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.

Book of Lives

Another quite big brick of a book and another surprisingly speedy read (well, Margaret Atwood is a very good writer). I have been an Atwood reader for most of my adult life. The Handmaid's Tale blew my mind very soon after it was published and I was captivated by Cat's Eye, with its tale of childhood bullying. I faithfully bought and excitedly read the big thick novels that followed: The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, but I think The Blind Assassin must have exhausted me or else I ran out of time for big thick novels because I dropped off after that. I did try Oryx and Crake (which began life in Australia as Emu and Crake) but at the time it didn't engage me. The good news is that I now have several Margaret Atwood books still waiting patiently for me to plunge into.

Atwood's life makes for an interesting story in itself. Famously her naturalist father carted the family into the wilderness for half of every year, which left Atwood with a legacy of environmental awareness and a love of birds in particular. She writes enjoyably about the beginnings of the Canadian literature scene, which I imagine has a lot of parallels to the Australian situation -- it was difficult to persuade publishers to risk printing local stories, and aspiring writers were advised to try their luck in the UK or USA (sadly, I fear that 'global' appeal is again becoming a requirement for publishers to risk their money).

The latter part of Book of Lives is overshadowed by the decline and death of Atwood's second husband, Graeme; another story of grief and mourning. It's remarkable to think that Atwood is now in her late eighties, and yet she is as sharp or sharper than she ever was, making films during Covid and still experimenting. I suppose we might not have her for much longer, but what a blessing to have this chunky, rich and funny memoir from a real literary legend before she leaves us.
 

Nest

I am a huge fan of Inga Simpson's writing (her novel Willowman and memoir Understory are just so beautiful), but for whatever reason, her second novel Nest didn't quite do the trick for me. Perhaps this quiet, reflective, observational novel suffered from being read simultaneously with big, blustery King Sorrow; perhaps it was my state of mind, where I was looking for distraction rather than meditation. Perhaps even the very short chapters, which is something I usually enjoy, meant that it took a long time to make my way through the story, to the point where I'd sometimes forgotten characters or events by the time they were referred back to (did I mention my concentration is not great at the moment?)

The actual writing and the nature observations were as usual absolutely gorgeous, in fact I think I would have enjoyed Nest more if it has been presented as a piece of nature writing or memoir rather than a novel. There is hardly any plot, and what there is, moves slowly and quietly. There is a missing child, harking back to a missing friend of Jen's own childhood; an absent father, an unsatisfactory ex. But these are elements that hover around inside Jen's head as memories and speculations, rather than playing out on the canvas of the novel. Gradually, very gradually, tense loner Jen starts to unfreeze, through her close relationship with the trees and birds on her land, tending to her house and garden, and her tentative friendships with the townsfolk and neighbours, and her drawing pupil Henry. The novel ends in quiet hope, but anyone looking for high stakes drama will not find it here. 

I think I would have loved this book more if I'd been in a different frame of mind! I have another Inga Simpson novel on my pile, but I might wait a while before I open it; I want to meet it in the right spirit.

How To Be Normal

Ange Crawford's How to Be Normal is the next book on my CBCA Notables List. Astrid has been homeschooled for years, but when her dad's business collapses (record store, no surprise), her mother has to go back to work and Astrid goes to high school for the first time.

There is quite a lot going on for Astrid. Her older brother has left home, her father is controlling and sometimes verbally abusive, and Astrid has never mixed with 'normal' teenagers before, so she has a lot of new friendship politics to negotiate, complicated by her father's 'strictness' and rules around behaviour. Though Cliff isn't physically violent, Astrid and her mum are always walking on eggshells, placating, soothing, forestalling his outbursts, and it's uncomfortably tense to read about. I must admit I was more engaged with the domestic drama than the high school situation.

Astrid's passion is electronic music, which was a refreshing novelty for me and worked really well as a method for her to communicate her isolation and her tentative reaching out, as well as a pathway to a future course of study and career. Sound became a really effective element of the story and a fascinating window to a field I know nothing about.
 

The Foal in the Wire

  

In terms of size, there could hardly be a bigger contrast between the whopper King Sorrow and The Foal in the Wire, which barely tips over a hundred pages, with lots of blank space and wide margins. As a verse novel, The Foal in the Wire covers a lot of ground with few words.

Sam's older brother is dead, his parents are fighting and he's struggling to find anything to make life worthwhile when he and the girl on the neighbouring property rescue an injured foal. Together, they nurse the young animal back to health, and in the process, discover companionship and then love in each other.

While The Foal in the Wire doesn't exactly have a happy ending, it does offer the prospect of change, and ultimately, hope. And how beautiful is that cover, by artist Tannya Harricks?

King Sorrow

It's been quite a while since I ventured to read a 900 page brick of a book; my attention span hasn't been up to it. King Sorrow was like reading four normal sized novels strung together, but it's a real roller coaster ride. It's the story of six friends who summon a dragon from another realm, ostensibly to do their bidding, but of course, as in all the best fairy tales, it turns out that they end being in his thrall. Every year they have to choose a victim for King Sorrow, or else one of their own lives will be forfeit, and inevitably a lot of innocent victims fall prey along the way (dragons are not known for their restraint).

To start with, King Sorrow reminded me of The Secret History -- a group of college students negotiating a dreadful secret, and the intra-group politics and shifting loyalties and betrayals that play out over the years that follow. But there's also a terrifying mid-air adventure, a chilling conspiracy and abduction episode, and a mythic quest for a magical sword, led by a troll deep underground. All this before the final confrontation. King Sorrow is also a fascinating meditation on the power of imagination and reality. 

I probably wouldn't have picked up this book if I hadn't heard it recommended on the ABC's Book Shelf program, but it was fun to explore something off my usual track. Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, and has evidently inherited his father's gift for story-telling. I did have to renew it as I was ploughing through, luckily there wasn't anyone else on the library's waiting list.

The Impossible Fortune

How lovely to be back with the Thursday Murder Club gang again! Though I must admit that the Netflix movie has irreversibly influenced the way I picture the characters now -- and there was a nice cheeky reference to Pierce Brosnan being the best James Bond (which may be the case, but he still isn't quite how I imagined Ron). 

Sinking into The Impossible Fortune was like stepping into a warm bath -- totally comforting and nourishing, and exactly the kind of book I feel like reading at the moment. My only complaint was that there was not quite enough Bogdan; mind you, there are so many gorgeous characters milling about Coopers Chase by now that it's hard to give them all full air time. There are some lovely Joyce-Joanna moments in this novel that make up for it.

The Impossible Fortune takes our octogenarian crew into the world of Bitcoin and old-fashioned 'cold storage,' a service providing physical storage in an age where digital security has become vulnerable. There are explosions and secret codes and double crossing, but there is also another parallel plot involving Ron's daughter and grandson which is less showy, but possibly more important.

I know the Thursday Murder Club can't live forever, but please, can they have lots more adventures before we have to say goodbye?
 

Death of an Ordinary Man

Novelist Sarah Perry's first non-fiction book, Death of an Ordinary Man, was recommended by Susan Green a few weeks ago. Looking back at Sue's review, I see that she used the exact words I was planning to write here: almost unbearably moving. Perry's father-in-law was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, worsened rapidly and died at home just nine days later. How well I could relate to Perry's panic and bewilderment, her pleas for help, for someone to come round now, now, now, we don't know what to do. And yet surprisingly quickly, caring for David becomes routine and manageable and not scary at all; Perry describes a sensation of a woman's hand on her shoulder and feels the reassurance of generations of carers behind her who have faced this challenge and met it, as she and her husband do, too, folding the process death into part of life.

I was amazed at the speed and compassion (mostly) of the health workers who rolled swiftly into action, delivering a hospital bed, nursing care, morphine, special sheets to David's home with a minimum of fuss. I have no idea if similar systems are in place here; I guess I might find out one day. It might not have been the best time for me to read this book, as I'm currently caring for my ninety-year old mother who was recently in hospital with an infection and is taking a while to recover. But I was also able to recognise myself as one of that long line of carers who find themselves able to deal with incontinence, dirty sheets, coaxing tiny spoonfuls of ice cream into a reluctant mouth, organising medication and all the rest of the work of caring. 

The very last image of the book was so incredibly beautiful, it made me cry.

Sometimes I stand at an upstairs window after dark when the city is getting ready for bed, and watch the lights go out one by one in rooms where strangers live. And if I stand there long enough I find, in compensation for the gathering dark, other lights arriving out of nothing -- the passage of a car turning for home, lamps switched on in bathrooms and bedrooms on the outskirts of town, streetlights marking roads I know quite well. Then I imagine I've walked out of the city and up what passes in Norfolk for a hill, and that I can see spread all around me  this same pattern going on over and over: lights, everywhere, coming on where there was no light, then shining for a moment or an hour before fading slowly to an ember, or being suddenly extinguished. On and on it goes, far ahead and behind me, over borders, horizons, seas, summoned up and going out in their own time -- illuminating barely half an inch or fully half a mile, and each light particular, never to be repeated or replaced: all those other lights. All those other towns.