Six degrees of separation, FROM A Christmas carol TO …

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And suddenly it’s the last Six Degrees of the year. Before we know it, everyone will be writing their top lists of the year, but I, as usual, will do mine in January, when the year is REALLY over. I like me “best books” of the year to be of the actual calendar year. I’m weird that way! But, that’s not what this post is about! Here we are talking the Six Degrees of Separation meme which is currently hosted by Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest). Click on the link on her blog-name to see her explanation of how it works.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas carolKate has chosen an older but appropriate goodie for the last starting book of the year, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas carol, which I have read, but way, way, way before blogging. It is a true classic, isn’t it, by which I mean it keeps on keeping on – particularly at Christmas time. Funny, that!

Alex Miller, LovesongNow, there are so many ways we could link from this book – on Christmas, on Dickens, on Scrooge-like characters – but I’m going with another book with a song word in the title. Indeed, the book I’m choosing has the actual word “song” in the title, Alex Miller’s Lovesong (my review). It’s the only Miller I’ve reviewed on this blog so I’m very happy to give this lovely writer a guernsey here.

Cate Kennedy, Australian Love Stories coverMiller’s book is, as you’ve probably guessed, more than a simple love story. It’s an exploration of love, and how it plays out over time, and in different age-groups. A delightful book that I fell in love with a couple of years ago and that also explores love – even more broadly – is an anthology of short stories devoted to the subject, Cate Kennedy’s Australian love stories (my review). I still feel the thrill I had reading that book.

Bruce Pasco, Dark emuThe first story in Kennedy’s anthology is by indigenous writer, Bruce Pascoe, and the story was about love in an older couple. However, it’s not that subject that I’m linking on this time, but simply on Bruce Pascoe and his non-fiction work Dark emu, dark seeds: Agriculture or accident? (my review). It was another memorable book for me – and it makes a contribution to the truth-telling going on in Australia at the moment.

Dymphna Cusack, A window in the darkI’m determined to mix this post up quite a bit – and not get stuck on specific themes and ideas – so my next link is, like my first one, on a word in the title, “dark”. The book is Dymphna Cusack’s A window in the dark (my review), which is her memoir of her years as a middle-class teacher who wanted – and achieved it too – to bring education and the associated opportunities to less privileged students.

Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta LacksAnd now, guess what I’ve done? I’ve worked it so I can link to my most recent review – Rebecca Skloot’s The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (my review). Can you work out the link? It’s that Skloot, too, was a middle class person whose work brought her in contact with poor and/or underprivileged people, the Lacks family. Indeed, at one stage during the book, Henrietta’s middle-aged daughter Deborah Lacks started planning to continue her education, because she didn’t finish high school …

Bianca Nogrady, The end book coverThen, just like that, we’ve reached the last book in the chain, and I’m sticking with writer and subject matter, but from a different angle. My last writer is Bianca Nogrady who, like Skloot, is a science writer. The book is The end: The human experience of death (my review) and, like Skloot’s book, it deals with both the science and the ethics of its subject showing that scientists too can (though whether they always will, is another question) think beyond the test-tube.

Quite a different sort of chain this month, with a wider variety of forms. Four of my books are non-fiction and one a collection of short stories, meaning that only one is actually a novel. Only two of my six authors are male but, since one book is an anthology, I could argue that this month’s chain includes more male authors than usual!

I do apologise, however, that for this Christmas edition of Six Degrees I ended up with a book about Death not Birth. That wasn’t very clever of me, really, but c’est la vie! You just have to go where the chain leads you!

And now I will end by thanking all you loyal Six Degrees readers for reading my meme posts this year. It’s been great fun doing this meme, and even more having you all along for the ride. I hope to see you all again next year … Meanwhile, if I don’t “see” you before then, I wish you a very happy Holiday season.

Now, over to you: Have you read A Christmas carol? And, regardless, what would you link to? 

Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (#BookReview)

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Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta LacksIn her extensive acknowledgements at the end of her book, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot thanks “Heather at The Book Store, who tracked down every good novel she could find with a disjointed structure, all of which I devoured while trying to figure out the structure of this book.” Interesting that she looked at novels, particularly given our recent discussion regarding non-fiction that reads like fiction, but more on that later …

Many of you will have heard of the book, or, if not, of Henrietta Lacks, or of her HeLa cells? It’s a sort of hybrid biography-cum-science book about an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks who died in 1951, and the immortal HeLa cell line that was and continues to be cultured from her cervical cancer cells. As Skloot writes, “these cells have transformed modern medicine.” The book was published in the USA in 2010. It won multiple awards, including, says Wikipedia, the National Academies Communication Award for “best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in science, engineering or medicine”. In addition, the paperback edition was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 75 weeks.

I’ve described the book as hybrid, because the story (or biography) of Henrietta Lacks is just one of its threads. It also interrogates the complex intersection between race, class and ethics in medical research as well as broader ethical ramifications of issues like “informed consent” and the commercialisation of human tissue. Skloot, herself, says early in the book,

The Lackses challenged everything I thought I knew about faith, science, journalism, and race. Ultimately, this book is the result. It’s not only the story of HeLa cells and Henrietta Lacks, but of Henrietta’s family—particularly Deborah—and their lifelong struggle to make peace with the existence of those cells, and the science that made them possible.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, then, this book is another example of those non-fiction books that I like so much in which authors author takes us on their journey of discovery, in this case to understand the people and the science, the ethics and the law, behind this astonishing story. Skloot wasn’t the first so tell it, however – something she makes clear during our journey. Earlier stories include Michael Rogers’ 1976 article in Rolling Stone, and the 1997 BBC documentary, The way of all flesh, which you can watch on YouTube. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the story of the cells, so if you want to know about them – read the book and/or watch this video.

Skloot explains her own fascination with Henrietta, from being introduced to her cells in high school, through those HeLa cells being “omnipresent” throughout her biology degree, to when she was in graduate school studying writing “and became fixated on the idea of someday telling Henrietta’s story”. It’s not surprising then that this book has been extensively researched – as evidenced by the Notes and Acknowledgements. (These two chapters make great reading in themselves.) It took around 10 years to write, not just because of this extensive research. A major issue which Skloot had to confront was the understandable suspicion and anger of the Lacks’ family, whose help she needed if she were to tell this story properly and with integrity. Their story is bound up in a long invidious history of research carried out on African-Americans, which is also detailed in the book.

“What do you mean, ‘everybody else’?!”

So, the structure. The book is divided into three parts – Life, Death, Immortality. In the first two parts, the story is told in two roughly alternating, chronological threads – one telling the story of Henrietta Lacks, her cells, and her family, from 1920 to 1973; the other tracking the early days of Skloot’s research from 1999 to 2000. In the third part, the two tracks coalesce into one chronological thread, starting from 1973 when the late Henrietta’s daughter-in-law, Bobbette, discovers quite accidentally via a friend’s brother-in-law, that Henrietta’s cells were being used in scientific research and had been since 1951. Until that point, no-one in the family had known that Henrietta’s cells were still “alive” and being used in research all over the world:

“What?!” Bobbette yelled, jumping up from her chair. “What you mean you got her cells in your lab?”

He held his hands up, like Whoa, wait a minute. “I ordered them from a supplier just like everybody else.”

“What do you mean, ‘everybody else’?!” Bobbette snapped. “What supplier? Who’s got cells from my mother-in-law?”

She is, to put it mildly, horrified – and rushes to tell her husband and thence the family.

Here, though, I’m going to return to the issue of writing non-fiction like fiction. There’s the use of narrative structure, of plot lines, to create some sort of tension for the reader – in this case it largely revolves around the lives and reactions of the family, particularly Deborah – while we are also learning drier “stuff” about the history and ethics of cell culture and medical research. The dialogue I’ve just shared is part of the main plot line concerning the family’s discovery of what had been happening to Henrietta’s cells.

Then there’s the use of evocative, descriptive language. Skloot doesn’t overdo this, staying, in the main, direct and focused – but there are enough little flourishes to keep the writing interesting, like “HeLa grew like crabgrass” or “tufts of hair like overgrown cotton sprouted from his head”. The imagery draws from the area in which it is set. And, there’s the use of dialogue. Skloot did carry out a lot of interviews over her decade-long research and often makes clear when she’s quoting from those – but not all dialogue comes from that research. Some is imagined – or what critics call “representative”. No-one, for example, would have recorded Henrietta’s exact words when she visited her gynecologist, but Skloot writes:

“I got a knot on my womb,” she told the receptionist. “The doctor need to have a look”.

How much more interesting that is to read than, say, “Henrietta visited her gynaecologist, telling the receptionist that she had pain in her womb that needed to be investigated.” I know what I’d rather read. Not only is dialogue more engaging, but if the writer gets the voice right it enhances our understanding of the character. One of the delights of this book, in fact, is our getting to “know” members of Henrietta’s family, and the dialogue plays a significant role in this. Not non-fiction readers, however, approve of this approach.

As I’ve already said, I’m not going to write a lot about the content of this book, fascinating though it is. It has been written about extensively; there are interviews with Skloot on the web; and for background there’s that BBC documentary. The book is now nearly a decade old. Cell research has moved on, but the story of the intersection of race and class with science and ethics is still relevant. Moreover, this is a book of history – the history of medicine. Close to home for me, for example, was learning that HeLa cells were involved in identifying the connection between the HPV virus and cervical cancer, and thence the development of the vaccine with which my reading group’s daughters were among the first in the world to be vaccinated.

All this makes the book well worth reading. There were, admittedly, times when the cell science got the better of me (and other non-scientific members of my reading group) but not enough to turn us off. Skloot’s courage, warmth and empathy with people out of her ken, the trust those initially fearful, angry people came to place in her, and her ability to tread the fine line between judgement and analysis when discussing actions of the past make this a special read. No-one in my reading group regretted this choice for our schedule. A fine way to end the year.

Rebecca Skloot
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Sydney: Picador, 2010
ISBN: 9781742626260 (ePub)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Bush Sketcher (Intro)

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I was uncertain about whether to title this post The Australasian or “Bush Sketcher”, but have decided on the latter. However, I will start by introducing The Australasian!

The Australasian was a weekly newspaper established in 1864 by the merger of three Melbourne weeklies, and later incorporating a couple of other publications, including, in 1889, the monthly Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil. The Australasian was the weekend companion to the Argus, and lasted until 1946 when it became the Australasian Post. That publication had a bit of a chequered history, but lasted until 2002 (albeit named, by then, Aussie Post.)

The reason, though, that I checked all this out was because of a regular column or section in the Australasian called “Bush Sketcher” as it was under this banner that Katharine Susannah Prichard’s short stories, “The bridge” and “Christmas tree”, were published (links are to my recent posts). It was when I saw the second story appear under the banner that I decided to check out this “Bush Sketcher” business. Through my best Trove jiggery-pokery (without spending hours), I think I can say that this “Bush Sketcher” column ran from around 1895 to 1925.

Bush Sketcher

Ernest Reid, Australian station storiesArticles ranged from 600 to 3000 or so words, with most being in the vicinity of 1500 to 2500 words, so this was more than a “column”. All the articles have by-lines, but many are pseudonyms (like Bushwoman, Millewa and Coriander) or just initials (such as J.A.M., A.H., and R.V.L). However, as we already know, some authors, like Katharine Susannah Prichard, are fully identified. Another well-known author who came up in my search was Daisy M Bates. Other lesser known writers (to me) include Hetty Ralph-Baker, Ernest Reid (whose short stories from The Argus and The Australasian were published in 1930 in a collection titled Australian station stories), and  E.S. Sorenson (novelist, poet and short story writer who appears in the Australian Dictionary of Biography). So, a varied bunch.

The content is varied too as a random selection of article titles shows:

  • “Aboriginal relationships” (Daisy M Bates – a detailed description of Western Australian Aboriginal kinship systems, written in 1922)
  • “Racing in the never never” (Bushwoman)
  • “A day at Bushvale” (Coriander)
  • “Far north blacks” (Hetty Ralph-Baker – but this article is barely legible, so worn or faded is it)
  • “The old station” (Ernest Reid)
  • “Sundowners” (ES Sorenson)

And, not only is the content varied, but the form also: some of the articles are short stories, while others are more journalistic or slices-of-life non-fiction.

I will return to “Bush Sketcher” in future as there’s some fascinating material here, but will close by sharing one …

“Women’s work in the North West”

Written by A.H. and published on 18 December, 1920, this article is written by the mistress of a station homestead. Focusing on wash-day, it describes the work undertaken by women in managing a homestead – though in fact the women whose work is mostly described is that of the Aboriginal women (or “gins” as she calls them). I think A.H. is being genuinely inclusive in her title, “women’s work”.

The homestead is set in the Kimberley area and provides insight into life there. The story starts with a somewhat purple but highly evocative description of the landscape around the station, then tells us that it’s wash-day. The arrival of the indigenous women reminds her that there’s no time to waste:

The women, running up with their shouts, laughter, and repartee to their lazier men folk, warn us that if the great mountain of soiled clothes in the laundry is to be clean goods by noon we too must be on the move.

She tells us how they all wear white in the house! Really? In the red-earthed north-west! And she describes the women: “Hebe, our bed room girl [who] has been well trained for her work from the age of ten …The other women … were all older – Chatterbox, the children’s nurse; Chloe, the dining room and pantry maid; Mirabon, the kitchen help; and old Biddy, Hebe’s mother, a general utility, able to clean windows, wash down verandahs, and help in the laundry.” She describes the challenges involved in keeping them on task, including bribing them with “a tin of apricots”.

However, once she’s got the women started on the washing, she writes that:

I can safely go in now to the half-past 6 breakfast, which is spread on the shady verandah. The children are in their nursery, the netted in end of the vine-covered verandah, where a swing and a hammock, a rocking horse, and boxes of bricks, with slates and pencils, minister to their amusement and interest through the long hot day. Every one, native and white, has a siesta from 12 till 3 in the afternoon, noon. Breakfast is taken at 6 or half-past, tiffin (a light meal of cakes and tea or coffee), at 10, lunch at 12, (a light meal also); afternoon tea at half-past 4; and dinner at half-past 7. Such are our rules, and these vary little among the station homesteads between the Gascoyne and Marble Bar, Broome, Derby, and Wyndham.

So, we get a lovely time-table of station-life.

The whole thing is paternalistic as you’d expect from the times – at one stage she calls the women “happy creatures” – but A.H. is not totally closed-minded to indigenous lives and ways. I was fascinated by this:

When the copper has its first consignment, the women pause for a drink of cold tea and a nice repast of broiled frogs, which Topsy a 10-year-old Coorie, has brought up smoking hot from the camp, and they do not look untempting, lying well browned on a mass of gum leaves in the boat shaped Tar-doo, which serves the natives as a tray. With a sleight of hand quite wonderful the frog is stripped of its brown coat, attendant ashes, and in the same movement the shrunken “innards,” leaving only the succulent limbs, which are swallowed as we swallow oysters.

She also describes some of the lively repartee with Chloe who, though under our writer’s control, is not afraid to express her frustration, telling A.H., “Missis too much wongi wongi: make black-fella woman bad fella”. Then, having given this “frank opinion”, she gets back to work “on the tubs.”

Particularly interesting, though, is A.H.’s concluding paragraph:

The natives who belong to the territory taken up by the squatter become, by an arrangement with the Government, his indentured servants. He is responsible for their upkeep. A liberal scale of diet is specified by the Protector of Aborigines, who also sends an agent from time to time on surprise visits to see that all regulations are fairly kept.

That, I suppose, is to reassure the city-readers that all is properly managed and happy on the stations.

There is of course so much we, a century later, could read into this wash-day slice-of-life, but I’m not going to say the obvious here. My point really is to show what a rich source “Bush Sketcher” is for providing insight into Australian outback life – including values, attitudes and language – at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. I’ll be back with more …

Non-fiction November 2018, Weeks 4 and 5

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Non-fiction November 2018Well, bizarrely, I did the first three weeks from 2016 for my first Non-fiction November of 2018 post! I won’t revisit those – they’re similar topics to this year’s anyhow – but I’m back on track for this post. Non-fiction November, if you haven’t guessed, involves celebrating non-fiction for the month, with each week focusing on a specific issue, question or topic. This year’s meme is being hosted by Katie (Doing Dewey), Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Rennie (What’s Nonfiction), Julz (JulzReads), and Sarah (Sarah’s Bookshelves). 

As with my first post which covered weeks 1 to 3, I’m combining weeks 4 and 5 into one post and am publishing it during the weekend between the two weeks.

Week 4: (Nov. 19 to 23) – Reads Like Fiction (Rennie @ What’s Nonfiction)

This topic essentially asks whether we like a form of non-fiction called “narrative” or “creative non-fiction”, which Wikipedia describes as “writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives.”

Well, in a word, yes – I do – very much. If that makes me sound soft, then so be it, but I’d argue that non-fiction writer using literary styles and techniques to engage readers doesn’t automatically weaken the seriousness or worthiness of their content. Commenting on a previous post of mine, historian Yvonne Perkins quoted historian Penny Russell who said that “Writing history… is a creative art. It requires empathy, intuition, a keen sense of drama and pathos, a distinct narrative flair.”

Helen Garner, This house of grief book cover

So, who (or what) are my favourites? One of the internationally recognised exponents of this form is the Australian writer, Helen Garner, whom I started reading long before blogging. Her books Joe Cinque’s consolation and This house of grief are excellent examples, and she influenced, I believe, younger Australian writers, like Chloe Hooper (The tall man) and Anna Krien (Into the woods and Night games). In these books the narrative drive comes from the writer’s involvement in the “story”, in their taking us along in their thinking and investigation. And to be not entirely ethnocentric, I’ll name one excellent non-Australian author I’ve read, albeit some years ago – Erik Larson and his book Isaac’s storm.

Michelle Scott Tucker, Elizabeth MacarthurTurning to this year, most of my non-fiction reading has been biography, which lends itself to this “creative” approach though not all biographers do adopt it. Two that I’ve read this year did, however, Sarah Krasnostein’s The trauma cleaner and Michelle Scott Tucker’s Elizabeth Macarthur: A life at the edge of the world. Krasnostein achieves it by being part of the journey, by using a creative structure interweaving her subject’s past with her present life, and by evocative language which uses the sort of imagery more common in fiction. Tucker, on the other hand, takes the more traditional straight chronological approach, but she encourages us to engage with Elizabeth Macarthur the woman, rather than present her to us as a fait accompli. There are gaps in Macarthur’s story. For example, we might know what happened, but not, perhaps, how or why, so Tucker uses her imagination – and makes it clear she’s doing to – to consider the situation. Here’s an example:

No. The most likely source is Elizabeth Macarthur, once more trying to mitigate her husband’s wilder misjudgements. But we have to imagine it: a hushed yet heated conversation with Edward to send him flying out after Oakes and then a vain attempt to placate and soothe John …

This is a thoroughly researched and documented biography, but written with a narrative, dare I say, novelist’s flair.

Week 5: (Nov. 26 to 30) – New to My TBR (Katie @ Doing Dewey)

Unfortunately, like last year, and although I’ve been reading several participants’ posts, I haven’t added anything to my TBR as a result of these November posts, because – and it’s a big because – I have so much already on that pile, including, most recently:

  • Peter Ackroyd’s Dominion (History of England V)
  • Elizabeth Kleinhenz’s Germaine: The life of Germaine Greer (about which I have also posted recently)
  • Clare Wright’s You daughters of freedom (currently reading, and about which I have already posted)

However, if I were looking for book ideas, I’d probably go back to some of “expert” posts. What a variety of topics – from Kate (booksaremyfavouriteandbest) on Empathy to Debbie (ExUrbanis) on Downsizing and Making Major Life Changes, from Buried In Print’s call for good non-fiction books on Indigenous Storytellers to Brona (Brona’s books) wanting more on the French Revolution (which reminds me that I must go recommend something!) To name just a few!

Meanwhile, I’d love your comments on any of the above, but particularly your thoughts on non-fiction that reads like fiction. Do you like it? And if so, do you have any you’d recommend?

Katharine Susannah Prichard, Christmas tree (#Review)

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Katharine Susannah Prichard

Prichard, by May Moore (Presumed Public Domain, State Library of NSW)

Commenting on my recent post on Katharine Susannah Prichard’s short story “The bridge”, Prichard biographer Nathan Hobby, pointed us to an online version in Trove of her short story, “Christmas Tree”, which he describes as the best of her early work. It’s about farmers, droughts and banks. Seemed very appropriate (to us in Australia right now, anyhow) so of course I checked it out. (And I corrected the OCR-introduced errors while doing so – hope I caught them all.)

So, “Christmas tree”. Published in The Australasian in 1919, it was, according to writer Glen Phillips, the first of Prichard’s stories to be translated – into Chinese in the 1920s! Fascinating eh? It would be interesting to know who read it and what they made of it.

“Christmas tree” tells the story of Western Australian wheatbelt famers Jinny and George Gillard, and is told third person, primarily through the eyes of Jinny who, at the start, is standing at her back door, reminiscing about their thirty years on the farm. The story starts:

Against the dim blue of the summer sky the Christmas trees had thrown their blossoming crests; they lay along the horizon like a drift of clouds, fluted and curled, pure gold.

The trees stood irregularly in the dry, scrubby land of the plain beyond Gillard’s fences to the north of Laughing Lakes homestead. Their trunks were not visible from the backdoor of the house to where Jinny Gillard stood, her eyes on that distant line of yellow blossom. But she was not thinking of the dark, heavy trees which put on an appearance of such opulent beauty at Christmas time. Her thoughts glanced from them and wandered listlessly, ravelling and unravellin, fretted, anxious, thoughts, old hopes, despairs, bitter, weary, and faint, sweet memories.

This year’s crops were, in fact, better than they had been for years, but it’s all too late – it is not they who will be benefiting from this year’s wheat but the bank.

It’s a sad story, but realistic rather than melodramatic. It’s about hard work and bad luck. Jinny knows they are not the only ones who have struggled. Some have had better luck than George who had sown “lightly when a good season happened along, or heavily when the rain kept off, and so had lost both ways” but some are also in George and Jinny’s predicament. The second part of the story concerns a Christmas party underwritten by one Christopher Tregear, who was chairman of the Great Western’s board of directors and “supposed to be one of the wealthiest men in the State”. Many farmers did business with Great Western, “thinking Tregear’s position in it would guarantee them from harsh treatment. But it had not.” Not for George, not for many others, and yet, here they all are, sees Jinny, dancing and singing with him, though “he was not a good friend of theirs.” Of course, we don’t get Tregear’s point of view, but there’s a sense that with the good season coming, compromises could have been reached.

This story is enjoyable on several fronts. Its realism means it conveys the facts without the histrionics that can sometimes distance readers. The realism also makes more effective the underlying theme that with more loyalty and less greed from the men with money, more farmers could survive the bad seasons. But it’s also enjoyable because of the tight, focused writing – from the sly irony behind the parasitic Christmas trees, and the names of the Gillards’ properties, Laughing Lakes and Everlasting, through the evocative descriptive writing, to the pointed repetition of the Gillards’ mantra “Crack hardy … I’m crackin'”.

“Christmas tree” is a story that hasn’t dated. It’s as relevant now as it was 100 years ago when it was first published – stoicism and dignity never go out of date, and we are still challenged by the role capitalist structures play in people’s lives and livelihoods. Another good read from Prichard – but that’s not surprising.

AWW Badge 2018Katharine Susannah Prichard
“Christmas tree”
First published: The Australasian, 20 December 1919
Also published in Potch and colour, Angus & Robertson, 1944
Available: Online at Trove

Apology: I posted this an hour or so ago with the wrong short story title, so have deleted that post, and republished with the right title, otherwise we’ll all get confused (including Google!)

Monday musings on Australian literature: University of Canberra Book of the Year 2019

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Jasper Jones, by Craig SilveyI have written about the University of Canberra’s Book of the Year initiative, twice – in 2012 when it was initiated, and again in 2014, when I checked to see whether the program was continuing. I am thrilled to say that earlier this month I heard the announcement of 2019’s book, so the program continues still. This book will be the 7th in the program.

Before I announce next year’s book, though, a quick refresher about the program. It involves the University providing a selected book, free, to all “commencing students” regardless of their subjects, as well as to all staff, academic and otherwise. The book is required reading, and teaching staff are expected to incorporate the book somewhere in their programs.

Emily BItto, The strays, book coverThe books are not always Australian, which is a shame given this is an excellent opportunity to introduce students to Australian literature. Also, and perhaps this sounds contradictory, while the genres and subject matter vary somewhat, there’s not a lot of diversity in terms of writers. No indigenous writer, no writer from a non-white/non-English language background, for example. Here is the list, to this year:

2013: Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey (my review)
2014: Room, by Emma Donoghue
2015: The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion (my review)
2016: The strays, by Emily Bitto (my review)
2017: The white earth, by Andrew McGahan
2018: Do Androids dream of electric sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Professor Klomp describes the goals:

The UC Book Project is a fantastic initiative that introduces commencing students to intellectual life before their studies officially begin, encouraging early engagement with UC online resources, and informal learning and sharing among all new students.

It also promotes interaction and engagement among staff and students with a common topic to chat about around campus.

UC Book for 2019

In October, the University announced the shortlist, which are, this year, all recent Australian books. Good decision – and again some varied content, but, notwithstanding Bobis, not particularly diverse. It really is time, I think, to see some indigenous Australian writing chosen.

The announcement says that the judging panel, which comprises “Professor Klomp, the University Librarian, a Professor of Creative Writing, authors, media personalities and students”, is provided the shortlist from which to select “a book that is appealing to our wide range of students”. This year’s shortlist (including main “awards” credentials) was:

  • Merlinda Bobis’ Locust girl: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction); Juan C. Laya Philippine National Book Award (Best Novel in English)
  • Felicity Castagna’s No more boats: Miles Franklin Literary Award (Shortlist)
  • Peggy Frew’s Hope Farm: Barbara Jefferis Award (Winner); Miles Franklin Literary Award (Shortlist), Stella Prize (Shortlist)
  • Bram Presser’s The book of dirt: NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction); NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing); NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (The People’s Choice Award); Voss Literary Prize (Shortlist)
  • Lucy Treloar’s Salt Creek: Dobbie Award for Best New Writer (Winner); Miles Franklin Literary Award (Shortlist); Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (Shortlist)
  • Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions: Miles Franklin Literary Award (Winner); Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for Fiction (Shortlist)
  • Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things (my review): Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction (Joint Winner); Stella Prize (Winner); Miles Franklin Literary Award (Shortlist); Barbara Jefferis Award (Shortlist); Voss Literary Prize (Shortlist); plus short listing for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Charlotte Wood, The natural way of thingsAnd the winner is: Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things. A provocative and probably challenging choice for many – but one that should stimulate great discussions about all sorts of ideas, values and topics. UC’s Press Release announcing the selection says that Professor Klomp “hopes that the book with engage a wide audience with its universal themes of power, morality, judgement and friendship.” Remembering the strong and varied reactions in my reading group – about everything from style and characterisation to meaning and themes – I’d love to hear the students and staff discuss this one.

I’d love to hear you thoughts about the book choices, or the program itself?

Katharine Susannah Prichard, The bridge (#Review)

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Time for another post on a short story available online, but not, this time, from the Library of America. Indeed, it’s not even American, but one of our own – Katharine Susannah Prichard’s (KSP) “The bridge”. As far as I can tell it has been published at least three times: in 1917 in the Weekly Times Annual; in 1940 in The ABC Weekly, which is where I found it; and in 1944 in a collection titled Potch and colour, about which Prichard biographer Nathan Hobby has posted.

Writing about Potch and colour, Hobby says that

Katharine wrote some incredible short stories. I would go as far as to say that I think the form suited her better than the novel, even if she is not as remembered for it. This collection mainly includes stories originally published in journals after her first collection, Kiss On the Lips (1932), but the first appearance of some of them still needs to be established. One story, at least, is quite early – “The Bridge”; I found a newspaper copy of it on Trove from 1917 (unfortunately, it’s not one of her “incredible” stories…).

Hobby then identifies three short stories from the collection as particularly worth commenting on. The first is titled “The siren on Sandy’s Gap” and Hobby says it “manages to be both humorous and an astute critique of marriage.” It’s about Susan – the siren – and her refusal to do “what they [men] say.” The second, “Flight”, is about the forced removal of mixed-race Aboriginal children from their homes, and the third, “The Christmas tree”, is about banks failing wheatfarmers during the Depression.

Now, before I get to “The bridge” a little from KSP herself. In 1967, Angus and Robertson published Happiness: Selected short stories by Katharine Susannah Prichard. It includes two of Hobby’s favourite stories from Potch and colour, but not “The bridge”. Most interesting, though, is Prichard’s Foreword. She talks of her various inspirations, including Thomas Carlyle, and says that Guy de Maupassant’s “Contes Normands” gave her “the short story technique, which, more or less unconsciously” influenced her story telling.

Defending herself against a criticism of her “loose and slipshod English”, she says that she purposefully used “the living speech of our people … making the context of a sentence give the meaning of an unusual word or phrase.” She quotes a Professor Holme who praises her style as responding to the need of her characters, and Nettie Palmer’s statement that her writing “made us remember that there was nothing so well worth writing about as the loves, conflicts, and sufferings of our own people”. Including all this in her short Foreword suggests that she felt the need to defend herself. Anyhow, she concludes with:

All the stories were inspired by an intimate sympathy with men and women in the comedy and tragedy of their lives.

So, “The bridge.” It’s not, perhaps, “incredible”, but it is moving – and reminds me, a little, of some stories by Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. It’s a brief story about the building of a bridge in southeast Victoria by a young man called Bryant and his off-sider Charley. The main action concerns the opening of the bridge, and the wedding that takes place immediately afterwards.

The story commences with Bryant and Charley reminiscing about some of the challenges they faced in building the bridge. It had taken a year to build, and without any loss of life:

“They’ve got a notion in some parts of the world, a life’s got to go into a bridge if she’s to going to wear,” he [Bryant] mused. “I’m mighty glad no one’s been killed or hurt on our bridge, Charley … and she’s a good bridge … as good a little wooden bridge as there is in the country.”

However, a flood crisis had threatened the bridge. To save it, Bryant needed horses but local farmer Joe Gaines would not help out – until Bryant tried a bit of psychology involving a pretty young woman working in Gaines’ kitchen. He got his horses, but at a great cost to that young woman, unbeknownst to him but discovered by Charley later at the wedding.

It’s a tight little story – about single-minded ambition and sexual jealousy set against female generosity and sacrifice – with a sting in the tail that ironically comments on Bryant’s belief about his bridge. I can see the influence of Guy de Maupassant here – and Prichard’s interest in the lives of women. You can read it at the link below.

AWW Badge 2018Katharine Susannah Prichard
“The bridge”
First published: Weekly Times Annual, 3 November 1917
Also published in The ABC Weekly, 24 August 1940, and in the collection,
Potch and colour, Angus & Robertson, 1944
Available: Online at Trove

Emily O’Grady, The yellow house (#BookReview)

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Emily O'Grady, The yellow house

Although Emily O’Grady’s debut novel The yellow house won this year’s prestigious The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award for unpublished manuscripts by authors under 35, I wasn’t sure at first that I was going to like it. I think this was because I was feeling I’d read a surfeit of books this year about young people living challenging lives in rural settings – Charlie Archbold’s Mallee boys (my review), Jenny Ackland’s Little gods (my review) and Sofie Laguna’s The choke (my review). I wasn’t sure this was going to have anything new to offer.

However, it wasn’t long before ten-year-old Cub’s voice got me in and I realised that this book had a different spin again, which is that it explores how families of violent or sociopathic criminals, like serial killers, cope in the long years after it all comes to light. It’s a coming-of-age story, in a way, but a very different one. Cub, then, is our narrator. She lives on a “lonely property bordering an abandoned cattle farm and knackery” (back blurb) with her twin bother Wally, her 17-year-old brother Cassie whom she adores, and her parents, Colin and Christine. Within sight of their home is “the yellow house” in which her maternal grandfather, Les, had lived. He had died two years before the Cub and Wally were born – and in the prologue we learn that he had been a serial murderer of young women. The prologue closes with a now wiser Cub telling us:

Now, I know everything he did trickled down and created us all, because it turned out he was the god of all our lives.

So we know at the beginning something that Cub doesn’t know when the narrative “really” starts. Why does O’Grady take this approach? I’m guessing it’s to focus us less on that plot. We know what Cub doesn’t know – or at least enough of it. We can therefore focus on how a family lives with this knowledge rather than on trying to work out, as Cub has to do, what the secret is. It makes Cub a perfect naive narrator: she has the curiosity and loyalty of a child but lacks the wisdom necessary to make the right calls. There’s an added complexity to Cub’s situation which increases her isolation: everyone else in the family knows, including her twin brother. Cub wasn’t told because she’s a girl. It’s no coincidence that she, Coralie, has a baby-ish nickname, while her twin brother doesn’t.

The novel proper starts when Cub is approaching 11 years old, and her aunt, Helena, and 11-and-a-half-year-old cousin, Tilly, move into the yellow house. Tilly’s father, Dermott, we’ve already been told, had driven his car into the dam some time ago and died. It is Helena and Tilly’s appearance which sparks the events that play out in the rest of the novel, events that are “driven” by that violent forbear whose “rotten blood” is in their veins, whose legacy they struggle to shake off.

It’s a horrifying novel. We realise early on that the family is ostracised by the community in which they live, and is struggling emotionally. Cub’s Dad does his best to keep them together but is ill-equipped for the challenge he faces, while her Mum also does her best in her own way, but regularly takes to her bed, with various malaises, many depression-based presumably. Cub and Wally have no other friends at school, something Cub doesn’t fully cotton on to, but we do:

The kids at school were strange; Wally and I played by ourselves at lunchtime, always paired up when we did partner work.

Cub is consequently desperate to make Tilly, so close in age, her friend:

I tried to think of something else to say. I knew we had one chance to make a good impression and I didn’t want to waste it. But the silence felt as deep as the dam, impossible to swim out of. I was annoyed at myself for not practising with the girls at school. I should’ve been prepared.

But, it never quite works. Tilly, dangerously – she’s too much like her mother, Cub’s Mum hints at one stage – is more interested in boys. And, there are boys – besides Wally. There’s Cassie, and his creepy friend Ian. Tilly, like Cub, doesn’t know the story of the “yellow house” and her mother is determined to keep it that way.

The story develops slowly, chillingly, and, it feels, inevitably, as the secrets, parental inadequacy, community prejudice and cold opportunism combine to result in … I’d like to say more, but perhaps should not spoil the plot.

This is not a novel in which everything is explained – as can be typical of naive narrator stories – but there seems to be a specific intention here. At least, I’d say that O’Grady’s aim is not to tease out all the possibilities and permutations of the situation, nor to follow the more usual crime fiction path of restoring order out of chaos. Instead, it’s to encourages us, at each point, to consider what might be happening, why it might be happening, and what might make (or have made) it happen differently. That gives the book a power that those more traditional crime novels don’t have.

Besides this open-endedness which kept me engaged and pondering throughout, there’s O’Grady’s writing. It’s not tricky. There’s quite a bit of dialogue and simple description of what’s going on, as you’d expect, rather than a lot of reflection, but O’Grady has some lovely turns of phrase. At one point Cub is near Cassie’s friend Ian:

Now that I was right up close to him I didn’t know what to do; it was like my brain was wrapped in sticky tape and I couldn’t think properly.

The language and imagery, as this example shows, are appropriate for Cub’s age. And there’s the “yellow house” itself. Yellow has so many connotations. It can suggest something warm, bright, cheery, hopeful, but is also the colour of cowardice and deceit, and can convey sickness. The contrast between these positive and negative meanings of the title underpin the novel’s horror.

Why read this novel? There’s the obvious reason that it explores a subject that many of us must wonder about when we hear of violent crimes – how does the wider family cope, what happens to them? And there’s the associated reason that in so doing it might encourage us to think more empathetically if we found such a family in our midst. But, besides that, it’s an engaging debut novel by a new young writer from whom we will hopefully hear more. It’s always exciting to be in there at the start.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) also liked this book.

AWW Badge 2018

Emily O’Grady
The yellow house
Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2018
314pp.
ISBN: 9781760632854

(Review copy courtesy Allen & Unwin)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Barbara Jefferis Award and negative depictions of women

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A month ago, blogger Kim Forrester (Reading Matters) tweeted “I’ve stopped reading books where a woman being murdered is the plot point. Let’s change the story.” I thought this was interesting, but didn’t think a lot about it at the time because I read very little crime (though I do watch some). However, I was reminded of it when, last week, Lisa (ANZLitLovers) brought my attention to this year’s Barbara Jefferis Award and the judging panel’s comment on the submitted books – but first some background.

The Barbara Jefferis Award has very specific criteria:

“the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society”.

In other words, it is not the sex of the writer that’s relevant here (nor, in fact, the genre). This award is for books about women and girls, but it must also present them in a positive or empowering way. It was controversial at the time it was established. I remember it well because I created the Wikipedia article on it. I noted that journalist and literary editor Susan Wyndham had asked whether Australia needed a new fiction award encouraging ‘positive’ portrayals of women and girls, or whether it’s “an outdated gesture in a post-feminist culture rich with female authors, characters and readers?” And then I continued with:

Several writers have supported the award, including Tom Keneally, Helen Garner, Frank Moorhouse, Gerald Murnane, Anne Deveson, Kerryn Goldsworthy and Brian Castro. However, writer and critic, Andrew Reimer dislikes the idea of focusing on “social agenda” over “novelist’s skill and imagination”, and novelist Emily McGuire agreed, stating that she doesn’t “like the idea of judging fiction based on its message”. Author and critic, Debra Adelaide, expressed her concern that the award might encourage “safe and constrained” writing and wondered whether “we are getting to the point where we have more awards than publishing opportunities”.

Libby Angel, The trapeze actJumping ten or so years later to the 2018 award, here is The Sydney Morning Herald’s report after the announcement of Libby Angel’s The trapeze act as winner:

Among a record number of books entered for the $55,000 Barbara Jefferis Award, a surprising number featured domestic violence, death or the subjugation of women, according to judge Sandra Yates, running contrary to the prize’s explicit criteria.

The first three books Yates read from the longlist saw one woman burnt at the stake, one woman pushed off a cliff and the other a victim of domestic violence.

“We were surprised, I have to say, that so many even in the longlist seemed to have such dark, negative portrayals of women in them,” she said. “We [women] don’t need any more books about our capacity to endure, I think we have established that.”

Reporting this, Lisa commented “So I am not the only one sick-and-tired of the current crop of misery memoirs and novels featuring women as victims…”

I don’t feel as strongly as Lisa about the “current crop” of books, but I am interested in the wider issue at play here, which I’d break down into three main questions:

  • How do we define positive, empowering representation?
  • Is there, currently, a prevalence of negative representations?
  • Should writers conform to a “social agenda”?

I’m not sure whether there is a definition for the judges to work with – and would be interested to hear from Dorothy Johnston who wrote a guest post here on judging this award –  but I’d define positive, or empowering depictions of women and girls as those in which women are able to exert some sort of agency in their lives. This could include Lisa’s “misery memoirs” if, as often happens, they end with the woman rising above the challenges (the violence, the abuse, the poverty, the illness – whatever the initial misery is) to take control. There can be a fine line here, though, between Yates’ notion of “enduring” and the idea of being, or becoming, empowered.

To be simplistic, we could say that, in the context of this award’s requirements, there are three “types” of books depicting women: those whose portrayals are positive (or, “ultimately” positive); those whose portrayals are neutral, that is, they are just about women getting on with the normal business of life; and those in which woman are essentially victims, with no agency to improve their lot.

Looking at the novels I’ve read that feature women and/or girls and were published between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2017, I would say that most – by my definition, anyhow – would fall into the first two “types”. These books include:

  • Carmel Bird’s Family skeleton (my review)
  • Diana Blackwood’s Chaconne (my review)
  • John Clanchy’s Sisters (my review)
  • Claire Coleman’s Terra nullius (my review)
  • Madelaine Dickie’s Troppo (my review) (shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis’ Award)
  • Michelle de Kretser’s The life to come (my review)
  • Sara Dowse’s As the lonely fly (my review)
  • Glenda Guest’s A week in the life of Cassandra Aberline (my review)
  • Sofie Laguna’s The choke (my review)
  • Catherine Mackinnon’s Storyland (my review)
  • Emily Maguire’s An isolated incident (my review)
  • Josephine Rowe’s A loving, faithful animal (my review)
  • Anna Spargo-Ryan’s The paper house (my review)
  • Ariella van Luyn’s Treading the air (my review)

Not all of these are simple, positive depictions, but their women are not all victims, albeit some are certainly challenged by the decisions they’ve made. I know from experience, however, that my definition of “positive” is not universal, and that I see hope where others don’t. Laguna’s The choke, for example, is undeniably grim – but Laguna believes in offering hope, and, whether or not you like the ending, it is intended to be hopeful.

The only book I’ve read from this period which, by my definition, would not meet the Award’s positive depiction criterion is Mirandi Riwoe’s The fish girl (my review). That girl tries, but is ultimately powerless and so done in by men with power over her.

So, I don’t necessarily agree that the majority of current books – at least those I’ve read – focus on women as victims. Many of the female protagonists may commence as victims – like Laguna’s Justine or the two protagonists in Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things (published in 2015) – but most of the books are about confronting problems, not simply succumbing to them and enduring.

As for whether writers should conform to a social agenda, my simplistic answer is no. But that doesn’t mean that a social-agenda based award is, in itself, wrong. It just means that it would be unwise for an author to write to an award whose requirements didn’t align with what they wanted to say. We have in fact many social-agenda oriented awards – the Stella Prize and the David Unaipon Award being just two examples.

How would you define “positive depiction”, and what do you think about the current crop of novels (regardless of where you live)?

Non-fiction November 2018, Weeks 1 to 3

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I’m not sure how long Non-fiction November has been happening in the blogosphere, but I first became aware of it last year. It runs for a month, with a different set of questions posed for each week of the month. Last year I concatenated my responses into two posts, one for weeks 1 to 3, and the other for weeks 4 to 5. I’m going to do the same this year.

The meme is jointly hosted this year by Katie (Doing Dewey), Lory (Emerald City Book Review), Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Rachel (Hibernator’s Library) and Julz (Julz Reads).

Week 1: (Oct 31-Nov 4) (Katie) Your Year in Nonfiction: 

There are several questions for this week, but, like last year, I’m just going to answer a couple …

What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?

Now, last year, I read a disproportionate amount of non-fiction (in terms of my reading preferences, that is), and said that I would like to right the balance somewhat this year. I like non-fiction – a lot – but I don’t want it to overtake fiction as it nearly did last year. Well, this year I sure have righted it, with, so far, non-fiction representing around 15% of my reading to date – mostly biographies and autobiographies/memoirs.

There are three standouts: Michelle Scott Tucker’s Elizabeth Macarthur: A life at the edge of the world (my review), Nadia Wheatley’s Her mother’s daughter (my review), and Sarah Krasnostein’s The trauma cleaner (my review). If I were forced to choose just one, I would have to go for The trauma cleaner for the sheer chutzpah of its subject against terrible odds and for the clever structure Krasnostein uses to tell the story.

What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? 

The same as last year – literary biographies – closely followed by Australian history.

Week 2: (Nov 7 – 11) – (Rachel) Choosing Nonfiction

Again, there are several questions and I’ll share them all: What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title or cover which you find striking.

Book cover, The forgotten rebels of EurekaThese are complex questions that could take a whole post, but I’m going to keep it succinct, with the following answer encompassing the first three questions above! The two main things I look for in a non-fiction book are subject matter and engaging style. For example, I like biographies (particularly of writers and achieving women) and Australian history, but I don’t like dry factual this-happened-and-then-that-happened writing. I particularly like something called creative non-fiction. However, while I want to be engaged, I also want to feel that the writing is authoritative so I like to see the author’s sources. Clare Wright’s histories, such as The forgotten rebels of Eureka (my review) and You daughters of freedom, are excellent examples. Wright writes with the narrative instincts of a novelist and yet her claims and statements are thoroughly cited.

Covers are never hugely important to me in selecting books. Of course, a good cover can catch my eye, but I will never buy a book by its cover. With fiction, it’s the author or a recommendation from a person I respect, that will decide me once I’ve seen the book. With non-fiction, the cover is even less important to me, which is just as well, because in general I’ve found non-fiction covers to be less interesting. Non-fiction covers seem more literal, more determined to capture the “facts” of the book – an image of the subject of the biography for example or of a war scene for a war history – whereas fiction covers can get a little more creative and look to capture an emotional response rather than depict content.

PS I also like Helen Garner’s non-fiction. She could write about grass growing and I’d be there.

Week 3: (Nov 14 – 18) – (Sarah) Book Pairing

I’m a bit ahead of the game here, but as I’ll be away from November 14 to 16, I’m going to sneak in my response now. The challenge is to pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction one – via whatever sort of connection seems fit. I loved this challenge last year, and found it fun again this year.

My pair is:

Yes, it is Clare Wright’s latest history, You daughters of freedom, which I’m still reading, and EM Forster’s Howard’s End which I reviewed just a week or so ago. You daughters of freedom is about the achievement of women’s suffrage in Australia, from the late 19th to early 20th century, and the role Australian suffragists played in worldwide suffrage movements, particularly in England.

Howards End was published in 1910, and its two main female characters, Margaret and Helen Schlegel, are well aware of and support women’s suffrage, though, as you’d expect from their personalities, Margaret is the one who is clearer about its meaning and impact. The novel opens with Helen writing from Howards End where Mr Wilcox easily demolishes her arguments for suffrage and equality:

He says the most horrid things about women’s suffrage so nicely, and when I said I believed in equality he just folded his arms and gave me such a setting down as I’ve never had. … I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life. I couldn’t point to a time when men had been equal, or even to a time when the wish to be equal and made them happier in other ways. I couldn’t say a word. I had just picked up the notion that equality is good from some book – probably from poetry, or you.

Later, when Margaret holds a luncheon party in Mrs Wilcox’s honour, suffrage and women’s rights come up. Margaret sees the issue as wider than just “the vote”:

“Aren’t we differing on something much wider, Mrs. Wilcox? Whether women are to remain what they have been since the dawn of history; or whether, since men have moved forward so far, they too may move forward a little now. I say they may…”

Howards End provides a fascinating study of England during this time of political and social change – and gender is one of the issues which recurs throughout.