A Work in Progress

March 12: Reading Notes

I have two books to tell you about today, if only briefly--two stories worth looking out for and both very enjoyable if for slightly different moods.  It's possible you might not have come across these; I did only haphazardly. 

I think I have the Stella Prize to thank (though by way of a rather circuitous route) for this first book.  I was ordering titles from the longlist for work and I came across a recent release from Black Inc. Books, The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean by Mira Robertson.  I found a copy through Amazon fortunately, though it was a bit of a splurge as Australian books, and this a paperback, are not cheap--if you can even find them here in the US.

The novel is a coming of age story set in rural Victoria, Australia during WWII, though the war is only happening peripherally.  This is a homefront story as seen through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Emily who is sent to her grandparent's property or station (she's not to call it a farm!) while her mother is away (away being hospital but the hints are it is less for an illness than for psychological reasons).  She's meant to be gone only a couple of weeks but fears the weeks may stretch longer and she fights against the possibility, not wanting to be sent off alone.  

This is a wonderfully told story of one young woman's education of the world and how to be an adult and it is not always an easy education.  It is gently told however.  While bad things occur and she must contend with prejudices and some violence, it is not an uncomfortable story to read.  She admires her prickly aunt, her father's sister, and must come to terms with her uncle who returns from the war damaged psychologically and physically having lost a leg, and she interacts with the Italian POW who is working for the family.  It is all a trial of sorts--her aunt has secrets and is rather brash and direct.  Her uncle is angry at the world and despondent over his life.  She crushes on the POW who she fears is a Communist and perhaps in a secret relationship with her aunt (even as she waits for her betrothed to return from the battlefield).  But nothing is really as it appears.  As a young woman who has a certain naivete of how the world works, she sees only part of the truth of each person or situation.  

The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean is a debut novel and I hope more books will be forthcoming from Mira Robertson.  You can watch a short introduction to the novel here by the author.  In the meantime I'm going to work on that Stella longlist (I have a few books on my reading pile from the list) and check out the publisher's other fiction offerings.  Lately I am on the lookout for books by Australian writers of books about the country or novels/mysteries set there. 

I'm also in the middle of a short crime novel--Hubert Monteilhet's Return from the Ashes published in 1963 and translated from the French by Richard Howard.  I really wanted to buy a copy of this to own, but it is out of print and used copies are quite expensive, so interlibrary loan has once again come to the rescue.  Here's the circuitous route this book took to reach me--I recently read a review in the NYRB Magazine about the forthcoming movie, Transit (I read the book a few years ago).  In it, they mentioned a previous movie by the same director, Christian Petzold, called Phoenix, which I saw a few years ago as well.  The movie was based on a novel (which I did not know at the time), so I had to go in search of it.

Monteilhet's very short novel is actually an epistolary novel told through diary entries.  The premise is really interesting and unusual and from what I recall of the movie fairly close in the telling of the story.  A Jewish woman has survived the camps of WWII and has returned home (in the book the setting is Paris, but the movie is set in Germany).  Months have passed from the opening of the camps, and her husband and daughter believe she perished as no one has told them otherwise and so much time has gone by without any word from her.  They assume the worst.  Not only did she have a very healthy bank account, but none of her family survived the war and all their money would be inherited by her had she lived.

Do you see where this is going?  Her husband is happy to receive the monetary benefits of his deceased wife, but she is in a sort of limbo--not having returned and claimed her rightful place yet no death certificate or body confirming her demise.  She only wants to return to her husband when she has regained some if her health and looks but no matter what she does her body and face are irrevocably changed.  When she does contrive a meeting he does not recognize her as his wife, yet she reminds him of her.  And then he lays out a plan to make them both rich.  If she will assume the identity of his dead wife they can reap the rewards of cash.  Twisty eh?  How does a woman impersonate herself!

I am hoping to finish reading the book in the next few days.  Although I know how the movie ended I am curious to see how the story in the novel will play out.  The woman has been presented with the scheme to get the money, and it is likely she will take him up on it.  While she feels like her appearance has changed too much from the war, she finds she loves him more than ever.  When I saw the movie I didn't give the title much thought--but now thinking about the title of the book and what happens to her--a phoenix rises from the ashes renewed--much like the woman in the story--she rises from the ashes of her death--to become a version of herself once again.  I think he wrote other books and perhaps I will see what I can get my hands on when I finish this book.

Teaser Tuesday: Tirra Lirra By the River

My hand hovered over the Sharon McCone mystery, which I thought would be a quick and easy read for the 1977 Club, but then something in me decided to pick up the unexpected.  I have looked at Jessica Andersons's Tirra Lirra by the River so many times but then passed over it in favor of something else.  I feel like reading outside the norm a bit, and after getting a taste of the story and writing in the first few pages, I think I made the right choice.  (I still want to read that Sharon McCone story, but its day will come, too).

I have owned my copy for ages and meant to get to it last summer when I was Wintering Down in Australia, but there were so many books to choose from I didn't get to even half what I had set out for reading choices.  (I wonder where I should virtually/literarily travel to this summer--it has not felt like spring even so to think about summer reading seems crazy, but it is really time to give it some thought!).  It has been reissued by Melville House in their Neversink Library Series, but I have an old Penguin edition. 

Just to orient things a little, the title comes from Tennyson's ballad "The Lady of Shallot" (which per the wikipedia "tells the tale of a female artist who meets a tragic end when she attempts to move beyond artistic isolation"). The story is about Nora Porteous who left Australia and an unhappy marriage for London and in the opening pages of the story sees her return home as a much older woman.  I am curious to see how her reflections back on her life will compare to the Tennyson quote.

A little teaser or two for you to get a taste of her writing.  By the way the novel is written in first person from Nora's perspective.  In the excerpt Nora is arriving at her childhood home being helped by a neighbor with her bags.

"I enter the hall, finding the echoes immediately familiar, and he falls in behind me, coughing rather respectfully.  Through the long mirror of that big hall stand I see a shape of an old woman who began to call herself old before she really was, partly to get in first and partly out of fastidiousness about the word 'elderly', but who is now really old.  She has allowed her shoulders to slump.  I press back my shoulders and make first for the living room."

And thinking back (already) about her London life and the flat she must have shared with other women:

"I am beginning to see our little coterie at number six through other eyes.  We would often say to each other, describing incidents that had happened 'outside', 'oh, he thought me 'quite mad'.  It was our happy assumption that everyone outside world thought us quite mad.  But now I am finding that when one is really outside, and alone, it is less of a burden (and much more private) to be thought quite ordinary.  Besides, I am too tired at present to insist upon my madness.  So I lower my hand, and speak in a reassuring voice." 

I am intrigued by Nora and am looking forward to hearing more about her life.  Although not planned this way, I am also rereading a favorite Judy Blume book, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, which is about a young girl--so on the other end of the age spectrum.  It seems a nice balance, that.  More about both books later!  Are you reading for the 1977 Club, too?

The Woolgrower's Companion, Joy Rhoades

The Woolgrower's Companion, the book which the character Kate Dowd refers to in her work on her family's sheep farm in rural Australia, offers bits of advice and hints on how to manage your sheep.  Although Kate has grown up on the farm and watched how it is run from a distance, as a newly married woman in WWII Australia she must take on increasingly more responsibility in running it, something that would have been unheard of before the war.  Sheep farming is a man's job and it's a man's world.  Sometimes messy, very rugged and and hard to manage financially.  This is the world that Joy Rhoades sets her story also called The Woolgrower's Companion, a sometimes bittersweet, often tensely dramatic but ultimately satisfying first novel.

Kate is an interesting character.  She is flawed yet likable.  She makes a lot of mistakes, holds more than a few prejudices--not surprisingly formed in her somewhat narrow upbringing considering the time, place and environment not surprising, but she has a capacity for love and acceptance and room for growth as she learns how to run her family's sheep farm.  Raised to be a lady rather than a rancher, when her mother died she is left caring for her father who lived through the First World War but age and a hard life have taken their toll.  She marries a man she barely knows before he ships off to fight in the war mostly because her dying mother wants her to.  When all is said and done, however, she is left to fend for herself.

There are some very interesting threads that make up this story.  Although Kate's father is alive and initially is managing the farm with the help of a few good hands, including a number of Aboriginal men, as the story progresses he begins to lose his grip on reality.  Age and perhaps the effects of the War begin to take their toll and wreak havoc on his memory.  In order to keep the farm running she must take on more and more responsibility as her father turns inward and behaves erratically, so much so that he spends money meant to be used on the farm and for bank payments leaving Kate scrambling to pay the bills.  Her overtures at helping run the farm are not especially appreciated by the farm hands.

While most young men are called to fight in the war, there is an influx of Italian POWs who are sent to the farms to help keep the local economy moving forward.  Two men are allocated to Kate's ranch with a warning not to become friendly with the Australians, particularly not with the women.  For Kate this is not a problem as her prejudices, or maybe her snobbishness (or maybe to some degree her ignorance) means she looks rather askance at not only the Italians but also the Aboriginal workers.  This includes the young maid who has come from an orphanage to work on the farm.  She befriends Daisy, yet she still has assumptions about how she lives and what she thinks and so keeps everyone at arm's length.  Kate has lots of assumptions that are often not at all correct.

The inevitable of course happens.  The more she takes on a role in running the farm the more she is exposed to the uglier side of Australian society and the narrow thinking of others.  So much of what she sees and must deal with leaves her uneasy and uncertain of what is right and true.  But she also sees beauty and the goodness in others.  She feels both repelled by one of the POWs and drawn to him.  Dangerous business for a woman of her station and situation and for the fact that she has a husband that she barely knows not far away training young recruits.

This is an engrossing story that moves along at a good clip with tensions both romantic and dramatic.  It's weightier than a lighthearted romance, yet the tension is softened by a love affair that shouldn't and can't take place.  The weightier side, too, includes seeing how Aboriginal characters are treated and misunderstood.  The story elicits a gamut of emotions--anger, worry, frustration but a certain amount of contentment as well.  Kate may have a few sharp edges and plenty of wrong ideas, but she is willing to take chances and really see what is before her eyes.  She becomes more and more likable and you can't help but root for her to win out in the end.  This is an impressive debut and I am eagerly hoping that Joy Rhoades is even now writing another book.

Peach Melba & Six Bedrooms: Short Stories

I guess when it comes to short stories you just have to make a commitment to read them.  Either you (and by 'you' that really means 'me') choose to pick a random story (like the weekly New Yorker short story that I used to be so very good at reading when my issue came in the mail) or you make your way steadily through a collection.  I think I have started at least three and maybe even four story collections this year.  That is not counting any annuals or anthologies that I am wooed into buying like the marvelous Freeman's (a new issue is due out very soon by the way), which also populate my night stand.  All (well, save one which I will get to) sit partially read and almost abandoned.  So, I hereby state, for the remaining quarter of the year that is left, I am going to make a concerted effort to get back on track with my short story reading.

First, the John Burnside collection, Something Like Happy.  He is an amazing writer, and I knew it the instant I picked up the book (last December!) that he would rival William Trevor in his storytelling skills.  For me William Trevor ranks up there with Alice Munro and Daphne du Maurier as masters of the short story.  I will read any of their stories (and will happily read more by all of them).  I'm thrilled to add Scottish writer Burnside to the list.  He is a poet, and maybe he considers himself a poet before a short story writer, but it seems that poets have some particular special talent of seeing 'underneath' and 'inside', seeing the things most of us don't, or if we do, being able to articulate those truths in subtle and amazing ways.  Not being a writer myself I can only imagine, but I think it surely must be harder to tell a good story in a few pages rather than hundreds.

Over the weekend I read two of Burnside's stories, am starting the next and plan on going back and rereading the first two that I read at the beginning of the year.  But I will just tell you a little about the story "Peach Melba".  I love stories that make you feel, that give you a sense of knowing something even if the story the author is telling is completely foreign--unknown people and places or things I cannot imagine doing.  But being able to tell a story in a way that makes the reader feel a familiarity or understanding is a real talent.  And I love a sense of longing and nostalgia that some writers can evoke, which Burnside does well.

"I have forgotten most of my life so far.  This surprises me, sometimes, because I have enjoyed it so much: enjoyed it all, or most of it, enjoyed the summer days here in my tiny garden by the sea, enjoyed the oddly quiet companionship, by marriage, enjoyed--quietly, es, and with a more or less deliberate economy--the coming of winter, the taste of snow on the air when I walk into the village, and the strangely exotic tree--dark, and very still, with a hint of distance, a faint, almost imperceptible rumor of tundra about it--that the Rotary Club raises every year on the little green outside the church."

The narrator is a widower who is looking back over an event in his life, a moment he recalls because of a taste, an aroma, the day that the mother of childhood acquaintances made him peach Melba.  It was one of those moments that was attached to an epiphany, a realization of the person he really was and who he would become.  Ever after when he tried to make another perfect peach Melba, what he was looking for wasn't the taste so much as "the repetition of a moment".  For me it is the smell of freshly cut grass in the heat of the early morning summer sunshine that brings back childhood memories.  When it happens I am immediately and vividly drawn back to my own childhood.

What I especially love about this story is that the narrator discovers things about himself, the person he really is, inside.  I see many of those qualities in myself, that desire for quiet and solitude and introspection, so this story resonated with my own life at this moment in time.  If you have the opportunity to read John Burnside, please take it.  If you come across his work, and especially this story, read it.  His writing truly has a magical quality to it.

***

I have finished reading Australian author, Tegan Bennett Daylight's collection of ten stories, Six Bedrooms.  My first finished collection of the year, but hopefully not my only or last.  Australian books tend to be rather pricey and harder to come by, at least contemporary works that do not have an international following (like Liane Moriarty's books for example).  Six Bedrooms was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2016 (and I think it is cool that short story collections do make award lists sometimes), which is how I came across her writing and was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of the book from my library.  It's well worth reading if you can get your hands on a copy.

The book blurb on back cover reads in part "Daylight's powerful collection captures the dangerous, tilting terrain of becoming adult."  These stories read quite differently than those of Burnside, but there is definitely a similar nostalgia and thematically they are looking back at youthful experiences.  In this case, however, Daylight often looks at the seamier, darker and more awkward side of being a young girl/woman growing up in the last few decades.  These are the moments you recall with a shudder or grimace.  They are more raw but no less true or relatable. 

Since it is freshest in my mind having just read it over the weekend, let me tell you a little bit about "J'aime Rose".  This is such a typical situation when it comes to relationships-and maybe not even young relationships or first romances.  Why is it that it's the brother of a best male friend who is more attractive?  Rose has had a longstanding friendship with Ben, but it's his stepbrother who will ruin their friendship.

"He was quiet and even shy, but in fact he was clever, fierce and defiant, and he cared nothing for what other kids thought.  He was the most entertaining friend I had.  He was the only boy I knew who laughed when things were funny, rather than when they were meant to be funny, or when everyone else was laughing."

High school comes along and Ben is much the same but but his once smooth, pretty face is acne-filled and he forgets to wash his hair as often as he should.  In other words, he is a typical teenager.  But he is ready to take their relationship from mere friends to an admission to their peers that they are a couple.  Rose is hesitant, but she gives in only to find she likes his new stepbrother more than Ben.  And as young girls so often do, she makes a bad choice, though at the time it doesn't feel bad.  Kids, teenagers, they can be pretty cruel at times.  This is where the shudders and grimaces come in.  It is only when a person doesn't learn from their mistakes . . . but then that is reality, too, sometimes.  

I would be interested to read more of Bennett Daylight's work and hope to get my hands on a novel she published a number of years back.  I'll have to do a wrap up of all my Australian reading this summer.  I read a lot of good books and have a number of new finds to share.

The Strays by Emily Bitto

Only one book so far under her belt, and I can see why Emily Bitto's The Strays has won numerous awards.  How do you follow up a novel like this, and more importantly when will she publish another?  Bitto's debut novel won the Stella Prize in 2015 along with a host of others and a few longlist prize mentions, too.  I read somewhere that it is a " polished gem" of a novel and I have to agree.  It's a perfectly told story in quite a slender volume so there is nothing extraneous and nothing wasted.  I love novels like this-a really interesting story encapsulated in pristine prose that lingers in your mind long after you've finished reading.  How far some authors can take you in a very few pages always amazes me.

The 'strays' refers to the group of artists that the Trentham family collects in their bohemian household in 1930s Melbourne, Australia.  Evan Trentham is a famous artist of his day, much lauded and pushing the boundaries, maybe too far later in the story.  It's just the sort of family,  Evan and Helena with their three daughters, you might imagine being the product of two parents whose inspiration in life is to create and express.  And it's through the eyes of a young woman who gets caught up in the excitement and exoticism of their world that we view them.  You could call this a coming of age story, and certainly for Lily, it is an education.  She is a careful observer and at times a participant who will not come out of the experience unscathed.  She tells the story in hindsight.  As she is living the the Trentham life it is magical and liberating, but only later will she see darker underside of their world and how it has affected and in some cases damaged the girls.

"Until I met the Trenthams, it seemed to me that there were two kinds of people in the world: those like my father's family--practical people, unperturbed by the undercurrents and interpretations of events, with a robust ability to get on and achieve what they set their minds to; and those like my mother, who was the only member of her family I knew.  My mother's parents had died before I was born, and although she had a sister with a child around the same age as me, there had been an enormous, unspeakable falling-out between the sisters, and I had never known either my aunt or cousin on my mother's side.  The fact of the falling-out, though, suggested to me that my mother's family must operate as she did, attuned to anything that might activate her indignation or impinge upon her sense of moral certainty."

Lily meets the middle Trentham sister, Eva, at school and the two become fast and close friends.  There is such an openness to Eva and the attraction to her and her family is immediate.  The Trenthams are so very unlike her family and her world up until that moment.  Experiencing the Trenthams is like opening up new and vast vistas.  She tells her parents at one point, when she has quite literally been taken in by the Trenthams that she loves them, but she wants to be different.  And for Lily she sees the Trenthams as the guiding spirit into that new and appealing world.

"Around Evan and the other artists I was learning the habit of attention, of noticing the world in all its ravishing detail and complexity.  The habit of being amazed .  They told stories, looking at objects and people until they shook them clean out of the dust of everyday and made them myth."

And how could that not be attractive to a young woman just coming to understand the world and realize its potential.  At first she just spends free time with Eva and the Trenthams and becomes one of their 'strays', but after her father has an accident at his work and must be looked after by Lily's mother, she moves in with the Trenthams temporarily while he recuperates. 

The Trenthams, Evan in particular with his wife Helena form a small, progressive group of artists who challenge the staid Australian art world and try to push it headlong into modernity to mixed results.  Their bohemian lifestyle of art and openness may inspire but their very loose parenting skills take a toll on their daughters.  The three, four counting Lily, are left to their own devices with the elder daughter trying to offer some guidance to the younger girls.  But in the end they are still more or less children.  In some cases the adults are not much older than the girls and mixing the two results in more than simple broken hearts.  In a family that knows no boundaries it's not surprising what happens, and when it does it is too late to repair easily.

Lily is ultimately an outsider looking in.  She yearns for what Eva and the sister's have, but in the end she is excluded from things due to Eva's secrecy.  She thinks of herself as a voyeur, "an unsuspected anthropologist disguised within the body of a girl, surrounded by other young girls who were part of the family."

"Yet I was a cuckoo in the nest, an imposter who listened and observed, hoarding and collecting information."

She takes what she sees and experiences with her through life and looking back recalls those years with the Trenthams, but it is only much later that she will understand the extent of those experiences and in the end betrayals and will be able to sort it out and see it for what it was.

I thought this was a beautifully crafted stories and one I can warmly recommend.  It has been one of my best reads of the year and I look forward to Emily Bitto's next book.

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

My copy of Nevil Shute's classic 1950 novel, A Town Like Alice, is a beat up old mass market paperback that I have owned for so long I can't even remember when or where I bought it.  The pages are all yellowed now and the cover brittle, but I have always loved the cover illustration (a delicate watercolor of a couple standing with hands held looking out over a vast vista) even if the print is tiny and covers each page from edge to gutter (my excuse as to why it took so long for me to finish reading it).  It's one of those books I have long wanted to read, since one of the blurbs calls it a "very satisfying war romance", but then further reflection of the "death march" that must be got through first always made me put the book back on the pile for later.  There are books you tell yourself that you 'have to be in the right mood for' and how can there be romance in a novel about WWII with POWs and death marches?  Better, that one, for later.

Sometimes it's those books that have those difficult moments that earn the highest regard after all is said and down.  There may be bittersweet moments in books like this, but they can still end with a sense of deep satisfaction.  I will say that there were indeed uphill moments while reading A Town Like Alice, but I can see why this is a classic that has endured.  And as Joe Harman is oft heard replying in his conversations--a slow Australian drawl, "oh my word", this one really is a good one.

The novel is actually narrated by Jean Paget's solicitor and the trustee to a fair bit of wealth she came into without ever really knowing her rich relative who bestowed it to her.  I think Noel Strachan, conservative as solicitors are known to be, falls in love a little bit with Jean despite the wide gulf of years between them.  She is a sensible, intelligent young woman who has managed to endure the worst privations a woman can face in war.  The money should have gone to her brother, but he died in the war, both siblings having been living in Malaya when the fighting began.  The story opens several years after the war in London where Jean is a secretary in a factory making leather goods.  She gets notice of the money she has inherited, but she cannot touch yet for many years.  Her brother, being a man could have inherited outright, but a single woman is surely in need of guidance, so she becomes wealthy without being able to actually touch most of the money.

So begins the story of Jean and her years in Malaya.  The novel is bookended by Noel Strachan's scenes, as well he turns up occasionally in the middle of the telling.  Soon after they meet Jean tells Noel of her experiences during the war.  She had been living and working in Malaya when the Japanese invaded and this ragtag group of women and children were to be sent to a clean internment camp to serve out their time until the end of the war.  Only such an internment camp never seemed to exist and the women were marched from one place to another under the leadership of a Japanese soldier--no one quite knowing what to do with the women.  It is Jean's ability to speak the language and her willingness to simply adapt to the environment and live and dress as the women of the country that enables her to survive when so many others in the group perish.

During their long marches, which were at times as terrible as you might imagine, the women come across a small group of Australian soldiers who are POWs made to serve as lorry drivers for the Japanese.  By this time the women who have managed to stay alive look much like the native women in their dress but are all the worse for wear having been walking endlessly.  They are in need of food and medicines, and Joe Harman, one of the soldiers, being the generous soul he is, steals or otherwise obtains the small items the women need.  He goes so far as to bring them live chickens to cook and eat and for his sins, since he is caught in the act, is punished severely by the Japanese. 

I won't go into any more detail of the story, but only admit that at this point I was perplexed and disappointed since you can imagine what the punishment of POWs for this kind of behavior might be.  How can this story possibly be a love story?  The war does end and Jean does return to England, where we find her at the start of the story working and finding out she has come into money.  At this point she knows she wants to do something for the people in Malaya, in the tiny village where the women finally came to stay and finish out the war.  Jean decides to return there and give them a well for water so the women need not spend hours of their day in carrying water back and forth.

And here we are not even halfway through the book, but it is what comes after that makes this such a remarkable and lovely story.  I was always curious what the title of the book meant, but to explain it would give away some of the best details, so I'll leave off telling anymore.  And there is so very much more to tell.  I am so glad I finally read the book, it is such a wonderful story.  It has been adapted to the big and small screen and made into a radio broadcast as well.  If I can get my hands on any of them I would love to experience the story visually.  Apparently the novel was published under the title The Legacy, which I am guessing refers to the money Jean inherits, but A Town Like Alice really does capture the essence of the story.  If, like me, you've put off reading it in fear of those war scenes, they are manageable knowing the rest of the story is so very satisfying.  I hope to read more of Nevil Shute's work now, too.

August 11: Reading Notes

Hooray for the weekend (it's been a long week!), and double hooray for book mail yesterday as the third volume of the comic Paper Girls was on the porch when I arrived home.  I am going to have to pace myself as it looks like a quick read in a couple of hours.  After this there will be another long wait for the next installment (and a peek at the back shows that there will indeed be more).  I read the first page or two last night and I might need to refresh where the story left off in the second volume, but it looks sort of crazy, far out there.  (And hopefully just as enjoyable as the first two books).

I have been doing far too much browsing, borrowing, ordering and pulling of books from my own shelves.  I have stacks of books all over my bedroom that will need to be tidied and there has been lots of new books grazing.  I will have to share my new library finds and newest book acquisitions.  Along with Paper Girls I have also started a new book of short stories that also just came in the mail.  I am sure I must have come across Polly Samson through some of my wanderings, but when the price of Perfect Lives dipped on the Book Depository, I knew I had to have it.  Whenever a reviewer notes that a book is the sort that makes you miss your bus stop, I always look twice.  Maggie O'Farrell (whose books I have read and loved) blurbed "with her effortless prose and unflinching eye, Samson dips beneath the surface of apparently contented, even blessed lives and the result is compelling, disturbing and moving."  I have only just started reading the first story in the collection, but I have a warm feeling already about her writing.

I see that Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is slated to publish the fourth book in her novels set in WWI, I thought I had better pick up the next book.  I read Goodbye, Piccadilly last year.  I am not sure how many books there ultimately will be, but each book seems to cover a year of the war.  The first was 1914 and now I am reading Keep the Home Fires Burning (1915).  I have The Land of My Dreams (1916) at the ready, and I am just waiting for the paper edition of The Long, Long Trail (1917) to be published later this year.  When the Boys Come Home (guessing that will be 1918 and maybe the last book?) won't be out until next year, so there is plenty of time to read my way through the books, but I was in the mood for some historical fiction and have settled nicely back into the lives of the Hunter family.  This set of books is much like her Morland Dynasty saga (though those books follow one family through most of British history).  Someday I am going to finish those books, but for now the WWI novels seem much more manageable.

Otherwise the books on my sidebar are the books I have been reaching for lately, though with special emphasis on Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice.  While I am very much enjoying the story (but will Jean and Joe Harman ever meet back up and get together . . .), my copy is an old mass market edition with the tiniest of print that runs from the gutter to the edge of the page.  Small print is so much harder to read these days sadly.  I have two books left from my reading Australia project.  I still have one to write about that I just finished (and loved), which will mean I managed to read about seven books by Australian authors.  Do I try and squeeze one more in to make it a nice round eight? 

I have not made much progress in the WITMonth, but maybe I can still read one more book.  I did finish Badriah Albeshr's Hend and the Soldiers, which (again) I need to write about (soon before too much fades away in my brain).  I have been carrying about Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution which is a novella (maybe even only a short story really) that was adapted to film.  I have been eager to read her, but I was hoping to read a full novel as well.  With all the insanity going on at the moment with North Korea, I was thinking I might pick up Han Kang's The Vegetarian.  I realize she is South Korean, but I might pair it with Suki Kim's Without You, There is No Us: Undercover Among the Son's of North Korea's Elite (not translated but by a woman writer and one that looks most illuminating).

So, there you go, my reading plans for the weekend!  I always have such grand ideas when it comes to books and reading (which is why it's probably a good thing to think it out before the weekend starts so I know what to pack in my tote bag).

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I have fallen behind in my emails, so there is loads to explore when it comes to online bookishness, here are a few that caught my eye and I will have to investigate more this weekend, too.

I'm not a romance reader per se (mystery mostly being my genre of choice), but I don't mind a novel with a dash of romance in it.  The RITA Awards were just given, so there might be some interesting titles on their winners or finalists lists.

As soon as I am finished reading Australia, I think it will be time to turn my attention to fall and you know what that means . . . ghost stories!  Here is a list of ten.  I have read half of them already, but the other half might hold some possibilities.  I don't usually need too much help finding a new ghost story to read, but I am always open to suggestions!

Lately (actually more often than lately) art and literature or reading about art (or novels that have something to do with art or artists) are on the edge of my mind.  Here are a very few (I think I own all of them . . .).

Happy weekend everyone.  And happy reading.

The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton

Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden is a very clever take on Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, though it is much darker in parts, a much more circuitous and complex story and a much much longer tale.  A secret garden for grownups, if you will.  It takes a while for the garden to appear and then when it does it is not just hidden but indeed it has been forgotten to the point of being completely closed off and overgrown.  You might not even know it was there unless you were curious to the point of nosiness.  The garden is in Cornwall, and while the story begins in London, Australia is really both the jumping off point and home to the women in this novel.

This is a story with multiple storylines set in three different periods, there are three main narrators and a full cast of characters otherwise.  If it sounds sort of boxy, perhaps a little unwieldy, and maybe a little confusing, that's because it is.  All those things and more really as it is rich in detail and texture and literally a story within a story (and sometimes within another story).  Set in part just at the tail end of the Victorian era, this has all the trademarks of a big, juicy Victorian novel.  It even starts with a  mystery.

London, 1913.  A little girl is left alone aboard ship bound for Australia.  She has a suitcase in hand, an envelope with a little cash and a book of fairy tales.  Coming from a world steeped in stories and fantasy, it's not such a stretch that the girl thinks this is a game.  One where she must not tell her name, must not tell where she comes from.  The lady, who seems to have disappeared after telling her to wait, that she will be back, is known only as the Authoress.  But she never does come back and the girl lands in Australia alone and accepting, but unable to tell the harbormaster who she is or why she is there.   He tries to find her family, but in the end she seems abandoned.  As he and his wife are childless with bounties of love to give, they take her in.  It's a bit hush hush, but their intentions are good.

She becomes Nell, a girl with a new family but no past, no history, and no real family.  Flashing forward to 2005, Nell's granddaughter Cassandra sits by her bedside in hospital.  We meet the little girl all grown up, her life lived and nearing the end.  Nell has more or less raised Cassandra.  Nell as an adult is rather prickly, and perhaps with good reason.  Her own daughter left Cassandra with her to raise and since 1975 the two have created a family of their own in Brisbane.  Just the two of them.  A few of the secrets have been uncovered, but Nell still doesn't know who her family was or why she ended up alone in Australia.  At her death she knows a little of her history but not all the secrets have been uncovered and it will be up to Cassandra to finish the search and understand where Nell and ultimately she herself came from.

It takes such a chunky book to unravel all the secrets, to understand all the stories that make Nell who she is.  The novel moves around from place to place and through different periods.  The reader is taken behind the scenes at times to see lives lived out, but it is all really a complicated puzzle to sort through.  It took some time initially to become comfortable with the story and understand who was who and how they are related.  As in any good Victorian novel there is plenty of drama.  There were admirable characters and sympathetic characters and plenty who were wicked and utterly odious.  There is a secret brooch hidden away with its own story that will be as dangerous as it is valuable.  Interspersed throughout the book are short fairy tales penned by the Authoress that start the search.  Who was she?  To find out her identity and the story behind the stories will be to solve the mystery of Nell's life and her uncertain journey.

Kate Morton has written a number of historical dramas; I read her first, The House at Riverton, ages ago and she had me hooked in that story from the very start.  This was lush and intricate every inch a Victorian melodrama.  I very much enjoyed it, though if I have one quibble it is that perhaps it does get a little unwieldy at times.  If it had been edited down a bit I would not have minded as I ran out of steam part way through and had to take a breather, but I do admire how Morton tied this story in with the children's classic and Hodgson Burnett herself even makes an appearance.

This was my May prompt, and it also fit in well with my summer Australian Lit reading.  I've already got my list of August books in mind and hope to share my prompt with you this week.  As for my reading destination, Australia will still feature through the month as well, though I am ready to move on to other locales as fall nears.  I have a few ideas in mind, but maybe the rest of the year will just see me wandering wherever the books take me (one book has a way of leading to another as you know).

Swimming Home by Mary-Rose MacColl

Mary-Rose MacColl's Swimming Home is the story of two very strong women, one by choice and the other by circumstance.  Set in 1925 the story begins in Australia but moves to England then to New York and back again.  Both women take journeys, both physically and emotionally that will be painful at times but life altering, too.  Of course there are all sorts of dramatic family secrets that will cause unhappiness and turmoil.  Secrets long held, maybe a few kept thanks to short-sightedness, kept with the best intentions, but twisting and turning the story in unexpected ways.  'Swimming Home' is an apt title since home, in this case, has more than one meaning and both women are searching for the place to call home.

For Catherine Quick home is always Australia.  In particular the small island off the north coast where she has spent her short life in happiness and contentment.  Her best friend Michael calls her Waapi, which in his native tongue means fish.  For Catherine, the water, the ocean so close at hand is also home to her, and much like a fish she cannot bear to be away from it for long.  It all comes to a shuddering halt when her beloved father dies of a sudden and unexpected heart attack.  Catherine's mother drowned several years prior, so she has been raised  by her physician father and their housemaid, Florence. 

Only fifteen, Catherine must go with her closest relative, her aunt Louisa.  She is deemed too young to stay on the island without any 'family', though for Catherine Florence is as close to a mother as she has had and Michael is as close as a brother.  Of course for a proper Englishwoman the idea of Catherine living with a native woman and her son is impossible.  Louisa, like Harry and her elder brother Alexander is a physician.  And like her other siblings she studied in America, and now she runs a clinic in one of London's poorer areas.  It is a lifestyle that was hard fought and won.  She knows about difficulties and determination as in her younger days she fought with the suffragettes for the vote.  For Louisa, education is everything.  She believes that if she takes Catherine back to London and gives her a good education that happiness and independence will follow.  Catherine will forget the island and move on to a new life.  But what she thinks is best for any young woman, what she wants most for herself, is not necessarily the best solution or road to happiness for her young niece.  It's all with the best intentions . . .

When the story opens, and I wrote about it briefly in my teaser, for Catherine swimming is her happiness, her independence and the island her home.  Swimming is what she loves and just what she does without any semblance of artificiality or affectation.  It is  not a game to be won or lost, it's just a part of her body and spirit.  She is expelled from her school when she not only swims the Thames River but encourages her classmates to come along.  She doesn't do it for any notoriety but the water calls out to her.  She does it for the pure joy of being in the water.  Louisa will never understand this, so the two women clash.  Each doesn't understand the other and the thrust of the story is how two women, each wary of the other will ultimately come together and create their own idea of family.

When Louisa is given the opportunity to help start up a clinic in America, she decides it is just what Catherine needs.  Catherine can get away from London, and she will have an opportunity to swim with young American swimmers.  The rage is for a woman to swim the English Channel.  It is the ultimate of swimming challenges for anyone, and as yet, no woman has accomplished it.  Although Catherine faces stiff competition, she is the best swimmer to come along ever.  But she swims out of love for the sport rather than any desire to win anything.  Louisa thinks when she gets this out of her system, she will settled down to school and move past it.  She decides it's best to cut off any contact between Catherine and her friends in Australia and withholds all letters going back and forth.  It really is with best intentions, but it backfires.  Catherine is like a selkie.  Like the mythological creature that must shed her skin to stay on dry land, Catherine also loses all sense of who she is and her unhappiness is palpable.

If I have any quibbles about the story it is that it tends to sag a little in the middle.  It's easy to see where the story is going, but at times the storytelling feels very sluggish getting there.  It has all the right elements, but for me there was some connection with the characters lacking.  I can't quite put my finger on what it was exactly that made it feel less like a good flow rather than moving through treacle.  That said, once the resolution was in sight the story moved at a nice pace and had a few good turns left to it.  A good read, but maybe I wanted (like Catherine) to be in Australia more than England or America.  The story does very nicely come full circle with a most satisfying resolution, however.   I've noticed a lot of press about the book of late, and it is well worth a read if the story appeals.

Next up for my own Australian (summer) reading is back to Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden, which I am now reading in earnest and am happy to get back into the story.  As I was trying to finish a few books this month, a few others got set aside, so it will be back to Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice as well, and then I have a couple other books by him and I'd like to get to at least one of them this summer still.  I've also got Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Patricia Carlon's crime novel Who Are You, Linda Condrick? sitting on my reading pile at the ready.  I have also accumulated a few more new books by Australian writers so I have plenty to choose from (and plenty of books to keep the momentum going)!

The Dry by Jane Harper

Yes, you were right!  Everyone who said Jane Harper's The Dry was a good read and suggested I read it, too, was totally spot on.  It was just what I needed.  A satisfying mystery that is not just another cookie cutter crime novel that (like so many other contemporary mystery/thrillers these days) is compared to those novels 'which shall remain nameless' (but you know which books they are).  You know, they are "the next . . . .fill in the blank (but usually 'girl' is in the title".  There were none of those blurbs on the book jacket and for good reason.

The Dry is does its own thing and does it really well.  It is nicely twisty turny and a little unexpected.  The mystery is not quite what you think it is, and the solution comes from a place you don't see coming even though Harper plays fair and leaves the clues out in the open.  There are really two mysteries in this story, and while you get a solution at the end it is not exactly perfectly tidy, much like real life, yet utterly satisfying.  And there was just the right amount of tension to move things along, make the reader a little afraid to turn the next page but unable to stop herself at the same time.

This is the debut novel of Australian author Jane Harper.  The setting is compelling, maybe almost a character in its own right and as important as all the others.  You feel the heat of the sun on your face and the dry, dusty air settling on your skin.  Knowing that the story is set in the wide expanses of middle Australia where huge ranches butt up against each other and the small community is suffering from a prolonged drought was what ultimately compelled me to pick up the book sooner than later.  I wanted an Australia that was palpably alive in the pages and indeed it was. 

"Nothing but sheep and fields."

". . . she gestured to the parched trees that lined the road."

" . . . they gazed around and were always taken aback by the crushing vastness of the open land.  The space the thing that hit them first.  There was so much of it.  There was enough to drown in.  To look out and see not another soul between you and the horizon could be a strange and disturbing sight."

Kiewarra is the sort of town that people want to leave, and for those who remain life is a struggle.  There are not many opportunities and the drought has dried up the land as well as the profits for those who live off it.  Aaron Falk, a Federal agent who works with crimes of finance only returns to Kiewarra from Melbourne because he is pressured to come back.  The note read, "Luke lied.  You lied."  He was expected to return.  It is a request made by Luke's father, and one he cannot ignore.

Falk left Kiewarra as a young man.  He had to leave following the disappearance of a friend.  He, Luke, Gretchen and Ellie were inseparable as teenagers.  But Ellie disappeared and then her body was found in a river.  His name on a note she wrote hints that he knew more than he ever let on, or at least threw suspicion on him.  That maybe he had something to do with her death, but he and Luke deny any involvement and provide each other with an alibi.  One they never, ever broke.  The town does not believe it, however.

When Luke and his family turn up dead all these years later, the unsettled past is dredged up once more and Kiewarra has not forgotten what happened.  The deaths point to Luke pulling the trigger, killing his wife and son and then turning the gun on himself.  Luke's father now wants answers and he wants Falk to come clean on what really happened all those years ago.  You know the saying you can never go home again.  For Falk it is going to be a painful return to his youthful home. 

Kiewarra is not the sort of town that merits much of a police department.  Sgt. Raco is an outsider, working his way up the ranks and using Kiewarra as a place to gain experience.  He is an honest man and sees in the deaths a puzzle whose solution may not be quite as cut and dried as the residents of Kiewarra believe.  He and Falk begin working together in a sometimes uneasy but mostly friendly, though very off the record manner; both men are interested in finding out the truth behind the deaths.  For Falk, though, he also wants to know what really happened to Ellie all those years ago.   It becomes an obsession that clouds his vision now, at seeing what is really there.

Sorry for the cliché, but this was a total page turner.  In part I just wanted to know the solution, but part of me was pained turning those pages as Kiewarra was such an unforgiving place--inhospitable in a variety of ways.  It is literally rough for Falk to remain in the town.  He is not welcome there any longer and the people are not especially interested in dredging up the past or in giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he really did not have anything to do with his friend's death.   It's like smoke and mirrors--you are looking at one crime and not seeing what is in front of you with the other, more pressing mystery that must be solved.

This is perfect summer reading and if you like a good, suspenseful read I can heartily recommend it.  I'll be watching for Harper's next book!