Bill curates: Favourite writers, no. 2

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Bill curates is an occasional series where I delve into Sue’s vast archive, stretching back to May 2009, and choose a post for us to revisit.

We discovered in August that Thea Astley is Sue’s #3 favourite writer. We’ve always known that Jane Austen (here) is #1. So I thought we should check out # 2. And, if you’re wondering, I’ve looked and there is no #4. Sue of course – she’s a librarian – is astonishingly well organised, so to go to her Jolley reviews, click on Authors above. There you will find authors listed alphabetically, and beneath each author the books Sue has reviewed.

My original post titled: “Favourite writers 2: Elizabeth Jolley”

Not, unfortunately, being a time-traveller, I haven’t managed to see or hear Jane Austen in person. I am, however, far more fortunate in this regard when it comes to the subject of my next favourite writers post – Elizabeth Jolley. I did get to see and hear her at a literary lunch at the height of her career. My reaction was the same as many others – her “little old lady” appearance and voice belied her sharp wit and earthy worldliness.

Elizabeth Jolley (Photo: Courtesy Fremantle Arts Centre Press)
Elizabeth Jolley (Photo: Courtesy Fremantle Press)

It’s not surprising that she is one of my favourite writers: I call her my antipodean Jane Austen. She is witty and ironic, she is wicked (though blacker than Austen), and she tends to write about a small number of people in a confined, often domestic, situation. But here the similarity ends. While the “character” of Austen’s characters play a role in what happens to them – there’s a reason why Elizabeth not someone like Lydia “gets” Mr Darcy – Austen’s main interest is in the social and economic constraints on her characters. Jolley on the other hand focuses more on the interior. She explores loneliness and alienation. She looks at the disturbing or unsettling sides of relationships, the ‘feelings’ people have but often don’t admit to such as those for a person of the same sex or for a person for whom they should not have feelings for (due, for example, to age differences, power differences, or infidelity). She shows how difficult it is to maintain a long-term intimate or deep relationship that is equal on all levels (physical, intellectual, social, material, etc).

In the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (Vol. 25, No. 1, 1991), Jolley writes:

In my own writing I have been interested in the exploration of survival (perhaps emotional survival), resilience and responsibility. (I only know this now after several books are written).

How very Jolleyesque that aside is – humble but a bit sly at the same time. She continues a little later to say:

…for the most part my characters are perplexed, anxious, often frightened with perhaps one redeeming aspect in their personalities – that of optimism which might for a time, until it gets out of hand, keep them from the specialist’s doorstep.

Photo: Courtesy Fremantle Press
Photo: Courtesy Fremantle Press

The first Jolley I read was the short story, “Night runner”, in an anthology titled Room to move. It introduced me to her concept of alienation and rather black notion of survival, her particular brand of irony, her portrayal of characters who more often than not suffer from some level of self-delusion, and her dark humour. I went on to read Miss Peabody’s inheritance, The newspaper of Claremont Street, The well, The sugar mother, and An innocent gentleman, among others, and have never really been disappointed. I enjoy her use of repetition and self-referencing, the motifs and the characters, even, that reappear in different works. She gets me in the pit of my stomach with her vulnerable but often unkind or downright cruel characters, but makes me laugh at the same time with her depictions of their attempts at survival. You just have to see Ruth Cracknell playing The woman in a lampshade to know what I mean!

I have not yet read all of Jolley’s works. Just as for a long time I kept back one Jane Austen novel because once I’d read it I’d have read them all, I am now doing the same with Jolley. Her books are so delicious they need to be savoured. I’m sure this is not the last post I’ll be writing about her.

Postscript: Since this post I have read more Jolley, but I still have some up my sleeve!

____________________

Bill is right. There is no #4, though I have frequently thought about who would be my number 4. I’ve also wondered about how many favourite writers it would be reasonable to have? I love so many writers, still living and those who are no longer with us … but I think that if I do name a 4th I will stick to ones who have died. And, I think I know who that would be.

You now know my top three writers, as I considered them 10 years ago? Would you care to name your top 3?

Carol Lefevre, Murmurations (#BookReview)

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Book coverMurmurations is a beautiful, evocative word, and Carol Lefevre’s latest book, titled Murmurations, does beautiful, thoughtful justice to it. It is though an unusual book. Styled by its author as a novella, it reads on the surface like a collection of short stories, except that the stories are not only connected by the various characters who pop in and out, but by an overarching mystery concerning one of them, Erris Cleary, whose funeral occurs in the first of the eight stories.

Murumuration is, you may know, the collective noun for a flock of starlings, something I discussed in my 2016 post on Helen Macdonald’s essay “The human flock”. She says starlings flock for protection (out of fear), to signpost where they are to other starlings, and for warmth. Lefevre provides, as an epigraph for her book, an image of a murmuration and the following quote from a paper on starling flocks:

The change in the behavioural state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group is.

These ideas are all reflected, in some way, in Lefevre’s book. But, the book also has another idea as Lefevre explains in her acknowledgements, and that is that each story was inspired by a different Edward Hopper painting. If you know his paintings – like “Automat” which inspires the first story – you will know that although they are set in real places, they have a certain paradoxical other-worldliness, which entwines bleakness with a sort of dreamy expectation. This tone also pervades Lefevre’s book.

Murmurations starts with “After the island”. Here, young doctor’s secretary Emily considers the funeral of her employer’s wife, the 53-year-old Erris Cleary. She remembers some mysterious messages that had occasionally broken through the doctor’s patient note recordings, messages that implied Erris was in danger. The book ends with “Paper Boats”, in which two neighbours, Amanda and Magda, discuss Erris’ death, with Amanda going on to write a short story about it. Erris Cleary, then, is the link that joins the stories.

The six stories that come between these opening and closing ones are all, like the two just mentioned, told third person from different characters’ perspectives. All are women except for the titular (and penultimate) story, “Murmurations”, which features a young man. His, Arthur’s, story is the only one in which we finally “meet” Erris as a living woman. Four of the remaining five stories feature women who moved in Erris’ circle – Claire, Fiona, Jeanie and Delia – with the fifth one featuring Lizbie who had a complicated and ultimately tragic relationship with two sons from this circle. She is also the daughter of the final story’s Amanda.

Each story focuses on the dark little accommodations or disturbances in its protagonist’s life. Marriage breakdown, looming dementia, suicide and other events threaten to – and usually do – destabilise the characters. There is a sense of quiet desperation in the stories, even in those that look to be alright on the surface. Claire (“Little Buddhas everywhere”) clings to the husband who has remarried. She relies on his sense of responsibility, not to mention her faith in her inherent lovability, to keep him looking after her as well as his new family, while Jeanie (“The lives we lost”) is thrown by the fact that the man she married admits years later that he hadn’t loved her then, though he did now. Delia (“This moment is your life”) is starting to lose her mind. She appreciates her second husband but seems to have married the same sort of controlling man she had the first time. And so on.

These are, mostly, the quiet little tragedies of life, the ones that never make the newspapers but that are all around us – if we only knew what questions to ask. As one character or another appears in the story of another, we see the possibilities for impacting each other – as in a murmuration. The overarching tragedy is that for all their apparent connections, no one seems to really see what is happening to the others or to have the time, or even the desire, perhaps, to genuinely care. This is beautifully illustrated in Jeanie’s story. She moves in with her cousin but they can’t connect:

Neither cousin understands what the other is saying. Though they speak the same language, words, sentences, turn opaque when they attempt to describe their lives.

The implication seems to be that this little murmuration of women is a surface one only, with little protection or warmth afforded to the individual members.

The exception is the mysterious Erris who, in the titular story, speaks to the young Arthur, working in her garden. She offers him the chance to fly:

… and a note, addressed to him, scribbled on a page torn from a blind notebook: Fly away, Arthur. Fly far, be free. Erris.

Around the edges of the paper, cloud shapes were filled with dozens of small, dark, pencilled birds.

The book is beautifully structured to suggest complex layers of links between the stories and characters, layers that would only multiply, I suspect on multiple readings.  The first story’s Emily, for example, is a young girl from the Star of Bethlehem children’s home. Then, after five stories about women linked through neighbourhood lives to Erris, we come to the aforementioned young Arthur. He also comes from the Star of Bethlehem children’s home and was a friend of Emily’s. Will these two, despite lacking the opportunities the others have presumably had, make a better fist of their lives?

The final story adds another dimension. In converting Erris’ death and the mystery surrounding it into a short story that she submits to The New Yorker, Amanda hopes to achieve her writing goal:

to hit one true note. A note that will make sense of something, perhaps of everything, a note that will crack the obliterating silence once and for all.

Can fiction, Lefevre seems to be asking, make the difference? Can we, through fiction, see the connections that we don’t always see in the real lives around us? If it’s fiction like this, written with such clarity and heart, I believe it can.

Challenge logoCarol Lefevre
Murmurations
North Geelong: Spinifex, 2020
108pp.
ISBN: 9781925950083

(Review copy courtesy Spinifex Press)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Urban vs Suburban

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Responding to my Monday Musings 10th anniversary post question regarding topics readers might like to see covered, Sue wrote that “there’s so much emphasis on regional writing which is wonderful – since I live outside the cities – but I think urban based fiction could be interesting”. 

Book coverI’ve been pondering this for a long time, in fact, but I’ve kept shying away from it because it’s such a big topic. There are so many questions to answer, before we even get started, beginning with what we mean by “urban”. Sue mentions Garner, Tennant, Park and Tsiolkas as examples of writers who could be considered. Now, Tennant’s Ride on stranger (1943) and Tell morning this (1967), Park’s The harp in the south (1948), and Garner’s Monkey grip (1977) are all clearly urban. That is, they are set in inner city areas. However, do we include suburb-set novels, like Tsiolkas’ The slap (2008) or, say, Patrick White’s The solid mandala (1968), in our definition of urban? Is there a difference, subtle or not so subtle, in the way novels set in inner city areas play out versus those set in the suburbs? I have a feeling there is.

However, Google wasn’t much help. I did find various bits and pieces, including reference to a “new” urban fiction or street lit genre which is, apparently, largely written by African-American writers, and, says the  Wikipedia article, is “as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living”. This article, like others I saw about this “new” genre, is somewhat patchy but it does identify what seems integral to urban  literature as I see it, which is that it’s “usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living”.

Mena Calthorpe, The dyehouse“Underside” here is the operative word, and refers, for me, to those “socio-economic realities”, Wikipedia mentions. Urban fiction tends (and I am generalising) to be about poverty and the various challenges and ills that occur in such an environment – marginalisation (of workers, women, migrants, and so on), crime, drugs, poor health, insecure accommodation, and so on – most of which stem from a sense of powerlessness. These are the sorts of issues variously confronted by Tennant, Park and Garner, and by other “urban” books I’ve reviewed here like William Lane’s The workingman’s paradise (1892) and Mena Calthorpe’s The dyehouse (1961). Many of these novels are – or owe much to – the social realist tradition. Christina Stead’s Seven poor men of Sydney (1934) also fits here.

If we look at urban-set historical fiction, this general trend seems to hold true. Wendy Scarfe’s Hunger town (2014), Eleanor Limprecht’s Long Bay (2015), Emma Ashmere’s The floating garden (2015), and Janet Lee’s The killing of Louisa (2018), for example, all tell of poor and/or marginalised people, from the late 19th century to the 1930s.

There are exceptions, however. Literature, after all, is not a binary affair. So, not all urban-set novels are about poverty and socio-economic challenges. Ada Cambridge’s novels like The three Miss Kings (1883) and A woman’s friendship (1889), Tasma’s Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill (1888), and Dymphna Cusack’s Jungfrau (1936) are set amongst more comfortable and/or often more educated people. They tend to deal with more personal stories to do with family, marriage and self-determination, particularly for women.

Suburban fiction, on the other hand, is not necessarily cheerier, but the concerns can be different. Almost by definition, its focus tends to be the middle class, and it can be more existential because these characters are not struggling for material survival. So, for example, it can be about alienation and spiritual emptiness. Patrick White is a good example, with The solid mandala being a favourite of mine. Elizabeth Harrower’s The watch tower is a psychologically dark novel about young girls left to fend for themselves, so has a nod to the realist urban novels, but the crisis these young women face is of another ilk altogether.

Christos Tsiolkas, The slapAnother common topic in suburban novels is family – often family dysfunction. Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet (1991), set in Perth’s suburbs, is probably the Australian suburban novel of the last few decades, though its protagonists are “battlers” rather than the middle class, and the story is told against the backdrop of history over a few decades. Christos Tsiolkas’ The slap also fits into these family-focused books, but again it’s overlaid with contemporary issues like class, sexuality, and ethnicity.

Steven Carroll’s six Glenroy novels (2001-2019), which I haven’t read, is a series set in Melbourne suburbia. Fairfax literary editor Jason Steger says that these

books have ensured that suburban life has been beautifully chronicled in Carroll’s distinctive style and is ensured a place in Australian literary heritage.

Steger reports that Carroll had read little fiction set in Australian suburbia, besides George Johnston’s My brother Jack (1964). Carroll sees suburban fiction this way

… taking the suburbs, the evolution of the suburb, and ordinary people living in that suburb and looking at the evolution of that place and the people simultaneously and acquiring a panoramic view of the whole thing over a series of novels.

He doesn’t say, though, what that “panoramic” view might be – and therefore how these books might fit into my discussion here!

Anyhow, moving on, the preoccupations and self-absorption of middle class suburbanites is ripe for satire – of which Carmel Bird’s Family skeleton (2015) is a perfect example.

Coming-of-age novels are often set – not surprisingly – in the suburbs, like Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones (2009), Sonya Hartnett’s Golden boys (2014), and Trent Dalton’s Boy swallows universe (2018).

Elizabeth Harrower The watch towerThen, there are the outliers. Where to put Elizabeth Jolley’s novels, many of which are set in  suburbs? Many of her characters are alienated or anxious, so perhaps they are a development of the Patrick White tradition? Amy Witting, Marion Halligan and Jessica Anderson have also set novels in cities and suburbs, some with a wry edge, and many dealing with the challenges women face in navigating contemporary life. And then there’s Sara Dowse’s West block – about to be reissued – which is probably unique here, with its life-within-the-bureaucracy context.

When the fiction – urban or suburban – is set affects the subject matter. Late nineteenth to early twentieth century novels, for example, started to discuss the role and rights of women, aligning with the suffrage and nascent feminist movements. In novels set since World War II, we start to see migration coming to the fore. Madeleine St John’s The women in black (1993) covers both women’s movement issues, and the positive impact of European migration on Australia, in the 1950s. Later novels though deal with some of the uglier aspects of migration – with discrimination and persecution – such as AS Patrić’s Black rock white city (2015).

Tony Birch, Ghost riverWe are also seeing some urban-suburban set Indigenous novels, like Tony Birch’s Ghost river (2015). These tend to be politically-charged, reminiscent in intent if not necessarily in style, of those earlier twentieth century realist novels.

I have made some wild generalisations here, and my coverage of Aussie lit is superficial, but I hope I’ve stimulated some discussion. I also hope Sue is happy with my attempt to meet her request!

(Links on titles are to my reviews. I haven’t linked other blog reviews, because there are too many, but you know where to look!)

Talking with my Dad: Wattles and Jimmy Woodsers

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As many of you know, my father turned 100 this year, and three weeks later, my mother died. Life is sad, but Dad and I are soldiering along – with support of course from Mr Gums, not to mention family elsewhere in Australia. What is amazing, though, is how often new little pieces of information, or insights into Dad’s life, are still cropping up! I’m sharing a couple here, to document them for myself and because they might interest readers here too.

Wattle Day

Image of Golden Wattle

Acacia pycnantha or Golden Wattle, by Melburnian (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Wattle Day, as most Australians now know, occurs on 1 September, celebrating the first day of spring here downunder. The golden wattle (acacia pycnantha), which was included in Australia’s coat of arms in 1912, is just one of many wattle species found around Australia, but most tend to blossom in late winter to early spring. Wikipedia provides the complicated origins of Wattle Day, but by the 1910s it seems, most states in Australia were celebrating it, though it wasn’t a nationally gazetted day until 1992.

So, on this year’s Wattle Day, as I was visiting my Dad, he burst into song, with these opening verses:

The bush was grey
A week to-day
(Olive-green and brown and grey);
But now the spring has come this way,
With blossoms for the wattle.

It seems to be
A fairy tree;
It dances to a melody,
And sings a little song to me
(The graceful, swaying wattle)

– by Veronica Mason

I was astonished. I’d never heard this song. Indeed, I had only become aware of Wattle Day relatively recently. However, on discussing the Day with my patchwork-now-coffee group, I discovered that all present, except one other, were very familiar with Wattle Day. What? Then the penny dropped. My father was born in 1920, and most of this group were born in the late 1930s to 1940. The “one other” was, like me, born in the 1950s. So, on thinking about it, I realised that they were born during times of pro-Australian nationalism, whilst that other and I grew up during a period of cultural cringe, a time when we turned away from things Australian.

Wikipedia helped confirmed this. Referencing Libby Robin, Wikipedia advises that “the day was originally intended to promote patriotism for the new nation of Australia”. I sussed out Libby Robin’s article, “Nationalising Australia: Wattle Days in Australia”, in which she talks about the linking of nature with nationalism. After discussing some of the various nature days that were created, she writes that

Wattle Day was the most aesthetic and human-centred of the three ‘days of nature’, and its influence waned as the century wore on. In the 1930s and later the Gould League went from strength to strength. Arbor Day had a steady and strong following, reinventing itself in the 1990s as ‘Arbor Week’. But Wattle Day changed in the early 1930s, eventually fading away altogether. A Wattle Day League limped on in Victoria until the mid-1960s, but the other states were no longer interested.

So, those born in the first half of the twentieth century were well familiar with the day – and its various songs and poems – while those of us born mid-century have only discovered it in recent years, with its revival and 1992 gazetting. Thanks Dad for the song – and the inspiration to suss out Wattle Day a little more.

A Jimmy Woodser

And then, just this week, Dad mentioned a “Jimmy Woodser”! I looked blank! Do you know what a Jimmy Woodser is, because I sure didn’t!

Barcroft Boake portrait

Barcroft Boake, by George Lambert, pre 1913, Public Domain.

So, back to Google I went. I found several references, but this one on Time Gents (Australian Pub Project) blog is particularly good. The post starts by saying:

Jimmy Woodser is a name given to a man who drinks alone, or a drink consumed alone. The name is thought to come from a poem by Barcroft Boake, published in The Bulletin on May 7 1892, about a fictional Jimmy Wood from Britian [sic] who is determined to end the practice of ‘shouting’ (buying rounds of drinks for a group of mates), by drinking alone.

“One man one liquor! though I have to die
A martyr to my faith, that′s Jimmy Wood, sir.”

“Jimmy Wood, sir” to “Jimmy Woodser”!

Barcroft Boake (1866-1892) was an Australian poet best known for his poem “Where the dead men lie”. (In a little digression, I have posted on, and reviewed works by, his niece Capel Boake.)

Back, though, to Jimmy Woodser. There is an alternative anecdotal version of the term’s origin provided in The Brisbane Courier (May 11, 1926), which dates it to the 1860s and a story about two rival publicans. There’s another one in the Dungog Chronicle (July 14, 1942), while this one in Adelaide’s The Mail (7 July, 1945) provides a rundown of several theories. Without doing more research I can’t confirm which is right, but the meaning doesn’t change. (In a fun little aside, the Glen Innes Examiner and General Advertiser (11 May, 1906) has an article titled ‘A “Jimmy Woodser” Club’ about the creation of the Non Shouting Club, in Araluen, near where I live. Its aim was to reduce the drunkenness that they believed shouting encouraged!)

Meanwhile, Time Gents go on to share a poem by Henry Lawson, titled “The old Jimmy Woodser” (c. 1899). They suggest it could be about a Wollongong character, Billy Fitzpatrick. Its first verse is:

The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar
Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,
Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;
So he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are
And they say that he tipples alone.

“Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far”. Well, my Dad is pretty old, but I’ll have a drink with him any day – and look out for more little treasures like this to research and share.

Emuna Elon, House on endless waters (#BookReview)

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Book coverI’ve said before that I’m surprised by how many takes there can be on World War II, and on the Holocaust, in particular – and once again I’m here with another such story, Emuna Elon’s House on endless waters. I hadn’t heard of Elon before but, according to Wikipedia, she’s an Israeli author, journalist, and women’s rights activist. Her first novel translated into English, If you awaken love, is about life on the West Bank, where she lived for many years.

House on endless waters, however, is historical fiction – or, at least, one of those novels which flips between the present and the past. It tells the story of successful Israeli author Yoel Blum who had been told by his late mother to never go to Amsterdam, from which they’d emigrated. However, the time comes when the middle-aged and internationally successful Blum is urged to Amsterdam by his literary agent to promote his latest Dutch-translated novel. While there, he and his wife visit the Jewish Historical Museum, and here, in a little looping video, he catches an image of his mother Sonia in Amsterdam during the war. Next to her is a man holding a little girl, his sister Nettie, but the baby she is carrying is not he! Who is this baby, and where was he?

Yoel returns to Israel, but, after obtaining the incomplete information his sister is able to provide (which is not divulged to the reader), he goes back to Amsterdam, alone, to research his past and write a novel about it. The result is one of those novels within a novel, as we follow Yoel’s journey alongside reading the story he is writing as he uncovers his family’s – and his – past. How much is “true” and how much Yoel imagines is not the point. We are carried along in the horrors of war-time Amsterdam, in stories of decent hardworking people’s disbelief that life could change so horribly so quickly, of Jewish collaborators, of the hidden children, of the most difficult choices people have to make. Elon conveys viscerally the shock felt by Jewish citizenry as one by one their rights are removed and as the foundations of their lives – something they thought immutable in such a place as Holland – crumble.

Much of this story has been told before. Anne Frank comes to mind of course, and many novels have dealt with the ways in which Jewish people were gradually ostracised and betrayed by their own society (the yellow stars, the loss of jobs, the resumption of homes, the rounding up, the transporting to concentration camps, and so on). What makes this one a little different – at least in my reading to date – is its exploration of the hidden child phenomenon, within a larger story of collaboration, betrayal, resistance and difficult choices.

The important thing, however, is less this difference than that it is a deeply absorbing read. Elon’s ability to manage her two story threads, and maintain our interest in both, speaks to a practised, skilled writer. There is no rigid chapter by chapter alternating of stories. Rather, as Yoel becomes increasingly invested in the life of his mother, Elon starts to blend the two stories, with Yoel sometimes feeling himself in both stories at once. As his sense of self becomes increasingly discombobulated, the line between past and present starts to blur:

Yoel would have liked to write about the architectural significance of Amsterdam, about the implication behind the labor invested in the rows of tiny reddish bricks, about the stylized cornices above the windows and the artistic embellishments that adorn every single building. But early the next morning, Sonia is walking along the street, and across the road the police are evicting a Jewish family from their beautiful art-nouveau-design house. The members of the banished family are trying to walk proudly to the truck that has come to take them away …

For Yoel, unlike the tourists he sees blithely enjoying the sun and culture of Amsterdam, “the past is still here” and it begins to overwhelm him.

Why a story-within-a-story?

This bring me to the question of why would Elon use the story-within-a-story-device? I can think of three reasons, the most obvious being that it draws the reader into the story, engaging us in its unravelling along with the protagonist. Secondly, in this case, it also mirrors how many children of the Holocaust generation didn’t know their parents’ stories – weren’t told them – and therefore had to work out those stories piece by piece. Finally, also in this case, it enables Elon to expose the personal development of her narrator, Yoel, who is initially revealed to be decent but emotionally remote. Very early in the novel, we learn this about him:

Perhaps the day will come when he’ll even train himself to live, a day when he will walk the earth like everyone else without being overcome by the thought that in fact it’s odd , even ridiculous to be a human being …

He is, says his wife, “scared of living”. This novel, then, is partly about identity. Yoel didn’t know his past but it’s clear that the traumas of that past had unconsciously impacted him, as we now know they do. Slowly, as he comes to understand who he is, he also starts to live, to be an engaged human being.

Jan Toorop, The Sea at Katwijk, 1887 (Public Domain)

There is much to this book, with Elon and her novelist Yoel drawing on art and music to reflect both Holland’s cultural achievements and its darker side. A motif running through the book is a stolen work of art – Jan Toorop’s The Sea at Katwijk – that had belonged to Sonia’s friends, Anouk and Martin, who are implicated in what happens. Martin suggests to Sonia that the painting is more about Toorop – “every painter evidently knows only how to depict himself” – than place. However, Sonia also sees herself in it: “there she is in black, there in red, there she is borne from wave to wave, moving in the infinite.” For Yoel, this sea “is a huge finite vessel containing infinite waters”. All this contributes to the novel’s message, one which Yoel finally realises Sonia was telling him:

Whatever was, was. Those waters have already flowed onward.

The trick is to know when to fight those waters, and when to let your “heart encounter the heart of the sea” and be at peace.

House on endless waters came to me out of the blue, but what a find. A Holocaust novel, it contains the horrors of that time but is also imbued with a generous, philosophical spirit that, without excusing atrocity, recognises the humanity of those who made selfish decisions and those who had to live with them. We need perspectives like this.

Emuna Elon
House on endless waters
Translated from Hebrew by Anthony Berris and Linda Yechiel
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2020 (Orig. ed. 2016)
309pp.
ISBN: 9781760877255

(Review copy courtesy Allen & Unwin)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian Writers’ Centre

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I have written posts now on writers centres in every Australian state and territory, but there is also, would you believe, an Australian Writers’ Centre. Who are they, and where do they fit in?

It seems like they are primarily a provider of writing courses. When you click on the About link on their website, the first thing you read is:

Welcome to the Australian Writers’ Centre

We’re Australia’s leading provider of writing courses and we’re so excited that you’ve found us at last!
If you’d like to improve your writing skills or simply find your inspiration, this is the place.

They say that they offer courses in “in creative writing, freelance writing, business writing, blogging and much more”, and that people love their courses “because of their affordability, short duration and accessibility – a risk-free way to gain new writing skills in a supportive environment”.  Their courses are “created by experts who are active in the industry”. They run in-person courses (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane) and online ones.

Nick Earls, NoHoThey sound and look highly self-promotional, but who teaches their courses? Well, there are some well-known names there, including published (many of them internationally successful) Australian authors, such as Kate Forsyth (best-selling author of fantasy, primarily); Alison Tait (best-selling author, particularly of children’s books); Nick Earls (popular writer of books for adults, young adults and children, and who has appeared here); novelists Annabel Smith (who has also appeared here a few times) and Natasha Lester; plus others including Valerie Khoo, and various journalists and free-lance writers. I notice, for example, that Annabel Smith’s Creative Writing course that started today is sold out.

They also offer other free “resources” or activities:

So, as far as I can tell, the AWC is primarily an organisation offering courses and other resources for writers, both fee-based and free. Unlike the state-based centres it is not a member organisation, but I can’t find anything on their site, not even their FAQs, about their history or governance. (Wikipedia’s article on Valerie Khoo says she founded it in 2005.) This sort of information is not essential, of course. If they are providing a needed and appreciated service, that’s the important thing. But, I’m a librarian-archivist, and I do love it when organisations provide some history on their sites. It’s not hard to do.

A novel works its magic by putting a reader inside another person’s life. (Barbara Kingsolver, from AWC Newsletter, 6/2/20)

Exactly why I love to read (notwithstanding there are some lives I may not want to be in) … what about you? 

Writers Centres posts: ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia.

Australian Women Writers 2020 Challenge completed

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I’m very late with my traditional completion post for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge – it’s been a weird and difficult year all round. As always, I will continue to contribute until the year’s end, and do a final round-up then, but I do like to get the completion admin done!

I signed up, of course, for the top-level, Franklin, which involves reading 10 books and reviewing at least 6, and of course I’ve exceeded this. In fact, by June 30, my usual marker for my completion post, I’d contributed 13 reviews to the challenge,

Here’s my list in alphabetical order (by author), with the links on the titles being to my reviews:

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Challenge logo

I don’t set myself specific reading goals, but I do keep in mind a wish to read more indigenous and diverse writers, more classics, and more from my TBR pile. As I wrote last year, these continue to be my non-goal goals. So, how did I go? Well, I read just one Indigenous Australian writer, an Iranian Australian writer, two classics (thanks to Bill’s AWW Gen 3 week), and four (Hooper, Park, Thirkell and Azar) from my TBR*. This is not too bad out of 13 books (I think!), particularly given this weird year. However, I’d like to do more. Let’s see how I go by the end of the year.

Book coverNot included in the above list is Heidi Sze’s book Nurturing your new life, which I have not specifically reviewed. However, I have read a significant proportion of it, and did write up the author event I attended.

Watch out for my 2020 AWW Challenge wrap-up post for the year’s full story!

* All books I read are, by definition, on my TBR, but in terms of my book management, I define my TBR pile as those I’ve had for more than 12 months!

Monday musings on Australian literature: Bookprint, Australian-style

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Have you heard of the term or concept of bookprint? I came across it in a December 2019 article in The Conversation titled “5 Australian books that can help young people understand their place in the world”. The Conversation credits the term to African-American educator Alfred Tatum who, according to the University of Illinois’ Today website, coined it to describe “one’s memory of personally influential books”. It goes on to say that Tatum believes “most young black males need to acquire a bookprint outside their school-assigned reading”.

Claire G Coleman, Terra nulliusConsidering this concept, The Conversation authors Larissa McLean Davies, Sarah E. Truman, Jessica Gannaway and Lucy Buzacott, came up with their list of five books for young Australians. They are:

  • Clare G. Coleman’s Terra nullius (my review) – for ages 16+
  • Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The tribe (Lisa’s review) – for ages 13+
  • Tara June Winch’s The yield (my review) – for ages 16+
  • Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Growing up African in Australia (Lisa’s review) – for ages 15+
  • Rebecca Lim and Ambelin Kwaymullina’s (ed) Meet me at the intersection – for ages 15+

To see their reasons for choosing these books, please click the link to the article in my opening paragraph. The authors make the point that “historically underrepresented people including Aboriginal writers, writers of colour, migrant writers, queers writers and writers living with disability are particularly underrepresented” in school curricula. Clearly – and with good reason – this is what they mostly address in this list.

Of course, what’s “personally influential” is, by definition, deeply personal, but this list looks to at least encourage young people to look outside their own box, to walk for a little while in the shoes of others – and that, it is presumably hoped, will develop empathy with and tolerance of others.

For me …

… the works that were “personally influential”, those I often find myself remembering, included those which confronted me with moral choices, those which helped me develop the moral code I (try to) live by. Shakespeare’s King Lear and Macbeth, and the characters in Albert Camus’ The plague (my review), for example, had big choices to make, choices that could mean life or death for them or for others, choices that involved behaving selfishly or selflessly, choices that exposed the moral codes they lived by. What Australian books would I recommend that encourage this sort of thinking, that confront students with choices about how to live?

Kim Scott’s That deadman dance (my review) could be one. While there is an overall narrator, we see several perspectives. We also see characters making choices and, sometimes, reflecting on the validity or implication of those choices. Thea Astley’s An item from the late news (my review) is another. There is meaty moral discussion to be had here, and, as in Shakespeare’s big tragedies, our protagonist is deeply flawed while also seeing what is right and wrong. In John Clanchy’s In whom we trust (my review), the protagonist has a big decision to make, one that would right poor decisions earlier in his life.

This is a topic that could go on forever – and I could certainly suggest more titles – but at this stage, having introduced the topic, I think I’ll pass it over to you, my Gummie brains trust. So …

Do you have books that were personally influential to you and/or what would you recommend for young people (and why)?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Rodham TO …

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Woo hoo, it’s spring here down under, and in my street we have yellow wattles and daffodils blooming, plus pink prunus trees and white Manchurian pears. Bright spots in difficult times, and it does the heart good. However, I’m not here to talk about that but for this months Six Degrees of Separation meme.  As always, if you don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

Book coverOnce again, the starting book is one I haven’t read, though unlike last month’s, I have heard of the author. The book is American author Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham. According to GoodReads it “imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton?” However, this is not where I’m going to go.

Jo Baker, LongbournI said that I have heard of Curtis Sittenfeld, and the reason is because of her involvement in The Austen Project, her contribution being Eligible, a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and prejudice. My first link is from this to another retelling of Pride and prejudice, Jo Baker’s Longbourn (my review).

Elizabeth Harrower, In certain circlesLongbourn was, I discovered, one of many books presented in England’s BBC4’s Books at Bedtime program. I was surprised to discover that another book broadcast on this program was our own (I mean Australia’s own) Elizabeth Harrower’s In certain circles (my review). How great is that!

And now, just to mix it up a bit, I’m going to link on circles and the fact that the circle is a symbol of infinity. This brought me to John Banville’s The infinities (my review). 

Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta LacksTwo main characters in The infinities can be described as infinite, meaning, in part, that they are immortal – the gods Hermes and Zeus. Gods aren’t the only things that are immortal. Cells can be too, as I learnt in Rebecca Skloot’s fascinating, heartrending, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (my review).

Maxine Beneba Clarke, The hate raceThe story of African-American Henrietta Lacks’ cells should be a good one. After all, her cells have gone on to produce some significant medical advances. However, the way the cells were taken and used is a story of both ingrained medical arrogance and ongoing racism whereby the human behind these cells and her family were continually ignored and discounted. A closer-to-home book about the experience of racism is Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The hate race (my review).

Book coverMaxine Beneba Clarke’s heritage is mixed, her mother being Guyanese and her father Jamaican (Caribbean). Indigenous Australian author Tony Birch, like many of us, has mixed heritage. He claims a Barbadian (Caribbean) convict amongst his ancestry! I can’t resist making that my last link, though I could also link on the fact that Birch’s writing deals with racism. His most recent novel, The white girl (my review), deals very specifically with racism in contemporary rural and urban Australia.

I’ve been very narrow in my travels this month, staying in English-speaking countries, and keeping (mostly) to the last 100 years. I’ve returned to my usual gender breakdown – two men and four women. I started with what has been described as a “what if” imaginary novel, but I ended, unfortunately, with a novel that is far too real.

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

Karen Jennings, Upturned earth (#BookReview)

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Book coverIntroducing my review of South African writer Karen Jennings’ debut novel, Finding Soutbek, I noted that I don’t normally accept review copies from non-Australian publishers but that I will, very occasionally, make an exception if the writer or subject matter interests me. Upturned earth, Jenning’s fifth book, is set in a nineteenth century mining town. Given some general similarities between colonial South Africa and Australia, and my own, albeit youthful, experience of living in a mining town, I was intrigued to read it.

Upturned earth is set in 1886 in Namaqualand, the copper mining district of what was then Cape Colony. It’s an arid region crossing the South African-Nambian border, with its largest town being Springbok (Springbokfontein at the time of the novel). The novel commences with the arrival by boat from Cape Town of 28-year-old William Hull, who is due to take over as magistrate. On first appearances, Hull seems almost like an antihero:

Weak-willed, forgetful, Hull was a poor employee. He did as he was told, yet somehow was never able to fulfil the chores of the position with the same success as his colleagues did. He confused cases, misfiled documents, knocked over inkwells.

In fact, it seems that he is more interested in nature, than work. “He carried,” we’re told, “the droppings of animals folded in handkerchiefs, kept pink newborns warm in his hat”. However, on realising he had been given the job “because no other man would take it”, he resolves to “be firm. Punishments would be meted out. The law would be laid down.”

Unfortunately, life as Okiep’s Magistrate is not as he expects. Slowly, he learns that no-one in Okiep is independent, not even the Magistrate, because the town is unofficially run by the Cape Copper Mining Company. Its head is the Super, Mr Townsend, whose widowed daughter, Iris McBride, returns to Namaqualand on the same boat as Hull. Initially, despite hints to the contrary, he doesn’t realise the true situation, so settles down to a life of work and following his naturalist’s heart, which sees him going out in every spare moment to collect plant and animal specimens. He’s keen to contribute to scientific knowledge. But, the irony is that in “trying to understand the dead things around him”, he is overlooking the live ones.

The narrative is told through two parallel stories. Hull’s is one, the other is Noki’s. He’s a Xhosa mining labourer, one of many who come into Okiep to work and send money home to families in the surrounding regions. Noki, though, has an added concern. While he is away visiting family, his 17-year-old brother Anele is arrested for drunken and disruptive behaviour, and is imprisoned in the gaol attached to Hull’s Residence. This gaol is managed by gaoler-cum-Hull’s-manservant, Genricks. He dissuades Hull from inspecting the gaol. After all, he has it all in hand, and weak Hull, though making an attempt to do the right thing, lets himself be put off.

Given the novel is set in a colonial society, and one involving mines with white and indigenous workers overseen by an arrogant brutal man, you’ll have a picture of what this novel is about. Gradually, things come to a head and people’s true colours are exposed. It’s to his credit that Hull comes to his senses and finds a strength he didn’t know he had – but the calamity can’t all the righted, and the ending is an appropriate one. This is literary historical fiction, so it doesn’t all play out to form, opting for something a little more realistic. I’ll leave the plot at that.

The perfectly titled Upturned earth is Jennings’ third novel. Her writing is tight and expressive. She talks about indigenous workers being “broken down into acceptance”, and here is Hull’s perspective of the place after he suffers a disappointment:

… and he saw as though with new eyes what he had lived in and grown accustomed to these past months. The dull sky, the wearying streets and stained homes, the disgrace of the prison building.

Plain language, but it is all that’s needed.

Why?

The important question to ask about historical fiction is – why? The obvious answer is that there are many stories worth telling, stories that the majority of us have never heard, like, for example, Eleanor Limprecht’s Long Bay (my review) about abortionist Rebecca Sinclair who was gaoled in Long Bay in 1909, and Emma Ashmere’s The floating garden (my review) about the demolition of homes in the 1920s to make way for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Jennings explains her reason for writing this book in her Author’s Note and Acknowledgements. She was inspired John M. Smalberger’s book, Aspects of the history of copper mining in Namaqualand (1846-1931), in which she found magistrate William Charles Scully. From there she went to various other books, including Scully’s own reminiscences. This is fiction, however, so, says Jennings, her character Hull’s “weaknesses are all his own”. However, the brutality (and name) of gaoler Genricks are fact, though the events relating to him, the Super and others have been fictionalised. Then comes her main point: she sees her novel as being “a comment on the history of commercial mining in South Africa – the exploitation, conditions and corruption that began in the 1850s and continue to the present”.

The novel, then, is a plea for humanity, for kindness. Here is Hull, halfway through the novel, talking with Cornish miner Tregowning whom he has just met. Tregowning describes the mistreatment of the miners, and particularly the indigenous ones, but Hull can’t quite believe or accept what he is saying:

Tregowning turned to face the magistrate. ‘Are we not taught to vindicate the weak and fatherless, to help the afflicted and destitute, to rescue the feeble and needy? To deliver them out of the hands of the wicked?’

Hull looked around uneasily. His tongue felt thick as he spoke. ‘Some would call those revolutionary words.’

‘I thought they were biblical.’

Which way will our weak Mr Hull go is the question we confront as we read. But, the theme is clear from the start – man’s inhumanity to man (especially in these colonial environments) and what can be done about it. Pondering what has changed and what hasn’t is why we read historical fiction. I enjoyed this book.

Karen Jennings
Upturned earth
London: Holland Park Press, 2019
202pp.
ISBN: 9781907320910

(Review copy courtesy Holland Park Press)