Lyrebird

Lyrebird opens with an irresistible hook: a biologist deep in the forest hears a lyrebird mimicking the sounds of a brutal murder, and a woman's voice crying for help. But twenty years go past before this killing can be properly investigated and a whole sordid scheme is eventually uncovered, involving trafficked women, sexual abuse and multiple murders.

Jane Caro clearly relishes making her lead detective a sixty year old woman, hauled out of retirement to take charge of this cold case. It's nice to see an older woman with some life baggage in a leadership role -- a bit like Jane Tennison in Prime suspect, only more likeable. The threat of climate change hangs over this novel, too, this time in the form of bushfire, which makes for an action-packed climax. Lyrebird is less twisty and convoluted than Chris Hammer's thrillers, but the largely female perspective makes it a satisfying and relatable crime mystery.
 

The Fire of Joy

In my ongoing battle to acquire a taste for poetry, I bought this collection as an experiment. Clive James, at the very end of his life, found solace in remembering the many poems he'd memorised by heart; The Fire of Joy collects about eighty of them, with commentary and anecdote by James. For the last couple of months, I've been reading one poem per night, just before going to sleep (I whispered them aloud to myself if possible, as per his instructions), which has been a lovely ritual, and I certainly developed a new appreciation of many of these poems, most of which were new to me, though some were old acquaintances.

I had an idea that I might also memorise these poems and thus be able to access the same joy and comfort that James obviously felt on his deathbed, but I fear it might be beyond me. I have tried to learn Louis MacNiece's The Sunlight on the Garden by heart, which is my favourite, and which I'd partly copied onto my collage study desk in Year 12; but so many of these poems are so long, and I don't like them all equally, so I don't think that the project is going to take off after all. It would be a wonderful thing to have a fund of poetry to repeat to oneself in moments of stress or crisis, which is what Clive James says he did during health emergencies. Traditionally poetry and I don't get along very well. The Fire of Joy has been at least one step towards reconciliation.
 

Music Camp

I absolutely love Penny Tangey's books for middle graders; they are the perfect blend of wry humour and important questions. In Music Camp, we see events through the eyes of flautist Juliet, bookish loner, and bolshie recorder-player Miley as they negotiate making new friends, loving Miss Lin (who teaches them both) and the politics of Grade 6 music camp. Juliet's father has died; Miley and her mum have lost everything in recent floods. Neither of them wants to talk about it. Climate change gently but persistently hangs over the story, but never in an overwhelming or hopeless way.

Tangey is so good at sketching characters through young eyes. We can see for ourselves that Renee has issues with OCD and that Clara might have ADHD, without it being spelled out for us. Minor characters are beautifully outlined -- Ollie, who is a total player on the music camp scene but is apparently a bit of a dork at school; Liam the eager gossip; Mr Broadbent, who is reluctant to accept the sponsorship of the big fossil fuel company; Miss Lin, who is more focused on the benefits their money can bring the kids she teaches. There is a lot of Tangey's trademark droll humour in Music Camp.

I can't get enough of Tangey's writing and I'm so excited that she has an adult mystery out now, set in East Melbourne, What Rhymes with Murder? I can't wait.
 

Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul

I have a feeling I might have read this biography of Dorothy L. Sayers before -- I think I borrowed it from the Stockbridge Library in Edinburgh in 1991, I'm sure I remember reading it in Jo and Alyson's flat in East Claremont St. Anyway, I had forgotten almost everything except the rather astonishing fact that she had a son in 1924, out of wedlock, telling no one. Fortunately she was able to foster the baby with her discreet cousin Ivy, who did this for a living, and was able to keep in contact with her son and support him for his entire childhood, until she 'adopted' him at the age of about eleven. He suspected that she was his biological mother but was not able to confirm this until after her death. (Also, apparently adoption as we know it was not legal in the UK until 1926! How extraordinary.)

Barbara Reynolds focuses a lot on Sayers' religious work and spiritual philosophy, which is of less interest to me than her detective fiction, so I skimmed over the last section of this book fairly quickly. I am intrigued to find her radio plays, The Man Born to Be King, which at the time were a revelation in their realistic presentation of Jesus' life. Something I'd forgotten was that Sayers pronounced her name 'Sairs' and strongly disliked the pronounciation SAY-ers, which is of course how I've said it my whole life. Whoops. Sorry, Dorothy. 

I don't think Dorothy Sayers and I would have agreed on much, but she had a brave, rich and resourceful life and I celebrate her.

The Blessing

I found this omnibus edition of three of Nancy Mitford's novels in a secondhand book shop. I already own a very well-thumbed copy of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate so I just bought this for The Blessing, which oddly I have never owned and I don't think I've read it since high school (a long time, anyway!)

The Blessing, while not reaching the comedic heights and poignant depths of the other two novels, stood up very well, though I expect I would have got more out of it if I knew more about French high society in the 1950s. Womanising Charles-Edouard is of course yet another portrait of Gaston Palewski, this time elevated to a dukedom and terrifically handsome. Despite being married to beautiful, languid, easy-going Englishwoman Grace, he can't keep his eyes or hands off other women; the central cultural conflict of the novel lies between the worldly, sophisticated French attitude to these affairs, and the uptight priggish English intolerance of such behaviour.

All through the story, Grace is urged to adopt a kind of radical acceptance of Charles-Edouard's roving eye, even when she catches him in flagrante. It occurs to me that Charles-Edouard could equally have exercised some radical self-control, but hey. The real villain of the piece is the couple's young son Sigi, who shamelessly manipulates them both to keep them apart and enjoy the fruits of their undivided attention. I have no idea what the contemporary attitude to extra-martial affairs is in France these days, but I suspect it might be a little less forgiving that it was in 1951. 

A Matter of Death and Life

A Matter of Death and Life is a beautiful, sad book. When Marilyn Yalom, married to author and psychotherapist Irvin Yalom and an accomplished academic and writer in her own right, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she suggested that she and Irv should write a book about their experience together. In the first two thirds of the book, they write alternating chapters, charting Marilyn's treatment, her acceptance that the end is near and her wish to take control of the process, along with Irv's panicked denials and terror at the thought of losing her. The last few chapters are written by Irv alone, grieving, observing himself, missing her so much he can't bear to look at her photograph. At 88, he is sure that it won't be long before he dies, too -- but, incredibly, as I write this, he is now 94 and remarried!

There are many interesting, heart wrenching observations: Irvin is shocked that he's besieged with obsessive thoughts of sex after Marilyn's death; he knows perfectly well intellectually that she is dead, but he can't help taking photos and storing up anecdotes to tell her (apparently this reflects different functions of the memory in the brain); he acknowledges for the first time that he has never really known loss before, and that his therapy clients who accused him of being smug and insulated in his own happiness were quite correct.

Marilyn quotes a beautiful poem that I hadn't come across before, by Jane Kenyon, who herself died tragically young.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

 

Silver

Fittingly, I read most of Chris Hammer's second novel, Silver, in a seaside town, though one located on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne rather than the north coast of New South Wales like the fictional town of Port Silver. Silver takes place in the months after Scrublands; journalist Martin Scarsden has finished his true crime book (don't we all wish we could bang out a whole book in a month or so?) and is joining new partner Mandy and her baby son Liam in his old hometown where she's inherited a house. Overlook the coincidence -- there are more to come.

Silver is a well-constructed mystery with the now familiar Hammer ingredients of shenanigans around real estate, buried secrets and unsuspected connections. I really enjoyed the sections where Martin is schlepping around with Liam; we don't often see investigations carried out with a toddler in tow, and the detective having to worry about nappies and baby food (conveniently, Liam falls asleep in the car a lot). Martin's own traumatic family past is fleshed out for the first time, and we meet his uncle Vern and his Aboriginal wife. The pace is less frenetic than in Scrublands, but there's plenty of action -- a corpse in the first few pages, several historic violent deaths, a fist fight on the beach, and a mass poisoning before the novel's end. Martin often acts like a dick, despite his bonding with Liam (luckily there is private childcare available whenever it's not possible for either Mandy or Martin to look after him), and Mandy gets realistically fed up with him.

Silver forms the basis of the second season of Scrublands, available on streaming, and now I've polished off the book I can't wait to get stuck into the TV version. If it's anything like Scrublands season one, it will simplify the plot considerably and delete a few storylines to compress it into four episodes instead of 560 pages. 

Cuckoo's Flight

Cuckoo's Flight is the third and final volume in Wendy Orr's Bronze Age trilogy, and Leira from Swallow's Dance makes a reappearance as Clio's grandmother. This time the town is in danger from raiders, and it seems that one of the young girls will be chosen as a sacrifice to appease the Goddess. Clio's family are potters, but Clio's true love is her father's horses. After an accident that damaged her leg, Clio will never ride again; but her father has an idea for a chariot that might be almost as good...

Orr wrote Cuckoo's Flight during Covid lockdowns, and she says she realised while she was writing it that Clio was going to be disabled, as she herself is now. Female family relationships and friendships are strongly emphasised in this book, like the other Bronze Age stories, and it's so refreshing to read a novel set in a matriarchal society (even if the Lady and the Goddess are sometimes unreasonable in their demands). Life is harsh in these times, with orphaned Mika being beaten by her brother, ill-treated slaves in the purple dye works, and brutal battles; but there is kindness and rejoicing, too.

Cuckoo's Flight was the last book I rescued from the Allen & Unwin clearout, and I'm happy to have all three volumes of the trilogy safe on my own shelves -- it would be worth it for the covers alone, created by the brilliant Josh Durham who was also responsible for the cover design of Crow Country.
 

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage was a recommendation from my book group friend Kirsty; it's a non-fiction collection of essays and articles by Ann Patchett, and I think I enjoyed it even more than Bel Canto. 

The essays about applying to join the Los Angeles Police Force in the wake of the Rodney King riots, and the long history of her relationship to her now-husband were hugely engaging; each was a complicated story. Patchett's father was an LAPD police officer, and while she did want to explore what kinds of people applied to join, she also wanted to acknowledge the difficulties of the work and honour her father (he was really keen for her to actually join, not just write about it). The marriage story is actually largely about divorce, but it has a gorgeously happy ending. The final story, about her friendship with an elderly nun who used to be her primary school teacher, was beautiful and moving.

I did find the essays about caring for her elderly grandmother and the death of her beloved dog were a bit close to the bone for me at the moment, which is another way of recognising their power and truth. The only essay I didn't particularly enjoy was the one about writing. Patchett's advice is blunt and robust, basically just get on with it -- which I know is true -- I just don't much feel like hearing it!
 

Journey to the River Sea

Journey to the River Sea must be about the last of Eva Ibbotson's books for older readers, and I've been saving it up. It's her most awarded novel, and in many ways it distils all that we love best about her work. Maia is the brave, kind heroine; orphaned Finn is the exotic young love interest; Miss Minton is the stern but loving guardian; the horrid, selfish Carters are unmitigated villains. We are transported to the Amazon in 1910, one of Ibbotson's favourite settings, and again we learn that what makes life worth living is nature, music, kindness, curiosity and books, a message that never gets tired.

I'm glad that of all Ibbotson's books, Journey to the River Sea is one that I decided to buy; it really is one of her best.
 

Daydreamers Anonymous

I was so desperate to read this novel that I broke my strict no-purchases-through-Amazon rule -- it was literally the only way I could access it. Samantha Rose Parker has published (I suspect self-published?) Daydreamers Anonymous, the story of Clara, who is thirty five and a compulsive daydreamer. Stuck in a boring office job, living in a basement room in an unsatisfactory share house, Clara's real life unspools inside her head. But she knows she can't go on like this, and she joins a support group, led by the charismatic Dr Hill, who claims to have cured himself. As the back cover blurb says, Clara 'meets her people, but she's not exactly sure she wants them to be her people: there's Jax, who lives a double life as a detective; Bob, who has an invisible family, and Janice, who's been married to Tom Cruise in her head for 30 years...'

Confession time: all through my teens I was a compulsive daydreamer, just like Clara. There's one character in Clara's support group who fantasises herself as 'Dr Who's assistant,' which is pretty close to the content of my own parallel life. It's not going too far to call this kind of daydreaming an addiction. Whenever I  had the chance, I'd slip into my inner narrative, assuming an alter ego who was smarter, prettier, braver and more lovable than me. I had one friend at school who also had an active fantasy life; she's the only person (apart from one therapist) with whom I've ever discussed what my friend and I dubbed 'etcetera.' Like Clara, I genuinely felt that my secret life was my true life and the most important thing about me; the outer me was just going through the motions. And like Clara, I realised that this was a dangerous path. When started uni, I tried to give up cold turkey -- it was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it took a long time to shake the addiction. I've relapsed from time to time, but I seem to have lost the urge, maybe even the ability, to lose myself in daydreams like I used to. And I'm honestly kind of sad about that. I could easily have ended up like Clara, and I'm glad I avoided that fate, but there's a loss and grief there too.

Daydreamers Anonymous obviously had a special resonance for me, but it's a funny, moving, poignant novel in its own right, with no easy answers for what is a genuine psychological problem. 

The Twelve

UK writer Liz Hyder's YA novel, The Twelve, was recommended by my book group friend, Cathy, who guessed correctly that it would be right up my alley. The blurbs all over the cover talk about Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, which is a signal to parents of my generation rather than a recommendation to young readers themselves these days, I would think. The Twelve certainly has strong echoes of both authors, but notably it's written in a much more modern style -- present tense, first person narration, without which apparently no contemporary young person will pick up a book (what a fuddy duddy I sound like...)

Kit is about fifteen, staying in a caravan over Christmas with her eleven year old sister Libby and her mother. The Christmas timing and the twelve mysterious Watchers harks back to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, and there are shades of early Alan Garner in Kit and her new friend Story's pursuit of the vanished Libby into the distant past and their battle against a dark enemy. There are lovely invocations of the teeming wildlife in the largely unpeopled historic times that Kit and Story visit: birds, insects, fish and mammals everywhere (I should add the novel is itself set in historic times, in 1999, though I have trouble thinking of a mere twenty five years ago as being historical fiction!)

I really enjoyed The Twelve, and I hope young readers thirsty for fantastical novels strong on landscape and character will relish it as much as I did.

Becoming Myself

I've long been a fan of American psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, especially his two wise books about coming to term with death, Creatures of a Day and Staring at the Sun. In Becoming Myself, Yalom recounts his life story, and it's just as insightful, compassionate and insightful as his writing about his therapy clients (I haven't yet read Yalom's long fiction, but Becoming Myself has piqued my curiosity).

In many ways, and he admits this himself, Yalom has had a blessed life. He married his soul mate, Marilyn, early, they have four healthy children, he has taught and written and seen clients for many decades, he has travelled all over the world and spoken to huge and adoring audiences, and espeically in latter years, he has enjoyed enormous acclaim and popularity. At the time of writing Becoming Myself, he was 86; he's now 94 and still with us.

Yalom is cheerfully candid about his own luck and his failings and regrets -- he allowed Marilyn to shoulder the bulk of child rearing, though she's had a demanding academic career of her own; he made mistakes in handling some patients; he wishes he'd had more empathy toward his difficult mother. He freely discusses taking marijuana, opium, LSD and ecstasy, which didn't shock but did surprise me. He is such an engaging writer and so open about his experiences, Becoming Myself was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Next I'm going to read A Matter of Death and Life, written a few years later by Irvin and Marilyn together, after Marilyn's diagnosis of terminal cancer. Yalom is frank about his fear of losing Marilyn, and I wonder how they handled it together.

The Names

I think I first heard about Florence Knapp's debut novel, The Names, on The Bookshelf on Radio National, and I was immediately hooked by the premise. In 1987, Cora is taking her newborn son to register his name, and on the way she tosses up between three alternatives -- Gordon, the name of her overbearing husband; Julian, her own preference; or Bear, the choice of her young daughter, Maia. The narrative then splits into three strands, each following the the consequences of a different naming decision.

I already have a weakness for names, and I love alternate timelines, so this was an instant must-read for me. I had to wait for months until my reservation came up at the library, and there are 144 people waiting behind me (they have to wait a little longer, as my daughter is currently reading it, and she doesn't normally read fiction, which again testifies to the appeal of this novel). The Names is a hugely readable and engaging story which nonetheless explores some big questions about fate and destiny, family violence, the power of small decisions, loyalty and money and power. The Names is a wonderful example of strong domestic fiction -- it deals relationships within one small family, but it spirals out to encompass a wider field thanks to the three parallel storylines. I did read one review by a person who apparently launched into the book without realising what was happening with the structure and was initially bewildered, but I honestly can't believe they could have been confused for long.

I whipped through The Names in a weekend and it would be a terrific recommendation for reluctant (adult!) readers.

EDIT: My daughter absolutely loved it and can't wait for the inevitable movie.
 

Secret Sparrow

There seems to be no end to the stories to be found in the history of WWI, even though it ended over a century ago. In Secret Sparrow, Jackie French has uncovered a largely forgotten cohort of women Morse code signallers who were recruited after many of the male Post Office employees had been killed early in the fighting. According to French, the service records of these women were destroyed after the war so that the government wouldn't have to pay them pensions, which sadly sounds  all too plausible! However, it seems their status was always ambiguous: they remained Post Office employees, despite wearing uniforms and having to obey Army orders.

Secret Sparrow is the story of Jean McLain, who recounts her wartime experience to young Arjun during a long night when they're stranded by a flash flood (this part of the story takes place in 1978). It's a cracking tale, full of action and peril -- Jean's transport ship is blown up, she is frequently under fire, eventually she's sent right to the front line and endures ten days of terror and excitement during a big forward push. There's even a bit of romance. There are a few moments of contrivance, but I'll forgive them in the service of the story (even 1978 seems a little early to be talking about Bletchley, but what would I know). I'm always up for a wartime tale and Secret Sparrow is a good one.