On the Calculation of Volume 1

I heard On the Calculation of Volume by Danish author Solvej Balle being discussed on the Radio National Book Shelf program, and because it has a timey-wimey plot, I was instantly intrigued. Main character Tara finds herself trapped in a time loop, where she wakes up day after day stuck inside the 18th November, just like Groundhog Day, except without the comic slant, and with the difference that she wakes wherever she fell asleep the night before, rather than returning always to the same starting point.

Tara is away from home in Paris when the pattern strikes; in a panic, she flees for home and explains her situation to her husband Thomas. But the day is not repeating for him; every 18th November happens for the first time. Again and again Tara has to explain her plight. They experiment together, try to stay awake all night, try to figure out why some things reset and others remain used up or transported. Eventually Tara separates from Thomas, withdrawing into their spare room and living a shadow, unseen life around his movements (he, of course, assumes that she is away in Paris). As Tara draws closer to a full year having passed for her, having experienced 18th November 365 times, she wonders if the loop will close -- or is there some significant action she must take to break the spell?

On the Calculation of Volume has to be the dullest title I've ever heard, especially for such a weird, haunting little book. Maybe it sounds better in Danish? And I can't have been listening properly to the Book Shelf, because I entirely missed the fact that this is just volume 1 of a projected seven book series!I absolutely flew through this novel, unsettled and delighted. Needless to say I have already reserved volume 2. 

We Saw What You Started

 

It's fitting that I've finished the final book the CBCA Notables list during Book Week, just after the winners have been announced. I predicted that Barry Jonsberg's Darkest Night, Brightest Star, with its themes of toxic masculinity, male violence and trauma would be a timely winner this year, so I'm not surprised that it took out the top prize, while I was pleased that Lili Wilkinson's Unhallowed Halls and Jade Timms' Golden were both Honour books in the Older Readers category.

In some ways We Saw What You Started by Carla Salmon is a very typical entrant in the Older Readers list. Set in a coastal town -- tick. Elements of romance -- tick. A mystery/crime plot -- tick (crime is very hot right now). One character with an American background to increase its international appeal -- tick. In fact I didn't mind the American character this time, Otto splits the narration with local Aussie Milly, so the US viewpoint is not overwhelming (apparently as soon as an Australian book mentions the word Mum, it instantly forfeits any chance of US publication).

What gives We Saw What You Started its unique flavour is that the action is centred around the local surf club and the rivalry over championships. Milly's father seems to favour her twin brother Jasper; is Jasper really a bad seed, or just obnoxious? Meanwhile fires are starting all over town, and new arrival Otto keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who is innocent and who is guilty? We Saw What You Started is a satisfying mystery story, and dare I say it, a great beach read.

Discipline

 

I had to wait a looong time for Randa Abdel-Fattah's first adult novel, Discipline, to become available at the local library; the reservations started mounting up as soon as the controversy over her (non) appearance at the Adelaide Festival early this year hit the news. There are still 26 eager readers waiting.

Abdel-Fattah's experience as a writer for young adults shows in her skill at keeping the action moving. Discipline is set in 2021. Viewpoints flip between Ashraf, an academic under siege at his (fictional) university, and Hannah, a young journalist at a mainstream newspaper. Linking these two characters is Jamal, Ashraf's PhD student and Hannah's husband, whose family is under attack as Israeli forces bomb Gaza. All the characters are under pressure to mute their pain and anger at the situation in Gaza, with Hannah and Ashraf's superiors anxious not to offend the Jewish community.

Discipline is not just a chronicle of anguish and frustration. Ashraf and Hannah are both part of exuberant, supportive, tight-knit communities, while Hannah also draws strength from her religious practice. Abdel-Fattah is careful to show that Muslim, Arab and Palestinian identities, while overlapping, are not identical and not monolithic. At times Discipline is uncomfortable to read, as it highlights moments when I might have 'both-sides'd Middle Eastern conflict, or slid unthinkingly into unsupported assumptions. I'm very grateful to Randa Abdel-Fattah for giving me such a vivid glimpse into her reality. 

Raising Hare

Raising Hare is the kind of book that I simply can't resist. It's the perfect intersection of nature and human experience, written in a gentle, thoughtful style by Chloe Dalton, who has mostly worked in politics and foreign affairs, focused on big international events. All that changed during lockdown when she lived in the country, in an isolated barn conversion, and unwittingly rescued a leveret (baby hare) and took it into her home. Against all odds, the hare grew and thrived, drawing Dalton into a hitherto unseen world of predators and prey, hedges and fields. Keeping her doors open so that the hare could come and go, tiptoeing around the sleeping animal, making sure that guests keep their noise down not to scare it, Dalton shapes her life around the hare, and is rewarded with her trust, to the point where the hare gives birth and raises a pair of leverets inside the home.

Dalton admits that before her relationship with the hare, she paid little attention to the natural world. The hare opens her eyes to the rhythms of the seasons, the activities of the birds and animals, the effect of intensive farming practices on the loss of wild spaces like hedges and woods. Raising Hare is not a long book, but it's a beautiful and profound reading experience based on close observation of small and undramatic events, like James Rebanks' The Place of Tides.

The Set-Up Girl

The Set-Up Girl by Sasha Vey is a fun novel about romance, crushes, sexual identity, misunderstandings and friendship. Amalia comes from a Slovenian Catholic family, a background I haven't seen explored before, and one which apparently comes with strict parents and tight extended family relationships. Amalia, her sister and mum are in a book group with her aunts and cousins, which adds a wry commentary to the boy/girl crush and friendship dramas she finds herself in. Amalia's see-sawing attraction to the hot boy and the hot girl felt very plausible, but it was grounded by her deep friendship with Mae, who is having identity and romance struggles of her own.

One element of The Set-Up Girl that I found slightly disturbing, but no one else seems to have a problem with, was Amalia's and her sister's routine deceptions of their parents, sneaking out after dark, setting up 'camping trips' that are a cover for visiting music festivals, secret alcohol drinking, secret dating, and other mild rebellions. It seemed to me that it might be better to open up communication between the generations, especially since both Amalia and her sister are over 18 and technically adults... but neither my daughter nor the members of my book group had any problem with the situation at all. Maybe I'm still in denial about how much (or how little) my own kids deceived me in their adolescent years! Anyway, in a YA book I should definitely be on the side of the kids.
 

One Life: My Mother's Story

I enjoyed Kate Grenville's One Life so much -- more than I expected to. She is just such a readable writer, even when handling material that by her own admission, might seem very ordinary. It's a biography of Grenville's mother, Nance, but it reads like a novel, and I kept eagerly turning the pages.

Mind you, Nance was not really such an ordinary woman. One her friends described her as 'remarkable,' and in many ways she was exceptional, despite living all her life in sleepy Australian towns and suburbs. But even the most ordinary lives contain their own drama and pathos. Nance was the child of an unhappy marriage, of pub owners Dolly and Bert (Grenville has also written about her grandmother in Restless Dolly Maunder, which I might check out next). (The pub owning background was also interesting on the heels of reading Australian Gospel.) Nance trains as a pharmacist at a time when it was unusual for woman to gain professional qualifications, but once she's attained her apprenticeship, she's qualified herself out of a job. She marries Kenneth, a closet Trotskyist, and their partnership has its ups and downs -- he's proud of her for working, but is clueless about taking up the domestic burden. Time and again Nance is thwarted by lack of childcare in her community.

One Life is a loving, clear-eyed tribute to a woman whose story becomes extraordinary in Grenville's hands, and a kind of first hand history of the middle decades of Australia, covering the Great Depression and the wars. I loved it.
 

The Conversion

Amanda Lohrey's novels tend to be a slow burn -- don't come to her books expecting thrills and action. But if you're in the mood for thoughtful observation, interesting ideas and internal development, a novel like The Conversion will hit the spot. 

Zoe buys the small country church that her husband Nick had his eye on, after Nick's death in complicated circumstances involving infidelity. Nursing her grief and anger, Zoe 'squats' in the church, unable to feel at home in the soaring space, with stained glass saints staring down at her. As she sorts through her feelings about Nick and tries to decide how to adapt her new home, she gradually gets to know her neighbours and finds a place for herself in the small community.

In many ways, The Conversion is a story of spaces and places, how we change ourselves to fit the places where we live, or change those places to fit our needs and yearnings. Zoe wrestles with how to alter the vertical orientation of the church, toward God, into a horizontal orientation for human living. Another character abandons his apartment, with its expansive views, for a more narrow but intense view of the sky from a courtyard garden. Zoe is pressured to allow the local high school to perform a play in her living space, and the experience fundamentally changes her relationship to the space and to the memory of her husband, which I sense the church represents.

Lohrey's novels might be quiet and seemingly uneventful, but I find they stick in my mind long after they're finished. 

Brain Rules for Ageing Well

John Medina has written several of these Brain Rules books -- about music, about babies, about work, about teenagers -- and Brain Rules for Ageing Well offers advice (current in 2017) about how to preserve or even improve our brain function as we get older. It's written in a light, friendly style with enough science to be convincing but not enough to overwhelm the reader.

Most of Medina's advice is just sensible: stay connected to friends and family, learn new things, exercise, eat properly, lower your stress (easier said than done). He does devote part of one chapter to the theory of so-called Blue Zones, which unfortunately was recently pretty comprehensively debunked -- for a few years, there was a lot of hype around certain areas of the world, like Sardinia and Okinawa, where people seemed to live well beyond the expected age limit. People got very excited by the supposed lifestyles adopted by these Blue Zone inhabitants -- but it turned out that most of the zones were actually quite poor areas where welfare fraud was common, and the people who were apparently living to 110 had often died years before... Oh,well, back to the drawing board.

One finding in Brain Rules for Ageing Well that initially surprised me was the beneficial effect of marinating in nostalgia. Our brains lay down their most vivid memories during our late teens and early twenties, so reliving those years makes us feel more alive. I can certainly testify that listening to the upbeat music of my youth during my morning walks puts a pep in my step, and when my husband was preparing for a high school reunion last year, the mood rush lasted several weeks as old friends reconnected over group chats and shared memories. So maybe there's something in that -- though I won't be revisiting 80s fashions or hairstyles any time soon.
 

Rapture

 

Emily Maguire's novel Rapture takes the probably apocryphal tale of Pope Joan and builds a convincing life story from the fragments of her alleged legend. Born in Mainz, masqueraded as a monk at her lover's urging, became a learned scholar and eventually rose to become Pope some time in the 800s, and was unmasked when she gave birth during a papal procession. Maguire hangs a luminous and moving novel off these bare bones which is a delight to read.

Agnes (alias John the Englishman) is brilliant, determined, passionate, and refuses to be shut out of opportunities open only to men. While she has few scruples about deceiving the men around her, she has a hardly time justifying her actions to God, and I like the way that Maguire takes Agnes' faith seriously. Rapture made an intriguing parallel read with Karen Armstrong's The Case for God. I also loved the way that Agnes always remains an embodied personality, whether she's burning with sexual desire or starving herself in penance. For a novel centred on religion and medieval history, Rapture is a surprisingly sensual and joyful journey.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

I am trying hard to understand the background to the dreadful situation in Gaza and the powerful emotions evoked on both sides. Peter Beinart's short book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, sets out the history of Palestine and Israel with brutal clarity, and he speaks from the perspective of a Jewish person who has been an unquestioning supporter of the concept of Israel in the past, but who is appalled by the actions of that state against its Palestinian inhabitants (not necessarily citizens).

I struggled reading Ruptured a few months ago, though I could understand that the anguish and the experience of anti-Semitism in Australia described by the various writers is very real; however, there was little acknowledgement of the long and cruel suffering of the Palestinian people that provided a context for the horrific events of October 11. Beinart has no problem recognising this history.

Beinart writes from a US point of view, but much of what he says applies to us here in Australia. Beinart argues passionately that the nation of Israel has betrayed the promise of a Jewish homeland by becoming an oppressor itself. I used to believe that a two state solution was the only possible answer to Israel-Palestine tensions, but I'm coming round to the view that a single state, where Palestinians and Jews have equal rights, is the only way to peace. Whether that's achievable is another question altogether.
 

This Season's Draft

This Season's Draft by first-time author Jason Gent is one of the last YA books from the CBCA Notables list. It's a slender book, not exactly in free verse, but what one of the characters describes as 'just thoughts,/stream of consciousness really.' The big areas of blank page make This Season's Draft easy to read, and any kid who's interested in sport (not just AFL) will find material to relate to here.

This Season's Draft follows six teenagers over a year, the final year of school for most of them, the year most of them hope to get drafted to an AFL side. Smart, level-headed Elias, already thinking about his future after football; Dane, who hasn't thought about anything past the draft; his girlfriend Beth, who has her own life to consider; Zac and Fletcher, best friends who are separated by their own success; and stoic Mason, who has already faced personal tragedy. Though their stories are told in short snippets, we see significant snapshots of a very important year in all their lives, whether that centres on AFL or not.

I really enjoyed This Season's Draft, especially as I'm also re-reading Helen Garner's The Season, and I hope more readers discover this slim but moving novel.
 

The Case For God

Years ago I bought and read Karen Armstrong's A History of God, which laid out the history of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I saw The Case for God on the shelf at the Athenaeum, and was intrigued -- I expected a rebuttal to the strident modern atheists, like Dawkins and Hitchens, who put my back up with their simplistic, reductionist scorn for religion and spirituality. Well, The Case for God was partly that, but not until the very end of the book.

The Case for God is another historical and philosophical examination of human striving for the transcendent, from ancient rituals that embraced wordless mystery and induced an experience of the divine, through evolving ideas about the nature of God that gradually edged toward a conception of Him as a grand designer or remote creator, who ultimately proved to be unnecessary in a world that emphasises a material and scientific understanding of the cosmos, which is where Dawkins and Hitchens enter the picture. And yet, as Armstrong argues, humans still maintain a stubborn yearning for the sacred and sublime, a need for meaning and purpose in our brief, painful lives. 

I found Armstrong's claim that religion is not something we think, but something we do, to be incredibly powerful. The Case for God was written in the shadow of fundamentalist terrorism and the growing influence of Christian evangelism in the US, which has increased even more disturbingly in the 25 years since. I couldn't help thinking of right-wing Zionist actions in Gaza, too, cruelty and destruction in the name of a particular conception of God. What is at fault is our own shallow convictions that we can penetrate and solve the deep mysteries of existence: why are we here? What's the point of it all? And as Armstrong argues, paradoxically, enlightenment will only come when we can accept that we will never know the answers.
 

The Sense of Being Stared At

 

Regular visitors to this blog will have already noted my attraction to the woo-woo side of life: ghosts and dreams and astrology and tarot cards and that kind of thing. Rupert Sheldrake (father of mycologist Merlin Sheldrake) is similarly inclined and has spent his life earnestly investigating what other people call paranormal phenomena, but which he is convinced are actually a natural part of life on earth.

I've previously read Sheldrake's Dogs Who Know Their Owners Are Coming Home (alas, our puppy never showed any sign of unusual awareness of our approach, only jumping up when she actually heard us arrive), and The Sense of Being Stared At examines such phenomena as precognition, telepathy, and of course the power of attention. I'm sure most of us have experienced weird coincidences like thinking of people just before they telephoned us, making people turn around by staring at the back of their heads, or waking up just before our alarm was set to go off. Apparently there are several accounts of people who felt an intuition of danger before the events of 9/11, and it seems such premonitions are not uncommon -- numbers of passengers on trains involved in crashes are lower than on ordinary days, suggesting that some people felt moved to avoid travel on that day.

I'm not sure whether Sheldrake's theory that our minds extend beyond our bodies in what he's dubbed 'morphic fields' is the actual explanation for such phenomena, but it's a fascinating discussion, and in a world of quantum physics where particles are spookily connected across universes and observers influence outcomes just by watching, maybe we shouldn't write off paranormal phenomena just yet.  

Benang: From the Heart

I heard Bruce Pascoe talking about Kim Scott's 1999 novel, Benang From the Heart, as a book that touched him very deeply, a book about the Stolen Generations, and I immediately borrowed it from the local library. I suspect that I wasn't the only one who heard that conversation, as there are now three more reserves.

Benang is not an easy book to read. It's challenging in its structure, leaping backward and forward in time, and with a final massive twist at the end, and its story is filled with confronting pain, sorrow, grief, violence and abuse. It opens with a description of the narrator, Harley, as 'the first white man born,' the first of his family to have his Aboriginal heritage 'bred out' to the point of invisibility. However, as we discover, this is not true. Benang wrestles with questions of identity, both self-ascribed and imposed from outside -- and also, now I come to think of it, recognised by communities.

Benang From the Heart traces a complex history of several generations, and I must confess at times I got lost between characters. There are elements of magic realism, and probably also some autobiographical features: the families' names are given as 'Scat' and 'Coolman,' while Scott mentions the Coleman family in his acknowledgements. I imagine this was a hugely difficult book to write, and it's fitting that it's equally difficult to read, technically and emotionally. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this novel before, though I'm familiar with Kim Scott's work, particularly Taboo and That Dead Man Dance, which are perhaps more approachable than Benang. A confronting, but rewarding and illuminating, reading experience. 

Of Flame and Fury

I was excited to read the next book on the CBCA Notables list, Of Flame and Fury, by Mikayla Bridge, who is a local (Thornbury) author who I might have passed in Psarakos fruit and veg shop. This is high fantasy, set in a world where phoenixes are raced in high stakes, sometimes lethal, competitions. Kelyn is the tamer of her beloved phoenix Savita, and when she's forced to team up with arrogant rider Warren 'Coup' Coupers, sparks fly. But if phoenixes, shrouded in flame, are dangerous, that's nothing to the powerful businessman, Canen Cristo, who dominates the racing industry but also has other, darker plans, involving phoenix immortality.

It's a super idea to use phoenix mythology as the foundation for a gripping fantasy/romance (though I found it hard to take 'Warren' seriously as a romantic hero's name -- to me, it's a name for a problematic brother-in-law) -- the phoenix races are genuinely exciting and tense, and Kel's racing crew are well drawn characters who anyone would want to hang out with. The world of Salta, with its different islands and forms of magic, is begging for sequels.

But.

Of Flame and Fury is sadly let down by poor editing. Bridge thanks three editors across different time zones, and I can't help wondering if some things slipped between the cracks. There is some awkward grammar and occasional clumsy word choices that pulled me out of the narrative -- honing in instead of homing in, aircrafts for aircraft, a single bird moving at unholy speeds. I feel like a grumpy nana pointing out these lapses, and probably some of these choices are acceptable to younger generations, but they did spoil my enjoyment of an otherwise terrific novel.