Australian literature

Sofie Laguna, The choke (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 29 Comments

Sofie Laguna, The chokeThere are many reasons why I wanted to read Sofie Laguna’s latest book The choke. Firstly, I was inspired by a very engaging author conversation I attended late last year. Secondly, she won the Miles Franklin with her previous book The eye of the sheep (which I still haven’t read). Thirdly, its setting, the Murray River, is one of my favourite parts of Australia. For these and other reasons, I finally slotted it in this month, despite my growing backlog of review copies, and I’m glad I did. It’s an engrossing, moving read.

The novel is divided into two parts, the first set in 1971 when its first person protagonist Justine is 10 years old, and the second set three years later when she is thirteen years old and starting high school. It’s an effective structure. The first part sets up Justine and her physically and emotionally impoverished situation. She lives with her war-traumatised grandfather Pop on a struggling farm on the banks of the Murray. Her mother is long gone, and her father returns erratically. She has regular contact with her two older half-brothers who live nearby with her father’s first wife. Pop loves Justine, but he does not have the wisdom or emotional resources to guide – or even provide for – her as she needs. She is undernourished and poorly groomed. We are therefore unsurprised when Part 2 unfolds the way it does.

Now, I am a little cautious about first person narratives. It’s not that I don’t like them. In fact they can be highly engaging, but it did seem, for a while at least, that first person was becoming the voice du jour. However, Laguna’s choice here is inspired. She’s known for her ability to write young people and it’s well demonstrated here. Telling the story in Justine’s voice enables her to show Justine’s situation, without resorting to telling, which can so easily turn to moralising. Justine is the perfect naive narrator. She can only describe and explain the world as she knows it, so we readers must read between the lines to work out what is really going on. We work out, for example, that she is dyslexic by the way she describes her inability to read. We learn about the quality (often poor) of the relationships that surround her through her observations.

When I looked at [half-brother] Steve it was as if there was a ditch all around him too wide to jump. If you shone a torch into it, you’d never see the bottom. Steve couldn’t get across by himself; it was only Dad who could help him.

She might not understand the world – and it is this, along with her loneliness, which drives the crisis when it comes – but she’s attuned to the feelings between people.

One of the reasons this book so engaged me, in fact, is that it’s all about character. In the conversation we attended, Laguna said a couple of things about this. She said that it’s the characters and the tensions between and within them that drive the narrative and that character IS the plot.

“I got it wrong from the start”

So, who are these characters who drive the narrative? Justine is the main one, of course. She tells us that she was a breech birth – “I thought that was the right way to come out.” She understands by this that she “wrong from the start”, and she blames herself for her mother’s departure three years later. Her sense of being wrong – and feeling somehow responsible – is a recurring refrain in the novel. The other characters – her Pop, her sometimes-present father Ray, her mostly absent but significant aunt Rita, her friend Michael, her half-brothers, and the similarly dysfunctional neighbouring Worlleys – are all seen through her eyes. It is the tensions, stated and unstated, between them and their impact on her, that drive the narrative and the decisions she makes.

As well as a coming-of-age story, The choke is also a classic outsider story. Part one sets up Justine’s outsiderness, and chronicles, among other things, the friendship that develops between her and another outsider at school, Michael, who is taunted, bullied, because of his physical disability. Justine doesn’t have the words, but his disability appears to be cerebral palsy. The end of this friendship with Michael’s departure for the city ends Part One. This friendship plays multiple roles in the narrative. It helps develop Justine’s character. Her decision to stand up for Michael, having earlier wanted nothing to do with him, not only brings her a friend and marks her outsiderness from the cohort, but also shows her own sense of social justice. However, this friendship also exposes her low self-expectations and further reveals her neglect, because Michael’s family is a “normal” middle-class family. There’s a mum and dad, two kids, a proper house, regular meals and proper care. Justine is intitially embarrassed by the gap between their lives and hers, but when Michael eventually visits her home, she discovers he loves visiting it. He loves, for example, the chooks, Cockyboy and the Isa Browns.

By the time Part Two starts, her father Ray is in jail and Justine is starting high school. With Michael gone, she’s isolated at school and, while loved at home, continues to be neglected. The crisis is revenge-driven for something her father had done, but Justine, as the vulnerable female, is, of course, the target. It’s a gut-wrenching story of damage, neglect, abuse and, yes, also just simple misguidedness. Her Pop means well but is ill-equipped for the caring role thrust upon him. In the end, the story is also one of a failure of people and systems – including education – to identify Justine’s real situation.

And then there’s “the choke” of the title. I don’t always discuss a book’s title, particularly given that the author doesn’t always have last say on this, but for this book it’s highly relevant:

Down at The Choke the river pushed its way between the banks. The water knew the way it wanted to go. Past our hideouts, past our ring of stones, past the red gums leaning close enough to touch – it flowed forward all the way to the sea.

The “choke”, then, is a bottleneck in the river, a place, Justine says elsewhere, “where it would push through and keep going”. It is a physical place (based on the actual Barmah Choke) and a metaphorical one. Physically, it is a place of tranquility, of respite, for Justine. However, it also symbolises the things that threaten to “choke” her life, while at the same time hinting at hope, at the possibility of pushing through.

The choke is a book written by someone who knows exactly what she is doing. As I flipped through it to write this post, I noticed again and again the crumbs laid for us, the signs, in other words, that prepare the groundwork for what comes later. There is nothing wasted here. It is a grim story, but it is enlivened by its resilient young protagonist who finds the resources within herself to “push through” when life threatens to overwhelm. It may not have been shortlisted for the Stella Prize but I’m glad I decided to read it.

AWW Badge 2018Sofie Laguna
The choke
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2017
369pp.
ISBN: 9781760297244

Monday musings on Australian literature: Contemporary Australian literary translators

/ Whispering Gums / 17 Comments

Today’s Monday Musings was inspired by the shortlisting for the 2018 Stella Prize of Iranian-born Australian-based writer Shokoofeh Azar’s The enlightenment of the greengage tree. I first came across this book when Lisa (ANZLitLovers) reviewed it last August, commenting in her opening paragraph that the novel “is an exciting development in Australian publishing” because it was written in Persian by Azar and translated into English by Adrien Kijek for publication by Wild Dingo Press. I wonder how many other speakers of non-English languages in Australia would like to write – or do write – but are closed off from the majority of us because of a lack of support and money for translation?

I have written about translation here several times before, but in this post I want to specifically name some current Australian literary translators, many of whom are based in our universities. We do, in fact, have many literary translators, but I’m going to select just a few – somewhat randomly – to give a sense of the breadth of translators we have here.

Stuart Cooke and Juan Garrido Salgado

Sydney-born Cooke has lived in Hobart and Latin America, but is currently a lecturer in creative writing and literary studies at Brisbane’s Griffith University. The various bios I’ve seen for him describe him as a poet, critic and translator. I’ve picked him because one of his translation interests is the Aboriginal song poem. In 2014 he published a translation of George Dyuŋgayan’s Bulu line: a West Kimberley song cycle. His other translation interest is, apparently, Spanish. In 2007 his translation of Juan Garrido Salgado’s Once poemas, Septiembre 1973 was published.

And, just to complicate things a bit, this Juan Garrido Salgado is a Chilean immigrant to Australia (1990). His poems, says Red Room Poetry, have been widely translated, and he himself has translated works by Australian poets – John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin – into Spanish. He has also translated five Aboriginal poets into Spanish for Espejo de tierra/Earth mirror poetry anthology (2008)!

Linda Jaivin

When I chose this post, one of the two translators to pop into my head – before I went to Google – was Linda Jaivin whose Quarterly Essay, Found in translation, I reviewed a few years ago. American-born, she did Chinese studies at university in Rhode Island before spending time in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She’s perhaps a bit of a ring-in here because she doesn’t seem to have translated novels or other sorts of books, but she is a professional translator whose work has included subtitling (into English) Chinese films like Farewell My Concubine. She has written a memoir, The monkey and the dragon, about her experience as a translator in China. And, she’s an associate of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University.

Meredith McKinney

Ogai Mori, The Wild GooseThe other Australian translator I remembered, before Googling, was Meredith McKinney. The daughter of the great Australian poet Judith Wright, she has made a name in her own right as an expert in and translator of Japanese language and literature. She lived in Japan for a couple of decades but is now a visiting fellow in the Japan Centre at the Australian National University where she teaches Japanese-English translation. She has translated both classic and modern Japanese novels and short story collections. You can see a pretty comprehensive list at GoodReads. Her translation of Furui Yoshikichi’s Ravine and other stories won the 2000 Japan-US Friendship Commission Translation Award.  A few years ago I bought her translation of The wild goose by Ōgai Mori (Finlay Lloyd) but it still, unfortunately, languishes on the TBR.

Ton-That Quynh-Du

Pham Thi Hoai, The crystal messengerVietnamese-born Ton-that Quynh-Du came to Australia in 1972 under a Colombo Plan Scholarship. He has worked as a translator, court interpreter, and as an academic at Deakin University, Monash University and the Australian National University. His translation of Pham Thi Hoai’s novel The crystal messenger – a book that has been on my bedside TBR for some years now – won the 2000 Victorian Premier’s Award for literary translation. (This award is now, unfortunately, defunct. I believe it was called the SBS/Dinny O’Hearn Prize for Literary Translation, and was only awarded three times, in 1997, 2000 and 2003. What a shame.) His translation of this same author’s collection of short stories, Sunday menu, won the 2007 ACT Book of The Year Award. While he mostly translates into English he also does some translation into Vietnamese (as does Pham Thi Hoai, who now lives in Germany)

Kevin Windle

I chose Kevin Windle as my fifth example because I found, via Google, that last year, 2017, he won a rather prestigious award, albeit one not known to most of us Australians. It’s only awarded every three years by the International Federation of Translators (FIT), and is the Aurora Borealis Prize for Outstanding Translation of Non-Fiction Literature. A press release said that “his work, translating into English from nearly a dozen different languages, and across a wide range of subject areas, is described by his supporters as ‘reliably brilliant’.” How I’d love to be descried as “reliably brilliant”! London-born Windle has worked at the University of Queensland but is now emeritus fellow in the School of Literature, Languages, and Linguistics at the Australian National University, where his expertise is in Translation Studies and Russian. Indeed, the Words Without Borders website states that in 2014 he was awarded the inaugural AALITRA prize for literary translation from Spanish, and in 2015, second prize in the John Dryden competition for a translation from Polish. Although the Aurora Borealis Award was for non-fiction, he has apparently translated fiction, drama, literary biography, and linguistics and ancient history texts.

The above-mentioned press release for Kevin Windle’s Aurora Borealis win notes that the award aims

to promote the translation of fiction literature and non-fiction, improve the quality thereof and draw attention to the role of translators in bringing the peoples of the world closer together in terms of culture.

And that seems a perfect point on which to end, I think.

Do you read translated literature? I’d love to hear your favourites – or anything else you have to say about translation.

John Lang, The forger’s wife (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

John Lang, The forgers wifeWhen new publisher Grattan Street Press offered me a review copy of John Lang’s The forger’s wife last November, I couldn’t resist, even though it is from their Colonial Australian Popular Fiction series. I say “even though” because, had it been written now, it would probably not have come under my radar. It’s very much in the popular vein. However, as a piece of work first published (in serial version) in 1853, it has much to offer modern readers.

It raises the question, in fact, of why read historical fiction when you can read from the time itself. I’m being a bit flippant here, I know. There is reason – there’s value in looking back, in revisiting the past with eyes from the present – but the question is worth asking, if only to focus our minds on context when we read.

Enough pontificating though, let’s get to the book – or, first, to the author. According to Grattan Street Press, John Lang was Australia’s first locally born novelist. I have in fact written about him briefly before, in a Monday Musings post, but I hadn’t had a chance to read him, until now. I mentioned in that post Victor Crittenden’s biography, because its title says a lot – John Lang: Australia’s larrikin writer: barrister, novelist, journalist and gentleman. Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver’s Introduction to The forger’s wife provides interesting background to his life, some from Crittenden’s work. Lang, it seems, lived quite a peripatetic life, and had had a few books published by the time The forger’s wife was serialised.

Gelder and Weaver write that it’s generally accepted that The forger’s wife is “the first novel by an Australian-born novelist to feature an Australian detective.” They go on to suggest that it is “the first detective novel in the Anglophone world” arguing that it predates by around ten years The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix which has been seen as the first detective novel in English. The rest of their introduction – naturally, because the series is about popular fiction – focuses on the book as a detective novel. However, I’d like to discuss other things.

The novel is essentially a melodrama which, say Gelder and Weaver, follows “the fairly familiar pattern of a female emigrant’s tale.” It tells the story of Emily Orford, the rather spoilt only child of a well-to-do British army officer. Eschewing more suitable suitors, she falls for a man whom she believes to be Captain Reginald Harcourt, but who is, in fact, the forger Charles Robert. Immediately after their elopement, he is arrested and convicted of forgery, and transported to Australia. Emily, believing that Reginald is innocent, follows him to Sydney. Here, she luckily finds a few friends amongst the colony’s rough and tumble, one being the convict turned policemen-and-thief-taker (our detective), George Flower. She also reconnects with the scurrilous Reginald/Charles, who, despite getting into increasingly outrageous scrapes, manages to keep Emily believing in him. This is a 19th century melodrama so it all turns out alright in the end, though not necessarily exactly as readers might expect.

What I want to talk about now, though, is why this novel is worth reading – besides its credentials as a pioneering detective novel, that is. My reasons have to do with the insight it provides into colonial life. Think how much we learn about life in mid-nineteenth century England from Charles Dickens’ novels. So …

“this uncouth and cruel land” (Emily)

We learn a few things about early to mid-nineteenth century colonial Australia, starting with some vivid descriptions of town and country. We learn about the roughness, the struggle to survive which results in various combinations of theft, corruption, bribery. The novel’s themes include the survival of the wiliest, and the challenge of identifying who you can trust. The naive, trusting Emily would not have survived a minute without the initial help of Captain Dent from Lady Jane Grey, the boat she arrived on, and then George Flower who looks out for her.

We learn about how women make a living – some via the oldest profession. Emily, though, gives piano lessons. However, when she becomes persona non grata because of Reginald, she’s “compelled to do needlework, to knit socks and comforters”. We learn about convicts who become policemen versus those who become bushrangers. We learn about settlers taking the law into their own hands. George Flower, on the hunt for Reginald now turned bushranger, tells a well-to-do settler that settlers need to learn to protect themselves:

The Gov’ment’s a fool for paying for mounted police. You ought to learn the value of combination, and how to protect yourselves.

Later on the same page he says:

I wish to teach you settlers, and the Gov’ment, and bushrangers, a great moral lesson. I want to make you more independent and secure – bushrangers less numerous and daring – and Gov’ment more economic and sensible.

And, of particular interest to me, we learn about attitudes to the original inhabitants. In between the above two comments, Flower says:

You can club up to get rid of the blacks, when they spear your cattle or kill your sheep. Why can’t you capture your own bushrangers?

So, the settlers clearly have no compunction about getting rid of “the blacks” themselves. Presumably they are “easier pickings” and don’t warrant the respect of a lawful process? You don’t always need to read history, then, to know what went on. Sometimes fiction contains useful truths.

There are other references – or not – to Indigenous people. A little earlier than the above scene, Flower is enjoying a lovely moment in a remote spot, where:

he discoursed for some time with [bushranger] Millighan on the grandeur of the scene, and the sweets of liberty. It was a beautiful warm day, and not a cloud in the sky. The foot of man had never before trod the ground on which Flower and Millighan were then standing.

I don’t think Lang was being ironic here!

Later, Flower returns to the same spot, where Millighan’s skeleton now lies. He treats the skeleton of this “brave” adversary with respect, leaving a note to ensure that when, in the future, the remains might be “stumbled across”, the finders will “not suppose he was some black fellow”!

And yet, a page later, there’s recognition of learning from these same “black fellows” when he makes a fire “as the Aborigines do, by rubbing two pieces of dry stick together until they ignite.”

The final reference to Indigenous people also refers to cultural learning. We are told that Flower, now back in England, had become very “‘colonial'” not only in “outward appearance”, but also in “parlance”. “He had mixed a good deal with the blacks” and, while the Aboriginal language was not “thoroughly understood by the Europeans”, it had contributed “sundry worlds and phrases” which Flower used, to the incomprehension of his listeners.

So, while I found the story itself entertaining – indeed a thoroughly enjoyable read – it’s these unconscious insights into the times by a writer of the times that has made this book memorable. I would love to read more in this series.

John Lang
The forger’s wife
Parkville: Grattan Street Press, 2017 (Orig. serialised in 1853)
224pp.
ISBN: 978098762304

(Review copy courtesy Grattan Street Press)

PS: I apologise for overwhelming your inboxes/reader feeds this week. There’s been a lot on. I’ll return to situation normal next week.

Stella Prize 2018 Shortlist announced

/ Whispering Gums / 14 Comments

Claire G Coleman, Terra nulliusAs you probably know, the Stella Prize is the award I particularly like to follow, though I don’t always post on the Longlist and the Shortlist as I am this year. The Longlist was announced on 8 February (my post), and the shortlist was announced, yesterday, International Women’s Day, as has, appropriately, become tradition.

Here is the shortlist:

  • The enlightenment of the Greengage tree, by Shokoofeh Azar (Wild Dingo Press)
  • Terra nullius, by Claire G Coleman (Hachette)
  • The life to come, by Michelle de Kretser (A&U)
  • An uncertain grace, by Krissy Kneen (Text)
  • The fish girl, by Mirandi Riwoe (Seizure)
  • Tracker, by Alexis Wright (Giramondo)

Interestingly, as has happened in the past, the proportion of non-fiction to fiction in the longlist has not carried through to the shortlist. Five of the twelve-strong longlist were non-fiction works, while just one of the six books in the shortlist is. And unfortunately, it’s not the one I’ve read! Seriously, though, I am glad to see Alexis Wright’s Tracker, which is about the Aboriginal leader, political thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth, on the list. However, this pattern suggests that it is difficult to judge fiction against non-fiction and that the Stella Prize’s goal of offering one award irrespective of form or genre is perhaps harder to achieve that it sounds? In a sense I can understand it. If the award is about excellence in Australian writing, and if excellence includes some sense of innovation, then it is likely that such definition of “excellence” is more likely in fiction. (By the way, innovation to me can include experimenting/innovating in style, form, genre, structure, content, so it’s not impossible in non-fiction, just more constrained – perhaps?)

Anyhow, what do I think about the list? Well, firstly, I’m pleased so see that the list accommodates diversity. I’m also pleased to see that my pick, Terra nullius (which I’ll be reading soon) is on the list, and that The fish girl which I bought because of its long-listing is also on the list. I even mailed a copy to my American friend for her birthday this week. And, I’m not surprised to see The life to come and An uncertain grace on the list, given the quality of these writers and the buzz about their books. I’m disappointed, though, that the book I’m reading now, Sofie Laguna’s The choke, is not on the list – not because I believe it should be as I haven’t read enough of the books to make that assessment, but because it’s one I would have read when the winner is announced! Oh well … c’est la vie. Fortunately, I’m enjoying The choke so my reading time is certainly not wasted!

The winner receives $50,000, and each shortlisted author receives $3000, as well as a three-week writing retreat on the Victorian coast. It’s a lovely generous prize. The winner will be announced on 12 April.

Now, I’ll get back to my reading … but if you have any comments on the list, I’d love to hear them.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Young Writers Awards

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

Yesterday’s post on young writer Ben Smith Noble’s prize-winning short story, “The sands of time” inspired today’s post. I’ve written about several prizes over the years – the big ones, and the more targeted ones – but not prizes for Young Writers. It’s a tricky topic to write about. There’s the definition of “young” and there’s the fact that there are many “small” prizes offered (that is offered within small spheres like a school or other contained group). My focus here is to pick out some of the bigger – more encompassing – prizes, and also to show some of the variety in the prizes being offered.

These prizes range from those offered for a piece of work submitted for competition to awards for published writing. The more adult young writers prizes (if that makes sense) define young writers as those under 35 or 30 years of age, while other prizes can be offered for age ranges. I’ll list a selection of awards, in alphabetical order.

Per Capita Young Writers’ Prize

I nearly didn’t include this prize because their website is so minimal. It says, for example, to “Click below to see winning entries from this year and previous years” but I could see nothing “below” to click on. However, it’s an intriguing award that’s been going for a few years, it seems, so I decided to include it. It is for Australians aged 25 years and under, and is “designed to encourage young people to think about the major public policy challenges facing Australia.” Weighty matter! The judging criteria includes, as well as the more usual ones of originality and writing quality, “the potential public benefit of the ideas put forward.” In 2014 the winner received $3,000 plus some sort of international travel. You can read a 2017 prize-winner on the writer Michael Dello-Iacovo’s website.

Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers (Nonfiction)

Established in 2013, this prize is seen as a development award aimed at fostering “talented writers aged 30 and under writing longform work.” Writer submit  entries of between 5,000 and 10,000 words “across all nonfiction genres, including memoir, journalism, essay, and creative nonfiction.” The winner receives cash ($3000 in 2017), mentorship and some Scribe books. Shortlisted writers receive some Scribe books, but also feedback on their entry and the opportunity to attend a masterclass. Pretty good eh? The prize makes their aim of fostering talent real.

SLQ Young Writers Award (Short Story)

An annual short story award, around 20 years old, for Queensland writers aged between 15 and 25. Prizes are offered in two age categories: aged 18 – 25 (short stories up to 2,500 words); aged 15 – 17 (short stories up to 1,500 words). In each of these, there is one winner and one runner-up, and four highly commended entries. Past winners include Benjamin Law, Tara June Winch and Romy Ash. You can read all the past winning, runner-up and highly commended stories online.

Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists (Fiction)

Emily Maguire, An isolated incidentEstablished in 1997 by former literary editor Susan Wyndham, this award which aims to recognise “emerging talent” is made to writers who were 35 years or under when their book was published. It’s become a well-regarded award and is quite a feather in a writer’s cap to be called a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. More than one writer is named each year. An example is Emily Maguire who won the award in 2010 (Smoke in the room) and 2013 (Fishing for tigers). She went on in 2017 to be shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Ned Kelly Award for An isolated incident (my review). You can see a list of the winners over the first 20 years, 1997 to 2016, online.

John Marsden & Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers (Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry)

Named for and supported by one of Australia’s most successful writers for youth, John Marsden, this prize is “an annual developmental award open exclusively to Australian secondary school students.” This award is made in three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Winners receive cash ($500 in 2017), a selection of Hachette YA books, publication of their work on the Express Media website and their names printed in the youth literary journal Voiceworks. You can read the winning 2017 works online.

Young Tasmanian Writers’ Prize

Tasmania 40 South Issue 78Run jointly by Forty South Publishing and the Tasmanian Association for Teachers of English, this is a literary competition for Tasmanian high school students, in two age categories, Senior Section (Years 10 to 12) and Junior Section (Years 7 to 9). They do, it appears, provide a theme/themes, as this entry form for 2018 shows. The winners in the two sections receive $300 and their story published in Tasmania 40° South, and the runners-up receive a $30 bookshop voucher. This is the one, as you’ve probably realised, won by Ben Noble Smith.

Young Writers’ Award (Picture Book and Short Story)

As far as I can tell this is a brand new award which started in 2017 and for which the first winner will be announced this week. It’s been established by the Redgum Book Club and is geared to children aged between 9 and 13 years of age, to “develop their writing skills and find their unique voice through storytelling.” They want it to be an accessible activity that can be  incorporated into a school’s writing program, so they provide a Teacher’s Toolbox on their site. There are two categories: picture book (up to 250 words plus illustrations) and short story (800 to 1000 words). Winners will receive a $250 Redgum book voucher, and the shortlisted writers a $150 voucher.

And there are many more awards – including other state-based awards and at least one for indigenous youth. For information about these and others, please visit a wonderful post by teacher and writer Melinda Tognini on her blog Treefall Writing.

I had no idea there was this variety around. I’d love to know if you have had any experience of young writers’ awards or know of any not listed here? (If you are not Australian please share any you know of from your country.)

Ben Smith Noble, The sands of time (#Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 13 Comments

Tasmania 40 South Issue 78Ben Smith Noble is the second young writer I have reviewed here, the first being Leah A with her 10 silly poems by a ten year old (my review) which came to my attention via Son Gums. Ben Smith Noble’s short story “The sands of time”, on the other hand, came to me from Mother Gums via Brother Gums who lives in Tasmania and knows the young writer. Indeed, I believe I’ve met him too, but that was nearly ten years ago, when he was probably around 6!

Many moons have passed since then and it appears that Ben Smith Noble is becoming quite the writer. “The sands of time”, which unfortunately is not available on-line, won the Junior Section (Years 7-9) of the 2015 Young Tasmanian Writers Prize – and what a delightful story it is. It’s a time-travel story about a man who dies suddenly and mysteriously finds himself in a coffin that had been used in England in 1122, during the time of the Crusades. What happens next, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is that he finds himself in the Holy Land in 1098 “standing between two armies that had a very certain view on who was right”:

The hot sands swirled around Mr Smith as the two armies gave a roar and started moving towards each other at a speed that suggested the sides shared an intense hatred for each other, and further suggested to the out-of-place Tasmanian the idea of being impaled on a lance or scimitar.

He dearly wished he was somewhere else. Heaven for example.

In the next paragraph, things are getting dangerous: “An arrow drifted by in what seemed slow motion, and hit a nice young man who would probably have got along well with his killer had his killer not been holding a bow”.

Mr Smith is not impressed, and starts to run:

He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was sure anywhere would be better than here.

However, he soon finds an English knight and a Saracen warrior approaching him on horseback from different directions, so he does the only sensible thing he can think of. He calls, “Stop!” The denouement, from this point, is beautifully and succinctly told, and conveys a message about war – something that “happens when people with small brains get big ideas” – that is pure and sensible. It’s an entertaining read.

What is impressive about the story is Noble’s grasp of language, of rhythm and pace, of voice, and of structuring a plot. We are told in the first paragraph that Mr Smith had “a guilty love of Doctor Who” which sets up the time-travel idea, but we are also told in the same paragraph that he likes “staying in the here and now”, and hadn’t, in fact, been anywhere further than Burnie. In other words, he’s a simple, ordinary man, and Noble sets this up effectively in the first paragraph. He also establishes his light tone in this paragraph, and sustains it through to the end. The story made me laugh – at the right times – and yet it has a serious message that’s relevant today. I don’t have a benchmark for what young writers are capable of these days, but this story would not embarrass its creator in adult company.

A search of the Tasmania 40° South revealed that Ben Smith Noble won the Senior Section (Years 10-12) prize last year, with a story titled “Napoleon, or, the musings of Mr Pink”. Clearly someone to watch. You heard it here first, folks!

Ben Smith Noble
“The sands of time”
in Tasmania 40° South, Issue 78?, pp. 85-86

Carmel Bird, The dead aviatrix: Eight short stories (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 28 Comments

Carmel Bird, Dead aviatrix

Carmel Bird, whose latest short story collection, The dead aviatrix: Eight short stories, I’m reviewing here, has to be the consummate writer. She can turn her hand to fiction and nonfiction, to short and long form writing, to formal and more informal voices, and to both serious and witty or satiric tones. She’s also an editor/anthologist in addition to being a writer. And now she’s experimenting with a digital platform. So, when she hesitantly offered me The dead aviatrix to read and review, there was only one answer, yes.

Her hesitation related to its e-book form. She feared that we Gums’ people aren’t much interested in ebooks, but, she wrote, “they are a growing part of the literary landscape”. Then, using a very Bird-like expression, she continued, “so maybe one day you will write a bit about them, and if and when you do, The Dead Aviatrix will be idling on the tarmac.” Well, how could I resist, even if I had wanted to, an aviatrix idling on the tarmac? And anyhow, as you know, I do read and write about e-books. Annabel Smith’s The ark (my review) is a good example, but I’ve reviewed several e-books here including Dorothy Johnston’s Eight pieces on prostitution (my review).

Like Dorothy Johnston’s book, which was a digital publishing initiative of the Australian Society of Authors, The dead aviatrix is the first Capsule Collection, a new platform by digital publisher Spineless Wonders. Subsequent titles in the series will, the book’s “About” says, include works “selected from The Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award”. You clearly can’t keep a good writer down. I love that this doyenne of the Australian literary scene is still exploring and experimenting.

However, it’s all well and good to explore and experiment with form, delivery platform, and so on, but in the end you need to produce the goods, and this Bird has done with her eight stories. I should say, before discussing them, that all have been published before – in publications like Southerly, Island Magazine, and Review of Australian Fiction.

So now, at last, the stories themselves. They are a wonderful lot. Bird regularly makes me laugh, and she does so again here. It’s not empty laughter though, because her targets are serious. It’s just that she frequently presents her ideas with a cheeky, often satirical approach.

The first story is “The dead aviatrix and the Stratemeyer Syndicate”. It’s written in the sort of style Bird used in Fair game, her memoir of Tasmania (my review). By this I mean it digresses or, as she says, becomes “productively sidetracked”. However, as “The dead aviatrix” is “a publishing story”, the opening digression about the prolific Edward Stratemeyer – creator of a childhood favourite of mine The Bobbsey Twins – is relevant in a way (of course!). Actually, it’s very relevant because she finds a quote about an aviatrix in a Stratemeyer book, and uses it to springboard her story. Oh, she’s a character! The tone of the story, like several in the book, is chatty. She talks directly to us, the reader, leading us along, often lulling us into a false sense of security. In this case, it’s a little satire on the publishing industry – on proofs going astray, on distracted publishing interns – but along the way it invokes or references all sorts of ideas, including the Australian aviatrix Nancy Bird Walton who “unlike the great and mysterious Amelia … did not disappear in the skies.” Sometimes it is hard to keep up with Bird (our Bird, I mean!) but I love trying. This story is, partly, about the art of writing stories.

The second story, “The Whirligigge of time brings its revenges”, draws from a Shakespeare quote, and is also a publishing story, this one more satirical about first and second novels, the notion of “literary” novels, awards, and not using agents. Again, it has a similar, chatty story-telling tone. Here’s an example:

The history of this novel (The Heat of Summer) is the real subject of my tale. That, and the wheel of fortune and the quirks of fate. The book takes its first inspiration from Camus’ famous L’Etranger, and its content is drawn from the aforementioned history of Joseph Tice Gellibrand, the disappearing Attorney-General of Van Diemen’s Land. Well, you can see that what Frankie was doing here was risky. It was what is often described as literary fiction.

There’s more delicious satire about publishers and their slush piles, but I’ll finish with a quote about promotion:

The media hype for The Heat of Summer is huge, what with the glamour of Frankie’s Paris life, and the deep fascination with gothic Australian bush stuff and so forth. Based around the tragic life of her ancestor. Smash hit. Frankie turned out to be a publicist’s dream, having, as well as the attributes I have alluded to, long legs, a face that could sell cosmetics and airline tickets, and an engaging lisp.

Delicious isn’t it?

And so the stories continue, addressing issues like missing children (“Cold case”), dying towns and New Age shops (“Cactus”), shallow suburbanites and their prejudices (“The matter of the mosque”), surrogacy (“Surrogate”), and species extinction (“Letter to Lola” and “The tale of the last unicorn”). All the stories could be lessons in writing – in tone, in varying form, in how to make words and language work for you, in being absurd without being absurd (if you know what I mean), in addressing serious matters with a light but pointed touch. I enjoyed every one.

While several stories are written in the chatty, satirical tone of the first two. Not all are. “Dear Lola” takes the form of a love letter from a Spix’s Macaw to his lost mate. It’s sad, and pointed, but the whole idea of a bird writing to its lover gives it a whimsical touch too. “The matter of the mosque”, on the other hand, is written in little scenes, comprising mostly dialogue between two mothers in which it’s clear that whether to use hairspray or mousse is more important than opening their minds to different ways of being. Bird’s control of language and narrative here, together with her use of repetition and recurring ideas or images, makes this a little gem.

Now, I know many of you aren’t short story readers, because you want to get lost in character. These stories won’t give you that. However, what a mind, what ideas, what fun and, ultimately, what heart, you miss by ignoring a book like this. It’s only available in e-format and costs a whopping $4.99! Why not give it a go?

AWW Badge 2018Carmel Bird
The dead aviatrix: Eight short stories
Spineless Wonders, 2017
50pp.
ISBN (e-version): 9781925052343

(Review copy courtesy the author, but available from Spineless Wonders)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aurealis Awards for Speculative Fiction

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

Those of you who know my lack of interest in science fiction might be surprised to see a post dedicated to the genre here. However, I do like to be more representative in my Monday Musings series. If that means sometimes moving into areas that are out of my comfort zone, then so be it. And now seems to be an appropriate time to do so in this instance, because this year’s Aurealis shortlist has been released and it contains some books that interest me.

First, though, a little background. According to the website, the awards were established “in 1995 by Chimaera Publications, the publishers of Aurealis magazine, to recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.” Their aim is to complement the Annual Australian National Science Fiction Convention’s Ditmar Awards and various other literary awards, but they delve deeper into the genre by distinguishing different types of speculative fiction – science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Their “rules” explain their criteria. They see themselves as “first and foremost a literary award”, so “literary merit, originality and contribution to the genre are of paramount importance in selecting the shortlisted works”. In other words, genre elements alone are not enough for shortlisting. Regarding genre definitions, they say that “a problematic definition of what makes a work of a particular genre” should not “bar an excellent book that contains appropriate elements of that genre”. They prefer “an inclusive view of what genre markers may include”. So, while they provide guidelines for their three named types of speculative fiction, these are not meant to be proscriptive. Rather, fluidity and inclusivity is their goal. This broad view is probably why there are a few books on this year’s list that interest me.

Over the years, award categories have come and gone, but the end result is that, today, the list is extensive. Their 2017 awards are for:

  • Best children’s fiction
  • Best graphic novel/illustrated work
  • Best young adult short story
  • Best horror short story
  • Best horror novella
  • Best fantasy short story
  • Best fantasy novella
  • Best science fiction short story
  • Best science novella
  • Best collection
  • Best anthology
  • Best young adult novel
  • Best horror novel
  • Best fantasy novel
  • Best science fiction novel

Phew! I love that they cover their three “types” in novel, novella and short story forms, and that they separately recognise children and young adult works, and collections and anthologies. It’s comprehensive, and it’s clearly successful because these awards have now survived more than two decades.

There is also the Convenor’s Award for Excellence. It’s something a little different, being awarded at the discretion of the convenors for “a particular achievement in speculative fiction or related areas” that doesn’t necessarily fit into award categories. ” It can be given to “a work of non-fiction, artwork, film, television, electronic or multimedia work, or one that brings credit or attention to the speculative fiction genres.” There’s no shortlist, and people can self-nominate. Again, if you’re interested to see the sorts of works being considered this year, do check the website.

Interestingly, I can’t find anything on their site about what the winners win, which makes me think it is more for the glory than for monetary gain.

Selected shortlist titles for the 2017 Awards

Given the large number of awards made, I’m not going to list the complete shortlist, but if you’re interested check out their  announcement. However, I’d like to identify a few that caught my eye.

Firstly, there are a few authors in the list who have appeared here, such as short story writer Deborah Sheldon (see my review of her 300 degree days and other stories). There are also popular children’s and young adult writer Garth Nix, local writer Kaaron Warren, and several writers I’ve learnt about through the Australian Women Writers Challenge, such as Kate Forsyth, Margo Lanagan and Tansy Rayner Roberts. I don’t feel quite so out of my comfort zone now that I recognise some names!

Claire G Coleman, Terra nulliusBut, this year’s shortlist also contains some specific titles that interest me:

  • Lois Murphy’s Soon, published by Transit Lounge (for Best Horror Novel). It won the Tasmanian Premier’s Prize for Unpublished Manuscript. Lisa reviewed it and found it compelling.
  • Claire G Coleman’s Terra Nullius, published by Hachette Australia (for Best Science Fiction Novel). This debut genre-bending novel by an indigenous writer (who identifies with the South Coast Noongar people of Western Australia) has also been longlisted for the Stella Prize. The judges wrote that “Coleman’s punchy prose is insistent throughout, its energy unflagging”. My reading group will be reading this in March so you can expect a review here in a month.
  • Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace, published by Text Publishing (for Best Science Fiction Novel). I’ve read one of her novels, Steeplechase (my review) and am intrigued to read more of her. An uncertain grace has also been longlisted for the Stella Prize (link above). The judges’ report begins with “Krissy Kneen does not simply perform the difficult feat of writing wittily about sex, she does so with aplomb. An Uncertain Grace is a formally ingenious and often amusing novel that combines eroticism and science fiction with a playful spirit of intellectual inquisitiveness.”
  • Jane Rawson’s From the Wreck, published by Transit Lounge (for Best Science Fiction Novel). I loved Rawson’s A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (my review) and am very keen to read this latest book of hers which, I believe, crosses historical and science fiction genres. I rather thought it might have been longlisted for the Stella, but that didn’t happen.

These awards are clearly sought after. This year 800 entries were submitted across the 15 categories. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony over the Easter long weekend during the Swancon convention in Perth.

Does speculative fiction have a place in your reading preferences? If so, how?

Diana Blackwood, Chaconne (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 28 Comments

Diana Blackwood, ChaconneDoes a book set in the early 1980s qualify as historical fiction? Does a book about a twenty-something woman’s romantic adventures, and search for direction, qualify as coming-of-age? The answer is probably yes to both. Certainly, it is within these parameters that it’s appropriate to discuss Diana Blackwood’s debut novel Chaconne.

Chaconne, as you can see, has a gorgeous cover. Rather than an image of a pretty young woman, promoting the idea of a “woman’s book”, it features a harpsichord – with an image of a Pershing (or similar) missile inside its open lid – sitting in a golden-lit rural landscape. This clues us into some important aspects of this novel, which are that music and war are involved. Of course, the title, Chaconne, also suggests a music theme. A chaconne, says Wikipedia, is “a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line (ground bass) which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and melodic invention”. By this description, the “chaconne” works as a metaphor for Eleanor who is “sort of” progressing in her life, though with a deal of repetition, particularly in her way of choosing the wrong men and of  bumbling along, without goal, from job to job. And within this main storyline are several interesting people and events which intervene along the way to add variety and decoration to the whole!

The novel starts with 24-year-old Eleanor arriving in Paris in 1981 to meet her lover, the bourgeois communist Julien whom she’d met a couple of years earlier in Sydney while he was an exchange student in Australia. Eleanor, who has “a fuzzy sense of being shut out of her proper story as if she had failed youth, been found wanting by life itself”, seems to have little direction in her life, though we know from flashbacks that she’s interested in music. One of her complaints against her mother, Mavis, and there are many, is that she’d stopped Eleanor’s piano lessons, replacing them with something she deemed more important for Eleanor’s education, maths tutoring! Escaping to Paris, though, is a bit of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, because Julien proves to be rather less than she thought. She finds herself spending much time alone in a tiny flat, relieved somewhat by her English teaching job at a lycée. Fortunately, her loneliness is assuaged a little by some lovely people, such as Rosa and the kind Monsieur Joubert who recognises her interest in music and starts, in a small way, her musical education.

As her relationship with Julien flounders, she meets Lawrence, an American who is flat-sitting for her next-door neighbour. It’s not long before she follows him to Germany, where he, a PhD student in deconstructive theory, is an English tutor on an American airforce base near a German village. The novel is set during the Cold War, when fear of nuclear destruction was high. Here Eleanor also obtains work teaching English. But, Lawrence – as we readers could have told her, just as we could have with Julien – doesn’t turn out to be the man she hoped.

Providing a background to Eleanor’s lacklustre romantic life is the unsettled political situation. Julien is engaged in communist politics, taking part in peace marches and the like, while Lawrence works on a military base where Eleanor keeps her Parisian life quiet and tries not to get too close to the base’s scary off-limit areas. Nonetheless she lives with “the unpalatable truth … that the nuclear umbrella was sheltering her by paying her rent.”

Not only does Lawrence draw her to this uncomfortable environment, but he is also not interested in music. What was she thinking in following him? Luckily, Eleanor finds a choir in the village, and her life gradually starts to change as she finally finds the thing that enlivens her.

And this is perhaps where the novel was a little problematical for me. While Eleanor’s journey to self-discovery was interesting, I never quite “felt” her sadness or her joy. I liked her, but I didn’t fully engage with her. This may be because she makes too many bad decisions that didn’t quite ring true for the intelligent young woman she clearly is. The coming-of-age felt a little late (particularly for the 1980s, which was before our 30-is-the-new-20 age?) But, this could just be sensible me speaking! Still, I would love to have seen more of her gutsy-but-also-life-challenged friend Ruth.

Nonetheless, there’s a lot to like about this book. I particularly enjoyed Blackwood’s obvious love of the English language. Eleanor and her Australian friend Ruth – not to mention her aforementioned mother – are grammar nazis (though that’s an unfortunate phrase given the post-war setting of this novel, a time when Germany was particularly uncertain about its past). The book delights in wordplay (including puns), alongside more serious discussions of grammar. Lawrence pegs Eleanor as “a proponent of prescriptive grammar” while she expects that “traditional grammar was another thing he would like to see tossed on the scrapheap”. The discussions Eleanor has about language are those we have here among the extended Gums’ family. We discuss language with each other, yell at the TV, argue about prescription versus description, ponder how and why language does or should or shouldn’t change. There are no answers but it’s fun exploring the issue.

Blackwood’s writing is also beautifully evocative, such as this description of Monsieur Joubert – “loneliness was close about him like a Parisian winter”. And this of the beginning of spring:

In the last few days spring has retreated. The quickening of the senses, the opening up to life and fate, had been dampened by chilling rain and the need to wear a jumper again.

This is exactly why I’m not a big fan of spring! It taunts with moments of warmth before plunging us all into cold again! Time and again Blackwood captured moments perfectly.

Chaconne, then, is an intelligent, well-written, well-structured book set in interesting times and places. I did like the cheeky metafictional reference to The catcher in the rye’s Holden Caulfield. Eleanor suggests that he needed “a firm but loving grandmother”. However, she also recognises that,

of course, the whole point of being a fictional character was to suffer misadventures and setbacks and humiliations without being bailed out by your grandmother, at least not until you’re sufficiently chastened.

Very true – and in the end our fictional character is – but no, I’ll not give it away.

Chaconne is book that should appeal to those who love Western Europe and baroque music, who remember the 1980s, and who like their romantic novels to be thoughtful and not neatly wrapped up. By the end, Eleanor has grown, but, as in life, we know she has yet more growing to do – and that’s the sort of ending I like.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) loved this novel and includes two YouTube links to music referenced in the novel.

AWW Badge 2018Diana Blackwood
Chaconne
Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2017
296pp.
ISBN: 9781925272611

(Review copy courtesy Hybrid Publishers)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australia’s most successful writer, ever

/ Whispering Gums / 36 Comments

The obvious question to ask when someone makes a “best ever” claim is by what criteria? The easiest way to justify “best” is with numbers. And so it is here, as it’s with numbers that Australian publisher Allen & Unwin’s blog, Things Made From Letters, suggests that Morris West is “Australia’s most successful writer, ever.” The numbers are sales of course. According to Allen & Unwin (A&U), West’s books have sold over 70 million* copies around the world – more, apparently, than any other Australian author.

Morris West, The shoes of the fishermanAnd yet, I wonder how many readers here know – or have read – Morris West. He wrote nearly 30 novels, not to mention radio serials, plays and non-fiction, and his work was translated into 28 languages. His most famous novels were The devil’s advocate  (1959), which made him an international best-seller, and The shoes of the fisherman (1963). These, and a few others, were adapted to film.

West was born in Melbourne in 1916, and died in 1999. The Oxford companion to Australian literature says that he was a member of the Christian Brothers order for 12 years, but that he left in 1940 before taking his final vows. This is relevant because he was known for writing about the Roman Catholic Church, particularly regarding its role in international affairs. During World War 2 he worked as a cipher officer and was briefly private secretary to ex-PM Billy Hughes. After the war, he worked in radio, and founded, in fact, Australian Radio Productions.

However, as the A&U blog says, he “was determined to build a career as a writer, and as for so many artists, musicians and writers before the 1980s, the only way to do that was to move overseas.” And so he did, living in Europe and the USA from 1955 to 1980. He clearly maintained contact with Australia during this time because in the early 1960s, he helped found the Australian Society of Authors. The A&U blogger is particularly interested to know why such an apparently successful writer is barely known today, indeed completely unknown to her “younger colleagues”. She offers a few reasons. One is that except for a couple of early novels, all his books are set overseas. “Is Australian literary culture reluctant to acknowledge a novelist who doesn’t write about Australia?”, she asks. Or is it that “an increasingly secular Australia is now uncomfortable reading fiction which takes religion seriously?” Even though he wrote this fiction with a critical eye?

But then there’s the issue of “literary” quality. The A&U blogger quotes the AustLit database as stating that his fiction “has not received a great deal of literary attention.” Kerryn Goldsworthy, writing about Australian fiction from 1900 to 1970 in The Cambridge companion to Australian literature, names West, along with Ion L. Idriess and Jon Cleary, as writers who were very popular in their time but who “tended to be dismissed by their ‘serious’ peers and by later literary historians as middle-brow.”  She describes his books as looking at public institutions, usually political or religious ones, on the international stage and dealing with “the moral dilemmas they pose for the individual”. These three writers are probably the equivalent of my generation’s Colleen McCullough and Bryce Courtenay?

Morris West, The clowns of GodSo, why the interest now? Well, you may not be surprised to hear that Allen & Unwin is re-publishing most of his work – in print and e-version. (The book covers here are from this new series). Author Simon Caterson writing in The Monthly refers to this reissue and asks what West has to offer contemporary readers. Good question. He talks about the subject matter, suggesting that the “fascination with church politics and influence” is of continuing interest. Books keep coming out dealing with these, he says, just think The Da Vinci Code!

What makes West worth reissuing is, he suggests, West’s ability “to turn the intellectual and emotional struggles within his faith – his own and that of others – into gripping melodrama.” Moreover, he says that

it makes commercial sense to bring back the books of Morris West, whose big themes – conscience versus power, the individual versus the institution – are as relatable to the struggles of secular – as much as religious – life.

And finally, there’s the writing. Caterson sums it up this way:

It is also important to note that West could not have sold tens of millions of copies of his books without knowing how to make the pages turn. The prose may sometimes be prolix and the endings not always satisfying, but his writing is always full blooded and, for the most part, remarkably fluent.

Middle-brow perhaps, but a good read it seems. And as someone who loves seeing older Australian writers being read again – even those who didn’t write about Australia! – I’m happy to see this blast from my past being published again. Good on Allen & Unwin. I hope, just as I continue to hope for Text Classics, that they do well.

* Wikipedia says 60 million, but I think that might be based on figures around the time of his death.