the presence of other writers in the same streets and districts that formed Tennessee Williams’s sensibility.” Nick Earls has likewise commented on how the Brisbane Writers’ Festival aims “to unite local writers with those from abroad”.
  • literary festivals are about as diverse as literature is itself. There are the big city festivals and the regional festivals (like the now well-known Byron Bay Writer’s Festival which started in 1997); there are festivals devoted to general literature and those that are genre-based; there are festivals which focus on big names and those which foster local writers; there are festivals designed specifically for children and young writers and those for poets; there are those – well, you get my drift. Check the links in my second dot-point above and you’ll see what I mean.
  • literary festivals can rejuvenate dying country towns. Just look at Clunes for example. Who had heard of Clunes, Victoria, 5 years ago? Now every reader worth his/her salt will heard of Clunes and its annual weekend book and literary festival. It started 5 years ago specifically to revive the town and this year earned “a coveted international Booktown listing”. First-day attendance this year “smashed” previous attendances.

The value and role of these festivals is supported by the Federal Government’s major arts funding arm, the Australia Council which, in its Literature Sector Plan for 2012-2014, lists the following under its Sector Issues of Concerns:

The Literature Board welcomes the fact that each year more and more regional towns in Australia are establishing their own writers’ festivals. These, along with the major capital city festivals, form a vibrant infrastructure for Australian literature and provide increased opportunities for writers to earn performance fees and promote their work. However, within the limited financial resources available to the Literature Board, it is not possible to offer support to every applicant.

Ah, money … there’s the rub. Festivals, even small ones, aren’t cheap but they are “a good thing” – for the attendees (wh0, as Moorhouse said, demonstrate by their attendance, a hunger for ideas and discussion) and for the health of the arts and therefore society as a whole.

Do you like literary festivals? Why or why not? And, if so, I’d love to hear which ones you attend, and what makes a good festival for you.

* But they do, funnily enough, like to be treated well. I like this post from an English author on “how not to run a literary festival” from an Author’s point of view.

Canberra Readers’ Festival 2012: For the love of reading

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Floriade 2011

Small corner of Floriade 2011: tulips among the gum trees

You could all be looking at tulips …

said Kate Grenville, the first speaker at today’s Canberra Readers’ Festival. She was referring to Floriade, Canberra‘s popular, crowd-drawing annual spring festival, and the fact that today was a glorious day. Just right, in fact, for tiptoeing through the festival’s stunning tulip beds. But instead, we keen readers were in the Playhouse listening to our favourite authors talk about writing and  reading. After all, like Scarlett O’Hara, we all knew that “tomorrow is another day”!

Session 1: Kate Grenville: “Family Stories”

After a generous welcome to country by the local representative of Australia’s original story-tellers, Ngunnawal elder Aunty Agnes Shea, Kate Grenville took the floor – and presented a passionate argument for the importance of capturing and keeping stories. She blessed her mother for insisting on repeating the family stories that eventually inspired her to research and write The secret river – and thence The lieutenant and Sarah Thornhill. She read excerpts from stories written by the 97-year-old John Mackie, and argued that “you can’t make up” the experiences of people from the past, that only by reading what they felt and experienced can you manage to turn them into convincing fiction. Sure, you can do research, she said, but you don’t know what to research if you don’t have the stories to guide you. She wouldn’t have known, for example, to research “a scuffler” if Mackie hadn’t written about one.

Grenville concluded by quoting Australian poet Dame Mary Gilmore who argued for preserving the things of the past. Gilmore wanted to write about people, not events; she wanted to show “not the miles walked but the feet that walked them”.

Session 2a: Anita Heiss: Writing Aboriginal Australia into the literary landscape

What an inspiring and entertaining speaker. Heiss commenced by describing what inspired her to write: she was on an international plane flight and overhead a passenger, whose neighbour had said he’d met “a fourth generation Australian”, responding with “you can’t get any more Australian than that!” This interchange showed Heiss that Aboriginal Australians did not appear on “Australia’s identity radar” and she set about correcting that gap in our awareness. Being tertiary educated, Heiss says she’s in the top 1% of the bottom 2.5% of Australians and consequently believes she has a responsibility to “voice our truths”, to show the commonalities as well as the differences in the lives of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. She clearly takes this responsibility seriously and has published a significant body of work, encompassing children’s and adult fiction and non-fiction.

Heiss was very clear about wanting to provide a resource for people to understand indigenous experience and identity in Australia. What’s good about fiction she said, is “you can create the world you want to live in”. Having not yet read Heiss, I bought one of her books!

Session 2b: Melina Marchetta: The role of travel in establishing setting

Marchetta’s talk was a more practical one about how she needs to visualise a place before she can describe it. I found this intriguing, particularly as she was talking about her Lumatere fantasy series. She needs to travel to see real places that she’ll describe in fantasy? You can tell I’m not a fantasy reader! It all made sense though when she showed photographs from her travels in France, Turkey, and so on, and read excerpts from her books to show how she used her knowledge of places like the rock villages in France to create her fantasy mediaeval world. She, a little sheepishly, read one excerpt which contained quite a bit of geological data, telling us that the general rule is that your reader should not see your research, but in this case she felt it was justified.

Session 3a: Hazel Edwards: Non-boring anecdultery

Self-described author-preneur (and hippopotamus lady*), Hazel Edwards took us on a lively ride through her writing life, which spans multiple forms and approaches from children’s picture-books to adult non-fiction, from writing on her own to collaborative writing. She loosely structured her talk using the letters from ANECDULTERY – as in A for Anecdote, E for e-Books, N for Non-boring, L for Literary Terrorism, and so on, ending in Y for Why! Her talk was full of the wisdom of an experienced writer, delivered with warmth, confidence and humour. She had some great turns of phrase. For example, she told us that her initial reaction to one research subject was that he’d suffered “a charisma bypass” but she grew to love him. She defined history as “high gossip not boring facts”. Edwards believes research is critical, stating that if “you don’t get something right, your reader is no longer going to trust you”.

She said her most significant book is the coming-of-age novel, f2m: the boy within, about a young woman who transitions to being a man. She co-wrote this, using email and skype, with the New Zealand-based ftm writer, Ryan Kennedy.

Session 3b: Kel Robertson: In defence of (trying desperately to be) popular fiction

Kel Robertson? Who is Kel Robertson? Well, I’m embarrassed to say that he’s a local writer who shared the 2009 Ned Kelly Award for Best (Crime) Fiction with Peter Corris for his latest novel, Smoke and mirrors. This same book also won the ACT section of the National Year of Reading competition which is why, he said, it was he addressing us and not one of Canberra’s other writers.

Robertson was in turn entertaining, realistic and provocative about the role of so-called popular, or accessible, fiction – what he calls “entertainments” – in the reading firmament. He told us that it is the popular writers – the Matthew Reillys, for example – who make it possible for publishers to take a risk on new writers, who pay the bills of literary fiction. Having made this point, he then went on to argue that a good reading diet needs its fast food as well as muesli in order to “feed the intellect and satisfy the hunger for diversion”. Many readers, he believes, move to and fro between simple and complex reads. He said that when he is feeling down he grabs “something that is accessible to nourish my psyche” and that he’d like to see a correlation done between “light recreational reading” and “the happiness index”. I’d like to think he has a point … wouldn’t it be good if books could take the place of prozac! I bought Smoke and mirrors for Mr Gums and may, you never know, dip into it myself.

Section 4: Frank Moorhouse: Memoir Writing and Ethics

Frank Moorhouse** is one of the grand old men of Australian literature, best known for his Edith trilogy. The third in this series, Cold light, recently won the Queensland Literary Award for fiction, which he described as “now probably the most noble prize to win because it’s the citizens’ prize, not the Premier’s prize”. Moorhouse didn’t fully speak to the announced topic of his talk – Memoir Writing – but ranged over a variety of issues to do with contemporary reading and culture. He argued that diaries, books on how to garden, weave and so on, make important contributions to culture, to documenting how we live and to shaping an Australian aesthetic. Some of these books, he argued, are written with flair and can survive into the future just as have, say, Samuel Pepys‘ Diary and Izaak Walton’s The compleat angler (1653). He spoke of the relatively recent rise of literary (readers’) festivals and author events, suggesting that they demonstrate a recognition of the importance of the arts in contemporary Australia. He teased out some of the implications of the e-revolution in books, saying, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek, that e-books make lending books a little harder and “that’s good for writers”.

Moorhouse is not, I’m pleased to say, a grumpy old man. He sees the internet as a positive thing which encourages writing.  He is a judge of a major short story competition in Australia and said that the number of entries is increasing as is the quality of the writing. Wow! He concluded with Samuel Johnson’s statement that writing and reading help us endure life***.

While I’d like to think they help us do more than “endure”, this seemed a good note on which the Festival could end, and end at this point it did. I do hope this Festival – beautifully emceed by Louise Maher – becomes a permanent part of Canberra’s cultural calendar.

* Edwards wrote the hugely popular children’s picture book, There’s a hippopotamus on our roof eating cake.
** Bryce Courtenay was the originally listed author for Session 4 but clearly withdrew after his announcement that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
*** The actual quote is, I think, “The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” That sounds more like it.

Dorothea Mackellar, Elena Kats-Chernin and the Vienna Boys Choir

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I’m guessing most of you have heard of the Vienna Boys Choir, but you may not, particularly if you’re not Australian, have heard of Dorothea Mackellar and Elena Kats-Chernin. Mackellar (1885-1968)  was an Australian writer, best known for her poem “My country”. Kats-Chernin (b. 1957) is an Australian composer who was born in Tashkent (in what was then the Soviet Union). She has been in Australia since 1975.

You’ve probably guessed now what this post is about. It’s about Elena Kats-Chernin setting Dorothea McKellar’s “My country” to music for the Vienna Boys Choir to perform (on their 2012 tour to Australia). According to the program, producer Andrew McKinnon, who commissioned the piece, wanted a poem that would both resonate with Australian audiences and “promote the beauty of Australia to international audiences on the choir’s future travels”.

And yet, as I sat down to the Choir’s concert on the weekend and looked at the 25 mostly European-born boys ranging in age from 9 to 14, I wondered what they could make of such a poem. For those of you who don’t know the poem, its most famous verse, the second, goes like this:

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of drought and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me

The program answered my question. After Kats-Chernin had drafted her composition, she went to Austria to workshop it with the boys. What fun that must have been. Kats-Chernin says that while that poem with that choir might seem an odd combination, it also makes sense:

The piece is about a country that’s still really young, but at the same time has been around thousands of years. At the same time they [Vienna Boys Choir] are only young boys, but the tradition they are part of is really old*.

Dorothea Mackellar's My country

Final two verses of Dorothea Mackellar’s My country (Public Domain from the State Library of NSW, via Wikipedia)

And so Kats-Chernin workshopped her ideas with the boys. Here is an excerpt from one of the choristers, Anton (12 yo), as reported in the program:

She read us some of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem. She said Australia is beautiful, and very dangerous. Which key did we think meant danger? Felix suggested B minor, David thought of F sharp. Immediately Ms Kats-Chernin started playing the right chords.

She gave each of us a word to sing, on a sequence of notes, floods, famine, sunburnt country. We were all doing it at the same time, and it was sounding like a fabric of music. That was a total surprise to me, and I could feel myself smiling. It just happened. I think some of this is in the finished piece.

It was a beautiful piece – not schmaltzy or cliched as it so easily could have been. She broke up the words at times, repeated some, left others out (if I remember correctly), all of which gave the poem new power for those of us who know it well. I like Kats-Chernin. She’s able to express a modern sensibility in her music (different or unusual rhythms and harmonic combinations, using my layperson’s language) while retaining lovely melody as well. (Hmm … that statement may imply more about modern music than I really intend, but you know what I mean!). The piece is called “Land of Sweeping Plains” but its most powerful, memorable section focuses on the first line of the 4th and 5th verses, “Core of my heart, my country”. “Core of my heart” was apparently the poem’s first published title. I like that … from “Core of my heart” to “My country” to “Land of Sweeping Plains”. It’s clever – or sensible, at least, I think – to give the piece a more descriptive, less nationalistic/patriotic title, if it is going to become an internationally performed piece. And I hope it does become so.

Meanwhile, if you are interested, you might like to check out this You Tube about Kats-Chernin and the Choir.

* Historians date the choir from 1498!

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aussie Lit and Facebook

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In writing this week’s Monday Musings I will be venturing a little into my discomfort zone. It’s not that I don’t use Facebook because I do, having been a member since 2007, but that I’m not an expert in how to make the most of it. I figure though that this post might encourage some discussion and teach me a few things in the process. Let’s see …

Early in the life of Facebook, cultural organisations and groups saw that it was the place where people – particularly young ones – were congregating, and so they decided they needed a presence there. Most though, it seemed to me, had no idea what to do with that presence, and their pages languished somewhat. But, in the last year or so, things have changed dramatically. Part of the reason is that Facebook’s functionality has improved, particularly in the way pages now “push” information. Previously, I had to GO to an organisation’s page to see what was happening. There was no way I could remember every organisation on Facebook that I was interested in – and if I did remember, I didn’t have the time to GO to them just on the off-chance they had added something new. Now if I “like” an organisation, its communications appear in my feed. A big improvement – except of course the quantity of material being fed to me can be overwhelming (even with my pretty small list of “friends” and “likes”). I’m not sure what systems are out there to help me manage that … but I assume there are some. If you have any hints, please let me (us) know.

Facebook certainly isn’t my prime source of literary news and information, but I’ve noticed that I’m learning more from its feeds now, than I did even a few months ago.

That’s my intro … the rest of the post will simply list a (highly selected) few of my favourite pages that relate to Australian literature. (I’m not sure whether the Facebook links will work for you if you are not on Facebook, but I’m providing them anyhow).

  • 100 Years of Words is special to me because it relates to the production of an anthology of writing to celebrate the centenary of Canberra, Australia’s capital. The anthology, titled The invisible thread, will be published in 2013. I can’t wait to see it … but in the meantime I am enjoying the literary bits and pieces the team shares about literary things of interest to we capital residents!
  • Australian Women Writers was established in response to discussions over the last couple of years about gender bias in Australian publishing and book selling. I have mentioned the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 on my blog (and have a clickable badge to it in my sidebar). The AWW page aims to network authors, reviewers, bloggers and readers – and is very keen to look at all the genres women write and read in. It serves a broad church (within its gender-limited field).
  • Meanjin (which ran last year’s Aussie Tournament of Books) is a good example of a literary magazine Facebook page that keeps me in touch with their magazine, their blog and general literary news.
  • Text Publishing and Allen & Unwin are two publishers whose feeds I find useful, partly because they publish overseas authors as well as Aussie ones. I’m not totally nationalistic, you see!

In addition to the above are pages for writers centres (such as the NSW Writers Centre), literary festivals (such as the Melbourne Writers Festival), blogs (such as my friend Lisa’s ANZLitLovers), and so on. There are also author pages, but I’ve not generally found them to be particularly useful for general literary news. I guess that’s natural. They’re primarily about promoting their own books.

Finally, just to show that I’m not totally rah-rah about new technologies, much as I appreciate the benefits, I’ll close with a quote from a post on Meanjin’s blog. The writer James Douglas discusses Jaron Lanier‘s book, You are not a gadget. Here’s Douglas’ conclusion:

The message is simple: the tools available to us from digital technologies, especially the tools that afford us the opportunity to ‘publish’ ourselves—Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.—may offer us exciting and stimulating opportunities for communication, but they also change us as people. It is our own responsibility to pay attention to what these tools do to us, how they express our individuality, how they value or devalue our work. This, I think, is one way to make sense of DeLillo’s remarks that email encourages ‘a response that I may not be willing to execute.’ The immediacy of email, in DeLillo’s view, interpellates him as an individual marked by ‘availability’; accessible and responsive to contact. Web 2.0 open culture may necessitate open people, which is not always to our benefit.

There’s much to think about here on how we engage with social media. For me it’s not a case of not doing it, but of working out what I’d like to get from it and trying to keep it to that. Easier said than done, and I recognise that some impacts on me may be subliminal, but I plan to keep trying.

I’d love to know if you use Facebook and, if you do, what you like and don’t like about it. Do you primarily use it for communication with friends, or is it also a useful tool for news in your areas of interest?

How many ways can you ask Google a question?

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Just over a year ago I wrote a review of the film (and book) Red Dog. In it I avoided talking about how the film ends, but that hasn’t stopped people asking. My Red Dog post is one of my top five posts and it’s there largely because of the following searches:

  1. does red dog die in the movie : 444 times
  2. red dog movie : 246
  3. does the dog die in red dog : 199
  4. does red dog die : 93
  5. red dog book review : 59
  6. does the dog in red dog die : 56
  7. red dog does the dog die : 54
  8. how did red dog die : 46
  9. does the dog die in red dog movie : 43
  10. red dog book : 32
  11. red dog movie music : 31
  12. how does red dog die : 30
  13. red dog the movie : 29
  14. red dog movie does the dog die : 26
  15. what happens at the end of red dog : 26

… and so on …

It seems that many people, like one of my favourite bloggers Stefanie of So Many Books, like to prepare themselves for sad movies – and so she asked in her comment whether red dog dies. If she hadn’t asked her question, would all of those searches have found me? Does Google look in the comments for search terms as well as the post itself? I’m guessing it must.

Do those of you with blogs have searches that surprise, entertain or even mystify you?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australia’s pioneer novelists

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David Unaipon

David Unaipon (1924) (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

One of the reasons I started this Monday Musings series was to encourage me to read, think and/or learn about my country’s literature, but in doing so I mostly write about books and authors I know and have read. Occasionally though I explore authors and works that are not so familiar to me. Today’s post is one of these.

A few months ago I wrote posts on two books on Australian literature written by Colin Roderick in the late 1940s. As I researched these posts, I came across a reviewer who wondered how many Australians knew about “the first Australian-made novel”. The unidentified reviewer was writing in The West Australian in 1950. I suspect the same question could be asked now … and so today’s post will name some of our novelistic firsts (as best I’ve been able to identify them) in case there are others like me whose knowledge of our history is a little vague.

  • First Australian-made novel: Quintus Servinton, by convict (forger) Henry Savery (1791-1842). It was published in Hobart in 1830. The West Australian reviewer writes that “apart from being the first novel written, printed and published in Australia, [it] has several other noteworthy features. It was the first novel to give a participator’s impressions of life on a prisoner’s transport”. In fact it is a fictionalisation of Savery’s life.  (An etext is available from the University of Sydney’s SETIS project).
  • First Australian-born novelist: John Lang (1816-64), who was apparently born at Parramatta. He went to Cambridge in 1838 where he become a barrister, and returned to Sydney in 1841, before leaving again a few years later to live in India and England. According to The Oxford companion to Australian literature, “the enigma surrounding the life and personality of John Lang has not, even a century later and in spite of considerable literary research, been completely solved”. It is, however, believed he wrote the fiction work, Legends of Australia, which was anonymously published in 1842. The Oxford companion suggests that authorship of this “would entitle Lang to the distinction of being the first Australian-born novelist”. There is a biography of Lang by Victor Crittenden. Its title says a lot: John Lang: Australia’s larrikin writer: barrister, novelist, journalist and gentleman. I was interested to read that he was also a contributor to Charles Dickens’ periodical Household Words.
  • First Australian-born woman novelist to publish a novel in Australia: Louisa Atkinson (1834-1872), who was the subject of a previous Monday Musings. Her novel Gertrude, the emigrant girl: A tale of colonial life was published in 1857. (An etext is available from the University of Sydney’s SETIS project.) I should say that The Oxford companion (mentioned above) is a little less categorical about her place in Australia’s literary history, stating instead that she is “one of the earliest Australian novelists and the first native-born woman to fictionalise Australian domestic, pastoral and bush life”. Did, I wonder, another Australian-born woman fictionalise something else before Atkinson’s work?
  • First indigenous Australian writer to have a book published in Australia: David Unaipon (1872-1967), who was born at a mission in the Tailem Bend area of the Murray River. (His father was our first Aboriginal preacher.) Unaipon’s best-known work, Native Legends, was published in 1929. He wrote, apparently, in a classical style, much like Milton. I should say that Unaipon was not, technically, a novelist, but his pioneering role in Australian literature warrants his inclusion here, I think, particularly since the David Unaipon Award for Unpublished Indigenous Writers is often awarded to a fiction writer.

I wonder if there are Australian (or other) readers of this blog who have read any of these authors or their works? And if you’re not Australian, what do you know about your country’s pioneer novelists?

Toni Jordan, Nine days (Review)

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Jordan's Nine Days

Book cover (Courtesy: Text Publishing)

Toni Jordan’s latest novel, Nine days, is somewhat of a departure from her first two novels which are more in the chicklit vein, albeit chicklit with a difference. The thing is, I don’t generally read chicklit, but I did enjoy Addition and Fall girl, so I was more than willing to read Jordan’s next offering. I was not disappointed.

Nine days was, according to the Author’s note, inspired by a photograph from the State Library of Victoria’s Argus collection. The photograph forms the cover of the book’s first edition: it depicts an unidentified soldier leaning out of a train window to kiss an also unidentified young woman. Jordan has woven around this photo a multi-generational story that spans six decades or so from the eve of world war 2 to the present. The title refers to the nine days upon which the book’s nine chapters are built – with an added complexity. This is a multiple point of view novel like, say, Christos Tsiolkas‘ The slap and Elliot Perlman‘s Seven types of ambiguity, but while those two novels progressed their narratives in a linear chronology via the changing voices, Jordan’s chronology jumps around in a seemingly chaotic manner. However, there is method to it, because careful reading reveals thematic or structural connections, even if not chronological ones, between each chapter.

That’s the basic structure, but the real interest of course is in what the novel’s about. How, though, to describe the plot of such a novel succinctly? The best way is to simply say that the novel tells the story of three generations of one family, which is, by the way, an impressive thing to attempt in 250 pages. There is a central mystery – for the reader and for the family though they aren’t necessarily aware of it – to do with the two figures in the photograph. Each chapter is named simply for the character in whose first person voice it is told. The first is Kip, a nearly 15-year-old boy in 1939, who has just had to leave school and go to work because of the recent death of his father. Other chapters are told by his twin brother Francis/Frank (who gets to stay at school), his mother Jean, and his much loved big sister Connie. Interspersed with their stories are those told by Kip’s wife, Jack who lives next door, Kip’s twin daughters, and even his grandson. For each person something happens – some choice must be, or is, made – in the particular day they describe, which impacts their life’s direction.

It’s an ambitious structure, but Jordan succeeds, for a few reasons. A big one is her ability to create strong, believable characters who are likable despite their faults. It helps that the first character, Kip, is particularly engaging. He’s easy-going and generous-hearted, but is also endowed with a good dose of wits and common-sense. He plays an important role in the denouement. His daughters, the overweight, rather uptight Stanzi, and the hippy-alternative-eco-warrior Charlotte, are clearly differentiated and provide a touch of humour with their (mostly) good-natured sibling bickering and point-scoring. Most contemporary female readers will see bits of themselves or people they know in these two. And, while I’m speaking of women, I can’t resist quoting Kip’s young, restless sixteen-year old grandson Alec:

I’ve wasted my whole entire existence up to now. I’ve done absolutely nothing with it. I’ve just been counting down the months of my life. Sixteen years, totally useless. I live with three women. A big night at my place is when the ABC runs a Jane Austen marathon. God I hate that Bennet chick. Marry him already, and spare us the drama.

Another reason the book works is that Jordan manages place and time well. Counterbalancing the seemingly erratic chronology is the fact that place is kept simple. The whole novel occurs pretty much in one suburb in working class Melbourne. This helps keep we readers grounded, as do two little motifs – a “lucky” shilling and a purple pendant – which appear on and off throughout the novel. I was initially concerned, after the first couple of chapters, that the shilling was going to be a little heavy-handed or mechanistic – particularly given the shilling graphic commencing each chapter – but it’s not. Like the pendant, it appears in some, but not other, chapters, and in so doing helps keep us focused without irritating us.

In other words, the book is handled very well technically. But, that’s not what makes a book, in the end, is it? What makes a book good is its heart – and the heart of this book is warm but real. Its particular subjects are war, abortion, religious and class difference, social conscience and social mobility, but it is also a universal tale about how love (marital, romantic, sibling, parental, and so on) forms the glue that keeps us going. This might sound corny, but that’s not how it comes across. The novel has its share of grittiness; and relationships have their tensions, conveying the message that love (whether marital, sibling or parental) is not a simple endpoint but something to be worked at.

This may not be the book for readers who like long family sagas they can lose themselves in, but for those like me who enjoy works which tease and leave ties undone, much like life really, Nine days has plenty to offer.

Toni Jordan
Nine days
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012
245pp.
ISBN: 9781921922831

(Review copy supplied by Text Publishing)

Andrew Blackman, Nights on Fair Isle (Review)

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You probably know by now that I occasionally like to review short stories that are available online, most often those published by the Library of America.  So when author and blogger, Andrew Blackman, recently posted that one of his stories had been published online, I thought I’d check it out.

“Nights on Fair Isle” is, he says, the first time he has had a short story available free on the internet, but he expresses uncertainty about the value of reading online and asks his readers’ opinions. Good question and one I’d like to answer … somewhat anyhow, and then bat it on to you. I don’t as a rule read fiction online. I read novels on an e-Reader but I don’t think that’s the same as online, or is it? And I read short stories and essays that are made available online. But, here’s the rub. I don’t read them online. I print them out and read the hard copy instead. This might just be the product of my babyboomer-dom… I could in many cases, I suppose, download stories and essays onto my e-Reader, but mostly I think what’s the point. It’s just as fast to print it out.

Anyhow, the story. It’s a little story … And I mean that literally in terms of its length not as a comment on its quality. In just three pages (in my printout version), Blackman tells a tightly controlled story of loneliness and how one woman goes about soothing her soul to enable her to keep on going day after day in a big city, London to be exact. We don’t know where Aurelia is from, but we do know that she wasn’t an English-speaker when she arrived in London. Not long after her arrival, she stumbles on the shipping  forecast on the radio and hears a “gentle male voice intoning” words like “Low, Fastnet, nine seven three, falling slowly”. Each night she tunes in to the same words, and thinks it’s a nightly prayer that she’s hearing. Eventually of course she’s put right, but she goes on tuning into the forecast for its soothing sound …

And for the way it reminds her of her mother’s “sweet lullabies … that chased away the shadows and fears”. Blackman neatly segues from the shipping forecast to the sea and Aurelia’s favourite sea-based fairy story, and effectively uses the paradoxes inherent in sea/water imagery to convey both fear and calm. I won’t relate more of the story though … after all it’s short enough for you to read yourselves via the link below. I’ll just say that I liked the way Blackman gently explores the power – and limit – of dreams and reverie to keep you going. It’s a realistic rather than grim or depressing story.

Meanwhile, do you read online? And if so, do you think it changes the way you read, or what you read?

Andrew Blackman
“Nights on Fair Isle”
SolquShorts, 2012
Availability: Online

Queensland Literary (Fiction) Awards, 2012: Woo-hoo

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Readers of this blog might remember that earlier this year the new premier of Queensland axed his state’s Premier’s Literary Awards … to a great outcry from literary aficionados around the country. However, with a wonderful can-do attitude and the support of private sponsors, a group of volunteers revived the awards, rebadged as the Queensland Literary Awards, just over 4 months ago. The prize purse was much reduced but the important thing is that the awards went ahead … And the winners were announced this week.

The awards group kept the full raft of awards that had been part of the original awards, a wide range that had made these awards particularly significant, but they are too numerous for me to list here. I will though report on the main ones of interest to me:

  • Fiction Award: Frank Moorehouse’s Cold light, the third in his trilogy, of which I’ve read the first, Grand days. This award rather breaks the stranglehold that women writers, Anna Funder and Gillian Mears, have had on this year’s awards to date.
  • David Unaipon Award for Unpublished Indigenous Writer: Siv Parker’s Story. This is a significant award for giving opportunities to and showcasing indigenous Australian writers. I’ve read some winners and have a couple more on my TBR.
  • Steele Rudd Award for Short Stories: Janette Turner Hospitals’s Forecast: Turbulence, which has been patiently waiting for me on my Kindle for a few months now. I’m a Hospital fan.
  • The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Book of the Year: Simon Cleary’s Closer to stone

A full list of the awards can be viewed here. Reviews of several of the winners listed above can be found at ANZLitLovers.