21st century literature

Sherman Alexie, War dances (#Review)

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Sherman Alexie’s “War dances” is the fourteenth and last story in the anthology, Great short stories by contemporary Native American writers. It is also the longest story in the book, and the most intriguing in form.

Sherman Alexie

Anthology editor Bob Blaisdell introduces Alexie as “born in 1966, of Coeur d’Alene and Spokane heritage”, meaning he is from US’s Pacific northwest. Describing Alexie as the “most colloquial” of the writers in the anthology, Blaisdell also says that he writes “with a confessional voice that is often humorous”. Not surprisingly, given Alexie is a contemporary and award-winning author, Wikipedia provides quite a lot more, too much in fact to share here in even summary form, so click on the link if you are interested. There are personal and political controversies there, as well as several literary awards.

Essentially, though, Wikipedia describes him as “a Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker”. And, citing a couple of sources, Wikipedia says this about his themes:

Alexie’s poetry, short stories, and novels explore themes of despair, poverty, violence, and alcoholism in the lives of Native American people, both on and off the reservation. They are lightened by wit and humor. According to Sarah A. Quirk from the Dictionary of Library Biography, Alexie asks three questions across all of his works: “What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? Finally, what does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?” The protagonists in most of his literary works exhibit a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness in white American society.

“War dances”

“War dances”, as I wrote above, has an intriguing form. Blaisdell writes in his introductory Notes for the anthology that “we feel as if the writer [Alexie] is discovering the story himself and extending conventional short story boundaries as he composes it: we encounter an interview a checklist, a poem, a critique of that poem and continual jokes and revelations”.

Now, as far as I can tell, the “story” titled “War dances” comes from a book of short stories of the same name. It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2010. GoodReads’ entry for the book describes it as “a virtuoso collection of tender, witty, and soulful stories that expertly capture modern relationships from the most diverse angles.” My problem is that I don’t know whether the “story” in Blaisdell’s anthology is a coherent excerpt from this book, or whether Blaisdell has selected disparate pieces to represent the work as a while. Whichever it is, I found an online version in The New Yorker. It comprises essentially the same content, with just a few differences that suggest some editing has happened between the versions. Also, in Blaisdell’s book the short pieces are numbered 1 to 16, while in The New Yorker they are not. None of this is probably germane to my comments so I’ll say no more. Consider yourselves informed!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece (these pieces). The quotes I’ve shared about his work all ring true from what I read here – the mix of forms (lists, poems, interviews, and so on), the wit and humour, the “diverse angles”. It is a work that draws from Native American experience, but that encompasses wider personal and political issues.

By personal issues, I mean his dealing with significant familial relationships, and by political, I mean his recognition that Native Americans don’t exclusively suffer from the socioeconomic (including health) ramifications of racial discrimination. While the pieces seem disparate, there is an overall narrative arc concerning the narrator’s own health – he is diagnosed with a meningioma – and his father’s. There are also recurring motifs which connect many of the pieces – insects, like Kafka’s bug (or cockroach), being one. Here is a scene from the first person narrator visiting his father in hospital. You can see the pointed use of bees here:

How had this change happened? For the first sixty-seven years of his life, my father had been a large and dark man. And now he was just another pale and sick drone in a hallway of pale and sick drones. A hive, I thought, this place looks like a beehive with colony collapse disorder. (4, Blankets)

The imagery here is clear, but not laboured. Alexie doesn’t, in general, labour his points but lets humour do the talking. The second last piece comprises questions for his dying father, the first one being

True or False?: when a reservation-raised Native American dies of alcoholism it should be considered death by natural causes. (15, Exit Interview for My Father)

There are many references to race, and to its construction by other in the determination to distinguish and separate, while for our narrator, no such distinction truly exists:

And then I saw him another Native man … Well, maybe he was Asian; lots of those in Seattle. He was a small man, pale brown, with muscular arms and a soft belly. Maybe he was Mexican, which is really a kind of Indian too, but not the kind that I needed. It was hard to tell sometimes what people were. Even brown people guess the identity of other brown people. (4, Blankets)

This is followed by a self-deprecating racist joke … the reason a Mexican was not the kind of Indian our narrator needed was because he was looking for a blanket for his shivering, hospitalised father, and, well, Indians do blankets don’t they! The dialogue with the man, who is indeed Indian, is priceless.

So, these pieces build up. Entertaining to read, with their varied forms and chatty but cleverly humorous style, they convey specific truths about racism, and larger ones about identity, change and loss. In terms of this work at least, I’d say Sarah Quirk’s above-quoted three questions nail it. “War dances” – including for its very title – makes a worthy conclusion to this anthology.

(Thanks to Carolyn for this book.)

Sherman Alexie
“War dances” (orig. pub. 2009)
in Bob Blaisdell (ed.), Great short stories by contemporary Native American writers
Garden City: Dover Publications, 2014
pp. 104-127
ISBN: 9780486490953

Available online, with some differences, at The New Yorker (August 10 and 17, 2009)

Sonya Voumard, Tremor (#BookReview)

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As I’ve previously reported, Sonya Voumard’s short memoir, Tremor, is one of the two winners of this year’s Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize. Earlier this month, I reviewed the fiction winner, P.S. Cottier and N.G. Hartland’s novella The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin. Now it’s Voumard’s turn, with her book on living with a neurological movement disorder called dystonia.

While essentially a memoir, Tremor also fits within that “genre” we call creative nonfiction. The judges would agree, I think, given their comment that Tremor is “notable for its compellingly astute interweaving of the author’s personal experience with our broader societal context where people with disabilities, often far more challenging than her own, try to adapt to the implicit expectations and judgements that surround them” (back cover). The interweaving of something personal with something wider is a common feature of creative nonfiction, but what seals the deal for me is its structure. Tremor has a strong – subjective – narrative arc that propels the reader on, with more objective information providing the necessary support.

The narrative opens on December 3, 2020, the day Voumard is to undergo brain surgery for her condition. It leaves us in no doubt that what we are about to read is a very personal journey. “I am”, she writes on this first page, “a hairless head on top of a flimsy cotton gown and long compression socks”. But then, two sentences later, she opens a new paragraph with, “as I wait to be taken to the operating theatre, I channel my inner journalist. I’m on a news assignment for which I have already gathered some key facts.” And just like that, we are in journalist mode, with Voumard describing her condition and the relatively new treatment she is about to receive, followed by some facts and figures. Around 800,000 Australians, she informs us, experience tremors of the body, and about 70,000 of these have dystonia. A couple of paragraphs later we flash back to early 1960s Melbourne. Voumard is four or five years old, and her personal trajectory begins with an anecdote about dropping a bottle of milk, about being “clumsy, prone to dropping things”, but also being “a risk-taker”.

From here, the book takes us on the two journeys I’ve just intimated. There’s the mostly chronological one tracking her life with dystonia until we arrive – at the end of the book – back at the beginning with her surgery and its aftermath. And there’s her exploration of dystonia, its causes, diagnosis, and treatment. Voumard binds these two journeys together with her astute, and empathetic, reflections and analyses. She knows what it’s like to live with a disability, even if early on she didn’t recognise it as such.

So, for example, she chronicles the tactics she’d use to hide her shaking, in order to get jobs and then to demonstrate she could do them (when clearly she could). She would sit on her hands, refuse offers of drinks, self-medicate with alcohol. Whatever it took to hide her condition. She talks about navigating a medical world that is so “siloed” that diagnoses ranged from the “psychogenic” (due to “some sort of failure of womanhood, an unfulfilled yearning, a cloak for something else”) to the “purely physical” (like a sports injury or from computer use) – depending on the speciality she was dealing with – when it was something else altogether. She touches on the cost of treatment, the overall politics of medicine, the gender issues which see women’s conditions so often dismissed.

And, lest I’ve given the wrong impression, she does this not only through her own experiences, but through those of others – met personally, or found through her research – ensuring that Tremor is not a “misery memoir” but something bigger, that contributes to our understanding of how people navigate a world in which they don’t fit the norm. This navigation has a few prongs: the obvious ones relate to coping with the physical limitations, discomfort, and/or pain the condition brings; and the less visible ones concern managing your expectations and aspirations, while also dealing with how people interact with you. Voumard shares the story of a woman who had suffered for over twenty years from cervical dystonia before she got a diagnosis. While diagnosis didn’t bring a cure, “identifying her condition had helped her to live her life more calmly, to not try to do too much and to understand something of others’ suffering”.

Voumard, you’ve probably realised by now, packs a lot into the 20/40 form (that is, into 20,000 to 40,000 words). At the winners’ conversation, she said there is the assumption that to be marketable you need to write 55,000 plus words. She had the bones, and had then started filling them out, but it was just “flab”. The competition, and then Julian Davies’ editing guidance, taught her that she had a good “muscular story”. So she set about “decluttering”. The end result is interesting, because this book doesn’t have that spare feeling common to short works. Tremor feels tight – there’s little extraneous detail – but not pared back to a single core.

Voumard, in fact, covers a lot of ground. She uses the Eurydice Dixon murder case, for example, to epitomise her ongoing interest in media and reporting, particularly regarding structural disadvantage and social justice. She also contextualises the latter stages of her journey against the 2019 bushfires, the 2020-2021 pandemic and lockdowns, and the 2022 floods in NSW’s northern rivers. Why all this? The subtitle explains it. This book, this “tremor”, is not just about a movement disorder but about something bigger:

My more recent thinking about disability has strengthened my belief in the urgent need to privilege the voices of others more marginalised than mine. But I also cling to the concept of freedom of speech – not as a neoliberal, tabloid-news defender of hate speech – but as someone striving to find ways to respond to the challenges of a democratic society that is becoming more disordered.

Tremor is another beautiful, thoughtful product of the Finlay Lloyd stable. Recommended.

Read for Novellas in November, because, while not a novella, it is a short work.

Sonya Voumard
Tremor: A movement disorder in a disordered world
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2024
129pp.
ISBN: 9780645927023

Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd.

PS Cottier and NG Hartland, The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin (#BookReview)

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Earlier this month, I posted on a conversation with the winners of the 2024 Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize, P S Cottier and N G Hartland, who wrote The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin, and Sonya Voumard, who wrote Tremor. On the surface, these books look very different, but conversation facilitator, Sally Pryor, found some similarities suggesting both explore ideas related to identity, one’s place in the world, and how we can be captured and defined by the systems within which we live. Having now read Cottier and Hartland’s novella, and having started Voumard’s memoir, I can see she has a point.

If you didn’t read my conversation post, you may be wondering what the heck this book with its curious title is about. Besides the fact that it’s a novella, which I love, I was attracted to it from the moment I saw it on the shortlist because the description said it “spirits us away on a comedic journey into a world where the reality and absurdity of political power are increasingly indistinguishable”. That sounded just too delicious and I was glad to see it win.

Ok, so I still haven’t told you what it’s about, but be patient, I’m getting there. The novella was inspired, said Cottier and Hartland, by the idea that there are such things as Putin “body doubles”. There is even a Wikipedia page about this “theory” so it is a thing, as they say! The titular “thirty-one legs” belong to 16 of these body doubles whose stories are told in the book. Sixteen, you ask? That doesn’t compute from 31? True, but one of the doubles only has one leg! How can that be, you might also ask, how can a “double” of two-legged Putin only have one leg? Good question, and I won’t give it away, but let’s just say that the idea epitomises the absurdity of the notion.

Now, this is a collaborative novel, and if I understood correctly from the conversation, Cottier and Hartland started by “pushing out” individual Putins. In fact, the novella reads rather like a set of interconnected short stories because each Putin stands alone, with minimal connection between them except they are all Putin doubles and most of them assume there must be others. However, there is a narrative arc to the whole. Each Putin tells us something about their recruitment and its impact on their lives, with some threads recurring through the different Putins, depending on their location and personality. Two Putins also bookend the story. Surfing Putin, Dave McDermott in Western Australia, opens the book in the Prologue and concludes it with his own story, while English Putin Samuel Chatswood starts off the stories proper, and returns with the penultimate story. Each chapter is titled with the name and location of a Putin, so we have, for example, “Maja Dahl, Oslo, Norway”, “Richie ‘The Putin’ Rogers, Cirencester, England”, “Joppe Stoepke, The Hague, Netherlands”, and “Andrei Galkin, Rostov-on-Don, Russia”.

The set-up, or plot, is simple. People from around the world who look like Putin have been recruited to act as Putin doubles should they be so needed. This recruitment has happened over twenty years, but the book is set post the Ukraine invasion, so our doubles suspect they will not be called upon to play Putin. Some are quite edgy about this, while others are more phlegmatic. For all of them, though, being paid – because paid they are, monthly, from an anonymous bank account – comes with questions, if not challenges.

Our first fully-fledged Putin, Samuel Chatswood from London, sets the scene. He tells us about his fears about being a double. Not only is he frequently teased about his resemblance to Putin and asked “why anyone would want to invade Ukraine?”, but he’s anxious because he has been increasingly getting dark looks from strangers since the Skripal poisoning. However, having recently spied another lookalike, he is “comforted” by the idea that “whatever suspicion and recriminations are possible, they are less likely to entangle me if I’m not the only Putin lookalike”. He also heralds the denouement, when he returns to find that such comfort might have been misplaced.

We meet all sorts of Putins, from the fearful, through the deluded, and the thoughtful, to the confident or more upbeat, but all ponder what being a Putin double means for them. For some their own identity gets lost in the role, and some are confused, or at least perplexed, about what’s expected of them. For others, like the resourceful Chilean, Sebastian Soto, it’s a business proposition, while several capitalise on their lookalike-ness. Steve Pinebrother in “International Waters”, for example, not only makes money, secretly, as a double but, publicly, as a performer on a cruise ship. Each one is beautifully individuated, and I find it hard to pick a favourite. There’s much humour in many of their stories, but there’s pathos too, particularly with those who get lost in – or fearful about – their roles. Life is not simple when you accept money without clarity, eh?

“the butterfly of truth does not need questions to emerge from its cocoon of facts”

So, what’s the takeaway. An obvious one is contemporary culture’s focus on appearance and its willingness to monetise looks without much substance behind it. But another is murkier. This novella, I’m tempted to say, could be read as an allegory of the changing world order. No matter where the Putins live, recent changes are unsettling them. The ground is shifting and they (we?) don’t know how to react. Do they bury their heads in the sand, believing it will be alright? Do they wait for the inevitable or, try to withdraw? Or do they take action, and if so, what action can they take? For French Putin, Hugo Fournier,

It matters not, I conclude, what is reality and what is an extravagant theory from a feverish mind. The answer of course is that I should trust no one. I am the only Putin who can, and will, look after me.

Is such isolationism the answer? Through their various Putins, Cottier and Hartland pose serious questions, including, what do we believe and what we can or should we do?

The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin is an audacious “what if” story. Its episodic approach works well in the novella form. Were the book much longer, the conceit would, I think, start to lose its freshness. As it is, there are enough Putins to provide a variety of stories, without becoming repetitive. The tone is light enough to be highly entertaining, but the content is informed and thoughtful enough to engage our minds. This book would make a perfect Christmas stocking stuffer, which is not to say I put it on a par with chocolates and scratchies, but that it is small in size, well-priced, physically lovely, and a thoroughly absorbing read.

Read for Novellas in November.

PS Cottier and NG Hartland
The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2024
115pp.
ISBN: 9780645927016

Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd.

Margaret Atwood, Widows (#Review)

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Marcie’s (Buried in Print) MARM (Margaret Atwood Reading Month) event is now seven years old, but this is only my second contribution. I read a reasonable amount of Atwood before blogging, and since then have let her slide somewhat, though I have reviewed a couple of books here. You can’t read it all – but, I do like her voice …

So, I decided to join in again this year, as I knew I had a collection of short stories in my TBR pile. The only problem is that my non-Australian TBRs are still in boxes somewhere. What to do? Maybe, I thought, there’s a short story online somewhere, and sure enough I found one in The Guardian. Titled “Widows” it features Nell and (the late) Tig. From Marcie’s blog I learnt that this couple first appeared in Atwood’s collection of linked stories titled Moral disorder, and appeared again in her recent collection Old babes in the wood, from which this story comes. However, I’ve not read either of these collections, and I didn’t recollect those characters or their names.

Then a strange thing happened. According to Wikipedia, Moral disorder contains eleven connected short stories, the second last one being “The Labrador fiasco”. This is the story I read for last year’s MARM, but it was in a 1996-published Bloomsbury Quid edition. I had no idea it was later included in the 2006-published Moral disorder. Oh these writers can be tricksy. Did she change it in any way – such as to name the then unnamed character – for version in the collection? Anyhow, moving on, Wikipedia tells me that the 2023-published Old babes in the wood comprises fifteen stories in three parts: “Tig & Nell” (three), “My Evil Mother” (eight), and “Nell & Tig” (four). “Widows” is the thirteenth story in the collection, so presumably the second one in that last group of four.

I won’t rehash “The Labrador fiasco”, except to say that it is a “story-within-a-story” story, and that the framing story concerns the unnamed narrator (who is apparently Nell) visiting her aging father and mother. The father, in particular, is declining, having experienced a stroke six years before the story’s opening. It is told first person by the daughter, who regularly visits her parents and is becoming aware of aging and our inevitable decline. Some years have clearly passed, and in “Widows” Nell has recently lost her husband “Tig”. It’s an epistolary story, I guess you could say, though it contains only two letters, both by Nell to a friend named Stevie.

The first, and main, letter is a delight – and pure Atwood. It’s partly in what she covers, as this short short story manages to encompass Atwood’s recurring themes – women (their position in society, and their relationships), language, aging, social conventions, and the state of the world. But it’s also in the sly way she makes her sharp little points. For example, talking about widows, she has a dig at the modern penchant for creating increasingly complicated gender-neutral descriptions:

I’m hanging out with a clutch of other widows. Some of them are widowers: we have not yet got around to a gender-neutral term for those who have lost their life partners. Maybe TWHLTLP will appear shortly, but it hasn’t yet. Some are women who have lost women or men who have lost men, but mostly they are women who have lost men.

Similarly, there is a sly reference to world politics and climate change, when she says to Stevie, who is much younger, that:

if you live another thirty years and are still enjoying it, or most of it – if anyone will be enjoying, or indeed living, considering the huge unknown wave that is already rolling toward us – I expect you will look at a picture of yourself as you are today, supposing your personal effects have survived flood, fire, famine, plague, insurrection, invasion, or whatever …

Of course, Nell talks about grief, about the forms, assumptions and cliches that surround it. She’s quietly scathing about “checking the boxes of the prescribed grief process” and eschews the well-intended offers of casseroles and suggestions that she go on a cruise.

When I read writing like this, I can’t help being reminded of Jane Austen, because both have the ability to see through our conventions and pretensions to the truths beneath, and to make us chuckle as they do so.

However, for all the cheeky barbs and social commentary, there is also something heartfelt in her discussion of grief. She speaks of how it skews one’s experience of time, how it affects one’s relationship with the person who has died, and what grieving people really talk about and deal with. Atwood knows whereof she speaks having lost her husband of 46 years in 2019.

If I thought this first letter was both clever and moving, the second letter just nailed it. In fact, if I were writing criticism and not a review, I would discuss what Atwood does here, but that would spoil the whole experience, and I don’t want to do that because you can read it yourself at the link below. Suffice it to say that, while “Widows” is a short story, it does a lot in its few words, and its ending signs off with aplomb.

Read for MARM 2024

Margaret Atwood
“Widows”
The Guardian, 25 February, 2023 (also pub. Old babes in the wood, 2023)
Available online at The Guardian, 2023

Raynor Winn, The salt path (#BookReview)

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While my reading group’s main fare is fiction, we do include nonfiction in the mix. In fact, this year has been unusual as we’ve scheduled three nonfiction books – Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 (my review), Anna Funder’s Wifedom (my review), and, last month, Raynor Winn’s The salt path. I can’t recollect how The salt path came to be chosen, and nor could the 8 (of our 11) members who attended the meeting, but we weren’t about to complain.

Many of you will know this book already, given it became a bestseller after its publication in 2018. It was shortlisted for some major awards, and won the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize (which I would call a “late bloomer” prize.) However, in case it escaped your notice, I will briefly summarise it. The book opens with two disasters befalling author Raynor and and her husband of 32 years, Moth. He is diagnosed with a rare, terminal degenerative disease called CBD (corticobasal degeneration) and, in an ultimately unjust court case, they lose their home which was also their livelihood. They have nothing but each other (and their two children who, fortunately, are young adults linving away from home). What do you do in a situation like this? You decide to walk England’s challenging 630-mile South West Coast Path, wild camping most of the way. That’s what.

Although it’s essentially a memoir, The salt path is better described as a road story that combines memoir, nature writing and social commentary. I would also argue that it’s a work of creative nonfiction, partly because of its strong narrative arc (albeit this is not uncommon in memoir and travel writing) but also because it includes dialogue (which, given there’s no evidence to the contrary, has presumably been recreated for the book). The result is a book which interweaves description, anecdote, personal reflection, social commentary and dialogue in a way that maintains our interest because it never bogs down in one mode or another. The balance Winn achieves is not only between these modes, but also in tone, which moves between serious and scared, melancholic and thoughtful, and light and humorous.

“you’ve felt the hand of nature … you’re salted” (woman on path)

I want to explore a little more how the combination of memoir and road story works to tell Winn’s story. Memoir, by definition, deals with a particular issue or time period in a person’s life. This gives the story a natural trajectory which conveys how that issue is handled or progresses – and/or what happens over that chosen time – until some sort of resolution or conclusion is reached. A road story has an even more obvious or natural narrative arc – the beginning of the trip, the middle with all the events and challenges met on the way, and the trip’s end (which may or may not be the originally intended one.)

So, in The salt path, the memoir, with its central issues being Moth’s illness and their homelessness, is framed by the road story, which describes the physical journey, that is, the landscape they walk through, and their experience of walking and wild camping. As in most road stories, we meet characters along the way, some positive or helpful, some amusing, and others negative or obstructive. And, as is also common in travel literature, we are introduced to issues that are relevant to the places travelled through. In this case they include conflicting ideas about heritage, conservation and the role of the National Trust in the communities and regions along the path.

There is, then, a lot to this book and while it works well as a coherent whole, some parts, of course, left a stronger impression than others. The strongest was their experience of the path, particularly given its recognised toughness combined with their impecunious state, inexpert preparation, and Moth’s ill-health. They were often hungry, wet and cold, and they walked at half the pace of Paddy Dillon whose guidebook they followed, but as time wore on Moth’s health improved. Why is a question never fully answered because they didn’t know why. Years later, he is still alive, still with the condition. Their strong interpersonal connection sustains them when little else does! And there is always the nature. This is Winn’s first book but she can clearly write. Her descriptions of the environment – the wildlife, the landscape, the vegetation, the sea – and of their feelings as they walk through it are perfect, like:

“A hidden land of weather and rock, remote and isolated. Unchanged through millennia yet constantly changed by the sea and the sky, a contradiction at the western edge. Unmoved by time or man, this ancient land was draining our strength and self-will, bending us to acceptance of the shaping elements.”

“The moon climbed into a clear sky, just past full, polishing the landscape in tones of grey and silver.”

After some time of walking the path, they start to look weathered – peeling skin, ragged clothes, and so on. It is around this time that they meet a woman who recognises the look. She tells them “you’ve felt the hand of nature … you’re salted”. Winn’s title is more than a literal description of a sea-swept path. It is also about being part of the nature, the life, they walk through.

From early in the book, however, another theme is introduced that threads through the book – homelessness. Obviously, it occupied Winn’s mind because they were suddenly homeless, but as the book progresses, she supplements their personal experience of being homeless with facts and figures. The facts are sobering, but they are made powerful by Raynor and Moth’s firsthand experience. For example, very quickly they became cautious about being honest about their circumstances, because it affected people’s attitudes to them:

“We could be homeless, having sold our home and put money in the bank, and be inspirational. Or we could be homeless, having lost our home and become penniless, and be social pariahs.” 

All sorts of other thoughts and issues arise, as you would expect on a long walk. Another is the aformentioned issue of protecting heritage and the environment, and the role of the National Trust. Locals complain about National Trust restrictions affecting their traditional jobs, but she also sees all the money coming in from the resultant tourism and senses “a strong whiff of hypocrisy”. In an area dug up for clay-mines, she discusses the various approaches taken after the mines have gone. One is creating an attraction like the Eden Project. Returning the land to its original state seems the least likely option, because “no tourist is going to pay to walk over a meadow with a leaflet that says, ‘You’d never know it, but this used to be a mine.’” By contrast, there’s the town of Tyneham that had been requisitioned during World War Two, and where

Strangely enough, limited public access, a lack of intensive farming and the occasional blasting by small-arms fire has allowed wildlife and vegetation to thrive throughout the ranges. A form of khaki conservation that no one expected to be the outcome when the villagers left their homes as part of the war effort.

Of course, insights into the land – into the many ways it has been used, modified and re-used – are common to those who walk, and land-loving Raynor Winn is no exception. Her observations are idiosyncratic to her. Readers may not always agree, but she is real and honest.

There is much more to say, but I’ll conclude on the personal, because this is ultimately a personal journey as much as a physical one. Winn starts off, somewhat angry but mostly scared (very scared about her beloved Moth dying) and deeply worried about the future and whether they are doing the right thing. Slowly though, as Moth’s symptoms seem to subside, and as time passes, she senses change in herself

I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that The salt path is a book about reality, not miracles but not tragedy either. Its interest lies in the particular situation this couple finds themselves in, in the path itself, and in Winn’s ability to write about it all with warmth, humour and honesty.

So, how did my reading group like it? Very much overall. Depending on our own experiences and perspectives, we varied in our reaction to the different decisions they took, but as lovers of the environment we all appreciated the description of the walk, and as lovers of “stories” we enjoyed the anecdotes about the people they met. Of course, we had questions, and there were little niggles – some didn’t always like the tone, and some couldn’t believe the couple’s poor preparation and apparent lack of sunscreen! But the discussion we had was excellent. So, a good book all round.

Brona also reviewed this book (nearer its publication!)

Raynor Winn
The salt path
Penguin, 2018
273pp
ASIN: ‎ B0793GXSBL
ISBN: 9781405937528

Monday musings on Australian literature: Final thoughts on Canberra Writers Festival 2024

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In 2019, I wrote a detailed wrap-up of that year’s Canberra Writers Festival, and I thought to do one this year, though I didn’t have the fascinating stats I had in 2019. However, with this year’s festival bumping up against November, which is a very busy month in the blogosphere, I’ve decided to scale down my plans and just share some ideas which caught my attention, mainly because they popped up more than once in the six sessions I attended.

Many of the ideas related to the ideas that drive the authors or that affects their writing lives.

  • Who are the decisionmakers, how are things being decided: Rodney Hall and Catherine McKinnon, in slightly different ways, indicated that these questions drive much of what they write. Hall said “we don’t know when the things that affect our lives are hatched”, and that too often we react (and act) without asking “why” things have happened. Similarly, McKinnon is interested in understanding our governments and the decisions they make, in thinking about who we are trusting to make decisions. 
  • Writing about the self: While autofiction and writing about the self are a strong trend of modern writing, they don’t appeal to all writers. Not surprisingly, the self-described classicist Rodney Hall is one of these. He sees his classicism as being out of step with his peers, whom he admires but who are interested in more personalised expression, because people “want the dirt of what you are yourself”. Robbie Arnott was more forthright. He sees the modern focus on writing on the self as raising mundanity to art. (I can enjoy both – it’s all about degree!)
  • Writing to encourage feeling in readers: Robbie Arnott and Anita Heiss were both very clear about wanting to make people feel. Heiss wants readers to feel with her characters. She see this as the power of fiction. (In fact, she suggested this differentiated fiction from nonfiction, which I can’t agree with. I know I’m not the only one who has been powerfully moved by nonfiction. As a blog-reader wrote to me, what about Anne Frank’s diary, for a start?) Arnott was also vey clear about his goals in this regard. For him, the aim of fiction is not to render the world as it is but how it feels. He starts by looking for the emotion.
  • Historical fiction, and looking at what it is about NOW that the past can illuminate: Once upon a time I avoided historical fiction, but that time has long gone, because I’ve learnt that historical fiction can explore ideas that speak to me. Catherine McKinnon and Emily Maguire both talked about the relevance of historical fiction to now. First, there’s the issue of retrieving history that has been lost (the role played by women, for example, or queer lives), because it didn’t meet the prevailing (often patriarchal) mindset. But McKinnon also talked about how you look for the story you want to tell now – at what it is about now that you want to speak to, at what it is about humans that is interesting to us now. So, the 2005 Oppenheimer-biography, American Prometheus was, she felt, about how people could be picked up and then dropped, but she was interested in decisionmaking (and how it can be petty).
  • On living in our loud, noisy, controlling, egotistical world: Charlotte Wood and Robbie Arnott both referred to this (but would have covered it more in the session I couldn’t attend due to a clash, The power of quiet): Wood said she understands the appeal of asceticism in our “you-can-have-everything world”, bur recognises that the idea of “obedience” (versus wanting to argue) is a challenge for the ego in our egotistical world. Arnott’s quietness is based in his focus on landscape and nature. Both, at least as I heard them, see value in withdrawing (at least for a while) from the noise that can get in the way of being.

Some ideas, not surprisingly, related more to their craft.

  • The craft: What I heard was writers knowing (or learning) how much the craft of writing does the job they want, rather than focusing on plot or character, for example. A good structure, the right voice, sentences that do something – these are what makes writing come alive, what makes their stories work. Structure, for example, is fundamental to what Rodney Hall does. Arnott talked about crafting his books sentence-by-sentence. Maguire and Wood talked about “propulsion” in their narratives coming from the language, the sentences, the voice. “If the voice is strong”, said Wood, “the reader will follow along. It’s propulsive. That’s the key.”
  • Writing as a vocation, that is, as something you must do, kept coming through, and was specifically mentioned by Charlotte Wood, Emily Maguire, and Robbie Arnott. It’s their sacred place.

None of this is mind-shatteringly new, I suppose, but these ideas interested me for different reasons – usually related to the context in which they were explored, or the slant or angle they were given. I hope you find something of interest here.

So, does anything here speak to you?



Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize 2024 Winning Books Launch with Conversation

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I mentioned the nonfiction winner of the 2024 Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize, in this week’s Monday Musings, but saved the full winner announcement until after I attended the launch at a conversation with the winning authors this weekend.

The participants

This year, as publisher Julian Davies had hoped, there was a prize for fiction and one for nonfiction. The winners were all present at the conversation, and were:

  • Sonya Voumard for Tremor, which the judges described as “notable for its compellingly astute interweaving of the author’s personal experience with our broader societal context where people with disabilities, often far more challenging than her own, try to adapt to the implicit expectations and judgements that surround them”.
  • P S Cottier & N G Hartland for The thirty-one legs of Vladimir Putin, which the judges said “welcomes us to a world where absurdity and reality are increasingly indistinguishable and where questions of identity dominate public discourse. The book spirits us off on a playful journey into the lives of a group of individuals whose physical attributes appear to matter more than who they may be.”

The conversation was led by Sally Pryor who has been a reporter, arts and lifestyle editor, literary editor and features editor at The Canberra Times for many years. Born in Canberra, and the daughter of a newspaper cartoonist, she has a special connection to our city and its arts world.

And of course, the publisher, Julian Davies, started the proceedings. As I wrote in last year’s launch post, he is the inspiring publisher and editor behind Finlay Lloyd, a company he runs with great heart and grace (or so it seems to me from the outside.)

The conversation

Before the conversation started proper, Julian gave some background to the prize, and managed to say something different to what he said last year. He described Finlay Lloyd as a volunteer organisation, with wonderful support from writers like John Clanchy. He reminded us that they are an independent non-profit publisher, but wryly noted that describing themselves as non-profit seems like making virtue out of something that’s inevitable! Nonetheless, he wanted to make clear that they are not a commercial publisher and aim to be “off the treadmill”. And of course he spoke of loving “concision” and the way it can inspire real focus.

As last year, the entries – all manuscripts, as this is a publishing prize – were judged blind to ensure that just the writing is judged. The judging panel, as I wrote in my shortlist post, included last year’s winners.

Then, Sally took over … and, after acknowledging country, said how much, as a journalist, she also loved concision. Short books are her thing and they are having a moment. Just look, she said, at Jessica Au’s Cold enough for snow (my review) and Claire Keegan (see my post). Their books are “exquisite”. She then briefly introduced the two books and their authors. Sonya’s Tremor is a personal history told through vignettes, but which also explores more broadly the issue of viewing differences in other. She then jokingly said that she “thinks” Nick and Penelope’s book is fiction. Seriously though, she loved the novel’s set up which concerns the lives of 16 Putin “doubles”. It’s a page-turner. The books are very different, but share some themes, including identity, one’s place in the world, and how we can be captured and defined by the systems within which we live.

On Sonya’s journey

The conversation started with Sonya talking about her journey in writing this book. She was about to have brain surgery, a stressful situation. But she’s a journalist, and what do journalists do in such situations? They get out their notebook. Her coping mechanism was to cover it as a story, one of big stories of her life.

She has had a condition called Dystonia – mainly tremor in her hands – since she was 13. She managed for many years but, as she got older, more manifestations developed, not all easily linked to the condition, and her tremor got worse. Getting it all diagnosed took some time.

Sally noted that in the book, the doctor is thrilled that he could diagnose her and have someone else to observe with this condition (which is both environmental and genetic in cause). Sonya, of course, was thrilled to have an answer.

On Nick and Penelope’s inspiration and process

It started when they were holidaying in Queensland. I’m not sure I got the exact order here, but it included Penelope’s having read about Putin doubles, and Nick having been teased about looking like Putin. Penelope said it was a delight to write in a situation where humour would not be seen as a negative. The story is about look-alikes being recruited from around the world to act as Putin doubles should they be so needed.

Sally commented that the doubles respond differently. For some, it provides purpose, while others feel they lose their identity. What’s their place in the world, what does it mean?

Putin, said Nick, is an extraordinary leader who has morphed several times through his career. They tried to capture different aspects of him, though uppermost at the moment is authoritarianism. How do we relate to that? Penelope added that it’s also about ordinary people who are caught up in politics whether we like it or not. Capitalism will monetise anything, even something genetic like your looks.

Sally wondered about whether people do use doubles. Nick and Penelope responded that it is reported that there are Putin doubles – and even if they are simply conspiracy theories, they make a good story.

Regarding their collaborative writing process, Nick started “pushing through some Putins” so Penelope wrote some too, but they edited together. Nick is better at plot, at getting a narrative arc, Penelope said.

On Sonya’s choosing short form not memoir

It was a circuitous process. There is the assumption that to be marketable you need to write 55,000 plus words. She had the bones, and then started filling it out, but it was just “flab”. The competition (and later Julian) taught her that there was a good “muscular story” in there, so she set about “decluttering”. Sally likes decluttering. The reader never knows what you left out!

“Emotional nakedness” was a challenge for her, and to some degree members of her family found it hard being exposed – even if it was positive – but they learnt things about her experience they hadn’t known. Sonya’s main wish is that her family and loved ones like what she’s written.

But, did she also have a sense of helping others? Yes! There are 800,000 Australians with some sort of movement disorder, and many like she had done, try to cover it up. (For example, she’d sit on her hands during interviews, or not accept a glass of water). Her book could be liberating for people.

Continuing this theme, Sally suggested there are two kinds of people, those who ask (often forthrightly) about someone’s obvious condition, and those who would never. She wondered how Sonya felt about the former. It varies a bit, Sonya replied, but it feels intrusive from people you don’t know well. At work it can feel like your ability is being questioned.

On Nick and Penelope’s editing process

Nick explained that their story had a natural boundary, given they had a set number of Putins. (And they didn’t kill any Putin off in the writing!) There was, however, a lot of editing in getting the voice/s right, and getting little arcs to the stories.

In terms of research, they read biographies of Putin, and researched the countries their Putins come from.

Sally wondered whether Nick and Penelope saw any legal ramifications. Not really, but they did research their Putins’ names to get them appropriate but unique, and they have a fiction disclaimer at the end (though Julian didn’t believe it necessary!)

On Sonya’s writing another book on the subject, and on negotiating with those involved

While there are leads and rabbit holes that could be followed, Sonya is done with this story (at present anyhow).

As for the family, Sonya waited until the book was finished to show them, but she also tried to avoid anything that might be hurtful or invade people’s privacy. She’s lucky to have a family which has tolerated and understood the journalistic gene. Regarding work colleagues, she did talk to those involved. It was a bit of a risk but she didn’t name those who had been negative towards her. Most people just thought her shaking was part of her, and she liked that.

Sally talked about the stress of being a daily newspaper journalist, with which Sonya agreed, and gave a little of her personal background. She started a cadetship straight out of school and was immediately thrust into accidents and court cases. It was a brutal baptism. Around the age of 30, when the tremor and other physical manifestation increased, she decided she couldn’t keep doing this work.

Were they all proud of their achievement with this format?

As a poet Penelope is comfortable with brevity, so this was an expansion (to sentences!) not a contraction. Nick was obsessed with “patterning” – with ordering, moving between light and dark, internal and external, providing an arc. Penelope added that it started with less of an arc, including no names for the Putin doubles.

Sonya paid tribute to Julian for being “such an amazing editor” who taught her about how to impose structure on chaos. Penelope added that it was an intense editing process. It was also a challenge because, being a publishing prize it’s not announced until publication so she couldn’t tell people what she was working on. But the editing process was interesting.

Q & A

There was a brief Q & A, but mostly Sally continued her questions. However, the Q&A did bring this:

Is Nick and Penelope’s book being translated into Russian and/or will it be sent to Putin: Julian said Finlay Lloyd were challenged enough getting books to Australians. Penelope, though, would love Russians having the opportunity to read it. Perhaps, said an audience member, it could be given to the Russian embassy …

Julian concluded that it had been a joy working with these authors who “put up with him”, and thanked Sally sincerely for leading the conversation.

This was a lovely warm-hearted event, which was attended by local Canberra writers (including Sara St Vincent Welch, Kaaron Warren, and John Clanchy) and readers!

These books would be great for Novellas in November. You can order them here.

The Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize Winning Books of 2024 Launch
Harry Hartog Booksellers, Kambri Centre, ANU
Saturday, 2 November, 12.30-1.30pm

Karen Jennings, Crooked seeds (#BookReview)

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Crooked seeds is the third novel I’ve read by South African writer Karen Jennings, and she continues to intrigue and impress me, because she seems to be quietly bubbling away in her little corner of the world writing books that grapple with the difficult questions. Unfortunately, I didn’t read her Booker-longlisted novel, An island (2020), but the two I have read, Finding Soutbek (my review) and Upturned earth (my review) are historical novels with strong political underpinnings. Crooked seeds has political import too, but is set in a somewhat dystopian near-future.

I say near future because my calculation from the information we are given has Crooked seeds set in Cape Town in the late 2020s, and it certainly feels dystopian with dire water shortages, fire on the surrounding mountains and ash falling. This setting is not, in fact, farfetched. Cape Town did experience a severe water shortage problem from 2015 to 2018, and climate change is an increasing problem in South Africa. Climate change, however, is not Jennings’ prime concern here. Rather, it provides a perfect, disturbing environment against which to explore the personal problems being faced by her protagonist, 53-year-old Deidre van Deventer, and the political problems threatening to undo post-Apartheid South Africa. The near-future timing enables Jennings to imagine a setting that is hard to question, but that is close enough to feel more than plausible.

The novel opens strongly. Deidre wakes up thirsty, dirty and smelly. Her personal grooming is almost non-existent and she doesn’t seem to care. By paragraph two, we learn she has false teeth and by paragraph three that she needs crutches. It’s 5.18am, and at 6am the water truck will arrive, so she sets out to join the queue. She speaks to people she knows, mostly to cadge cigarettes or other help from them, things she never pays back. Clearly though, the sympathy card works because, as demanding as she is, people continue to help her, often at some cost to themselves. She is, I should add, white.

This is the background. An unappealing woman fighting a world that is tough and difficult for all those at the less advantaged end of the spectrum. Into this setting comes the plot, when, early in the novel, Deidre is contacted by police officer Mabombo concerning some bodies – infants’ bodies – in the yard of her old home. This is the same yard where, at the age of 18, she had lost her leg in an explosion caused by her pro-Apartheid activist brother Ross. Deidre wants none of this investigation. It’s nothing to do with her, she says, directing them to find the family that had lived there before.

“I’m the one that needs help. Me. Look at me. I’m the one!” (Deidre)

From here we follow Deidre, as Jennings drips out more and more of her story, matching flashbacks to an unhappy past where Deidre came a poor second to her mother’s beloved Ross, with a present where a highly unlikable but clearly damaged Deidre tries to survive in a desolate world. Deidre is one of those characters who can frustrate some readers. She’s a taker not a giver. She is rude to those who help her, including her kind but long-suffering Coloured neighbour Miriam, not to mention those at the perfectly-named Nine Lives Club where she wastes spends her days. She refuses to consider any advice that might make her life easier. And she certainly doesn’t think for herself about how she might improve her situation.

Meanwhile, Deidre’s estranged mother, Trudy, lives across the road in a nursing home. Suffering from dementia, she is lost in the patriarchal past, yearning for her son, but it is she who holds the key to the mystery.

Halfway through the novel, Miriam’s frustrations with Deidre’s self-centredness boil over when Deidre admits that she has never voted, because the government doesn’t care for her. Miriam, remarking that this government provides her disability grant, continues:

“You know what, Deidre, you’re really something else. Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of you, you come out with something even more terrible. Every single time, no matter what. Are you trying to be unpleasant, tell me? Is that your plan, to be unpleasant and make everyone dislike you. I really want to know?”

Deidre looked down into her lap. “No, it’s just the way I am.”

So, frustrating, yes, but Jennings had me engaged from the start. For all her faults, I cared about Deidre and about that

invisible thing that came at her from all directions … this thing that was always watching her, that never took its eyes off her. That saw what she was and punished her for it.

Also, I wanted to see where Jennings was going with her story, because, as I’ve already intimated, there is a political layer – not only the water shortages and encroaching fires, but the forced removals from homes (which Deidre and Miriam had experienced) and an overall sense that the state isn’t working.

I don’t think I’m going too much out on a limb to suggest that we could read white, damaged Deidre as representing white, privileged South Africans who see themselves as victims in the post-Apartheid world. Like Deidre in terms of those infants’ bodies, they may not have been personally responsible for the worst that happened under the regime, but they need to face the truth of what happened under their noses. Towards the end, Deidre asks Mabombo about the point of chasing it all up now, decades later. He responds:

“Miss van Deventer, this is difficult for you, of course, but you must agree that the truth has to come out. To leave the thing alone would have been to deny it and cover it up. And we must consider the other people involved. Families lost their children, and have been living with questions and pain for all these years.”

Ultimately, what Jennings shows in Crooked seeds is a society at odds with itself, and I use the word “shows” intentionally because this is such a spare, tight book. There is no telling, just a powerful story about a woman from whom everything was taken, in her mind at least, when she was 18, and who has never been able to rise above it, seeing only her own pain and loss, never recognising others’ loss or that the possibility of change lies at least partly in her hands. A personal story with a political heart. This is a stylish, clever novel, with an ending that hits just the right note.

Karen Jennings
Crooked seeds
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2024
219pp.
ISBN: 9781922790675

(Review copy courtesy Text Publishing)

Stephen Orr, Shining like the sun (#BookReview)

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A question that confronts many young people as they reach adulthood – in western cultures at least – is, should I go or should I stay? This is particularly so for young people in small rural towns, and is the issue at the heart of Stephen Orr’s latest novel, Shining like the sun. Wilf Healy, the oldest of three brothers, stayed in Selwyn which is now dying, while his brother Colin left for the bright lights of America, as soon as he could. Now eighty years old, the widowed Wilf is confronting the rest of his life, and he is again pondering the question, except he is not thinking of heading for the bright lights but for Louth, the island on which he grew up. The thing is, that island is empty. No-one lives there now. But this doesn’t dissuade Wilf from his dream. Meanwhile, his 17-year-old great-nephew Connor is about to lose his Mum to cancer and sees no life for himself in Selwyn.

That is the basic plot. Selwyn is a fictional wheatbelt town in South Australia – only identified because Louth Island is a real island off the coast. Selwyn has “three hundred people coming and going, dying, lost in the cracks”, plus one of those signposts pointing to far-flung places around the world. Wilf lives and works in Monk’s pub, delivers the mail (not to mention vegetables and pharmaceuticals) around the community, and drives the school bus, all because he can’t say “no” when yet another job needs doing. However, as the novel opens, he’s had enough. He wants to retire, but his plans to leave are half-hearted at best – and not just because of his sense of responsibility for his sick niece Orla and her son, the disengaged Connor. Why?

The three epigraphs provide a clue, but so of course does the story. We follow Wilf through his days, as he engages with the people of Selwyn, people whom Orr paints beautifully with a description here, a piece of dialogue there. Take young Connor, “an out-of-tune whistle that just needed a breath of air”, or Bobby, the 85-year-old vegetable grower and builder of a kit plane “who is too old to deliver vegetables, but not fly”. Take the school principal, Noah, for whom Wilf drives the school bus. He’s a weak man, who, when a certain crunch comes, cannot stand up for right. And take Wilf’s school bus passengers who are so entertainingly individuated from the opinionated Sienna to the JK Rowling-wannabe Luke, from the withdrawn Trevor to the entitled bully Darcy. The bus-rides are interspersed through the novel, providing perfectly pitched comic relief while also playing an important role in moving the narrative along. It is something that happens on the bus that triggers the novel’s main crisis.

But, Wilf and Connor provide more than two ends of the “do I leave” spectrum. Wilf’s reflections on his growing up provide a stark contrast to the lives of Connor and his peers. Wilf, of course, came from the often brutal “spare the rod, and spoil the child” era, when you did what you were told and expected little else, whilst Connor is growing up at a time when young people are not directed, but encouraged to find themselves. Orr does not judge either way, but lets his readers see and ponder how it all plays out in a life.

I opened this post on the question of staying or going, identifying it as the novel’s central issue – which it is. However, this is not the theme. Rather, it is the question which gives the theme its push. The theme, itself, is something deeper, something so fundamentally human that it could almost sound trite, except it’s not. I’m talking about the idea of community, of connection, of being where you are part of something bigger, where you can make a difference to the lives of others. This might sound schmaltzy. However, because Orr’s characters are fallibly human, and because the socio-economic challenges facing small towns (in particular) are real, connection doesn’t come easily. Shining like the sun, with its cast of authentic characters and array of specific, yet also typical situations, teases out whether this connection, this idea of community, can in fact still fly.

“the possibility of being happy” (Connor)

Orr’s intention? There is surely some political intent, some wish to convey the value and importance of these towns which are being allowed to die through neglect and poor policy (“farms flattened”, and so on). But, it is also personal in terms of exploring what sustains human beings the most – a fancy job or house? Or connections with your community? Mr Gums and I wait for the cliched “tight-knit community” which is unfailingly trotted out after whatever disaster (natural or personal) is on the day’s news. Like most cliches, however, it has an element of truth. A “real” tight-knit community is worth its weight in gold – another cliche for you. Orr knows this, so does Wilf. There is nothing romantic to this story, just real life with all its questions and toughness alongside moments of humour and mutual support in which, even Connor realises, there is “the possibility of being happy”.

Shining like the sun, then, is another special Stephen Orr novel. It is not fancy in voice or structure. That is, it is told third person – albeit a first person narrator opens the proceedings – and is told chronologically, with occasional flashbacks as Wilf remembers his past. What makes it special is the quality of the descriptive writing, the knowing characterisation, the authentic dialogue, and the serious but warm tone leavened by natural humour that comes from ordinary people going about their business.

I read this novel immediately after my return from touring outback Queensland. We saw many small country towns, most of which were variations on the theme. Orr’s story rings true to these towns. Indeed, to end on a cliche – because, why not? – Shining like the sun is a love letter to an Australia little known to its mostly urban inhabitants. It has much to offer on both political and personal levels, but, beyond that, it is just a darned good read.

Stephen Orr
Shining like the sun
Mile End: Wakefield Press, 2024
313pp.
ISBN: 9781923042278
Review copy courtesy of Wakefield Press.

Jane Caro, The mother (#BookReview)

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When my reading group scheduled Jane Caro’s debut novel, The mother, I was, I admit, not exactly enthusiastic, because my sense was that it was not going to be the sort of, shall I say, subtle writing I prefer. My sense was right, but I am not sorry I read it – partly because of the engaged discussion we had and partly for Caro’s intention.

The mother, then, is not a literary award-winner – the writing is fine but not exciting or breath-taking in the way I like – but, and it is a big but, it is an accessible, fictional exposé of the main points Jess Hill makes in her Stella Prize-winning See what you made me do: Power, control and domestic violence (my review). Hill explores family and domestic violence from every angle, but the most shocking and enlightening part for me concerned children, particularly the Family Court’s inability or refusal to see the risks to children from its parent access orders, even when the children themselves express fear. This point is powerfully made by Caro in her novel*.

But, let me step back a bit. The mother tells the story of 60-something middle-class Miriam Duffy who, widowed early in the novel, is pleased – and indeed grateful – when her emotional daughter, with whom she has had a tricky relationship, marries a perfect-seeming man. Gradually, however, little niggles about this relationship become bigger until one day they are confirmed when Ally returns home with two little children in tow, having left her husband. From here the situation deteriorates as the husband Nick escalates his bullying, predatory behaviour, and Miriam and Ally realise that the law is unable to protect them. The novel is described as a thriller, so I’ll give you just one more piece of information. It opens with a Prologue in which Miriam buys a handgun.

This brings me to the structure. After this Prologue, the novel is divided into two parts. In Part 1, Ally marries and soon after, Miriam is widowed. There is also a second, older, daughter who is in a stable marriage and has two children. During this part, Caro slowly drips out many of the flags that constitute coercive control, but that on their own don’t initially look like it or can be explained away – things like isolation from family and friends, use of a (demeaning) pet-name, jealousy, charm that is turned on and off at will, and surveillance, moving into sexual violence and gaslighting. This part ends with Ally’s return home. Part 2 commences four years later, and we are reminded of the Prologue, because Miriam is researching where she can buy a gun. Miriam and Ally have been systematically intimidated by Nick, and have reported his transgressions against Ally’s AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) again and again, but

Eventually they had stopped going to the police. It wasn’t that the cops weren’t sympathetic; it was just that they could not do anything.

In this part, Caro ratchets up the sense of helplessness (and hopelessness) the two women feel as Nick finds new ways to harass and terrify them. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think about all the news stories of recent years about murdered women and children. Nor could Miriam and Ally, but they turned the TV off the minute these stories came on. They were too close to home!

Like many issue-driven books, The mother did, as many in my reading group commented, feel didactic at times, and it is somewhat predictable. Some of us also felt that it was a little laboured in places. However, offsetting this is the novel’s characterisation and understanding of human nature. Caro conveys the complex human emotions we all experience under stress. She explores the lines and balance between what is acceptable in relationships and what is not, the fears about when to speak up, the justifications we try to find when things feel awry, and the feelings of guilt (particularly in mothers).

The mother is unapologetically a novel with a cause. With its compelling storyline and believable characters, it has a chance of reaching those who do not understand what coercive control is, and who do not realise that it crosses all demographics. Nick, for example, is a vet and Ally a PhD candidate. Miriam, a successful businesswoman, lives in comfortable North Shore Sydney.

This novel is being promoted primarily as a thriller, but I’m more inclined to see it as belonging to that long tradition of social problem novels. It may not be as sophisticated as the best of them, but its intention is clear, to drive social change. I hope it succeeds. I don’t imagine Jane Caro, or Jess Hill for that matter, will let matters lie until we see real, sustained change happening – and nor should we.

* This month there has been news about changes in family law in Australia, including removing the presumption of equal shared care, putting a focus on prioritising children’s best interests, and revamping the role of independent children’s lawyers. Time will tell what difference this makes in practice.

Jane Caro
The mother
Allen & Unwin, 2022
368pp.
ISBN: 9781761063893 
ASIN: B09MQ3PN1W