Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

I've read and enjoyed many Anne Tyler novels over the years, but somehow Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, long time staple of high school readings lists, had passed me by. My husband was astonished when I said I'd never read it; it's one of the few books he'd read and I hadn't (not anymore, ha ha). This copy, which I found in a street library, was clearly a high school text -- it was almost destroyed with highlights, underlinings and graffiti in the margins, not to mention chewed and folded corners. I have to say this is by far the least attractive cover for this novel I've seen, too -- presumably this character is supposed to be scrappy tomboy Ruth, but this Ruth has a far too knowing smirk, when really she's a kind of innocent.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is essentially a story of intergenerational trauma. It opens with Pearl Tull on her deathbed, reflecting on the amazing job she's done raising her three children alone after her husband Beck walked out on them. But we soon see, in flashbacks of the family history, that Pearl is a pretty terrible mother -- violent, abusive, volatile, prickly. Each of her three children carries the legacy of their childhood in a different way, but all are scarred to some degree, and we see that damage passed on in turn to their own children. I can see why it was such a popular set text -- mind you, my husband couldn't recall anything from his Year 11 study, so it didn'tmake that much of an impression.

In many ways, Dinner at the HS is the quintessential Tyler novel -- family dynamics, set in Baltimore, the passage of time, misunderstandings and wilful contradictions, but at the end of the day, the ties of family and shared history (even when it's experienced very differently between the players) create some kind of wavering, uncertain bond.
 

A Legacy

 

An uncharitable reader might accuse Sybille Bedford of re-hashing the same material over and over. I've now read three versions of the story of herself and her own family -- in the autobiography Jigsaw, the fragmented non-fiction Quicksands, and now in this novel, A Legacy. But frankly, when the material is so rich and so fascinating, I don't blame her at all for mining it as deeply as possible.

There's really not much crossover with Jigsaw. A Legacy is largely the story of what came before Sybille herself was born, the tangle of two families, scandals, forbidden marriages, mental illness, murder and suicide. Bedford's sometimes elliptical style, the large cast of characters, and the unspoken social conventions of turn of the 20th century Berlin meant I was sometimes confused about what was actually happening, though to be fair to Bedford, I did take a break from A Legacy to read a couple of library novels, and I lost track of events. 

I was chuffed to see an endorsement from Nancy Mitford on the back cover: One of the very best novels I have ever read. Wow, you could certainly die happy with a blurb like that under your belt. I might not go that far, but I did enjoy A Legacy and its peek into a vanished world.

About A Girl

I wasn't really aware of Georgie Stone's story -- despite her starring on Neighbours, and being featured on Australian Story and Four Corners. But I'm so glad I picked up this memoir by Georgie's indefatigable mother. Rebekah Robertson, herself a staunch trans ally and activist. Reading an account like About A Girl, you're left shaking your head at the confected panic stirred up by conservatives. Georgie has known she was a girl since she was two and a half; all she's ever wanted is to be able to get on with her life, as an actor, musician and school student. And yet she and her family were forced to fight every step of the way for the treatment she needed to live in a body that was profoundly alien to her deepest sense of self.

Who the hell does it hurt for an individual to choose how they want to express their own gender or sexuality? And yet the word 'choose' is also misleading, as it doesn't feel like a 'choice' but an undeniable inner reality. Georgie has always maintained that her identity was a private affair; she didn't come out at high school for years, though she had to live with the threat of exposure, bullying and abuse every day. The obnoxious lobbying around the same-sex marriage vote was also incredibly damaging to kids like Georgie, and recently (this book was published in 2018), while awareness of trans people has grown, so has the vitriol aimed at their very existence. I've been deeply disappointed at the anti-trans stance taken by JK Rowling, for example. Earlier this year, the story of Nex Benedict, a non-binary teenager who was beaten up in a school bathroom in the US and died the next day, brought me to tears.

And yet even as I type these words, an episode of All In the Mind has just come on the radio, discussing 'gender euphoria' -- the utter joy experienced by trans people finally living as their true selves. As Georgie Stone reminds us, there are good stories out there and we have to hang onto them.
 

French Braid

 

Anne Tyler is one of the most reliable authors I know -- I can pick up one of her novels with complete confidence that I'm in safe hands and that I will enjoy the ride. In French Braid, Tyler returns to familiar territory: an inter-generational family story set in the suburbs of Baltimore. 

The novel opens in 2010, with an encounter at a train station between two cousins who haven't seen each other for a long time, setting up the slight mystery of why the members of this family don't stay in touch. (It says a lot for Tyler's powers that she can turn such a relatively (ha!) low stakes mystery into an utterly absorbing story.)

The following chapters swoop back and forward in time, from a rare family holiday by the lake in 1959 to Covid lockdowns in 2020, each chapter focused on a different member of the family and illuminating from a different angle the weird silences that lie between them. Mercy, the mother, has moved out of the family home, but it's never spoken about. David, the son, never comes home and leaves it to his new wife to announce their marriage. Candle, a grand-daughter, accompanies Mercy on a fateful trip to New York. But it's not until the very end of the novel that we discover the source of this peculiar, decades-long tension, and even then we're left unsure whether it was all a tragic misunderstanding.

I just love Anne Tyler, opening one of her novels is like slipping into a warm bath. In the past I have succumbed to the temptation to read too many in a row, and after about five books the charm began to wear thin (maybe the bath water grew cool, to stretch the metaphor). But as a treat, once in a while, there is nothing more enjoyable. Is there anyone better at capturing the unspoken undercurrents of family dialogues -- the meaning glances, the raised eyebrow, the forced cheer, the humour? Anne Tyler is a master.

Inheritance

 

I borrowed Dani Shapiro's memoir, Inheritance, from the library on a whim after seeing it recommended on Facebook -- I'm a sucker for stories about family mysteries and secrets and long lost relatives. In fact I've recently also become addicted to the British TV show, Long Lost Family, which has eight seasons available on ABC iView, and has reduced my own family to tears every time we've watched it.

Inheritance is Dani Shapiro's own story of accidentally discovering, through an impulsive DNA test, that she was in fact not related to her own deceased father, nor, by extension, to her much older half-sister, or her large extended family on her father's side. This was a devastating blow; Shapiro had always felt closer to her father than her mother -- who was she, if she was not her father's child? Inheritance tells how she unravelled the mystery of her paternity and gradually came to terms with her experience of her identity shattering. 

The discovery was all the more shocking because Shapiro identifies strongly as Jewish; while she was still Jewish, because Jewishness is traced through the mother, the loss of her whole father's family rocked her sense of self. But paradoxically, the uncovering of the secret also made sense of the silence at the heart of her parents' marriage; of her mother's ambivalent love; of her father's hollowness; and of a persistent uncertainty in Shapiro's own consciousness.

Inheritance is a fascinating story, though it might have been more satisfying as a long magazine article than spun out into a whole book.

Huda and Me

 

H. Hayek's debut middle grade novel, Huda and Me, has earned some award short-listings lately, and rightfully so. It's another tale about sibling adventure (close to my heart after The January Stars!), this time centred on protective older brother Akeal and cheeky little sister Huda, who run away to find their parents in Lebanon when their minder, 'Aunty' Amel abuses her baby-sitting power and turns the whole family's life to misery. (Coincidentally, H. Hayek is herself named Huda, and is also the second-youngest of seven siblings. Hm...! The seven children in the story and their parents are also named after Hayek's real-life family members.)

The action switches between the peril of the aeroplane trip itself, and the back story of horrible Aunty Amel which has led them to this desperate solution. It's a simple story, but filled with warmth, family support, and lovely detail of Muslim Lebanese domestic life. Akeal frequently sends up prayers, Huda has a nasty moment when a fellow passenger tries to rip off her hijab, and when the children reach Beirut, they see sobering war damage in the streets, so it's not all sunshine and flowers. 

This is a gorgeous tale of adventure and courage, never really frightening, but exciting enough to appeal to younger readers. Funny, sweet and pacy, Huda and Me deserves all the praise it's earned so far.

Macbeth Through the Ages

I've hung onto so many books over the years just in case my children wanted to read them (nuh, they read Harry Potter instead) or might need them for school or uni (alas, all my feminist classics still languish on the shelf untouched).

But this year, Ms 16 is using my old school copy of Macbeth for Year 11 Literature! I can't remember which year we studied Macbeth. It may have been Year 11 as well, because we did Antony and Cleopatra in HSC and I'm pretty sure Romeo and Juliet was Year 10 (I have fond memories of reading Mercutio in class). The margins of my copy are well covered in pencilled notes from almost forty years ago (I just wrote thirty, and had to recalculate -- can I really be that old??)

Ms 16 says some of my notes have been very useful. There is a list of themes on one of the back pages which has proved handy, apparently. Other notes have been merely amusing (I'm starving!!) or cryptic (Jim 4 PD). I like the idea of my 16 year old self communicating across the gulf of years with my unimagined daughter. 'Yeah,' says Ms 16. 'That is kind of cool.'

Farewell Little Bunny

In a piece of heavy-handed symbolism that you could never get away with in a work of fiction, my daughter's childhood rabbit has died in the very week that she's moving out of home. 

Maya lived with us for almost eight years, a pretty good innings for a Netherland Dwarf. He was a pretty little rabbit, so cute when he cleaned his face with his paws. He wasn't much of a cuddler, but he would hop over eagerly at the sound of the fridge opening, and allow us to pat his soft brown fur. Originally he and his brother Momo lived in Al's room, but they kept her awake at night -- especially Maya, who would naughtily leap from his enclosure and hop around her room -- so a few years ago we moved his hutch into the living room, where he lived ever since. (Momo died in mysterious circumstances quite early on. I don't want to speak ill of a departed rabbit, but we did wonder...)

We whinged freely about having to clean out his stinky enclosure, about cutting his nails, and having to feed him with a syringe when he got sick a couple of years ago. But he was part of our family, and yesterday we all had a cry when we said goodbye.

The Stone Book Quartet

 

I think The Stone Book Quartet is my favourite Alan Garner novel. It's really a collection of four novellas, each focused on a child of a different generation of a family strikingly similar to Garner's own: he has said that this is his most personal book. In these slim but tightly controlled stories, each taking place over a single day, Garner explores themes of family and history, memory and craft, belonging and loss.

In The Stone Book, Mary's stonemason father takes her up to the stop of the church spire and then deep into the earth to discover a secret painted cave. In Granny Reardun, Mary's son chooses to come a blacksmith rather than a mason, to work with metal instead of stone. In The Aimer Gate, Robert helps with the wartime harvest but alone of the children, can't find a moment of joy or a vocation. Finally, in Tom Fobble's Day, set during the Second World War, William's grandfather (the smith of Granny Reardun) makes William a perfect sledge on his last day of work.

There are echoes and resonances between the four stories. The demolished house from Granny Reardun reappears as rescued rubble in The Aimer Gate. Robert climbs inside the church tower and finds his grandfather's mark hidden in the 'cave' of the belfry. In each generation, there is deep skill and respected mastery. And Alan Garner himself, descended from these craftsmen, has created a homage to them using the tools of his own craft: words.

There are also gaps and mysteries here. No one seems to know what the 'aimer gate' means. Mary, who longed to work in a great house and care for beautiful things, can't afford to care for her own firstborn son. Robert is not drawn to any particular mastery and we don't know what becomes of him; the last tale centres on William and his grandfather, and William's father doesn't even appear. 

Hot on the heels of Underland, it was especially wonderful to read of the ancient painted cave of The Stone Book with its vivid animal scenes, overlapping footprints and handprints, a secret handed down through a single family. Do the later children know of it, or is the secret lost? The broken loom of Mary's uncle becomes William's perfectly balanced sledge four generations later; some knowledge, some possessions, are passed down unknowingly. 

Like the sledge, swift and balanced, sweeping and sure, the product of hand and eye and history, The Stone Book Quartet itself is close to perfection.

The January Stars

I suppose it's about time I talked about MY book: The January Stars.

The plot of The January Stars is quite simple. While their parents and brother are away dealing with a family emergency, Clancy and Tash accidentally kidnap their grandfather from his aged care facility, and take him on a road trip to find him somewhere better to live. Along the way, Clancy becomes convinced that the spirit of their grandmother is guiding them, and the adventure ends up drawing together a family that has drifted apart.

The genesis of the story was my own father's stroke, five years ago, which left him paralysed on the right side and living with aphasia, which means, in his case, that he can read and understand speech, but can't speak (apart from a handful of involuntary words) or write. So he is in very much the same situation as Pa -- except that he is much better off than Pa, as he still has my mum.

The single hardest aspect of the COVID-19 emergency for my family has been that Dad's home has a strict ban on all visitors. Usually my parents spend every day together, either at Bill's home or at our place. Now their only real contact is a nightly FaceTime call, which is a lot better than nothing, but still not enough.

So while in one way it has been absolutely terrible timing to have a new book out, in some ways it's a perfect book for the weird and stressful times in which we find ourselves. It's about pulling together (and pushing -- wheelchair joke there); it's about family and taking care of elderly, vulnerable relatives; it's about community; and it's about travel, which is something we're not allowed to do at the moment.

I've been getting some lovely feedback about The January Stars already. If the virus hadn't happened, I would have had a launch this weekend. I'm really hoping that when this is all over, I can still have that launch, and that my Mum and Dad can both be there. Fingers crossed.

Only

Caroline Baum has been a familiar face from the ABC, where she worked for many years as a journalist and presenter. Only: A Singular Memoir is a family story, which she describes as a triangle consisting of herself, her father and her mother, with a struggle to pull to the top spot.

Baum's family history is an extraordinary one. Her French mother had a dramatically tragic background; her Viennese Jewish father escaped the Nazis via Kindertransport to England, but lost his entire extended family in the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, these losses permanently marked Baum's parents, with her father an especially forceful personality with a lot to prove. His love of luxury, money, high quality clothes and cars, meticulously organised travel, made his daughter's childhood in some ways highly privileged; but she also suffered the crushing burden of being the only child -- treasured, but expected to be perfect. It's not really until the second part of the book, when Caroline's father's health fails, that she truly feels the pressure of singleness. Suddenly the whole responsibility for caring for both parents lands squarely on her shoulders.

There was much in this memoir that resonated with me. Though I'm not an only child, my sister has an intellectual disability, so for practical purposes I'm the only one who can take charge when things go wrong. And they did go spectacularly wrong a few years ago, when my father had a debilitating stroke. Overnight, our roles were reversed; instead of running to my parents for support and refuge, suddenly they were both dependent on me (and so was my sister). Luckily I didn't have to deal with it alone; my marvellous husband shouldered a huge part of the task. But I understood what Caroline Baum was going through, especially when she was running around London trying to find suitable accommodation for her father. Many secrets came tumbling out in the aftermath of her father's illness.

This was a thoughtful, moving and fascinating memoir. Baum says that three never felt like enough to make up a family, and it's true that the bonds between the three of them were intense and super-charged with emotion. I thoroughly enjoyed Only.

The Winter of Our Disconnect

The subtitle (see above) says it all. About ten years ago, American-born, Perth-based academic Susan Maushart decided to give her family a temporary digital detox -- no screens for six months. No television, no computer games, no internet, no phones, no iPods. The Winter of Our Disconnect is their story, and a rumination on the effect that being permanently plugged in has on us all.

Times change fast in the world of technology. In 2009, being deprived of their iPods was a major hurdle. In 2019, I'm not sure that iPods even exist any more. Now music and podcasts are streamed through our phones. Maushart's kids didn't care that much about losing their phones, because back then phones didn't do as much as they do now. I laughed at the fact that Maushart's elder daughter, at 19, was addicted to Facebook. Ten years later, no 19 year old in their right mind would go anywhere near Facebook (so I'm told). Facebook is for nanas!

The details may have changed, but the central lessons are still valid, in fact more valid than ever. Boredom is good for us. Without a screen in the way, we can see the real world more clearly. Constant distraction is robbing us of deep concentration. Hanging out with our friends is more rewarding than social media. Access to screens stops us sleeping properly.

The three teenagers (heavily bribed to take part) survived. Maushart's son picked up his neglected saxophone and embarked on a musical career. Her daughter rebooted her disordered sleeping patterns and hugely improved her mood and her health. And Maushart, with more time to reflect deeply on her life, decided to relocate the family back to her home, the US. (How the kids reacted to this decision is not recorded.)

When I talked to my own teenagers about this experiment, their reaction was swift and predictable. No way. Impossible. And sadly, I fear they might be right. I don't think the digital world we live in now is all bad, but it does come at a cost, and I'm not sure our kids even realise what that price is.

How Bright Are All Things Here

I started reading Susan Green's lovely novel How Bright Are All Things Here about a year ago, but set it aside because there was a character with a depressed husband -- a theme that was a little too close to home at the time! Fortunately that particular situation has resolved itself and I was able to return, and I'm so glad I did. In fact I needn't have shied away so soon, as the husband's depression doesn't play a huge part in the story and (spoilers) it also resolves happily in the end.

How Bright Are All Things Here is a story about family and identity, regrets and joys, secrets and masks. It contains lots of my favourite elements: art, London in the 1950s, a Melbourne setting, relationships between siblings. Bliss is in the last days of a long, rich and crowded life, and her memories intertwine with the lives of her adult step-children, who are struggling with their own problems as well as their sometimes fraught relationship with Bliss herself.

This is a beautiful novel about a complicated woman that reminded me (serendipity!) of Mary Wesley's life story -- lots of relationships, some joyful, some sad; the struggle between creativity and family responsibilities; the wry humour and delight in sensual pleasures. Bliss and Mary might not have hit it off in real life, but they have quite a bit in common.

I'm so happy that I came back to this novel, I enjoyed it tremendously.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was Kate Atkinson's first novel, and it exploded on the scene with huge fanfare and multiple awards in 1995, kickstarting Atkinson's wildly successful career. I have read all the Jackson Brodie novels (apart from the very latest one) and most of the others (haven't got round to A God In Ruins yet) and found them extremely satisfying (mostly).

Behind the Scenes was not at all what I was expecting; it's quite unlike any of her other novels in subject matter, though her exuberant, playful, psychologically acute style is the same. It's a family saga, deftly interweaving strands of four generations of mostly women with the central story of Ruby Lennox (who happens to be born in the same time and place as Atkinson herself) and whose life centres on a big mysterious gap -- which the reader figures out long before Ruby herself does.

There are plenty of Atkinson's trademark coincidences and surprises, and it's tempting to assume that there are parallels in this family history with Atkinson's own life, but who knows? You can't always assume that first novels are drawn from life, but there are vivid and baroque details here that do seem like the product of memory more than imagination. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Riding the Bus With My Sister

Happy New Year to you all. I must say I'm very pleased to say farewell to 2018, which was a horrible year in many ways, but I'm hoping for a greatly improved 2019!

Riding the Bus With My Sister is Rachel Simon's account of a year she spent with her intellectually disabled sister, Beth. Beth doesn't work; she prefers to spend her days hopping the bus routes of her home town (a small, unnamed, American city). Beth gets up at 5am to catch the first bus of the day; she knows all the drivers and many of the passengers know her. At first Rachel is inclined to see Beth's obsession as a waste of time, but as she too gets to know the drivers, with their patience, wisdom, humour and philosophy, she begins to see the value in slowing down and making connections (more on that topic later...)

I was drawn to this book because I also have a younger sister with an intellectual disability, and I have also been tormented by those guilty thoughts that I'm a 'bad sister' -- not supportive enough, impatient, sometimes bored. I have wrestled with the same dilemmas that Rachel struggles with: when to allow Beth the freedom to live her life the way she chooses, and when to act in her sister's best interests, even when she resists (for example, when Beth risks her sight by refusing an eye operation).

I could see many parallels between Beth and my sister. They both hate being 'bossed'; they can both be extremely stubborn. They can develop overwhelming crushes on people. If they disagree with you, they don't argue back; instead, they just shut down, presenting a blank wall of passive resistance. This book helped me to see that these tactics are not just infuriating quirks, but a logical response to a complex, sometimes incomprehensible world where people are always trying to get you to do stuff even if you can't understand why. Beth and my sister both cling fiercely to their independence and their privacy, to that small secure space they've been able to carve out for themselves. They don't like change. They are hyper-aware of 'meanness' and any hint of bullying. They can seem self-centred, but perhaps that's a survival technique too. When you have to spend so much of your time and energy protecting yourself, there's not a lot left over for empathising with others.

As a result of reading Riding the Bus With My Sister, I've joined a Facebook group for adult siblings of people with disabilities, and already I can see that most people have to deal with far more severe problems than my sister. She has a job, she has paid off her own house, she lives independently and mostly happily. Her life is hard at times, and I have to remember that. But we have a lot to be grateful for, too.

The Art of Psychotherapy

Wow, I have been reading r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y lately, ploughing my way through a couple of books that are either extremely dense and demanding (Marilynne Robinson) or best consumed in small bites (Taste). But more of those books later (when I actually finish them!). Who would have thought that the book with the dullest title of the three, The Art of Psychotherapy: Case Studies from the Family Therapy Networker, would turn out to be my 'fun read'?

The Family Therapy Networker is a magazine for mental health workers, and the case studies presented in this collection began life in its pages. Each case is described by the therapist concerned, together with their choice of treatment and how the therapy turned out. This is then followed by a commentary from another one or two therapists, who might agree with the approach taken, or vehemently disagree. Sometimes the original therapist then responds with justifications or extra information.

It all sounds pretty dry, but it's absolutely fascinating! I've always been a sucker for those collections of case studies, more literary than this, by author/practitioners like Oliver Sacks or Irvin D. Yalom. This material is less polished, but comes direct from the coalface of the therapist's consulting room. Mistakes are admitted, not all cases are successfully resolved, sometimes huge issues are left completely unaddressed (eg the role of gender in reinforcing a wife and daughter's 'caring' for an alcoholic husband; the possibility that a young boy who 'acts out' being a girl may actually be trans). Published in 1999, it was clear that social norms have shifted dramatically in some areas in the last twenty years, and were in the process of shifting on these pages. Some new and apparently exciting therapy techniques (EMDR, Thought Field Therpay) have now been debunked.

But what remains constant is the complex, intriguing, troubling field of relationships and mental health -- however they are tackled, those problems will always be with us. It's sobering, but also weirdly comforting, to learn that there is no one 'solution' to any client's difficulties; but that sometimes, it doesn't really matter what the therapist does, as long as they do something.

My Father's Books

Half a shelf's worth; approximately one twenty-fouth of the library

 My father was a hoarder. A meticulous, neat, super-organised, OCD-type hoarder, but a hoarder nonetheless. (I say was, though he is very much still with us, because since he moved into aged care after a stroke a couple of years ago, his opportunities for hoarding have been drastically curtailed. Thank God, says my mother.)

The extent of Dad's hoarding was suspected, but never confirmed, until it came time to clear out my parents' house for rental. To give you some idea: Michael has been sorting through the two rooms that made up Dad's study; I have done the whole of the rest of the house. My job was far easier, I'm all finished! Michael is still going.

A hoarder Dad may have been, but he was never really much of a reader. As well as all the other things he collected (stamps, coins, business cards, matchbooks, train tickets, computer software, cameras, model aeroplanes...), he amassed a library, which contained many books he'd used in teaching -- texts on principles of flight, meteorology, aircraft magazines, cloud atlases -- as well as various other books that reflected his other interests -- travel guides, dictionaries, photography manuals, bird guides, street directories, histories of classical music.

It was fairly easy to decide about the other books, whether to keep them ourselves or pass them on, but the aircraft collection was more difficult. They were so specialised, so niche -- yet there were so many of them! Wasn't it better to try to keep them as a collection, for someone who might appreciate them?

And we found someone. A young woman associated with the flying school where Dad had taught for several years, someone who loves books (and also, coincidentally, is fascinated by PNG) and flying. She was dumbstruck when she first saw Dad's collection -- awesome and insane was what she finally stammered. She ended up loading her car with textbooks, maps, flight manuals, course materials, NOTAMs, notebooks and other treasures -- this was the back seat. The boot was full as well. Her poor little car was groaning, and dipping at the rear.

She spent a couple of hours exclaiming and exploring: we still use these sheets! Oh wow, this is from 1975! I've never seen anything like it...  Some things she'll keep and some she'll give away, but I feel reassured that this part of Dad's collection, at least, is in good hands.

Thank you!

The Marlows and the Traitor (again)

Over on Memoranda, Michelle Cooper has been conducting a fabulous read-through of The Marlows and the Traitor, which has given me the opportunity to read it again, too. And I think I've enjoyed it even more this time; it really is a cracking story, despite the holes in the plot, the poor behaviour of most of the adults involved and the stiff upper lips all round. Forest uses multiple viewpoints and clever pacing to masterfully control the tension of the narrative. In many ways this is a very adult book. We are told, 'The children are expendable' -- you wouldn't get that in Enid Blyton!

In other news, I had to do something absurdly upsetting this week -- get rid of my childhood books. I'm in the process of clearing out my childhood home -- I'm very fortunate that my parents have lived in the same house for nearly fifty years, and the books I read as a four and five year old have all been tucked away in a spare bedroom, to be read by my younger sister and then by my own children. I've saved my special favourites, but I couldn't keep them all, and most of them were so tatty (and had my name scribbled in them!) that they couldn't be passed on. So into the recycling bin they had to go. How ridiculous that this, more than anything other aspect of the business, reduced me to tears! I had to go home, too upset to do any more clearing out that day.

When I got up next morning, I discovered that my lovely husband had fished the books out of the bin and brought them home. 'They don't take up much room,' he said. 'We can keep them.' Bless him.

Catching Up

Image: AFL

So... we went on a little holiday to new Zealand. I know, I know, what self-respecting football fan books an overseas holiday in September? But the decision to take the family on a brief break across the Tasman was a form of tempting fate -- come on, surely the Bulldogs wouldn't still be playing in the last couple of weeks of the finals? At best we might scrape into the semis...

Well, unless you've been living under a rock, you know how this story ends. Our Bulldogs DID win a preliminary final, gaining entry to the Grand Final for the first time since 1961. We watched the astounding victory (underdogs for the third game in a row...) on cable TV in our hotel room in Wellington. A couple of days earlier, a random stranger had bounced up to Michael in the Auckland Museum and wished us luck (Michael happened to be wearing a jacket with a very discreet Bulldog logo attached).

We made it home in time to secure tickets. We were there, high up in the Southern Stand, to witness the game. We chewed out nails, plaited the tassels on our scarves, cheered and howled and roared. And before the siren sounded, I was already in tears.

Anyway, while we were away, I read a couple of books: The Spire, by William Golding, about a medieval priest who is driven to add a spire to his church, against the warnings of his master builder, and the effects of his misguided vision on the community around him; and also Landmarks, by Robert Macfarlane, an absolutely beautiful book which examines some of Macfarlane's favourite nature writers, and also gathers a glossary of local terms for landscape and weather, words that describe with precision and poetry the interplay of water and air, earth and sky. Macfarlane laments that with the loss of this language, we lose our ability to really see what lies around us. This immediately led me to think of the tragic loss of Aboriginal languages and place-names, which perform the same function of knitting together people, spirit and place. And it felt as if New Zealand, with its proliferation of Maori place-names, and its bi-lingual signage, is miles ahead of Australia in recognition and preservation of local language.

But since I finished Landmarks, nearly all my reading has been about football, and that glorious, thrilling victory: match reports, interviews, newspaper articles, blog posts... and I still haven't even unwrapped the Footy Record!!

This post has already gone on long enough, so I will conclude with a simple, joyous shout of GO DOGS!

Re-read: Run Away Home

This morning I looked up the post where I wrote about my first reading of Antonia Forest's Run Away Home. I had completely forgotten that I'd written that post on 26th March last year, and seeing that date sent a peculiar shiver down my spine.

Why? Because that was the last day Before; the last day when life was normal. Run Away Home was the last book I read before the day my father had a massive stroke, and all our lives turned upside down. On March 27th, 2015, my father almost died. He was in hospital for a month, and went from there straight into an aged care home. My mother moved in with us. Dad has not been back to his own home since the day he left in an ambulance. These days he gets around in a wheelchair, or, tremblingly, shuffling, with a cane. He can't use his right hand or arm at all. And since that day, he cannot speak.

Our lives have changed so utterly that it's weird to look back and realise that it's only been a year and a half. We're working toward getting Dad to move in with us, too, into the granny flat that we've built for Mum. We think we'll be able to manage it (unhelpful bureaucracy notwithstanding!). And that will be another massive change.

It's odd to reflect that this is one of the recurring themes that Antonia Forest's novels explore: how swiftly life can alter, from one moment to the next; how freely we toss around terms like 'tomorrow' and 'the rest of our lives', without thinking how conditional our futures are, how lucky we are when we do manage to string together our tomorrows.