Kim Kelly, Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room (#BookReview)

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Early in the month I reviewed the first of the two winners of Finlay Lloyd’s inaugural 20/40 Publishing Prize, Rebecca Burton’s Ravenous girls (my review). It was set in Sydney in the 1980s. Now, as promised, I bring you the other winner, Kim Kelly’s Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room. It is also set in Sydney, but in the early 1920s. Some of you will know Kim Kelly, as she has published around 12 novels, mostly historical fiction. Not only that but she was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize 2022 and shortlisted for the Viva La Novella 2021 prize with her novella, The rat catcher: A love story.

So, she has written novellas, before. A check on her GoodReads page revealed others, including what I think is her best known book, Wild chicory. So, she, like Rebecca Burton, is comfortable with the novella form (or length).

Finlay Lloyd describes the book on their website like this:

Two young women, brought up to expect conventional lives, are thrown together in unexpected circumstances. Each has suffered a devastating loss that challenges their belief in life and themselves. It’s rare to come across a work of deep psychological insight conveyed with such verve and lightness of touch.

As I said in my opening paragraph, Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room is set in 1920s Sydney. The title is explained in the first of two epigraphs. It comes from an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, in 1922, for the Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room in Farmer’s department store. This “artistic room” was intended as a place of respite for busy shopping ladies. It was also where they could also write any “urgent notes” for “the very next mail”. Writing facilities were provided for the purpose. The room was, of course, intended for the well-heeled, as you paid a “nominal charge of 8d.” to avail yourself of its charming “rose shades”. The second epigraph comes from Sappho, which might or might not tell you something!

The story is told in from alternating third person perspectives of two young women. One is the apparently entitled Dotty, who comes from a wealthy business family and who uses the Room in the opening chapter. She is introduced, however, on the street outside where she plays chicken with a tram every Tuesday on her way to Farmer’s and its titular room. Why does she do this? We soon come to understand the pain this young woman, who seems on the outside to have it all, is dealing with. And it’s to do with World War 1, if you haven’t already guessed from the time setting.

The other young woman is down-on-her-luck Clarinda, who has just started work as the Room’s attendant. She went to school with Dotty, but Dotty, in her grief, doesn’t notice her, which doesn’t surprise Clarinda after her shooldays’ experiences with Dotty. Clarinda has her own sadness, partly stemming from losses in the War, but also from the fact that due to her father’s tragic death she and her mother are now on the proverbial hard times.

The narrative takes place over a few weeks encompassing Christmas, and comes to a head when Dotty’s pain becomes too much for her, resulting in a crisis in the Corset Salon (next door to the Ladies Rest and Writing Room). Clarinda steps in to protect Dotty, and, through what ensues, both young women grow. Clarinda treats Dotty with compassion and forgiveness, while Dotty wakes up to sadnesses in others.

What I most enjoyed about the book is its evocation of post WW1 1920s Sydney. Kim Kelly knows the place and the time well, and, despite the shortness of the novella form, she vividly captures a city and people in flux – the grief of wartime loss, the changing workforce as men return home after the war, the increasing migration, the excitement of change in the air, but with old social values and class structures still in place.

Clarinda, for example, was grateful for having finally landed a decently paid job:

It certainly beat unreliable casual waitressing at three shillings a luncheon, or three and six per dinner service, or sixty hours per week as a shop assistant at considerably less than two pounds, both of which she’d done, piecing together a living. All the better paying more respectable clerical positions for which she was qualified, were being given to returned soldiers, and that was fair enough, except that nothing fair had happened for Clarinda since her brothers were ripped from this life and …

So much is told in these words.

Kelly is also adept at characterisation, creating two well-differentiated characters in Dotty and Clarinda. They immediately come to life on the page, which is particularly important in a novella where there’s no time to waste. We care about them both, because we are privy to what’s going on for them, and thus to their isolation, even if those around them aren’t.

The writing and plotting are assured. Kelly is clearly experienced in writing historical fiction where description and rhetorical language are used to create the sort of atmosphere and tone needed to drive a plot forward. Kelly does this very well, and I quickly became engrossed in these two girls’ lives. It’s a novella that wears its heart on its sleeves, and I wondered at times whether some pulling back might have challenged us readers to delve into more of the complexities, and maybe leave us with more questions than answers. But, that would have been a different book. As it is, Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room is beautifully accessible and will hopefully attract more people to the novella form. It and Ravenous Girls would make excellent stocking stuffers for busy readers in your lives. And I don’t mean this condescendingly! I am referring to their perfect stocking-stuffer size!

As with all Finlay Lloyd books, the design is gorgeous, with an appealing monochromatic cover featuring a woman’s hands writing a letter. Very different to your usual historical fiction cover.

Ladies Rest and Writing Room is a good read about a significant and complicated time in our history. Like Ravenous girls, it is a compassionate book, this one about navigating deep loss and the grief that attends it, and, even more, about the importance of generosity in dealing with others. I wish these two books well and thank Finlay Lloyd for sponsoring such an appealing, targeted prize.

Read for Novellas in November. Lisa (ANZ Litlovers) and Theresa (Theresa Smith Writes) have reviewed both winners in one post, but I have done them separately.

Kim Kelly
Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2023
122pp.
ISBN: 9780994516596

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Winners, 2023, announced

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The Winners of the the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2023 were announced this evening.

The website says that 643 entries were received across six literary categories: fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry, and Australian history. Each shortlisted entry receives $5,000 with the winner of each category receiving $80,000. The awards are now being managed by Creative Australia, rather than by the Department of the Arts, which should provide the right arms’ length distance and avoid the problems of political interference which soured some of the early awards.

The event, which I attended in livestreamed form from the National Library, was slick but not superficial. Arts Minister Tony Burke inspired me once again, not only with his passion for the importance of the arts to Australia and his determination to entrench arts policy in government, but with his obvious personal engagement with arts across all forms. I’ve seen it before, and I saw it again. It’s a joy. As MC, Benjamin Law said, any Minister who takes poetry into the office has “got the vibe”.

Below is the shortlist for the three categories I am most interested in, with the winners marked in bold.

Fiction

  • Jessica Au, Cold enough for snow (my review)
  • George Haddad, Losing face
  • Yumna Kassab, The lovers 
  • Fiona McFarlane, The sun walks down
  • Paddy O’Reilly, Other houses (Lisa’s review) (on my TBR)

Non-fiction

  • Debra Dank, We come with this place (my review)
  • Louisa Lim, Indelible city: Dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong 
  • Brigitta Olubus, Shirley Hazzard: A writing life
  • Thom van Dooren, A world in a shell: Snail stories for a time of extinctions
  • Sam Vincent, My father and other animals: How I took on the family farm (Vincent said that he “wants to change perceptions about what Australian farmers can do and be” particularly regarding their relationships with First Nations people)

Australian history

  • Alan Atkinson, Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm
  • Rohan Lloyd, Saving the Reef: The human story behind one of Australia’s greatest environmental treasures
  • Russell Marks, Black lives, white law: Locked up & locked out in Australia
  • Shannyn Palmer, Unmaking Angas Downs: Myth and history on a Central Australian pastoral station
  • Lachlan Strahan, Justice in Kelly Country: The story of the cop who hunted Australia’s most notorious bushrangers

Other category winners …

  • Poetry: Gavin Yuan Gau, At the altar of touch
  • Young Adult fiction: Sarah Winifred Searle, The greatest thing (Searle said during her acceptance speech, referencing how challenging the world is to navigate, “admit you’re scared even if you don’t have answers”.)
  • Children’s fiction: Jasmine Seymour, Open your heart to country

The complete shortlist with judges’ comments can be seen on the website. But I will say that the shortlist and the winners are impressively diverse, in who created the works and in their subject matter. So good to see.

Our lives are made more meaningful in the presence of a talented scribe. (Benjamin Law, closing the awards presentations)

Thoughts?

Chris Hammer in conversation with Jack Heath

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Apologies for those of you expecting a Monday Musings. I did think about it, as this conversation turned out to be a bit of a Chris Hammer retrospective so it could have worked as one of my Monday Musings spotlight-on-an-author post. However, after considering my options, I decided to call this post what it is, a report of an author event. It was held at the wonderful Muse Canberra, a restaurant-cum-bookshop or vice versa, where co-owner Dan did the introductions before passing the baton to Jack Heath to conduct the conversation.

The participants

Chris Hammer is a multi-award-winning local Canberra author, who worked for 30 years as a journalist, during which he also published two nonfiction books. Since 2018, when he was 58, he has written six bestselling crime novels. (If he’d been around when I wrote my Late Bloomers post in 2011, he would have qualified – as the only man!) His first three novels (Scrublands, Silver, and Trust) feature the journalist Martin Scarsden, with the next three (Treasure and dirt, The tilt, and The seven) featuring a detective duo, Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan. The seven was the official subject of the conversation.

Jack Heath is also a local writer – of fiction for children/young adults and adults. He is definitely not a late bloomer, having published his debut novel, The lab, in 2006, when he was 20. Since then he has written around 40 science fiction and crime novels. His new book, Kill your husbands, is coming out now.

From these intros, I think you’ll be able to work out who’s who in the pic!

The conversation

I loved that Jack launched straight in, with little of the usual pleasantries. It was clear that they were comfortable with each other, which is probably not surprising, both being Canberra-based crime writers.

On moving from nonfiction to fiction 

Although his first novel only came out five years ago, Chris said that fiction had always been a passion. Like many writers, he has in his drawer a very bad one he wrote in his 20s (that will never see the light of day – unless, joked Jack, you don’t destroy it and your literary executor thinks otherwise! We all know some of those examples.) Chris said he didn’t have the talent or attention span for fiction when he was young, so he turned to journalism, but persistence pays off.

On dramatic openings

The seven starts with a bizarre death. Is this his modus operandi, Jack wondered. Chris’s answers to this and the next question were fantastic, taking us through his novels, and, at the same time, his development as a writer. I’m not sure I’ve ever attended such a lucid discussion of a writer’s oeuvre in one session before.

After giving a sly little plug to the premiere of the Scrublands TV series on Stan later this week, Chris said not all start like that, but most, including Scrublands, do. He finds it works effectively.

However, Scrublands did not start like that. He was six or seven drafts in before he decided to start with a prologue describing the murder. He was learning on the job, he said. The narrative then jumps a year with his journalist investigating the murder on its first anniversary.

With The Seven, the dramatic opening death marks the start of a contemporary story. The homicide detectives arrive. (The murder victim is an accountant. They are good victims, Chris said, because they have secrets. That got a laugh.) Anyhow, the killer is still on loose, so the detectives are in a race against time. But, there are two other storylines: a university student in the 1990s who decides to do his thesis on the history of irrigation (during which he finds some skeletons); letters from an Indigenous girl from 1913. The connection between them all is not clear until near the end.

On his voices

All Chris’ novels are set in Australia, and all but one are rural. Will this always be the case? Further, Scrublands, his debut novel, features a journalist, a bit like himself. It is set in the present, but gradually, through his later books, he has been moving back in time, and diversifying his characters. How did he get into voices that aren’t a middle-aged ex-journalist?

Chris described his development beautifully:

  • Scrublands, the first of his journalist series, has a simple structure, and is told completely chronologically.
  • Silver, the second in the series, has similar trajectory but there are flashbacks.
  • Trust, the third (and currently final) in the series, has two alternating points-of-view.
  • Treasure and dirt, the first of his detective duo (Ivan-Nell) series, has a dramatic prologue (like Scrublands) and alternating points-of-view. The duo start finding crimes in the past, and this got him into some exposition. However, writers are always told to show-not-tell, so in ….
  • The tilt, the second Ivan-Nell book, he decided not to use exposition, which meant needing to create voices from the past. The 1973 voice wasn’t a big stretch since he was alive then, but the 11-year-old boy from World War 2 was a challenge, so he created an old man looking back on his time as an 11-year-old. This novel has multiple (four, I think) points-of-view.
  • The Seven, the third Ivan-Nell book, also has multiple points-of-view from different times, but they include a 15 to 16-year-old Indigenous girl. Before I or anyone could ask the question, Chris said that we need diverse – including Indigenous – characters in books, otherwise it’s terra nullius all over again. But there’s the issue of appropriation, so he decided to tell her story through letters, which, he said, can be unreliable, given people “present” themselves through letters.

Each book, he told us, has built on the experience of the previous books, with the latest ones being “more accomplished”. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are better stories! Jack interrupted, though, with the comment that Chris just keeps getting better and better.

By this point in the session, I felt we were getting gold.

On second-guessing issues of the day

Jack noted that many of his books seem to have second-guessed coming issues of the day (such as reference to Afghanistan war crimes in 2018’s Scrublands, and irrigation corruption in The seven). How did he do it?

Some has been luck, some has come from keeping his ear to the ground (with his journalist friends). For example, rumours were just starting to appear regarding the SAS-Afghanistan war crimes when he was writing Scrublands, so he included that. Given it’s fiction, he didn’t have to be factual. Most of his books are set in rural Australia, where ongoing concerns are climate change and Indigenous dispossession. These are part of The seven. It’s not hard to write his stories, he said, because, given its history, “the Australian continent is a crime scene”. Touché. He added that “Crime writers often touch on matters of societal concern”.

However, the opal mines’ skulduggery in Treasure and dirt he made up, only to be told later that what he’d described really does happen.

On changing his setting

Most of his novels, except for Trust, are set in dying country towns, but The seven’s setting is a beautiful, tidy town. Was he playing against his “type”?

The answer in a single word was No – but he was looking for something new. An earlier novel had featured a lot of water, and he thought water-trading would be good to explore, but not in that book. The town in The seven is fictional, but is based on Leeton, which was planned by Canberra’s Griffins. It has circular layouts and lovely art deco buildings.

On being a nice guy!

Finally, Jack, saying what a nice guy Chris was, offered four reasons: 1. he’s not really nice, but is a villain; 2. he’s so successful, he can afford to be generous; 3. he came to success late, so he realises how lucky he is; and 4. he’s just always been very nice!

Having learnt from his two nonfiction books how hard it is to make a living from writing, Chris considers himself fortunate to be “living the dream”. Scrublands was life-changing, and he is very grateful. He is financially secure and doesn’t have to struggle for that work-life-writing balance that most writers do. Also, Australian crime writers are welcoming and collegial, and – unlike many journalists – have their egos under control!

Q & A

There was a brief Q&A, some of which required knowledge about Hammer’s earlier books.

  • On whether there will be more Ivan and Nell books, or a new tortured detective: The next book is another Ivan one, but he is thinking of bringing journalist Martin back. (The way this questioner started her question made Jack and Chris palpably nervous about spoilers!)
  • On whether he plots carefully: As I’ve heard authors say before, Chris said there are the “plotters” (like Jane Harper) and the “pantsers” (like himself). He has a setting, an idea, and a few plot lines, and then sees how it goes. If he doesn’t know where the plot is going, how can the reader, the implication being this is good in crime writing. He also wants his main character/s to have “skin in the game”. There is usually an emotional storyline, whose trajectory he knows, but the crime plotting is done constantly as he goes.
  • On his “silly” character names, which critics have commented on: If I understood correctly, he said that as he was writing Scrublands, he got a bit bored and created fun names. He feels sheepish about them now as he is stuck with them, the reason being he has many recurring characters, and can’t really have recurring characters with exotic names alongside new ones with plain names. Also, his editors didn’t complain, which they’d do if they disapproved. And, one reader told him that the distinctive names helped her keep track of who’s who.

A wonderfully lively session, one enjoyed also by Mr Gums who has read three of the novels, and bought a fourth from Muse.

Chris Hammer in conversation with Jack Heath
Muse (Food Wine Books)
Sunday, 12 November 2023, 3-4pm

Nonfiction November 2023: Choosing nonfiction AND Book pairings

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My participation in Nonfiction November has been sporadic, but this year I have done Week 1, and am now combining Weeks 2 and 3, partly because there’s an element of repetition in my Week 2 responses.

Nonfiction November is hosted by several bloggers. This year, Week 2 – Choosing Nonfiction is hosted by Frances at Volatile Rune, and, my favourite, Week 3 – Book Pairings, by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home.

According to the plan, Week 2 finished last Friday (10 November), and Week 3 commences tomorrow (Monday 13 November), so I am dragging the chain for the first and jumping the gun for the second, by posting today, Sunday 12 November.

Choosing Nonfiction

This week the questions relate to what sort of nonfiction we like to read. My answers will mostly be known to regular readers here, but there are some new twists on the questions.

What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book?

Depending on the book and the topic, I am looking to learn something new, to increase my understanding of something I already know, and/or to have my perspective challenged (which might result in my changing that perspective, or, being able to better defend it.) The two books I named in my Week 1 post – Debra Danks’ We come with this place (my review) and JD Vance’s Hillbilly elegy (my review) – satisfied at least one of these criteria.

Dank’s book, in fact, satisfied all three – I learnt new things about First Nations history and culture; I better understand it, particularly in terms of connection to Country; and, as a result, I can better explain and defend my support for First Nations’ people’s fight for fairness.

Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to?

I haven’t changed from what I’ve said before, which is that my overriding interests are literary biographies/memoirs, nature writing, and works about social justice/social history (which includes First Nations history and decolonisation, climate change and feminism.)

This year, as you already know, I’ve read very little nonfiction, but those I’ve read have been memoirs in the social justice/social history area.

Do you have a particular writing style that works best?

For want of a better word, I enjoy what is broadly called creative or narrative nonfiction. Because I love fiction, I like the writing to be engaging and evocative, which tends to mean writing that draws on some of the techniques of fiction to tell a nonfiction story. This does not mean playing with the facts, but making the facts, shall we say, accessible. Where a case is being argued, I want it to be clear and logical, not characterised by academese or jargon that is understood only by those in the know.

While this question doesn’t specifically ask it, I also like, where it’s appropriate, to know what sources have been used (either through an author’s note or footnotes/endnotes), and I LOVE an index. I know indexing is expensive, but, unless you are reading an eBook with search functionality, the value of a nonfiction book can be seriously diminished by the absence of an index.

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.

I wouldn’t say I am influenced by titles and covers, because with nonfiction – for me, anyhow – content or subject matter is queen. However, this is not to say that a good titles and beautiful covers don’t enhance the experience, because they do.

Debra Dank’s We come with this place is a powerful title. It categorically announces that First Nations people were always here, that is, they WERE HERE when the settlers/invaders arrived. More than that, it suggests they are an intrinsic part of, if not essential to, this place. WE. COME. WITH. THIS. PLACE.

By brother Ian Terry’s book, Uninnocent landscapes, also has a strong title (but I will discuss that in my review). The book’s design and its cover are also glorious. The cover is striking in a minimalist restraint that also happens to be literal, in that it depicts Robinson’s journey that Ian followed.

Book Pairings

Our instruction is to “pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. You can be as creative as you like! “

Okay, so my creativity will extend to two pairings:

Nonfiction read this year, paired with fiction from any year

Alexis Wright, Carpentaria

Debra Dank, We come with this place with Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (my post). For a start, both books are set in neighbouring parts of northeast Australia, just south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Secondly, both convey, in powerfully descriptive ways, the catastrophic dislocation experienced by First Nations peoples when they are separated from Country and/or when they are not able to interact with Country in the ways that are essential to their (and Country’s) wellbeing.

Fiction read this year, paired with nonfiction from any year

I have read a lot of First Nations and other non-white/BIPOC fiction this year, but I’ve already focused on First Nations writing in the post, so I’m changing tack, and am pairing Edwina Preston’s Bad art mother (my review) with Jane Sinclair’s memoir Shy love smiles and acid drops (my review), which I read early last year. Preston’s novel was inspired by several Australian artists (visual artists and writers) including the story of Sunday and John Reed’s adoption of Joy Hester’s son Sweeney. Jane Sinclair’s parents were part of the Reeds’ Heide Circle, and in her book Sinclair includes letters written by her mother to Sunday Reed, which include discussions of Sweeney. These are just two of the books I’ve read which deal with or reference in some way Heide. There are many more I haven’t read, as this Circle was not only fascinating but one of the most influential in Australia’s arts history, particular in terms of Modernism.

What would you pair (and/or do you have anything to share regarding the first questions)?

Novellas in November 2023: Week 2, What is a novella

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The thing about these annual memes is that the questions became somewhat the same, which is fair enough as new bloggers appear on the scene as do new ideas. However, my challenge is whether I have anything to add to what I have written about novellas before? The answer is not a lot, but I did listen to the beginning of the 20/40 winners’ interviews on the Finlay Lloyd website. I didn’t listen for long, because it’s a combined interview and I haven’t finished reading the second book. My preference, where possible, is to gather and write my own thoughts before I hear other ideas (including those of the authors).

However, the interview started on the topic of novellas, and the two winners did have some interesting things to say about them which add to what I’ve said before. I’ll recap those ideas first by (re)sharing the Griffith Review’s Julianne Schultz on novellas. She said they are

stories that are longer and more complex than a short story, shorter than a novel, with fewer plot twists, but strong characters. Condensed tales that are intense, detailed, often grounded in the times, and perfectly designed for busy people to read in one sitting.

Most of the novella definitions out there say things like this – in more or less words, and with different emphases here and there. In the 20/40 Prize interviews, authors Kim Kelly and Rebecca Burton put their own interesting spins on it.

Kelly said novellas are books you can read in a couple of hours, without racing but also taking your time. Yes! Good call, I thought, because I do like to take my time with what I am reading, and this works well with novellas. I can take my time but not take forever! Kelly also commented on the value of novellas from the writer’s perspective. As a busy person, she says, she has little time for writing, but once a story “presents itself as a novella” she can see the finishing line and get there faster! I love insights like that into the practicalities of a busy writer’s life.

The interviewer and, more relevantly, the publisher, Julian Davies, made a point about structure, suggesting that a novella is long enough for the writer to develop something but not so long that such development can get away from them. Burton picked this up, saying that, with a novella, writers have time to develop but can still retain “a fleetingness”, a sense of “capturing a moment in time, a breath, a mood”.

Kate Jennings, Moral Hazard

Somewhat less poetically, Kate Jennings, as I recorded in my in praise of the “taker-outers” post, described novellas as “sinew and bone”, which Davies captured in the interview by using my favourite cliche, “less is more”.

I agree with all these definitions, but I’d like to add that novellas can also offer writers the possibility of experimentation. Writers can try things out without getting lost in excessive verbiage, or they can simply be experimental without being constrained by any expectations of form. I’m thinking, for example, of Ida Vitale’s Byobu (my review) or of Kate Jennings’ Snake (my review).

For this week 2 of the meme, we are also encouraged to suggest works that best capture the ‘spirit’ of a novella. I have done that before (Little Treasures and Classic Australian novellas), but let’s just say that in recent years I could add some new memorable books like Sayaka Murata’s Convenience store woman (my review) and Jessica Au’s Cold enough for snow (my review) which are condensed, intense, detailed tales focusing on a limited set of characters. But I could also add experimental books like Byobu, that aren’t that at all.

What about you?

Written for Novellas in November 2023

Patrick Modiano, Sundays in August (#BookReview)

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Disappointingly, I ended up missing my bookgroup’s discussion of the book I had encouraged us to read, Sundays in August by 2014 Nobel prize-winner Patrick Modiano. I have no-one else to blame but myself, since I did the schedule and should have remembered that I was going to be in Hobart for my brother’s exhibition. C’est la vie.

I recommended this book for a couple of reasons, one being high praise from Kim (Reading Matters) and the other being to include translated fiction in our reading diet. Also, the book intrigued me. Kim described it as a “jewel heist”, albeit qualified by “with a difference”. That seemed unusual subject matter for a Nobel prize-winner. Having now read it, however, I see that he is a skilful writer. I loved reading it. But the subject matter?

According to Wikipedia, Modiano (b. 1945) is “a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction”. He has published over 40 books, and in them, Wikipedia continues, has “used his fascination with the human experience of World War II in France to examine individual and collective identities, responsibilities, loyalties, memory, and loss. Because of his obsession with the past, he was sometimes compared to Marcel Proust”. I’m not sure about the “was” here, as he is still alive. Anyhow, it is this obsession with the past, with its associated exploration of memory and loss, that made Sundays in August (Dimanches d’août) so fascinating. I am drawn to stories about the past that are told in well-controlled melancholy tones, stories that involve a later reflection on what had happened and the implications for the protagonist’s present. (By the way, this does not appear to be one of Modiano’s autofiction works.)

The novella is set in Nice, and starts with a first person narrator (identified partway through the book as Jean) spotting someone he’d known seven years ago. The man is Villecourt, and he is selling leather goods in the market. Neither man, in fact, has done well in the years since they’d met. Both are alone, and not living the apparently secure lives they had been. We quickly realise that this is not a case of old acquaintances happily re-uniting. Instead, there is palpable tension. After they meet for a drink, Jean makes clear he wants nothing more to do with Villecourt, while Villecourt tries to keep the contact going. He does little to ingratiate himself, however, reminding Jean that he, Villecourt, was the only man someone called Sylvia had loved. He also says that he and Sylvia had not been married. Why had she lied to him about that, Jean thinks to himself?

In this way, in the first few pages, we are drawn into a mystery involving these three. Soon after, the aforementioned jewel – a diamond, with a “long and bloody history”, called the Southern Cross – is introduced, and we learn that Jean and Sylvia had been on a mission to sell it. Then, a little further down the track we meet the mysterious Neals, who seem to live in a grand home named Château Azur, and who all too soon offer to buy the diamond.

It sounds like a simple story involving a love triangle and a heist, but in fact, it is a complex crime story in which it behoves readers to attend carefully for hints and clues about what’s really going on. These are conveyed through the narrative, as Jean tries to “rejoin the invisible threads”, and through gorgeously written imagery that creates an oppressive, foreboding atmosphere, occasionally lightened by the Riviera’s bright sun, and blue skies and water.

“blurred … dissolving”

As we read, the ground constantly shifts beneath our feet. People appear and disappear, and sometimes shapeshift. Virgil Neal, for example, sounds American, then he doesn’t, then he does again, before finally turning out to be someone else. Cars and buildings, too, aren’t always what they seem. Nonetheless, through cleverly managed flashbacks and foreshadowings, we gradually start to see – or, think we see – the set-up. It is all complicated, however, by that tricky beast, memory. Jean writes:

I don’t know anymore whether we met the Neals before or after Villecourt arrived in Nice. I have searched my memory, looking for points of reference, but am unable to sort out the two events. Anyway, there’s no such thing as “events.” Ever. It’s a false term, suggesting something definitive, spectacular, brutal. In fact it all happened gently, imperceptibly, like the slow weaving of a design into a carpet…

Soon after this reference to meeting the Neals, Jean says

The word “meet” doesn’t apply, any more than “event.” We didn’t meet the Neals. They slipped into our net.

Who slipped into whose net is the question. And how many nets were there? Jean will probably never know it all, but by the end he’d learnt that “our anxiety didn’t come from our contact with that cold stone with glints of blue – it came from life itself”.

Typical for a novella, the book is tightly written. Every word counts, and is worth noticing. I loved, for example, that Jean was a photographer who now can’t seem to remember the necessary details, and that Sylvia’s last name is (ironically?) Heureux. These little details aren’t casual, and make us readers think and question at every step, as we are alternately unsettled then proffered glimmers of light.

Sundays in August is an accessible, noir-ish tale about loss and the emptiness that accompanies it. It explores life’s shadows and uncertainties, shows how innocence can be so easily taken advantage of, and it doesn’t wrap everything up neatly, leaving us to ponder the possibilities. I won’t spoil the ending, but it is spot on, and explains, at last, the title, leaving us on a little up despite it all. I’ll be reading more Modiano, if I can.

POSTSCRIPT: I believe we know the main culprit in it all, but the question is, who else was in on it and who else was taken in. It would take more reads to work through that, but in the end I think we can’t ever know it all because we can only know what Jean saw and tells us.

Read for Novellas in November.

Patrick Modiano
Sundays in August
Translated from the French by Damion Searls
New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2017 (Orig. French pub. 1986)
156pp.
ISBN: 9780300223330 (Read on Kindle)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Uninnocent Landscapes opened and launched

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Those of you who know me on other social media will already have seen some of this, but I am keen to spread the message wherever I can about my brother’s wonderful, and significant, project. I introduced it back in September – and later in Nonfiction November I will review the book. That, however, will be after the exhibition has closed, and I want to encourage anyone who is in Tasmania to see it.

Uninnocent Landscapes – the exhibition and book – is the culmination of an idea Ian started thinking about a decade ago, but that he actively worked on over the last two to three years. It involved his following the journey taken by George Augustus Robinson on his 1831/32 Big River Mission, which was a poorly conceived attempt to conciliate between settler and Aboriginal Tasmanians. Needless to say it was a disaster, that effectively ended First People’s resistance in lutruwita/Tasmania (at the time anyhow!) For Ian, who has come to call lutruwita home, there is discomfort in reconciling his privileged life as a middle-class white man with the devastating impact of colonialism on Tasmania’s First Peoples. This is his truthtelling project, and he found a unique way to do it by combining the three big passions of his life (besides family) – history, photography and the bush.

I will write more about this when I review the book because what Ian has done feels original and exciting. Essentially, though, the book and the exhibition comprise photographs accompanied by excerpts from Robinson’s journal, resulting in an experience that is enlightening, engrossing, and sobering. The exhibition contains a selection of 11 from the book’s over 50 photographs.

The venue, Sidespace Gallery, is in a heritage building that dates back to the mid-1800s. This means two things – there are some restrictions on how items can be affixed, and the walls and floors are not what you would call square. However, Ian and his “crack instal team” did the research and, by the time I got there, were ready to go. The photographs – large-scale archival prints – were “hung” through a clever system of special Japanese tape (that doesn’t mark walls), double-sided tape, and magnets. I enjoyed being a little part of it all on the first day of installation, and loved meeting Ian’s delightful, hardworking team, Erica and Nikki, who made me feel so very welcome.

The opening (and book launch) went very well, with 50 or 60 in attendance. The MC was writer and researcher Steph Cahalan, and the exhibition was formally opened by Tony Brown, a First Nations man and museum colleague of my now-retired brother. Ian of course then spoke to his project, explaining, among other things, that he had discussed his project with many in the local Aboriginal community, and had made clear that he was not trying to tell their story, but his own. His good relationships with the community suggest that they accept this.

It was a warm-hearted event attended by historians, artists, museum professionals, bushies, activists, not to mention family and friends. I met and talked with so many interesting, thoughtful people who support Ian’s project and believe in what he is doing. I can’t name them all, but before it all started I had a great chat with the two women who designed and published the book. Our conversation ranged from technical issues like fonts to more personal ones like downsizing and philanthropy. It was truly a privilege to be there.

Ian calls Uninnocent Landscapes a photographic conversation. By this he means, I think – though I didn’t ask him while we were together – that he is using photography to reflect on (to interrogate, in fact) his relationship with the Tasmanian landscape he loves so much but which has been indelibly affected by over two centuries of colonialism. The idea of conversation, however, also encompasses something ongoing and inclusive, something inviting us all to join in as we engage with his photos and, for those of us living in colonised places, as we engage with “our” places. I will discuss this more, and talk about the title, in my review!

Uninnocent landscapes, the book, is published and distributed by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights under their imprint An Artist’s Own Book. It costs $65, and all proceeds are going to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can order it here.

Ian Terry
Uninnocent Landscapes
Sidespace Galley, Salamanca Arts Centre
3 – 13 November, 2023
Admission is free

 

Nonfiction November 2023: Your year in nonfiction

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My participation in Nonfiction November has been sporadic, until last year when I managed to complete the whole series. Maybe I will again this year, maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

Nonfiction November, as most of you know, is hosted by several bloggers. This year, Week 1 – Your Year in Nonfiction is hosted by Heather at Based On A True Story, with variations on the usual first week questions.

But, here’s the thing. As we come to the end of 2023, I’m having to come clean on what a strange reading year I’ve had. You will hear more in my end-of-year roundups, but by then you’ll have had inklings from posts like this! Last year, I wrote for this post that I’d read about 25% more nonfiction than I’d read in each of the preceding few years. Last year’s (that is for 2022) non-fiction reading had comprised 45% life-writing, 45% essays, with the rest being “other” non-fiction. This year, since the end of last November, I have read only TWO nonfiction works and both have been memoirs.

What were your favorites?

The two books are Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review), and JD Vance’s Hillbilly elegy (my review). We are asked to name our favourites, which is always tricky for me, as I don’t tend to think in terms of “favourites”. Both these books provided truly fascinating insights, albeit in diametrically opposed directions. Dank is a First Nations Australian writer who conveys with impressive clarity just how the interconnectedness between her people, the ancestors and Country works, and how that translates into knowing Country, while Vance was a poor white hillbilly from Kentucky who is now a Republican politician and, last I heard, a Trumpian. You won’t be surprised I think to hear me say that while I found Vance enlightening in terms of contemporary US politics, Dank’s book is by far my favourite. She bowled me over with her generosity.

Have you had a favourite topic, and Is there a topic you want to read about more? 

I’m bundling there two questions together because clearly I didn’t review enough nonfiction this year to have a favourite topic, but what I’d like to read more are books on my favourite interests areas – literary biographies, nature writing, and works about social justice/social history.

I have several literary biographies, in particular, on my TBR, so maybe next year I’ll have a fuller report to make. In terms of the third area – social justice/social history – I must say that reading more nonfiction from First Nations writers, like Debra Danks’ book, is what interests me right now.

What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? 

As I wrote last year, I am not looking for more recommendations – not because I am not interested but because I have too much on my TBR already without adding to the pile (physical and virtual). However, I always like book talk, and the book talk I most like is that which focuses on areas that interest me (see above), and which talks about wider issues like why do we read nonfiction, what do we look for, and what makes a good nonfiction read?

What do you think?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Western Lane TO …

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Time has been tight for me this last month so I’ve rushed this month’s Six Degrees a bit, but I hope it satisfies my regular readers’ different needs! So, let’s just get to it … the Six Degrees meme, I mean. If you don’t know how this meme works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In November we are back to books I haven’t read. Indeed, this is one I hadn’t even heard of, Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane. It’s a debut novel that was shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. GoodReads starts its description with “a taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself…”

Louise Mack, The world is round

I could go with books about sisters, or athletes, as I’ve read a few of those on my blog, but I’m going in a different straightforward direction instead, to another debut novel by a young writer, albeit this one a century or so ago, Louise Mack’s The world is round (my review). It’s not about a struggling athlete, but it is about a would-be writer.

Book cover

Now, I don’t want to go down the content path though that would be easy – and, you never know, we might meet a would-be or struggling writer or two a bit later in this chain. Here though I’m going for a word in the title, and so it’s to Michelle Scott Tucker’s biography, Elizabeth Macarthur: A life at the edge of the world (my review) that I’m linking next. Round worlds, edges of worlds, where to now? Not to worlds, in fact … but to …

Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate nomad, book cover

Another strong woman. Elizabeth Macarthur had to be strong to keep the family farm going in colonial Australia while her husband spent months if not years travelling to and from England. Freya Stark was another strong Englishwoman who made her way in a man’s world, a century or more after Macarthur. The book I’m linking to is Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s biography, Passionate nomad: The life of Freya Stark (my review).

Geniesse’s biography was published in 1999, as was the wonderful Amy Witting’s gorgeous novel, Isobel on the way to the corner shop (my review). Here come the would-be writers! Isobel is a young woman who is struggling to be a writer. Poor, starving and isolated, she ends up contracting TB and, after a dramatic collapse, is admitted to a sanitarium, where she starts to recover in more ways than one.

From Isobel I am taking us to my most recent post, Rebecca Burton’s Ravenous girls (my review) which is about another young woman – starving for different reasons – who ends up as a long stay patient in hospital. Justine is a different person to Isobel, and the story is from her sister’s perspective, but the link still works!

John Clanchy, Sisters

And now, I’m going to do something I don’t usually do, which is to close the circle. Maroo’s book is apparently about sisterhood, and so, in a large way, is Burton’s Ravenous girls, so it’s on sisters that I’m going to conclude, but with sisters at the older end of the spectrum. John Clanchy’s Sisters (my review) are not struggling to find themselves, or to make their way in the world. Instead, they are needing to resolve secrets from the past, which just goes to show that when you solve one of life’s challenges, there’s sure to be another waiting! In fiction, at least!!

I’ve spent far more time in Australia than I usually do, but we did make a quick foray to the middle east, and we have traversed Australia from its early colonial days to through to the present. I have also been, as last month, rather one-sided in author gender, with just one male author again bringing up the rear.

Now, the usual: Have you read Western Lane? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Rebecca Burton, Ravenous girls (#BookReview)

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When I announced the two winners of Finlay Lloyd’s inaugural 20/40 Publishing Prize, a few days ago, I said I planned to read them for the Novellas in November challenge/meme/reading month. (What do we call these things?) So here, now, is my post on the first I’ve read, Rebecca Burton’s Ravenous girls.

Rebecca Burton, as I’ve said in previous posts on the prize, is an editor, and author of two young adult novels, Leaving Jetty Road and Beyond Evie, both published by HarperCollins Australia. This book, I’d say, is a cross-over. It could be read by YA readers, but its subtle perspective of looking back from some years later, means that it is particularly geared to adult readers.

Finlay Lloyd writes on their website that

Stories of family dysfunction often expose us to relentless failure. And while Ravenous Girls is about the tensions and growing distance between two sisters—the elder burdened by anorexia, the younger by self-doubt—it is distinguished by its lithe and tender understanding of the complexities of growing up.

It is, I suppose, a story of family dysfunction, but in the sense that most families, dare I say, can be dysfunctional to a point. By this I mean that many families face trauma and challenges that can affect how well they function. Which is the chicken, which is the egg? It’s probably not worth much going there – and this book doesn’t. Nonetheless, there is a bit of backstory to why things may be the way they are.

So, Ravenous girls. It’s told first person from the point of view of 14-year-old Frankie, which puts her slap-bang in the coming-of-age category, and like most her age she is unsure about who she is. She feels “the wrongness of me”, which includes sometimes being “too much me”. She is challenged by her friend “racing away” from her, as can often happen at this time of life, with neither the racer-ahead nor the left-behind having the tools – the experience – to manage it gracefully. Frankie feels the loss deeply, just when friendship is most needed.

Meanwhile, Frankie’s family life is challenged by the fact that Justine, her seventeen-year-old sister, is, as the book opens, about to enter an Eating Disorders Unit as a live-in patient. The third person in this family is Iris, their mother. She – and all of them – still suffer from the premature death of husband and father some eleven years earlier. I have seen this happen – a mother’s grief over the early death of her husband derailing family relationships. That seems to be part of the situation here.

The story primarily covers the months over the summer holidays when Justine is in hospital. Frankie, at loose ends because friend Narelle has secured a holiday job, visits Justine every day. She observes Justine, and thinks about what is happening to her and why. She and her mother attend, with Justine, a poorly-handled family therapy session, and she also attends a family support group. Neither of these provide much help or support. She doesn’t see either Justine or her family in these, so she continues to try to work it out for herself. She sees her mother’s tiredness and pain, and she sees there is no space for her own concerns when Justine’s needs are so great, which is something Justine, bound up in her own growing-up challenges, doesn’t appreciate.

What elevates this reading from what could have been a “woe is me” tale are the occasional foreshadowings or hints from later Frankie, telling us what she now knows, or in some cases, still doesn’t know. These references play several roles, from recognising their naiveté at the time (“It astonishes me now that this is the way we thought”) or her own self-absorbed inattention (“maybe if I’d listened more carefully”) to sharing lessons learnt or hinting that character development had occurred (“But now I think that I may have been a monster too”). Burton handles these later reflections adroitly – they add richness and depth without spoiling the conclusion or losing the tension or reducing our care for the characters.

The novella is set in 1985/1986 Adelaide, and Burton captures the era well – the political happenings from Queensland’s Joh Bjelke-Peterson to America’s Unabomber, the technology (cordless phones appearing, but certainly no mobiles!), the films and music. I could ask why the novel is set then, which is my usual question for novels set in the past, but, for a start, an earlier time-period is necessary to enable the inclusion of that perspective, I’ve mentioned, of the much older Frankie.

There are references during the novella to Frankie and her mum reading books about anorexia and other recovery memoirs – as readers will do when confronted by difficult situations. I liked this comment – or warning – about such memoirs:

It didn’t occur to me that what was truth for one person might not be true for another – or that the truth as people wrote about it wasn’t always the truth as they’d experienced it.

Fortunately, Ravenous girls isn’t a memoir!

As with all Finlay Lloyd books, the design is gorgeous. It has their unique shape, a dust jacket despite being a paperback, and a stylish but minimalist overall design aesthetic with elements that carry through to the other winner.

Before I close I must mention the title, Ravenous girls, which relates to anorexia and the hunger its sufferers experience. In anorexia, as we know, the hunger, and hence the title, is not purely literal. For Justine, as she articulates to Frankie, it’s about “wants”: “I don’t want to want the things I want, you know?” “Ravenous” perfectly encapsulates the intensity of need explored here.

Ravenous girls is a compassionate book that sensitively charts the emotional ups and downs that are part of the anorexia landscape, and explores the helplessness about understanding what is such an individual and complex mental condition. It also conveys something more generally relatable about family relationships – sisterhood and daughterhood, in particular – and about how darned hard it is to grow up. But, grow up we do.

Read for Novellas in November. Lisa (ANZ Litlovers) and Theresa (Theresa Smith Writes) have reviewed both winners in one post, but I am doing them separately. Watch this space.

Rebecca Burton
Ravenous girls
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2023
103pp.
ISBN: 9780645927009