Hitchhiker

  

I was a bit taken aback when I read the foreword to M.J. Simpson's biography of Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker. The foreword was written by John Lloyd, now best known as the creator of QI, but at one time Adams' closest friend, and he describes Hitchhiker as 'painstakingly researched and ineffably sad,' and describes Simpson as 'an honest man who has done his level best to present a balanced picture of what can hardly be described as a balanced life,' which at first seemed mystifyingly like damning with faint praise.

However, having now read the biography and gone back to re-read the foreword, it seemed less mean-spirited and closer to the simple truth. Douglas Adams was evidently a gifted and difficult man, and the huge success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy delivered him wealth, fame and opportunities, and simultaneously dragged like a millstone round his neck. He was a fountain of ideas, fired up when he was collaborating with other people, a natural extrovert, but loathed the isolation and discipline of sitting at a desk and doing the lonely work of actually writing, hence his notorious inability to meet a deadline. (Perhaps his most famous quote was, 'I love deadlines, I like the whooshing noise they make as they fly past.')

Adams' was widely loved, but he burned many bridges. He brimmed over with ideas but was hardly ever able to see them through to a finished product. At one point his publisher had to lock him up in a hotel room and physically sit glowering at him until he had finished writing the book he was contracted for. He was a master of distraction and procrastination (it's not considered in this book, which was published in 2003, but I wonder if he had ADHD). Adams died far too young, of a heart attack at 49, when his daughter was only seven years old. That's not the only reason why this biography seems so sad, but also the unfulfilled promise of a huge brain and often lonely heart. 

Golden

Golden by Jade Timms has been short-listed for the CBCA Awards, and it's immediately obvious that it's a cut above the average YA title. Eddy (Edwina) is dealing with untreated PTSD after the drowning death of her brother-in-law Jackson three years earlier; in fact, her entire family is still struggling with his loss. Eddy feels haunted, angry, miserable and very much alone. The story of Golden tracks her turning toward recovery.

I really liked the big cast of characters, mostly Eddy's teen cohort from her small coastal town, including her twin brother Pat. (Timms really likes unisex names -- as well as Eddy, we have girls called Stevie, Joss and George.) The cast is nicely diverse, too, and there's a satisfying web of cross-currents that link and divide the friends/boyfriends/girlfriends/ exes/wannabes. The adults are all pretty useless, though Eddy's dad is doing his best. I also enjoyed that Eddy didn't discover a miracle silver bullet to cure her trauma; it's the sum of a whole lot of different things that end up helping her, including messing with art (I feel as if this might have been intended to take up more of the story at one point, it fades away toward the end), running, friendship, finally talking about her experience, cooking, and first love all playing their part.

While it's not action packed, Golden is thoroughly engaging and kept me turning the pages. Eddy is appealing but plausibly flawed, and I kept wanting to make an appointment for her at a therapist (at the end of the novel, she's going to try therapy again); it was hard to believe that no one in her circle had recognised how badly she needs help in three years. But then, maybe I come from a therapy-positive background! I won't be surprised if Golden wins a medal to match its title.

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman

Lucy Worsley is a well known English historian who has presented many television and podcast series and written several books of historical fiction and non-fiction. I must admit that in the media I sometimes find her 'isn't this thrilling' presentation a bit much, but I must also admit that I found her biography of Agatha Christie utterly beguiling and illuminating. Worsley has a knack for intertwining Christie's personal history with social movements of the time which makes for fascinating reading.

Naturally the hinge of the book lies with the mysterious events of 1926, when Christie disappeared for several days, after her husband had told her he was leaving her for another woman. Her car was found abandoned and foul play or suicide was suspected. She was eventually discovered in a Yorkshire hotel, and the official story was that she had lost her memory. The whole episode was a press sensation, and it didn't take long before nasty aspersions were cast: was it a publicity stunt? A hoax to cast suspicions of murder on her husband? Or an elaborate scheme to lure him back? Worsley takes the view, informed by modern psychological knowledge, that Christie was acting in a genuine fugue state, a recognised psychological condition which is not exactly amnesia but certainly involves acute mental distress and delusion. It seems highly unlikely that Agatha Christie, who fiercely guarded her privacy all her life, would have deliberately staged such an attention-seeking stunt.

Worsley points out that the notion of Agatha Christie stories as cosy and nostalgic has largely arisen from the TV and movie adaptations of her work; the actual books were often acutely modern (for their time) as well as technically adventurous. Though she lost her grip as she grew older (Worsley suggests that perhaps dementia was setting in in her later years), at her peak she was a sharp psychological observer as well as a fiendish mystery plotter. I'm quite tempted to go back and revisit her classics -- I acquired loads of Christie collected volumes from various library sales, but I think they are all in storage with my daughter's stuff...
 

Summerwater

Almost exactly a year ago, I was blown away by Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall (thanks to Penni Russon for the recommendation). I wasn't aware when I borrowed Summerwater that a TV miniseries of it was released last year -- the reviews I've found have been lukewarm at best, but it's a weird coincidence, and if it pops up on my screen I'll probably at least have a look at it. It's an odd choice for an adaptation, because each of the chapters in Summerwater is so internal -- each voiced from the point of view of a different character, and with some overlap of events, but each with a very distinct attitude and each one very self-absorbed. It's not easy to dramatise a narrative which depends so heavily on internal monologues, and it sounds as if the TV writers didn't quite pull it off.

I do love a book written from different perspectives, even one like this which relies on a mounting sense of tension rather than any startling events, until the very end. It traces a single day in a rainy Scottish campground, where half a dozen families and couples are marooned by the weather. It's not a long book, and it would make a good teaching aid for demonstrating what 'voice' is and how it works. My one quibble would be that we don't get to see inside the heads of the 'outsider' family, the Ukrainian mother and her young daughter, in whose cabin noisy parties are held every night to the fury of the other guests. I'm guessing this was a deliberate choice, to keep them firmly in the role of outsiders, but it still makes me slightly uneasy that we don't get the same insight into their lives as we get into everyone else's.

Sarah Moss is a beautiful and skilful writer, but her subject matter is unrelentingly dark. In a way I'm glad that Summerwater and Ghost Wall are no longer than they are.
 

Unhallowed Halls

Lili Wilkinson just gets better and better, she is right at the top of her game (disclaimer: we've been friendly for years, she lives near me and we run into each other sometimes). Over the course of her writing career, she has produced delightful rom-coms, gripping realist novels about cults and apocalypse, and lately she's turned to chunky volumes of fantasy, all of which have been standalone stories with a fresh world and magic each time. Gee, she's good.

Unhallowed Halls has been deservedly shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year, and at this stage (without having read all the shortlisted books), I hope it wins. It's a terrific tale of elemental magic, set in a remote Scottish school for troubled, rich teenagers (surely there is a nod to Hogwarts here). Page has been brought from Florida to Agathion on a scholarship -- but why? Among a host of gifted adolescents, her gift is a particularly dark and mysterious one. For the first time in her life, Page finds herself part of a friendship group, and even falling in love with a boy. But a web of lies and a horrifying history of deception and murder lies beneath Agathion's seductive surface.

There is a lot of body-swapping in this story and Wilkinson does a stellar job of helping the reader keep track of whose soul is inhabiting who, and when. Underlying the plot (and surely this too might be a gesture toward the weird cruel creature that JK Rowling has become) is a concern with minds, souls and bodies -- are they, and can they be, split? What if mind and body don't feel as if they belong together? Is the body a gross flesh machine to be despised and mortified, or a gift to be relished? These deep questions are wrapped in a thoroughly thrilling and often beautiful fantasy tale that weaves together the boarding school, magic, romance and sacrifice in a fresh and gorgeous way.
 

The Correspondent

  

I heard about Virginia Evans' novel, The Correspondent, at the Sorrento Writers' Festival, where it was discussed by a panel of psychiatrists. I was going to reserve it at the local library, but balked when I realised there were 143 people ahead of me in the queue! Eventually I found it on the shelf at my reliable Athenaeum so I was able to gobble it down.

The Correspondent is that delightfully old-fashioned thing, an epistolary novel, something which has become much rarer since texts and email have pretty much replaced the snail mail letter. Most of Sybil's correspondence is via pen and paper, but there are also emails. The short format of most of the letters keeps the pace humming along, and the elliptical references to past events and current relationships let the reader do just enough work to piece the story together -- it's very cleverly done.

Of course a clever structure is wasted if the central narrative isn't also engaging, but Sybil's story has plenty of hooks. She's old, she's isolated, she's stroppy and doesn't mind picking a fight; she's estranged from her daughter and divorced from her husband, who now both live overseas; one of her sons died as a child, and we suspect that Sybil's troubles can be traced to this source. But she also seems to have a sinister stalker, and a couple of suitors, and a teenage boy to mentor, and it's through all these relationships, hostile, friendly and affectionate, that Sybil is gradually drawn back into the world. 

The Correspondent is a satisfying, fun and gently moving read, a perfect marriage of form and substance.

The Worst Perfect Moment

I'm usually pretty positive about the books from the CBCA Notables list, and Shivaun Plozza's The Worst Perfect Moment has an intriguing premise: sixteen year old Tegan is dead, and she's landed in an afterlife that recreates the worst weekend of her life. She needs the help of cute, annoying angel Zelda to figure out just what the Marybelle Motor Lodge has to teach her, or they are both in serious, eternal trouble.

Unfortunately, The Worst Perfect Moment didn't quite work for me. To start with, I think the cover is pretty awful -- that murky green is true to the story, but it's also one reason why the Marybelle is such a horrible place. I know it's important for Australian authors to appeal to an international (ie US) readership, so Tegan is American, her mother is 'Mom,' and the Marybelle is in New Jersey. But I have a visceral aversion to Australian stories pretending to be American. I also felt uneasy about the casual co-option of the architecture of Christian heaven, angels and even God to unpack teenage angst -- I couldn't help feeling that all these supernatural beings must have bigger problems to occupy their time? For me, the whole tone of the novel felt slightly off: in focusing on Tegan's past friendship dramas, I felt as if we were losing sight of the fact that she's just died-- her father and her little sister, who obviously love her to pieces, are going to be absolutely shattered, let alone her mother, who has left the rest of the family and will now no doubt be burdened with a lifetime of irredeemable guilt.

I can understand that it's a tricky mix to pull off a humorous take on the afterlife, existential life questions, queer romance, grief and death in one young adult cocktail, but for me, this time, the recipe didn't quite work. 
 

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

I'm not usually a great reader of celebrity biographies, but when I saw this Rob Lowe autobiography on the sale trolley at the local library, I felt it was worth shelling out the two bucks. I'm a bit of a fan of Rob Lowe; the family are in the middle of a West Wing re-watch, in which he stars as Sam Seaborn, and I'm comfort-watching Parks and Rec, in which he's extremely funny as super-fit and positive Chris Traeger. Also my daughter made me watch Bad Influence, an eighties movie in which he plays a villain who uses a sex tape to bring down his hapless victim, and which unfortunately came out at the same time as Lowe himself was the focus of a sex tape scandal (which almost permanently ruined his career).

It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the young Lowe, who was in his early twenties when the sex tape scandal occurred, and who'd been making movies since he was fifteen, but without anyone to provide him any wisdom or guidance. Young men aren't known for their sage judgement, and Lowe shows compassion for his younger self and his over-indulgence in girls and alcohol. Interestingly, he describes himself as being a giant nerd at school, which is sweet, and he lost his head when he suddenly found himself a member of the coolest gang in town.

What saved him was meeting his grounded and sensible wife, Sheryl, and going to rehab. He's still married and sober till this day, which in itself is pretty impressive. I love the way he turned himself into a comedy star, from being a very pretty heartthrob and a serious dramatic actor. Stories I Only Tell My Friends is predictably packed with celebrity anecdotes: he was high school mates with Emilio and Charlie Sheen, he dated Melissa Gilbert and Princess Stephanie... But Rob Lowe is genuinely fun to hang out with, all by himself.
 

Big Sky: when the emu left the earth

I heard astrophysicist Professor Ray Norris (born in the UK, now living in Australia) and beloved and controversial First Nations elder Bruce Pascoe talking on Radio National about their collaboration, Big Sky: when the emu left the earth, and immediately reserved it from the library. As anyone who's read The January Stars will know, I'm a sucker for astronomy and space (Duane Hamacher, who was the consultant on January Stars, is quoted often in this book).

I was a little disappointed by the astronomy volume of the otherwise excellent First Knowledges series, and Big Sky fills in some of the gaps. It really is remarkable to think that some sky stories, like the Seven Sisters myth, which carries extraordinary similarities all over the globe, may have travelled with the first humans out of Africa. There are other stories from parts of Australia that might recall celestial events like supernovae, comets and meteor strikes, that occurred tens of thousands of years ago. Star maps can act as mnemonics, along with stories, to guide land journeys. The Emu of the title of course refers to the Dark Emu figure visible in the dark patches of the Milky Way.

I was particularly struck by the different explanations of solar and lunar eclipses, often described as Sun-woman and Moon-man having sex, but showing an understanding of who is on top of whom! Some of Norris and Pascoe's examples show that Aboriginal cultures had a more sophisticated understanding of the skies than Renaissance scientists.

I'm not sure that books are the best way to pass on First Nations knowledges; the ideal way is to have an elder explain to you what you're ready to understand. But in the absence of that firsthand experience, books like Big Sky are the next best alternative. 

This Stays Between Us

Margot McGovern's second YA novel, This Stays Between Us, has made it to the shortlist for the CBCA Older Readers award, which is fairly unusual for a genre novel (not that it should be). Perhaps the CBCA judges are making a belated attempt to recognise the excellent work being achieved by Australian authors in these categories, or perhaps it's a recognition of their popularity with readers. No shade on This Stays Between Us, which is a sharp, accomplished novel that ties together a scary horror tale with a distinctly feminist message about violence against women.

Set in the early 2000s (so no one has mobile phones), four teenage girls are spending two nights at a remote South Australian school camp. Between ghost stories by the campfire, rumours of a phantom haunting the old settlement, ambiguous experiences that might be imaginations running riot, or might just be a real threat, McGovern expertly ratchets up the tension to a bloody climax.

There is a lot packed into these two nights and one day. Sexual harrassment, queer love, friendship tensions, power imbalances and peer pressure, all bring a texture of reality to the horror content. I'm not usually a horror fan (I keep making exceptions to this rule!) but I'm not surprised This Stays Between Us made it through to the next round. 

Mariana

My adult fiction pile has been a bit slender lately, so I was casting around for something to read, when I remembered that there were a couple of novels in this collection of Monica Dickens' books that I hadn't ever got around to reading. I'd bought it yonks ago mostly for One Pair of Hands (memoir about working as a domestic servant in the 1930s) and One Pair of Feet (memoir about working as a nurse).

Mariana was first published in 1940, after One Pair of Hands, when Dickens was only about twenty three, and apparently it's quite autobiographical. It's very much a young author's book, focused on Mary's childhood and adolescence, and her various misadventures in love and career. Ostensibly the message of the novel is something about becoming an individual and growing into one's own unique personality -- it's just a shame that Mary seems to accomplish this mostly by meeting the perfect man. 

Mariana is a gently funny novel, but plot-wise there is not much at stake here (though Dickens does her best to ratchet up the tension by making Mary's husband's ship sink on the third page -- and of course we don't yet know exactly who that husband might be). Nonetheless it's engaging, and the details of daily life in 1930s London are the main drawcard for me: dances, theatre, nightclubs, fashion, fog, appendicitis (which means weeks lying luxuriously in hospital and then convalescence at the seaside afterwards). Nowadays they probably kick you out the same day as the surgery!

Himalaya

I'm not much of a traveller. I did a couple of obligatory backpacking trips through Europe and the UK, and I spent a few days in New York, but most of the continents of the world remain untrodden by my feet and seem likely to stay that way. However, I do enjoy a vicarious journey on TV or through books, and Michael Palin is a reliably engaging companion who can suffer all the discomforts and uncertainties of travel on my behalf while I stay cosily on the couch. After tracking him around the world and from pole to pole, this time he tackles Himalaya.

To me, the Himalaya region always evokes the books of Rumer Godden, who has written so magically about her year of living in Kashmir in a simple mountain house with her two young daughters after her marriage fell apart in the early 1940s. Even though her family's time there ended in a nightmarish fashion when one of her servants tried to poison them, her deep delight in the beauties of the landscape, house and people glows through her prose. Sixty years later, Michael Palin journeyed through what was in some ways an utterly altered world, but in some ways still very much the same.

Palin and his team travelled through more than half a dozen countries as they made their way through the mountains, but despite differences in politics, forms of government, and degrees of military presence, the solid fact of the mountains themselves is always present: the sublime beauty, the hardship, and the tough, hospitable people. I don't think I'd be up to a hundred and twenty five days of butter tea and oxygen deprivation, not matter how gorgeous the landscape; lucky for me Palin was willing to do it for me.

The Locked Room

Adam Cece's The Locked Room was my next read from the CBCA Notables list, and it was such an entertaining ride, I raced through it at top speed. Andy and three other teenagers wake up in a locked room with no idea of how they got there or what they are supposed to do next. It turns out that this locked room is just the first in a series of escape rooms to be solved before they can leave the maze in which they're imprisoned, and discover why they were put there.

Each of the rooms provides a puzzle to solve, challenging enough but not impossible, and each of the teens has their own personal issues to grapple with. Andy, our narrator, has learned passivity and hopelessness from his father; Chad is a bully; 'Nameless Girl' has been struggling with depression, while even popular high achiever Gabriella Lee has her own secrets. And of course there are twists and surprises along the way.

I'm not familiar with Adam Cece's books but apparently he usually writes for younger readers; you can see the traces of that background in the fast pace of the story and broad brushstrokes of the characters. The whole book unfolds over a matter of hours, so arguably there isn't much room for depth or complexity. The Locked Room is an immensely appealing and engaging novel for readers looking for a fast, satisfying plot and, dare I say, some escapism? Upper primary readers will enjoy this, too.

The Death of the Heart

I have very dim memories of reading this copy of Elizabeth Bowen's 1938 novel, The Death of the Heart, as a teenager in the 1980s. I have a feeling that my mother might have been studying it when she did HSC English as an adult.

The Death of the Heart is regarded as Bowen's best work. Sixteen year old Portia comes to live with her half-brother and sister-in-law in London after the death of her parents, and finds herself lonely and adrift in a social world whose rules she struggles to comprehend. Frankly, her sister-in-law Anna is a bit of a selfish bitch, who reads Portia's diary and makes no attempt to welcome her; her brother is at a loss; Anna's erstwhile toyboy, Eddie, is a self-absorbed dick who can't resist flirting with Portia. The only person in the household who seems to have any real relationship with poor Portia is the maid, Matchett, inherited from Thomas and Portia's father.

This is an incredibly sad novel, in which various isolated and self-loathing or bewildered characters orbit around each other without ever making any real contact. The figure of Major Brutt, in his shabby hotel, imagining he's friends with Thomas and Anna, is absolutely heart-breaking. The one character I couldn't feel too sorry for is the 'charming' Eddie, whose company I couldn't bear even for a few pages; of course Portia falls in love with him, but he's such a pretentious little shit, I felt like throwing him across the room. 

It's possible that I didn't finish reading The Death of the Heart the first time around, because I found a possible bookmark wedged in its pages about how to care for ear-piercings, which would have to date from 1990 (so slightly later than I first thought). If that's the case, I only made it about a third of the way through. 

Plainsong

I had never come across the American author Kent Haruf until my friend Elizabeth put Plainsong into my hands. What a revelation! I'm not usually drawn to American novels, but I was completely won over by Haruf's spare, deceptively simple prose, which matches the austere landscape of (fictional) Holt County, Colorado.

This is a very cinematic novel, though the action is mostly subtle, with occasional bursts of violence. We are never told how characters feel or what they're thinking; instead, we witness their words and actions and make our own interpretations. Haruf takes 'show, don't tell' to the extreme, but it works beautifully across a range of characters, who are all isolated in their different ways, and who end up interacting unexpectedly. A pair of elderly brothers on their remote farm; a pregnant teenager; middle-aged teacher Tom Guthrie, whose wife has withdrawn and finally left him with his two young sons; warm, humorous fellow teacher, Maggie Jones, who is the catalyst who brings the McPheron brothers and young Victoria together.

Plainsong is true to its title -- unadorned, no fuss, but deeply moving. Elizabeth has promised to lend me two more Haruf novels and I can't wait.