Review

Rudyard Kipling, The Janeites (#Commentary)

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The topic for my local Jane Austen group’s March meeting was “Jane Austen in the trenches” which, I realise, sounds a bit anachronistic, given she died in 1817, nearly a century before the trenches we’re talking about. But, you see, Jane’s fame didn’t start in 1995 with Colin Firth and that wet shirt. No, her popularity took off around the late 19th century and has continued ever since, albeit with a huge spurt in the late 20th century. As Claire Harman states in Jane’s fame, she is the only writer “who is instantly recognisable by her first name”.

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Anyhow, into the trenches. Our discussion was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The Janeites”, first published in 1924. It’s a little tricky to read, being peppered with Cockney voices, but it’s worth the effort – and not just for Janeites. It is set in a London Masonic Lodge in 1920, during a weekly clean-up of the premises. There are three main characters – Brother Anthony, a veteran of army service in the Holy Land during World War I, now a taxi driver; Brother Humberstall, a hairdresser who is a veteran of artillery service in France and who suffers somewhat from shell-shock (now, PTSD); and the first-person narrator, ostensibly Kipling. Humberstall tells the others of his induction, during the war, into a secret society, the Janeites. He explains how he came to join this society, which included members from all ranks, and the tests he had to pass to do so. He tells how this society kept them sane during the war, and how it, in fact, saved him, when, after a terrible attack, he was his group’s only survivor:

… I walked a bit, an’ there was a hospital-train fillin’ up, an’ one of the Sisters—a grey-headed one—ran at me wavin’ ’er red ’ands an’ sayin’ there wasn’t room for a louse in it. I was past carin’. But she went on talkin’ and talkin’ about the war, an’ her pa in Ladbroke Grove, an’ ’ow strange for ’er at ’er time of life to be doin’ this work with a lot o’ men, an’ next war, ’ow the nurses ’ud ’ave to wear khaki breeches on account o’ the mud, like the Land Girls; an’ that reminded ’er, she’d boil me an egg if she could lay ’ands on one, for she’d run a chicken-farm once. You never ’eard anythin’ like it—outside o’ Jane. It set me off laughin’ again. Then a woman with a nose an’ teeth on ’er, marched up. “What’s all this?” she says. “What do you want?” “Nothing,” I says, “only make Miss Bates, there, stop talkin’ or I’ll die.” “Miss Bates?” she says. “What in ’Eaven’s name makes you call ’er that?” “Because she is,” I says. “D’you know what you’re sayin’?” she says, an’ slings her bony arm round me to get me off the ground. “’Course I do,” I says, “an’ if you knew Jane you’d know too.” “That’s enough,” says she. “You’re comin’ on this train if I have to kill a Brigadier for you,” an’ she an’ an ord’ly fair hove me into the train, on to a stretcher close to the cookers. That beef-tea went down well! Then she shook ’ands with me an’ said I’d hit off Sister Molyneux in one, an’ then she pinched me an extra blanket. It was ’er own ’ospital pretty much. I expect she was the Lady Catherine de Bourgh of the area.

Of course, you have to know your Jane Austen to get the Miss Bates reference … !

Jane Austen by sister Cassandra

Throughout the story Austen is only ever described as Jane, which bears out Harman’s comment above. There’s an entertaining description of Austen’s subject matter –

’Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ to ’em, either. I know. I had to read ’em. They weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d call even interestin’

– and some amusing references to various Austen characters, particularly Reverend Collins, Lady Catherine de Bugg (de Bourgh), General Tilney and Miss Bates. There’s also a comment that Austen did “leave lawful issue in the shape o’ one son”, and that was Henry James. Fair enough. At one stage, Humberstall chalks their guns with the names of Austen characters. His Janeite superiors approve, though there is some discussion about whether he’d accorded the right name to the right gun. For example:

… they said I was wrong about General Tilney. ’Cordin’ to them, our Navy twelve-inch ought to ’ave been christened Miss Bates …

Of course, much has been written about this story, including its secret society setting, the Masons, and Kipling’s intentions about that – but these other issues are not my focus here.

What is of interest is Humberstall’s statement late in the story:

“… You take it from me, Brethren, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. …”

It is this that inspired our meeting because, while Kipling’s story is fiction, it is the case that Austen’s novels, among others, were provided to soldiers to read for morale. On the Kipling Society’s website is this:

In 1915, John Buchan and George Mackenzie-Brown, co-directors of Nelson, launched the highly successful Continental Library series, designed to be carried in soldiers’ pockets. Gassart [who wrote an article for the TLS in 2002] quotes the papers of W.B. Henderson, a Glaswegian schoolmaster attached to a Siege Battery in the Royal Garrison Artillery, in arguing that a book’s solace:

was its power to transport the infantryman from a world of “sergeants major and bayonet fighting, and trench digging and lorry cleaning and caterpillar greasing” into the fantasy of the novelist – and none was better at it than Jane Austen.

Her novels were also used during the war as part of therapy with shell-shock victims. Indeed, the above-mentioned Clare Harman says that three of Austen’s novels were “at the top of a graded Fever-Chart”. Academic Claire Lamont (in her paper, “Jane Austen and the nation”) suggests that this was because Austen’s “Englishness expresses itself as the standard of where and how one might live…”. Other critics have other ideas – though many of them are variations on this theme. One member of my group found a report that novels like Austen’s were used to gee-up damaged soldiers to get them back to the front! That shocked us somewhat. Bibliotherapy, it seems, is not a new thing.

Kipling, himself, was, not surprisingly, an Austen fan. As well as his story “The Janeites” (which term was coined by a critic back in the 1870s), he wrote a poem, whose final lines are used as an epigram for “The Janeites”:

Jane lies in Winchester, blessed be her shade!
Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made.
And while the stones of Winchester – or Milsom Street – remain,
Glory, Love, and Honour unto England’s Jane!

OK, so it’s a bit sentimental I admit, but he wrote it and that’s my excuse for using it to close today’s little commentary!

Rudyard Kipling
“The Janeites”
First published: Hearst’s International, MacLean’s, and the Story-Teller Magazine, May 1924
Available: Online at UWYO

Us Mob Writing, Too deadly (#BookReview)

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Us Mob Writing, Too DeadlyToo deadly is an anthology of writings by the Canberra-based writing group Us Mob Writing. Comprising Australian First Nations writers, this group was formed in the late 1990s and is, apparently, one of our capital’s longest running writers’ groups. I saw advertising for the book’s launch back in late 2017, but was unable to attend. I was consequently thrilled to be offered a copy to review some months later. Finally, it worked its way to the top of the pile and I have read it. Things happen slowly here at the Gums!

The book comprises works by 11 women writers. It is introduced by Jeanine Leane whose novel Purple threads I reviewed a few years ago. She describes the content as including “prose and narrative poetry; flash fiction, fiction and creative non-fiction; and life writing.

It was interesting to read this just after reading Anita Heiss’s anthology, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia (my review). Heiss’s book, obviously, is all life-writing, while this anthology is more varied in form and subject matter, but, as in Heiss’s book, many of the works are overtly political, not surprisingly, but all writers speak of connection to culture, in some way.

Now, how to do this? I don’t usually discuss every writer in an anthology because doing so, without writing a tome, risks being superficial, but I’m going to try here and see if I can find a fair balance. You be the judge.

Wulli Wulli writer Lisa Fuller: eight pieces, mostly poetry. They deal with her writing practice, her sources of inspiration, and her sense of self. My heart went out to her struggles to accept that she is “good enough” in poems like “Who me?” and “Never enough” (“I will kill myself through/ should-i-n-g and my 20/20 judging”), but I also loved her sense of humour and word plays. “Waking” made me laugh, with the “only clock in the place/ disguised as a phone” as did her wry references to her “Master pieces” in “Electronic inclusions”, which describes her preference for “paper and pen” over keyboard. She also writes of nature and the inspiration it provides, including:

the mist envelops
its cool embrace
blocking everything
making the everyday
more mysterious
(“Surrounds”)

Juru-Kija poet Michelle Bedford: six poems, most of which directly address culture – her connection with it, and/or loss of it. In “Kindred Spirit-so many stories untold”, the refrain at the end of each verse is “so many stories untold”, while “Straight up and back with a certain native pride” tells of a hunting party and how engaging in cultural practice brings contentment and pride. Coming from the beautiful Kimberleys, she has some poems evoking her love of that landscape: “Colour me fine” is a love-letter to the Kimberley that I could relate to. Other poems are more overtly political. “Standing alone with others” and “I promise you … she is worthy” reminded me somewhat of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s work.

Wiradjuri poet Yullara Reed: one poem, “Catch me if you can”. Told in the voice of a bird, her allegorical poem confronts its reader with the realities of indigenous life, particularly regarding the stolen generations, as the bird watches out for catchers. There’s a cheeky freshness to this poem which makes its message so much starker.

Erubian writer Chella Goodwin, from the Torres Strait: two poems and one prose piece. “Morning dreaming” is a gorgeous poem about yearning for a simpler life. Her irregular use of rhyme here is particularly effective. Many of us can relate to these lines, “microsoft word/ part of the city herd”, and to

divorcing the city
with its traffic and hustle
for straight roads to the horizon
where the kookaburras hustle

Bundjalung writer Samia Goudie: six pieces, mostly poems. They mourn a loss of culture, but also express defiance (particularly “White lie”) and sorrow (“Dirt child”). Her prose piece, “Coming home”, is a short story about a stolen generation daughter meeting her mother for the first time. The insensitivity of the church official, where the meeting is effected, is breathtaking. He wants a photo for, he says:

“… the church newsletter, the story, our story; it is such a great story. The congregation will love it.”

Whose story?

Yuin writer Brenda Gifford: one memoir piece about her life on the road, for ten years, with the mixed indigenous and non-indegnous band, Mixed Relations. Much of the story would be familiar to any band, I guess, except that this one has the added issue of race to deal with. She talks of confronting racism in Moree, and of the opposite in Brewarrina, where the local mob showed them the fish traps (now made famous by Bruce Pascoe in Dark emu.) She also writes of touring North America, and sharing experiences with First Nations Americans (not to mention trying their wonderful fried cornbread!)

Wiradjuri author Kerry Reed-Gilbert (grandmother of Yullara above) has ten pieces, and is the best-known, most published of the group. Reed-Gilbert also appears in Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, with a strong small town story. Some of her poems talk of dark history, such as blood loss and massacres in “The place in the paddock”, while others ask for Australians to work together, as in “Reflections” and “I know you”. Many of her pieces, as do those of others, talk of the wisdom of older people (uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers) and, further back, of the Old or Ancient Ones from whom the laws come.

Ngemba/Barkindji writer Barrina South: four pieces. Her poem “Ghost Gum” describes the ageing and regeneration of a tree, but surely also works as a metaphor for indigenous history – the losses (“pooled blood appears on the surface caused by previous contusions”) and the hope for the future (“She reaches up and gently sways/ Dancing in time with the stars…”) “Baaka” is more overtly political, but also uses nature, the river in this case, to oppose long connection with culture (and the “old people”) against loss (and “they [who] fence rivers”).

Wiradjuri poet Marissa McDowell: three pieces. “By the campfire” is a lovely hymn to indigenous creation spirit Biamie, “the maker of all things”, while “Me” is a plea to be respected “before all is lost/at what human cost”.

Kamilaroi writer Joyce Graham: eight pieces, starting with three haiku which lead into more powerful, pull-no-punches poems. “Proud Uncle” references, I believe, the story of the two indigenous men Jimmy Clements and John Noble who walked miles to attend the opening of Canberra’s provisional parliament house in 1927. It confronts us with our lack of interest (“ignored by white/ present not caring/ not curious/ Dismissive/ ignorant of your importance”). It’s a story most Canberrans didn’t know until recently. Certainly I didn’t – “ignorant”! “Life’s landscape” uses strong language, too, to make its point, describing “the white dust storm” and its aftermath.

Torres Strait Islander writer Samantha Faulkner: twelve pieces, including five prose pieces. Faulkner’s pieces, like many others, explore the history of indigenous experience in Australia. “The Old Man” also reflects on the Jimmy Clements and John Noble story, describing the two men as “compelled to be there”. “Tribute to Mabo” is another straightforward narrative poem about an indigenous hero. “One Day at Walpa (Walpa Gorge, Kata Tjuta/the Olgas” made me laugh at its depiction of tourists visiting this beautiful peaceful, place. And “It’s a small town world” succinctly conveys opposing images of small towns – narrow on one hand, and big-hearted on the other. Faulkner’s is, generally, a lighter touch than some in the book, but no less effective for that.

There are, then, recurring themes in the anthology, as you’d expect – to do with loss and disconnection caused by colonisation and white laws – but while some are angry (and understandably so), many are generous and hopeful, looking to a better future. Motifs recur too. There’s the wisdom of older people and of the Old Ones, and, of course, nature, particularly trees and birds, appears in many pieces.

Too deadly is a challenging book to read with its varied styles and tones, but it is well worth the effort because this very variety provides a breadth of insight that is not easily come by. I’ll close with some lines from McDowell’s “Me”, because, in many ways, it conveys the heart of the book (but apologies for not getting the lines’ layout right):

Images are plastered all over our screens
Scaring the weaker
And empowering the meaner
Open your door and open your mind
move a bit closer
I could be your friend
not an enemy
Who’s portrayed as the end.

AWW Challenge 2019 BadgeUs Mob Writing
(Eds. Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Samantha Faulkner, Barrina South)
Too deadly: Our voice, our way, our business
Us Mob Writing, 2017
172pp.
ISBN: 9780992559823

(Review copy courtesy Sarah St Vincent Welch and Us Mob Writing)

Maria Edgeworth, Leonora (#BookReview)

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My Jane Austen group decided to start the year by discussing one of Austen’s precursors, not to mention favourite writers, Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849). Edgeworth was born eight years before Austen and lived much longer than Austen’s not quite 42 years – lucky her! She was also prolific, so we had plenty to choose from. According to Wikipedia, she was “during the period 1800–1814 (when Walter Scott‘s Waverley was published) … the most celebrated and successful living English novelist.” Australian academic Dale Spender supports this in her Mothers of the novel*, writing that:

If ever there was a period in the history of letters when women unquestionably led the way it was in the last quarter of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century when the only challenges to the pre-eminence of Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth came from other women – like Elizabeth Inchbald and Ann Radcliffe.

So, Edgeworth is well worth looking at, and my group gave it a good shot. Some books were read by more than one member, and some members read more than one book, but I was the only one to read Leonora. In case you are interested, here are the books we read:

  • Letters for literary ladies (1795)
  • Castle Rackrent (1800)
  • Belinda (1801)
  • Leonora (1806)
  • The absentee (part of Tales of a fashionable life) (1812)
  • Harrington (1817)
  • Helen (1834)

Now, Leonora …

Its plot is essentially this: kind, newly married, well-to-do Leonora invites to her English home, Olivia, who had been exiled to France because of her unconventional, shall we say, behaviour in marriage. This was a time when divorce was shocking and required “guilt”. Sensation-seeking Olivia’s ideas about marriage are romantic:

I married early, in the fond expectation of meeting a heart suited to my own. Cruelly disappointed, I found—merely a husband.

Poor Olivia!

Maria Edgeworth, LeonoraIn Leonora, Edgeworth leaves aside her Anglo-Irish themes for an English-French one. She pits English common-sense, through Lady Leonora guided by her mother the Duchess, against French “sensibility”,  through Olivia, an English woman who behaves like a French “coquette” under the guidance of her friend Gabrielle. The novel anticipates Jane Austen’s Sense and sensibility (1811), but while Marianne’s “sensibility” can be seen as teenage silliness and idealism, Olivia’s is self-centred, lacking in morality – and, unlike Marianne, she’s unlikely to change. The book critiques this sort of over-dramatic, over-blown behaviour, and makes a case for steady love based on early passion developing into deep respect and friendship!

Leonora, it must be said, does not exhibit the subtlety nor the realism that makes Austen so special. The characters tend to the black-and-white, and the discussion of sense versus sensibility lacks the nuance that Austen brings to it. Austen’s characters are more “rounded”, with sensible Elinor also capable of feeling, and emotional Marianne not being completely devoid of sense. In Leonora, sense and sensibility are presented very much as dichotomies, though Leonora is shown to have strong feelings in addition to sense, which works, of course, to her advantage in the end. Despite this lack of subtlety, the book is worth reading, for several reasons.

To start with, it’s an epistolary novel, a form which, Wikipedia says, has been around since the 15th/16th centuries. I don’t always like these novels, mainly because the letter form can break the narrative flow. I did find it a little challenging at first to work out who was who – until sorting that out became part of the fun. Given there’s no one authorial voice, it also took me a little while to work out which character/s, if any, Edgeworth, was aligning with. Was she, an Irish-sympathiser by-and-large, supporting British “sense” or French “sensibility”? However, the form provided Edgeworth with a neat way of presenting multiple first person points of view. It gave a freshness to the narrative, and enabled her to easily present different perspectives and characters. (By their own mouths shall they be known!)

Of course, I enjoyed the sense versus sensibility theme, not only because of the Austen comparison, but also because Edgeworth aligns them with national characteristics. Leonora was published during the Napoleonic Wars when England (the United Kingdom) was fearful of French invasion. It’s not surprising then that anything “French” was viewed askance. Leonora’s mother writes to her that a

taste for the elegant profligacy of French gallantry was, I remember, introduced into this country before the destruction of the French monarchy. Since that time, some sentimental writers and pretended philosophers of our own and foreign countries have endeavoured to confound all our ideas of morality.

Sensibility, then, is aligned with France and lack of morality – and, of course, vice versa for sense and England.

There is also some commentary on fiction and the novel, and that always interests me. Austen is, of course, famous for it in Northanger Abbey. (Indeed, one of the novels she references in her defence of the novel is Edgeworth’s Belinda.) Here, for example, is Leonora’s response to her mother, who had Olivia tagged at the outset. Leonora’s mother criticises Gothic novels, which Olivia reads: “they must have scènes and a coup de théâtre; and ranting, and raving, and stabbing, and drowning, and poisoning; for with them there is no love without murder”. Sensible Leonora has a more generous take:

Many people read ordinary novels as others take snuff, merely from habit, from the want of petty excitation; and not, as you suppose, from the want of exorbitant or improper stimulus. Those who are unhappy have recourse to any trifling amusement that can change the course of their thoughts. I do not justify Olivia for having chosen such comforters as certain novels, but I pity her and impute this choice to want of fortitude, not to depravity of taste. Before she married, a strict injunction was laid upon her not to read any book that was called a novel: this raised in her mind a sort of perverse curiosity. By making any books or opinions contraband, the desire to read and circulate them is increased.

Haha, I love the comment on the effect of banning books! Anyhow, interestingly, Olivia’s mentor Gabrielle, who later in the novel urges more dastardly plotting, tells her that such novels do not provide good advice for life:

Permit me to tell you, that you have been a little spoiled by sentimental novels, which are good only to talk of when one must show sensibility, but destructive as rules of action.

(And she goes on to say that “Love has been with you the sole end of love; whereas it ought to be the beginning of power.”)

I’ve been pretty brief here – really?, you say! – because each of the points I’ve touched upon could make a post in themselves. Leonora is not a subtle book, but I enjoyed reading it, partly for its place in literary history and culture, partly for its commentaries, and partly because it has a liveliness that I found engaging despite myself.

* Bill (The Australian Legend) is making a study of Mothers of the novel, starting here.)

Maria Edgeworth
Leonora
Library of Alexandria, 2012 (Orig. pub. 1806)
174pp.
ASIN: B0073UNBJC (Kindle ed.)
Available online at Project Gutenberg

Anita Heiss (ed.), Growing up Aboriginal in Australia (#BookReview)

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Anita Heiss, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia

As many others have said, including my reading group, Anita Heiss’s anthology, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, should be required reading for all Australians. At the very least, it should be in every Australian secondary and tertiary educational institution. Why? Because it contributes to the truth-telling that is critical to real reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Truth-telling comes in many forms. There are formal processes, as through truth-telling commissions, but there are also the informal processes that we can all engage in while we wait for the government to fiddle-diddle around deciding whether it can front up and do the right thing.

Essentially, truth-telling means all Australians acknowledging and accepting “the shared and often difficult truths of our past, so that we can move forward together”. These truths include the original colonial invasion of the country, the massacres, the Stolen Generations, and the ongoing racism that results in continued inequities and significant gaps in almost every health, educational and occupational measure you can think of. Informal truth-telling encompasses all the things we do to inform ourselves and each other of these truths. Heiss’ anthology, Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, which contains 50 stories by indigenous Australians on their experience of growing up indigenous in this so-called lucky country of ours, contributes to this informal truth-telling. Taken as a whole, the book provides a salutary lesson, for all Australians who care to listen, on the experience of being indigenous in Australia. Taken individually, each story has the potential to break your heart. If you think I’m laying it on a bit thick, then you haven’t read the book!

“a stranger in my own land”

The above line from William Russell’s story, “A story from my life”, brought me up short because it replicates a line I read in Atkinson’s book The last wild west (my review). Atkinson describes his Indigenous friend and co-worker Sno as being “an alien in his own homeland”. There is strength in this replication between books, just as there is strength in the repetition of experiences within Heiss’s book, and the strength is this, that every repetition reinforces the truth of the historical (and continuing) injustice faced by Indigenous Australians. The stronger, the more inescapable the truth becomes, the harder it must surely be to ignore.

So, what are the repeated experiences in Growing up Aboriginal in Australia? Well, there are recurring references to the Stolen Generations, to being questioned about identity (“are you really Aboriginal?”, “you look too white to be Aboriginal”), to feeling disconnected from culture, to being called racist names, to being humiliated in myriad ways too numerous to list, and to being physically attacked. These are the experiences that we’ve all heard of, but Heiss’ contributors enable us to feel them. And that’s important. I’ll share just a few quotes from a few stories:

Thankyou for your acknowledging every 26 January with such grace and humility. Thankyou for your encouragement – and advice to me – to let the past be in the past, to simply ‘get over it’ on the day my people’s land was invaded and dispossessed. (Dom Bemrose’s biting “Dear Australia”)

My father cut to the chase. ‘Olly, you can’t go telling people we’re Aboriginal … It isn’t safe’. (Katie Bryan, “Easter, 1969”)

I would paint and draw and sculpt about being Aboriginal. I would see people twitch uncomfortably and sometimes even let their ignorant thoughts out: ‘But you don’t look it’, ‘From how far back’, ‘Do you get lots of handouts?’ (Shannon Foster, “White bread dreaming”)

In Year 2 I was lined up with Aboriginal classmates to be checked for nits and, as I stood there with fingers being raked through my hair, I felt angry and embarrassed as my non-Indigenous classmates watched. I realised that … for some reason it was only supposed to be us Aboriginal kids that had nits. (Jared Thomas, “Daredevil days”)

None of us kids are allowed to go anywhere outside after dark by ourselves. We can’t ever go to the toilet at night: we gotta go in twos, and Mummy stands at the door and watches. She has a big bundi* ready in case there’s trouble … Terror is outside the door, and we can’t do anything about it. (Kerry Reed-Gilbert, “The little town on the railway track”)

It was hard selecting these quotes – not because they were hard to find but because there were so many options that it was hard to decide which ones. That’s the shame of it. And these stories come from all ages – from teenagers to those in their 70s or 80s –  and from all parts of Australia, from, as Heiss writes in her Introduction, “coastal and desert regions, cities and remote communities.” They come from “Nukuna to Noongar, Wiradjuri to Western Arrernte, Ku Ku Kalinji to Kunibídji, Gunditjamara to Gumbayanggirr and many places in between.”

The contributors include many well-known people – writers like Tony Birch and Tara June Winch, sportspeople like Patrick Johnson and Adam Goodes, performers like Deborah Cheetham and Miranda Tapsell –  but there are also lesser-known but no less significant people, many of whom are actively working for their people and communities.

Despite the devastating picture being painted, the book is not all grim. There are also positive repetitions in the book. They include deep connection to country, the importance and support of family, and particularly, the strength of mums. There’s humour in some stories: you can’t help but laugh, while you are also grimacing, at Miranda Tapsell’s story of her friends expecting her to turn up to a party as Scary Spice, but opting for Baby Spice instead (Miranda Tapsell, “Nobody puts Baby Spice in a corner”).

“two divided worlds”

One of the early stories is particularly sad because its 29-year-old author, Alice Eather, took her life before the book was published. In her person, in her story, in her life, she represents the challenge Indigenous people face in Australia today. Her story “Yúya Karrabúrra” starts with a poem. At the end of the poem she writes:

This poem is about identity, and it was a really hard thing to write in the beginning because identity is such a big issue. It’s a large thing to cover. The poem is about the struggle of being in between black and white.

Now Alice, like many in the book, had an Indigenous parent and a non-Indigenous one, but the struggle she names here is faced by every person in the book, regardless of their family backgrounds, because every one of them must contend with white society and culture, and it’s clearly darned hard.

I’m going to close on this idea of identity, because identity is the well-spring from which everything else comes. The stories are organised alphabetically by author, which I’m sure was an active decision made to not direct the conversation. Coincidentally, though, the last story – Tamika Worrell’s “The Aboriginal equation” – provides the perfect conclusion. It constitutes a strong, unambiguous statement of identity. She says:

I will not sit quietly while my identity is questioned. It doesn’t matter how many times you say you didn’t mean to be offensive, that doesn’t dictate whether or not I’m offended.

Then concludes with a hope that she

will live to see a future that is less ignorant, less racist and at least somewhat decolonised. Until then, I’ll continue to be an angry Koori woman, educating those who don’t understand and those who choose not to.

She’s not asking for the moon here is she? The least we can do is choose to understand – and we can start by reading books like this.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) has also posted on this book, and there are several reviews for the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

* “bundi” is a Wiradjuri hitting stick I believe.

AWW Challenge 2019 Badge

Anita Heiss (ed.)
Growing up Aboriginal in Australia
Carlton: Black Inc, 2018
311pp.
ISBN: 9781863959810

Neil H Atkinson, The last wild west (#BookReview)

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In one of those strange synchronicities, I attended an event, a few hours after finishing Neil H Atkinson’s The last wild west, that gave me the perfect opening for my post. This event was the launch of the VR film, Carriberrie, at the National Film and Sound Archive. Speaking at the launch, indigenous woman and participant in the production, Delta Kay, referred to being approached by the non-indigenous filmmaker Dominic Allen about making the film. Most non-indigenous people, she said, come to their community and “want, want, want” but Allen was offering to “give”, in a spirit of true reconciliation. This spirit of “giving” to indigenous people was as far from Atkinson’s experience as you could get.

Neil H Atkinson, The last wild westAtkinson’s memoir –The last wild west: A saga of Northern Territory cattle stations, racial violence, wild horses and the supernatural: A true story – chronicles the time, 1977-1980, he spent working at a Northern Territory cattle station. He went there in a state of disillusionment and despair, having been refused shared custody of his children after his divorce. His aim was to transform himself, to become a man the judge would see as stable and reliable, to become, in other words, a person “like other people, who were trusted and respected”. He did transform himself, but not quite in the way he’d expected. He had felt that in the Northern Territory he could work hard and prove himself a man. In no way did he think that he would become involved in brutal racial conflict and that the “manhood” he sought would encompass a new understanding of humanity.

I’ve read novels about white brutality towards indigenous people in Australia – such as Thea Astley’s A kindness cup – and I’ve read histories and other nonfiction books, like Chloe Hooper’s The tall man, which tell this story. However, I haven’t read a memoir this charged on the subject. The physical and psychological brutality conveyed here is truly confronting – and what makes it worse is that, much as we’d prefer it be otherwise, it’s not surprising or unbelievable.

But, why write it now? Atkinson’s experience happened 40 years ago, and progress has surely been made (as suggested by projects like Carriberrie.) Atkinson answers this in his Introduction:

I wanted to hold up a mirror; otherwise it is too easy for people to say: “That was then, and  our society isn’t like that anymore.” I wanted to ask if things had changed as much as people thought they had.

This is a question for each reader to consider. I would certainly hope that the sort of brutality described in this book is no more, but I really can’t be sure. However, I do know – we all know – that we still have a long way to go before true equality is achieved. For that reason – because we all know about slippery slopes – Atkinson’s book is relevant, and worth reading.

“an alien in his own homeland”

And now, I’d better give you some sense of what Atkinson’s experience was. Self-described as timid and insecure, Atkinson, with no cattle station experience, decides that the Northern Territory is the place to remake himself. Serendipitously, while en route, he meets two truckies who give him the names of a pub, of a man who visits that pub and of the station he works for. They advise him not to admit his lack of experience but to “wing it”. They also tell him that “blacks are treated worse ‘n shit”, that they “should get more credit and be paid more”, and, most critically, that “there’s a hell’va lot of bad blood between whites and blacks right now.” This was post-Wave Hill, a landmark for indigenous land rights that heralded a time of change in the outback. White owners and bosses felt threatened, and, while the tide might have been changing, indigenous people were still deemed inferior and had little or no power.

Atkinson’s story is one of being caught between these two worlds. While he starts off having little regard for indigenous people and their rights, early describing himself as having “little sympathy for the blacks”, he is a sensitive person. He soon experiences the brutal machismo of the men in charge – to greenhorn men like himself, to the indigenous workers and their families, and to the cattle. Indeed, his descriptions of the treatment of the cattle by the station workers and managers conveys such barbarity that you are prepared for anything.

To write this memoir, Atkinson draws from the diaries he kept at the time, in which he recorded experiences “as they occurred, the same day or shortly after, and using as far as practical, people’s own words”. The result is that the dialogue and descriptions feel fresh and authentic. He is a good story-teller, telling his story chronologically, and building up slowly to the event which – well, I won’t spoil it. He shares this journey with an almost ego-less honesty, admitting that, even two-thirds of the way through his time in the Territory, even after seeing much brutality, he was still thinking “It was an Aboriginal problem, not mine.” His intellect, his historical understanding, in other words, lagged behind his humanity. Emotionally, he started aligning himself increasingly with the indigenous workers, but he continued to do his darndest to avoid becoming involved in the conflict, to avoid even recognising that the indigenous people’s struggles for voice, dignity, and land, was an “Australian” problem not just an “Aboriginal” one. This attitude is, to a degree, understandable, given the power and control wielded by the white station foreman and his henchmen.

Atkinson’s writing is highly evocative. Initially, I found it almost over-blown – too many adjectives I was thinking. But, as I got into the story, I became mesmerised by his voice, by his way of imbuing feeling into what he was seeing and experiencing. This is not the spare writing of modern writers – but it feels right for Atkinson. Certainly, it conveys an inner response to the situation he found himself in:

Dawn knocked with such blinding clarity, its beams should have scarred the door and windows with clutching fingers of blazing red and yellow, as if I should just hurry over and embrace the new day because of its arrogant promise of purity and renewal.

[and, on Sno, his indigenous co-worker]

I then watched him walk away, a black man with a black shadow cast over the baked red earth of a past filled with pain.

Now, I’ve discussed here many times that issue concerning white people telling black stories. This is not, ostensibly, a problem here, because this is Atkinson’s memoir of his experience. It involves sharing his understanding of indigenous people’s culture, particularly of their attitude to place (“country” is not used here – was not used, I think, so much back in the 1970s) and of their spirituality. Mostly, he quotes their words to him, or his interpretation of their words. It can be a fine line.

As I often say in my posts, there is so much more to this book, so many issues and ideas that I haven’t touched upon, but I’m going to close with two ideas Atkinson discusses in the book, ideas which get to the nub of why this book is worth reading. One concerns his understanding of the history wars:

Such wars are as much about morality as about facts, because we choose the way we frame the national drama: either to regard the dispossession of the people as an injustice that needs addressing, or not. There is no neutral body of facts to which to appeal to answer the basic question. We all have to answer for ourselves. Every Australian has to exercise historical judgement. (p. 149)

And the other, in a sense, frames this:

Most ignorance is ignorance you choose. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. Our will decides how and upon what subjects we use our intelligence, direct our interest. Those who don’t detect any meaning in the Aboriginal world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their opinion that the black world should be meaningless, so it is. (p. 194)

I don’t usually like to use book review clichés, but The last wild west is, I must say, provocative in the best meaning of the word.

Neil H. Atkinson
The last wild west: A saga of Northern Territory cattle stations, racial violence, wild horses and the supernatural: A true story
Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers
288pp.
ISBN: 9781925272918

(Review copy courtesy Hybrid Publishers)

Annabel Smith, Whiskey and Charlie (#BookReview)

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Annabel Smith, Whiskey and CharlieSome explanations first. Western Australian author Annabel Smith’s novel Whiskey & Charlie was first published in Australia back in 2012 as Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, which immediately brings to mind the two-way alphabet (or, as I knew it, the alphabet used by the police on The Bill for communication. The things you learn via TV!) However, as happens, the book was, excitingly and successfully, published in America in 2014, and its title was changed to the less evocative Whiskey & Charlie. What I read – heard, actually – was the audiobook that I won in a Readers’ Pack draw last year. Mr Gums and I listened to it on our recent road trip to Melbourne. It passed the time beautifully.

But, another thing, before I talk about that. I’m not a huge fan of audiobooks as I explained earlier in this blog. I really like to see the text; I don’t like to miss visual clues; and I rarely like readers acting out the voices. All these were challenges with Whiskey & Charlie, particularly the last one. The reader, Gildart Jackson, is English. He did the English accents well, but, oh dear, his Australian accent sounded disconcertingly American. I assume this audio, with its American title, was made for an American audience, but, regardless … I prefer reading!

So now the book itself which, really, is what this is all about isn’t it? It tells the story of two identical twins, Whiskey (born William) and Charlie. It is all told, however, through Charlie’s eyes, as the novel starts after Whiskey has had a freak accident and is lying in hospital in a coma. They are 32 years old, and the trouble is that they have been estranged for some time. Charlie has no idea what music, for example, Whiskey would want played at his funeral should he not awaken. He’s distressed. A procastinator who avoids confrontations, he’d always believed there’d be time to sort it all out. The novel progresses from this point, with the family taking turns waiting by Whiskey’s bedside, while Charlie remembers the past and how they’d got to the point they’re at. As he does so, he gradually comes to some realisations about himself and their relationship that enable him to – finally – mature, to see that it hadn’t all been as one-sided as he’d rather smugly assumed. This could be seen in fact as a coming-of-age novel. Perhaps all novels are, in a way; perhaps none of us stop coming of age until we, well, stop?

Anyhow, what makes this book particularly intriguing, besides the thoroughly engrossing story of an ordinary family with all its ups and downs – emigration from England to Australia, parental divorce, and so on – is its structure. And this is where the two-way alphabet comes in. We learn early on that when they were 9 years old, the then close twins been given a walkie-talkie set, and, to help with communication, they learnt this alphabet. William was disappointed that Charlie’s name was in the alphabet, while his was not. Charlie dubs him Whiskey, which becomes his name from then on. Smith structures the narrative around the alphabet, with each chapter titled according to the words – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and so on right through to Zulu – and with each of these words linking to some part of its chapter’s content.

This – and the fact that the flashbacks aren’t completely chronological – gives the novel a somewhat episodic structure, but it doesn’t feel forced. Instead, the story is revealed in the backwards-forwards sort of way, for example, that we gradually get to know new friends while the friendship itself is moving forward. (A not uncommon structure. What makes this one a bit different is being organised by the alphabet.)

I’m not going to write my usual sort of review, mainly because having listened to it, I don’t have the same sort of notes, or the same easy access to check details or find quotes. So, I’ll just make a few comments. It’s quite a page-turner, with the main plot, as you’d expect, turning on whether Whiskey will come out of his coma, and if he does what state will he be in. The secondary plot relates to Charlie’s mental state, and his understanding of himself and his relationship with his brother (not to mention with his long-suffering, angelically patient partner, Juliet). He has always felt inferior – the one who came second, the one who didn’t get the girls or the fancy jobs – but he also felt in the right when it came to their estrangement. However, were things really how he saw them? This is something he has to work out for himself. For this reason, the third person limited voice is a good choice for the novel. It enables us to feel with Charlie, while also providing that little bit of distance which enables us to see that Charlie’s perspective may be just a little skewed.

One of the lovely things about Smith’s plotting is that there’s no melodrama, or over-blown emotionalism here. Sure, drama occurs, and there are some surprises, but it’s all within the realm of possibility. There’s some lovely humour too, particularly in the stories of the boys growing up. One particularly funny section has Charlie describing the “bases” in petting with a girl. There were times, though, when I felt Charlie was too angry, too irrational, particularly towards the end when it seemed he was on the road to growth, but that’s minor and didn’t affect his overall trajectory.

Binding all this together is the description of Whiskey’s medical condition. Smith obviously did quite a bit of research – or already knew – just how extended comas play out. While I knew some of it, there were details that I didn’t, and that I found fascinating. Smith also covers such issues as grief and end-of-life decisions.

Finally, I like the title. At first I wondered why Whiskey’s name was first when Charlie was telling the story, particularly given Charlie also comes first in the alphabet. But, of course, it’s polite to put the other person first, and it also reflects Charlie’s sense of who was first in their relationship.

Whiskey & Charlie (or Whisky Charlie Foxtrot) has been out for a few years now, but it’s still worth reading if you come across it in a library or bookshop. Or, have you read it already? If you have, let me know what you thought.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) also liked and reviewed this – but way back when it came out!

AWW Challenge 2019 BadgeAnnabel Smith
Whiskey & Charlie (Audio)
(Read by Gildart Jackson)
Blackstone Audio, 2015 (Orig. pub. 2012)
10H30M on 9CDs (Unabridged)
ISBN: 9781504608268

 

Igniting Change, Small ways to shape our world (#BookReview)

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Igniting Change, Small Ways to Shape our WorldI really should have posted on this book, Small ways to shape a world, way before this, because it is a quick (albeit meaningful) read, but I am rigorous about the order in which I post on books sent to me for review, and so it has taken until now for it to rise to the top of the pile. I am sorry it has taken so many months for me to get to this book.

Anyhow, enough excuses. Have you heard of Igniting Change? I hadn’t until this lovely little book was sent to me. Igniting Change is, as its website says:

a purposely small organisation that’s passionate about sparking big, positive change with people doing it tough in our communities. We are moved by the humanity and courage of the people we are privileged to work with. We listen, we remain open-minded, we uncover what’s hidden from everyday eyes, we’re guided by the people who experience the issues, we connect unlikely experts to create new thinking and above all we strive to give a voice to people experiencing injustice and inequality. Solid governance and independent funding enable us to take risks when backing outstanding people and organisations, cutting-edge investments that have a real chance of catalysing social change. We call this ‘igniting change’ and we love what we do.

They are, then, about social change and they seem to mainly work from the grass-roots level. Click on the videos on their Projects page to get an idea of how they work, and what they do. One of their mantras is “see the person, not the label” – that is, not “prisoner”, or “homeless”, or “refugee”, and so on.

(Check out the members of the Board for a good picture of who they are.)

Anyhow, Small ways to shape a world is very much about working from the grass-roots. It stems from their belief that “Small Changes x Lots of People = Big Change.” Their promo describes it as “a meaningful, practical book encouraging over fifty small acts of kindness, thoughtfulness and quiet rebellion”. It is, then, about person-to-person kindness, and about the myriad things any individual can do to effect change – no matter how small. As Paul Kelly sings, “from little things, big things grow”.

The book contains a variety of ideas – some are direct suggestions for action, while others are thoughts or questions or adages that suggest action or that simply encourage us to tweak how we think which may then flow on to how we act. Whatever the idea though, it’s inspired by such values as respecting dignity and showing warmth. Some of the ideas are credited to other people and organisations, while others presumably come from their own brainstorming. They address a wide gamut of issues we are confronting – regarding community, social justice, and energy. Here are some picked (sort of) at random!

  • Why do some cultures have elders while others have the elderly? (elders.org)

  • Homeless doesn’t mean nameless. (thebigissue.org.au)

  • Who are the traditional owners in your suburb? (welcometocountry.mobi)

  • People who need the most love often ask for it in the most unlovable ways.

  • Connect with people. Have a talk.

Igniting Change, Small ways to shape our world, page viewThese ideas and thoughts are presented one to a page with a simple, clear illustration on the facing page, some whimsical, some more provocative, most symbolic, but all making a point.

I don’t think there’s much more I can say except that this is the sort of book that probably preaches mainly to the converted, but even the converted can need reminders, because it is so easy to get caught up in our daily challenges and forget the small ways in which we can contribute to the bigger picture.

Lisa also posted on this lovely little book.

Igniting Change
Small ways to shape our world
Richmond: Hardie Grant Books, 2018
ISBN: 9781743794197

(Review copy courtesy Igniting Change)

Josephine Wilson, Extinctions (Guest post by Amanda) (#BookReview)

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I am very pleased to bring you another guest post by Amanda, for a book I’ve not managed to read yet, much as I’d like to: Josephine Wilson’s Miles Franklin Award winning novel, Extinctions.

Amanda’s review

Josephine Wilson. ExtinctionsI loved this book. I was really sorry when it ended. It’s the kind of novel you press into the hands of a good friend. If we lived in the same town I would drive over and lend it to you. [Thanks, Amanda, I wish you could!]

It comes with impressive credentials – Winner of the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2015 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. I would never judge a book based on its awards – and putting those aside, Wilson has created an intelligent sensitive story, combining the personal and political with poignant and endearing characters.

I’ll give you a brief synopsis of the plot and a mention of some unique touches Wilson employs. Some reviews out there give away too much, which ruins the book’s unfolding narrative.

As implied by the title – the book deals with extinctions of all sorts – racial, national, natural and personal. Our protagonist is retired engineering professor Fred Lothian, father to Caroline and Callum, reluctant resident of St Sylvan retirement village, neighbour to Jan and desperately missing his deceased wife Martha. The first couple of chapters are a bit slow moving as we are introduced to Fred and in retrospect to Martha. But it picks up the pace quickly and indeed the ending did seem a bit rushed. The story is told mainly through balancing the present with Fred’s memories.

Wilson uses photos and drawings throughout the book to emphasise a point, which works very well. The photos are unique enough to create interest and have sufficient detail for a reader to divine meaning in addition to the narrative. She also likes quoting large paragraphs from other literature, ranging from Shakespeare to Wind in the willows. That I liked less, they seemed overdone and distracting.  Some engineering terms are used as metaphors in numerous chapter titles.

Wilson is a master story-teller. She is excellent at creating suspense. She deftly manages humour and even in this poignant, serious tale it never seems out of place. You’ll find the most entertaining first date in literature in this book. Some writers let their characters meander aimlessly in the story, but Wilson was having none of that. She works her characters like draught horses. They are constantly flung at each other to challenge, chide, ameliorate and alleviate each other. She has a great ear for dialogue and parent-child dynamics. However, this is a political book and sometimes her characters’ conversations can seem didactic – with each taking an opposing view to prove that there is no absolute right or wrong in most matters. Also occasionally Wilson needs to stretch the plot twist to fit the story and even Fred admits that some events were highly coincidental.

Extinctions is full of beautiful sentences – there is a whole paragraph about the early years of educating a child. It’s too long to quote here, but you will recognise it when you get to it. With great writing I often wonder how much is autobiographical. I note in the afterword that both of Wilson’s parents and a mother–in-law passed away during the writing of the book. Also her father was an engineer.

What I liked most is Wilson’s message of hope – that before we all grow old and become extinct, it is never too late to make amends and make the world a better place for the ones we love.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) reviewed it of course when it came out.

AWW Challenge 2019 BadgeJosephine Wilson
Extinctions
UWAP, 2016
ISBN: 97817425888988

Angela Meyer, A superior spectre (#BookReview)

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Angela Meyer, A superior spectreA superior spectre may be Angela Meyer’s first novel, but her already significant writing credentials, including being the author of the short/flash style fiction collection Captives (my review), and the editor of the anthology The great unknown (my review), ensure this is a confident debut. And it needed to be, because Meyer took big risks in this book – structurally, genre-wise, and with her characters.

Let’s start, however, with the title. It hints at genre, doesn’t it? And yes, this book does owe much to genre, but more to genre-bending than to simple genre. It has two storylines – which is part of the risky structure – one set in mid 19th-century Scotland, drawing on historical fiction, and the other also set in Scotland, but in 2024, making it more speculative fiction. There is also a touch of the Gothic here, with visitations, hidden rooms and madhouses, with dark thoughts and hints of perversion. But, the novel is more complex, more sophisticated than that suggested by this idea of two interwoven storylines from the past and the future. The two epigraphs that introduce the novel clue us into this complexity. The first epigraph is from Emily Dickinson and suggests that the “superior spectre” is not “external”, or “material”, but something “interior”, or “more near”, while the second, from Kafka, hints at the dark side of love and human nature.

These ideas are explored through the two main characters: Leonora, a young farm girl from the Scottish Highlands, and Jeff, a dying man who has “escaped” Australia (something that is difficult to do in his chip-controlled futuristic world) to die alone in Scotland. Leonora is poor, but well-read and resourceful; she’s a hard-worker and loves her father; she’s sensual, sexual, but not afraid to express it; and she has a mind of her own, but is independent rather than wilful. She is, in other words, easy to like and wish well for. Jeff, on the other hand, is more ambiguous, and thus a challenge for us readers. Not only does he admit to some questionable sexual proclivities, but his behaviour in Scotland, particularly towards Leonora, becomes increasingly selfish. He knows it, but in the end puts his needs and desires ahead of hers. How, though, given their different eras?

Well, let’s now turn to the structure. Meyer sets us up at the beginning with a comfortable, predictable structure in which third-person Leonora’s story alternates with first-person Jeff’s. There’s nothing particularly remarkable in this, but it doesn’t last. In Part 2 (of this four-part novel), Leonora’s story also becomes first-person. It happens because, as the back cover blurb has told us, Jeff is using some experimental technology (a “tab”) that enables him to inhabit Leonora’s mind, and at the end of Part 1 he decides to change how he brings her to us. His aim, he says, is to enable us to “partly inhabit her as well” though in so doing, he warns us, our thoughts too, like Leonora’s, may be “infected” by him. I like books in which the structure itself underpins the meaning of the work. In this case, the structure unsettles us – as in, where are we now, who are we with – and mirrors the discord being experienced by Leonora, who wonders

about how powerful our thoughts can be. We might think we are sick when we truly have no ailment. But if we present the symptoms, and believe them, are we not sick anyway? . . . I wonder if a person could learn to be aware of when the mind is influencing a bodily reaction, and also when an instinct is overruling the mind.

So, in A superior spectre, we have a destabilising structure, a slippery character in Jeff who knows he doesn’t deserve our sympathy but wants to justify himself nonetheless, and a creative intertwining of genres – but to what purpose? There are several, I think, some personal, some sociopolitical. The latter is obvious. For Leonora there are the gender expectations which limit what a young girl of her class and background can do: she cannot study at university as some young women she meets are doing; she cannot marry the Laird for whom she falls; and she cannot protect herself from being deemed mad when she admits to strange visions of flying machines and horseless carriages. For Jeff, whether we like him or not, there is the lack of personal freedom that comes with living in a so-called technologically-advanced (dystopian) society. It’s not completely coincidental that Meyer wrote her final draft of this book on Jura, where George Orwell finished 1984.

But, it’s the personal – particularly the grappling with one’s inner demons or “spectres” – that gives the book its greatest power. Jeff’s selfishness, his poor self-control and yet desire to explain himself to us, recall characters like Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert. It’s hard to completely hate a character who is so open about his self-disgust even while he does nothing about it, and who engenders at least some sympathy from his Scottish landlady. She doesn’t approve, but she doesn’t reject either. In the end, Jeff is more pathetic than hateful, partly because his “spectres” are plain to see.

Leonora’s “spectres” come from her challenge in matching her sensual nature with the life she finds herself in, from her desire to find that freedom espoused by John Stuart Mill:

It is difficult for me to read about freedom and tyranny without relating these words to my own situation. Mill’s number one basic liberty is a freedom of thought and emotion. The individual being sovereign over his own body and mind. But what if your thoughts are being suppressed not just from the outside, but from some inner tyrant also?

She knows her aunt wants the best for her, a “good” marriage, but fears this would mean

suppressing the thoughts and emotions I have? It is the opposite of liberty; it is to put myself potentially in the hands of another tyrant. I feel I am pressing at walls all around.

Jeff’s “infection” of her (his tyranny), then, can have multiple readings: not only is it a manifestation of his selfish disregard of others, but it represents her own inner spectres, and symbolises the male control she rejects.

A suitable spectre is not an easy book to pin down, but this just makes it more enjoyable. And if that’s not a good enough reason for you, how about that it offers an intelligent interrogation of past and future, of inner conflicts and outer challenges, through two vividly drawn, not-easy-to-forget characters?

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) also liked this book.

AWW Challenge 2019 BadgeAngela Meyer
A superior spectre
Edgecliff: Ventura Press, 2018
270pp.
ISBN: 9781925183917

(Review copy courtesy Ventura Press)

Deborah Hopkinson, Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen (#BookReview)

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Deborah Hopkinson, Ordinary, extraordinary Jane AustenWriting biographies for young children – like, for example, Deborah Hopkinson and Qin Leng’s Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen – is an interesting concept. Interesting, but not new. So, when I was given this gorgeous Jane Austen one for Christmas, I decided to research the topic – and what I discovered is that the picture book biography is a well-recognised genre. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, given the number I bought for the young Gums way back when.

Still, it got me thinking. A quick search of the ‘net retrieved a few interesting articles (mostly including lists of recommended books). In 2016, The Guardian writer Amy Coles wrote how “picture book biographies peel back history and bring to life the true stories of iconic figures for a younger generation of readers”. An obvious aim, I suppose, but there’s more to it than just knowing these people’s stories, as Coles continues:

there is a lot to be learnt from the trailblazing achievements of history’s most renowned and respected figures. But how did these inspirational figures reach their goals and what prompted them to act the ways they did?

Coles provides a list of ten books that cross “nationalities, careers and cultures”, books about well-known people like the inspiring young Malala Yousafzai and Nelson Mandela, and lesser-known ones (to me, anyhow) like Wangari Maathai, who is “credited with planting over 30 million trees in Kenya”.

I love the idea of these non-fiction picture books, but how popular are they, really? Well, it just so happens that they have quite a wide readership.

Writers Rumpus is the website and blog of a group of children’s book writers and illustrators from the Boston area. Their blog began with “a lively, opinionated, humongous rumpus of a critique group” that (still I gather) meets monthly in a library. Back in May last year, they wrote this (as an introduction to a list of new releases from the previous year):

We live in a most exciting time, one of abundant picture book biographies! At my library, patrons of all ages check out these books. One adult recently told me he found it an excellent way to learn about famous people—past and present—without spending precious time reading a full biography on each person. With their lavish illustrations and informative back matter, this is no surprise. Authors and illustrators of picture book biographies put in a lot of research time to make sure their facts are correct, recorded, and shared in an entertaining manner.

The list is appealing – and includes books about the composer Bach, the “father of children’s literature” John Newbery whose name now graces a significant American children’s literature award, the black woman ex-slave-cum-anti-slavery-activist Harriet Tubman, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, not to mention a whole raft of scientists, sports people and creators of all sorts.

Julie Just, writing in The New York Times last November, also praised picture-book biographies, stating that modern publishers are producing

beautifully illustrated and closely researched nonfiction books about unsung heroes as well as heroes we can’t read enough about. Best of all, if you like true stories, they include superbly detailed endnotes and suggestions for further reading.

And this brings me to the Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen, which is just such a book. The front cover flap describes the book as a “gorgeous tribute to an independent thinker who turned ordinary life into extraordinary stories”.

The book’s epigraph from Pride and prejudice – “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in return” – will probably not make sense to its 4 to 8-year-old intended audience, but should give its adult readers a wry laugh. The book proper opens – not totally originally (!) – with

It is a truth universally acknowledged
that Jane Austen is one of our greatest writers.
But it might surprise you to know that
Jane lived a simple life.
She wasn’t rich
or even very famous in her time.

This would, I think, push the young reader a bit. How many would even have heard of Jane Austen to wonder whether she was rich or famous? Still, from the opening page they learn some basic facts about her. This first-page text is accompanied by a lovely sketch-illustration of our Jane writing at her famous little round writing table. The book goes on to provide the important facts of her biography. It gives a sense of Austen’s personality, including her love of humour, particularly at the “foolish things people sometimes did and said”. It tells us about the life of her times, including how people entertained themselves, which of course would interest children. It also explains how Austen wanted to write more realistic stories about the ordinary world, representing a significant break from the popular novels of the time – adventures and romances. Its conclusion, suggesting that Austen may have stood in her father’s library one day and thought to herself, “I can do this”, is nicely aspirational (as Coles suggests these books can be.)

The book concludes, as Julie Just notes many such books do, with some useful end matter: a basic but detailed enough timeline; a description of each of her novels including when it was published, and some “famous quotes”; some Internet sources to research; and a few books about Austen that the author used in her research.

You won’t be surprised to learn that this book didn’t teach me anything new, but as the friends who gave it to me know, I love adding to my Jane Austen collection of books, videos, CDs and other merch!

Do you have any favourite picture book biographies?

PS I should note that the annual Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards includes the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books, which would include picture-book biographies in its purview.

Deborah Hopkinson
illus. Qin Leng
Ordinary, extraordinary Jane Austen: The story of six novels, three notebooks, a writing box and one clever girl
New York: Balzer + Bray, 2018
ISBN: 9780062373304