The Family Next Door

We all watched and enjoyed the ABC adaptation of Sally Hepworth's novel The Family Next Door, and younger daughter bought the book as her next tram read. It was interesting to compare the two versions of the story; perhaps it's format bias, but I think the drama worked slightly better in the TV series. A whole new subplot (and family) was added; two subplots were merged; and the emphasis of the narrative was heavily weighted toward the missing child thread, while in the book, the secret difficulties of each family were given roughly equal weight. On TV, the setting was altered to become a seaside town rather than a city suburb, although confusingly, the beach scenes were actually filmed in the suburbs where they were originally set in the novel (Sandringham, Black Rock -- I only know this because my husband grew up there).

In all senses, The Family Next Door would make a perfect beach read -- absorbing without being too demanding, eminently readable -- and it made a perfect basis for a TV adaptation. Success all round. 

First Knowledges: Ceremony

 The latest volume in the wonderful First Knowledges series is Ceremony: All Our Yesterdays for Today by Wesley Enoch and Georgia Curran. It's fitting to have a male and female co-author, because ceremonies can differ for different genders and purposes. Enoch and Curran distinguish between public-facing ceremonies, shared and open to all, like Welcomes to Country and funeral rituals, and inward-directed ceremony, restricted to certain people and sacred in intent.

Enoch makes the excellent point that it would be preferable to support and celebrate the continuing and evolving practice of actually holding ceremony, rather than giving priority to recording performances and collecting artefacts for a static, frozen archive (though I can see the importance of that, too). Ceremony is a living, ephemeral practice, constantly repeated and renewed through performance, and as such, it's difficult for Western cultures, so centred on knowledge through texts and material objects, to value it appropriately.

As always, this First Knowledges volume contains much food for thought and insight into First Nations history and culture (including a note at the front of the book that points out that some Aboriginal people dislike the term 'First Nations' which has its origin in North America. Oh, dear! I think I'll keep using it, though, even though I appreciate that 'nations' is probably not the best descriptor of Australian Indigenous peoples.) The next title will be Politics -- should be an interesting and maybe confronting read!