Monday musings on Australian literature: A dry or not so dry continent?

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It’s rather ironic that  in the last week or two when I’ve written a couple of posts about Australia’s image* as a “sunburned land” (Barbara Hanrahan) or “sunburnt country” (Dorothea Mackellar), the image the world has been seeing is somewhat opposite – a raindrenched land. Then again, Dorothea Mackellar did also write that this is a land “of drought and flooding rains”.

So, I thought this week I’d share a few images from current poets – from The best Australian poems 2009 book which I was given a year ago. For most of these poets the imagery might come from the land and the weather, but the subject is not necessarily so …

Sarah Day‘s poem, “A dry winter (Some observations about rain)” is particularly poignant – though no less real – given current events:

… This rain moves on swiftly
leaving sun and silence in its wake …

And the poem ends with

Mostly too little rain falls here.
There is only the silence of the sun.

Even in winter after low skies
and the impression of rain

for days and weeks, the earth is dry as dust
under trees. Cracks refuse to close up

in the cold months. This makes rain exotic.
Something to pay attention to.

John Leonard’s “Rain in March” captures the cleansing effect of rain. His poem ends with:

Chirping crickets and autumn peepers
Trilling with the carolling of magpies
And currawongs, and a brief clamour
Of cockatoos.

In the muted darkness
The front passes, single drops
Spitting from a matt black sky –
Rain has washed through the world,
A faint, cool wind lifts
Branches heavy with wet leaves.

“Fred’s Farm” by Astrid Lorange is about more than the land, but it starts with

yes this is a field of gunmetal glinting like weather
an entire ecology of dead thistles mapping a drought

That imagery rather sets a tone doesn’t it … The poem is not so much about Fred’s farm – a self-consciously neutral title – as the poet’s stream of consciousness reflection on remembering a past. She’s a new young poet and one to watch…

Road to Hermannsburg, Central Australia

Road in Central Australia

For Robyn Rowland too, in “Is the light right?”, landscape and weather are closely related to mood, but there’s no simple polarity to the imagery. The water, for example, is “blood-warming” but “dark”. Her poem ends:

What if tomorrow, light is too big when it comes,
never a shadow to rest in,
no blood-warming pools of dark water to drink from,
sky never again boot-black and anxious,
and I forever driving through burning day
along ten thousand miles of loneliness.

In “The orchardist”, by Petra White, the tough needing-to-be-irrigated land breeds tough farmers. Here is a description of the landscape, with “we” being fruit pickers:

At night we walked the river, following its curves
that wound us out to where a redgum
stood marooned at water’s edge, fossilised in thirst

And then the farmer:

All day the farmer circled on his tractor, mad as a bull-rider,
lurching on thick dry mud-tracks…

Finally, a poem that harks back to the terrible fires in Victoria just two years ago, reminding us again of the extremes wrought by our “drought and flooding rains”. The poem is titled “Kinglake“, a town which bore the brunt of the Black Saturday fires. It’s by Fiona Wright and she concludes her poem about the devastation with:

Your orchard eaten into black dust.
I send you irises,
and try to write
some kind of greening.

This post is, I know, rather bitsy-piecy. The poems, which vary in theme and style, aren’t necessarily my favourites in the collection, but they show that sun and water still pervade the Australian consciousness even if the purpose to which they are put, poetically speaking, has diversified. I may return to this book in the future … but in the meantime would love to know if there’s particular imagery that represents your nation’s “being”, or, if you’re Australian, whether agree with what I’ve written?

* After all, wasn’t Bill Bryson’s book on Australia published overseas as A suburnt country?

Jane Austen, Sense and sensibility (Vol. 1)

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Ch 22 of Sense and Sensibility, (Jane Austen N...

From Chapter 22, illus. by CE Brock (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

This year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s first (published) novel, Sense and sensibility. To celebrate this, my local Jane Austen group plans to discuss the novel over the next three months, volume by volume. We tried this last year with Mansfield Park and valued the opportunity it presented to delve a little more deeply into the novel – not only the characters and themes, but the writing and structure. Consequently, in this post I’m going to focus on Volume 1 (chapters 1 to 22) which ends with Lucy Steele’s dramatic announcement to Elinor.

But first, some caveats. I’m going to assume that most readers who come to this post will know the story – and if you don’t, the Wikipedia article provides a good summary. Also I am not going to write a formal review but just share some of the ideas that have struck me during this slow reading*.

I have always liked Sense and sensibility, partly because I’m fascinated by the dichotomy Austen sets up between the two sisters: Elinor (sense) and Marianne (sensibility). And yet, it’s not an easy-to-like novel. The heroines aren’t as sparkly nor the heroes as dashing or heroic as in Austen’s next novel, Pride and prejudice. It feels more serious, less witty – though not as serious as Mansfield Park. This could be because its premise – the sudden drop in wealth for Mrs Dashwood and daughters and their dislocation from their family home, due to the death of their husband/father – mirrors what happened to Jane and her mother and sister after Rev. Austen’s death in 1805. It wasn’t until the family settled in Chawton in 1809 that Austen, to the best of our knowledge, returned seriously to her writing. I wonder if this novel is her working through this very real experience of grief and insecurity. (Interestingly, a very similar story is played out at the beginning of Tracey Chevalier’s Remarkable creatures in which she describes the removal of the Philpot sisters from London to Lyme Regis in 1805).

That’s the historical background to the novel – and forms its social milieu. But there is more to the novel than social history. Austen is a far more complex writer than that. Take, for example, the money issue. There is a lot of focus on money and income in volume 1 – on who has what – indicating Austen’s real awareness of the issue, and yet Mrs Dashwood does not focus on husband hunting for her daughters. In fact, she says:

“I do not believe,” said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile, “that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters towards what you call catching him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich. …”

This is no Mrs Bennet … but she’s not without her faults either.

And, take the dichotomy issue. It’s actually not quite as clear-cut as the title would suggest. Check the way our two heroines are introduced:

Elinor … possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong: but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.

Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great.

In other words, Elinor has sense (“coolness of judgment”) but is also emotional (“her feelings were strong”); and Marianne is emotional (“eager in everything … no moderation”) but also has sense (“sensible and clever”).

However, as I read the volume 1, the issue that kept raising its head was that of “judgment”. I’m not sure whether it will continue to do so in the next two volumes, and I need to think about how the judgment issue plays out in other novels, but it does seem that Austen is exploring people’s ability to judge – and most seem to be not very good at it. Sir John Middleton, who praises the Steele sisters, is confident in his judgment, as is Marianne of hers on Willoughby – and we know how those turn out. Meanwhile, Edward, says, Elinor, “distrusts his own judgment” – and he is probably right to (in some matters at least!) Elinor, on the other hand, recognises that she has made errors at times and suggests that you need “time to deliberate and judge”. Related to all this is the fact that Marianne tends to judge people by surface factors, whereas Elinor tries to understand what makes people (such as Edward, Col Brandon, Mr Palmer) behave the way they do. I look forward to seeing whether this idea continues to be specifically explored in volumes 2 and 3.

But let’s move on to Austen’s writing; specifically, her plotting. Until recently, Emma was my least favourite Austen. Then I read it again more attentively and was bowled over by how beautifully it is plotted. I started to notice something similar in Sense and sensibility but will just give one particular example – how Austen uses parallels to create links between the storylines and move the plot along. These parallels, though, aren’t all slavish, aren’t exact. Here are some from volume 1:

  • Willoughby asks for/is given a lock of Marianne’s hair; Edward wears a ring made of Lucy’s hair
  • Willoughby and Edward both leave Barton Cottage in different but less than happy circumstances, and the Dashwoods ascribe this, in both cases, to the influence of strong controlling women – Willoughby’s aunt, and Edward’s mother
  • Elinor states that correspondence between Marianne and Willoughby would convince her of their engagement; later, evidence of correspondence between Lucy and Edward convinces her of their engagement.

And here I shall finish, mainly because I’ve gone on long enough. There is so much more to say, but maybe they will still be relevant in volume 2. Meanwhile, I’d love to know what other Austen readers think …

* Our little nod, perhaps, to the Slow-Reading Movement which I must admit does hold some attractions for me.

Matt McClelland, Best river and alpine walks around Mt Kosciuszko

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Best river and alpine walks around Mt Kosciuszko book cover

Book cover (Courtesy: Matt McClelland, Wildwalks)

For many years now, Mr Gums and I have been going to Thredbo in Kosciuszko National Park for a few days in early January. In other words, instead of heading east to the coast, like many of our city’s residents, we head south to the mountains for a bit of R&R involving bushwalking, dining and reading. Over the years I have picked up various guides to help us – field guides to flora and fauna, general activity guides, and so on. But, until recently, I had not found a good comprehensive book on walks in the Park.

This has not totally deterred us. The Park brochures and the various guides I did find provided us with enough information for us to find and undertake walks. However, I’ve always wanted more and, when I was preparing for last year’s trip, I discovered – via Google – a wonderful website called Wildwalks. They had information on some of our favourite walks, but by no means all. However, I was in luck. Late in 2010, as well us updating and expanding their Southern Kosciuszko walks on their website, they published a book, Best river and alpine walks around Mt Kosciuszko, which details over 40 walks in the very area we like to walk, and so, of course, we bought it.

Along the Rennix Track, Kosciuszko National Park

Mr Gums walking through Derwent Speedwell on the Rennix Trail

The Wildwalks people are a generous bunch though: thorough descriptions, with maps, of each of the walks can be downloaded as pdfs from their website. Of course, unless you travel with a printer*, that means you must decide in advance which walks you plan to do. If you have the book, on the other hand, you can select a walk on a whim – or, on the basis of the weather, on how you feel after the previous day’s walk, on whether you are willing to drive to the starting point (as it is a very large national park), on how much of an appetite you want to work up …

But, enough of that, let’s get to the book. It is nicely produced on quality semi-gloss paper. It includes useful material about the park in general (including weather conditions), and about bushwalking (including safety tips) in particular. It has a map at the front with the walks marked on it, and an excellent table listing the walks so that you can see them all at a glance and check length, difficulty level etc. It has a small but useful index. And it is packed with enticing photographs. The bulk of the book is of course devoted to the walks and is organised (and colour-coded) by region, such as the Alpine Way, Guthega, and so on. There is a section, too, on Snowshoe Walks for those hardy people who go to the mountains in the winter.

For each walk the following information is provided:

  • At a glance inset box providing the Grade (difficulty level); Time; Distance and type of walk (one-way, return, etc); Ascent/descent (in metres); Conditions (amount of shade, water crossings etc); and GPS for beginning and end.
  • Brief description of the walk.
  • Finding the track. In other words, how to find the start!
  • Walk directions. Written directions for the walk, with numbered points which are shown on that walk’s map.
  • Map and relief diagram, on both of which are marked the numbers from the Walk directions.
  • Other information as appropriate, such as, for some walks, variations that can be taken.

Last week, we did four of the walks in the book – three we’d done before and one we hadn’t. We found the guide easy to understand and accurate – right down to timing and assessment of “grade”. We particularly valued the climb information provided – both textually and pictorially – for the ascents and descents involved in each walk. We did find the odd discrepancy – mostly a marker mentioned in the guide that we didn’t see on the ground. Perhaps we missed them or, more likely, they have disappeared (faded, fallen over, whatever!). We also noticed that the pdf descriptions of the walks provided a little more detail – such as distance/time information for each point on a walk – and a contour style map rather than the more schematic one in the book. This difference in maps is due, I presume, to space and page size factors – and is not a critical issue: the walks in general are easy to follow and, anyhow, you can print out the pdf in advance (at no charge) if you wish.

A good quality spiral binding, with an inbuilt book/page marker, would probably make the guide more user-friendly when you are on a walk, but spiral bindings (even good ones) are not as sturdy so the glue (perfect) binding style is probably best.

Overall then, a big thumbs up. This is a well-thought out guide prepared by people who clearly know bushwalking and what bushwalkers (particularly casual, recreational ones like us) want (and need). My sense is that the people at Wildwalks are doing this more for the love than the money – and for that I wave my hiking stick at them. If you walk – or plan to walk – in Australia (specifically, at present, in NSW and the ACT), check them out because they currently have over 900 walks documented on their site.

Matt McClelland and the Wildwalks team
Best river and alpine walks about Mt Kosciuszko
Warriewood: Woodslane Press, 2010
250pp.
ISBN: 9781921606045

* or have downloaded them onto some smartphone device in advance (as you can’t rely on reception once you are out on a walk).

Monday musings on Australian literature: Mountain murmurings

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Mountain? Because this week’s Monday musings was inspired by my recent sojourn in the mountains. Murmurings? Because it will be more pictorial than textual. And what does all this to have with Australian literature? Two things, primarily:

  • My definition of “Australian literature” for this blog series is a broad one – it is intended to not only be about Australian literature but also about the things that our literature draws on, such as culture and landscape. This post is about a very specific part of Australian landscape.
  • In my last post, on Barbara Hanrahan, I referred to her looking in vain for “the sunburned land” she learned was her home. My aim in this post is to support her, to show that in fact much* of Australia, albeit a dry continent, is not sunburned.

Here’s a little context. The second – and most well-known – verse of Dorothea McKellar‘s famous (in Australia) poem “My country” starts with “I love a sunburnt country“. This is the image which Hanrahan rails against in her novel, and it is probably still the prevailing image Australians have (or like to have) of our country. And yet, there are other images – real ones as you’ll see in this post, and poetic ones, like the following:

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling
(The opening lines of  “Bell-birds”, by Henry Kendall)

There are, in other words, many ways of seeing Australia: not all of them are “sunburnt”, and neither are they all romantic or nostalgic, but those are not for today’s just-back-from-holiday mood.

So, to cut to the chase, here is a small selection of images from the Snowy Mountains (in Kosciuszko National Park). Enjoy, because next week we’ll be back to more serious stuff!

Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went
(From “The man from Snowy River“, by Banjo Paterson)

Snowy Mountains, near Thredbo
In the Snowy Mountains, taken from the Thredbo riverside walk
Near the top of Dead Horse Gap walk, on the Main Range

It's mid-summer, but not so sunburnt here

Eucalyptus Stellulata or Black Sallee

Weird but wonderful, a gum just at the tree-line

Snow Daisy close-up

Snow Daisy and friends

Gunn's Willow-herb

Gunn's Willow-herb may not be on the tip of every Australian writer's tongue but how pretty it is

Short-beaked echidna

You never know who you might meet on a bushwalk - such as a Short-beaked echidna nosing around for food

And finally, one bit of Australiana that all Aussies know: (Eastern grey) kangaroos, in the bush.

* Defined as the parts of Australia where the majority live. Much of the Australian continent is indeed pretty sunburnt!

Barbara Hanrahan, The scent of eucalyptus

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Writer-artist Barbara Hanrahan was born half a generation before I was and in the city of Adelaide not a country town in Queensland, but the childhood she depicts in her first novel, The scent of eucalyptus, could almost have been mine. Almost, but not quite, as I was brought up in a standard nuclear family and she by three women – her mother, grandmother, and Aunt Reece (who had Downs Syndrome) – resulting in a somewhat different experience of home-life even if not of wider society.

And there’s another more crucial difference. The half generation time lag accounts for a major change appearing on the horizon – in the education of women. Hanrahan, like my mother who was born nearly half a generation earlier, suffered from the reduced opportunities and low expectations that were women’s lot back then. Both were expected to undertake commercial training at high school – rather than join the academic streams they desired – in order to fulfil “the plan” as Hanrahan calls it:

“( … Our expectations were swallowed by shorthand symbols, hammered by typewriter keys, imprisoned by the columns of a neatly-ruled ledger whose credit column never balances its debit.)

I was part of a school that was a factory, pumping forth each year, from the swollen Commercial class, the girls of fifteen who would go to work as typists and clerks. At eighteen they would be engaged, at twenty, married, at thirty – old. These were the girls I stood with under the lacquered fig trees in the Grade Seven photograph. (They are at their prime at the age of twelve … )

How sad that is. I loved this book from beginning to end. The writing is poetic – not the sort of poetry that is full of allusions and ambiguities in which you have to work hard to locate meaning, but the sort that paints word pictures of both the physical and emotional landscape. An example is her description of a visit to relations in the hills:

“I remember rising while it was still dark to visit them; … watching the sky turn pale and frayed with light; seeing houses jump forward from the darkness; hearing the cold voices of first roosters, the kookaburra’s ruffled peal.”

The writing is rhythmic. There are few wasted words, there is effective use of repetition, there is stream of consciousness, and she uses punctuation precisely to control flow and meaning.

Hanrahan tells her story more or less chronologically, with thematic chapters interspersed at appropriate points and occasional asides foreshadowing her future. The novel spans her life – this is an autobiographical novel – from birth to puberty. It’s not strong on plot, but there is a powerful story here about the development of self. For example, in chapter 2, we see the origins of the artist she was to become: “As a child and ever after, the minute, hidden facets of things intrigued me”.

The first few chapters introduce us to the significant people – the “important” three – in her life. Here she is on her mother:

“My mother was a lark whose tongue was cut; a gull with clipped wings. She learned to expect nothing that she did not strive for … My mother trod a familiar path; hedged by as many briers as Sleeping Beauty’s ever was”.

Such economy of expression that conveys so much. She writes similarly of her grandmother and aunt, and we learn how “the three” love and support each other but also harbour disappointments. These, though, our narrator is barely aware of:

“(I was deceived by familiarity. I didn’t see, couldn’t see, forgot to reason.)”

And so the novel progresses through infancy, kindergarten, and primary school until we reach the point at which I began this post. She paints perfect pictures of school days, of special holidays, of childhood friendships, of fears and hobbies, of a flirtation with religion, and of a sense throughout, but becoming stronger as she grows older, of being “different”:

“And as I grew older I became adept at leaping quicksilver from one of my selves to the other. And as I grew older the split grew deeper, yet I forgot it was there.”

This is a delicious novel – the language is almost mesmeric, capturing a world that has passed and yet is still part of our cultural landscape. I will finish with one final excerpt which delighted me. She, like most Australians, grew up with the image of outback Australia, our “sunburnt country”, firmly entrenched in her mind, but she, also like most Australians, was “a city child” and so she asks:

“But where were the hills of the history book, stitched with the pathways of Burke and Sturt and Leichhardt?- the hills of the sun-burned earth and budgerigar grass, and azure skies and fiery mountains we sang about at school before the flag spangled with all the stars of the Southern Cross I was never sure of seeing? Where were the old dark people I did not link with the lost couples on suitcases at the railway station? Where were the crocodiles and brolgas, the billabongs and snakes? Where were the flowers that wilted in blistered clay, the rusty waves of Spinifex that looped the cliff?

… I looked about me for the sunburned land. In vain.”

This is not the end of the book … but is as fine a place as any to end my review because it, as much as anything, conveys the paradox of her childhood – the knowing one thing but the seeing of/the being something else. This is a book for all Australians to read … and for anyone else who is interested in a thoughtful, lyrical rendition of a childhood.

Barbara Hanrahan
The scent of eucalyptus
St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1973
188pp.
ISBN: 0702225169

The gift of words

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Xmas Tree

There be words in there

Middle age has come
and all the plans and needs
are chaff not seeds,
blowing down the blue air
to fall flat and trampled
by some window where
a hopeful girl braids
her thick hair and hums.

(“Humble”, by Ginny Jackson)

Better late than … hmm, perhaps not, but I’m going to tell you anyhow.

I’ve noticed in recent years that I don’t receive a lot of books for Christmas – and when I do, they are often not fiction – but a few hardy gift-givers still bravely feed my obsession. And so, I received a small but intriguing bunch this year, which I will list by category:

Fiction:

  • Margaret Atwood‘s The year of the flood. Atwood is one of my favourite writers but I’ve dropped the baton on her a bit in recent years. I hope to pick it up again and run this year with this, her most recent. Thanks, Mum.
  • Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s last stand. I have already read and reviewed this one – and suggested at the time that there were people I knew who would enjoy it. I didn’t have a copy then so couldn’t lend it to them. I now do … thanks Sandra, from my bookgrouplist swap.

Poetry:

  • Ginny Jackson’s The still deceived. I can always rely on my brother to choose something a little bit different for me, and this year was no exception. My brother lives in Tasmania and this book, published by Ginninderra Press, is by a Tasmanian poet/artist. I have only dipped into it – but if you like the poem opening this post you might like to dip into it too. Thanks, bro!
  • There’s something about a rose. I knew immediately who chose this book – my Dad, the rose lover. It comprises a selection of poems and art celebrating, yes, roses, and was compiled by the Friends of Old Parliament House Rose Gardens. The poems are by Australian poets, some well-known, such as Barbara Blackman, Les Murray and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and others not so well known (to me at least). I have already dipped into and enjoyed several of the poems…and may share some with you as the year goes on. Thanks, Dad.

Non-fiction:

  • The Canberra gardener. I’ve had previous editions of this gardening bible, but not for some years. Published by the Horticultural Society of Canberra, this one is the 10th edition published in 2010. The previous edition was published in 2004, just as our last serious drought was starting to bite. As a result, this new edition focuses on how to create lovely gardens with less water. Funnily enough, our dams are now suddenly full (last year they were at 50%) but we have all learnt (if we didn’t already know it) that Australia is a dry continent and that we should make water conservation a permanent goal regardless of annual fluctuations in water levels. This book will help me in my endeavour. Thanks, Carmel.
  • Roger McDonald‘s Australia’s wild places. I do like a good coffee table book and this is a good coffee table book. It’s published by the National Library of Australia and comprises landscape photographs of Australia from the Library’s collection. The photos were chosen by award-winning Australian novelist, Roger McDonald, whose books tend to have strong rural themes. The book has an introductory essay, with a strong environment message, by McDonald, followed by gorgeous images by some of our top photographers, including Peter Dombrovskis and Frank Hurley. It is just the book for me to look at now, as we prepare for our annual foray into the Snowy Mountains for a bit of post-Christmas R&R. It was given to me by a friend who spent most of her career working with these images. Thanks, Sylvia.

So, there you have it, six books from six people, each book reflecting a little bit of both the giver and the receiver. What more can one ask of a gift?

And now, if it’s not too late, I’d love to hear if any of you received books this year, and what they were.

Monday musings on Australian literature: The King’s Speech (Movie)

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His Majesty King George VI of the United Kingdom.

King George VI, c. 1942 (Presumed Public Domain: From the United Nations Information Office, via Wikipedia)

I wasn’t going to review The King’s Speech, the current biopic about how Lionel Logue helped cure George VI‘s stuttering, because I mostly review Australian films. But, I do like a biopic and this film does have some Australian connections. These connections may not be particularly literary but, what the heck, at least one of the connections does relate to language … and so I’ve decided to make the review my first Monday musings of 2011.

Like most who’ve seen this film, I was engaged by it and would happily see it again to further explore its subtleties and nuances. Of course it helps that it stars Colin Firth. Anyone who has played Mr Darcy as well as he did is a friend of mine! And, it stars other actors from that wonderful 1995 miniseries of Pride and prejudice: Jennifer Ehle (Lizzie Bennet then, Myrtle Logue now) and David Bamber (Mr Collins then, a theatrical producer now). In addition, its actors include some Australians, including Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue and Guy Pearce as David, the abdicating King Edward VIII. And, let’s not forget the often underappreciated Helena Bonham Carter who plays George VI’s wife (later to become the much beloved Queen Mum). (Did you know that Helena’s distant cousin, Crispin, played Mr Bingley in the Firth-Ehle Pride and prejudice? Oh, the tangled webs!)

Now, I’m no expert in the history of George VI. I knew he was a shy man who did not want the monarchy; I knew he was a very popular monarch; and I was vaguely aware that he had stammered. I knew, however, absolutely nothing about the role an Australian played in the management (cure?) of this stammer. Consequently, I’m not going to comment, as I believe some others have done, on the veracity of the film. It is a biopic after all. Rather, I’ll just mention a couple of issues.

One relates to the fact that it was an Australian who helped George (Bertie to his family). At the time, the 1920s-1940s, Australians were very much seen as the “colonials” and not, really, as people who could teach the Brits anything. In the film this is portrayed pretty clearly through the Archbishop of Canterbury’s (played by another British acting great, Derek Jacobi) disdain for Logue and his lack of formal credentials, despite the successes he had already achieved with Bertie. I was tickled by the subtle way the film conveyed this little part of the history between our two nations. The tension between the two men is not subtle, but this particular subtext is.

The other issue has nothing to do with Australia, but is related to the film’s very effective sound design. First though, let’s talk Colin Firth. Can you imagine being an actor playing someone who can’t speak? What a challenge, but Firth pulls it off. The film is not afraid to let time drag when Bertie/George tries to speak. It lets the clicks and stutters reverberate as he struggles to get a word out . It’s excruciating – and is sustained just to the point at which we feel his pain and that of those around him but are not irritated by it. The score underpinning the movie is pretty spot on too – lovely original music combined with well-known music (particularly by Mozart and Beethoven). But, here’s my issue. I was intrigued by the use of a favourite piece of mine, the first movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, to background the King’s first war-time speech. Beethoven? For a speech about a second war with the Germans? That was to me weird … Was it intended to be ironic in some way? The King’s triumphant speech set against the reality of what was to come?

Whatever, it’s an engaging film which not only tells a specific story about English royalty, but is also about universals: perseverance and hard work (the King’s in overcoming his speech problem), supporting, encouraging and standing by the one you love (his wife), and the value of experience and ingenuity over paper qualifications (Logue).

If you haven’t seen it yet, do … and tell them an Australian sent you!

Top fiction, et al, from 2010

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Award Symbol

No. 1!

Well, 2010 is officially over so I reckon I can now safely present my top fiction of the year! As I listed my top Aussie reads in my last Monday musings post, this post will exclude Aussie writers. Partly for this reason, I’m not going to list the usual 5 or 10 here, but just those that rose to the top. What does it matter after all whether I list 7 or 10 or 13? The world will, in fact, still go round!

My top non-Aussie fiction of the year

In alphabetical order (with the title linked to my review):

  • Jorge Amado‘s Gabriela, clove and cinnamon. I  didn’t read a lot of non-English writers this year but this was one of them. Larger than life, and very colourful, it introduced me to a period of Brazilian history I knew little about and an author I’d like to read more.
  • John Banville‘s The infinities. I like Banville’s writing – this is my second of his. I particularly liked the somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone of this one.
  • MJ Hyland’s This is how. This is cheeky I know as I also listed it in my aforementioned Australian Top Fiction list. She really isn’t Australian, so I reserve the right to list her here too!
  • Hilary Mantel‘s Wolf Hall. One of my first reads of the year – and it got me off to a good start. I look forward to reading more Mantel in future, probably, the way I’m going, the sequel to this one.
  • David Mitchell’s The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet. This is probably the most controversial of my top reads for the year but I remain unapologetic about it. It wasn’t perfect but it was a thoroughly engaging read in a style that “mixed it up a bit”.
  • Haruki Murakami‘s Blind willow, sleeping woman. What can I say? I’ve scarcely met a Murakami I haven’t liked and this collection of short stories was no exception.

Some miscellaneous other “tops” of the year

  • The standout film for me this year was Animal Kingdom – but I did also thoroughly enjoy The King’s English which we saw just a couple of days ago.
  • My top short stories (excluding collections) were an older one, Kate Chopin’s Desirée’s baby, and a modern one, Nicole Krauss‘s The young painters.
  • The most intriguing piece of non-fiction writing I read this year was Alan Bennett’s The lady in the van.

So, that’s it. There were other tops of the year but, to take the advice of the immortal Mr Bennet, I have delighted you long enough and will now give you time to tell me your own favourites. But, before we get to that, I wish you all

a very happy 2011, full of brilliant books and delightful discussion (not to mention, of course, health, wealth and happiness!)

I thank you all for popping by my blog this year, and I particularly thank those of you who have taken the time to comment. I treasure every one of you and look forward to more interactions in 2011.

Now, your favourites?

Kate Holden, The Romantic: Italian nights and days

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kate Holden, The Romantic book cover
Book cover (Courtesy: Text Publishing)

The romantic, by Kate Holden, is hard to categorise. In an interview with Richard Aedy on ABC Radio’s Life Matters she comments that, despite the success of her memoir In my skin, she was “a little bit uncomfortable with memoir” because it felt a bit “narcissistic”. And so this, her second book, she intended writing as a novel, albeit based heavily on her experiences in Rome. However, as she tells Aedy, her editor told her that most of what she’d written was not fiction, but “life” and so she decided to write it as memoir. So why my opening statement? Well, it’s because this memoir is told in third person.

Who, then, is Kate Holden? Today she is a professional writer living in Melbourne, but she was not always so. In my skin, which I read before my blogging days, is an astonishingly honest chronicle of her twenties when she was a heroin addict and sex worker. The romantic is a sequel of sorts. It tells the story of her year or so in Rome and Naples where she went to further her recovery, to, as she says, find herself. She tells Aedy that she decided on third person to enable her to maintain “critical distance from my own former self” (since the events in the book occurred around 2003) and to give the reader the prerogative of that distance too. Which, I think, is not a bad thing – as this is one very explicit book about, as she says, “the permutations of love, sex and romance”. Sex, though, predominates this threesome, if you get my drift.

Okay, that might be a cheap shot, because Holden is, again, fearlessly honest. The book, told chronologically, is divided into 7 parts, most of them named for a sexual/romantic partner, and some of these partners overlap a little. Throughout the book she alludes to poets – particularly the romantic poets, Byron and Shelley. In fact, each part of the book is introduced with a quote from a poet. In her interview with Aedy, she said that she wanted to be “honest, sincere and authentic like the Romantic poets”. Well, she certainly seems to be that, even if much of what she is being honest about is not exactly “romantic” – unless, that is, we define ongoing self-questioning as “Romantic”.

And here, in a way, is the rub. Holden is not only a fearless writer, she is also a good one. She knows how to string a sentence together, she describes character and evokes place well, and she expresses emotion clearly. But, I’m not sure what the point is for the reader. There is a lot of detail here about relationships – and sex in particular – that is not particularly positive for her. Around the middle of the book she writes:

She wishes to be free, virtuous, brave, joyous. The men around her say she is needy, neurotic, manipulative, disingenuous, hurtful, promiscuous. She knows she is deceptive, duplicitous and cynical. Somewhere in all of this is a portrait. She thinks this; and buries her face in the pillow.

This sort of self-analysis is the flavour of the book so that, in the end, it feels more like something that is therapeutic for her than enlightening for the reader.

The seventh part of the book – a short one named Kate – is introduced by the following lines from Byron:

I am not now
That which I have been.

I certainly hope so because the Kate in this book has, by the end, still not quite found herself. However, her interview with Richard Aedy in 2010 reveals a composed, confident and articulate woman. I look forward to seeing what this woman produces next.

Kate Holden
The romantic: Italian nights and days
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2010
240pp.
ISBN: 9781921656743

(Review copy courtesy Text Publishing)

Katharine Susannah Prichard, The pioneers

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Katharine Susannah Prichard

Prichard, 1927/8, by May Moore (Courtesy: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons)

Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969) is probably not as well-known in Australia, let alone internationally, as she should be. She was born in Fiji, but grew up in Tasmania and Melbourne, travelled overseas and in other parts of Australia, before settling in Western Australia in 1919. She was a founding member of the Australian Communist Party (1920) and also of the Western Australian branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. Politics and literature, then, were the twin passions of her life. Her most famous novel and the only one I’d read until now, Coonardoo (1929), was remarkable in its time for its exploration of the relationship between white men and black women.

I don’t usually commence a review with a biography, but it felt appropriate in this case – partly because she is so little known despite her significance and partly because her politics were an intrinsic part of her literature. In the foreword to my new edition of the book, her granddaughter describes Prichard’s values as:

a huge love of and respect for the bush; the importance of living your life with integrity; of caring and fighting for the underdog; of holding strong principles and remaining true to them; and of embracing life with passion.

These values are evident in The pioneers, her first novel which won the Hodder and Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia in 1915. She went on to write over thirty works, including novels, plays, short stories and poetry. But, perhaps that’s enough prelude for now – on with the book.

It’s a simple tale really, plot-wise. It starts with a couple, Donald and Mary Cameron, arriving by wagon in an unsettled area of Gippsland (in eastern Victoria) in the early-mid nineteenth century. They clear the land, build a home and establish a successful farm. Very early in the story, while Donald is away getting supplies, Mary is “visited” by two desperate men, Dan Farrell and Steve. A tricky situation for a woman on her own but she manages to win them over and they leave her, unharmed. The novel tells the story of these people – and the others who move into the district – over the next two decades or so, as they work to make lives for themselves, some honestly and some not so.  There are archetypal characters here – the hard-working, tough, taciturn farmer; the loving, but wise and stoical wife; the loyal but unappreciated-by-his-father son; and more. There are escaped convicts, cattle rustlers, and a thoroughly bad man.

This may all make it sound rather typical and a bit melodramatic. And, in fact, it does have its melodrama. But the book is more than this. Its overriding style, or approach, is social realism, as Prichard explores the hopes and wishes of a new country struggling to come to terms with its origins and forge a more positive future. Her style is not particularly innovative and, while the combination of social realism and melodrama is appropriate for a novel set in the nineteenth century, the melodrama was a little discordant to my modern ears.  Take this, for example:

It was as if that encounter in the valley of shadows had brushed all misunderstandings from the love that was like the sun between them. Deirdre had wrestled with death for possession of him.

A contemporary review suggested that the romance – which drives most of the melodrama – was included primarily to attract readers who may not be interested in the history. This could very well be so.

Despite not being particularly innovative, Prichard’s writing is sure and shows that while this was her first novel she’d been honing her craft for some time. I particularly loved her language. It is gorgeously descriptive. She perfectly captures the paradox of a place that is both beautiful and harsh – and effectively conveys the physical and emotional impact of the landscape:

The bright hours were rent by the momentary screeching and chatter of parroquets, as they flew, spreading the red, green and yellow of their breasts against the blue sky. At sunset and dawn there were merry melodious flutings, long, sweet, mating-calls, carollings and bursts of husky, gnomish laughter. Yet the silence remained, hovering and swallowing insatiably every sound.

The plot, as I’ve suggested, is a little melodramatic and fairly predictable but it’s a well-told tale, nonetheless, of good forces fighting bad, of compromises that are sometimes made, and of bad judgement calls that come back to bite you. The characters, while tending to archetype, are nonetheless real so that you believe them and their various plights. There is, I think, something reminiscent of Dickens here.

The themes reflect very much the values identified by her granddaughter in the foreword. The main characters are imbued with a strong sense of principles that they try to live by. When Mary meets the convicts early in the novel, she says:

But if you will believe the truth it is this: My heart is with you and all like you.

In her twenties, Prichard apparently met the Austrian sociologist, Rudolph Broda, who introduced her to the ideas of socialism and suggested that, as a new country, Australia was leading the world in social legislation. This idea is reflected in the novel. Early on, Mary says to Donald:

It’s a new country and a new people we’re making, they said at home, and I’m realising what they meant now.

Little did she know, then, what this “making” would really involve but defining “a new country” is clearly the goal Prichard set for herself. The novel concludes by suggesting that the new generation will

be a pioneer of paths that will make the world a better, happier place for everyone to live in.

Corny? Or aspirational? Take your pick … but whichever way you see it, this novel makes a significant contribution to the development of the Australian psyche, to our transition from colonial convict-fearing past to an independent self-realised future. I am glad it has been re-released and hope that more people read it.

Katharine Susannah Prichard
The pioneers
Singapore: Monsoon Books, 2010 [first ed. 1915]
272pp.
ISBN: 9789810848804

NOTE: An ebook version of the novel is available at Project Gutenberg.