The Pangs of Love

I'd forgotten how much I love Jane Gardam's writing, though I was very sad to hear of her death just a couple of months ago. I'd previously read some (but not all) of the short stories in 1983's The Pangs of Love in a big fat story collection I acquired years ago, but enough time had passed that I was able to enjoy them freshly.

The collection opens with The First Adam, a story from the point of view of a familiar Gardam type, an expatriate engineer who has lived abroad for years without compromising his essentially English outlook. He feels sorry for an older woman by the pool, invites her to a drink in his room, but doesn't try to seduce her, ultimately more absorbed in his work. Fittingly, the collection ends with The Last Adam, told from the woman's point of view -- and she actually has a more interesting backstory than the bloke, and she in turn feels sorry for him, and calls him 'the poor old man.' The title story, a rewrite of the tale of the Little Mermaid, was probably my least favourite.

Many of these stories centre around a disconnection between appearance and reality, between perception and truth, image and fact. I could understand criticism of Gardam for her narrow English, middle class lens and perhaps for exoticising some of her settings: India, Hong Kong, Malta, Italy, are always seen through colonial eyes. But I respect the honesty of that; and I can forgive a lot for the sharpness of her writing and the poignancy of her characters.
 

Maria Petranelli Is Prepared for Anything (Except This)

Still reading my way through the Notables list. Maria Petranelli is Prepared for Anything (Except This) won the Ampersand Prize for first-time author Elisa Chenoweth, and while this book didn't make it to the shortlist, it's a very cute novel. Sixteen year old Maria has built a defensive shell to protect herself from her bossy, intrusive (but very loving) Italian family, and her impulsive decision to go on student exchange to Italy is part of separating herself from their influence. But the trip is not straightforward. Not only does Maria meet an exciting new friend, Kennedy, but both girls become tangled in murder, kidnapping, corruption and undercover police officers.

MPIPFA (ET) is part frenetic adventure story, part sweet queer romance, with some Italian travelogue thrown in. It's quite a ride, often funny, though it took me a little while to settle into Chenoweth's style. At times Maria seemed closer to twelve than sixteen, burgeoning romance notwithstanding; in fact, now I'm thinking about it, perhaps the style of the book reads more as junior fiction, while the subject matter is YA? Maria's grandparents also seemed to belong to a generation older than they actually were -- perhaps Chenoweth's own family memories might have played a part there!

I very much enjoyed Maria Petranelli, especially as it reminded me of my own backpacking trips to Italy when I was a few years older than MP (where I behaved like a twelve year old myself, to be honest). I'm looking forward to seeing what Elisa Chenoweth Does Next.

Searching for the Secret River

Having read Kate Grenville's brilliant Unsettled not long ago, it seemed like fate when Searching for the Secret River popped up on Brotherhood Books. It made a very interesting companion read, because it covers some of the same ground, but from quite a different angle. As a writer, it was fascinating to follow Grenville through the process of writing this big, important, successful novel, from the first scratch of interest in her family history and the stories handed down, all the way to the final edit, and the multitude of decisions along the way. In Unsettled, the emphasis is squarely on her awareness and assumptions about First Peoples, and interrogating the family stories with fresh knowledge. One of the very first prompts for rethinking came early on, when a First Nations writer helped Grenville to query what 'taking up land' really meant -- it meant 'taking.'

This is a story Grenville also tells in Unsettled; it was clearly a formative moment. Despite its wide success, The Secret River was not an uncontroversial novel. It was criticised for not including the voices of its Aboriginal characters; Grenville reveals that was a deliberate, and in its own way, respectful choice. Inga Clendinnen fiercely argued that Grenville confused history and fiction; I'm not sure that's true. The project of fiction is not the same as the project of history, and Grenville is aware of that all the way through.

I'm so glad I read this book, though it might not be as totally fascinating for everyone. It got me through a long night in the emergency department of our local hospital, if nothing else!
 

Three Days in June

I had completely forgotten that I'd reserved Anne Tyler's latest novel, Three Days in June, at the library, and by coincidence, my turn arrived just after I'd finished reading Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. It's a very slim novel, almost a novella really, just over 150 pages, and it's a distillation of all Anne Tyler's more sprawling family sagas into a compressed time frame: the wedding day of Gail's daughter, Debbie; the day before, and the day after. But as with all Tyler's novels, it reaches back through time to see how we ended up in this place, and in this case, looks forward to a future where past mistakes can be forgiven.

Three Days in June is a slight but enjoyable comfort read, gently funny, poignant, observant and compassionate. Many years ago, Gail blew up her marriage, but now Max, Debbie's father, is back for the wedding and apparently wondering why he allowed Gail to throw away what they had. This issue comes into sharp focus when we learn that, perhaps, perhaps not, Debbie's future husband might have made a mistake of his own. Unusually for Tyler, the narration is in the first person.

One of the back cover blurbs calls this book 'a joy to read in a single relaxing afternoon,' which strikes me as a perfect description.
 

Shadow Tag

I've been a fan of Louise Erdrich's novels for a while now, but I hadn't come across Shadow Tag from 2010. It's unlike the other Erdrich novels I've read in that it focuses in narrowly on the dynamics of a marriage and its ultimate breakdown. Irene America is the wife and muse to painter Gil, and mother of their three children. When she realises that Gil has been reading her diary, she starts to write deliberate lies for him to read; mistrust, alcohol and violence brew a destructive mix.

The parts of this novel I enjoyed the most were probably the sections written from the perspectives of the three children, who are trying to hold it together while their parents are falling apart. Erdrich writes exceptionally well about family relationships and the currents of feeling that flow between parents and children, and between siblings. As a parent of seven children and a survivor of several relationships, she obviously has a lot of experience in this area. 

I did pick up one slip, where a side character is referred to just once as 'Louise' rather than 'May.' Erdrich has written herself into at least one other novel as a character and I wonder if she initially intended to do the same here, changed her mind, and let this one reference slide through uncorrected. Shadow Tag feels like an outlier in Erdrich's oeuvre and while at first I feared it might be a dull middle class marriage story, there was a lot more going on -- about images, art and ownership, identity and parenthood.