Australian literature

John Clanchy, Sisters (#BookReview)

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John Clanchy, SistersLocal writer John Clanchy has appeared a couple of times in this blog – as the author of the short story collection, Six: New tales (my review), and as the person launching Stephanie Buckle’s collection, Habits of silence (my review) – but never for one of his novels, until now. Sisters has an interesting history: it was originally drafted at the La Muse writers retreat in southern France in 2008, and has now been published by the retreat publisher, La Muse Books.

Given I introduced the versatile, and too little known, Clanchy in my review of Six, I’ll turn straight to discussing this latest novel of his. Briefly, Sisters tells the story of three late middle-aged sisters and the month they spend together at the family home on the north-central coast of New South Wales where the eldest, Sarah, now lives. The other two sisters, Grace and Rose, are twins. There is a mystery about why Sarah has asked them to come, though Grace is pretty sure she knows why, and we readers are pretty sure we know what it is that Grace believes she knows! It is, however, a little more complex than that – as you would expect. So, the first thing to say is that there is a plot.

The next thing to say is the obvious one – this is a book about sisters. There are, in fact, very few men, and I wondered how Clanchy had managed to capture women so well, because the book succeeds or fails on the basis of his ability to convince us with his women. Well, I had forgotten his dedication, which is “To my sisters Mary, Helen, and Elizabeth / and to Brigid, as ever”. (Brigid is his partner, I believe). I don’t know whether he has brothers too, but clearly he has spent a lot a lot of time with women. No wonder he writes them so well – and with such sensitivity.

So, pretty quickly their individual characters are established. Sarah, as the oldest, is the bossy planner who expects to control their time together. Indeed, she’s orchestrated this month because she has “thinks to discuss … things … to tell.” Grace, the older twin by 49 minutes (!), is widowed and has had breast cancer. She’s a counselor and is seen as the empathetic, reliable one. Rose, by contrast, has had a few husbands and even now is pining for her latest lover back in the city. She can be flighty and a bit oblivious, but can surprise Grace with her perception nonetheless. Clanchy captures the shifting alignments and allegiances between the three beautifully – Sarah’s separation from the twins, Sarah and Grace’s protectiveness towards Rose, Rose and Grace’s natural connection, and so on.

Gradually, Clanchy develops his plot, interweaving the sisters’ time together with stories of their childhood. While they were relatively happy, their growing up was not without drama, recalling Tolstoy’s famous opening to Anna Karenina. Their disabled four-year-old brother drowned in a cave at the beach while under their care, and their father left home for France to live with his mistress. How and why all this happened, what they made of these events as young people and now as adults, and who knew and knows what, underpins the plot. Mystery and secrecy rule. The end, when it comes, is fairly predictable, but then this is not unusual in a well-constructed story. It’s the journey to that point, and the little details in the telling, that make most books worth reading. Here, it’s also the warmth and generosity in the tone that make it such an engaging read – particularly if you are of a certain age!

Of course, Sisters is about more than its plot of unfolding secrets – and the epigraph provides a clue. It comes from TS Eliot’s Four quartets: “We are born with the dead: / See, they return, and bring us with them.” Besides the fact that an old death drives the plot, there is the bigger issue of mortality. The sisters are in their mid-to-late sixties, and one has already had cancer. Rose believes, in fact, that Sarah wants them there to talk about wills. She doesn’t, but mortality is behind her request for them to come – and awareness of mortality imbues much of the sisters’ thoughts and communications over the month. Early on, in Chapter 3, Sarah shows them the work she’s done to restore their (appropriately named) Grandfather Forrest’s orchard:

‘I had to rip the old one out,’ Sarah said without turning her head. ‘It was done for. Over sixty – and over the hill,’ she added. Reminding each of them of a personal fact.

Supporting the plot and theme is Clanchy’s writing. It flows easily from description to dialogue and its various, sometimes funny, set scenes, all supported by evocative turns of phrase. Here’s lively Rose “within whose house of memory window after window was now flying open of its own accord”. And this is thoughtful Grace:

The past was another kind of train journey. One undertaken with only random glimpses of the landscape outside to anchor or trouble the memory …

Memory is, of course, part of the picture – what we remember, how we remember, when we remember, and who remembers what.

There are a few other characters who make brief appearances – those from the past via the sisters’ memories and two policemen, particularly the young, uncomfortable Constable Demko who first visits the sisters to check on neighbours’ reports of nightly activity in the orchard, “Music, people running about, loud voices, laughter …”. It is, of course, the sisters enjoying their summer evenings, “the original Bacchantes” as Sarah tells him.

And here I’ll leave it. Sisters is a gentle, thoughtful novel – sad, but realistically wise. It’s about life and death, regrets and missed opportunities, secrets and guilt, and most of all about love and forgiveness. On the surface, it seems simple – it’s certainly an easy read and it could feel clichéd with its family-secrets-driven plot – but in fact it’s a philosophical book from an older writer reflecting on how we make sense of our lives. His conclusion, I’d say, is that the answer is in the quality of the relationships we forge, and the generosity with which we maintain them. This is the stuff of life.

John Clanchy
Sisters
Labastide Esparbairenque: La Muse Books, 2017
259pp.
ISBN: 9791097233006 (eBook)

(Review copy courtesy La Muse Books)

Monday musings on Australian literature: #8wordstory

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Do you like writing challenges?

Last year I started a Monday Musings sub-series on Australia’s state writers centres. So far I’ve written on four, and I should be getting on with it. However, I can’t resist returning, today, to the Queensland Writers’ Centre (previous post) to share a wonderful campaign they ran late last year. Called #8wordstory, it asked participants to pen a story in 8 words. The response was astonishing.

#8wordstory ran, officially, from 30 October to 26 November last year, and, as they say on their About page, involved asking “everyone, young or old, writer and non-writer alike, to share a story …”. The project was a partnership with three companies, but most significantly with goa.com, a large Queensland billboard and signage company, who have a Community Partnership Program. Are you getting the picture? Because what happened was that each week 20 8-word-stories were selected by the judge – author Nick Earls – and displayed on digital billboards around Brisbane, and via QWC’s social media, such as Twitter (which is where I discovered it, and add it to my list of ideas for Monday Musings.)

In a Books + Publishing report on 27 November – the day after the campaign ended – the QWC is quoted as saying that it “surpassed all expectations with over 10,000 entries submitted”. This report goes on to say that the entrants included “the entrants were New York Times bestselling authors, Australian award-winning writers, Australian and international publishing houses, the Queensland Police Service and hundreds of school children.” Wow, eh?

So, why 8 words? QWC explains this on the above-mentioned About page. They say that “a billboard gives you a few seconds to read, register, and understand. And 8 words gives you just enough canvas to make an impact. It is the perfect number where storytelling and advertising meet.” They provided Tips for people to help them get started, tips which look generally useful as well as to the goal of writing a story in 8 words. The tips are (and they are further elaborated on their page):

  • Start with a simple idea: this and the next tip, in particular, make me think of haiku
  • One thing should happen
  • Don’t use too many characters: haha, sounds sensible to me, otherwise your story might be all people and no action.
  • Find an emotional tone
  • Use all your senses
  • Write long first, then take out unnecessary words: sounds like my blog post writing! Except I don’t take out enough words, I know.
  • Punctuate or perish: all I can say to this is Yes, Yes, Yes!
  • Make every word count: well, yes.

They also had a special page of advice and resources for schools.

And, of course, they have a page listing ALL the stories, though when I say page, I actually mean 83 of them, presented in reverse order of submission. The stories apparently had to be written to one of four themes – Home, Love, Change, Play. There is a search box at the bottom of each story page, though it doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to.

I’m not sure about copyright, but I’ll share just a few assuming that it’s OK as long as I don’t share them all!

Surrounded by complete idiots. Damn those mirrored walls. (Donny Hawthorne, Change)

I woke with wings, stolen in a dream. (Isobelle Carmody, Change)

Once upon a time there was the earth … (@julescdr, Home)

Holding her fractured cheek she said “I’m sorry”. (Rebecca Hafner, Home)

In the pages, another world is my home. (JWilliams, Home)

You shouldn’t confuse ‘Don’t! Stop!’ with ‘Don’t stop’. (Lynne Lumsden Green, Love)

Your letters in the compost. The roses blooming. (Nike Sulway, Love)

He complimented her smile and then erased it. (jessicalim, Love)

Words can inspire and words can destroy. Choose. (Byron, 12, Love)

Can we all fit in the band wagon? (Jane Meehan, Play)

All seven numbers! Panicked, she swallowed the form. (@KrissyKneen, Play)

With confidence he plays the cards he’s dealt. (@VacenTaylor, Play)

Some are by published authors known to me – Isobelle Carmody, Nike Sulway and Krissy Kneen  – but the others I chose because they attracted my attention in my random browse and offer some variety in terms of tone and intent.

Author Jessica White (whose Entitlement I’ve reviewed here) blogged about her #8wordstory, which was selected for a billboard. Check it out to see the inspiration and how it looked. And Queensland crime author, MT Ellis, also blogged her billboarded story.

If you’d like to make your comment an 8wordstory, I’d love it. But if, like me, you suffer from verbal diarrhoea, don’t let that stop you commenting. I’d love to hear your thoughts regardless …

Claire G. Coleman, Terra nullius (#BookReview)

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Claire G Coleman, Terra nulliusClaire G. Coleman’s debut novel, Terra nullius, was my reading group’s third book for this year. The first two – An unnecessary woman (my review) and The sympathizer (my review) were well liked – but not so Coleman’s book. In fact that I was the only one who liked it. So, instead of my usual review, I’ve decided to tease out some of the issues my group had with the book, and see where I end up. I didn’t take notes at the meeting, so I’m relying on my memory. I may not have got all the issues down, or down correctly, but I’ll give it my best shot. In doing so, I’ll also draw on GoodReads because its users tend to be general readers, like you finding reading groups.

First though, a brief introduction for those who don’t know the book. Terra nullius starts off reading like an historical fiction novel about the colonial settlement of Australia and the concurrent dispossession of our indigenous people. Coleman’s world of Settlers and Natives, of Troopers and Trackers, of Missions to which stolen children are taken for education, of a Department for the Protection of Natives, and so on, mimics colonial Western Australia in particular, but it’s not long before hints start to appear that all is not as we’ve assumed. Before halfway, all is revealed, and we realise we are not reading historical fiction, but speculative fiction set in some near future. It is, as a result, not about indigenous Australians versus white colonists, but about colonised people of all races versus settler-colonists (“grey fellas”) from somewhere else. This realisation is unsettling, and clever, because it forces non-indigenous readers to switch identification from the colonisers to the colonised.

Now to my reading group’s response. The over-riding criticism was that it was repetitive and tedious. This is the criticism I could most understand, because partway through the novel’s second half I felt the momentum flag a little, which I put down to the structure. It’s multi-stranded, with the stories of different people or groups running parallel for a significant portion of the book. The strands include Native Jacky who is on the run; Settler Sister Bagra who runs a Mission; Settler Sergeant Rohan who leads the posse which is hunting Jacky; Esperance and her camp of free, renegade Natives; and deserter-Settler Johnny Star who is taken in by some rebel Natives. Fortunately, just as I wondered whether the separate groups – the separate strands – were ever going to come together, two things happened. A new character, Father Grark, appeared, and the strands did start to coalesce. These, along with other factors including the writing itself, were enough to prevent the book’s becoming tedious for me.

However, my reading group friends weren’t alone in their criticism. One GoodReads reviewer described it as “gratingly repetitive” and another overall positive reviewer had “some minor quibbles”, of which the main one was that “some elements of the story were repetitive”.

Another criticism made by some of my group was that they weren’t interested in any of the characters. Some GoodReads reviewers concurred. One didn’t “connect with any of the characters” and another said that “the characters, the individuals, are basic, with no complex motivations, no desires”. This surprised me, because I was interested in several of the characters, and I looked forward to their next appearance. One was Esperance, the young woman living with that renegade camp of Natives. Another was Jacky, who is the first character we meet and who, for over half the novel, struggles on alone, trying to survive and keep one step ahead of his pursuers. There are, though, a lot of characters, and I can see the argument that many of them have “no complex motivations”. However, I’m not sure that deep characterisation is always essential for speculative, dystopian fiction, such as this book is. Anyhow, regardless of this point, I can’t accept the argument that none have desires. Esperance and Jacky, for example, certainly have desires. Survival is one, and for Jacky, returning to his home, his country, is a major driving force.

One of the positive GoodReads writers said, and it reflects my response, that “importantly, Coleman’s more ‘extreme’ characters – such as Sister Bagra, in charge of a Native ‘orphanage’ – are frighteningly familiar, and it [is] these elements of the story that will linger.” She is not, in other words, a particularly complex character, but given what I know of colonial history, she is believable. I’d argue that that’s sufficient.

Then there were arguments that the book was too heavy-handed, too obvious, not nuanced enough. Again, there were GoodReads reviewers who agreed, one saying the “messaging was much too overt” and another that it could have been more subtle. However, I’m not sure that I’ve read much dystopian fiction that is subtle. On GoodReads I found a perfect example of how differently we “read” books. One criticised the chapter epigraphs, which come from various fictional “sources”, saying that “the book could have been done much more subtly without the chapter-starters explicitly comparing the colonisation to the colonisation of Australia”, while another said that Coleman’s “use of ‘archival documents’ at the beginning of each chapter gave the book rich perspective.” Again, I concur with the latter, and some in my group agreed that this feature of Coleman’s book was effective and worth exploring further.

It seems that those who are well-versed in speculative fiction’s colonisation stories – in my reading group and on GoodReads – felt that Coleman’s book didn’t offer anything new. A member in my group felt that it was so clearly Western Australia’s story that Coleman may as well have made it Western Australia. I agree that the “facts” aligned closely with the Western Australian experience, but I didn’t see that spoiling its speculative layer. In a way, it increased its effectiveness because, using the GoodReads quote above, it felt “frighteningly familiar”. There is an argument to be had, I suppose, about how “familiar” speculative fiction can be before it’s no longer speculative, but for me it worked.

Other concerns were raised in my group, but there were positives too, particularly regarding the quality of Coleman’s descriptive writing. She knows the landscape well and captures the heat and light, not to mention the weirdness of Australian desert vegetation beautifully:

He [Sergeant Rohan] did not relish another night under the alien trees, the twisted limbs, the hanging bark, the wrong colour: their waxy grey-green leaves too hard, almost glassy.

There’s more to like about the writing than this, however. From the first page when we meet Jacky on the run, I loved Coleman’s voice. It’s direct but evocative, it’s serious but peppered with a light, cheeky touch that uses throwaway lines and afterthoughts to great effect:

Dinner was a disappointment: sure the meat was fresh but it was tough and tasted like all the other Native meats – quite unappetising, only to be relished by the desperate. Good thing they were desperate then.

So, I was impressed by this book. My heart engaged with the characters who were struggling to survive their nightmarish world, while my mind was intrigued by what Coleman was doing, by her layering of historical experience within an imaginative framework, by her grounding us in a familiar story, and then overturning it to force us to see it from a different perspective. I’m not sure I followed all her intellectual twists and turns but I certainly got the point about invasion – and about the cruelty people inflict on each other in its name.

He [Johnny Star] had learned, through his friends, that the bent, broken drugged and drunk state of those surviving near the Settlements was not the habitual state of Natives. The truth was, it was a sort of depression brought on by what they had lost, brought on by being dominated and controlled by another people. Who could not be depressed, being treated like animals in a land that had once been theirs alone.

Without giving away the details, the ending is generally what you’d expect from a dystopian scenario, but it’s not without hope, without defiance too. A great read … at least, I thought so!

Lisa (Anzlitlovers) loved the book, as did Bill (The Australian Legend).

Note: I haven’t cited the individual GoodReads reviewers, but they can be found at the site’s page for the book.

AWW Badge 2018Claire G. Coleman
Terra nullius
Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2017
294pp.
ISBN: 9780733638312

Monday musings on Australian literature: Novels retelling other literary works

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Mirandi Riwoe, The fish girlThose who read my blog regularly will guess what inspired this post – Mirandi Riwoe’s The fish girl (my review), which is her response to W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “The four fat Dutchmen” (my review). It got me thinking about how many other Australian novelists have done this sort of thing …

However, when you start researching this topic, my what a rabbit-hole you find! Firstly, what do you search under? Do you use words like “tribute” or “homage”. Well, no, because I wasn’t necessarily seeking novels which celebrate the original in that positive sense. Other search terms I tried were “responding to” (but even though I entered “novels responding to novels”, I mostly got hits about how readers respond to literature), “retelling”, “reworking”, and “riffing”. All these retrieved a variety of hits that contributed something, although when I added the term “Australian” into the mix, the results petered out somewhat. I also scouted around Wikipedia thinking surely there was something there to help me. I found various “list” pages, such as List of modernized adaptations of old literature and List of books based on works, but these were limited in their value, partly because they weren’t very comprehensive. However, during my Wikipedia travels, I did find a new term which is pretty perfect, I think, Parallel novels. One of the sources given for this article was from the West Milford Township Library, which defines the parallel novel:

A parallel novel owes its basic structure to a work by a different author. It can borrow a character and fill in his story, mirror an “old” plot or blend the characters of one book with those of another.

There is also, of course, the term “fan-fiction” but it’s somewhat tangential to what I was looking for – and is, to my mind, a separate group, albeit with some overlapping.

So, what was I looking for? Something more one-off, like, say, Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip (Great expectations), Jane Smiley’s One thousand acres (King Lear), Jean Rhys’ The wide Sargasso Sea (Jane Eyre), or Margaret Atwood’s The penelopiad (Homer’s Odyssey) (my review), all of which I’ve read and enjoyed. In other words, I wasn’t looking for novelists who had jumped on the bandwagon of a famous name (like Jane Austen, for example) or who wanted to continue a story they loved just because they loved the story or its characters. No, I was looking for novelists who wanted to explore a story from a different angle, often with some political or philosophical intent, though not necessarily so. There is, of course, a fine line in all this, and I certainly don’t want to offend authors who engage in the more popular style of “retellings”. After all, they’ve written a novel, which is more than I’ve done!

A few Australian parallel novels

I have read all the (few) books I list below, but some before blogging. If there’s a link on the book title, it’s to my review.

Geraldine Brooks’ March (Louisa May Alcott’s Little women): Brooks answers the question of what was the sisters’ father, Mr March, doing while he was away from home at the Civil War? It enabled Brooks, who is married to Civil War tragic Horowitz, to look at the Civil War from the point of view of an idealistic minister. He confronts the cruelty of war, not to mention his own failings, and learns that there are no simple answers to the rights and wrongs of war.

Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (Charles Dickens’ Great expectations): As Brooks does in March, Carey fills in the story of a largely absent character in the original, the convict Magwitch. By having him return from the penal colony as a successful man, Carey forces readers to question issues like class, success and the power of money.

David Malouf Ransom

UK edition cover

David Malouf’s Ransom (section of the Iliad Books 22-24): Now, I have to admit that while I loved this book because Malouf writes so beautifully and so compassionately, I did wonder a little why he decided to write it. This is because, unlike the previous two books I’ve listed, he does not, as far as I can tell, retell the story in any major way, though he does flesh it out more, and in so doing, I suppose, he gives it a new slant. He also introduces a new character, Somax the cart driver, who provides an opportunity for Malouf to further develop Priam’s character. In the end, I decided that the book is about daring to dream – regardless of whether you are successful or not – and about the power (importance) of stories.

Mirandi Riwoe’s The fish girl (W. Somerset Maugham’s “The four fat Dutchmen”): As I wrote in my very recent review, Riwoe tells the story of the Maugham’s nameless, mistreated Malay girl, from the girl’s perspective. Although Riwoe tells her story third person – as against Maugham’s observational first person narrator – she gets into Mina’s head and creates in her a lively, resilient but ultimately naive and, more importantly, powerless young woman who is no match for the men who control the colonial and traditional worlds in which she lives.

Roslyn Russell, Maria Returns Barbados to Mansfield ParkRoslyn Russell’s Maria returns: Barbados to Mansfield Park (Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park): Russell’s book falls to some degree in the fan-fiction category, but it also works as parallel literature because it picks up the story of the disgraced Maria Bertram and imagines what might have happened to her. Could she redeem herself? Russell uses Maria as an excuse to explore the slavery issue, which is tantalisingly referred to in Mansfield Park but not explored. It’s a point of ongoing (some might say endless) fascination for readers and critics of this intriguing Austen novel!

There is a question germane to all this, which is whether you need to have read the original before you read the retelling. I’d argue that the work must stand on its own, as I think the above novels do. Knowing the original should surely enhance the read – besides that little fillip of pride when you recognise an allusion! – but it shouldn’t make the read.

What do you think? And, while we’re at it, are you interested in parallel novels? If you are, I’d love to hear your favourites.

Mirandi Riwoe, The fish girl (#BookReview)

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Mirandi Riwoe, The fish girlMirandi Riwoe was joint-winner of the 2017 Seizure Viva La Novella prize with her book, The fish girl – and it has now been shortlisted for this year’s Stella Prize. As you may already know, it was inspired by Somerset Maugham’s short story “The four Dutchmen”, which I reviewed a few days ago. Indeed, Maugham’s story provides the epigraphs to each of the novella’s three parts. Do you then need to have read Maugham’s story to appreciate Riwoe’s take? I’d say not – and would hate that assumption to put people off reading her book. Nonetheless, I’m glad I read Maugham’s work. How’s that for a foot in both camps?

To recap briefly, “The four Dutchmen” tells of four fat, jolly Dutchmen who work together on a boat plying the southeast Asian seas. Immensely loyal to each other, they plan to all retire when the first of them dies. The only blot on their togetherness is the captain’s penchant for Malay girls. However, the chief officer usually cleans up after him – paying off the girls, in other words, when the captain tires of them – until the day the captain decides to bring one of these girls along on a boat trip. Tragedy ensues.

Now, Maugham’s story is told first person by an observer-narrator, a traveller in the region, rather than one who’s involved in the events. The story has a matter-of-fact tone. Not so Riwoe’s story, which, although told first person, gets into the girl’s heart. Unlike Maugham, Riwoe gives her a name, Mina, and from the start, we realise that Mina’s fate is tied to men. Hers is a world controlled by men – regardless of whether that world is her village or the Dutch Resident’s house.

I should, perhaps, clarify some terminology at this point. Maugham uses the terms “Javanese” and “Malay girl” in his story. These days, we differentiate Javanese, who come from Java which is part of Indonesia, from Malaysians, who come from Malaysia, which neighbours Indonesia. However, in Maugham’s time, Malay was used for Austronesian people, which include today’s Malaysians and Indonesians, amongst others. Mina, Riwoe’s version of Maugham’s Malay girl, is from a Sunda village in this region.

Riwoe tells her story in three acts, each preceded by epigraphs from Maugham’s story. In the first part, Mina is offered by her father to a man who comes searching for “cheap labour for the Dutch Resident’s kitchen.” The barely pubescent Mina doesn’t want to go, has never left home before, but for her parents, her father in particular, there is hope that she will be able to send them things they “need, like more spice and tobacco.” Mina is scared, but we also get an intimation of resilience when we’re told of the “tremor of excitement finally mingling with the dread in her stomach.” Maybe it will work out alright we hope.

By the end of part 1, she has arrived at the Dutch Resident’s place where she works in the kitchen to the unsympathetic, unkind head cook Ibu Tana. She seems to be a favourite of the Dutch Resident who treats her kindly, and requests her to serve table in his house. Is he grooming her? Or is he decent? We fear the answer.

Part 2 introduces the four Dutchmen who dine with the Dutch Resident, and, in particular to the captain – the man described in the epigraph from Maugham as “losing his head over one brazen hussy or another”. That should warn us, though in this part he seems gentle. He wants her to teach him her language. In return he teaches her his, and gives her gifts. Hmm … our antennae are up. Meanwhile, Mina has fallen for Ajat, her village chief’s son who does some work for the Dutch Resident. Her sexuality is awakening, but Ajat treats her cruelly. Part 3 commences with her arrival on the boat with the captain, after which the story plays out pretty much as Maugham tells in his short story.

What Riwoe does in this story – her post-colonial response to Maugham’s – is to look at it from the angle of the colonised, and particularly colonised young women. What she shows is that young women are not only pawns in the hands of colonial powers but also in the hands of their own men (in this case her father who trades her for potential material gain, and the chief’s son who tricks her and uses her ill).

This may all sound same-same, as in “I’ve heard all this before”, and at a simple level that’s so. However, what makes The fish girl such a good read is the character Riwoe gives Mina. She’s young and naive, but she’s not a type. She has dreams and at least an attempt at having agency. Here she is, as she’s about to be taken to the boat by the Captain:

Kanjeng Ratu Kidal (Ocean Queen): By Gunawan Kartapranata (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0]


Mina leans against a tree, rolls her head gently against the prickly bark. She takes a deep breath. She will need to be very strong. She will need to be like one of the dhalang’s wayang puppets, as hard as lacquer, enduring.

Also, Riwoe adds a mythical element through Mina’s love of the sea, and her belief in the Ocean Queen. The sea is presented as a curative force – both physically (for her rash, presumably eczema) and spiritually.

She calls for the Ocean Queen. Only when she feels Nayai Loro’s strong, smooth pull, feels the soft arms suckle at her damaged thighs, does Mina scatter the flowers upon the sparkling water.

Finally, although this is short, Riwoe unfolds the story slowly, developing Mina’s character and allowing us to hope that Mina will endure. But that, of course, would be a fairy tale and, despite its heartening mystical conclusion for Mina, this is definitely not that. An engaging but powerful read.

AWW Badge 2018Mirandi Riwoe
The fish girl
Sydney: Xoum, 2017
97pp.
ISBN: 9781925589061

Monday musings on Australian literature: Some Australian adventurers (1)

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Hands up who likes to travel? And keep your hands up if you like to read travel writing! This post is especially for you. I’ve numbered it (1), because I’m drawing primarily from a book, which I think could warrant a few posts.

Edith Moodie Heddle ed., Some Australian adventurers

1957 edition

The book I’m using is another of those that I retrieved from my aunt’s house when Mr Gums and I were clearing. The book is titled, yes, Some Australian adventurers, and was edited by someone called Enid Moodie Heddle, so let’s start with her. Wikipedia says she was an “Australian poet and writer for children”, but she did more than that. Wikipedia says that she joined Longmans publishing house in 1935 where she worked as an educational adviser until 1946, at which time she was appointed Education Manager. In this job, to 1960, she “oversaw the publication of textbooks for schools and universities.” Some Australian adventurers was published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1944.

Heddle wrote the brief introduction to Some Australian adventurers. She says its aim is “to catch something of the spirit of adventure and joy in discovery which seem to us to be not only characteristic of the majority of the writers here represented, but also of Australians as a race”. Hmm … Australians are known to like travelling, but is it a racial characteristic? She goes on to say that

Wide Brown Land sculpture

Wide Brown Land (National Arboretum)

From our British ancestry we have inherited qualities which, no doubt, make us turn eagerly to far horizons, and even our own wide brown land* is not enough for most of us. Like the writers of these extracts, we would walk “the wind-wide ways”* of the world and see strange sights and meet strange people, from the Northern Lights to Antarctic snows. If this is impossible for us, the next best thing is to read of action by others. Here, then, are some accounts of real and imaginary adventures from the legendary wanderings of the aboriginal, at home in the land of the Southern Cross long before the white man came, to modern tales of land, sea and air.

The first thing to say is that these sentiments are very much of their time, so I’m not going to comment on ideas like the “qualities” Aussies “inherited” from “our British ancestry”. As readers, though, we would still agree with the idea that if you can’t travel “the next best thing” is to read other people’s travel writing. And, it is interesting, given the era, that she references Indigenous Australian stories, about which more below.

The last thing I’ll share from her introduction is her discussion of her chosen extracts, from which she says

we may learn, if we wish, something of what goes to build up tradition, of what makes for riches in experience, of what stuff is life.

I love this language, and her aspirations for the book. She emphasises that it comprises fragments from larger wholes, and is thus a “prelude to adventure”. To help further adventuring, she provides bibliographical details for the works excerpted, plus additional reading suggestions.

The book is then divided into thematic sections:

  • In the land of Mirrabooka: from K. Langloh Parker
  • The white intruders: from Eleanor Dark, Elizabeth Bussell, William Hatfield, Ion L. Idriess
  • Animals and men: from Frank Dalby Davison, Vance Palmer, Hedley Herbert Finalyson
  • Further afield: from Jack Gordon Hides, Sir Douglas Mawson, Sir George Hubert Wilkins, C.E. Kingsford-Smith, Alan J. Villiers, Wilfred G. Burchett
  • Strange encounters: from Jack McLaren, Frederic Wood Jones, Walter Murdoch
  • Story and character: from Henry Lawson (twice)

The thing that struck me about the table of contents is that it contains many writers I don’t know. Further investigation explained it, however. Most, though not all, of those I don’t know wrote non-fiction, such as Hedley Herbert Finalyson, Jack Gordon Hides and Jack McLaren. My guess is that non-fiction writers disappear from view faster than fiction ones? Anyhow, some of these new people are interesting, as are the familiar ones. I look forward to sharing some of them in future Monday Musings.

K. Langloh Parker

K Langloh Parker, More Australian Legendary Tales

First published 1898

I’m going to conclude with K. Langloh Parker because she has the opening section of the book to herself! She was, in fact, Catherine Eliza Somerville Stow (1856-1940). She was born (and died) in South Australia but spent time in the nineteenth century in New South Wales where she recorded the stories or legends of the local Ualarai people. Introducing Parker, Heddle writes that

The first adventurers of whom we know in Australia, the land of Mirrabooka, the Southern Cross, were the Australian Aboriginals. Even now we have much to learn of their customs and culture.

She continues that Parker has done a great service “by collecting their legends and retelling them in English in a way as near as possible to the original”. Wikipedia, writing in our time, says that “her testimony is one of the best accounts of the beliefs and stories of an Aboriginal people in north-west New South Wales at that time. However, her accounts reflect European attitudes of the time.” Not surprisingly.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that Heddle recognised the importance and relevance of Indigenous Australian stories to her book. It’s also interesting though that she presumably didn’t have access to Indigenous versions of these stories. Her further reading suggestions are also all by non-Indigenous writers. She says that the book from which her extract “Beereeun the mirage maker” comes was illustrated (uncredited I believe) by an Indigenous artist. Wikipedia says that the Indigenous artist Tommy McRae illustrated the first volume, Australian legendary tales, but doesn’t mention his illustrating the second. It’s likely though that he did, as the same people were involved in producing both.

Australian legendary tales, but not More Australian legendary tales, is available at Project Gutenberg Australia.

* Aussies will recognise “wide brown land” as alluding to Dorothea Mackellar’s poem “My country”. Fewer of us, I think, including me, would recognise “wind-wide ways”, which she encloses in quote marks. It comes from a poem called “The bush” by Bernard O’Dowd, who has been mentioned here a couple of times, first in my Monday Musings about most popular poets and novelists in 1927.

Stephen Orr, Incredible floridas (#BookReview)

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Stephen Orr, Incredible floridasThe good thing about reviewing Stephen Orr’s latest book Incredible floridas is that you know the end at the beginning, so there’s no need to worry about spoilers. The end, the one that you read at the beginning that is, is that Hal, the 22-year-old son of artist Roland and his wife Ena, commits suicide. By the end, the real end that is, you have some understanding of why he does, but you are also left to think about the drive to create art and its impact on family, about parental love and father-son relationships, and about that notion that it takes a village to raise a child.

To make this work, Orr uses a flashback-style chronology. The novel starts in 1962, just after Hal’s death, and then flashes back to 1944, when Hal is 4. From there it moves forward in irregular bunches of years -1948, 1950, and 1956 – until we arrive again at 1962 where it takes us through the events leading up to the death. This, then, is not the book for those who seek excitement and plot. Rather, it’s for those who love character, are intrigued by families and neighbourhood relationships, and like historical fiction.

There’s more to it than this, however – and it relates to the artist-father Roland. He is clearly modelled on the Australian artist Russell Drysdale (1912-1981) about whom I wrote a couple of years ago. Roland’s work and career as described by Orr – his angular lonely figures in stark landscapes, and the decline in his reputation – is similar to Drysdale’s. And Drysdale’s biography – his having a son and daughter, his being rejected for war service because of a detached retina, and his son committing suicide at the age of 21 in 1961 – is similar to our fictional Roland’s.

And then there’s the title. “Incredible floridas” rang a bell with me, and a little research brought it back. Peter Weir made a short film called Incredible Floridas in 1972. (It’s available on YouTube.) It portrays Australian composer Richard Meale (1932-2009) creating his work, Incredible Floridas, which was inspired by the 19th century French poet, Rimbaud. Curiouser and curiouser.

But, how much of this is relevant to Orr’s novel? Well, Meale’s work is an homage to Rimbaud, just as Orr’s is to Drysdale. And Weir’s award-winning short film has been described as “a wonderful tribute to artistic inspiration” which we can see in Orr’s book. Then there’s Rimbaud’s poem, “Le bateau ive” (“The drunken boat), which includes the words “incredible floridas”. It’s about inspiration and ecstasy, and their downsides, disappointment and disillusion. There are, in fact, several references to boats in the novel, paper ones and a painting Roland does of a child in a boat with panthers, another reference to Rimbaud’s poem, in the background.

And, while I’m at it, there are also allusions to Shakespeare’s Henry IV Pt I. Hal is nick-named Prince Hal, and the allusion is underlined by one character telling him to watch out for Hotspur. The irony, of course, is that our Prince Hal does not win out in the end.

I hope all this hasn’t been boring – or worse, off-putting. The book can be read very comfortably without knowing any of this, but I love the layers they contribute. Now, the novel.

“casualty of art”?

Set in mid-twentieth century suburban Adelaide – mostly – the novel tells of Hal’s growing up within a small community comprising, primarily, his family (father, mother and older sister Sonia) and neighbours Mary, her brother Sam, and her lupus-afflicted daughter Shirley who is ostracised and bullied by the neighbourhood kids. Other characters, who appear more sporadically, include Roland’s art school friend James, Mary’s cousin Trevor, and Hal’s grandmother Nan who works for Dr Bailey. These make up “the village” which raises, or tries to, Hal.

From 1944, when Hal is 4, it’s clear that he’s not an easy child. And it’s also clear that Roland is driven by his art – “art was an all-or-nothing proposition”. How these two are related is central to the book. Hal regularly feels he comes second, but Roland is not the stereotypical dark, inward-looking artist. Sure, he thinks about his work most of the time, and sure, he had his “periods … months on end when they barely saw him”, but he is also seen engaging with the family and making time for Hal. Finding the art-life balance is a challenge for creators, particularly when they work from home. Always being there doesn’t mean they are always available. Is Hal a “casualty of art” or are his problems something else?

When Hal is around 16 years old, directionless and acting erratically, sometimes violently so, Roland takes him on the first of several road trips because “he knew that Hal could only be made better under the stars” (albeit Ena thinks Hal “needs a proper doctor”). To a degree it works, but Roland can never quite get it right. Of course he thinks about art and makes sketches – creating a visual diary of the trip – while they travel, but he’s also there communicating with his son, talking about options, and not pushing him to be anything in particular. Unfortunately, Hal doesn’t see the love, the sacrifice, the wish for him to be “happy”. He just sees it as Roland “trying to improve his character”.

Stepping into some of the gaps left by Roland’s busy-ness is next door neighbour Sam. He becomes a second father to Hal, taking him to the racecourse, providing his own thoughtful counsel when Hal comes calling, and making significant sacrifices to help Hal. Nan’s employer, Dr Bailey, is also generous. But Hal just keeps on getting into scrapes – at school and in the neighbourhood. He has few friends because, as he himself realises, he doesn’t know how to be one. As Ena says in the opening section, “Hal was Hal, and his wires were crossed”.

While art and the artist’s life is an overall theme, this is primarily a book about men, about fathers and sons. And Orr portrays them so authentically. There are women here too, but this is the mid-twentieth century and it’s essentially a man’s world in which women’s agency is limited. All they can do, Ena sees, is to follow the men, and try “to make the unworkable work.” Similarly, poor Shirley sees the sacrifices Sam makes for Hal, who has treated her poorly, and wonders where she fits.

So what more is there to say? The writing is clear, evocative and, what I especially love about Orr, includes wonderfully natural dialogue. I’ll just share one excerpt (but it’s so hard to choose!). It comes from 1944 when four-year-old Hal and Roland visit an airforce base with Trevor Grant:

Uniform or not, things were looking up. Hal studied the plane’s wings and asked his dad, “D’yer reckon it’s got guns?”
“No.”
“D’yer reckon I could look inside?”
“Prob’ly not.”
Grant and the other man approached them. The man messed his hair. “This is top secret,” he said. “Has Corporal Grant administered the oath?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, he will, later. And once you’ve taken it you can’t say nothing about this to no one, or else the government will come lookin’ for you. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Roland noticed the same look on his son’s face, as Hal studied the two men. Like he’d just seen a comet for the first time. Something marvellous, new; a boy in a boat in a jungle full of panthers.

Incredible floridas is the third Orr book I’ve read, the others being The hands (my review) and Datsunland (my review). What keeps me coming back is his ability to capture ordinary, day-to-day human interactions, human hopes and fears, with such realism and warmth. There’s no judgement from Orr. He leaves that for the reader to consider.

Lisa (ANZlitLovers) is also a Stephen Orr fan and enjoyed this book.

Stephen Orr
Incredible floridas
Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2017
335pp.
ISBN: 9781743055076

(Review copy courtesy Wakefield Press)

World Poetry Day 2018

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Did you realise that today, March 21, is World Poetry Day? I’m not asking this to catch you out but more because I wonder how well promoted it is – particularly here in Australia? I must say that, as in previous years, I’ve heard very little about it. Perhaps, though, if I went to my local public library, they might be promoting it? You never know.

I have mentioned this day before, including dedicating a Monday Musings post to it in 2016, when I gave a brief explanation of the Day. It was designated for 21 March by UNESCO in 1999, but has been celebrated for much much longer, often in October to align with the birthday of the birth of the Roman poet Virgil. Its aim is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world. There is, as I wrote back in 2016, a Facebook Page for World Poetry Day, but the posts there are an eclectic bunch.

I enjoy poetry, but I don’t write a lot about it here. However, most years I write a few posts and I have a small book by a Tasmania poet on my TBR now that I hope to get to soon.

Now though, I’ll just share a three Australian initiatives I discovered via our good friend Google, and which cover us almost from cradle to grave!

Reading Australia

Leah A, Ten silly poems by a ten year oldThe Australian Copyright Agency’s wonderful Reading Australia, which I’ve mentioned before, is doing its bit. In late February it announced that it would spend “the entire month featuring the diversity and brilliance of our Australian poets, contemporary and classic.” They list five works for primary school students, including a picture book featuring a poem by Australian classic balladist Banjo Paterson, and five for secondary students, including a verse novel I don’t know by Steven Herrick, and works by well-known Australian poets Robert Adamson, Judith Wright, Bruce Dawe and Kenneth Slessor.  For each work, they provide teaching resources, along the lines of this one for Judith Wright’s Collected poems.

They also provide an “extra reading list” for those who want to explore further. This includes a verse novel for primary students, Bully on the Bus by Kathryn Apel, which won the 2015 Australian Family Therapists’ Award in the Young Readers/Picture Book category, and the now classic feminist anthology Mother, I’m rooted from 1975, comprising works from over 150 poets. They say about that that “You’d be hard-pressed to find a collection of poetry that so completely represents the diverse spectrum of being a woman.”

The website doesn’t make clear how they are making this is a month-long focus, but it’s a start – particularly for teachers who are uncomfortable with or unconfident about teaching poetry.

Coffs Harbour Regional Museum

Google also revealed that the Coffs Harbour Regional Museum (up there on the NSW mid-north coast) is celebrating  the day with an event they’re calling Celebrating World Poetry Day with a Rime and an Open Poetic Mic. The word “Rime” comes from their feature poem – Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – for their. The event, which has a sea theme, comprises an art exhibition named for Coleridge’s poem; a conversation between a poet and the exhibition’s artist; and the open mic session for people “to perform an original or much regarded poem – under 4 minutes please bards” (and sea-themed of course).

What I particularly like about this is that it’s example of the way regional museums and galleries work hard to actively engage their communities in culture, rather than simply present static exhibitions.

Golden Carers

You can probably guess what Golden Carers is – and you’d be right. Based in Brisbane, Australia, its tagline is “Supporting carers of the elderly worldwide since 2007”. The organisation caters for “Diversional Therapists, Recreation Therapists and other caregivers of the elderly, including volunteers”, but to get full access you need to pay. Fair enough.

Wonderfully, they have a page for the 2018 World Poetry Day, and provide a list of activity ideas which look doable for non-experts. The ideas include:

  • Ten Tips for Celebrating World Poetry Day
  • Poetry in Popular Song
  • Poets and Poems Quiz
  • Funny Poems by Roald Dahl
  • Multicultural Poems
  • Share Your Poems

There are resources for all the listed activities, behind the pay wall.

Before I conclude, I’d like to share some lines from a couple of poets* (one Australian, one not). Who would not benefit from thinking and talking about what Emily Dickinson has to say:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain …
(Emily Dickinson)

Or, Judy Johnson:

Listen to which footsteps
placed

on the heart’s risers
produce a squeak

and which treads
are noiseless.

(Judy Johnson, from “Words, after an absence”)

And now, back to the UN and its aims for denoting this day:

One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.

The observance of World Poetry Day is also meant to encourage a return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to promote the teaching of poetry, to restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and to support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media, so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art, but one which enables society as a whole to regain and assert its identity.

What a comprehensive goal! I wonder if they are doing anything to measure whether or not the Day is achieving anything.

Happy World Poetry Day everyone!

* Emily Dickinson, from The School of Life’s boxed set, 20 poems; Judy Johnson, from Prayers of a secular world.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Mollie Skinner and DH Lawrence

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I promised this post in yesterday’s review of Mollie Skinner’s short story, “The hand”, but have since been reminded that Bill (The Australian Legend) has already written about Skinner’s relationship with Lawrence. I’ve decided to continue with my plan, not only because it interests me, but because I hope to add to the discussion.

DH Lawrence, ML Skinner, The boy in the bush

First US edition, Thomas Seltzer, 1924

So, I suggest that you read Bill’s post (linked above), because I plan to avoid repeating what he’s said. However, you do need a little groundwork, and it is this. In 1922 Mollie Skinner was running a guest-house and nursing-home in Darlington, Western Australia, to which the newly arrived DH Lawrence, and his wife Frieda, had gone to stay. The end result of this meeting was the co-written novel, The boy in the bush. (You can read Bill’s review of this, too, on his blog.)

To avoid repeating Bill’s information which uses Paul Eggert’s introduction in the novel’s 1990 edition, I am drawing from – yes, you guessed it – my newspaper research in Trove, where I found some more contemporary commentary to complement Bill’s work. Contemporary commentary comes, of course, with the biases of the time, but is fascinating, both in spite of and because of that. Unfortunately, as is the way with newspapers, not all the articles have bylines.

ML Skinner, The fifth sparrowHaving said all this, the first article I’m using is not quite contemporary, having been written in 1973, and does have a byline, Maurice Dunlevy. He is writing because of a new Heinemann edition of the book, and seems to draw his information from Mollie Skinner’s autobiography, The fifth sparrow, which Bill’s Paul Eggert also uses, and from the Heinemann edition’s introduction by Professor Harry T Moore. (There is, it appears, no lack of critical analysis of this work!) Dunlevy notes the existence of previous writings on the pair, but also says that:

We can certainly be more sure of our facts than the reviewers were a half-century ago when they thought that Mollie Skinner was a man.

Presumably this was because she is cited on the book as ML not Mollie Skinner – though it’s pretty clear that she was well-known in her birth state of Western Australia. Interestingly, some editions of the book don’t have her name on the cover at all.

Anyhow, Dunlevy quotes Skinner’s description of Lawrence as:

a man-boy with the little red beard, scarlet lips, strange eyes flashing with amused lights, and an upright body held with dignity.

Dunlevy goes on the describe how the novel came about – Skinner’s showing Lawrence some of her work, his expressing approval of her writing and suggesting she write about a particular topic, and her eventually sending him her manuscript of the novel she called The house of Ellis.

He then reports that:

Lawrence thought the book had “good stuff” in it, but was “without unity or harmony”, “without form, like the world before Creation”. He offered to re-cast it and have it published under their joint names.

This recasting, apparently, included recasting the hero, Jack (who was based on Mollie’s brother) to be “not quite so absolutely blameless an angel”. This included his coming to believe he was entitled to two wives. Dunlevy reports that Mollie cried when she read of this change! He also writes that Lawrence recast what was essentially “a conventional, parochial romance of an English boy sent to Australia for a social gaffe” and who then turns hero, into

a much more complex and universal story, the story of an Englishman responding to the new freedoms, the new challenges, the new possibilities for living an unconventional life on a frontier not bogged down by traditions. It is also one of the few good examples of an “Australian” version of that situation so familiar in American literature: a boy’s initiation into manhood.

Nonetheless, Professor Moore does say:

The writing throughout is distinctly Lawrencean and the book should rank as a Lawrence novel, though Mollie Skinner’s extremely important contribution should be noted”.

But what of more contemporary commentary? As Bill noted, it did tend to be more parochial. Here’s one from a paragraph on Publications Received in Western Australia’s The Great Southern Herald (14 March 1925). The writer suggests that Skinner wrote all the lovely descriptive material, perfectly capturing “the scenery and scents of the bush” about Perth and Fremantle, but:

the narrative itself is a discredit to the Australians it attempts to depict. It is a story of sordidness and immorality with the characters speaking a mixture of Bowery and Cockney slang. The one thing, beyond all others, that the average Australian is remarkable for, is the purity of his diction, in this respect being far above the average Englishman, and it is an insult to characterise him as speaking the awful polygot which appears in “The Boy in the Bush.” The opening chapters of the book grip one with their descriptive power … [and] … stamp the writer as one who knows and loves the West. Of the rest of the story, the less said the better.

I do love the comment about the “average Australian” being “remarkable” for “the purity of his diction.” I’m not sure I’ve heard that said before. Anyhow, the writer concludes that Skinner “will shortly publish The Black Swan, written without collaboration, and which should offer better proof of her literary powers”!

Someone called Norbar, writing a little later in 1938, is a little more even-handed, writing:

STRANGELY different from other West Australian authors is Miss Mollie Skinner. Her work has an elusive character which is difficult to grasp. Its naivete, lack of discipline and neglect of construction have led many to dismiss it as worthless, yet the hypercritical D. H. Lawrence, one of the greatest figures in 20th century English literature, not only praised her first book but collaborated with her in a second and urged her to complete a third. Miss Skinner’s collaboration with Lawrence in “The Boy in the Bush,” however, besides dragging her into the type of controversy which would not normally have been associated with her work, has unduly overshadowed her own originality.

Norbar then says, confirming his criticism at the beginning of this paragraph, that it’s easy to find fault in her books but that “in none of them does she fall into the facile pattern of stock character and situation which fills the lending libraries.” After some further discussion of Skinner’s collaboration with Lawrence, and of some of her later works, s/he concludes with the following assessment, which is a good a place on which to conclude this discussion:

In Miss Skinner’s novels we find her considerable originality, spiritual perception and feeling use of words circumscribed at every turn by almost school-girl conceptions of situation and character, probably an unconscious legacy from a mid-Victorian middleclass sensibility which has lingered among the old families of Australia long after its wane in England. Whatever contempt men like Lawrence might feel for English intellectual aridness, Miss Skinner would have benefited from early introduction into a circle invigorated by the new realism inspired from Scandinavia and France, even if she had had to slough it off afterwards. But literary and spiritual currents had little effect on the respectable classes of Australia and Miss Skinner’s training and traditions were against her turning to the democratic crudity of the working class, the salvation of many Australian writers. She has, consequently, been left high and dry and her work bears the marks of her isolation.

An interesting insight into some thinking of the critics/reviewers of the day, n’est-ce pas? There are some things here worth teasing out another time.

M.L. (Mollie) Skinner, The hand (#Review)

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ML Skinner, The fifth sparrow

ML Skinner, The fifth sparrow: An autobiography

Pam of Travellin’ Penguin blog read ML Skinner’s short story “The hand” for a challenge she was doing, and, when I expressed interest in it, very kindly sent me a copy. “The hand” is a mysterious little story – and by little, I mean, little in that it takes up less than 7 pages of the anthology, Australian short stories, that she found it in.

Now, the story is a bit tricky, and I think is best understood within the context of Skinner’s biography. She was born in Perth in 1876, but the family moved to England and Ireland in 1878. Mollie was a keen student and reader but had to abandon formal education in 1887 because of an ulcerated cornea, which resulted in her spending much of the next five years in a darkened room with bandaged eyes. After cauterisation partially restored her sight, she started to write poems and stories. Presumably this was around 1892 (ie 5 years after 1887?) when she was about 16 years old. Later she trained as a nurse, which gave her her main living. And then, the ADB biography (linked to above) says something interesting in terms of our reading of this story:  “she recognized within herself an intuitive power, or sixth sense.” A little later in the biography, we are also told that “Mollie believed that God’s hand on her shoulder guided her life. She dabbled in the occult”. She returned to Australia in 1900, though returned to England later to study. She also travelled to India, and served there and Burma during World War 1.

So to the story, which was first published in 1924. It is set in a “mining hospital back there in the west.” As there was “little doing” and the light too dim to read by, the Matron is encouraged to tell a story which she is “good at” doing. They – presumably the off-duty staff – ask her about her life in “those posts way back in the interior”. Was she ever frightened, they ask?

‘Of what?’
‘Well–the loneliness. And bad white men, and bad blacks. Of patients in delirium. Or some awful maternity case you couldn’t handle.’
‘I didn’t think about it. I did what I could. I was frightened once, though: and that, really, by a nurse screaming. A nurse shouldn’t scream.’

Interesting, the “bad white men, and bad blacks”, but I’ll just take that as another of those ways in which contemporary stories provide us insight into the times, and move on with the story. She then tells the story of the scream. She describes the small outback post, the sense of community they had, and the little L-shaped hospital which was open to the bush on one side, and the road and railroad on the other. There were two other nurses besides herself, one being Nurse Hammer “a regular town girl, very attractive, but unstable, untried.” On the night of the scream, our Matron story-teller was doing accounts while the two nurses were chatting with the patients. Our Matron’s mind kept wandering she says. She’s

very practical, really, and then liable to feel things in the air, things that other people don’t seem aware of. My father called it “unwarranted interference”; and told me to taboo it. But it gets hold of me sometimes: and this evening I was uneasy, aware of “something”. There seemed to be a sound.

But, she can’t identify anything, so continues to try to work. She hears Nurse Hammer go to bed, and then – the scream. The rest of the story concerns locating the scream – it was Nurse Hammer – and working out the cause of it – a hand has grabbed Hammer’s leg.

In the end, there’s a practical explanation for “the hand” but along the way there’s a sense of an awakening or at least, a growing up, for Nurse Hammer. Initially, the Matron is

conscious, not only of Hammer’s terrible fear, but of a deeper source, dark and secret within herself. I remembered how lovely she was. How men in the wards watched with furtive eyes as she walked past. I remembered the way she walked–how she avoided those eyes. I knew then that the girl had herself been tempted, that she was powerless, now, in this dark room, because in her own life she was passing through crisis.

The Matron finds herself praying that “whatever we found in this room would not be evil.”

Skinner builds up the suspense well, the darkness, the lantern going out, until eventually the cause of the scream is determined. Before it is fully explained though, Nurse Hammer has a little more to endure, but, says Matron,

I glanced at Hammer. The Nightingale light was flooding her face …

And the Matron goes on to use words that imply a biblical aspect to Hammer’s enlightenment – but if I say more, I’ll give away the story which I’m not sure I want to do (though unfortunately the story does not seem to be available online).

Interestingly, Skinner attracted the attention of DH Lawrence … but I think I might make this the subject of tomorrow’s Monday Musings! Meanwhile, I think the story is to be understood in the sense of a divine intervention intended to test and try Nurse Hammer, from which she emerges, in a sense, reborn and now a real nurse, like Florence Nightingale. (But, I could be wrong.)

AWW Badge 2018ML (Mollie) Skinner
“The hand” (1924)
in Australian short stories (1951)
ed. by Walter Murdoch and Henrietta-Drake Brockman
(pp. 148-154)