Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, woman, other (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 30 Comments

If ever there was a “zeitgeist” book, Bernadine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize winning novel, Girl, woman, other is it. It might be an English-set novel about black British women, “the embodiment of Otherness”, but its concerns, ranging from ingrained inequality, racism and sexism to newer issues such as globalisation, are contemporary – and relevant far beyond its setting.

Take, for example, sexual violence. One young woman, after being raped, is not sure exactly what happened:

    wondering if he’d done anything wrong or was it her fault
    she should have stayed and talked to him about it
    he might have said he hadn’t heard her saying no

(Chapter 2: LaTisha)

This could have been set in Australia, given discussions happening here right now. It is truly troubling how many young women apparently feel uncertain about what they’ve experienced, and turn it back on themselves. But now, having leapt in to make my “zeitgeist” point, I’ll start again, properly!

Girl, woman, other is an astonishing book, as most of my reading group agreed. It’s fresh and exuberant, but oh so biting too. As much poetry as prose, it has minimal punctuation and yet it just flows. It’s a risky book – what great art isn’t? – because, in addition to its idiosyncratic style, it comprises multiple points-of-view that move back-and-forth in time. There are four main chapters, each divided into three parts with each part in the voice of a different character. This makes 12 voices in all! The voices within each chapter are closely related in some way – mothers, daughters, friends – but the links between the four chapters are more subtle. This demands much of the reader.

Fortunately, the voices are captivating. Spanning over a century, they range from the ultra-confident 19-year-old Yazz, daughter of a lesbian mother, to 93-year-old Hattie, a strong-minded farmer and great-grandmother. All are women, and all have some genetic links with African or Caribbean cultures, some from a few generations back, others being themselves migrants. Through them, Evaristo interrogates a diversity of experiences and responses to colour, in particular, in contemporary England. Hattie’s mother, for example, had an Abyssinian father, and she herself had married an African-American GI. However, with the colour fading amongst her descendants, the family is less than happy when it is reintroduced by Julie who “saw not the darkness of his skin but the lightness of his spirit”. Hattie reflects

    none of them identifies as black and she suspects they pass as white, which would sadden Slim if he was still around 
    she doesn’t mind, whatever works for them and if they can get away with it, good luck to them, why wear the burden of colour to hold you back?
    the only thing she objects to is when they objected to Chimango when he arrived on the scene, a fellow nurse at the hospital where Julie worked, from Malawi
    Hattie was sickened by their behaviour, they should’ve been more enlightened 
    but the family was becoming whiter with every generation 
    and they didn’t want any backsliding

(Chapter 4: Hattie)

You can see how well the language flows, and how accessible it is. It’s experimental but unforced. You can also see the author’s approach to her subject matter, which is to show, through her characters, different behaviours, values and attitudes. With 12 characters telling of their interactions with even more people, the breadth of humanity Evaristo encompasses is breathtaking – and it is all done without judgement. Some characters might, and do, judge each other, but Evaristo doesn’t. She lets them speak for themselves, which requires us to read attentively.

So, when Dominique’s female lover increasingly restricts her life, we see abusive control long before she does. And, when 93-year-old Hattie’s mother, Grace, experiences postpartum depression in the early 20th century, it is not named. Who talked about that then? But we recognise it immediately.

Issues come and go in this novel, whether they are up-to-the-minute topics, such as Brexit or transgender rights, or ongoing issues in women’s lives such as violence or ageing. Underpinning it all, however, is race and inequality. Being “othered” is common to Evaristo’s characters, and they all deal with it differently, but we see very clearly its debilitating, devastating impact.

    oh to be one of the privileged of this world who take it for granted that it’s their right to surf the globe unhindered, unsuspected, respected

(Chapter 2: Carole)

By now you might be thinking a few things – that the novel is heavy-going, perhaps, or that it’s chaotic. But nothing doing. For all its seriousness – and there are definitely grim moments – the novel has a light touch, frequently bitingly satiric, sometimes simply funny, always human. Nineteen-year-old Yazz, for example, is a hoot with her teenage know-it-all confidence. Many recognise their failings, as they grow older, such as Amma appreciating her father too late or Carole realising her supportive teacher had feelings. Transgender Morgan, the epitome of the modern activist, speaks many truths:

    Megan was part Ethiopian, part African-American, part Malawian, and part English
    which felt weird when you broke it down like that because essentially she was just a complete human being

Chapter 4: Megan/Morgan

And, although the novel may sound chaotic, it does have an overarching structure. It starts hours before Amma’s play – the one she hopes will finally make her name – is to premiere at the National Theatre, and it ends with the After Party and an Epilogue, which, combined, bring most of the characters together. The ending, in fact, is clever. The After Party is political, drawing together the threads and reminding us that there’s a long way to go before black people in white societies are not defined by their colour. The Epilogue, on the other hand, is personal, showing us that there’s always human connection and that that, really, is the stuff of life – if only we could all see it.

Girl, woman, other is such a read. Uncompromising in its politics, but also warm and cheeky, it offers heart and intelligence in equal measure.

Bernadine Evaristo
Girl, woman, other
Hamish Hamilton, 2019
453pp.
ISBN: 9780241985007 (ebook)

Monday musings on Australian literature: 1936 in fiction

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

As some of you will know Karen (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon (Stuck in a Book) have been running for some time “reading weeks, which involves their choosing, somewhat randomly, a year from which “everyone reads, enjoys, posts and shares wonderful books and discoveries from the year in question”. The next one is 1936, and happens from 12-18 April.

Despite my best intentions, I’ve not yet managed to take part, though I know several of my blogging friends have. I might this time – we’ll see – but, regardless, I’ve decided to focus on that year in my Monday Musings, a week in advance, to provide some inspiration perhaps?

1936 was a pretty tumultuous time in Europe with, for example, the Spanish Civil War, the 1936 Summer Olympics and Hitler’s aggressive display, not to mention the Nazis amping up their power and control. Things were generally quieter in Australia, with Joseph Lyons our Prime Minister.

Dymphna Cusack, Jungfrau

However, it was a busy time in literature, with several writers we know publishing novels (and other works but my focus here is novels). Here is a selection – links on names go to my posts on that writer:

There weren’t so many literary prizes then, as now, but Miles Franklin’s All that swagger won the 1936 SH Prior Memorial Prize for Australian Literature, and Eleanor Dark’s Return to Coolami won the ALS Gold Medal.

Several authors were born this year, including Marian Eldridge (one of the Canberra Seven), Robin Klein, Kate Llewellyn and Alex Miller.

The state of the art

Of course, I checked Trove to see what newspapers of the time were saying about Australian literature, and it’s pretty much as I’ve written in my other Monday Musings posts on the era – the ongoing concern about lack of recognition of Australian writing, of Australian writers having to go overseas to make a living, of most publishing of Australian authors happening overseas.

Perth’s Western Mail, announcing the publication of the Australian writers annual, starts with:

Too long have the Australian public been kept in ignorance of the wealth of literary work that is and has been done by Australian writers, the ranks of whom are increasing every year. Perhaps the fault lies with the reader, perhaps the reason can be found in a lack of publicity. 

Rockhampton’s Morning Bulletin focuses on the the quality of what is being produced, arguing that Australian literature, while naturally looking to England, “is gradually tending towards a measure of independence”. Indeed, citing Henry Lawson and CJ Dennis (admitting “he may not touch greatness”), this writer says that “brief as is our history, it has developed its own romanticism”.

The Hebrew Standard of Australasia also argues that things are improving, but names women writers. It says:

It is not so many years ago since the prefix ‘Australian’ when applied to anything literary, artistic, or cultural, provoked the ire of editors and the sneers at would-be highbrows. Yet, even then, much, had been done by writers here in our midst to put Australia into a very appreciable place on the literary map. 

It then names Ethel Turner (whose writing for children avoided “the stilted and moral” stories common at the time). It continues to say that, what Turner did for children’s literature, others are “endeavouring to do for literature in general”. Unfortunately, though, confirming my opening paragraph, it says that “many of our best have had to go abroad to achieve fame, such as Henry Handel Richardson and Helen Simpson”. However, confirming Western Mail’s supposition, it suggests that “we still have many people with us whose work, given proper publicity [my stress], would make the term ‘Australian’ respected in any part of the world”. One of these is Eleanor Dark.

Apparently, someone was listening to all these woes, and it was a politician! Many newspapers around the country wrote about the Budget statement made in Parliament by then ex-PM, James Scullin. Melbourne’s The Herald starts its report with:

It is doubtful whether “the life austere that waits upon the man of letters here” can be given more than a suggestion of comfort by the helping hand of Government. Yet the generous speech for which Mr Scullin caught the Federal Speaker’s eye yesterday will be approved and possibly have influence. 

It describes Scullin as a “book-lover … who earnestly desires the advancement of his country in things of the mind and spirit.” Scullin identified the minimal support the government had given to literature, and then, as Melbourne’s The Age and Hobart’s Mercury outline, he named various ways in which the government could help, such as:

  • increased payments to struggling authors (rather than the minimal pension currently offered);
  • the establishment of a literary prize for the best Australian works;
  • supporting/undertaking/providing grants for the publication of nationally significant books now out of print, of works of national value, and of new works struggling to find a publisher.

Interestingly, the Mercury reports that he suggested that “wealthy people in Australia might follow if a lead were given by the national Parliament”, while The Age shared that Scullin believed that with more time for leisure available “in the machine age”,

Literature offered the best scope to utilise this added leisure with profit to Australian culture. 

The Sydney Morning Herald’s report is also worth reading.

I’m not sure that much happened immediately, but Wikipedia (linked on his name above) says that, with the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Scullin was responsible for a dramatic boost to the Commonwealth Literary Fund‘s budget in 1939. A start!

And, of course, it was another Labor politician, Kevin Rudd, who created the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, in 2007.

Additional sources:

Meanwhile, do you plan to take part in the 1936 Club?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Shuggie Bain TO …

/ Whispering Gums / 55 Comments

It is now autumn here Down Under, and, like our summer, it’s a strange one – cooler and wetter than “normal”. Oops, we need to get used to the fact that in this world of change, there is no “normal” anymore, “new” or otherwise. Anyhow, ’nuff said. Let’s get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book – and after a two-book run, we are back to normal (did I say that!) by which I mean to a starting book I haven’t read, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. It won several awards, including the 2020 Booker Prize. I’d like to read it.

Now, I considered many links for this – subject, titled for main character, Scottish setting, but in the end I’ve gone with the obvious, another Booker Prize winner. I used to read them all, but since blogging I’ve only read a handful, but I did have a choice, and the one I’ve chosen doesn’t really have any other obvious links with Shuggie Bain besides both being winners, but I’m sticking with it, New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s The luminaries (my review).

Book cover

It’s an historical novel set on the goldfields of New Zealand’s West Coast, and is grand and ambitious in its conception. Somewhat less grand, but nonetheless, also an historical novel set in a mining community is South African writer Karen Jennings’ Upturned earth (my review). Inspired by a real character, it’s primarily about corrupt powerful men destroying the lives of the powerless men in their employ, and the challenge of standing up to them.

Another novel about corrupt men – in this case police and justice officials – destroying the lives of powerless others is the crime novel I read in March for Kim’s (Reading Matters) Southern Cross Crime Month, Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road (my review). It is set in a tiny, poor community in rural South Australia and is about a demoted police officer’s struggles to solve a crime in a situation where he doesn’t know which colleagues he can trust.

My next book is also titled for the name of a road, but it is set in one of the world’s busiest capital cities, Helene Hanff’s delightful book, 84 Charing Cross Road (my review). Now a classic, you probably know it, but if not, it comprises the charming letters between American writer and bibliophile Helene Hanff and bookseller Frank Doel of Marks & Co, a London bookshop which specialised in secondhand and antiquarian books.

Maria Edgeworth, Leonora

For my next link, we are staying in England, and sticking with letters, this time with a classic epistolary novel, Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora (my review). Published in 1806, it lacks the subtlety of Austen’s novels, the first of which was published in 1811, but it’s interesting for Edgeworth’s exploration of English and French “sensibilities” during Napoleonic times.

And so, I’m going to stay with this time period and conclude with Caroline Moorhead’s Dancing to the precipice (my review) which is a biography of French aristocrat Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet, from her birth in 1770 to her death in 1853. It’s a wild ride, but a fascinating story about survival in tricky political times.

So, again we’ve roamed around a bit, from Scotland to New Zealand to South Africa, over to Australia before returned to Europe where we stayed for the last three books. We time travelled a bit covering many time periods between the late 1700s to contemporary times. Five of my links were written by women.

Now, the usual: Have you read Shuggie Bain? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Jane Austen, Juvenilia, Volume the second (#Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

Last November, my Jane Austen group read the first volume (my review) of Jane Austen’s Juvenilia, with a plan to read the next two volumes during 2021. This month, we read the second volume, which contains pieces written, it is believed, between 1790 and 1793, when Austen was 14 to 17 years old. As with the other volumes, the pieces were later transcribed by her into three notebooks, with the original manuscripts now being lost (as far as we know). Interestingly, the notebook contents are not presented in perfect chronological order of her writing the pieces, so did she “curate” them in some way? Or did she just transcribe them, randomly, picking up pieces as she felt like it?

Anyhow, volume 2 includes three longer works – Love and freindship, Lesley Castle and The history of England – plus other pieces. The contents are:

  • Love and freindship (13 June 1790, dated by Austen) (my separate post)
  • Lesley Castle (3 Jan to 13 April 1792)
  • The history of England (26 November 1791, dated by Austen) (my separate post)
  • A collection of letters (dedicated to a childhood friend, Miss Cooper, who was married on 11 December 1792)
  • Scraps (dedicated to niece Fanny Austen, who was born in Jan 1793)

For more intro, including why read the Juvenilia, please check my first post, linked above.

Thoughts

This volume contains fewer – but some longer – pieces than the first volume. As I’ve written separately on two of them (as linked above), I won’t focus on them here. Those two and, in fact, Lesley Castle, have been published in separate volumes and/or in other combinations, so they tend to be better known by Austen fans.

Austen scholar Brian Southam suggests that Austen transcribed these pieces (which, evidence suggests, she was still doing in 1809) in order to “keep” them? Why? One reason is that they were read aloud in family circles as a form of entertainment. We know this because her brother Henry said so in the biographical notice he (most probably, it was he) wrote for the posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey:

She read aloud with very great taste and effect. Her own works, probably, were never heard so much to advantage as from her own mouth; for she partook largely in all the best gifts of the comic muse. 

This is supported, say those who have seen them, by the fact that the notebooks look well used.

I’d like to ponder an additional reason for her wanting to “keep” them, the reason used by many novelists – Helen Garner, for example – which is for possible use in future works. This seems to me to be particularly relevant to the section called A collection of letters. These letters could be seen as character studies, she could turn to. The letters are:

  • From a mother to her friend: in this letter the mother writes of bringing “out” both her daughters at the same time, which reminds me of all the Bennet girls being out at once in Pride and prejudice (and Lady Catherine’s horror at such an idea!)
  • From a young lady crossed in love to her freind: this young lady suffers from acute “melancholy” after being disappointed in love, so much so that her friends are alarmed for her: “They fear my declining health; they lament my want of spirits; they dread the effects of both”. This is closely reminiscent of Sense and sensibility’s Marianne Dashwood and her falling apart after being rebuffed my Willoughy, and, interestingly, the names Willoughby and Dashwood appear in this letter.
  • From a young lady in distress’d circumstances to her freind: This young girl is treated with supercilious kindness by the local lady, which of course, calls to mind Lady Catherine in Pride and prejudice.
  • From a young lady rather impertinent to her freind: This young lady brazenly admits in a letter to her friend that “I am not wanting for impudence when I have any end in view”. She recounts being very nosy about a new acquaintance’s life “and what had befallen her”. I can’t bring to mind a direct match in the novels but authors don’t reuse all ideas they jot down, do they? And, there are plenty of impudent young women in Austen, including Lucy Steele in Sense and sensibility.
  • From a young lady very much in love to her freind: Again, Sense and sensibility comes to mind – and Marianne – with the young lady Henrietta’s comment on instant attraction “… for that is the only kind of love I would give a farthing for–There is some sense in being in being in love at first sight”. The romance, however, is impacted by the love object’s estate not being enough for “Henrietta who has had an offer from a Colonel and been toasted by a Baronet”!

Following this collection of letters is the final group in the volume, just labelled Scraps. It comprises a Dedication to her young niece, Fanny, in which she describes the pieces as comprising her “opinions and admonitions on the conduct of young women”. These are delightful pieces of absurdity and nonsense. I wonder if they are the young Austen’s response to the stuffy conduct books for women that were popular at the time, like Reverend James Fordyce’s conduct book, Sermons to young women (1777) from which Pride and prejudice‘s earnest but stuffy and unempathetic Mr Collins reads to his young cousins.

More themes/concerns

In my last post, I focused particularly on themes and styles in the first volume, and most of what I said there also applies to the second volume. However, I thought I’d mention here some of the issues that I picked up in the second volume that reminded me of her first three novels, in particular. So, in the second volume, she parodies:

  • Gothic (seen in Northanger Abbey); 
  • overactive imagination and sensibility (found particularly in Northanger Abbey and Sense and sensibility); 
  • snobbishness (pointing particularly to Pride and prejudice)
  • self-centredness (found in all the novels, really)

It seems petty clear that in these early writings she was making fun of Gothic and 18th century literature’s favouring of sensibility over sense. I’d argue that she took up these ideas again in the first novels she wrote, Northanger Abbey and Sense and sensibility (though the former was published much later), but, as I wrote in my previous post, her tone in the Juvenilia is one of exuberant exaggeration and parody rather than the more sophisticated wit and irony we have in her adult novels.

I’ll finish here, but will be back with more Juvenilia later, including, perhaps, a separate post on Lesley Castle!

Jane Austen
“Juvenilia. Volume the second” (ed. R.W. Chapman & Brian Southam)
in The Oxford illustrated Jane Austen. Vol VI, Minor works
London: Oxford University Press, 1969 (revision)
pp. 76-178
ISBN: 19 254706 2

Monday musings on Australian literature: Expressing the zeitgeist

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

At the end of last week’s Monday Musings, I asked whether “saying something” was important to you, meaning, really, is it a top criterion when you choose what to read or when you talk about what you’ve read? For me, it is, as you can probably tell from the sorts of reviews I write. So, I’ve decided to explore it a little here, focussing on fiction (though “saying something” is, for me, important in literature, and the arts, more broadly.)

The question is, of course, what is this “something”? Now, what I write next is going to be pretty much off the top of my head, so apologies if it’s too obvious! Thinking about it, I feel I can break it down into three, sometimes overlapping, “somethings”.

There’s human nature, which, like Wikipedia, I’d define as the way humans think, feel and act. This is where Jane Austen, for example, comes in. She skewers our pretensions and failings – in all their forms – and shows our finer qualities, with such precision that she never goes out of date (even if some readers find her language hard-going).

Then there’s, for want of a better word, the human condition, which is hard to define, but Wikipedia helps by suggesting that it encompasses “all of the characteristics and key events that compose the essentials of human existence, including birth, growth, emotion, aspiration, conflict, and mortality”. This means the things that make up all our lives, no matter who we are or where we live – our lives, our nature, our society. Wikipedia goes on to say that ‘as a literary term, “the human condition” is typically used in the context of ambiguous subjects, such as the meaning of life or moral concerns’. It’s probably fair to say that any book that says something falls into this category!

These two “somethings” are the ones most likely to produce the classics because, by definition, their concerns are universal, transcending place and time. To become classics books need more, of course, including good or innovative writing, great characters, and, it must be said, luck.

Anyhow, finally, there’s the zeitgeist, which originally meant “the spirit of the age”, but which many of us use to mean the specific issues concerning the times we are currently living in (which can be a bit narrower that an “age”, however you define that).

These books, I’d say, are less likely to last, unless they also encompass those more universal concerns.

Today’s “zeitgeist”

Right now, the zeitgeist would include climate change, sexism (in its broadest meaning, and exemplified by movements like “me too”), racism (again in its broadest sense, and exemplified by the movement for reconciliation and truth-telling here in Australia, and more generally “black lives matter”), and minority (like refugee and migrant, LGBTQIA+, disability, aged) rights overall. Related to these, but broader, are globalisation, the failures of democracy and capitalism, and increasing inequality. Most of these issues aren’t new of course, but they have a certain flavour and power right now.

Are Australian novels covering these? And, if so, how? My feeling is that contemporary, historical and dystopian fiction would be the main areas to check, but, in the interests of not writing too long an essay, I’ve decided to look at the last five years of some of our major literary awards. Five years does not a “zeitgeist” make, really, but you know what I mean!

Book cover

The Miles Franklin Award is a good place to start. The last two winners, Tara June Winch’s The yield (my review) and Melissa Lucashenko’s Too much lip (my review), both deal with dispossession and its all-encompassing impact on Indigenous Australians, and so are definitely “zeitgeist” novels. Michelle de Kretser’s The life to come (my review) also fits, with its broad-based satire of middle-class Australia’s pretensions and assumptions, particularly regarding multiculturalism and migrants. 2017’s winner, Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions (Lisa’s review), starts with ageing, but encompasses a wide range of “extinctions” including, I understand, the Stolen Generations and genocide, so it fits too, as does the previous year’s winner, Charlotte Wood’s The natural way of things (my review) which confronts, head on, the scapegoating of women for men’s sexual behaviour. These winners, then, pretty squarely reflect the “zeitgeist”.

Heather Rose, The museum of modern love

Probably the best known of the state-sponsored awards are the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, so I’m choosing the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction to represent them! 2020 and 2019 were won by the above-mentioned Tara June Winch’s The yield and Michelle de Kretser’s The life to come. Bram Presser’s The book of dirt (Lisa’s review) won in 2018. Essentially, it’s a Holocaust story, so where does it fit? Well, I think it fits into our “zeitgeist” group because not only does it deal with persecution of minorities, or, the “othering” of people, but it also reflects, I understand, our current understanding of intergenerational trauma and its longterm impact. 2017’s winner, Heather Rose’s The museum of modern love (my review) is different, its concerns being the exploration of art’s place in “the human condition”, and how they intersect. Finally, in 2016, the winner was Melinda Bobis’ Locust girl: A lovesong (Lisa’s review). It is an allegory, and Lisa writes:

Fearful containment of The Other distorts the lives of the rulers of the Five Kingdoms, even as it protects them from having to share what is left after the environment has been ruined.

Bobis is passionately committed to saying something in all her art. Fear of “Other” and a ruined environment ensure its inclusion in our “zeitgeist” group. Like the Miles Franklin, then, most of these books reflect the “zeitgeist”.

Charlotte Wood, The natural way of things

What about the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction? It can behave a little differently from the other mainstream awards. 2020 and 2016 were won by the aforementioned Winch and Wood novels (with the latter being shared, but I’ll come to that.) 2019’s winner, however, is, perhaps an outlier. I haven’t read Gail Jones’ The death of Noah Glass (Brona’s review) but as far as I can gather it seems to be more about art and the “human condition” (loss and family relationships) than about specific issues of today. Gerald Murnane is often hard to categorise, but Lisa’s review of his 2018 winning Border districts tells me that at least some of its subject matter, clerical sexual abuse is a “zeitgeist” concern. Another hard to categorise book – and another I’ve yet to but am keen to read – is 2017’s winner, Ryan O’Neill’s satirical Their brilliant careers. Its scope is broad, including satirising writing, publishing and Australian literary culture in general, but along the way it also, apparently, addresses issues like racism and sexism. Finally, there’s Lisa Gorton’s The life of houses, 2016’s co-winner (Jonathan’s review). It too defies categorisation, at least from the reviews I’ve read, and is perhaps more universal family-and-relationships based. The PM’s Literary Awards have, I’d say, lived up to my sense of their taking more risks, being more prepared to buck, with the Fiction anyhow, the “zeitgeist”!

Finally

This survey is too brief, too simple and definitely too limited to draw any significant conclusions, but I’ve had some fun thinking about it and documenting some ideas. My tastes are catholic. I ask just two things – for the arts I “consume” to say something and for it to be done well, respectfully, engagingly, and, perhaps, provocatively.

Those of you who like your reading “to say something”, what sort/s of “somethings” do you like – or, would you like?

Stella Prize and Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2021 Shortlists announced

/ Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

With two shortlists being announced on the heels of each other, I thought I would combine them into one post, so here goes …

Stella Prize Shortlist

The Stella Prize shortlist was announced this morning and is, I suppose, a bit of a surprise for me – though I haven’t read the books so I have nothing to base that on. I was hoping Ellen Savage’s Blueberries, Nardi Simpson’s Song of the crocodile and Elizabeth Savage’s Smart ovens for lonely people would be in the list as they are on my TBR or I’m keen to read them. However, besides the Stella judges, I have it on good authority from other bloggers that many of the books below are excellent reads, so … on with the show … and I’ll see what I can read!

The shortlist

Book cover

Stella’s Executive Director, Jaclyn Booton makes a political point – which is very Stella!:

As recent events have shown, there’s significant cultural change needed in this country to ensure women’s voices are heard. Books can be a tool for positive social change – I encourage everyone to seek out these books and delve into the stories and perspectives within.

The judge’s chair, Zoya Patel, says:

“The 2021 Stella Prize shortlist truly demonstrates the immensity of talent in Australian women and non-binary authors. This shortlist is varied, diverse, and reflects on urgent themes across the gamut of human experience.

To read the judges on each of the shortlisted books, do check out the Stella website.

The winner will be announced on April 22.

NSW Premiers Literary Awards

Unlike the Stella, these awards comprise several categories, but I’m just going to share the two fiction ones.

Book cover

The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction

  • Kate Grenville’s A room made of leaves
  • Carol LeFevre’s Murmurations (my review)
  • Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach
  • Pip Williams’ The dictionary of lost words
  • Charlotte Wood’s The weekend (my review)
  • Evie Wyld’s The bass rock

UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing

  • Erin Hortle’s The octopus and I
  • Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach
  • Sean O’Beirne’s A couple of things before the end
  • Nardi Simpson’s Song of the crocodile
  • Madeleine Watts’ The Inland Sea

For more categories in these awards, and links to her own and other bloggers’ reviews, please see Lisa’s post on them.

Any comments?

Leah Swann, Sheerwater (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments
Book cover

I’ve been wanting to read Leah Swann’s Sheerwater, having read and enjoyed, a few years ago, her short story collection, Bearings (my review). However, I didn’t get around to buying a copy, so was pleased to see it available as an audio book when I was looking for listening matter for our recent Melbourne trip. I thought we’d finish it on the trip but, in the end, the sightseeing was so interesting that we listened less than we thought we would. We’ve finished it now!

But, how to write about a crime book in which the main mystery – the disappearance of two boys – is resolved for us early on. At least, resolved in the sense that we discover what has happened to them and who was involved. As it turns out, though – and we learn this quickly – there’s another story to tell, and it’s a powerful, terrifying and unfortunately only too relevant one, a story of domestic violence, of power and control that isolates those who are vulnerable.

Interestingly, the novel’s opening reminded me strongly of the unforgettable opening to Ian McEwan’s Enduring love, which, as it happens, is also about dysfunctional love, albeit a different sort. There is also an ironic allusion to Australian literature’s “lost child” motif, when Ava thinks “this was a Continent where you could still get lost”, because these children aren’t “lost” – per se!

Anyhow, the story takes place over three days, and is told in alternating 3rd person voices, primarily those of the mother Ava, father Laurence, and 9-year-old Max who is the older of the two sons. Swann does an impressive job of getting into the heads of these disparate characters. Each one feels psychologically real, and their stories are compelling – well, most of their stories. Laurence is way too chilling to be compelling, but he is scarily real.

Now, I’m not going to write my usual sort of review, because listening to a novel (particularly while driving) doesn’t provide the same opportunity for reflection (and note-taking) that reading does, and certainly not for recording quotes, though I did jot down a few when I wasn’t the driver. The novel falls into the literary crime category, I’d say, for several reasons: it’s not a traditional crime novel; it’s told from multiple points of view; and the language is highly descriptive, if not poetic.

The title Sheerwater, for example, has multiple meanings. There’s the literal one, it being the name of the town that Ava is escaping to, and a literal and metaphorical one in that shearwaters (or, mutton birds), at the time the book is set, are doing their big migration south. They start the novel and each of the three days (if I remember correctly). There’s a sense that their impressive endurance mirrors that of women like Ava, and their arduous journey that of the boys. If we push it, there could also be a play on the words “sheer water” given the multiple meanings of “sheer” (pure, perfect, precipitous) and the role of water and the sea in the novel.

“We become evil when we hide the truth from ourselves” (Mother)

Swann creates a melancholic tone early on with phrases like “no pity under its wings”, and “sea of shipwrecks and stolen lives”. The no-nonsense but ultimately supportive policewoman Ballard is described by Ava as having a face like the “impermeable slap of seawashed stone”. It’s not all completely grim though. There is a lot of love, and Ava’s comment on one person’s kindness being enough to sustain a whole childhood is beautiful albeit, in a sense, prophetic.

So, was this book good to listen to? Yes, and no. Katherine Tonkin reads it well, including bursting into little verses of song when required. I didn’t find her voice intrusive, which can be a problem with audiobooks. However, for me, such highly descriptive books are better read than listened to. Somehow, when listening, there’s a greater sense of wanting to get on with the story. The descriptions and internal ruminations got in the way of that, whereas reading it would have allowed me to better absorb the language and descriptions, to feel and consider them, so I’m sorry about that.

Still, the narrative is strong, and it grabbed our attention, forcing us to think hard about each character, their truthfulness, their motivations, and the soundness of their actions. Who would you believe, and what would you do (if you were any of the characters involved), are the questions you confront as you read. The ending is also strong, emotional – and, dare I say it, appropriate.

In Sheerwater, Swann uses fiction to put flesh on the media stories we hear about domestic violence, encouraging us to see behind the stories to feel the confusion, roller-coaster emotions, helplessness and terror that those involved experience. Sheerwater is a book that says something.

Read for Reading Matters Southern Cross Crime Month. 

Challenge logo

Leah Swann
Sheerwater
(Read by Katherine Tonkin)
Bolinda/HarperCollins Audio, 2020
8hrs 44min (Unabridged)
ISBN: 9781460782354

Monday musings on Australian literature: Peril, and Asian Australian literature

/ Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

A decade ago, I wrote a Monday Musings post on Asian-Australian literature, in which I named, as I often do in such posts, 5 Asian Australian writers. Given the increasing problems of discrimination faced by Asian communities in western countries alongside, perhaps paradoxically, the increased visibility of Asian Australian writing here, I thought an update might be in order.

Peril

I didn’t know when I wrote my last post about the online magazine Peril which had been in existence since 2006! If I had known, I’d have referenced it. Peril focuse, says its About page, on “issues of Asian Australian arts and culture”. It is free, and is supported by donations from its readers, plus the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria and other organisations.

Do read its About page for a full description of them, but, essentially, they want

to showcase new literature through diverse forms, including poetry, drama, translations, creative writing, memoir, essays, biographical profiles, interviews and other story structures. We are also interested in writing about the visual arts, theatre and film and other cultural arts practices. 

In the sidebar on its Home Page, you will find a list of its editions, from Edition 1 Nerds to Edition 44 Feminist Journeys.

Hoa Pham, Lady of the realm

Nerds is introduced in an editorial by Peril‘s founding editor, Hoa Pham (whose Lady of the realm, I’ve reviewed). It is a small edition with pieces by Hoa Pham, S.K. Kelen and Tom Cho, among others. Hoa Pham explains the origin of the name, Peril, as coming from the “so called Yellow Peril that labelled the wave of Chinese immigration in the 19th century. We are perilious (sic) and take risks but not in the way that the Pauline Hansons of the world think!” Well said!

In its now 15 years, it has published 44 issues, which is a great achievement. Contributors have included – and here I’m naming some of the writers I know, so it’s highly selective and not, necessarily, the most prolific contributors: Ouyang Yu, Alice Pung, Benjamin Law, Jessica Tu, Merlinda Bobis, Roanna Gonslaves, Eileen Chong, Shastra Deo, Melanie Cheng.

Edition 22 particularly captured my attention. Titled Black on Rice, it’s

A collaborative co-edition with the State Library of Queensland, Indigenous publishing initiative, black&write!. Together with co-editor, Ellen van Neerven, we consider six Indigenous and six Asian Australian writers whose work we love, whose work we like to see side by side, writers whose take on the relationships (or otherwise) between migrant and Indigenous Australia we would like to hear.

The writers included several Indigenous Australian writers you’ve met on my blog, like Ellen van Neerven, Marie Munkara and Jeanine Leane, in addition to Asian Australian writers like Ouyang Yu, Eleanor Jackson and Michelle Law. Even though, historically of course, their situations are radically different, the “othering” that both groups face binds them. I am often moved on shows like The Drum by the empathy Indigenous and immigrant Australians (of colour) regularly show each other.

There is, naturally, a strong political underpinning to the writing, as edition titles make very clear, like Why are people so unkind (8), We’re queer here (28 & 29), You don’t sound Asian (32), History Repeats (36). Peril is a rich source of contemporary writing, on tap whenever you want it – but do consider donating, if you read it!

Asian Australian writers, update

Now, I’m going to add 5 more writers to the 5 I listed in my first post, but I’m not limiting this list, as I did then, to writers only born elsewhere. Most of these writers have written and published more than the books I mention below – short stories, poetry, etc – and are actively involved in promoting diverse writers and writing.

Merlinda Bobis

Merlinda Bobis Fish-hair woman

Born in the Philippines, Bobis has written four novels, including Fish-hair woman (my review). Her most recent novel, Locust girl: A lovesong, won the 2016 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She is also a visual and performance artist, and has won multiple awards across all her artistic endeavours. She is committed to Asian (indeed migrant) Australians being recognised for their “real” value and contribution rather than being exoticised as other.

Julie Koh

Born in Sydney to Chinese-Australian parents, Koh has had two short story collections published, Capital misfits and Portable curiosities, the latter of which was shortlisted for several awards and won her a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist award in 2017. A review at The Guardian reports that ‘Koh says her stories are essentially about “the entrapment of the individual in social structures”’. 

Hoa Pham

Born in Hobart to Vietnamese parents, Hoa Pham’s first novel, Quicksilver, was published in 1998. She has since had four novels published. Her second novel, Vixen, won a 2001 Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Writer of the Year award. As mentioned above, she was the founding editor of Peril, and I have reviewed her latest novel. She is passionate about about achieving equality for the Asian Australian community, and the role of literature/culture in supporting this.

Mirandi Riwoe

Mirandi Riwoe, The fish girl

Born in Brisbane, with a Chinese-Indonesian father, Riwoe’s The fish girl (my review) won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Queensland Literary Award’s UQ Fiction Prize. Her latest novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain won the 2020 Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, the inaugural ARA Historical Novel Prize, and has been longlisted for this year’s Stella. Both these works confront Asian people’s experience under colonialism.

Elizabeth Tan

Born in Perth to Singaporean parents, Tan’s debut novel, Rubik (on my TBR and reviewed by Bill) was well received. Her follow-up collection of short stories, the wonderfully named Smart ovens for lonely people (also on my TBR and reviewed by Bill) won the 2020 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and is longlisted for this year’s Stella. She writes about a range of contemporary ills, including climate change, capitalism’s failures, and racism.

Finally

In Peril Edition 41 AA17 (March 2020), Hoa Pham wrote “We’re a movement not a moment”. She looks how the Australian literary landscape had changed in the fourteen years since she founded Peril, and asks whether it was still needed. You will surely not be surprised to find that she concludes yes. (Do read her argument if you’re interested.)

And now, a word from Mirandi Riwoe:

I admire those authors who bring us stories and perspectives that reveal unfamiliar worlds. I’m talking of diverse writers, who favour a perspective that is not mainstream. I love books that are beautifully written but are also saying something.

Is saying something an important part of your reading choices?

Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 34 Comments

Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road has been sitting on my TBR pile for over seven years. It was sent to me on spec but, as crime is not my preferred reading, I didn’t feel obliged to read it – and yet, I hung onto it, just in case… So, when Kim (Reading Matters) decided to run an Aussie-New Zealand crime month, I knew what I was going to read.

Actually, though, this is not the first Disher to appear on my blog. Text had previously sent me an earlier one of his, Wyatt, which I managed to talk Son Gums into guest reviewing for me. You can read his review here. However, Wyatt is a thriller with an anti-hero as its protagonist, so is very different to Bitter Wash Road, a police procedural featuring the more sympathetic constable, Paul Hirschhausen (Hirsch).

More sympathetic he may be, but straightforward he is not, because Hirsch is a recently demoted detective who has been sent three hours north from Adelaide to a “single-officer police station” in Tiverton, a fictional “blink-and-you’d-miss-it-town” in struggling “wheat and wool” country. Having previously worked with a team of corrupt detectives, Hirsch, though not found guilty (which, he realises, is different to being found “not guilty”), has “a stink clinging to him”. For whatever reason, Internal Investigations is not convinced he’s clean. Consequently, Hirsch finds himself investigating crime in a fearful community where the police are hated, while also having to watch his own back. Who can he trust?

“an air of waiting”

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed this novel. It’s well-plotted, so that while the ending isn’t a complete surprise – surely it’s not a good crime novel if it is? – there are enough possibilities thrown in your path along the way to keep you pondering which way it will go. However, it’s not the plot that grabbed me. It’s the characterisation, the writing, and the subtle way contemporary issues are referenced or implicated in the story.

Hirsch is introduced in the first paragraph as the “new cop in Tiverton” and then we immediately meet him through a phone conversation with his sergeant, Kropp, in nearby Redruth. Some shots have been heard out near Tin Hut and he is to investigate. We are then launched into the action as Hirsch drives off, but we are also introduced to his character. He’s observant and careful, but also, probably sensibly, a bit paranoid. When he comes across a gum tree blocking the road, he sees it as a potential ambush, but on closer inspection it’s simply a fallen branch:

All that sinewy health on the outside and quiet decay within.

A bit like the police, really.

With such language the tone is set. Hirsch is isolated, physically and psychologically, like many in the region, for different reasons. This is a tough place where Sergeant Kropp’s two brutal constables, Nicholson and Andrewartha, terrorise the locals, paying particular attention – if you know what I mean – to young girls and Indigenous youths. Hirsch needs all his resources to navigate this lot and the rest of the community’s officials. Fortunately, he’s a true policeman, sizing up every place and person he sees or comes across, alert to every nuance in behaviour. This is, after all, the key both to survival and getting at the truth.

Now, I’m not an expert on writing about crime, but even I realise that I haven’t actually mentioned the crime. It wasn’t the gunshots out near Tin Hut, in fact, but the body of a dead girl out that way, along Bitter Wash Road. Hit and run? Or something else? A little later, a woman is found dead, this time looking like suicide. What is going on in the area? Were these deaths murders? Are they connected?

Set in a dry, struggling outback community, Bitter Wash Road is an example of a sub-genre that is now loosely known as outback or drought or bush noir. It is typified by remote communities living in harsh, unforgiving landscapes, and, as Disher makes clear, by the sort of sexism and racism that is peculiar to such settings (which is not to say they aren’t found in other settings too.)

In this sub-genre you would, I expect, find descriptions like this:

A five-hour round trip. Lengthening shadows striped the crops, the highways, the hillsides. More birds on more wires. An air of waiting, of things drying, turning to dust.

So, with suggestive writing like this, a compelling and complex character like Hirsch, and a plot with as many dips and turns as its titular road, Bitter Wash Road makes splendid reading. I’m not surprised that Disher decided a few years later to return to Hirsch with Peace (2019) and Consolation (2020).

Read for Reading Matters Southern Cross Crime Month. Kim has also reviewed this novel.

Garry Disher
Bitter Wash Road
Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2013
325pp.
ISBN: 9781922079244

Review copy courtesy Text Publishing

Monday musings on Australian literature: A view from 1930

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

Today, another post in my occasional series of posts about Australian literature from the 1920s to the 1940s, this one featuring two critics of the time, HM Green (1881-1962) and Nettie Palmer (1885-1964).

To do this, I’m using, primarily, a 1930 review in The Adelaide Advertiser of HM Green’s book, An outline of Australian literature, and a 1930 article the The West Australian by Nettie Palmer on the sudden flowering of the Australian novel. Both articles offer a brief survey of the Australian novel to date, with Palmer’s providing an update on “now”.

Green

The Advertiser’s reviewer notes that Green’s work is “admirably done”, and “covers all noteworthy ‘creative literature’—verse, prose, fiction, plays, and essays—from the earliest date to two years ago”. S/he goes on to name the works Green admires (with, given the paper’s location, a special reference to South Australia). The reviewer identifies two South Australian-relevant writers. One is Mrs Aeneas Gun’s We of the Never Never, which, Green admits, is “void of plot as are the lives of most people” but which, our reviewer says, is “one of the most popular of Australian books, perhaps because the lives of most people have so much in common with those of its characters”. The other is new to me, William Hay. Green has criticisms, but he also allows The escape of Sir William Heans to be “one of the most notable novels Australia has produced”. Our reviewer believes the same praise could be applied to Hay’s “fine story of the convict days” Herridge of Reality Swamp. 

Tasma, Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill

After this, the only writers our reviewer mentions from Green’s book are women, starting with Rosa Praed, Tasma, and Ada Cambridge. S/he writes that “in spite of the pains [they] lavished on their work, they are probably to the present generation not much more than names”. Green apparently wrote that Cambridge was in “some respects, ahead of her time, and though many of her advanced opinions have now been accepted, we are not quite ready for all even yet.” Our reviewer continues that Cambridge’s ability to feel “so poignantly the wrongs of the world enabled her, as the author [Green] says, to pierce deeper into the heart of humanity than most Australian writers have done”.

Our reviewer concludes with a whole paragraph on Catherine Helen Spence who, s/he writes, “bears a name not so conspicuous as it ought to be in Australian literature”, primarily because of her political activity. However, s/he writes ‘so competent a literary judge as the late Chief Justice Way … paid her the compliment … of describing her writings on proportional representation as “real literature for their terseness, strength, and brilliancy”.’ Green also praises Spence’s work:

The first and best, Clara Morrison [sic], written in the fifties, has, like the rest, been out of print undeservedly, if its merits are as great as Mr. Green says. It does not always follow that an omnivorous reader is a master of the pen; but Miss Spence was one of the best read women of her day, and as a novelist learned her craft from the greatest writers of her own sex in the nineteenth century, and had intelligence enough to perceive their faults and steer clear of them.

Unfortunately, my understanding of Green’s view is rather limited, here, so please just treat this as a taster. I’ll return to him again one day, because his was an important voice at the time.

Palmer

Palmer argues in her article that until the early 1920s, “the novel in Australia was a matter for apology”, but that there had recently been unexpected advances – in “the right direction”. 

She then does a bit of a recap starting with the early novels, of which only a few were still in circulation, including:

obviously, Clarke’s Term of his natural life and Boldrewood’s Robbery under arms, less obviously, some novels by Mrs. Campbell Praed, ‘Tasma’ and Ada Cambridge.

She then makes the interesting comment that there were others “with considerable power and importance” but they “were hardly novels in form”, like Tom Collins’ “remarkable omnium gatherum of the Riverina in the ‘eighties, Such is life“, and “such of Lawson’s short stories as were lightly linked together by their theme”.

Then come more women, with, around 1900, Miles Franklin’s “vivid, sardonic yet girlish confession, My brilliant career“, Barbara Baynton’s “painful, remorseless Human toll“, and a bit later, Katharine Prichard’s Pioneers (my review), followed by her “much more serious and original book, Black opal in 1920″, which had, to the time of writing, “never been well distributed and recognised”. There was not much else “except for commercial novels that were without roots either in the soil of Australia or in that of art”. 

Palmer never pulled any punches! She continued, “looking round us we saw, on the whole, desert”. The causes were clear, a major one being authors depending on “English publishers who naturally preferred to please English readers by giving them no Australian books except those showing, Australia as another America, a wild-west in which an English hero (magazine type) would have monstrous, adventures showing the superior prowess of his race”. The results was that

authors who desired to write simply and truly, of life in Australia as they knew it were hampered, to the point of paralysis, by a sense of hostility. No one wanted their books in advance. No one wants any new art form, handling new subject matter, until it has come into existence — and often not then!

But, she argues, things were starting to change by 1924. The first volume of Henry Handel Richardson‘s “great trilogy” (Australia felix) had appeared in 1917, but the second, The way home, was published in 1925. However, it received little notice in Australia, as “the air was not kindly yet to a genuine work”. However, soon after, Katharine Prichard’s “Working Bullocks, radiant, with awareness of the timber country and its challenging beauty” came out. Its “artistic ‘seriousness'”, she said, “made it more possible for other serious books to be recognised in Australia; and this has actually come about”.

These new novels included Martin Mills’ The Montforts, Vance Palmer’s psychological study The Man Hamilton, and the third volume of Henry Handel Richardson’s trilogy, Ultima Thule, which she described as having “deep literary significance”. A “particularly responsible London critic” called it a masterpiece, and she praised it herself, as being “symphonic in form, with sustained, and developed themes”. The trilogy was received so well by “serious readers in England, the Continent and America”, she felt, that it raised the status of Australian literature.

Book cover

But there’s more! Richard Mahony typified “the misfit”, but types of characters were also appearing, such as “pioneers who could take what advantages there were in the new world about them”. M. Barnard. Eldershaw’s A house is built features such a character. She also praises Brent of Bin Bin’s Up the country and Ten Creeks Run, which contain complex, full lives. And she makes the point I quoted a couple of months ago, about the lack of exploration of “aboriginal life of Australia” and Prichard’s Coonardoo.

Conclusions

So, did Green and Palmer agree about Australian fiction to that point? To some degree – particularly regarding those turn of the century women writers – but I did only read a review of Green (not Green himself) as Bill (The Australian Legend has). Also, Green’s book is a more encyclopaedic one about Australian literature while Palmer’s article focuses specifically on the novel.

Touchstone in his review of Green’s Outline in Melbourne’s The Herald shares Green’s assessment of what’s characteristic of Australian versus overseas literature:

“an independence of spirit, a kind of humorous disillusion, a careless willingness to take a risk, a slightly sardonic good nature and a certain underlying hardness of texture,” but, “in all but the best of it there is a lack of intellectual content, as compared, with work of similar level overseas.” 

This last point is, I think, where Palmer was seeing change in the mid-1920s, which is about when Green’s work finishes. Palmer concluded, with some relief it seems, that “we begin to have books that we can send abroad as our contribution to the literary world in the important form of the novel, the development of character by narrative”.

Note: Bill, Lisa and others have reviewed many of the books listed here. Please check their blogs if you are interested.