Wolf in White Van

I borrowed John Darnielle's debut novel, Wolf in White Van, knowing absolutely nothing about it, because it's partly about role-playing games (more on that later, perhaps). It's not the kind of novel that I normally read, which as a dedicated follower of my blog, you already know tend to be cosy crime or gentle family dramas. Wolf in White Van is a young man's novel, a disturbing story of a, well, a young man who has suffered some kind of devastating 'accident' and now lives with horrifying injuries, running a role-playing game by correspondence. Something has gone terribly wrong with two of the players in this game, and as we slowly circle around those events back toward Sean's own 'accident,' the spiral tightens around a single life-changing decision.

The book is structured non-chronologically, which some readers have found challenging, but it's like peeling back an onion to the core of Sean's soul. This is a novel about choices -- the role-playing game that Sean has created demands players choose between four possible actions at the end of each turn, though none lead to consequences as brutal as Sean's real life action. This is a haunting novel about darkness, disconnection and alienation, which will stay with me for a long time.

John Darnielle is a novelist and musician. I suspect his music might be a bit too dark for me, and I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to approach his other novels, but I'm really glad I read this one.

The Diary of a Nobody

After listening to an episode of the Secret Life of Books podcast, I remembered how much I'd enjoyed reading George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody while I was at school, and in a fit of nostalgia, borrowed it from the local library. I was quite surprised they had it, as they turn over their catalogue pretty fast, and Diary was first published in 1892.

SLOB alerted me to the class dimensions of the hunour -- I don't think I grasped, as a fourteen year old, that we were supposed to be laughing at the small pretensions and anxious respectability of the lower-middle class Pooters, as well as Charles' minor mishaps (painting the bath red) and feeble Dad jokes (you are talking a lot of dry rot yourself!). And I can't agree with Evelyn Waugh, who apparently described it as 'the funniest book in the world.' But I very much appreciated spending time in the Pooters' suburban world, trundling along in their comfortable social groove. It was extraordinary how relatable some of their problems still are: worrying about what to wear to a special event, fretting over their twenty year old son's life choices, getting in a huff over an offensive remark.

Most of all, I enjoyed this quiet celebration of modest lives. Pooter takes a refreshing pride in his lack of ambition, his desire to do his duty and keep his head down, and while I'm not sure if we are supposed to admire his humility and low-key virtues of fidelity and honesty, I can't help cheering for him and his 'dear Carrie.'
 

The Star of Kazan

I think I've now read just about all of Eva Ibbotson's books, but The Star of Kazan is a particularly good example of her formula. Reading an Ibbotson book is like sinking into a warm, fragrant bath; it's wonderful comfort reading. The Star of Kazan features an orphan girl (as usual, kind, generous and good at cooking!) who is unexpectedly whisked away from her close community in Vienna by a noblewoman claiming to be her long lost mother. The twist is that, while Annika's Viennese 'family' was warm, happy and comfortable, the grand household at Sittal with the von Tannenburgs is cold, miserable and poverty stricken. But wait! Some good fortune comes Edeltraut's way... but is it connected with Annika?

There is the usual cast of kind, capable boys, a courageous horse, some gypsies, a loyal bookish friend, delicious food, a cruel boarding school, missing jewels, and generous dollops of humour and pathos before everything comes right in the end. I can't believe I lasted so long without being exposed to Eva Ibbotson's work; it is so delightful. I would class The Star of Kazan as a children's book. Though some of her other novels straddle the line between young adult and adult, this one is perfectly safe (apart from one reference to suicide).
 

Angel with Two Faces

Angel With Two Faces, volume two in Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey murder mystery series sees Tey staying in Cornwall to write a new novel, at the childhood home of her closest friends, Ronnie and Lettice Motley, and their police detective cousin, Archie Penrose. Soon they are all deeply entangled in local secrets: the unexpected death of a young man which has left his two sisters bereft, and then the murder of a curate who apparently knew more than he should.

The Penrose estate, Loe Pool and the amazing clifftop Macklin Theatre are all real places, though Upson has taken liberties in allowing her fictional characters to be so thoroughly embedded in their history. The character 'Jospehine Tey' occupies an interesting space between fiction and reality, as it was a pseudonym for writer Elizabeth Mackintosh; 'Josephine' never actually existed. I can see how this light fictionalisation gives Upson a degree of freedom to play with Tey's personal history and character.

Angel With Two Faces centres around some darkly disturbing secrets (at one point I thought it was going to go even darker, but it pulled back), but it's worth it for Upson's assured writing and the intelligent, compassionate characters of Josephine and Archie, who share their own complicated history. I think there are now eleven books in the series, all set in my favourite period between the wars, and featuring real and imagined figures from theatre and literature. I will definitely be going back for more.
 

The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy

With the rather twee subtitle, The Lion, The Witch and the Worldview, The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (2005) is part of a series that also contains titles about Seinfeld, baseball, The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and many more pop culture products (the Woody Allen volume might not have aged too well). It's a collection of essays on various philosophical topics, for example, 'Trusting Lucy: Believing the Incredible,' 'No Longer a Friend: Gender in Narnia' (this came out at about the same time as Neil Gaiman's famous essay, The Problem of Susan), and 'Worthy of a Better God: Religious Diversity and Salvation in The Chronicles of Narnia.' You get the gist.

As with any collection, some of the essays are better than others, and there are quite a few from an openly Christian evangelical standpoint, which is not surprising. It was interesting to see how often the same moments in the Chronicles kept coming up, examined from different angles: when Lucy, but no one else, sees Aslan trying to lead them a particular way, and struggles to convince the others to follow him; similarly, Peter and Susan worrying about Lucy's sanity when she first returns from inside the wardrobe; the dwarfs in The Last Battle who refuse to see that they have entered Paradise; the Lady in The Silver Chair who tries to convince Puddleglum and the others that the underworld is the only reality, and that Narnia above ground is just a dream (it's all in Plato!)

It was interesting to note that there were relatively few references to my favourite of the books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and many quotes from my least favourite, The Last Battle, which is the most obviously didactic and religious. I have always loved these books, they are part of the fabric of my imagination, and despite their many problematic aspects, I suspect I always will.
 

Return to Sender

First of all, what a beautiful cover! It's a work of art. Hazel Lam was shortlisted for a book design award for this cover and rightly so, it's gorgeous. Lauren Draper's debut novel, Return to Sender, is next on my list of CBCA Notables, and it's a novel with a lot going on: a returning delinquent, a group of friends, a mystery, a simmering romance, historical pain, a secret house in the woods, a cache of mystery letters...

As anyone who has read Dear Swoosie will know, I am a sucker for a cache of mystery letters. In this case, Brodie and her delightfully eccentric grandmother actually live in a post office with a Dead Letter Office attached, so there is plenty of scope for mysteries and possibly even ghosts. But the heart of the story lies in the tight bonds between Brodie, her gay bestie Elliot (and his boyfriend), and heart throb frenemy Levi, all of whom have families with suffering in their pasts.

At times I felt a little unmoored in the landscape of Return to Sender, possibly because it enjoyed a simultaneous Australian and US publication which might have left it hovering between the two countries. The lake and the woods felt more American than Oz, though the wildlife and vegetation was fairly non-specific. Even a reference to the local police department coded US to me. It's all carefully internationally flavoured, nothing to scare the horses (I may have a bias here, as Crow Country was rejected by US publishers as 'too Australian!') Return to Sender apparently began life as a Covid book, and I can't think of a better way of spending lockdown than in spinning this layered, heartfelt novel.
 

Slay

I originally borrowed Brittney Morris's 2019 novel Slay for research into role playing games (more on that later, perhaps), but it actually turned out to be a lively, nuanced story about race and identity. From the first page I was plunged into an unfamiliar Black American culture, which sent me scurrying to the internet for a crash course in terms like twist outs, Hotep and Ebonics.

Our protagonist Kiera has a secret life: after enduring racism in other video games, she has developed and runs a safe online community where thousands of participants duel using cards based on Black culture (skating over how plausible this is for a high school student with a lot of other commitments and a limited budget...) But when one of the players is murdered in real life, (white) people start to ask questions, and Kiera starts questioning herself. Is Slay a safe space, or is it racist and exclusionary? Is it a violent place, or a place of safety and support? Kiera's own vehemently pro-Black boyfriend is against the game, but he doesn't know that Kiera invented it.

Slay is a hugely engaging, pacy novel that confronts important issues in a complex and relatable way; it would make a brilliant class text. Not surprisingly, it's been immensely popular, and despite the necessary suspension of disbelief, I was totally caught up in it.

Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective

I've been looking forward to Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective since I first saw that it was on the horizon, and it did not disappoint. It made me appreciate the character of Caroline Bingley in a whole new way; I pictured her as Anna Chancellor in BBC Pride and Prejudice throughout: haughty, slightly arrogant perhaps, but intelligent, determined and curious -- all fabulous traits for a private detective.

Gardiner and Kumar have taken Caroline Bingley's personality and gleefully run with it, setting up a plausible mystery involving Georgiana Darcy's missing ladies' maid, the East India Company, smuggling, the slave trade, and (to paraphrase a long ago Dr Who episode) a wonderfully violent butler. There are some gorgeous scenes on the frozen Thames, lively drawing room banter, and thoughtful social commentary, as well as plenty of criminal action. It would have been so difficult to pursue wrongdoers without the benefit of mobile phones (or indeed any phones), cars or a fully functional police force.

I can't wait for further adventures of Miss Caroline Bingley, and I'm sure Jane Austen, though she might have been nonplussed, would thoroughly approve.

A World to Build

The history of Britain immediately after the Second World War is a period I know very little about. David Kynaston has written two books about Austerity Britain: A World to Build covers the years 1945-1948, and its sequel, Smoke in the Valley, takes us from 1948 to 1951.

Kynaston's method is to divide his narrative between the voices of ordinary (and sometimes not ordinary) people, expressed in diaries, Mass Observation interviews, letters and newspapers, and a broader political narrative tracing events in Parliament, policy development, elections and party conferences. I must admit the minutiae of Labour and Conservative party machinations made my eyes glaze over, though the story of the determination to establish a more equitable, yes, socialist, community after the war has its own fascination. As well as setting up the National Health Service, and nationalising many industries, there was an imperative to build new housing -- a struggle with interesting parallels to Australia at the moment.

But I must confess that I found the everyday observations of daily life riveting: complaints about food rationing and other shortages, a terrible freezing winter with low coal supplies, the ubiquity of the black market and 'spivs,' the beginning of ex-colonial immigration with the arrival of the Windrush from Jamaica, moans from the establishment about working class's apparent addiction to cinema and greyhound racing. A more egalitarian future was contemplated with horror by some and satisfaction by others, but it was very difficult to shift class attitudes and prejudice. This was played out clearly in education reforms, which did aspire to offer greater opportunity to bright working class children, but not at the expense of dismantling the public school system -- a bastion of class privilege that Australia seems sadly determined to cement here.

My Family and Other Suspects

Next on my CBCA Notables list was My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery. Yet another YA crime novel! This one was a hoot from start to finish: a kind of YA Benjamin Stevenson (Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone), with a lower body count and a dose of teen romance, and knowing asides to the reader. Fourteen year old Ruth is about to go home after a family holiday on her step-grandmother's isolated farm, when a suspicious death forces everyone to stay longer. Ruth and sort-of cousin Dylan set themselves to solve the many mysteries and secrets swirling through the extended family, to a dangerous and satisfying denouement.

Maybe the CBCA judges decided to eliminate all the crime stories from their shortlist, but in my opinion, My Family and Other Suspects should have been on it. It's deft and funny, smart and self-aware (and gets extra points from me for including McCullochs in the story -- one of my own family names). Murder and humour make a winning combination if you can pull it off, and Emery does so brilliantly. A joy to read.
 

Arthur Ransome and Capt Flint's Trunk

For a Swallows and Amazons fan, Christina Hardyment's Arthur Ransome and Capt Flint's Trunk was a pure delight from start to finish. Published in 1984, it came out forty years ago -- less than the 37 years which had passed between the publication of the final S&A book in 1947 and this labour of love.

Hardyment visits the locations of all the S&A novels and hunts for real life parallels in geography and characters. The lake of the first adventures is a combination of Coniston and Windemere, but most of the terrain seems faithfully copied from one or the other (with the exception of the Swallowdale valley, which she leaves for future readers to pin down). She is greatly aided by the contents of Ransome's trunk, now in an archive, which contains notes, drawings, maps and unpublished material, much of which is shared here.

Hardyment was also able to interview many of the children (now adults) who inspired the characters, like the Altounyan family (including the real life Titty and Brigit!) and gather their recollections of Ransome. Most of these people are sadly dead now, so it's wonderful that Hardyment took the opportunity when it was available. She explores some of the waterways by windsurfing -- much easier for a solo sailor! -- and includes many photographs of Ransome, his boats and various children posing for the book illustrations.

One marvellous inclusion is a draft first chapter for Peter Duck, showing Captain Flint and the S&As beginning to invent the story of Peter Duck, which was eventually published without this framing device, but showing how different the final book might have been.

Arthur Ransome and Capt Flint's Trunk is the kind of treasure I scour Brotherhood Books for -- a delicious treat and one I will definitely devour again.
 

Help Yourself

How many stories do you need to make a collection? In the case of Curtis Sittenfeld's Help Yourself, it's THREE. Not complaining about the quality, but a volume of well under a hundred pages has trouble qualifying as a book, in my opinion! This is the problem with buying sight unseen from Brotherhood Books -- of course I don't take note of the number of pages when I'm eagerly clicking Add to Basket.  

Having said that, the stories themselves are excellent: wry, self-aware, slightly painful. In White Women LOL, a middle class woman makes some ill-judged remarks at a bar, and pays the price in community  and self-judgment; Creative Differences ponders the trade-offs between commercialism, art, exposure and money. Show Don't Tell deliciously returns to one of Sittenfeld's favourite arenas, the world of students, this time creative writing students, but enlarges the horizon with the inclusion of a difficult housemate.

I devoured these stories in a single greedy gulp, but they've just left me hungry for more.

 

A Language of Limbs

I heard Dylin Hardcastle's recent novel, A Language of Limbs, recommended on the ABC Book Shelf program. It's a kind of sliding doors story. Two young girls, growing up in regional NSW in the 1970s, choose different life paths. In 'limb one,' she acts on her lesbian desires, is thrown out of home, makes her way to Sydney and finds a new community, under siege from the law and social opprobrium and soon to be ravaged by AIDS, but also joyful, loving and supportive. In 'limb two,' she suppresses her illicit feelings and follows a more conventional journey, through university and marriage, but still facing personal tragedy.

For quite a while I thought these two characters might be alternate universe versions of each other, their experiences eerily echoing or brushing up against each other; but they do come together at the very end. There was a bit more poetry than I'm really comfortable with (I'm a bit allergic to poetry), but this is a beautifully written and constructed novel that also provides an overview of queer history in the 20th century, quite a bit of which I remember living through. There's probably more sex in it than I'm really comfortable with, too, but each to their own! A Language of Limbs is a wonderful, deeply emotional, moving and passionate novel.
 

Stay Well Soon

By chance, I read Emily Gale's comments on Penny Tangey's Stay Well Soon just as I was in the middle of reading it. Gale was writing about funny books, and complained that no one would ever guess that Stay Well Soon is a funny book by looking at the 'sad girl on the cover.' She pointed out that Stay Well Soon is a sad book, too, and it is -- it's a book about sibling illness, cancer, death and dying -- but seen through the eyes of our narrator, eleven year old Stevie, it's also very droll and delightful to read.

Stevie is a great protagonist. She's having friendship problems, and all she wants from life is a pony. She fantasises about riding her dream horse, Atta Girl, along beaches and through the desert, communicating telepathically. 'She'll let me know when the campfire is going out.' But when her brother gets sick, suddenly everything revolves around Ryan and his hospital treatments. Very plausibly, Stevie tries to push away her knowledge about what this might mean, but reality intrudes.

I loved Stevie, her friendship with Lara from the hospital, her family, her harassed Mum, who we can see is barely holding on, 'Dad Ben,' new friend Morgan, teacher Mr Parks. There are lots of funny schoolyard scenes, like when the group play Kidnappers and even more when they're playing Royal Family. I absolutely loved Stay Well Soon and Tangey strikes the perfect balance between poignant and snort-giggle.
 

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.