Review

Nancy Cato, All the rivers run, Book 1 (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

It’s been a long time since I reviewed an audiobook or, more accurately, reviewed a book via its audiobook version. As I’ve said before, I don’t listen often to audiobooks, but last month Mr Gums and I did a long drive and so decided to listen to Nancy Cato‘s All the rivers run. I referred to this novel a few Monday Musings ago, because it was one of Australia’s early, successful adaptations for television.

Enough introduction though, time to talk about the book. Our audiobook contained the first book* of Philadelphia (Delie) Gordon’s saga. It starts her story when, in 1890 at the age of 13 she is orphaned in a shipwreck off the coast of Victoria. She is taken in by her dour aunt and more welcoming uncle who lead a spartan prospecting life at Kiandra in the Australian Alps. When her uncle Charles strikes it rich – that is he finds a large nugget of gold – the family (with her cousin, Adam, who is three years older than she) move to a sheep farm on the Murray River not far from Echuca. This first book, which is pretty much a coming-of-age story, finishes when Deli (as she prefers to be called) leaves home at the age of 17, after a tragedy has struck the family.

This is not really the sort of book I would normally read, though it is the sort of book I’d listen to on audiobook. Why so? Well, at the risk of being called a literary snob, I tend not to read sagas (whether they be historical fiction, fantasy or whatever). This is because their focus tends to be plot rather than style, structure, theme and, even perhaps, character development, though I know aficionados will argue with me and they will probably be right (to a degree!). Anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not what I prefer to read. However, such stories are perfect for listening to in the car. Literature requiring intense concentration is not a safe bet when you are driving (or even when you are navigating). Horses for courses, as they say.

Cato’s book, like good historical fiction, captures the social history of the era well, particularly the tail end of the gold rush, the 1890s depression, life along the Murray River for the pastoralists and paddle steamers, the challenges faced by women in a male dominated society. She also touches on the dispossession of the indigenous people, showing the women working as “house-girls” for the pastoralists and their all too often descent into prostitution, often as the result of being used by and bearing the children of their white male bosses. Cato was, apparently, an active campaigner for indigenous land rights as well as for conservation.

I enjoyed Cato’s vivid descriptions of the landscape. The plot is a little predictable and the characters are somewhat stereotypical – the welcoming, easy-going farmer, the tough wife, the handsome son champing at the parental bit – but not so much that they don’t engage. Delie in this first book, for example, is a believable young girl, orphaned and taken in essentially by strangers and then experiencing her first love. She’s bright but not brash, independent but not without uncertainties.

I enjoyed one little description in particular. At a moment when things are going wrong for Deli, Cato writes that “a pair of kookaburras laughed sardonically”. I liked this description because only recently I’d been thinking about the first white settlers in Australia and what they made of the birds here, many of whom can sound pretty raucous. I wondered, in particular, what they thought when they first heard a kookaburra’s “laugh” as we describe it. Sardonic, is a very good description of it!

Overall then, it’s an enjoyable read, if you enjoy historical sagas, are interested in life in country Australia in the 1890s – and particularly if you have a long drive ahead of you! You could do way worse …

Nancy Cato
All the rivers run: A river not yet tamed (Audio CD)
Read by Kate Hosking
Bolinda Classics
6 hrs 15 mins on 5 discs
ISBN: 9781742336732

* Note: As far as I understand it, the three books in the trilogy were originally separately published as: All the rivers run (1958); Time, flow softly (1959); and But still the stream (1962). Recent editions, however, combine the three novels into one volume titled All the rivers run. I am not sure where the title A river not yet tamed comes from, but it looks like it might be Bolinda’s title for the first part of their recording of the trilogy.

Karen Jennings, Finding Soutbek (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments
Jennings Finding Soutbek
Finding Soutbek (Courtesy: Holland Park Press)

I don’t, as a rule, accept review copies of books by non-Australian authors, but when New Holland Press offered me Finding Soutbek by South African writer, Karen Jennings, I was intrigued. Intrigued because of connections in our countries’ respective histories, and because I’ve read several books set in South Africa (by, for example, JM Coetzee, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer). This is Jennings’ first novel, but she has written and published poetry and short stories, winning both the Maskew Miller Longman Award in 2009 and the Commonwealth Short Story Competition‘s Africa Region prize in 2010.

I enjoyed Finding Soutbek. It’s an ambitious, layered novel that switches between the 17th century and the present in a small, remote community in South Africa, the fictitious Soutbek in an area called Namaqualand. The town comprises two groups of people, the upper-towners and the lower-towners. In a neat reversal of expectations, the upper-towners are the poor, the under-class, who at the novel’s opening, have just been hit by a fire for the second time in a reasonably short period. The novel tells the story of what happens in the town after this fire, interspersed with chapters from The History of Soutbek, written by the Mayor and a local Professor, about the community’s founding in the 17th century. This history presents the town as having utopian origins, based on “communal living, sharing and acceptance”.

The novel’s main characters are this Mayor and his wife Anna, the destitute teenage girl Sara who appears in the town at the beginning of the novel and is reluctantly taken in by the Mayor, and Willem who lives in the upper town but who also happens to be the Mayor’s nephew. Jennings explores the relationships between these (and other) characters as the Mayor, the town’s first coloured mayor in fact, struggles to achieve his personal goals in a climate that seems to stall him at every step. The potential benefits of The History are undermined by the post-fire chaos in the upper town. There is a dark side to this mayor, to the way he treats others in his quest for personal wealth and power. Anna sees this and recoils from it, and finds herself increasingly isolated until Sara’s arrival. Willem, attracted to Sara, joins these two in a companionship that sees them jointly reading The History.

The themes are pretty universal – power and oppression, the rich controlling the poor, social inequality – but there is also something that seems particularly South African. That is, the book reminded me of works I’ve read by Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing. I’m thinking particularly of Gordimer’s short story Six feet of the country and Lessing’s novella The grass is singing, which, like Finding Soutbek, describe marital tensions deriving from a life characterised by the exercise of power by one group over another. This sort of conflict is evident too in JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, though his occurs between father and daughter, rather than husband and wife. These works are more complex and hard-hitting than Jennings’ novel, but they all seem to reflect a pre- and post-Apartheid South African literary aesthetic.

What interested me most about the book though was The History which purports to be based on the previously unknown journals written by the leader of a previously unknown unofficial expedition in 1662. A few chapters into the history, we learn a little more of the Mayor’s co-author, the Professor. We learn he has fallen into disrepute because his previous histories had been pro-Apartheid, had in fact argued that Apartheid should have been “carried further”. Moreover, we are told,

he felt no remorse for his actions. He believed that what he had done was fair and just … He had moulded the past into a suitable present, giving people historical proof of what they already believed.

So, a little way into The History we readers are forewarned. It may not do to be taken in. Willem is intrigued, “attracted by the utopia it described … [and] … its answers for a better life”. But, the oldest man in the village makes him wonder and so he starts to read other histories. Late in the novel he says

History says that for centuries humans have been trying to rule other humans, taking the land and everything else for themselves. That’s all the history you need to know. There’s nothing else.

You might guess from this that the utopian vision presented in The History may not be quite as it looks – and you’d be right but I won’t give too much away of how it all plays out. I’ll simply say that I like the fact that Jennings has tackled the writing of history, and how easily it can be made to serve a purpose. As we in Australia know, “history”, whether knowingly fabricated or not, can completely miss the point. And this can have devastating consequences.

While I enjoyed the book, I had some reservations. The History chapters are longer than they need be for the point they are making and this slows the book down somewhat. And the characters are kept a little at a distance. This is partly due to the almost mythic tone and partly to the shifting point of view. It’s the sort of tone I like, but it fights a little here with the very real story going on, and the shifting point of view makes it hard for us to fully engage with the characters. We don’t get to know them quite well enough to fully empathise with them, and this lessens somewhat the book’s emotional impact.

Finding Soutbek is, nonetheless, a good read. The plot is logically developed, the writing is good and the subject matter is relevant. Jennings writes in her Acknowledgements:

At all times I have been careful to remember that though this is a piece of fiction, it is a tale nonetheless which represents a sore reality, and I have tried my utmost to relate it in a sympathetic and sensitive manner.

She has done exactly that and, despite my reservations, I’m glad I read it.

Karen Jennings
Finding Soutbek
London: Holland Park Press, 2009
273pp.
ISBN: 9781907320200

(Review copy supplied by Holland Park Press)

Ruby Sparks (Movie)

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

English: Zoe Kazan attending the premiere of T...

Zoe Kazan 2011 (Photo credit: David Shankbone, using CC-BY 3.0, via Wikipedia)

Because I am a litblogger not a film blogger, I don’t review all the movies I see. When I do review a movie it is usually an Australian one. However, because of a certain synchronicity and because of its subject matter, I can’t resist writing a little about Ruby Sparks.

The synchronicity comes from Anita Heiss‘ statement at last week’s Canberra Readers’ Festival that the good thing about writing fiction is that “you can create the world you want to live in”. She meant this positively, because she is passionate about creating a world in which indigenous Australians are respected for their culture, for their similarity to non-indigenous Australians and for their diversity. In other words, she wants them to be recognised and valued as equal human beings, which should not be too much to ask. But, what if the world you want is not the world you need?

Ruby Sparks is a a delightful but also clever and thoughtful movie about a young man with writer’s block. Calvin, the writer, had a New York Times bestseller with his first book when he was 19 years old, and was hailed as a genius, but ten years later, as the movie begins, he has not produced anything more beyond some short works. This, however, is not his only problem. He is in therapy – not only because of his writer’s block but because his life is not going well. He lives alone (with his dog Scotty who, in an affront to Calvin’s manliness, pees like a “girl dog”) and has not had a romantic relationship for several years. Enter Ruby – first in what seems to be a dream sequence and then in the park. Who is this Ruby, we wonder? It soon dawns on us that Ruby may not be real, that she may be a figment of his imagination, the product of his pen (or, in this case, his manual typewriter). It starts in fact to feel a little like a Pygmalion story …  and, as we move down that path, we are forced to confront how far a writer’s hubris might take him, because gradually Calvin’s sweet neediness starts to take on another look.

And so the movie progresses, teasing us with the “is she or isn’t she real?” question, and forcing us to examine the implications of want versus need . I’m not going to say anything more about the story, though, for fear of spoiling what is a charming but by no means silly movie. I’ll simply say that the movie explores the potential of its plot with humour and warmth, alongside a little darkness – think power and manipulation – which keeps it grounded. It’s gets a little “tricksy” at times, but not incomprehensibly so. The cast – including the well-known (such as Annette Benning, Antonio Banderas and Elliott Gould) and the lesser-known (namely the romantic leads, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan) – do a convincing job. They, particularly Dano and Kazan are, dare I say it, “real” and engaging.

Then, at the end of course, came the credits – which I do like to read. I was delighted to discover another little twist to get our heads around. The script, you see, was written by Zoe Kazan* who plays Ruby who may (or may not be) the product of Calvin’s pen. What is that about art imitating life? (Or, something imitating something, anyhow – my brain is starting to hurt now with the permutations!)

This is not a proper movie review. If it were I’d take the time to talk more about the plot and the role of the other characters; I’d discuss the music (which I loved); and I’d mention the symbolism including the moment when Calivn ditches his typewriter for a laptop.  But, I simply wanted to share a few thoughts about it with people who like to read. If you’re a movie-going reader like me, I recommend you give this film a go … and if you do, come back and tell me what you think. Meanwhile, I wonder what Anita Heiss would think …

* Zoe Kazan has an impressive pedigree. Her grandfather was film director and screenwriter Elia Kazan and her parents are screenwriters.

Dorothea Mackellar, Elena Kats-Chernin and the Vienna Boys Choir

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

I’m guessing most of you have heard of the Vienna Boys Choir, but you may not, particularly if you’re not Australian, have heard of Dorothea Mackellar and Elena Kats-Chernin. Mackellar (1885-1968)  was an Australian writer, best known for her poem “My country”. Kats-Chernin (b. 1957) is an Australian composer who was born in Tashkent (in what was then the Soviet Union). She has been in Australia since 1975.

You’ve probably guessed now what this post is about. It’s about Elena Kats-Chernin setting Dorothea McKellar’s “My country” to music for the Vienna Boys Choir to perform (on their 2012 tour to Australia). According to the program, producer Andrew McKinnon, who commissioned the piece, wanted a poem that would both resonate with Australian audiences and “promote the beauty of Australia to international audiences on the choir’s future travels”.

And yet, as I sat down to the Choir’s concert on the weekend and looked at the 25 mostly European-born boys ranging in age from 9 to 14, I wondered what they could make of such a poem. For those of you who don’t know the poem, its most famous verse, the second, goes like this:

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of drought and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me

The program answered my question. After Kats-Chernin had drafted her composition, she went to Austria to workshop it with the boys. What fun that must have been. Kats-Chernin says that while that poem with that choir might seem an odd combination, it also makes sense:

The piece is about a country that’s still really young, but at the same time has been around thousands of years. At the same time they [Vienna Boys Choir] are only young boys, but the tradition they are part of is really old*.

Dorothea Mackellar's My country

Final two verses of Dorothea Mackellar’s My country (Public Domain from the State Library of NSW, via Wikipedia)

And so Kats-Chernin workshopped her ideas with the boys. Here is an excerpt from one of the choristers, Anton (12 yo), as reported in the program:

She read us some of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem. She said Australia is beautiful, and very dangerous. Which key did we think meant danger? Felix suggested B minor, David thought of F sharp. Immediately Ms Kats-Chernin started playing the right chords.

She gave each of us a word to sing, on a sequence of notes, floods, famine, sunburnt country. We were all doing it at the same time, and it was sounding like a fabric of music. That was a total surprise to me, and I could feel myself smiling. It just happened. I think some of this is in the finished piece.

It was a beautiful piece – not schmaltzy or cliched as it so easily could have been. She broke up the words at times, repeated some, left others out (if I remember correctly), all of which gave the poem new power for those of us who know it well. I like Kats-Chernin. She’s able to express a modern sensibility in her music (different or unusual rhythms and harmonic combinations, using my layperson’s language) while retaining lovely melody as well. (Hmm … that statement may imply more about modern music than I really intend, but you know what I mean!). The piece is called “Land of Sweeping Plains” but its most powerful, memorable section focuses on the first line of the 4th and 5th verses, “Core of my heart, my country”. “Core of my heart” was apparently the poem’s first published title. I like that … from “Core of my heart” to “My country” to “Land of Sweeping Plains”. It’s clever – or sensible, at least, I think – to give the piece a more descriptive, less nationalistic/patriotic title, if it is going to become an internationally performed piece. And I hope it does become so.

Meanwhile, if you are interested, you might like to check out this You Tube about Kats-Chernin and the Choir.

* Historians date the choir from 1498!

Toni Jordan, Nine days (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

Jordan's Nine Days

Book cover (Courtesy: Text Publishing)

Toni Jordan’s latest novel, Nine days, is somewhat of a departure from her first two novels which are more in the chicklit vein, albeit chicklit with a difference. The thing is, I don’t generally read chicklit, but I did enjoy Addition and Fall girl, so I was more than willing to read Jordan’s next offering. I was not disappointed.

Nine days was, according to the Author’s note, inspired by a photograph from the State Library of Victoria’s Argus collection. The photograph forms the cover of the book’s first edition: it depicts an unidentified soldier leaning out of a train window to kiss an also unidentified young woman. Jordan has woven around this photo a multi-generational story that spans six decades or so from the eve of world war 2 to the present. The title refers to the nine days upon which the book’s nine chapters are built – with an added complexity. This is a multiple point of view novel like, say, Christos Tsiolkas‘ The slap and Elliot Perlman‘s Seven types of ambiguity, but while those two novels progressed their narratives in a linear chronology via the changing voices, Jordan’s chronology jumps around in a seemingly chaotic manner. However, there is method to it, because careful reading reveals thematic or structural connections, even if not chronological ones, between each chapter.

That’s the basic structure, but the real interest of course is in what the novel’s about. How, though, to describe the plot of such a novel succinctly? The best way is to simply say that the novel tells the story of three generations of one family, which is, by the way, an impressive thing to attempt in 250 pages. There is a central mystery – for the reader and for the family though they aren’t necessarily aware of it – to do with the two figures in the photograph. Each chapter is named simply for the character in whose first person voice it is told. The first is Kip, a nearly 15-year-old boy in 1939, who has just had to leave school and go to work because of the recent death of his father. Other chapters are told by his twin brother Francis/Frank (who gets to stay at school), his mother Jean, and his much loved big sister Connie. Interspersed with their stories are those told by Kip’s wife, Jack who lives next door, Kip’s twin daughters, and even his grandson. For each person something happens – some choice must be, or is, made – in the particular day they describe, which impacts their life’s direction.

It’s an ambitious structure, but Jordan succeeds, for a few reasons. A big one is her ability to create strong, believable characters who are likable despite their faults. It helps that the first character, Kip, is particularly engaging. He’s easy-going and generous-hearted, but is also endowed with a good dose of wits and common-sense. He plays an important role in the denouement. His daughters, the overweight, rather uptight Stanzi, and the hippy-alternative-eco-warrior Charlotte, are clearly differentiated and provide a touch of humour with their (mostly) good-natured sibling bickering and point-scoring. Most contemporary female readers will see bits of themselves or people they know in these two. And, while I’m speaking of women, I can’t resist quoting Kip’s young, restless sixteen-year old grandson Alec:

I’ve wasted my whole entire existence up to now. I’ve done absolutely nothing with it. I’ve just been counting down the months of my life. Sixteen years, totally useless. I live with three women. A big night at my place is when the ABC runs a Jane Austen marathon. God I hate that Bennet chick. Marry him already, and spare us the drama.

Another reason the book works is that Jordan manages place and time well. Counterbalancing the seemingly erratic chronology is the fact that place is kept simple. The whole novel occurs pretty much in one suburb in working class Melbourne. This helps keep we readers grounded, as do two little motifs – a “lucky” shilling and a purple pendant – which appear on and off throughout the novel. I was initially concerned, after the first couple of chapters, that the shilling was going to be a little heavy-handed or mechanistic – particularly given the shilling graphic commencing each chapter – but it’s not. Like the pendant, it appears in some, but not other, chapters, and in so doing helps keep us focused without irritating us.

In other words, the book is handled very well technically. But, that’s not what makes a book, in the end, is it? What makes a book good is its heart – and the heart of this book is warm but real. Its particular subjects are war, abortion, religious and class difference, social conscience and social mobility, but it is also a universal tale about how love (marital, romantic, sibling, parental, and so on) forms the glue that keeps us going. This might sound corny, but that’s not how it comes across. The novel has its share of grittiness; and relationships have their tensions, conveying the message that love (whether marital, sibling or parental) is not a simple endpoint but something to be worked at.

This may not be the book for readers who like long family sagas they can lose themselves in, but for those like me who enjoy works which tease and leave ties undone, much like life really, Nine days has plenty to offer.

Toni Jordan
Nine days
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012
245pp.
ISBN: 9781921922831

(Review copy supplied by Text Publishing)

Andrew Blackman, Nights on Fair Isle (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 11 Comments

You probably know by now that I occasionally like to review short stories that are available online, most often those published by the Library of America.  So when author and blogger, Andrew Blackman, recently posted that one of his stories had been published online, I thought I’d check it out.

“Nights on Fair Isle” is, he says, the first time he has had a short story available free on the internet, but he expresses uncertainty about the value of reading online and asks his readers’ opinions. Good question and one I’d like to answer … somewhat anyhow, and then bat it on to you. I don’t as a rule read fiction online. I read novels on an e-Reader but I don’t think that’s the same as online, or is it? And I read short stories and essays that are made available online. But, here’s the rub. I don’t read them online. I print them out and read the hard copy instead. This might just be the product of my babyboomer-dom… I could in many cases, I suppose, download stories and essays onto my e-Reader, but mostly I think what’s the point. It’s just as fast to print it out.

Anyhow, the story. It’s a little story … And I mean that literally in terms of its length not as a comment on its quality. In just three pages (in my printout version), Blackman tells a tightly controlled story of loneliness and how one woman goes about soothing her soul to enable her to keep on going day after day in a big city, London to be exact. We don’t know where Aurelia is from, but we do know that she wasn’t an English-speaker when she arrived in London. Not long after her arrival, she stumbles on the shipping  forecast on the radio and hears a “gentle male voice intoning” words like “Low, Fastnet, nine seven three, falling slowly”. Each night she tunes in to the same words, and thinks it’s a nightly prayer that she’s hearing. Eventually of course she’s put right, but she goes on tuning into the forecast for its soothing sound …

And for the way it reminds her of her mother’s “sweet lullabies … that chased away the shadows and fears”. Blackman neatly segues from the shipping forecast to the sea and Aurelia’s favourite sea-based fairy story, and effectively uses the paradoxes inherent in sea/water imagery to convey both fear and calm. I won’t relate more of the story though … after all it’s short enough for you to read yourselves via the link below. I’ll just say that I liked the way Blackman gently explores the power – and limit – of dreams and reverie to keep you going. It’s a realistic rather than grim or depressing story.

Meanwhile, do you read online? And if so, do you think it changes the way you read, or what you read?

Andrew Blackman
“Nights on Fair Isle”
SolquShorts, 2012
Availability: Online

Alexander McCall Smith, The Saturday big tent wedding party (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

I have a number of tenets – if that’s not too grand a word for it – according to which I read. These include that I don’t read series books and I don’t read crime. However, the best rules are made to be broken, aren’t they? And so, I break mine for our family holiday tradition which is to read the latest book in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. We are now behind though. We should have read The Saturday big tent wedding party (the 12th of now 13 books in the series) last September. But that annual family holiday as well as our February holiday this year were cancelled due to health reasons. We finally got away in August … I have now read the book and am about to pass it on to the next eager reader.

So, what to say? If you know the series you’ll know what it is about and may have read this one already. If you don’t know the series, then I’d say if you are looking for something warm and charming, with a touch of humour, to fill in a quiet time you could do worse than spend a few hours with Precious Ramotswe and her family and friends. Or, if you prefer to spend your reading time on different fare, watching the miniseries on DVD could be just the thing. It was an enjoyable adaptation.

I said that I don’t read crime. However, these are probably not books leapt on by aficionados of that genre. There is always a crime to investigate of course … but while the crimes in these books have, on occasion, involved violence or real danger for the victims, their resolution never depends on violence, guns, car chases and the like. Rather, Precious (and her assistant, Mma Makutsi) use common-sense, psychology, simple observation and forthrightness to determine the perpetrator. Police, courts and jails are rarely if ever invoked.  The denouement, instead, usually entails natural justice and/or negotiated restitution. If only life could be managed this way …

Which brings me to McCall Smith and his philosophy. These books espouse a life based on moral and ethical behaviour, on forgiveness and humility, and on understanding where the other is coming from. It might seem (and is) a little cutesy at times, but the heart is real and the lessons seriously intended. In resolving the crime in this 12th book, Precious Ramotswe thinks:

There would be no further attacks – that was clear, and the damage had been set right by the one not responsible for it. All that was lacking was the punishment of the one responsible. But punishment often did not do what we wanted it to do …

And the one responsible … well, that would be giving it away. Suffice it to say that it’s not as simple as it might have looked at the beginning.

The rest of the book – like its predecessors – continues the story of Precious and her family. The apprentices are growing up (at last), a wedding finally occurs, the tiny white van is not totally lost – and Mrs Potokwani continues in her well-meaning but organising way.

And now onto the next holiday read …

Alexander McCall Smith
The Saturday big tent wedding party
London: Little, Brown, 2011
248pp.
ISBN:  9781408702598

Anna Funder, Stasiland (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 30 Comments

Anna Funder's Stasiland bookcover

Funder’s Stasiland (Courtesy: Text Publishing)

Anna Funder‘s Stasiland, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, is one of those books that can be reviewed from multiple angles, and I know that when I get to the end of this review I’m going to be sorry about the angles I didn’t get to discuss. But, I can only do what I can do, eh?

I found it interesting to read this book immediately after another non-fiction book, Brenda Niall‘s biography True north, because the contrast clarified for me why I liked True north but loved Stasiland. To put it simply, True north is a well-written but pretty traditional biography, while Stasiland is what I’d call “literary non-fiction”. In other words, in Stasiland, Funder uses some of the literary techniques – relating to structure, voice and language – more commonly found in fiction to tell her story. It’s not surprising really that this is the case, because when I heard her speak last month, she said that she had initially planned to write Stasiland as a novel but, having done the research and interviews, it “didn’t feel right” to turn those people’s stories to another purpose. She was also aware that there were things in these stories that might not be accepted, that might seem too far-fetched in fiction! Such is the fine line we tread between fact and fiction.

At this point, I should describe the book, though its broad subject is obvious from the title. Funder (b. 1966) has a long-standing interest in things German, from her school days when she chose to learn German, and has visited and/or lived in Germany several times. She writes of travelling through the former German Democratic Republic, a country that no longer exists, that comprises “tumble-down houses and bewildered people”, and she describes feeling a sense of “horror-romance”:

The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past; from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name.

And so she decides to try to understand this dichotomy and places an ad in the paper:

Seeking: former Stasi officers and unofficial collaborators for interview. Publication in English, anonymity* and discretion guaranteed.

This is, depending on how you look at it, either a very brave or naively silly thing to do. Funder, who sees writing as an act of empathy or compassion, interviews several Stasi men who answer her ad, as well as other East Germans who suffered at Stasi hands. It might be coincidental, but essentially all her subjects who suffered were women, while the perpetrators were men. In fact, when she visits the Stasi HQ in Berlin, she’s told it only had toilets for men! All this is not to say, however, that men didn’t suffer (or, even, that there weren’t women perpetrators). Indeed, some of the Stasi men she interviewed were themselves bullied, blackmailed and otherwise stood over to keep them in line.

What makes this book compelling are the stories she gathers, partly because the stories themselves are powerful and partly because of Funder’s own voice. Funder places herself in the book. This is not a third person “objective” recounting of the interviews she conducted but a journey we take together to find some answers. When she interviews Herr von Schnitzler, who hosted the Black Channel, a television program in which he presented a Communist commentary on excerpted programs from the West, we are in the room with her, hearing not only what he says, but getting a sense of his personality alongside her. We see her being fearless in sticking to her questions in the face of a man who frequently shouts. “I recognise”, she writes, “this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason from other bullies I have known”.

It is particularly in the von Schnitzler section that the GDR paradox becomes most clear. Von Schnitzler was, Funder tells us, molded by the injustices of the Weimar Republic. We see how the drive to create a new society not bedevilled by the iniquities – that is, the inequalities – of capitalism (or imperialism as many of the Stasi men call it) resulted in the creation of an authoritarian society where freedom was minimal (or non-existent) and dissent not allowed. In stark contrast to von Schnitzler and his refusal to see any error in, or critique, the GDR, is Julia, one of the “victims”, who had believed in the GDR but, through having an Italian boyfriend, had become caught in the Stasi net. She discovered that the “state can be so dangerous, so very dangerous, without me having done anything at all” and was completely traumatised by the extent of surveillance and loss of privacy she experienced. And yet, having experienced the East and the West, she can still say

you see the mistakes of one system – the surveillance – and the mistakes of the other – the inequality – but there’s nothing you could have done in the one, and nothing you can do now about the other … and the clearer you see that the worse you feel.

The GDR story is, as Funder tells it, one of grand humanitarian aims but one also riddled by paradox and irony. She asks Herr Bock, a recruiter of informers, what qualities he looked for in an informer:

‘… and above all else,’ he says, looking at me, his eyes distorted and magnified through the glasses, ‘he needed to be honest, faithful and trustworthy.’

I look back at him. I feel my eyes too, getting wider.

How can you resist a writer who tells a story like this, who shows without telling exactly what is going on, who can inject sly touches of wit and humour into the tough stuff?

I can’t possibly relate all the stories – many quite horrendous – in this book. All I can say is that it is a book that manages to show how history writing can be intimate while at the same time conveying facts and hard truths. It is a memorable book, and worth reading if you have any interest at all in politics and human behaviour.

Anna Funder
Stasiland
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002
ISBN: 9781877008917
282pp.

* I’m intrigued by the promise of anonymity because it seems that in some, if not in all, cases, real names are used. I presume the people involved agreed to this.

Brenda Niall, True north: The story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 13 Comments

‘Of course we are mad,’ Bet wrote to Mary, ‘but we live in a mad place.’

Brenda Niall's True North
Brenda Niall’s True North (Courtesy: Text Publishing)

The mad place that Bet – Elizabeth Durack – refers to is the Kimberley region of north-west Australia and the book this quote comes from is biographer Brenda Niall‘s True north: The story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack.

Brenda Niall, along with the late Hazel Rowley, is one of Australia’s best regarded biographers. True North, her most recent book, tells the story of writer Mary Durack (1913-1994) and her younger sister, the artist Elizabeth (1915-2000). I must say that it took me a long time to read this book. I was fascinated by the story but it lacked, in the beginning at least, some of the punch that I found in Rowley’s Franklin and Eleanor: An extraordinary marriage which I reviewed last year. I think this is because Niall’s style here is a little flatter, a little more like reportage, than I found in Rowley’s book. Both books have two people as their subjects and both books have an overriding theme – the Roosevelts’ extraordinary marriage for Rowley and the sisters’ fascination with the remote north for Niall – but, for me, Rowley’s had a stronger narrative drive which resulted in a more cohesive “argument”. However, I did settle into True North and, in the end, enjoyed it for what it did do.

Mary and Elizabeth, for those of you who don’t know, belonged to the pioneer pastoralists, the Duracks, who had  emigrated from Ireland in the 1850s. They farmed in Goulburn (NSW), then moved to Coopers Creek (Queensland) in the late 1860s, before droving their cattle nearly 5,000 kms cross-country to settle in the Kimberleys (WA) in 1882. Mary told this story in her best-selling (now classic) history, Kings in grass castles, and its sequel Sons in the saddles.

Niall’s book, though, is not about that, but about the two sisters and their lives in the 20th century. Mary and Elizabeth spent most of their childhood and youth in Perth, while their father managed the northern properties, returning south each year in the off-season. However, both separately and together spent time on their father’s properties, particularly in their late teens and early twenties. Niall’s title, “true north”, expresses the sisters’ identification with the north. In 1929, for example, Mary said she returned to the north “like a homing pigeon”. Elizabeth described it, a few years later, as “that wild, wonderful country”. The north was, in fact, the inspiration for their creative output.

Niall characterises the two sisters well. Mary was the calmer, more sociable, reliable one who struggled to find time to write between raising children, supporting various family members, and playing a significant role in the literary life of Perth. Elizabeth was more unsettled, more fiery and perhaps more ambitious. She was frequently poor and depended on the family, particularly Mary, for monetary and emotional support throughout much of her life. Theirs was a close relationship, and included several collaborative books for which Mary wrote the text and Elizabeth did the illustrations. Neither made wonderfully successful marriages – and both, despite their challenges, produced significant bodies of work.

Several themes run through the book, but the most interesting one for me concerns the Duracks’ relationship with Aboriginal people. From early on the family employed indigenous people. According to Niall, the sisters’ father, Michael Patsy Durack, “stressed their value as allies”. For the sisters, their early experiences were positive and resulted in a lifelong interest in and awareness of indigenous people and their issues. Elizabeth spoke many years later about “how lovely it was to go walking with them and to learn about the bush” while Mary wrote of being disturbed by “the shadow people in their humpies on the river banks, humbly serving, unknowing, unquestioning”.  Mary wrote a short story, “Old Woman”, about the harsh treatment of an Aboriginal woman by a station wife. It was published in The Bulletin in 1939 and nearly resulted in a libel suit. Elizabeth wrote in a letter, around 1935,

It’s a question of either opening one’s eyes to the situation and grappling with it with whatever instruments lie within one’s reach or shutting one’s eyes to the whole business and getting the hell out of it.

I don’t have time to fully explore it all now, but I was intrigued by this comment on Mary late in her life:

She found the Aborigines surprisingly objective about the past ‘recalling events with no hint of bitterness’, talking about the white people with neither praise nor blame.’

This brought to mind indigenous writer Kim Scott’s That deadman dance, which I reviewed last year and in which he presents (albeit in a novel but borne out by the records, I believe) a similar generosity or openness of spirit. But, back to True north. Niall argues that the Duracks were respectful and sympathetic employers and friends. Big brother Reg in the 1930s was aware of “the social injustice of use of Aboriginal labour”. Mary, in the 1960s, argued persistently for equal pay, and even though, when it came, indigenous station workers were displaced in droves, she still believed in the principle. Ah, that tricky conundrum: principle versus reality, idealism versus pragmatism.  Why are they so often at loggerheads with each other?

Elizabeth, however, did get into hot water later in her life when, going way further than Mary who wrote a poem in the voice of an indigenous woman, she took on the name and persona of an Aboriginal man, Eddie Burrup, as a nom de brush. Niall discusses the issue at some length teasing out artistic and personal issues versus cultural trespass. She is sympathetic in the end to Durack and her somewhat mixed motivations. The situation was certainly complicated and, while some of Durack’s motivations give me pause, I’d rather not pass judgement, except to say that in the late 20th century it was not a wise thing to do.

The insight Niall gives into an albeit specific pastoral family’s experience of and response to their relationship with indigenous people makes this book worth reading. We do of course only get Niall’s presentation of the Duracks’ experience. Besides a few scattered references to indigenous people’s responses, we know little of the indigenous perspective. The sad thing is that we may never know their side, since few people are left to tell it, and not much is likely to have been documented.

Oh dear, I’ve written a lot about one theme and there’s so much more to tell, but I won’t retain you much longer. Two other major themes permeate the book. One revolves around love of and identification with place, with how place can get under the skin and drive one’s life. The other concerns the challenge women creators face in serving their art while juggling families and the need for financial support.

While I didn’t find Niall’s book as compelling as I’d hoped, the more I think about it, the more I appreciate what she has attempted to do. The Duracks’ story is a complex and somewhat contradictory one. Mary, Elizabeth and their brothers were the children of a “cattle king”, and being such their public image was “one of effortless privilege”. The reality was, in fact, rather different – and it resulted in lives that were challenged and challenging. Niall’s book will not, I suspect, be the last we hear of them – but it makes a valuable contribution.

Brenda Niall
True North: The story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2012
Kindle edition
272pp (Print ed.)
ISBN: 9781921921421 (eBook)

Dame Mary Durack, Lament for the drowned country (Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 5 Comments

Lake Argyle with Crocodile

Freshwater crocodile heading into Lake Argyle

Near the end of her book True north about Mary and Elizabeth Durack, biographer Brenda Niall writes of Mary Durack‘s poem, “Lament for the Drowned Country”, which she says “has been judged her finest poem”.  Of course, with such a statement, I had to read it. I could have Googled* it, but I decided to check my Penguin Book of Australian women poets and, hallelujah, it was there. (Once again this book didn’t let me down!)

“Lament for the drowned country” is a long poem and is presented in the voice of an Aboriginal woman, Maggie, mourning the drowning (for the Ord River Irrigation Scheme) of her “born country”. It’s a poignant poem – for obvious reasons – as it’s about the loss of country (for the indigenous people) and home (for the Duracks, whose Argyle homestead went under the water). But, there’s something else too – an irony, because the idea of damming the Ord River was first proposed by Mary’s brother Kimberley Durack in the 1940s. Mary supported her brother** at the time … but the reality many years later, after her brother’s death, was sad for her.

The interesting thing about the poem is that Durack chose to write it in the voice of an Aboriginal woman. Niall writes of this that:

At a later time, her creation of a first person voice for Maggie Wallaby might have been questioned. In 1972 it was taken as she intended it, as a work of empathy and imaginative identification.

This made me think of Thomas Keneally‘s The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1972. It was written in the voice of the Aboriginal protagonist, but Keneally has since said that he wouldn’t presume to do that now, and would tell the story from a white point of view. This says something, I think, something positive, I hope, about Australia’s cultural development. In the 1970s and before, indigenous voices were hard to find. This is less so now – and will hopefully only get better bringing us more voices, and a greater variety of story representing the diversity of indigenous experience.

Anyhow, back to the poem. According to Niall, the poem was inspired by Mary seeing Maggie “catching fish and unaccountably throwing them back into the [new] lake”. Mary saw this – realistically or romantically, who’s to say? – as signalling hope. She has Maggie saying:

I sit along river coming down from my born country.
That heart place! I got to talk to that water.
I got to tell that fish: ‘You go back – you go back now –
talk strong my country. You tell him that spirit can’t leave ’em.
You tell him – Wait! Hang on! This is not the finish!
…’

Later in the poem, Maggie talks of the land drying, the sun coming once again to warm it, and the animals and birds returning. Maggie also makes a reference to the Durack homestead:

You go back up there, that old station – Argyle station –
(poor fella my old boss, my old missus. Nothing left that
house, where I sweep’m every day!) You look out that house,
you look out
windmill, tank, garden, kitchen, saddle shed.
…

The remarkable thing about the poem is how well – or so it seems to me – Mary Durack captures the cadence, the intonation even – of Aboriginal speech and story-telling. I shouldn’t be surprised though, because Durack spent much of her childhood playing with Aboriginal children and spent her adult life, when she could, not only arguing for but working with indigenous people in their fight for equal rights. According to Niall, as Mary Durack left the north for the last time, “the Aboriginal women, knowing they would never see her again, began to beat their heads and wail inconsolably”. We all know the psychology of master-servant/white-black relationships is a complex one, but that doesn’t deny the fact that amongst it all there can genuine feelings and mutual respect.

I’ll be writing more on the Duracks, and particularly on Mary whose love for the land of her birth was, like Maggie Wallaby’s, absolute:

she can’t forget ‘im, my country, she all day heart-crying.

Meanwhile I recommend this poem …

Mary Durack
“Lament for the drowned country”
In Susan Hampton and Kate Llewellyn (ed)
The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets
Ringwood: Penguin, 1986
pp. 65-68.

* I did Google it too, to provide a link for this post, but I only found excerpts rather than the whole poem. Hence no link here. I guess it’s too recent to be in the public domain.

** Kim Durack was an agricultural scientist. He apparently loved the land and was committed to improving it after the damage caused by years of over-grazing.