Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian Christmas imagery

/ Whispering Gums / 41 Comments

As a 50-something Australian, I grew up with a big disconnect regarding Christmas. Our Christmas occurs in summer but the cards we received (and could buy) and the carols we sang (and still do) tended to be winter-focused. And then we discovered the carols by Wheeler and James. John Wheeler (lyricist) and William G James (composer) both worked for the ABC, our government-funded broadcaster. In the late 1940s-mid 1950s they wrote Christmas carols for Australians.

The most famous of the Wheeler-James carols is the “Carol of the birds”. Not only is it a lovely song, but its chorus includes, significantly, an indigenous Australian word, Orana, which means “welcome”. Our (sheet music) version of Wheeler and James’ Christmas carols comes in three sets of five carols:

  • Set 1 (1948): The three drovers; The silver stars are in the sky; Christmas Day; Carol of the birds; Christmas bush for His adorning.
  • Set 2 (1954): The day that Christ was born on; Christmas night; The little town where Christ was born; Sing Gloria; Noel-time.
  • Set 3 (1953*): The Christmas tree; Our lady of December; Golden day; Country carol (The oxen); Merry Christmas.
Paddocks in Lake George, 2005

Sheep in brown paddocks in Lake George, 2005

So, what makes these songs Australian? Most reference the Christian aspect of Christmas, as you can tell from some of the titles, but the important point is that they also evoke Australian colour and sound through celebrating our landscape, flora and fauna. Here are some examples:

The North wind is tossing the leaves,
The red dust is over the town;
The sparrows are under the eaves,
And the grass in the paddock is brown;
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ-Child our Heavenly King.
(the beginning of  “Christmas Day”)

Friar birds sip the nectar of flowers,
Currawongs chant in wattle-tree bowers;
In the blue ranges Lorikeets calling-
Carol of the bushbirds rising and falling-
Chorus: Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day
(Verse 3 and chorus of “Carol of the birds”)

When the sun’s a golden rose,
And the magpie carols clear,
You can say, and I can say,
On the summer morning,
Here at last is Christmas Day,
The day that Christ was born on…
(The beginning of “The Day that Christ was born on”)

Sheep in fold, Shine like gold,
As the day is dawning,
Riding by, Stockmen cry,
Welcome Christmas morning.
(Middle of first verse of “Merry Christmas”)

Interestingly, Geoff Strong, writing in The Age newspaper, believes that these songs have failed to endure, but I’m not so sure. Just because they don’t feature in shopping mall carol “musak” doesn’t mean that they’re forgotten. They are taught in schools, and recordings do exist of them. Most Australians, I believe, know at least a couple of them.

There are also more humorous, non-Christian-focused Australian Christmas songs. A couple of favourites are:

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little nod to the season. As this is the last Monday musings before Christmas, I wish all those who visit and comment on my blog, a very happy holiday season and a peaceful 2011. Monday musings will continue in the New Year.

* Don’t ask me why the date for Set 3 is before the date for Set 2, but that’s how it is.

POSTSCRIPT: The complete words to all the songs can be found on A Growing Delight’s blog.

Literary Societies of Sydney

/ Whispering Gums / 14 Comments
Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), english writer An...

Anthony Trollope. (Presumed Public Domain, by Napoleon Sarony, via Wikipedia)

Although I grew up in Queensland and New South Wales, and have spent most of my adult life in the Australian Capital Territory, it seems I have referred more in this blog to Melbourne (and Victoria), so now seems the time to balance it out a little. Why now? Because this week, in the December 2010 issue of the Jane Austen Society of Australia’s newsletter, Chronicle, I read about the Literary Societies of Sydney.

This is a new organisation, and its website describes it as follows:

The Literary Societies of Sydney is a loose federation of single-author literary societies in Sydney, formed to establish a presence online, to facilitate communication between those societies, and to encourage public contact with them. It is unfunded, and non-profit.

The single author societies it covers are (in alphabetical order by name of society):

Fascinating list, eh?  I don’t see any Australian author societies here like, say, a Miles Franklin Society, but I do love the fact that such societies as these exist. I wonder if they play the role that salons did in the past? (In fact, I sometimes wonder whether blogs operate a little like an online salon?) Certainly, for me, being a member of the Jane Austen Society of Australia provides an invaluable opportunity to share, debate and learn more about her books and ideas. Austenites, for example, can spend a lot of time arguing the case for (or against) Fanny Price, or discussing just how “bad” Frank Churchill is – not simply (or only) on the basis of personal preference, but also by looking at such things as literary traditions and social history. The society, with its wide membership, not to mention its events and publications, helps ensure that our discussions are informed ones.

Do you – or would you like to – belong to an author society (or two)? Why or why not?

Vale Ruth Park

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

“Harp in the South silenced: author Ruth Park dead at 93” confronted me this morning on page 3 of our daily newspaper. I guess it had to happen, but it is nonetheless sad to see such a grand dame of Australian literature leave us. I have referred to her several times on this blog, three of those times being focused specifically on her – reviews of Swords and crowns and rings, and Missus, and a Monday Musings dedicated to her – so that will give you some measure of my regard for her and, really, of her standing in Australia.

Susan Wyndham, who wrote the announcement I read, concluded with the following:

Park’s publisher at Penguin, Robert Sessions, once said that she was one of three older women who had a huge impact on him, along with the writer Thea Astley and the legendary editor Beatrice Davis. All have now died.

Astley and Park both had huge stature in Australian literature and they had that rare combination of talent and strength and humility, he said.

What more can I say, except, well done Ruth, we’ll miss you – but we’ll keep on reading you.

Alan Bennett, The uncommon reader

/ Whispering Gums / 11 Comments

Light with bite is how I would describe Alan Bennett‘s delightful novella The uncommon reader. But, before I explain that further, a quick plot summary for those few who haven’t come across it. It explores what happens when Queen Elizabeth II stumbles across a mobile library on the palace grounds and becomes obsessed with books and reading. Bennett cheekily suggests what the impact might be on her family, staff and the politicians around her when reading becomes not only something she wants to do all the time (instead of her work) but also results in her starting to think and question.

One of the delightful things about the novel is that it can be read on several levels from the straight (a sweet story about the current English Queen discovering the thrill of reading late in her life) through the contemplative (a meditation on readers, reading and the value of literature) to the satirical (an expose of life in the palace, and more broadly of politics and those involved in the political process).

Take for example, reading. The Queen (in the book) says that: “Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.” Fair enough, we all agree with that I’d say. But then there’s this, again from our newly enlightened reading Queen: “Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book as it were closes the book.” Hmmm…Bennett’s Queen is one clever (and scary) lady!

Jokes at the expense of palace officials, politics and politicians abound. Nothing really new here but they are proffered with a light touch. The Queen, now talking about writing her own book, says “To enquire into the evidence for something on which you have already decided is the unacknowledged premise of every public enquiry, surely?” on which the Prime Minister thinks to himself “If this was to be the tone of what the Queen was planning to write there was no telling what she was going to say. ‘I think you would do better just to tell your story, ma’am'”.

This is no sentimental tale, but neither is it completely cynical (though some could see it that way). Sly is perhaps the best word to describe its ability to engage us with the humanity of the characters while skewering them and their (our) world at the same time. However, I won’t go on, except to say that the ironies, word play and allusions evident in the title give a clue to what is inside – and yet it can be read and enjoyed whether or not you pick up all, some or none of them. I’m sure I missed my share. But that’s okay, as I would be more than happy to read it again.

Alan Bennett
The uncommon reader
London: Faber and Faber, 2007
124pp
ISBN: 9781846680496

Note: I originally posted this on my reading group’s site but, since one of my online groups will be discussing this in the next quarter, I decided to post it over here too as a record of my current reading and discussions.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aussie writers and Jane Austen

/ Whispering Gums / 23 Comments
Jane Austen sketch by Cassandra

Cassandra's portrait of her sister, c. 1810

Funnily enough, I’m not the only Australian who loves Jane Austen – and so we too have our very own Jane Austen juggernaut. We see the films and miniseries, we have the Jane Austen Society of Australia – and we have academics and others researching and writing on all sorts of topics relating to her. Today, I thought I’d post about one of the lighter Australian-published books on her because it is, after all, that time of year when we tend to relax the brain power a little – or, at least, I do. The book is Jane Austen: Antipodean views (edited by Suzannah Fullerton and Anne Harbers).

I clearly remember when this book was published, nearly 10 years ago, because it included comments that I related to – that tickled me, in some cases – by some Aussie writers, and so this is what I’m going to share now.

The comment that made the greatest impression on me was the one from John Marsden, a popular and award-winning Australian children’s writer:

I’ve deliberately refrained from reading Persuasion, so that I would never get to the point where I had no more Jane Austens left to read. When the doctor, with grave countenance, gives me the news that I have only three months, the grief will be mitigated by delight that at last I am allowed to read Persuasion. In the meantime, I am avoiding crossing roads when busses are in sight.

Now, I can relate to this because I too saved a Jane Austen for quite a long time. Although I’d reread all of the others a few times, I was saving Mansfield Park for the same reason. Finally, a decade or so ago, I decided that I could put it off no longer (mainly because the Patricia Rozema film version was coming and I wanted to read the book first!). I’m glad I changed my mind and I hope Marsden has too, as rereading Jane Austen is as enjoyable, really, as reading her the first time. Why deny yourself that pleasure?

Close to that one is the following from one of my very favourite Australian writers, Elizabeth Jolley:

I find in old age, I have forgotten the novels, in particular the magic of being lifted into other lives and background. Re-reading is one of the Best Things of old age. Forgetfulness – it’s like having a present.

This one tickles me because my reading group often jokes that when we get to a certain age – and it’s moving rapidly closer – we’ll read the same book over and over because it’ll be new every time! I’ll be very happy if that one book is a Jane Austen…

My third favourite comment – and those of you who regularly read my blog will soon see why – comes from the mellifluous broadcaster and writer, Phillip Adams:

The longer I live the more bored and irritated I am by excess  – and the more grateful to find such a wide range of emotions, and such accuracy of observation, in the less-is-more prose of that remarkable woman.

“Less-is-more”. Exactly so! Need I say more?

There are many more comments along similar lines to those above but, just to be even-handed, I’ll end with the words of the award-winning but clearly unenlightened children’s book author and illustrator, Graeme Base:

Jane who?

The cheek of it!

Suzannah Fullerton and Anne Harbers (eds)
Jane Austen: Antipodean views
Neutral Bay: Wellington Lane Press, 2001
168pp
ISBN: 9780908022168

Animal Kingdom scoops the 2010 AFI Awards

/ Whispering Gums / 13 Comments

Australia’s version of the Oscars – the AFI (Australian Film Institute) Awards – was held last night and, as my post title announces, Animal Kingdom (which I reviewed a few months ago) won, deservedly I think, almost every major category . The major awards were as follows:

BEST FILM: Animal Kingdom
BEST DIRECTION: David Michôd, Animal Kingdom
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: David Michôd, Animal Kingdom
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Stuart Beattie, Tomorrow When the War Began
BEST LEAD ACTOR: Ben Mendelsohn, Animal Kingdom
BEST LEAD ACTRESS: Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joel Edgerton, Animal Kingdom
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Deborah Mailman, Bran Nue Dae (also reviewed)

BEST FEATURE LENGTH DOCUMENTARY: Contact

Pilbara, near Newman, WA

In the Pilbara (part of the homelands of the Martu people) taken by me in April this year.

 

Animal Kingdom is one of the grittiest films I’ve seen this year, while Bran Nue Dae has to have been the cheeriest. In between these two on the “grittiness” continuum is Bright Star, another favourite of mine from this year’s awards. It received multiple nominations and won in three categories: Best Cinematography (Greig Fraser), Best Production Design (Janet Patterson), and Best Costume Design (also Janet Patterson).

Finally, I was pleased to see that Contact won the Feature Length Documentary award. It tells the story of the first contact a group of indigenous Martu people had with white society in 1964. At the time, they were one of the last – if not the last – indigenous Australians to still be living traditionally with no knowledge of or contact with modern Australia. Amazing, eh? Just shows how big – and empty – Australia is.


Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable creatures

/ Whispering Gums / 24 Comments
Bookcover

Cover image courtesy HarperCollins Australia

Most readers experience, I think, periods of reading synchronicity when we read books in close succession that are related in some way. I am experiencing such a period now as Tracy Chevalier‘s Remarkable creatures is the third book I’ve read recently to deal in some way with the first decades of the 19th century. The others are David Mitchell’s The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America.

Tracy Chevalier would not normally be high priority for me, but this book intrigued me because of its period and setting. You see, it is set in Lyme Regis in the early 1800s, and that rings a special bell for me! Yes, it’s to do with Jane Austen. Not only did she visit Lyme Regis, but she set a significant scene in Persuasion there*. So, my appetite was whetted.

But, I must say, I was somewhat disappointed. It’s not that I expected a lot, really, but I did expect a little more than I got. In other words, I didn’t expect exciting or innovative prose, but I did expect writing that wouldn’t bother me. However, it did, and this was mostly due to a lack of subtlety. The best writing shows, not tells, but there was way too much telling in this book, and it falls into two main types:

  • Giving “facts” that we should know. Here is Elizabeth over-explaining Mary’s calling her “Ma’am”, when she’d previously called her “Miss”:

And she was calling me “ma-am” now. Spinster or not, I had outgrown “miss”. Ladies were called “miss” while they still had a chance of marrying.

  • Describing something, such as a character’s emotions, when it should be (and usually is) apparent. Here is a bit of petulance that sounds rather silly in the first person voice of a supposedly mature Elizabeth:

As angry as I sounded, I was also secretly pleased that Colonel Birch had discovered the value of my fish enough to want one for himself.

(For a humorous review of an unsubtle book, do read Kerry, aka Hungry Like the Wolf, on Ken Follett’s The pillars of the earth.)

There are also a couple of rather gratuitous references to Jane Austen and her novels, gratuitous because the main characters don’t read novels and the reference to Austen adds nothing significant in terms of plot or characterisation. It’s as if Chevalier knew Austen went there and decided to draw on Austen’s current popularity by making the connection:

One of Miss Austen’s books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier, and did not end so tidily, with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.

Enough of all that, however. Let me give a quick rundown of the plot. It tells the story of two women who were fossil hunters in Lyme Regis in the first half of the nineteenth century. They were Mary Anning (1799-1847), a poor working class woman whose fossil finds helped change the course of paleontology, and Elizabeth Philpot (1780-1857), a gentlewoman who befriended Anning and who was particularly interested in fossil fish. Using known facts and novelistic licence, Chevalier has written an engaging story that focuses not only on the fossils and their impact on scientific and religious thinking of the time but also on the difficulties faced by women, particularly those unmarried like Philpot or unmarried and uneducated like Anning. Philpot says early in the novel that

… I had to find a passion: I was twenty-five years old, unlikely ever to marry, and in need of a hobby to fill my days. It is tedious being a lady sometimes.

Chevalier shows the financial precariousness of women, their lack of power, and how easily they can be exploited. Women, for example, were unable to belong to the Geological Society of London, and Mary’s collections (in particular) were written up in scientific journals by men, often with no credit given to her contribution. This is the real story of the novel and Chevalier captures well the circumscribed lives of women, and the challenges they faced in living independently. And yet, she undermines this by fabricating a jealous falling out between Elizabeth and Mary over a man. Did Chevalier really need to do this to make the story exciting?

That said, the characterisation is effective overall. She differentiates the two main characters not only by their very different voices, but also by creating a conceit for each of them. For Elizabeth it is her describing what people “lead with”. The forthright Mary, for example, leads with her eyes, while one of the foppish male characters leads, she says, with his hair. Good one, I thought! Mary’s conceit is being the “lightning girl”. The book begins with her being struck, but not killed, by lightning when she was a young girl. Lightning thereafter becomes a motif in her life for surprising or lucky events and for strong feelings.

Chevalier also writes some lovely descriptions – of people and landscapes:

While I accommodated her absence, a dull ache in my heart remained, like a fracture that, though healed, ever flares up during damp weather.

and

Lyme Regis is a town that has submitted to its geography rather than forced the land to submit to it …It is not planned, like Bath or Cheltenham or Brighton, but wriggles this way and that, as if trying to escape the hills and sea, and failing.

This is an enjoyable book for the glimpse it gives into the lives of two interesting and little known women, but the writing, for me, doesn’t quite do the story justice. For a more positive review, you may like to read Lisa’s at ANZLitLovers.

Tracy Chevalier
Remarkable creatures
London, HarperCollins, 2010
352pp.
ISBN: 9780007178384

*It is also the setting, of course, of John Fowles‘ The French lieutenant’s woman.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Silly names for the silly season

/ Whispering Gums / 28 Comments
Burrumbuttock sign

22 kms to Burrumbuttock (Courtesy: Carolyn I)

It’s nearing Christmas, and I’m getting busy, so today’s Monday musings will be short …

Ever since I started this blog series, I have wanted to write about Australian place names. We are not, I know, the only country to have interesting or fun place names – and I’d love it if you shared your favourites in the comments – but we do have some good’uns Downunder.

Oodnadatta,
Parramatta
Names to make your tonsils chatter
…
(From “Patter”, by Ronald Oliver Brierley)

Oodnadatta and Parramatta are just the beginning. What about Cabramatta, Wangaratta and Coolangatta? And then there’s Woolloomooloo. You have to concentrate to spell that one! (It’s a bit like, I suppose, Mississippi, isn’t it?) Many of these places appear in Lucky Starr‘s tongue twisting “I’ve been everywhere” song. You can listen to it online if you like… I love all these names. They tend to sound silly and poetic at the same time, and because of this many of them have found (and still find) their way into Australian verse and song.

Kurri Kurri Hotel

Kurri Kurri Hotel, Kurri Kurri, NSW

But, there is a type of name that is rather endemic here, and that is the reduplicated place name. The best known one is probably Wagga Wagga – “Don’t call Wagga Wagga Wagga”* – but it’s just one of many. Here are some of my favourites: Bong Bong, Drik Drik, Gatum Gatum, Grong Grong, Kurri Kurri, Tilba Tilba and Woy Woy. You can find more in Wikipedia. English comedian Spike Milligan‘s parents moved to Woy Woy in the 1950s, and Spike wasn’t above making fun of the town. In his novel Puckoon, he wrote

There is, somewhere in the steaming bush of Australia, a waterside town called Woy Woy (Woy it is called Woy Woy Oi will never know).

Finally, in a related but somewhat different vein, is the poem, “The Integrated Adjective” about the great Australian adjective. If you don’t know what that is, you soon will. The poem was written by John O’Grady, who wrote, under the pseudonym Nino Culotta, the 1957 novel, They’re a weird mob, a comic tale of an Italian migrant’s struggles to understand and fit into his new country. Anyhow, “The Integrated Adjective” is set in a bar and is the narrator’s record of the bar-time talk he overhears:

“…. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”

Now the bar was pretty quiet, and everybody heard
The peculiar integration of this adjectival word.
…

The town of course is really Tumbarumba, but do we let that spoil our story here? Abso-bloody-lutely not!

*Song by Greg Champion and Jim Haynes.

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments
Alexis de Tocqueville.

Alexis de Tocqueville (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

It’s not surprising, really, that after living in America for two decades Peter Carey should turn his pen to it. Having lived in the US twice myself, I well understand the fascination of trying to understand that large and paradoxical country. In Parrot and Olivier in America, then, Carey sets out to explore America through the eyes of two men from early nineteenth century Europe: Olivier Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont, a French aristocrat whose parents had barely survived the French Revolution, and John ‘Parrot’ Larrit, a poor Englishman who had been brought to France as a boy by another French aristocrat.

Olivier was born in 1805, the same year that French writer and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was born. This is not a coincidence as the novel is Carey’s loose re-imagining of Tocqueville’s trip to America, with a friend, to study American prisons. Like Tocqueville, Olivier undertakes his trip with the support of the July monarchy, but Oliver’s companion is not an equal. Rather it is Parrot, servant-class and twice Olivier’s age. An unlikely pair, really, but perfect for Carey’s purposes …

… which are to pry into, poke at, and peer under that great American experiment, Democracy. Through having two protagonists of such diverse backgrounds and perspectives, Carey is able to explore the issues from different angles, that of master and servant. And through choosing the picaresque as his form (or style), he is able to do so without being ponderous. In other words, the tone is comic, as befits a picaresque novel, and the narrative comprises a series of adventures in which our “heroes”, Parrot and Olivier, meet a range of characters along the way who test them and their ideas. The novel is told in alternating, and well-differentiated, first person voices – starting with Olivier and ending, very even-handedly, with Parrot. It is basically chronological, but there are flashbacks to fill in gaps and frequent overlaps caused by one telling a story followed by the other giving his version.

That’s the nuts and bolts of it, but how does it come across? Well, in a word, exuberantly. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its serious side, but just that it’s rather fun to read. At least, it was for me, though that could be because of my personal history with America. Here, for example, are some of the observations which caught my attention:

On not needing government (Parrot talking with a tradesman):

‘When there is enough for all,’ the nail-maker said, ‘there is no need for government.’
‘But what of the poor.’
‘No man who will work can be poor.’

A little myopic methinks – but an idea that seems to be still entrenched in America?

On the focus on money and trade (Olivier):

No matter how strong their religious sentiments, or their passion about the reform of criminals, the Americans quickly revealed themselves to be obsessed with trade and money … They had got their hands on a mighty continent from which the least of them could, by dint of some effort, extract unlimited wealth. There being so much to be extracted it scarcely mattered how they were governed, because there is no need to argue when there is plenty for all.

For all, that is, if you are able to work, are not black and not indigenous! Even aristocratic Olivier noticed some of these contradictions.

On the ability to be self-made (Peek, the banker, to Olivier):

‘Experiment,’ he cried, laughing too violently for my taste. ‘There is no experiment. We make this transformation every day. It is called rags-to-riches …’

And on the possibility of art and culture in a democracy (Olivier):

… They [paintings in Philadelphia] made me think that the taste for ideal beauty – and the pleasure of seeing it depicted – can never be as intense or widespread among a democratic as an aristocratic people.

Hmm…Peter Carey is on record as expressing concern for the survival of culture. He said in his closing address at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival that ‘We have yet to grasp the fact that consuming cultural junk … is completely destructive of democracy’. In other words, Olivier/Carey question whether “high” art and “total” democracy are mutually exclusive? Somewhat related to this is Carey’s ongoing interest (see My life as a fake, and Theft: a love story) in authenticity in art. He explores it here through Olivier’s love of art, and the artistic endeavours of several characters, including Parrot and his mistress.

As for the story itself, there is a lot to enjoy. Olivier and Parrot have a complex relationship that develops from mutual disdain to a cautious friendship as the novel progresses. For all his attempts to be open-minded, Olivier never totally accepts the notion of equality between “men”, but Parrot, from both his early training and a generous nature, manages to tolerate and even accommodate this. Besides these two, there are characters from all strata of society: aristocrats, printers, bankers, land-owners, artists, actors, and so on. And, of course, there are romances, with Olivier’s playing out to a rather ironic conclusion.

One little demur, though. The book did not really engage me emotionally – something I tend to expect in longer novels – and I wonder whether this is partly due to the picaresque genre whose episodic and comic nature can have a distancing effect. Is this a failing? I think not, but it was noticeable, and means that the writing and ideas have to be powerful enough to carry the reader along. And mostly they do here, largely due to the novel’s pacing.

So, what is Carey’s conclusion? Well, it’s pretty even-handed, with both the aristocrat and the servant summing up their experience of America. But, in a twist on Tocqueville, the last words are Parrot’s. As a reader who always looks to see if structure informs the meaning, I wonder if this tells us something. Then again, there could be an element of irony in it. However you read it, there is no real answer to the question in the epigraph:

Can it be believed that the democracy which had overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists? (Alexis de Tocqueville)

Prophetic words, eh.

Peter Carey
Parrot and Olivier in America
London: Faber and Faber, 2010
578pp
ISBN: 9780571253319

Joanna Biggar, That Paris year (Guest post)

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

When I received That Paris year via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program, I got the sudden attack of the guilts! How was I to review this book alongside all the other books I wanted to read? And then the thought struck me! My daughter, Hannah (aka Wayfaring Chocolate), is a reader, was an exchange student (albeit in the USA), and had recently been to and fallen in love with Paris. Perhaps she might like to read and review it  – and, yes, she would (with not too much arm-twisting). I posted a version of that review, as required, on LibraryThing, and then suggested we post it here too. She did some small revisions and … here it is … Thanks, Hannah!

Wayfaring Chocolate’s review of That Paris year, by Joanna Biggar

That Paris year, book cover
Book cover (Image: Courtesy: Alan Squire Publishing)

That Paris year weaves together the story of five American female college students on exchange at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1962. There is something dream-like about the narration of the girls’ lives as it is J.J., one of the five, who recounts the story of each, through her own memories, tales the others have told her and, at times, her own surmising about what may or may not have happened in their lives. It is not that J.J. is an unreliable narrator, but that the novel reads in the same way that life is experienced – as a sometimes clear, sometimes hazy pinning together of what we ourselves remember and feel, what others have told us of their own lives, and the threads we create in our minds to tie the two together. Moreover, this novel shows how sometimes, in pulling together our own and others’ stories, we have the potential to blur the boundaries of our selves:

Still, I wondered at it, wondered where she had disappeared when she recited Eve’s thoughts as if they were her own.

Each of the five girls followed in this novel is initially set out as markedly different. Yet for all their varied degrees of attractiveness, confidence, studiousness and self-awareness, ultimately each girl seems focused on one thing above all else: the quest for love, sex, and a life partner. It is this that weakened the novel a little for me as, while I myself am a female university student in my early twenties with a deep love of Paris who wouldn’t mind not being single, I felt suffocated by the constant idea thrumming through this novel that a man is what will, ultimately, define me as a young woman.

The novel certainly deals with other aspects of women’s coming-of-age, such as coping with parents’ divorce, class dichotomies, living in a foreign country, and navigating the limits – or limitlessness, it seems at times – of friendship. I only wish some of these narrative threads had been fleshed out in more detail. Such issues are as relevant today as they were during the novel’s 1962 setting, and the evocative writing of Joanna Biggar ensures that the reader is cognisant of this. The political tension between America and France at this point in history, the insecurities one character (Gracie) faces when comparing her homeliness with the long-legged grace of her statuesque friends, even the novelty of putting on an American Thanksgiving dinner in Paris – these are concepts that Biggar tackles with humour, grace, and a fair degree of sympathy.

For example, even when Gracie’s dogged belief that her intelligence is a curse preventing men from liking her made me want to reach into the book and shake her by the shoulders, I couldn’t help but feel both sympathy and understanding for her in the following:

By trusting me, by believing there was a place of revelation – Paris – where possession of all womanly secrets was obtained, she had simply been delivered into another of Dante’s circle. In only a few short weeks, she already felt doomed … by being short, ill-dressed, and homely in the world capital of style.

One thing I did particularly enjoy was that there were times during the reading when I felt that all I had to do was close my eyes to believe myself back in a smoky Parisian cafe, or perhaps on a beach in Avignon with the wind rising, or sitting by the Seine watching stylish Parisian women strut past me. Biggar has a talent for evoking a Paris, and a France, that is both familiar yet not clichéd, and this was something I particularly took pleasure in. There were also moments when particular lines jumped out at me as if they were my own, such as when one character tells another that:

Maybe it’s just that you have a way of listening like you’re hearing more than I even know I’m saying […] Jocelyn listens too, so much so that sometimes I think she can play back to me what I’ve said. Maybe she doesn’t hear in quite the same way.

Haven’t we all had people in our lives who, we know, implicitly “get” us, and others with whom conversations only ever take place on the surface? I think Biggar captures the way in which both types of friends are valuable in different ways. In fact, you could read her novel as a study of different types of friendship (and, as I’ve mentioned above, how for some women friendships are apparently mediated through and in reference to men).

Yet despite my slight reservations with the novel, I would still recommend it for anyone who has had, or wants, a Paris Year of their own. This novel brought back memories of my own time in the City of Lights and, for that, I am grateful.

Joanna Biggar
That Paris year
Bethesda: Alan Squire Publishing, 2010
469pp
ISBN: 9780982625101

(Review copy courtesy Alan Squire Publishing, via LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program)