Month: December 2015

Vincenzo Cerami, A very normal man (Review)

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Vincenzo Cerami, A very normal manAnd now for something very different from my recent fare here, a modern Italian classic. Originally published in 1976, A very normal man was, the back cover blurb says, Vincenzo Cerami’s first novel – and it brought him instant acclaim. I can see why. At least, this is the sort of writing that gets me in, but more on that anon.

Now, you may have heard of Cerami (1940-2013). I know I should have, because he was the co-screenwriter on that wonderful 1998 film La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful). He was also a poet, commentator and a writer on writing. In other, words a very interesting man! (Couldn’t resist that.)

But now, the book. It is, as you might have realised, a translation, which is always a challenge from my point of view, because I know I’m reading a mediated work. And, as I started this book, I felt it must have represented a very particular challenge because this is a satirical, darkly humorous and deeply ironic work. That must be hard to translate across languages and cultures – and it apparently was, starting with the title. Wakefield Press says on its website that “the complex word play of the Italian title is untranslatable in English; it means literally a very little, very middle-class man”. Does this remind you of Camus’ L’Etranger, and its publication in English as both The stranger and The outsider?

So, who is this very little, very middle-class – or very normal – man? He is Giovanni Vivaldi, living in Rome during the Years of Lead. He’s married, happily enough it seems, with a  20-year-old account-trained son, Mario, of whom he is very proud. He’s been a public servant in the Ministry, the Office for Retirement Pensions, for 40 years, and at the start of the novel he is about to retire. First, however, he wants to get Mario a job in the Ministry. It’s the least he deserves, he believes. Italian novelist Italo Calvino, who apparently negotiated the novel’s publication, also wrote the preface to the original Italian edition. My Wakefield edition’s preface quotes from it:

You would expect a story about office workers to be drab, short on events — the inevitable caricature. Not this one. Extraordinary events abound: a ludicrous initiation ceremony into Freemasonry; an incursion into the savage world of the daily crime columns; revenge that is the stuff of nightmares […] What we see is reminiscent of the precision effects of a magnifying glass angled over the unredeemed ugliness at the heart of civilised society — and over the tenacious lust for living which clings on in a world emptied of meaning.

Hmmm, what more can I say? These excerpts convey a little of the story and the main theme, without giving away too much of the plot. I wouldn’t want to give away any more, but I can talk a little about the character, the style and tone.

“the common sense of an ordinary decent man”

About a quarter of the way through the novel, during his application to become a Freemason, Giovanni is described as having “the common sense of an ordinary decent man”. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Except that we have already seen quite a bit of not-so-decent behaviour from him, including the very reason he is applying to become a Freemason, which is to obtain favour to help his son beat the civil service exam for the Ministry job. On the first page of the novel, he tells his son that “the sign of a really smart young man is a total focus on career and nothing else. Let the rest of the world go and hang themselves”. On page 2, Giovanni, out fishing with his son, kills a fish in a cruel, violent way. At the beginning of chapter 2, his normal drive to work is described: he’d “deal out vicious abuse to anyone he thought was trying to get in his way, rant and rave against everything and everyone”.  Pretty quickly then, we are clued in to the fact that he is not a very humane man – and yet, he is also presented as a “normal”, responsible family man. He’s (arguably) a good father, a decent husband and a diligent employee.

What happens in the novel is, in fact, shocking, and the way Giovanni responds is even more so, but it is all told in matter-of-fact prose, and this is what I like. I love writing that is integral to the meaning of a work, that is, that isn’t just there to carry the story and ideas. In this case, the calm tone of writing that conveys a grotesque story reinforces the themes of hypocrisy and corruption, of mismatch between the surface and the subterranean (if that makes sense).

The tone might be matter of fact, unemotional, but the imagery leaves us in no doubt as to Cerami’s view of life in 1970s Rome:

The city had all the signs of a Sunday: greasy roller blinds down on the shops; apartments with their entrances yawning open mockingly; parked cars lining the footpaths like the embalmed corpses of family pets; the slow, tentative caterpiller-weaving of empty trams. Against an unbroken infinity of apartment blocks that crossed the city from end to end, branching off in every direction, rows of bristles on a hairbrush for a scabby head.

Cerami mixes up descriptions of mundane detail (“he got his raincoat, grabbed his car keys … found himself a clean handkerchief from his sock drawer”) with descriptions that stop you in your tracks:

In person: young maybe Mario’s age, except that this one reminded you of rusted-out tools and coffee dregs.

At times there is a sense of the mock-heroic: Giovanni “sprang into the saddle of his charger”, that is, his Fiat 850. And there is plenty of humour (dark and otherwise), such as when Giovanni, in a police station, tries various Freemason secret signals, to no avail. Giovanni thinks he’s “mastered the art of living” but his view of living is not an appealing one.

For all this, there are moments when he seems human – he is a loving father and responsible husband – and can tug, albeit briefly, at our sympathy. Overall though, the novel is a devastating indictment of middle-class life that is superficial, self-centred and morally corrupt in a society which seems to be not much better. A fascinating read.

Vincenzo Cerami
A very normal man
Translated by Isobel Grave
Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2015
117pp.
ISBN: 9781743053713

(Review copy courtesy Wakefield Press)

My encounter with Encounters

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I rarely write about museum exhibitions, and when I do it’s usually in the context of a travel post, but I do want to share with you our National Museum of Australia’s current exhibition, Encounters. Subtitled “Revealing stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum”, it is described by the Museum as “one of its most important exhibitions”. That could sound, of course, like your typical promo-speak, but in this case I’m inclined to agree. Encounters is a very interesting and, yes, important exhibition – one that is not without its controversy.

The foundation pieces of the exhibition are 151 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects, including masks, shields, spears and spearheads, didgeridoos, baskets and head dresses, which were collected by a wide range of people – settlers, explorers, administrators, and so on – between 1770 and the 1930s, and which are now held by the British Museum. Complementing these are 138 contemporary items, some specially commissioned for the exhibition. The objects are supported by excellent interpretive labels which convey both the history of the objects and contemporary responses to them. The end result is a conversation between past and present that is  inspiring and mind-opening.

I’m not going to formally review the exhibition. You can read a thoughtful one published in the Sydney Morning Herald last month, including a discussion of the repatriation controversy. (Thanks to brother Ian for pointing me to this review). Instead, I’m just going to comment about its impact on me. So, here goes …

One message I took from the exhibition is not a new one at all, really, but more a confirmation: it’s that indigenous people, like all of us, are not one! It is way too easy for us (no matter who “us” are) to simplify “other” (no matter who “other” are). We tend to think that “they” all think the same, but obviously, like “us”, “they” don’t! This is made patently clear in Encounters where we see different responses by different indigenous communities to the objects. Some are adamant that their objects should be returned to them. Others may agree with that, but that’s not their priority (perhaps because they realise such a goal may not be realistic, in the short term at least!) They, such as Robert Butler, a Wangkangurru man from the Birdsville area, believe that the objects should not have been taken in the first place but recognise that the fact that they were now means they are available once again. Still others argue that the important thing is not the object itself, but the knowledge and skill they can obtain from it. Obtaining knowledge and practising skills that can be passed on, they argue, are the crucial thing, because they are critical to indigenous people’s identity and mental health.

I was consequently interested, for example, in a comment from the Noongar community regarding objects that had been collected by a young Englishman Samuel Talbot in the 1830s. He made detailed notes about the objects, demonstrating his keen interest in understanding Noongar culture. Present day Noongar woman, Marie Taylor, says:

I want to acknowledge the white people who sat down with the Aboriginal people, who wrote the stories down, who collected this information that still exists today. Down here in Noongar country, we may have lost all of that had it not been for many of these people.

Talbot is one of many such people. Lieutenant Dawes, about whom Kate Grenville wrote in her historical novel The lieutenant (my review), is another. Taylor’s response is, though, a generous one, since had there been no white people, they would not have lost (or been at risk of losing) their culture in the first place!

Bagu figures, contemporary objects from the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, Cardwell, north Queensland

Bagu figures, contemporary objects reflecting the past, from the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, Cardwell, far north Queensland

A very different story comes from far north Queensland. The panel that accompanies a shield, club and basket is titled “Guerrilla warfare”. The objects were collected in the 1860s by settler John Ewen Davidson at Rockingham Bay. He’d gone there, we’re told, “in 1866 to establish a sugar plantation. He began as a shocked observer of the violence of the occupation, yet within six months he was part of it”. Coincidentally, this story reminded me of another Grenville novel, The secret river, in which her fictional protagonist commenced with the aim of being peaceful but he too got caught up in violence.

Then there’s a comment that touched me on a more deeply personal level. It comes from Aunty Barbara Vale, a Dieri elder in South Australia. She says:

When I visit Killalpaninna I get a strong feeling of belonging. It’s our land, Dieri land. I feel safe and relaxed and always come away feeling good for having been there.

Now, I know my connection to the land is nothing like that of an indigenous person’s sense of belonging to and responsibility for their country, but Vale describes perfectly how I feel each year when Mr Gums and I go to Kosciuszko National Park – safe, relaxed, and a lovely sense of well-being. I don’t presume at all that my feeling is the same – it’s not – but her statement did give me a sense of connection, and, in that, of the validity of my own “truth”.

Towards the end of the exhibition, I came across a recent statement by Don Christopherson, a Muran man. He said:

Christopherson

And that is the spirit I’d like to think we all have in Australia today. It is surely the only real way we can move forward. Objects like the ones in this exhibition are crucial to this process, because, as one elder said, they bring the past into the present, which then enables us to move into the future. And, I’d say, they provide an excellent basis for a conversation.

A wonderful exhibition that I’ll try to visit again.

POSTSCRIPT: Here is a link to short films included in the exhibition. Many depict the way contemporary indigenous Australians are making objects today – some making traditional objects, some making modern ones commenting on contemporary relationships and concerns (like the ghost net project on Darnley Island – Erub – in the Torrest Strait).

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian Women Writers’ Challenge 2015

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awwchallenge2015For the fourth year now, I’m devoting the year’s last Monday Musings to the Australian Women Writers Challenge*.

The challenge continues to be supported by a wide range of reviewers. This year we moved to a self-hosted site which enabled us to produce a single searchable database of all reviews logged since the challenge started in 2012. We now have reviews for nearly 3,000 books across all forms and genres of Australian women’s writing. An impressive resource, I’d say, for its breadth and accessibility.

As usual, the Challenge ran some special events during the year, including a focus on Lesbian/Queer women writers,  author Q&As, and an In Conversation With series. These were organised by some wonderful challenge volunteers, particularly Jessica White, Marisa Wikramanayake and Annabel Smith. I think these posts deserve more air, so will share them here:

The Australian Women Writers’ Challenge is the only challenge I do (or have ever done). This year I posted 27 reviews for the challenge, three fewer than last year. I managed a similar variety in my reading, but unlike last year, I didn’t manage to read one book from my TBR pile. It was, I must say, an erratic year for me and I feel that I lurched from book to book, scrabbling to keep up. If I set myself one goal for next year it would be to tackle the TBR pile a little! On the plus side, three Australian women feature in my top ten posts for the year – Hannah Kent, Barbara Baynton, and Tara June Winch. What a diverse group that is!

Anyhow, here’s my list of works read for this year (with links to the reviews):

FICTION

SHORT STORIES

NON-FICTION

There are some subtle differences from last year’s list to this. For example, last year nearly all the non-fiction reads were memoirs, whereas this year only two are. I read a similar number of novels as last year, but twice the number of historical fiction novels, 4 versus last year’s 2. I will talk more about that in another end of year post. I would like to have read more classics/older books.

Anyhow, if you are interested in the challenge, you can check it out here. I don’t believe the sign up form is ready for 2016, but watch the site. You are most welcome – whether you are female or male – to join us. The challenge is also on Facebook, Twitter (@auswomenwriters), GoodReads and Google+.

Finally, a big thanks to Elizabeth and the rest of the team – including Lewis, our wonderful database developer – for making it all such a cooperative, and enjoyable experience. Roll on 2016.

* This challenge was instigated by Elizabeth Lhuede in 2012 in response to concerns in Australian literary circles about the lack of recognition for women writers. I am one of the challenge’s volunteers – with responsibility for the Literary and Classics area.

Eleanor Limprecht, Long Bay (Review)

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LimprechtLongBaySleepersOne of the things that interests me about historical fiction, of which Eleanor Limprecht’s Long Bay is an example, is why the author in question chooses to write his/her story as fiction rather than non-fiction. As I’ve written before, this is an issue with which Kate Grenville grappled when she wrote The secret river. That book was initially going to be non-fiction about her ancestor Solomon Wiseman. However, for various reasons which she outlines in Searching for The secret river, the book ended up as fiction. Her reasons included gaps in the historical record, and finding the story – and particularly the voice – within the facts she had. I wondered, as I read Limprecht’s Long Bay, what her reasons were.

Long Bay, which draws its name from Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol, tells the story of Rebecca Sinclair, a young woman who in 1909, at the age of 23, was gaoled for manslaughter after a botched abortion. Limprecht describes on her website how she came to write the story: she was hunting for first person stories from the gaol when she came across two letters about Sinclair from the Prison Comptroller. Both those letters are reproduced in the book. Limprecht writes that she became obsessed with Rebecca Sinclair’s life, and started seeking out her story:

I found out everything I could and then began looking for living relatives in the hope they could tell me more. I joined an online genealogy site and made contact with a woman who had Rebecca on her family tree … she was Rebecca’s granddaughter.

Not only, it turned out, was she Rebecca’s grand-daughter, but the daughter of the baby Rebecca had had in goal. That baby, Freda, never did tell her daughter where she was born and why. Grand-daughter Christine

said that she wanted to honour her mother, who never felt she could share the story of her birth with anyone. She gave me permission to use her grandmother’s name and story for the novel, Long Bay.

Limprecht doesn’t specifically discuss why she chose to tell this story as fiction. Most likely it’s because she’s a fiction writer. Duh! (She does say on her site that Rebecca’s “story told me to look deeper, to understand bad choices, and to see beyond the razor wire, to the messy, real truth that fiction can reveal”.) But it may also be because, while there are several official records relating to Rebecca, there are major gaps in the record of her life. The lives of poor people, Limprecht implies, are not well documented. At the back of the novel, Limprecht notes the specific sources she quotes in the novel, but she does not, as some historical fiction authors do, discuss the historical basis of her story in any other detail – such as how much she has assumed, and how much she is confident of as “fact”. I’m interested in this, though it’s certainly not critical to analysis of the book as a piece of fiction.

So let’s get to the fiction! Limprecht tells the story straightforwardly. She starts with the letter – the one which inspired her story – from the Prison Comptroller to the Royal Hospital for Women advising of the arrangements for admitting Rebecca Sinclair. This is followed by a Prologue describing Rebecca’s admission and taking us to the beginning of labour. The novel then flashes back to her childhood (Chapter 1) and her story is told chronologically from this point.

Limprecht carefully sets up Rebecca’s character as a hard-working young woman who has a pretty good head and can be resourceful, but who in youthful naiveté let herself be taken in by Donald Sinclair, the only son of Nurse Sinclair, an abortionist, and a man who is, let us say, “an operator”. While there does seem to be love between them, Rebecca also slowly becomes aware that he is not to be trusted. Limprecht sets up a motive, to do with her sexuality, for Rebecca’s early willingness to accept Sinclair’s attentions. To modern minds, it could seem a little unrealistic but for the time it’s probably valid enough.

Rebecca is presented as responsible, and having integrity. As she imagines her trial, she realises that her

family will sit in that courtroom and watch her be led up into the cage. They will listen to all of the horrible things she has done. She did them with Don, for Don, but he did not force her hand.

I liked that self-awareness – though it’s true that her options if she did not go along with the plan, like those of poor women of her time, were few. I was intrigued to read in a contemporary newspaper report in Trove that she “caused a painful scene when she was sentenced. She sobbed and clung to her husband, the other prisoner, and appealed piteously to the court not to separate her from him.” Without giving too much away, this is not quite the Rebecca depicted by Limprecht, but perhaps her court-side Rebecca is drawn from what she knows was the trajectory of Rebecca’s life after her release.

Overall, while I enjoyed reading Rebecca’s story, she didn’t fully come alive for me – and I think back to Grenville’s challenge with her novel, that of finding the story, the voice, within the facts she had. I wonder whether having the permission of the family to tell this story hampered Limprecht in some way. Did she feel a little constrained to be sympathetic to Rebecca? Grenville decided to break free of her “real” subject and invent a character based on him. Not all historical fiction writers do this of course – Hilary Mantel didn’t for Wolf Hall (my review) and neither did Hannah Kent for Burial rites (my review) – but in this case, it may have freed Limprecht to fly a little more with the character, to have been, perhaps, a little less laboured about justifying her actions and decisions.

Nonetheless, the novel does make excellent reading. The plotting is confident and coherent, with the ground carefully laid for the “crisis” point. There’s some lovely imagery. Here, for example, is Rebecca feeling shame:

Like a hem on a dress that is too long, it drags behind her, gathering dirt, there for everyone to see.

And Limprecht’s description of turn of the century Sydney, and of the lives of poor women in particular, feels authentic. Rebecca’s mother, with six children, falls on hard times when her husband dies. She makes her money as a seamstress, which is a skill Rebecca learns. Her other daughters find different paths in life – one respectable, another not so. Limprecht is careful not to moralise on the abortion issue, preferring to show, rather than exhort. Nurse Sinclair is clear and unsentimental about why she does what she does – women need the service and they need it done safely, and she needs an income (“a trade that turns a pretty profit”). Rebecca sees the sorts of women coming through – servant women abused by their master, poor women with too many children, unmarried women. A prison guard shows rare kindness because she understands the issues.

Rebecca Sinclair’s story is a fascinating one. Notwithstanding my little equivocation, Limprecht has done it justice and brought to our modern times the story of a woman whose story is worth telling. A perfect one for the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

awwchallenge2015Eleanor Limprecht
Long Bay
Collingwood: Sleepers, 2015
313pp
ISBN: 9780987507044

(Review copy supplied by Sleepers Publishing)

Books given and received for Christmas, in 2015

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I did a “books given and received post” last Boxing Day, and decided to do it again. It’s a useful record for me to keep, and may just interest you, so, here goes.

  • For Mr Gums, who is often up for a walk: Walking and cycling Canberra’s Centenary Trail
  • For Ms Gums Jr, in her stocking: Anna Funder’s The girl with the dogs.
  • For Mr Gums Jr, in his stocking: Richard Flanagan’s Short Black The Australian Disease: On the Decline of Love and the Rise of Non-Freedom.
  • For Ma Gums, who has worked as a lexicographer: Mary Norris’s Between you and me: Confessions of a comma queen (inspired by a review by Stefanie at So Many Books) AND, in her stocking, Elizabeth Gaskell’s The old nurse’s story.
  • For Brother Gums, lover of nature and good writing: Tim Winton’s Land edge: A coastal memoir
  • For Sister-in-law Gums, who loves art, nature and is interested in women’s lives: Louisa Atkinson’s nature notes (a selection of sketches and writings by this nineteenth century Australian naturalistDanielle Wood, Mothers Grimm, book cover.
  • For Gums’ Californian friend, who indicated in a comment on my post that she’d like to read this book: Danielle Wood’s Mothers Grimm.
  • For Gums’ Californian friend’s daughter, who’s busy studying for her law degree and might like some little interludes: Paul McDermott’s Fragments of the hole (my review) and Cassandra Atherton’s Trace (two fl smalls).
  • For Gums’ Californian friend’s other daughter, who’s developing quite a passion for baking: Delicious Bake.

As for what I received, a lovely, eclectic bunch:

  • From Ma and Pa Gums: Elizabeth Harrower’s In certain circles, in readiness for my reading group doing it in 2016) and Betty Churcher’s The forgotten notebook (about trips she made in the 1990s arranging loans of art of a blockbuster exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia).
  • From my Californian friend, who knows what my New Year’s resolution is going to be: Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (oh dear, now I’m really going to have to do it). Carolyn, that’s her name, wrote about it in her letters this year and, quite coincidentally, I read about the same book in Travellin’ Penguin’s blog. The title is slightly different but that’s just different editions I believe. She and Carolyn did make me laugh with their discussions of applying this book to their own decluttering projects.
  • From “old” Canberra friends: Tom Griffiths’ Endurance, historical fiction about photographer/explorer Frank Hurley (and they gave us a book gift voucher too. Lucky, us).

What about you? Any Christmas book news you care to report?

Neel Mukherjee’s The lives of others, and those epilogues

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MukherjeeLivesOthersChattoWhen my reading group discussed The lives of others questions were raised about the meaning of the two epilogues, specifically in terms of what they contributed to the meaning of the book. Not having finished the book in time, I wasn’t able to join in, so I’m having a go now.

As I mentioned in my review, the two epilogues are dated much later than the main action of the book, the first occuring in 1986, and the second in 2012. Let’s start with 1986 …

Epilogue 1

It’s about Sona, the youngest grandson in the house and the son of the youngest, and most ill-treated, daughter-in-law Purba. At the end of the novel, before the epilogue, we learn that his mathematical skills have resulted in his being offered a scholarship to go to America. He’s 15. In 1986, he is 30, and a Professor of Pure Mathematics at Stanford University – and he has won a special Mathematics Prize. What has this to do with the novel?

Tricky. At one level, it shows that the lowest in the family hierarchy did manage to get away and “make good”. It’s lovely seeing poor Purba, even before they left, suddenly being recognised and appreciated by the family. But, it’s how they got away that is also significant, which is through skill, ability and education. Education is one of the novel’s themes. Early, daughter Chhaya sees a niece (another grand-daughter in the family) displaying signs of immodesty and defiance:

This is what happens when one has an uneducated mother, Chhaya thinks …

Then again, the rather unpleasant Chhaya is unmarried. Some say that

being a graduate, having a BA degree, had harmed Chhaya’s chances of finding a husband.

Even given that Chhaya is not the most sympathetic character, the message seems to be that for women education is a complicated issue – at that time, in that society. For men, though, it is a way out. For Sona (our Professor), education was critical to escaping a controlling family. For Sona’s grandfather, Prafullanath, however, education was unnecessary to his achievement, and he doesn’t see its value. His oldest son Adi though does, as does second son Priyo, who wishes he’d been born into a different family, one comprising “fierce reformers; progressive, educated people”. Go down another generation, to Sona’s that is, and we find Prafullanath’s oldest grandson and Adi’s son, Supratik. He is, in today’s parlance, radicalised at university to the point that he becomes a Naxalite.

I could go on, but for me it’s clear that a major point of Epilogue 1 has to do with education, and with the fact that with education you can escape.

But, what about maths? Why maths in particular? Is this significant? I think it is, and it deserves further study. For example, here is Supratik near the end, when he is under arrest and being confronted by his surely hypocritical decisions and actions:

The calculation at that time, he remembers, had been strictly mathematical – if one have-not had to be sacrificed so that fifty have-nots could be benefited, nothing trivial such as emotions could stand in the way.

I’ll leave you with that thought! Maths, like education, itself, or almost any idea in the book, has no intrinsic value. It is how it is used that is important. In other words, as I said in my review, Mukherjee doesn’t seem to want to give answers, but to show different ways of being. I think I know what he thinks, just by the fact that he has told this story, but he certainly doesn’t ram it down our throats.

Epilogue 2

This Epilogue is dark. It describes a terrorist act that will result in mass murder, and it is conducted by new revolutionaries, revolutionaries who see Supratik as a hero, a martyr to their cause. Their technique is his:

The trick is more than forty years old, she has been told during her training. Someone had come from Chhattisgarh to show them the ropes, and he had mentioned that according to local Maoist lore it was a Bengali invention, the work of a man known as Pratik-da in the late Sixties in some district bordering West Bengal and Bihar.  […] his gift to his future comrades survived and, for those who cared to or were old enough to remember, he lived on in his bequest …

Our young Maoist revolutionary knows what she is fighting for:

The tribal people knew what fate awaited them outside their land – daily wage-labourer in the city, maidservant in someone’s home, prostitute.

And she’s pragmatic about the implications of her role:

They would all die one day – and it will come a lot sooner in their lives than in others’ – but it was better to die fighting, like a cornered wildcat, than crushed underfoot like an unseen worm.

But what is Mukherjee saying? That it’s ok to continue to calculate, to sacrifice the lives of others for some better future?

I’m not sure, but going back a few chapter to when Supratik is under arrest, he thinks

The questions of feelings and principles and inhuman betrayal that he has had to wrestle with surge back, this time without the soul-destroying arithmetic to balance them out: did he . . . did he go down that route because of reasons of class, because a servant stealing is so much more credible, so much more natural, than a member of the family? Was it to make the theft believable to the police that he had framed Madan-da, or was it because it had cost less to betray a servant than one’s own kind? The questions are so unbearable …

And so now, I think, I understand the novel a little more. The questions are, indeed, unbearable … and the basic one is: when are the answers absolute and when do they require calculation, that soul-destroying arithmetic? The risk is, I suspect Mukherjee is saying, that when we apply that arithmetic we are more likely to sacrifice the lives of others than those of our own.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Some Aussie lit links

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Well, folks, I’ve been back in Sydney over the last four days working on my aunt’s house. With that, and with Christmas looming, I’ve not have much time to think about Monday Musings for this week – or, more to the point, to spend time researching and writing it. I did have an idea, but that will have to wait.

So, instead, I’m just going to share a few interesting links that you may like to check out in any spare moments you have:

  • 25 Aussie books by Australian women to read right now (published in The Guardian online, and written by Melbourne’s independent bookstore, Readings): This is a useful list, organised into categories like “If you like novels that transport you into the past…” and “If you prefer your fiction with some fantastical elements…”. The list includes the book I’ll be reviewing next, Eleanor Limprecht’s Long Bay; the book that I mentioned last week as being the most frequently picked best Aussie read this year, Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things; one of the most reviewed books this year in my section of the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge, Robyn Cadwallader’s The anchoress; and two wonderful sounding short story collections, Abigail Ulman’s Hot little hands and Tegan Bennett Daylight’s Six bedrooms. All this says to me that it’s a list well worth checking out!
  • Your summer reading guide for 2015 (from some RN, that is ABC Radio National, presenters): Last year I wrote a post on picks from RN presenters, picking out just the Aussie books. This year I’m just giving you the link, and you’ll have to pick out the Aussie ones yourselves – but you can look at the non-Aussie selections too, while you are at it! The Aussie picks include two memoirs that interest me, writer Gerald Murnane’s Something for the pain, which I hope to get to in the next month, and comedian Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning, which is garnering a lot of positive vibes.
  • How Australian dystopian young adult fiction differs from its US counterparts was written in August this year, but I came across it when I was looking for links about Australian cli-fi in honour of the Paris Climate Change Conference. However, I’ve talked about cli-fi before, and so when I came across this article I thought I’d share it instead of looking further. I’m not an expert in this area at all – in YA fiction, I mean – and so I won’t say whether the conclusions drawn by writer, Diana Hodge, are valid or not, but I found her argument that Australian YA dystopian fiction resorts to “magical” abilities and a return to nature for resolution while American books are more likely to look to technical skills and knowledge in their protagonists rather interesting. I’d love to know what readers versed in YA dystopian fiction think.
  • Susan Wyndham, the Sydney Morning Herald’s literary editor, wrote about Aussie literary trends also back in August. She briefly looked at trends in Australian fiction through 2014 and into 2015, and identified issues like domestic violence and child abuse, and dystopias, as featuring in recent Australian literature. This makes sense given our society’s current preoccupations. But there are other issues too – like religious (in)tolerance, the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers, and racism? Are many books exploring these? I can think of a couple, but not many. What about you?  (The rest of this pretty brief article is worth a read too.)

And there, I’m afraid, I’ll leave it … hope it’s been of some interest to you!

This is, of course, the last Monday Musings before Christmas. I do hope you all have an excellent holiday season, that you receive some exciting books, if you celebrate Christmas, and/or that you are able to make lots of wonderful time to read whatever books you have. Next week, I will do some annual reviews. Watch this space, if you are interested!

Neel Mukherjee, The lives of others (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 32 Comments

MukherjeeLivesOthersChattoBefore I talk about Neel Mukherjee’s Booker Prize short-listed The lives of others, I want to briefly mention the experience of reading it on the Kindle. I probably haven’t told you my little reading rule of thumb before, which is that I aim to buy Australian books in print, and overseas books electronically. It’s my measured foray into downsizing!

However, I don’t greatly enjoy reading on my Kindle. I like the Kindle itself. It handles pretty much like a book, the e-ink technology is easy on the eye, it’s light and portable, and with this particular author whose vocabulary is impressive, I did find the in-built dictionary to be very useful. But, I don’t find reading books in e-formats particularly pleasurable. It’s not easy to get the measure of a book, to flick through it and see what’s what. Consequently, I didn’t discover the family tree until I’d read the first couple of chapters. Now, if you’ve read this book, you will know that the three generations of the Ghosh family who live in a four-storey house are introduced in one chapter. Their names are unfamiliar to a westerner’s ears making it hard to remember who’s who, so that family tree was a godsend. But, I only found it when a a reading group friend mentioned its existence. The diagram’s small print was, though, very hard to read, and could not be enlarged like e-text can, so I hand-drew a family tree, photographed it, and shared it with my group. Then there were the many specifically Indian words that were not in the dictionary. They were in the glossary at the back, but it’s tedious flipping between glossary and text in an e-book environment, so I didn’t. How hard would it have been to hyper-link those words to the glossary?

“the very quicksands of family” (Suranjan)

Rant over, let’s talk about the book! The lives of others is set in West Bengal from 1966 to 1970, with two epilogues set much later, one in 1986 and the other in 2012. It centres on the aforementioned Ghoshes, a well-to-do family whose wealth comes from paper mills. By the time the novel opens, business is starting to fail, so there is tension in the air, exacerbating the rivalries, envies and secrecies which characterise the family’s relationships. That’s the personal, but this book is also political, because one of the characters, a grandson of the old couple, becomes a revolutionary with the Naxalites, a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (or, CPI-M). In 1967, they commenced radical action to redistribute land to landless farmers and labourers. The book’s chronology mirrors the early years of this movement.

Indeed, the book is chronologically structured, with each chapter labelled by date. The first thirteen of its nineteen chapters comprise two sections – a third person story about the family in the Calcutta house, and a first person epistolary story (presented in a different font – unless your e-book was on an iPad, but that’s another story) by Supratik, the revolutionary grandson who is in the countryside “where the real politics lay”. This first person story finishes in chapter 14, when Supratik returns to Calcutta. The effect of this structure is to parallel manipulative behaviour and power plays in the family with the societal/political power imbalances against which Supratik fights. Just before he leaves the family, Supratik says to his mother, Sandhya:

Are you happy with the inequalities of our family? Of the power-on-top-ruling-people-below kind of hierarchy? Do you think it’s right? Has the thought ever crossed your mind that the family is the primary unit of exploitation?

This structure is just one example of how carefully the book is crafted. There are also allusions – and I’m sure there are many that I didn’t get – to literary classics. Chapter 4’s opening line that “not all family bonds are equal” must surely allude to the opening of Anna Karenina, which is also both about family and land/farm reform. And there’s a scene reminiscent of Sense and sensibility. In it the Ghosh patriarch, Prafullanath, is done out of the inheritance his father wanted him to have by a half-brother, who is spurred on by his wife. This reminded me of Fanny Dashwood talking husband John out of properly helping his stepmother and half-sisters, despite his dying father asking him to do. One of the themes of Sense and sensibility is economic power and inequality, and how families can wield power.

“this unvarying calculus about the worth of one’s own kind measured against the lives of others ” (Supratik)

Mukherjee, however, takes these themes to another level. The lives of others is a powerful and often brutal book. The prologue, which tells of a murder-suicide enacted by a poor sharecropper after consistently receiving no help from his landlord for his starving family, establishes the two main themes – economic inequity, and the inhumane treatment of “others”. These themes are played out in the way various members of the family treat each other, their workers and those with whom they come into contact, and are paralleled in the farm politics which engage Supratik’s passion. While the themes can be simply stated, the story-telling is sophisticated. Complex links and parallels, together with concrete and abstract motifs, evocative images and targeted allusions underpin the novel’s layers to expose human capacity for cruelty, self-preservation and self-deception. In a devastating conclusion, Mukherjee shows what happens when idealism loses sight of the humanity it is trying to protect, when calculation over-rides empathy. He offers no answers, makes no judgements, but simply shows.

The result is tough, and sometimes very uncomfortable, reading, but what drove me on was Mukherjee’s language. It is truly delicious. The imagery is accessible, often referencing the very ordinary, but it is so fresh that it takes its mark perfectly, again and again:

… if you fail an exam, it decreases the chances of getting out of the system that will slowly crush you to a flat piece of cardboard

AND

Two things with the power to scrunch Prafullanath’s plans into a shapeless paper bag had not occurred to his myopic mind.

AND

His voice has the serrations of a knife in it.

Cardboard, paperbags and knives. All so mundane but, in Mukherjee’s hands, so on the money. Here’s one more, describing one of the daughters-in-law:

Haranguing the servants at last gave Purnima a point of convergence for all her diffuse days and energies to focus on, and she took to it like a spindly, undernourished sapling to rich loam.

Mukherjee’s ability to capture people and place with such vividness and clarity is impressive. It’s not a perfect book, being weighed down at times by detail that, interesting though it is, doesn’t always seem essential.

However, Mukherjee’s compassionate but unsentimental understanding of human nature, combined with his clear-eyed analysis of how the personal interacts with the political, reveal uncomfortable truths about our dealings with other, and make him, unlike Supratik, a more trustworthy “defence counsel for humanity”.

Neel Mukherjee
The lives of others
London: Chatto & Windus, 2014
ISBN (e-pub): 9781448192182

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aussie writers name their pick reads of 2015

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It’s the month of the lists, and so, while I’ll be saving my lists until the END of 2015, I thought today I’d share some of the lists that have already been published. I appreciate that there’s value in publishing these lists now, as they might just help people with their Christmas shopping (or with compiling their Santa lists for other people’s shopping!).

Because my Monday Musings series is about Australian literature, I’m only going to list the favourite Australian books chosen by Australian writers. Most of the books nominated were published in the last 12 months or so, but writers were allowed to choose the best of what they’d read during the year, so some have chosen older books.

So, here’s the list of books, in alphabetical order (with the nominating author/s in parentheses at the end):

  • ***Robert Adamson’s Net needle (poetry) (Luke Davies, Jennifer Maiden, Gig Ryan)
  • Debra Adelaide’s Letter to George Clooney (short stories) (Christos Tsiolkas)
  • Nigel Bartlett’s King of the road (crime novel) (Debra Adelaide)
  • Tony Birch’s Ghost river (novel) (Omar Musa) (reviewed 2016)
  • Stephanie Bishop’s The other side of the world (novel) Susan Johnson)
  • Frank Bongiorno’s The eighties (non-fiction) (Tom Keneally)
  • Margaret Bowman’s (comp. & ed.) Every hill got a story (history) (Alexis Wright)
  • James Bradley’s Clade (novel) (Luke Davies)
  • Tania Chandler’s Please don’t leave me (novel) Graeme Simsion)
  • **Tegan Bennett Daylight’s short story collection, Six bedrooms (Susan Johnson, Charlotte Wood) (reviewed later) (reviewed 2016)
  • Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the animals (novel) (Chris Wallace-Crabbe)
  • Peter Doyle’s The big whatever (crime novel) (Debra Adelaide)
  • **Ali Cobby Eckermann’s, Inside my mother (poetry) (Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden)
  • Delia Falconer’s The lost thoughts of soldiers (novel) (Luke Davies)
  • Michael Farrell’s Cocky’s joy (poetry) (Gig Ryan)
  • **Martin Flanagan’s The short long book (biography) (Anita Heiss, Favel Parrett)
  • Bill Garner’s Born in a tent (non-fiction) (Don Watson)
  • Lisa Gorton’s The life of houses (novel) (Chris Wallace-Crabbe)
  • Barbara Hanrahan’s The scent of eucalyptus (novel) (Peter Goldsworthy) (my review)
  • Lesley Harding and Kenneth Morgan’s Modern love (biography) (Steven Carroll)
  • Natalie Harkin’s Dirty words (poetry) (Anita Heiss)
  • **Martin Harrison’s Happiness (poetry) (Robert Adamson, Lisa Gorton)
  • Elizabeth Harrower’s A few days in the country and Other stories (short stories) (Joan London) (reviewed 2016)
  • Sonya Hartnett’s Golden boys (novel) (Robert Adamson) (reviewed 2016)
  • John Hawke’s Aurelia (poetry) (Gig Ryan)
  • Antonia Hayes’ Relativity (memoir) (Graeme Simsion)
  • Lisa Heidke’s The Callahan split (self-published novel) (Anita Heiss)
  • Marty Hiatt’s Hard-line (poetry) Gig Ryan)
  • **Sarah Holland-Batt’s The hazards (poetry) (Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Fiona Wright)
  • Chloe Hooper’s The tall man (non-fiction) (Abigail Ulman) (read before blogging)
  • Clive James’ Poetry notebook (essays) (Peter Goldsworthy)
  • Karen James’ On purpose: Why great leaders start with the PLOT (non-fiction) (Anita Heiss)
  • **Gail Jones’ A guide to Berlin (novel) (Debra Adelaide, Fiona Wright)
  • Mireilla Juchau’s The world without us (novel) (Fiona Wright)
  • **Leah Kaminsky’s The waiting room (novel) (Graeme Simsion, Clare Wright)
  • Krissy Kneen’s Eating my grandmother (poetry) (Kristina Olsson)
  • **Malcolm Knox’s The wonder lover (novel) (Christos Tsiolkas, Don Watson)
  • Lee Kofman’s The dangerous bride (Clare Wright)
  • **Ramona Koval’s Bloodhound (memoir) (Shane Maloney, Clare Wright)
  • Anna Krien’s Night games (non-fiction) (Abigail Ulman) (my review)
  • Chip Le Grand’s The straight dope (non-fiction) (Steven Carroll)
  • Joan London’s The golden age (novel) (Don Watson)
  • Alan Loney’s Crankhandle (poetry) (Gig Ryan)
  • Tim Low’s Where song began (non-fiction) (Don Watson)
  • Helen Macrae’s Dinner with the devil (history) (Favel Parrett)
  • Jennifer Maiden’s The fox petition (poetry) (Fiona Wright)
  • Chris Mansell’s avian triptych, Aves (poetry) (Jennifer Maiden)
  • Drusilla Modjeska’s Second half first (memoir) (Joan London)
  • Gerald Murnane’s Something for the pain (memoir – and on my actual TBR) (Gregory Day) (reviewed 2016)
  • Les Murray’s On bunyah (poetry) (Peter Goldsworthy)
  • **Pi O’s Fitzroy: The biography (poetry) (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Gig Ryan)
  • Kerry O’Brien’s Keating (biography) (Tom Keneally)
  • Anthony Reid’s Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680 (non-fiction) (Omar Musa)
  • Michael Robotham’s Life or death (crime novel) (Shane Maloney)
  • Margaret Simons’ Six square metres (gardening, with reflections) (Helen Garner)
  • Rebecca Starford’s Bad behaviour (memoir) (Abigail Ulman)
  • TGH Strehlow’s Journey to Horseshoe Bend (memoir) (Lisa Gorton)
  • **Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning (memoir) (Graeme Simsion, Christos Tsiolkas)
  • **John Tranter’s Heart starter (poetry collection) (Jennifer Maiden, Gig Ryan)
  • Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and light (fiction/short stories) (Omar Musa) (my review)
  • Abigail Ulman’s Hot little hands (short stories) (Omar Musa)
  • Ann Vickery’s The complete pocketbook of swoon (poetry) (Gig Ryan)
  • Susan Whelan’s Don’t think about purple elephants (children’s) (Anita Heiss)
  • Petra White’s A hunger (poetry) (Chris Wallace-Crabbe)
  • Anne Whitehead’s Betsy and the emperor (history) (Tom Keneally)
  • Jessica L Wilkinson’s Suite for Percy Grainger (poetry) (Jennifer Maiden)
  • WoodNatural*****Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things (novel) (James Bradley, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Susan Johnson, Kristina Olsson, Fiona Wright) (reviewed 2016)
  • Fiona Wright’s Small acts of disappearance (essays) (Luke Davies) (reviewed 2016)
  • Beth Yahp’s Eat first, talk later (memoir) (Drusilla Modjeska)
  • Ouyang Yu’s Fainting with freedom (poetry) (Alex Miller)

There are some surprises for me here, that is, some books and/or writers I’ve never heard of, such as Abigail Ulman, not to mention some of the poets. I was also surprised – or, perhaps just interested – in the variety of books chosen, that not only is there fiction and poetry, but also quite a diverse selection of non-fiction. I had never heard of Anne Whitehead, for example, until I did some research on the New Australia movement in Paraguay, during which I discovered that she’d written a book about Mary Gilmore, and now, here’s Tom Keneally nominating a recent book of hers. Hmmm … poor TBR.

Unless I’ve made a mistake, a few Australian writers didn’t choose any Aussie books – Geraldine Brooks, Jessie Cole (though she did mention several Australian literary journals), Malcolm Knox, Tim Flannery, and Michael Robotham. I’m naming them to shame them! Well, not really, but still … I do hope they read their peer Aussie writers.

On the other hand, there’s Alex Miller who only chose ONE book, and that was Chinese-born Australian writer Ouyang Yu’s poetry collection, Fainting with freedom. Miller describes it as “some of the finest poetry ever written this century”. No beating about the bush there, no feet in multiple camps as I’ll do with my list – when I get to it! I love such bravery!

Finally, it’s very clear I need to read Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things.

And now, over to you: Do you read top pick lists in your neck of the woods (no pun intended!)? And if so, have you been surprised, delighted, or perhaps, shocked?

________________________________________________________________

Source: Panorama section, The Canberra Times, 12/12/2015

* Asterisks denote those books nominated more than once – the number of asterisks identify the number of nominations.

The Griffyns experiment with Utopia

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In a recent Monday Musings, I referred to the fact that the Griffyn Ensemble’s last concert for 2015 would be about the New Australia Movement’s Utopia experiment in Paraguay. That concert took place this last weekend, and what a concert it was. The Griffyns – yes, I’m a fan – just keep getting better. Well, actually, they’ve always been good musicians, but the concerts are becoming tighter, more coherent perhaps, while still retaining the freshness, inventiveness and intimacy that we members so enjoy about them.

Mary Gilmore, 1927 (Public Domain, at State Library of QLD, via Wikipedia)

Mary Gilmore, 1927 (Public Domain, at State Library of QLD, via Wikipedia)

The Griffyns do like to move around town, so this concert was held in the foyer of the National Portrait Gallery. Not surprisingly, there were a couple of portraits of Dame Mary Gilmore on the wall behind the performers. The venue worked nicely (even though we do like the Belconnen Arts Centre’s friendly little bar!) The acoustics – to my ears – were excellent, and the natural, early evening light coming in through the big windows was just delightful.

But now, the music, which, appropriately, all came from Australian and South American composers. At the start, musical director Michael Sollis announced a change in the program, swapping the third piece, Gerardo Dirié’s Ti xiuhtototl, with the fifth piece, Eric Gross’s Rondino Pastorale. I wondered why – and whether it might become evident as the concert went on. It did, because Gross’s work and the piece preceding it, George Dreyfus’ Mary Gilmore goes to Paraguay, are lyrical, pastoral pieces evoking idyllic scenes appropriate to the ideals of the new Utopia. By contrast, Gerardo Dirié’s piece is more plaintive, sombre, even a little discordant. In terms of the story being told, it fit better towards the end of the concert as the Utopian dream is starting to fail. The story, in other words, was conveyed musically as well as through words spoken and sung by Susan Ellis who, with a twinkle in her eye, played an older Dame Mary Gilmore looking back on her Paraguayan experience.

The program was, at roughly one-hour, shorter than many Griffyn programs, but it ran without a break, transitioning seamlessly from piece to piece. The concert opened with Sollis speaking a promo for New Australia – “Start your life afresh”, he exhorted. This was followed by Laura Tanata on harp and Chris Stone on violin playing Nigel Westlake’s Beneath the midnight sun. It was beautiful, with Tanata’s gentle, lyrical harp offset by the more plaintive violin, suggesting to me a little uncertainty (for the new colony, I mean, not the musicians. Their playing was mesmerising, and set a high standard, which was fortunately maintained).

Ellis then took up the story from Gilmore’s point of view, and we heard the ensemble play Dreyfus’ accessible, melodic piece which, with its hints at times of a rousing, western movie theme, conveyed the excitement and enthusiasm of pioneers. I loved Kiri Sollis’ flute and Stone’s violin here. It’s a crowd-pleasing sort of piece, and was played with a verve which carried us all along. Gross’s piece continued this positive tone, while Ellis, as Gilmore, told us nostalgically that “I wish I was back in Cosme” (Cosme being the name of Lane’s second settlement in Paraguay).

This was followed by the central piece of the concert, Vincent Plush’s “The Paraguay songs” from The plaint of Mary Gilmore. It’s a rather tricky piece requiring Ellis to sing words from Gilmore’s letters. Yes, you’ve read correctly, from letters – that is, not from verse, but from prose. I sat up. Good prose, of course, does have rhythm, but these were letters, not crafted fiction. Here are a few lines from the program:

Communism as we have it is alright, Harry*, and we are getting on — slowly, of course, but in a year or two what is now is, will have gone, so beautiful, so rich in bird-life, and plants. And the history! And the story of the war. If you were only here Henry.

See what I mean? It takes some singer and composer to make that work. I was impressed by how well and expressively Ellis, not to mention the full ensemble, rose to the challenge.

The aforementioned rather sombre Dirié work followed this, and was performed, with a melancholic soulfulness, by the four female Griffyns who sang some lovely harmony, in addition to playing their instruments. Really moving. This was preceded by Gilmore telling us about some of the troubles in the colony, and was followed by another sombre-sounding piece, The freedom of silence by Alcides Lanza.

The concert concluded with Gilmore expressing sadness that Cosme did not turn out to be what she expected. She left in 1900, five years after she arrived, because of the pettiness and squabbles. Nonetheless, she never regretted the experience, arguing that while it was not a success, neither was it a complete failure:

… we failed the harshly scornful say … [but] we sowed a seed.

Villa-Lobos’s wistfully sad Song of the black swan (with hints, if my ears didn’t mistake me, of Swan Lake), played by Tanata and Downes, concluded what was a satisfying, well-performed and nicely conceived concert. Roll on 2016 I say … if you are in Canberra, and would like to know more (and even buy tickets), check out their website.

You can hear different versions of two of the pieces online:

Griffyn Ensemble: Michael Sollis (Musical Director and Mandolin), Susan Ellis (Soprano), Kiri Sollis (Flutes), Chris Stone (Violin), Laura Tanata (Harp) and Holly Downes (Double Bass).

* Henry Lawson