Big Magic

 

I'd wanted to read Big Magic for a while, and I am one of the millions who enjoyed Eat Pray Love and (to a lesser extent) Committed, so when I saw it on my friend Chris's shelf, I grabbed it.

Elizabeth Gilbert is a chatty, disarming, insistent companion, with a refreshing respect for the role of luck and chance in the creative journey. In this book she is determined to convince the reader that you, too, can live a creative life -- write, paint, knit, research, whatever -- and be richer for the experience (not necessarily financially richer, as she's at pains to point out!)

There are lots of lovely things to share here. I love the notion that ideas float through the ether, searching for a receptive home -- Gilbert maintains that one such idea for a novel was passed via a kiss from herself to Ann Patchett. I've also had this experience where someone else produces 'my' idea before I can manage to get it out there, and it rings true to me that ideas have an independent existence and a will to live.

I also agree with Gilbert's refusal to fetishise the trope of the Suffering Artist; her focus on joy in creation rather than material success; her insistence that curiosity will serve you better than passion; and her belief that it's essential to trust enough to keep putting your work out there, even if there's no response, or not the response you hoped for.

But ironically the very fact that I agreed with so much of what Gilbert says means that this book was not really written for me. I already know that I have to be persistent, to seek enchantment, to have courage, to not expect that writing will support me. I don't feel I need permission to pursue my craft. I'm already following her advice. Which doesn't mean it's bad advice -- it's excellent advice -- but that I'm not massively in need of it. Not today, anyway!

I Own the Racecourse!

This week I was asked to take part in a radio discussion of I Own the Racecourse!, which has necessitated a quick re-read. (Tomorrow morning, 2SER Final Draft, if you're interested...)

A few years ago, I was asked to write the introduction to this new edition of Patricia Wrightson's beloved 1968 novel. I was hugely flattered, of course, but I'm not sure why Text approached me, perhaps because Crow Country had just won the Patricia Wrightson Prize at the NSW Premier's Awards, or because people were making comparisons between Wrightson's handling of Indigenous magic and the similar subject matter of Crow Country. But the magic at play in I Own the Racecourse! is of a very different kind, and nothing to do with Aboriginal culture.

Andy Hoddel is different from the other boys who skateboard and play cricket and scrounge for scrap on the streets of Appington Hill; though Wrightson never explicitly says so, he is intellectually disabled. He is vulnerable, and easily conned into thinking that he is the new owner of the racecourse. Indulged by the workers at the track, Andy's delusion becomes so deeply ingrained that, though his friends try to protect him, everyone, even the Committee themselves, end up going along with it.

I had never read I Own the Racecourse! and strangely it turned out that I had a different, very personal connection to this particular novel. My sister, born the year after this book was published, also has an intellectual disability, and I could recognise her in Andy: her vulnerability, her stubbornness, her eagerness to belong. I found it impossible to write a truthful response to the book without talking about her.

This sparked off a deep discussion within my family. Should I write about something so private? How would my sister feel about it? Did she even think of herself as intellectually disabled? Believe it or not, this was not something we ever spoke about within the family. Asking my sister what she thought, giving her the introduction to read and approve, and discussing it with her, ended up being a really therapeutic process for the whole family and something that was long overdue.

As I say in the introduction, I just wish my sister had had a group of friends like Andy's.

My Brilliant Friend

Appropriately, this book was a birthday present from my brilliant friend, Sandra Eterovic. I think I felt rather intimidated about reading this novel, as the series has received so much praise -- but now the Neapolitan fever has cooled somewhat, I've finally managed to hop onto the Elena Ferrante bandwagon (have I mixed enough metaphors there?)

My Brilliant Friend, as everybody surely knows by now, is the story of two friends, Lila and Lena, growing up in a poor district of Naples in the 1950s. Right until the very end, I assumed that the 'brilliant friend' of the title was Lila, being described by Lena, the narrator; but it turns out that it's Lila, describing Lena. The two girls are both very clever, sometimes rivals, each driving the other to greater feats of excellence, but as Lena notes, they seem bound by some mysterious fate whereby Lila thrives when Lena's life is hard, and vice versa.

This is a very people-focused novel, with little physical description of the setting. But it still paints a vivid picture of 1950s Naples. Maybe it helped that I've been there? My heart was wrung for these two young girls who are forced to grow up so fast, the age of my own daughters. Despite their brains and their strength, they are so much at the mercy of their parents, the local boys and men, the judgements of the neighborhood. You long for them to burst free and taste the joys they deserve, and there are hints that this might be possible. I just hope I don't lose track of all the characters and their complicated, intertwining histories.

Three more books to go, and I'm hooked.

Joe Cinque's Consolation

Once again, a book read years ago has drawn me to a film, which has in turn sent me back to the original book. This week it was Joe Cinque's Consolation which screened on SBS on Friday night. Though Helen Garner's book deals with the legal and moral aftermath of the killing, the film focuses instead on the events leading up to Joe Cinque's death; so when I returned to the book, I had a clear picture in my mind of what had gone before.

I say a clear picture, but in fact the events are far from clear; they swirl in a muddy, ambiguous tangle of intention, possible psychosis, passivity and grief. Cinque was drugged with Rohypnol and then injected with heroin by his girlfriend, Anu Singh, who had been talking for a long time about suicide and was judged to have been suffering from mental illness. Her friend Madhavi Rao helped her acquire the heroin and plan the bizarre "farewell" dinner parties which preceded the killing -- she was cleared of all charges.

Garner grapples with the questions of culpability and guilt that this scenario throws up. If Singh was mentally ill (something Garner seems to never quite accept), then who bears responsibility for Cinque's death? Did Rao have a duty to prevent Singh from acting, to call the police, to call for an ambulance? Legally, apparently she did not; but what about morally? Again and again Garner circles back to the brute fact that "Joe Cinque is dead." What is his death worth? Who will pay? She befriends Cinque's wounded, dignified parents, and ultimately seems to see her own moral duty as a kind of bearing witness to their pain, to making sure that this gentle young man Joe is not forgotten.

I've read absolutely scathing reviews of this book which find Garner racist, sexist, judgmental, self-absorbed. I'm inclined to be a little more lenient, and I think Garner is not unaware of her own compromised position in telling this story and the sides she chooses. But I guess I choose to be forgiving mostly because of the sheer crystalline quality of Helen Garner's writing. I raced through this book in less than an evening, utterly gripped, thrown this way and that by the force of the big questions Garner ruthlessly pursues and is brave enough to leave unresolved.

Encounter in Eltham

Last weekend I had the pleasure of being a guest at the Eltham Festival of Stories at Eltham Library (that's me on the right, above). It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with some old friends, and meet some new ones, like Ailsa Wild, author of the Squishy Taylor series (she's the cool one in the middle), and the lovely Teagan who interviewed us both with panache (she's the one with the mic).

The topic of our panel was 'Where Do Stories Come From?' and I'd expected to be talking mostly about Crow Country, which is my best-known book. But as it happened, the lovely Teagan wasn't able to get hold of Crow Country -- all the copies were out from the library, which is nice to know! -- and she read New Guinea Moon instead. So I mostly talked about that.

New Guinea Moon is partly based on my own childhood memories of growing up in the Highlands of PNG in the 1970s. My father was a pilot, and my memories of the Mt Hagen ex-pat community and my later adult unease with their colonial attitudes, even at the time of Independence, were at the centre of the novel.

After we spoke, as always happens when I talk about New Guinea Moon, members of the audience came up to say that they, too, had a connection with PNG. It amazes me that so many Australians have a personal history with our nearest neighbour, and yet PNG receives so little attention (compared to say, the UK!) and we know so little about the place. Someone always wants to tell me, my aunt was a missionary or my grandfather was an engineer or even, I grew up there too.

This time a woman came up to say that her uncle had also been a pilot in the Highlands, from the 1970s until he was killed in a crash in the early 2000s. I asked his name, but somehow I already knew the answer. I remembered her uncle vividly. He had worked with my father and been a good friend of my parents; we'd all been shocked to hear of his death, which featured in a story on the ABC's Foreign Correspondent a few years ago. In fact, the character of Tony in New Guinea Moon was partly based on my memories of him. We both ended the conversation in tears.

It's strange how sometimes what seem to be the most personal, private stories end up being the ones that other people find most easy to share. And what a coincidence that she had happened to attend this particular session on this particular day, and that I'd happened to discuss this particular book. It turned a lovely day into a really special experience.

Holding the Man

I happened to catch the 2015 film of Holding the Man the other night on SBS (it was excellent) and it prompted me to hunt out the book, which I hadn't read since its first publication in 1995.

Holding the Man is a memoir by Timothy Conigrave, about his relationship with John Caleo. They fell in love as schoolboys at a Catholic private school in Melbourne in the 1970s, moved to Sydney, and became caught up in the horrific AIDS epidemic of the 1990s. Conigrave writes simply and almost unbearably movingly of his and Caleo's illness, and Caleo's death. Conigrave died ten days after completing Holding the Man, and it was published posthumously to great acclaim.

I had forgotten how funny and honest, and how sexy, the early parts of this book are, perfectly describing the thrills of young love (especially forbidden love!). But the prejudice of their families, and the stigma that clung to AIDS, are painful to read, and timely in the current climate. It would be nice to think that we have progressed as a society in the last twenty years, and I believe we have; but only up to a point.

Reading about Conigrave and Caleo's treatment brought back all the terminology that was part of our lives in the 1990s, words I had forgotten -- AZT, T-cell counts, PCP, Karposi's sarcoma. But the story of their unwavering love is very moving, and I was forcibly struck by the account of the loving friendship and support that surrounded the couple. Though the epidemic was a terrifying and devastating time, it did prove the amazing strength and generosity of the gay community. That's a good thing to remember.

Iris and the Tiger

This book was a gift from my wonderfully talented friend Sandra Eterovic, who made the cover art and the internal illustrations. She is so clever!

Iris and the Tiger is the first junior fiction (I think!) from accomplished local YA author Leanne Hall. Twelve year old Iris has travelled to Spain to meet her eccentric great-aunt Ursula; she is also on a secret mission for her parents, to check out any possible rival heirs to Ursula's estate, Bosque de Nubes (Forest of Clouds). But nothing is as it seems in this magical place, and Iris soon finds a multitude of secrets to explore and riddles to solve.

This is a fantastic concept for a story, expertly combining a cast of intriguing characters, an enticing setting, and the world of surrealist art. Iris and the Tiger has a marvellous, mysterious atmosphere, where sunflowers play tennis on an overgrown court, giant steaks drape over balconies, trees have eyeballs, and tigers might escape from paintings to run wild in the woods. In fact there is so much going on that I found myself occasionally muddled about what exactly was going on; this is a novel that rewards close attention, and there is plenty of fun for adult readers picking up the artsy allusions. This is a gorgeous book, inside and out.

A Leg To Stand On

One of the ugliest covers I think I've ever seen! But I'm now committed to reading everything that Oliver Sacks has ever written, so I didn't pay any attention to the packaging, and dived into the contents of A Leg To Stand On.

This slim volume, first published in 1984, is Sacks' account of an accident and serious injury he sustained as a young man, falling down a mountain in Norway. The operation to mend the injury went well, but in the aftermath of recovery, Sacks experienced an unexpected and to him, inexplicable, sense of alienation from his own limb. He felt that this leg was an utterly foreign object, unconnected to his sense of self, unable to be controlled, horrifying and even disgusting. Eventually this feeling was overcome, but not by thinking and brooding -- only by unself-consciously doing and actually using the leg, was it joyfully re-integrated and truly recovered.

The most striking thing about this experience was the degree to which Sacks felt unable to communicate how he was feeling to the doctors, nurses and therapists, even with the advantage of his own medical standing. Only with fellow patients was he really able to express what he'd been through and discover that such feelings were quite common. Hopefully this book, and Sacks' research, has led to greater awareness.

Sacks also expresses beautifully the journey of every patient -- from the intense terror and dread of being struck down by injury or illness, the relief of rescue and sense of safety when treatment commences, the delicious sensation of being excused from normal life, when it's enough just to be still alive, and the ultimate chafing at restriction and desire to reconnect with the world again. I found this memoir extremely moving, in every sense.

The Mirror Image Ghost

Picked this up at Brown and Bunting because I admire the powerful Marianne Dreams by the same author (Catherine Storr). Annoyingly, Marianne Dreams has gone missing from my bookshelves, I must have lent it to someone and neglected to chase it up.

I wasn't aware of The Mirror Image Ghost but it's an interesting, eerie little book. It's probably too light on plot to appeal to most of today's junior readers, but I thought it wove together several story strands with deftness and subtlety, and I would have loved it if it had been around when I was about ten or eleven.

Lisa's mother has just remarried and now Lisa finds herself saddled with a French step-sister and -brother whom she intensely dislikes. The tensions of a blended family are well-drawn. Her beloved grandfather lost his family in the Second World War but no-one wants to talk about exactly what happened (the adult reader can guess easily, but a child reader is led gently toward the revelation of the Holocaust). Meanwhile Lisa is glimpsing snippets of the past in an old mirror; will she discover the secrets on her own? And is she herself a part of the story?

The Mirror Image Ghost doesn't have the punch of Marianne Dreams, and though it was first published in 1994, it has the feel of a much older book. Not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned, but it might put other people off!

Run, Pip, Run

Thankfully, the junior fiction selection for the Convent book group Homelessness theme was much more enjoyable than the YA book! Run, Pip, Run was a deserved winner of the 2016 Readings Children's Book Prize, by debut Australian author J.C. Jones.

Pip's tenth birthday starts horribly when her carer, gruff old Sully, collapses with a stroke and goes off to hospital. With no other family, Pip is determined not to end up in the hands of 'the welfare' and goes on the run. If this was a current YA book, it would probably descend into dark and grim territory, but Pip is brave and resourceful, and her adventures are handled with a light touch that emphasises the help she receives along the way.

Run, Pip, Run is a terrific read for boys and girls alike.

I'll Be There

Bought on the Kindle for our next Convent book group meeting, with the theme of 'Homelessness.' We've actually already read Holly Goldberg Sloan's Counting By Sevens, but I'll Be There was her first novel, after much experience writing screenplays.

This was a hugely successful debut, so Sloan doesn't need any boosting from me, and I must confess, this novel didn't really work for me. The story certainly rocketed along, with plenty of action, loads of feels, and all the loose ends tied up neatly at the end. Sweet Emily and sensitive Sam, our star-crossed lovers, seemed too perfect to be true, and came across as younger than seventeen and eighteen respectively. It's no surprise that Sloan, with her screenwriting background, is a master of pace and plot. And the themes of caring and compassion are definitely worthy ones.

But the writing style was just so flat!  
And then... and then... and then... (End para)  
It was true. (separate para for emphasis)

Plod, plod, plod! I know this sounds like a contradiction, because the plot was fast-moving, chopped into swift digestible chunks -- but within each short chapter, the prose was painfully clunky. There were a few bonus chapters of the sequel included at the end of the Kindle edition, but (gulp) I couldn't bring myself to bother.

Elidor

I've had Alan Garner's third novel, Elidor, on my bookshelf for I don't know how long, but I'm ashamed to say that until now, I've never actually read it. I think I feared another Weirdstone disappointment. But I needn't have worried -- Elidor is a much, much better book than either Weirdstone or The Moon of Gomrath, and in this novel, you can see Garner truly beginning to come into his powers.

Despite the high fantasy cover, Elidor is actually grounded firmly in our world. The excursion of the four children into the mysterious, blighted land of Elidor comes early in the book, and it's brief. They return to their own world as guardians of four precious items, disguised in our world as a chipped bowl, a 'sword' of wooden planks, a stone and an iron bar. The children hide the treasures, but it's not long before the enemies of Elidor come searching.

The everyday creepiness of the Treasures' power is wonderful -- their 'charge' interferes with radio signals and electricity, making kitchen tools come to life even when they're not plugged in. This part of the story reminded me of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, where high fantasy and the everyday  intersect in a similar way. I also loved the humdrum disguise of the Treasures -- and which imaginative child hasn't known that the cracked china dug up in the garden was really a magical chalice, or waved a stick for an enchanted sword? Or was that just me?

Elidor has been criticised for not elaborating more fully on the alternate world; but I think it's all the more powerful for being elusive and oblique. The predicament of Nick, the eldest, who tries to explain away their experience as a mass hallucination, foreshadows the suffering of the adult Colin in Boneland, who also has to deal with the aftermath of a magical encounter that can't be rationally accounted for. Originally written as a radio play, Elidor is a taste of wonders to come in Red Shift and The Owl Service.

A Thousand Acres

I couldn't find an image of the edition of Jane Smiley's 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, but this is pretty close. My copy was released as a film tie-in (the movie was directed by Aussie Jocelyn Moorhouse!) and the cover put me off for a long time. You know when you have a book sitting next to your bed for months, and then finally you force yourself to read it, and you think, wow, this book is really good, I wish I'd read it sooner? Yeah... that.

I picked up this novel because it had been recommended so many times as a great book club read in a book I read about book clubs (meta, hey). Set on a farm in rural Iowa, this prosaic story felt more remote from my life than some of the fantasy novels I've read recently.

I've described the story as prosaic, but that's unfair. It's a re-telling of Shakespeare's King Lear, a play with which I'm not familiar, so I kept a Wikipedia summary of the plot open beside me as I read. Not that I needed it -- the major plot points and characters are loosely paralleled, but it's the emotional truth of the tale, and the harrowing, complicated pain that families can hide, which is the heart of the novel. This was a clear, adult, deeply satisfying read, filled with hard wisdom.

Memory in a House

A quick read between the cracks -- very kindly lent by Pia at book group, where we were discussing The Chimneys of Green Knowe. I devoured this book in a single sitting! It's Lucy Boston's account of her rescue and restoration of the house that Green Knowe is based on, complete with floor plans and photographs. I am going to copy the floor plans and tuck them away for reference with my Green Knowe collection so I can picture the house more clearly.

It turns out that the Manor, Hemingford Grey, is much smaller than I imagined from reading Boston's exquisite novels -- it's almost just two-up, two-down, with extra bedrooms in the attic. The core of the house is very old indeed, a Norman hall from the twelfth century, with alterations, additions and demolitions in the generations since. Boston painstakingly stripped away the awkward adaptations of the intervening years and allowed the history of the house to breathe. Since her death, the Manor has been cared for by her daughter-in-law Diana, and can be viewed by the public. While Green Knowe is home to a number of beloved spirits, the Manor also hosts some ghostly presences which are less well defined.

It's obvious that Boston's love and respect for the house became the over-riding passion of her life, and the direct inspiration for her writing. It seems that every book she wrote had its roots in the house, not just the Green Knowe books, but also her adult novels and memoirs.

It was lovely, and unexpected, to discover that Boston was also a noted quilter -- her patchworks gave her the idea for The Chimneys of Green Knowe. Her designs can be found on the internet, and they are truly beautiful, works of art in their own right.

Not If I See You First

Another book read in a galloping hurry, as our book group meeting is tomorrow, and the library didn't supply Eric Lindstrom's Not If I See You First until last Friday. It's fat, but the print is large, fortunately, so I was able to race through it.

As I read the first chapter my heart sank slightly, as we discover in short order that our narrator, Parker, is blind; her mother died in the car accident that took her sight; and her father has also recently died. To add to her trauma, her aunt and family have moved into her home to care for her and insist on doing things for her when she's actually very independent. This seemed to set the scene for one of those YA books I loathe, where off screen family death raises the stakes artificially high, AND we have disability thrown in for good measure. Plus the teens are all Fault-in-Our-Stars-style bitter and whip-smart. I was all set to hate this novel!

Well, it improved as it went along (though it probably went along a little too long for my liking). The conceit of the blind narrator works really well, and it was cleverly used by the author a few times to test the reader's assumptions, too, about race and appearance. We are in the same position as Parker -- we can only judge characters on what they say, not how they look. This means that Parker gets a few things wrong (that's kind of the theme of the novel) but it also means that she has to judge people on their actions, rather than their appearance. (I guess this means that a film adaptation won't work for this book!)

I learned a lot about the experience of a blind teenager, and had my own assumptions tested -- for instance, music is not super-important for Parker. She can't waste precious audio-book listening time on music if she wants to keep up with classmates, and she can't multi-task listening to music with reading or jigsaw puzzles or flicking through her phone. I also liked the way she wears a blindfold as a fashion statement. For me, the book dragged a little during the angsty relationship conversations; but it really took off when Parker runs. I would have liked the balance tilted further in that direction.

Brave New World

Long story short: in a burst of enthusiasm after receiving an NGV membership for her birthday, Alice signed up for an NGV book group session about Brave New World. She tried to read it, and listened to an audio dramatisation, but couldn't get into it, and with time running out, gave her ticket to me instead.

I first found this ancient paperback on my grandmother's bookshelf as a child of ten or eleven (I think it belonged to my mum). At the time I found it mystifying but compelling; I must have re-read it at high school (the inscription on the front page says I was in Year 11), but I have no memory of studying it.

The book group discussion was interesting (if Alice had gone, she would have been the youngest person there by about thirty years!) We all agreed that for a novel written eighty years ago, some elements were frighteningly prescient: the relentless consumerism, the constant distraction of shallow entertainment preventing deep thought, the lack of privacy and solitude. (My best line was 'FOMO is our soma.') Of course Huxley didn't foresee the internet, or seem to take into account the likely future automation of ... well, everything, apparently... but in the last part of the book it's explained that this was restricted deliberately, to give the population a necessary level of activity -- a precaution which our capitalist system seems unlikely to follow. Huxley's biggest 'miss' was the degree of social liberalisation that has occured since the 1930's -- BNW is sexually progressive, but horribly misogynist and racist.

Overall, we agreed it was a chilling and still highly relevant warning. It's terrifying how classic dystopian novels seem more relevant than ever at the moment -- Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid's Tale. We may not be too close to a cloned, artificially stratified society, but many of Huxley's other predictions are uncomfortably near the bone.