The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Narnia

  

You might have noticed that I'm a sucker for books about Narnia Michael Ward's Planet Narnia is still my favourite). I need to be careful, though, because particularly the American guides to Narnia tend to come from an overtly Christian standpoint and are only really interested in showing how Lewis used the Chronicles to retell a Christian story. In my view, there is more to Narnia than that, and while it's not possible to completely disentangle Lewis's Christian message from the stories, I don't agree that they function solely as evangelical propaganda.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that James S. Bell Jr and Cheryl Dunlop's The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Narnia is strongly weighted towards the Christian angle. They pull in Bible quotes at every opportunity and stress the parallels between Aslan and Jesus. I noticed that they skimmed over certain aspects of Lewis's biography: Mrs Moore doesn't rate a single mention. The pitch of the book is uncertain. Sometimes it seems to be directed at child readers of the Chronicles, sometimes at adults. (The authors recommend reading the books aloud, 'even if you don't have a child,' so perhaps the primary audience is grown up!)

This is a comprehensive guide to Narnia, examining the literary and mythological influences on each book (though always stressing the Biblical), though there's a bit more emphasis on the 'morals' of the stories than I'd like. Picking out explicit moral lessons is a sure way to kill the magic of a book. Maybe this guide might be most useful to a first time visitor to the Narnia universe.

The Burrow

I had to wait a long time to borrow Melanie Cheng's The Burrow from the local library. It's a small and exquisitely formed novel, about a small group of people (and one rabbit): Jin and Amy, their ten year old daughter Lucie, and Amy's mother, Pauline, who is forced to move in with the family after breaking her wrist. They are all negotiating the death of baby Ruby, three years before, and dealing with Melbourne Covid lockdowns.

Ironically, when The Burrow finally became available, I wasn't sure if it was the right time for me to read it. My own elderly mother recently broke her wrist, and my family is dealing with the recent death of a beloved pet. When I read about Lucie adopting a fragile mini-lop rabbit (yes, we've had rabbits, too), my heart sank. Could I handle a novel about grief and loss, especially one that was so intimately relatable?

But The Burrow is so gentle, so delicate, it's like softly pressing a wound to see how much it hurts. Though the book opens with everyone locked inside their own suffering, as the story unfolds, connections are made and the world begins to open up again. This is a beautiful miniature novel, and though it didn't take long to read, it was worth the long wait.
 

Voices From a Lost World

I had a feeling I'd read this book before! Searching my blog reveals that I bought Jan Roberts' Voices From a Lost World for the first time from the local library book sale in 2010 -- and I've now bought it again from Brotherhood Books at four times the price (still cheap). I can't find it on my shelves, though; perhaps it's in the box of PNG resources in the attic that I stashed there after I finished writing New Guinea Moon.

ANYWAY it's still a fascinating book. Published in 1996, it features interviews and stories from Australian women and children who lived in Papua New Guinea before the outbreak of WWII. Though some returned to live there after the fighting, a certain way of life vanished forever. In some ways it was a very hard life -- little medical care, isolation, few mod cons, tinned food, malaria and blackwater fever. In some ways it was incredibly privileged, compared with the lives of the local people. Despite the colonial exploitation, close personal relationships did form between individual families and their house staff, the cooks and 'boys' and nannies, and most white children of the era recalled a carefree and happy childhood.

Whether government administrators, gold prospectors, traders or hotel owners, the colonial life came to an abrupt end with the invasion of the Japanese. All white women and children were swiftly evacuated, but most of the men remained behind, many losing their lives in the sinking of the prisoner ship Montevideo Maru, a tragedy communicated to their families only long after the event.

Voices From a Lost World will go on my bookshelf and I'll try not to lose it this time (and I'll try not to buy it all over again).

The Skin I'm In

The Skin I'm In is the debut novel of First Nations comedian Steph Tisdell, and it's the final shortlisted book on the CBCA Notables list. I'm disappointed that it didn't take out the top gong, because I really enjoyed it. Tisdell is only thirty and she's kept in close touch with all those big adolescent feelings; her protagonist Layla is warm and funny and excellent company, even when she's going through gut-wrenching experiences.

Layla is pretty much the only Indigenous student at her high school, and she's always been a top pupil, her eyes set firmly on university, a law degree, and changing the world. But her final year holds a few unexpected road bumps. Her cousin Marley comes to live with the family, and he's had a rough childhood. Layla loses her best friend to another girl, and studying Australian history brings up uncomfortable questions about her identity and the way her fellow students and even the teachers look at her. Then, as if she didn't have enough distractions, she falls in love...

There is a lot of tough material here: Layla reflects on historic trauma and disadvantage, Marley's mother is a drug addict, there is a suicide attempt, Layla's boyfriend's has an unstable and abusive home life. But Layla is such an engaging character that we are happy to follow her anywhere. It's not so much that she's laugh out loud funny, but she's thoughtful and entertaining and candid. The Skin I'm In is my favourite of the CBCA shortlist, in case you hadn't guessed.
 

The Harp in the South

I was inspired to go back to Ruth Park's Harp in the South novels after reading her autobiographies. I read the final volume, Poor Man's Orange, years ago for school, but I wasn't even aware that Park had written a prequel, Missus, in the 1980s. So I pounced on this omnibus edition when I found it at the Athenaeum.

Well, I tried Missus, but it wasn't for me. Somehow I couldn't connect with the characters and the story seemed forced. But once I plunged into The Harp in the South, all was forgiven. Mumma and Hughie, Dolour and Roie, leapt off the page in their brave struggles with poverty and bad luck. I can see why The Harp in the South caused such controversy when it was first published, with people protesting that such scenes of deprivation couldn't be true. But Park and her husband had themselves lived in the streets of Surry Hills and witnessed the lives of people like the Darcys firsthand. 

There is much humour and joy in this novel, but Park doesn't shy away from either the everyday sufferings like bedbugs, rats, ragged clothes and shared beds, or the grimmer realities of alcoholism, violence, and back street abortion. (The latter was probably the true source of the outrage at the time.) I remember being very confused by Roie's name when I first encountered it -- was it a fancy way of spelling Roy? Eventually I realised it was short for Rowena. I'd also forgotten, or never realised, that Charlie, Roie's eventual husband, has Aboriginal heritage, though he is disconnected from his people. It'll be interesting to see how much of Poor Man's Orange, if anything, has stuck since Year 9 English!
 

28

Helen Garner's The Season is a book about football written from the outside looking in, by a loving grandmother witnessing awkward moments at training, courage and vulnerability on the field. In contrast, Brandon Jack's memoir, 28, is written from the inside of an AFL club, the experience so intense that there is no outside world.

Brandon Jack, son of rugby great Garry and brother of star AFL player Kieran, spent several years on the Sydney Swans list without ever quite breaking into the regular side. 28 refers to the number of senior games he ended up playing; often he served as an emergency, floating uncomfortably between seniors and reserves. No matter how manically he trained, how much self-punishment he meted out, he could never quite lift himself over that invisible line. For the last couple of years, he lost interest in the game, faking an injury to get out of playing seniors, leading the drinking games and mindless destruction of his fellow fringe players (I expect his recently released novel Pissants will cover these activities in more detail).

There is insight in Jack's story, and he writes with eloquence about trying to belong in a sporting team without losing his sense of self, but the largest pain here, and one he doesn't examine too closely, lies in his family. Jack and his parents were estranged for years (though I gather they have a better relationship now), but we only get glimpses of the casual brutality of his father's expectations and the effect they must have had on Jack and his two brothers. The brothers' decision to change codes from rugby to AFL was a dreadful blow to their father; not wanting to play football at all was unthinkable. But Brandon's true passions are music and writing, not sport.

28 is subtitled A Memoir of Football, Addiction, Art, Masculinity and Love. That's a lot to bite off, and perhaps it's no wonder that Jack can't fully chew the whole mouthful. Still, this is a remarkably candid and painful memoir and well worth a read.

The Sweetness Between Us

The Sweetness Between Us by Sarah Winifred Searle, the next title on the Notables list, surprised me in several different ways. First, it's a graphic novel -- the only one on the list, as far as I recall -- which meant I could race through it in a single sitting. Second, it's set in the US (at least, a parallel universe US with supernatural elements). The author is an American now living in Perth, but more than a little homesick. Third surprise: vampires! They appeared just as I thought I was settling into a conventional high school relationship story. Fourth surprise: one of the main characters, Perley, turned out to be a boy, though I had mentally coded him firmly as a girl for quite a while. My bad.

I enjoyed the twist on high school odd couple romance. Amandine, 'turned' into a vampire after a near-fatal accident, is still trying to come to terms with her new identity, as is Perley, who has recently been diagnosed with diabetes, something that creates inconvenience but also huge financial difficulties for his family (this is one issue that I assume wouldn't arise with such sharpness if the story was set in Australia). Happily, Amandine can save Perley some cash on testing strips by tasting his blood sugar levels, while that little bit of real human blood also gives vegan Amandine benefits in energy and health. However, both characters need to separate for a while and explore their identities independently before they can truly be together.

The Sweetness Between Us is, appropriately, a sweet and thoughtful story with plenty of space for diverse identities of all kinds, and kicking back against all kinds of stereotypes.

My Brother, Finch

Continuing my exploration of CBCA Notable books, next comes My Brother, Finch by multi-award winning author Kate Gordon. Initially I was put off by this bleak brown cover; then I was put off by the peculiar formatting of the text, with line breaks between each paragraph. This is a very sad little book, focused on twelve year old Wren, whose brother Finch vanished three years ago on a family excursion, along with another young girl, Ava. Wren's family is shattered; her mother has thrown herself into investigation, her father is deeply depressed, Wren's former friends have drifted away. But when eccentric Freddie appears, it seems that she and Wren might become friends -- do they have more in common than Wren realises?

My Brother, Finch is a beautifully written, poetic book about grief and loss, and the particular pain of open-ended anguish that attaches to 'missing.' There is no happy ending here, though there is some light in the darkness. I've read reviews from adult readers who found it profoundly moving and helpful, but I suspect it might be a book that speaks to adult readers more easily than young ones. I hope that anyone who needs it, young or older, finds this book and loves it.
 

The Marches

As a big fan of Rory Stewart on the UK politics podcast, The Rest is Politics, I swooped on The Marches when it turned up in a street library. The subtitle, Border Walks With My Father, is a bit misleading: in the first section, Rory walks along Hadrian's Wall while his 94 year old father takes a car and meets him at intervals for a meal and a chat; in the second section, Rory takes a much longer walk through the country on either side of the Scotland/England border, trying to discern whether there is a distinct 'border' identity, and how much people there are influenced by national identity imposed by being on either side of the line (in fish and chip shops, the favoured fish switches abruptly from cod to haddock!) This time, Stewart senior is only present in daily ruminative emails.

I found the final section of The Marches the most moving. It's a detailed account of Brian Stewart's death and funeral, and it manages to sum up and complete the rather muddled previous sections, where Rory in fact fails to find the 'border identity' or sense of local history that he's seeking. He contrasts his conversations with the Scots and English of this area with his previous walks through countries like Afghanistan, where each village along the way has a fierce and distinct individual history and identity (maybe too fierce). 

I don't always agree with Rory -- he's hugely sceptical about rewilding, for example, and much prefers cows -- but he is always stimulating and congenial company, and his close relationship with his father is really touching.
 

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.