Death At the Sign of the Rook

Yet another murder mystery! But Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels (this is number 6) are a very different beast from Dorothy Simpson's Inspector Thanet stories. There are a couple of murders, and a handful of near misses, but the real mystery centres on theft rather than murder, and the real pleasure of the story lies in Atkinson's witty, wandering, but tightly plotted style. Her characters loop in seemingly aimless spirals, playing with words, following diversions, colliding in implausible coincidences ('A coincidence is an explanation waiting to happen,' says Jackson Brodie), but Atkinson draws the strings tight by the end and ties up every dangling thread.

Death At the Sign of the Rook is full of in-jokes and references for fans of cosy murder mysteries, echoing Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, the cliches of Cluedo, and even newcomer Richard Osman, and probably others who went over my head. There are some lovely characters to linger with here: a vicar who has lost his faith and his voice; a drifting, depressed ex-soldier; a haughty, delightfully sterotyped lady of the manor. But for the regular reader, it's wonderful to be reunited with amiable detective Jackson Brodie and sharp little Reggie Chase. 

The Sign of the Rook has a feeling of belonging to an earlier time; though there are references to the pandemic and pocket trackers, it doesn't seem totally anchored in the modern world. But I'm not complaining.
 

Inspector Thanet Omnibus 2

I hadn't intended to return to the Inspector Thanet well so soon, but the book I wanted to borrow from the Athenaeum wasn't there, so I grabbed this instead. We are now well into the mid-80s, though the timeline seems to move more swiftly within the novels -- Thanet's daughter has aged ten years by the end of Dead On Arrival, despite only five years passing in publication time (Simpson could really churn them out! Kudos).

Again, though I do enjoy the mysteries themselves, the real appeal is in the social detail. Close Her Eyes (1984) features a fifteen year old victim, and it would be a brave author today who would describe an abused teenager as 'pure evil.' Last Seen Alive (1985) opens with a visit to the town by Princess Diana, at the peak of her popularity and before her marriage to Charles broke down. It also, rather yuckily, features incest, and the social panic de jour, children sniffing glue. Dead On Arrival (1986) (a title which, by the way, has nothing to do with the plot) breaks one of the Golden Age detective rules by centring on identical twins, though perhaps it doesn't strictly break the rule as we know about the existence of both twins from the beginning. Thanet's daughter enters a competition akin to Junior Masterchef, with the gorgeously eighties menu of Pork Chops With Mint and Lemon Flummery.

Looking forward to volume three! But perhaps not quite yet.
 

Look Back With Mixed Feelings

I've now discovered that there are actually four volumes in Dodie Smith's delightful autobiography; I think Look Back With Mixed Feelings might be my favourite title, though. This second book in the series covers Smith's late adolescence and early twenties, a period when she was training at 'the Academy' (later better known as RADA) and beginning to make her way in the theatre. You would barely guess that the First World War was going on during these years, and Smith herself admits to feeling guilty for giving the conflict so little thought. Like a typical teenager, she is mostly preoccupied with falling in and out of love and trying to find work. 

Probably the most important event for Smith during these years was the death of her beloved mother. After this, Smith drifted out of her family's orbit, though the band of Manchester uncles were as loving and supportive as ever, often coming to the rescue with badly needed funds. Again, like any young person, Smith turned to her 'Gang' of friends, mostly fellow members of the Three Arts Club, a home from home-cum-boarding house for women artists, writers and actors, which sounds rather like living in college, though I didn't think much of the cheap cubicle option, windowless, with the partitions not even reaching the ground!

There's much discussion of cocoa made on gas rings, theatrical 'digs' with sympathetic landladies, stage mishaps, flitting from one play to another (or, sadly, in Smith's case, not getting work for ages) and it's remarkable to reflect on this vanished world where even in the thick of war, plays were being constantly mounted, toured and even taken to the battlefront. There must have been thousands of people working in the theatre, and of course Noel Streatfeild also spent years in the same milieu (they were almost exactly the same age, I wonder if they ever came across each other?)

I've already nabbed Look Back in Astonishment (another great title) but incredibly, the usually reliable Athenaeum doesn't have the final volume, Look Back With Gratitude. It's just possible I might have a Christmas present on the way...

Windswept

I bought Annabel Abbs' Windswept: Why Women Walk for my friend Christine, who is a woman who walks herself, and enjoys histories of overlooked women, especially creative ones. Now she's lent it back to me and I loved it (maybe I really wanted to buy it for myself, let's be honest).

Abbs explores some forgotten stories of women who found freedom, strength, consolation and creative inspiration in walking, or what our American friends would call 'hiking.' Most of these women walked along rivers and across mountains at a time when long-distance walking was considered an exclusively masculine preserve. Georgia O'Keeffe gloried in the wide empty plains of Texas, while Simone de Beauvoir soothed her soul by walking through French forests. I had heard of Nan Shepherd's writing about the Scottish wilds, and seen her quoted by other writers I admire, like Robert Macfarlane, but I hadn't known her biography: she was one of the 1920s so-called 'surplus' women after the Great War, who would have expected to marry and have children. Instead, she taught, and walked, and wrote, though her writing wasn't fully appreciated till after her death. Painters, writers, philosophers, all found a new sense of self and purpose through walking.

At one point Abbs talks about the strangely liberating, sense-enhancing experience of night walking, an experience that is too often denied to women, barred to us for our own safety. When you think of all the men down through history who have enjoyed the thrill and oddness of walking at night, it's so unfair that this is something that most women will never be able to do with the same sense of freedom and power. I remember as a student the joys of walking the streets around the university by night -- it was a pretty safe area, but we never went alone.

Windswept is an invigorating and thoughtful book, and it makes me think I ought to get out in nature more. I'm relishing my short suburban morning walks, but perhaps I need to strike out into something more challenging...

Atomic Habits

I had James Clear's bestselling self-help book, Atomic Habits, on hold at the library for so long, I can't remember when or why I originally reserved it -- there were dozens of people in the queue ahead of me. But lo and behold, when my elder daughter saw me reading it, she said, 'You know I've got that book somewhere, Mum...' (Unfortunately, 'somewhere' means in storage on the other side of town, so not that useful after all.)

Various members of the family asked why I was reading it, as I'm notorious in this house as having any number of habits -- morning walks, crossword, Duolingo, yoga, tea, no TV before 6pm, no Candy Crush before 4pm. For someone who works flexibly at home, I actually have a pretty tight daily schedule. But perhaps that's not so paradoxical; it's easy to drift off track without guard rails.

Atomic Habits is a clear, easy read, and a lot of what Clear presents is common sense. He describes 'habit stacking' where you add a desired new habit to an existing one (eg take your meds at the same time as you make your morning cuppa). He points out that you want to try to make good habits easy, attractive, obvious and satisfying (put out your running gear the night before, reward yourself for sucess), while bad habits, the ones you want to lose, should be difficult, invisible, unsatisfying and unattractive (lock yourself out of social media and let a friend guard your passwords, put the naughty snacks at the back of the fridge and the healthy stuff at the front). And you need to be patient. Even the best daily habits won't bring results overnight.

I must admit that I borrowed Atomic Habits mostly so I could feel smug, and after finishing it, I do. It turns out I am pretty good at forming habits. But the difference between me and James Clear is that I'm not going to make a ten million dollar career out of it!
 

What Katy Did Revisited

 Here are a trio of books that I haven't read for a LONG time. Of course I was initially drawn to What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next because the heroine shared my name! I knew they were 'old' books but I don't think I realised just how old they were when I first read them: What Katy Did was published in 1872, so they were over a hundred years when I first discovered them at the Mt Hagen library, and they are 150 years old now.

It was fun to revisit them, but they haven't aged particularly well, and they are of interest now mainly as historical documents. There's not a lot of plot in any of the books. In the first volume we meet Katy as a harum-scarum twelve year old, who is crippled when she falls off a swing (which she was warned not to swing on) and learns to be patient and motherly during the four long years when she's confined to her bed, inspired by her saintly Cousin Helen. It's not quite as saccharine as it sounds but it's also not massively action-packed. Miraculously, despite not getting any physio or treatment whatsoever, Katy regains her ability to walk -- not sure how plausible this is!

My favourite was always What Katy Did At School, because Katy and her sister Clover, sent away for a year at a distant boarding school, make friends with a lively, mischievous girl called Rose Red who gets into all kinds of scrapes. I was mystified but intrigued by the habits of the 'young ladies,' but couldn't understand why they were 'ladies' while the boys in the school next door were 'students.' Naturally goody two shoes Katy gets up a society against flirting, but otherwise it's mostly wholesome fun. I vividly remembered the sisters' Christmas box, packed with delicious things to eat and lots of lovely homemade presents.

Lastly came What Katy Did Next, in which Katy gets to travel to Europe as a companion to a young widow and her daughter. It's mostly a travelogue, which I actually quite enjoyed this time round, as I've now visited most of their destinations myself. It reads very much as if it's adapted from the author's own travel diary -- weird to read about the Colosseum being overgrown with ivy! The main event is the illness of the young daughter, which also stuck with me -- she had to have her hair cut off, and her doll's hair, too, while Katy scours Rome for a feather pillow and tries to vain to obtain satisfactory beef tea. Happily, the widow's hot brother does the right thing and falls in love with Katy's nursing skills, so we all know what Katy will do after that...

Given their extreme antiquity, the Katy books hold up fairly well. I wonder it they were inspired by the success of Little Women, which was published a few years before? They are actually less heavy-handed on the moral front, though the characters are less vividly drawn than Alcott's. But I'm not sure if I would have loved them so much if Katy wasn't called Katy.

No Church in the Wild

I heard Murray Middleton's novel recommended on the ABC's Book Shelf programme but didn't know or had forgotten the details of what it was about. I'm so out of the loop that I didn't realise No Church in the Wild is a rap song (my daughter was able to play it to me). This novel plunged me into a world that is close to my own geographically, set in the housing towers of Flemington and Kensington in Melbourne's inner west, but a universe away in terms of experience. The casually racist police officer, the struggling high school teacher (okay, maybe I have come across a few of those), but above all the kids, flailing to keep their heads above the water of disadvantage, trauma and a society stacked against them, are people whose lives I don't ordinarily see.

No Church in the Wild loosely coheres around a planned trip to Kokoda, but the real drama lies in the quietly devastating revelations that Middleton almost buries in the midst of the kids' bragging, scheming and joking around. The ending made me catch my breath. This was a novel that I probably wouldn't have sought out, but I'm so glad that I read it.

Listen to the Nightingale

In addition to being an extraordinary writer, Rumer Godden made her living for years as a ballet teacher and ran her own dancing school in India. So it's not surprising that several of her children's books are set in dancing schools and theatres. Published in 1992, Listen to the Nightingale is a late-written novel, and it has an old-fashioned feel. It's rather like reading a literary Noel Streatfeild story. 

Lottie is an orphan who lives with her aunt, who is wardrobe mistress for a small but superior ballet company, Holbein's. Her mother was a ballerina (natch) and she's been taught by Madame Holbein herself (natch), and (natch) she makes her way into the elite ballet school, Queen's Chase. There is drama involving a rescued (or stolen?) dog, a duplicitous best friend, and a naughty boy who bullies her but doesn't really mean it. It's a charming fairy tale that finishes with a neat happy ending, very comforting to read.

There are poignant moments, too, and it's not all roses in the garden. There are sympathetic but also mean characters, there is anguish and loss as well as triumph and love. It doesn't really feel like a story set in the 1990s, but it belongs in a kind of timeless 'ballet world' where it's perpetually the 1950s, ballet dancers are celebrities, teachers are strict but kind and children wear cloaks to school.
 

The Places In Between

I am a huge fan of Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell's podcast, The Rest is Politics, and though I naturally lean more toward Alistair's Labour perspective, I have come to love and respect Rory immensely. He is a man who likes tradition, a small-c conservative, and although he did serve as a Tory MP, he quit on a matter of principle (he wouldn't serve under Boris Johnson) and he is driven by a deep desire to make the world a better place, a stance which is usually associated with the progressive side of politics.

That's a very long-winded introduction to The Places In Between, which is a memoir of his 2001-2 walk across Afghanistan. He walked alone, a British man in a country where the British and American military were in occupation, from village to village through the mountains, grudgingly accepted overnight, fed most often on bread and tea, suffering from dysentery. He picked up a half-wild dog, Babur, who reluctantly accompanied him most of the way. His life was threatened periodically and he had to talk his way out of trouble. Everywhere he saw evidence of the devastation of war -- wounded fighters, burned villages, traumatised people. 

Rory recounts these events in a very matter-of-fact way, which only underscores his personal courage and determination. Also, he speaks eleven languages! And this Afghanistan walk was only part of a longer trek across India and Pakistan. Although the walk sounds absolutely grim, he says he fell in love with the country and the people, and later returned to set up a charity, Turquoise Mountain, in Kabul, to which he is still committed. There are whispers, as there were about Arthur Ransome, that he might have been a spy; if so, he reserves a discreet silence. He would certainly make a very good one.

Scar Town

Scar Town by Tristan Bancks was the this year's winner of the CBCA Book of the Year for younger readers, and it thoroughly deserved it. At first I thought the cover made this book seem more like a young adult title, but the three protagonists are all twelve or thirteen, which puts it firmly in the younger category. However, the themes and events of the story do lean into older territory, with the kids finding human bones and ill-gotten money in the first chapter.

The pace never slackens -- the action takes place over only a couple of days. The chapters are very short and punchy, perfect for reluctant readers, hauling you through the story with one cliff hanger after another. There are thrills and perils, bike chases, quite a bit of violence, family drama and buried secrets, as Will and his friends fight to solve a mystery and keep ahead of the bad guys.

I was interested to read in the author's note that Bancks first came up with this story idea back in 2009. The plot hinges on a body and some money hidden in a house which has been long-drowned at the bottom of a dam and only revealed as the water dries up during a drought. Meg McKinley used a similar device in her terrific book Surface Tension, and I also based part of Crow Country around a dried-up lake. There is something gripping about that image of the past, especially past wrongs, being covered up but eventually revealed -- irresistible to a writer's imagination! And I'm sure we all saw the same stories and images of revealed ruins during the millenial drought; but just look at the very different kinds of plots we came up with.

Dirrayawadha

Anita Heiss is a best selling, award winning Australian author. She also happens to be a Wiradyuri woman, and in Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) she explores the troubled, tragic history of colonisation around the Bathurst area, Wiradyuri country.

Dirrayawadha centres on a love story between a Wiradyuri woman, Miinaa, and an Irish convict, Dan O'Dwyer. But Dan and Miina work for a pair of white settlers, and Miinaa's brother is the famous warrior Windradyne, who led the First Nations resistance in the eighteenth century. Love, joy and loyalty are inextricably intertwined with brutality, loss and tragedy.

This is an important story, and we need more stories about colonised Australia that centre the First Nations point of view. Heiss also draws an interesting parallel between First Nations dispossession and  the history of Ireland, also violently colonised by the British. I'm not aware of any Irish political prisoners, like Dan, who could clearly see the comparison between the two, but it's a fascinating idea that gave me food for thought. Like Melissa Lukashenko's Edenglassie, this book also includes many First Nations words.

In some ways, Dirrayawadha adopts a modern sensibility, perhaps intentionally, which might help a wider readership more easily relate to the power dynamics of the historical situation. Expressions like hyped-up, maintaining autonomy, racism, culture, self-worth, and you don't get it might be anachronistic, but if they gain this novel more readers, I'll swallow it.

Look Back With Love

Good old Athenaeum comes up trumps again with this delightful memoir from Dodie Smith, author of I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Born in 1896, Dodie (Dorothy) grew up in Manchester in a big house surrounded by aunts, uncles and grandparents -- the ultimate only child experience. Her father died in her infancy, but a plethora of uncles filled the gap.

Are antique author childhood memoirs my favourite kind of book? This one was sheer pleasure. The combination of social history, psychology, family dynamics and richly amusing writing made it impossible to resist. Smith wryly recounts her early acting experiences, casting herself as Sleeping Beauty (a mistake, because she lies unconscious for most of the story) and writing her own plays (terrible). It's interesting that adult Dodie clearly sees her later play-writing and acting as her chief legacy, where I had only the dimmest notion of her work in theatre and love her books above all.

The Athenaeum also holds the other two volumes of her autobiography, gorgeously titled Look Back With Astonishment and Look Back With Mixed Feelings. I can hardly wait.
 

Highway 13

One of my favourite kinds of novel (is it a novel?) consists of short story collections where the stories are linked -- by a single character, like Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, or by a theme or an historical event, as is the case here. The twelve stories in Highway 13 revolve around a series of murders in the Australian bush, which bear striking parallels to the so-called Backpacker Murders executed by Ivan Milat. In Highway 13, the murderer is Paul Biga, of Polish extraction (Milat's father was Croatian), but his crimes are very similar -- hitchhikers and tourists picked up by the side of the road, taken into the forest and brutally murdered. I should add that neither the murderer or his crimes ever appear directly in any of the stories, but their off stage presence looms ever more powerfully because of it.

Highway 13 reminds us that the effects of crimes like these ripples out far beyond the victims themselves. We meet a 'tourist,' ghoulishly obsessed with the murders; true crime podcasters; someone who knew Biga's sister-in-law; the brother of a missing woman; one of Biga's neighbours; someone who managed to get away; a police officer who worked on the case. The stories swoop across the years, before and after the crimes were committed, and across continents.

I absolutely loved this book. Each story is beautifully written, shining a different light on something very dark: moving, clever and compassionate. Superb.

Joan Aiken Wolves Chronicles

My signed copy of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is one of my prized possessions. The rest of the Wolves series I picked up at library book sales or in secondhand bookshops -- they are definitely not the covers I would have chosen, especially The Cuckoo Tree, which has one of the most mediocre cover illustrations I have ever seen and is ironically, probably my favourite to read.

I'm not sure if I've ever read the series back to back. I read them a lot in early high school, except for Black Hearts, which was the only one my school library didn't have, so I was never properly introduced to Dido Twite. She is a fabulous character -- smart, resourceful, brave and loyal, frank and decided -- and the series really takes off after her appearance.

There are so many things I love about these books. I adore the alternate history timeline, where the pesky Hanoverians are always conspiring to remove good king James Tudor-Stuart III from the throne and replace him with one of the Georges. I love the way Aiken writes about creature comforts, in what is quite a harsh world. Sylvia sleeping in a donkey-cart filled with geese and patchwork quilts remains a vivid image of warm, snuggly comfort. The food is evocative, too, whether it's clam chowder or huckle-my-buff (it's a real drink!), it always sounds super delicious and sustaining.

The plots are delightfully lively and inventive -- giant cannons to shoot from Nantucket to London, pink whales, wolves breaking into railways carriages, hot air balloons sailing over London, St Paul's Cathedral mounted on rollers to slide into the Thames during the coronation of King Richard IV.

But the real joy of these stories is the exuberant, intoxicating, rollicking play with language. Many of the words were unknown to me when I first read them, some of them are unknown to me even now, many of them no doubt originated in Aiken's own imagination, but nevertheless they always make perfect sense.

"This is a fubsy kind o' set-out,' Dido said to herself. "Still, no use bawling over botched butter -- have to make the best of it. I'd as soon not tangle overmuch wi' that old witch next door though. Only thing is, how are we going to get summat to eat? Oh well, maybe old Lady Tegleaze'll send some soup and jelly -- or cheese and apples -- no use fretting ahead. Queer old cuss she is, too -- all those rooms in that great workus of a place, and she has to send us to a ken that ain't much bigger than a chicken-coop."

There are other books featuring Dido and other members of her family whose existence I was previously unaware of, but I will definitely be keeping an eye out for them in future.

Inspector Thanet Omnibus 1

Recommended by Susan Green as a classic, undemanding murder mystery, Dorothy Simpson's Inspector Thanet proved to be exactly what was promised on the tin. My Athenaeum library has all five omnibuses, fifteen novels in all, and I must say, having raced through the first three, The Night She Died, Six Feet Under and Puppet for A Corpse, I am quite tempted to settle in with the next twelve and a cup of hot chocolate.

While I do enjoy the pure puzzle aspect of a murder mystery, though I'm not very good at figuring out whodunnit, perhaps the greatest pleasure for me lies in the snapshot of social mores that crime novels provide. This is why I love reading Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers so much -- there is nothing like a murder novel, with its high stakes, to spotlight social anxieties and pressures of the time.

The 1980s don't seem so long ago to me but these three novels, published between 1981 and 1983, were very much of their time. Luke Thanet's wife wants to go back to work now that their youngest child is starting school -- the fact that Thanet would even regard this decision as worth arguing about speaks volumes about how the world has changed in the last forty years. One story featured a deserter from the Second World War -- they are all long gone by now. The descriptions of clothes and furnishings are often hilarious. Most strikingly, the things that characters regard as utterly shameful secrets -- mental illness, male sterility, infidelity -- are much more accepted now and openly acknowledged (even if not exactly enjoyed). Even the reason why Dorothy Simpson gave up writing novels (RSI) seems quite dated!

I must note in passing that Thanet's small daughter Bridget is described as having sci-fi show Blake's 7 as 'one of her favourites.' I devoured Blake's 7 as a teen in the 80s but I can't approve of it as being suitable for an eight year old!

It is rather nice to have a detective who is so resolutely ordinary, rather than, I dunno, a poetry-writing aristocrat or a Belgian egg. Thanet's humdrum personal life allows the crimes to shine. I'm looking forward to his further adventures.
 

The Clearing

Scottish artist Samantha Clark's 2020 book, The Clearing: A Memoir of Art, Family and Mental Health was in a bundle of books lent to me by my good friend composer Chris McCombe. It's a slender but dense volume, an intensely personal story which I initially found quite tough going. At first I thought the 'clearing' of the title referred to an open space in the woods -- even if it was a metaphorical space -- but no. The book begins with Clark and her two brothers clearing out their family home in Glasgow, a process which eventually ends up taking them three years (!!)

It's immediately obvious that this was not a happy home -- not because Clark's parents weren't loving, but because her mother's severe mental illness made demands on her father and on the siblings which crushed all the joy from their lives. As the memoir unfolds, Clark reflects on her difficulties in connecting with either of her parents, her struggle to find freedom away from home and her feelings of guilt and shame, love and hurt, anger and grief. Though Clark is a visual artist, she expresses these feelings beautifully in words and metaphors -- the concept of ether, which both holds and separates; the light perceptible even within the deepest darkness, the darkness that enables us to discern the light; the dutiful acts of personal care (grocery shopping, nail cutting) performed unwillingly but conscientiously.

I must admit that about a third of the way through The Clearing I was thinking, this is the grimmest book I've ever read! and wondering why Chris had lent it to me. But as the house is gradually cleared, Clark finds her own emotions settling and also becoming clearer, and by the end of the book, she is finding peace and creativity in her artistic practice, moving away from her demanding academic job and swapping the chaos of the city for the wild weather of Orkney. I was thrilled to see that she recently won a major art prize, too. The Clearing is not an easy read, but it is a beautiful and rewarding one.

The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome

 

As regular readers of this blog will be aware, Swallows and Amazons and its many sequels are among my (sometimes problematic) faves; however I did not know very much about their author, Arthur Ransome, of whom the bald, jovial adventurer Uncle Jim Turner in the books is an obvious self-portrait.

So I was very interested to discover this autobiography, written piecemeal and late in life, though it only takes Ransome's story up to 1931 (the remaining thirty-odd years of his life are summarised in a postscript by his younger friend and colleague Rupert Hart-Davies). 

Perhaps Ransome's most intriguing years were those spent as a journalist and researcher of folklore in Russia, before and after the 1918 revolution. He was on intimate terms with many of the major players, including Lenin and Trotsky, and indeed, Trotsky's personal secretary became his second wife. Ransome claims that he was able to become so close to the Bolsheviks because he himself was completely 'unpolitical.' This contention has led to speculation that he was in fact acting as a spy during this period, though naturally there is no discussion of espionage in the autobiography. He and Evgenia made a hair-raising escape to safety into Estonia in the chaos of fighting between White and Red, with Ransome bluffing his way through the front lines and Evgenia riding on the back of a cart (according to other sources, with millions of roubles worth of diamonds smuggled in her petticoats). To be honest, the ins and outs of the revolutionary period, with its shifts in power and double-crosses, were quite hard for me to follow, but it was a good reminder that the narrative of history is difficult to discern at the time of the events -- everything is in chaos, and it's only after the dust has settled that the story becomes clear (and sometimes not even then). Who knows what the established story of our own times will be in a generation or two? The moments that seem crucial to us might end up being insignificant in the broad sweep of history, and perhaps the most important developments are the ones we are not even aware of.

Fire and Hemlock

When I was doing my recent Diana Wynne Jones binge, I remembered that I used to have a copy of Fire and Hemlock, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared (I must have lent it to someone). Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought myself another copy and plunged in.

You would think that, having read it before, I would find the plot easier to understand. I did not. What did help immensely was finding a blog post from someone which explained the 'problematic' ending and the rest of the story while they were at it. This is an extremely clever, deeply layered, intelligent book which draws on several different legends, most obviously the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, in which the Fairy Queen takes a mortal as her king for ten years, after which he is supposed to be sacrificed, but is saved by the heroism of his mortal lover, Janet. In Fire and Hemlock, Thomas Lynn takes the part of Tam Lin while Polly is his saviour -- a female hero, loyal, brave and imaginative.

The actual mechanics of the deal that Mr Lynn strikes with the Fairy Queen and her minions, and the way Polly finally overcomes their bargain, are too complicated to explain (maybe I still don't fully grasp them :), but this doesn't at all get in the way of a deeply engaging, playful and original story which races along in a most satisfying way. 

This is not to say that the novel is without flaws. The growing friendship between Polly, aged ten at the start of the book, and adult Mr Lynn, is uncomfortable to read, especially as he really is, in a sense, grooming her. By the end of the story Polly is nineteen and Tom is, at the very youngest, twenty-nine -- still a big gap but not an impossible one -- but still... In fact, most of the relationships in the book are uncomfortable in one way or another, except for Polly's grandmother, who is fantastic.

Fire and Hemlock is not an easy read. It's about as sophisticated as young adult literature gets, considerably more sophisticated than the 'adult' murder mystery I was reading at the same time. And it's definitely a book I will reread in the future.

Fireweed and Lapsing

 

Jill Paton Walsh is an author I discovered relatively recently, and I am still actively collecting her novels. Quite coincidentally, I found two of her books within a week or so of each other. I found Fireweed in a small op shop in Euroa, with a tiny collection of YA books for sale (I gasped audibly when I saw it on the shelf). Lapsing turned up, appropriately enough, at a church book sale in the city among many books about theology and missionary travels, and it only cost me a dollar.

I loved Paton Walsh's Wimsy sequels, and I also relished her Imogen Quy mysteries, but of her standalone novels, I definitely liked these two best (so far). Fireweed is very short (even by Paton Walsh's standards) but it tells a vivid and moving story, of two teenagers from very different backgrounds camping out alone in London in the middle of the Blitz. The Blitz setting is breathtaking in its brutal detail; Paton Walsh thanks 'everyone I know who was old enough to remember 1940,' and the novel very much has the flavour of lived memory.

The same is true of Lapsed, though this is a very different kind of novel; it feels autobiographical in parts. It centres on Tessa, an Oxford undergraduate in the 1950s (like Paton Walsh herself), a staunch Catholic who finds herself being courted by several young men and who makes a choice that is consistent with her beliefs, but which will probably baffle a modern reader. Shot through as usual with philosophical and moral struggles, Lapsed feels unusually heartfelt (unlike A School for Lovers, which was much lighter, almost farcical in tone). Like Tessa, Paton Walsh was also a Catholic. She formed an attachment to another man while already married; she did eventually marry the second man, but only after the death of her first husband, who was also a devoted Catholic; so we can only guess how much of her own experience was poured into Lapsed.

The Last of the Marlows

 

The last four books of Antonia Forest's Marlow series are a mixed bag: two 'holiday' books and two set at Kingscote, two of my absolute favourites and two at the bottom of my 'liking list,' as Nicola would say.

The Ready-Made Family is a lovely read, introducing the Dodd children (bookish Rose, chirpy Chas and ponderous Fob) and their dismal father Edwin, who unexpectedly marries nineteen year old Karen, thus bringing her Oxford studies to an abrupt halt. It's always perplexed me that everyone just assumes that Karen has to give up her studies after marriage, but perhaps there was some kind of university rule about it? The theme of this book is 'nearly a nasty accident,' from the naughty boys throwing stones on the railway tracks in the opening chapter, all the way up to Rose and Nicola's terrifying near-miss encounter with a very nasty man in Oxford at the end. It could be argued that Karen and Edwin's marriage actually is a nasty accident; I'm less lenient toward him and his (not always suppressed) violent streak than Nicola is.

The Cricket Term ties with End of Term as my teenage favourites -- two perfect school stories. It's been pointed out that this novel feels like it could be the end of the series, neatly tying up Nicola's long-standing enmity with the dastardly Lois Sanger, a happy, summery atmosphere, and a cracking cricket match as its climax. Forest writes about cricket as well as anyone I know, so well that she's won converts to the game among American readers who otherwise wouldn't have a clue. And there's a fabulous plot twist involving my pet Lawrie, which delights and outrages me every time.

The Attic Term skips over the summer holidays and brings us back to school. This is my least favourite of the Kingscote stories, mostly because it revolves around Ginty, my second least favourite Marlow sibling, and her tedious romance with boy-next-door Patrick. And I could well do without Patrick's pontifications on the recent changes in the Catholic Church, which make him so unhappy at his own school that I honestly can't understand why his parents don't move him. This time the theme seems to be 'the coughing bear' -- a minor breach of rules/laws that results in terrible damage, most immediately Nicola's first illicit phone call from the school office which paves the way for Ginty's later wrongdoing. I think Forest is suggesting that the changes of Vatican II also opened the door for catastrophe to follow? I don't know enough church history to comment on that point of view!

Run Away Home is another patchy book, like The Thuggery Affair (though I prefer Thuggery). This one features my first least favourite Marlow, oldest brother Giles, who is sexist, pompous and insufferable, though clearly intended to be dashing, bold and tremendous good fun. I'm irritated by the plot of the runaway boy, in which the rights and wrongs are less obvious to me than they are to the Marlows. I'm furious on behalf of poor Ann, who is treated with utter contempt by everyone, teased, lied to and denigrated at every turn; I'm inclined to agree with her take on the Edward situation and I think her family treat her abominably. There's a half-formed problem with Nicola accepting the gift of Miranda's dress, which again, I find baffling -- who cares? Miranda would have thrown it away if Nick hadn't taken it! However, the final few chapters, with Giles and Peter in trouble at sea and Patrick holding vigil, are almost worth the annoyances at the start.

It was interesting to read all ten novels from beginning to end. It was much easier to follow little bits of continuity, like the endless pony swaps and Peter's splinter, as well as the presence of the Dodds, which I never understood as a young reader, having missed Ready-Made Family. Taken as a single work, they are certainly uneven, but there are far more moments of brilliance than there are moments when I grit my teeth. As Patrick says to sexy au pair Claudie, 'Might we do that again some time?'

Friends, Lovers and the Big, Terrible Thing

Matthew Perry's memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing was a birthday present. I've been wanting to read it ever since Perry's shock death in October last year. Insecure, witty Chandler Bing was my favourite Friends character; Chandler and Monica's romance unfolded in parallel with my own courtship with my husband, and I followed it avidly. I was dimly aware that Perry had suffered from a painkiller addiction during one season of Friends, (one season? Huh!) but I stupidly assumed that he had gone to rehab and got over it. How wrong I was.

Friends, Lovers is a painful read. Perry started drinking at eleven, moved on to opiates (though he always balked at heroin) and ketamine, and never broke free from addiction to one substance or another for longer than a year or so until the day he died. He tells how, as a colicky baby, a doctor prescribed phenobarbitol to stop him crying; was that when his brain chemistry was irretrievably altered? Or was his deep anxiety the source of the black hole inside he was never able to fill, not with gorgeous girlfriends, not with fame, not with money or artistic success? 

The tragedy of Matthew Perry is that he was never able to convince himself that he was enough. Plenty of people tried to help him; he made numerous attempts to help himself, and sometimes he would seem to succeed in shaking off his demons. But never for long. There was a particular anguish in reading the end of the book, where he declares that he's clean for good this time, knowing full well that he would be dead within a year. It's hard to escape the conclusion that his sad, premature ending was inevitable. Perhaps the saddest part is that he really was just as smart, funny and surrounded by love as Chandler; yet as Perry himself points out, Chandler was able to mature and achieve the goals that Matthew Perry the actor never could.
 

The Great Believers

I came of age in the AIDS era. In the late 80s and 90s, the spectre of the disease hung over me and my gay friends like the threat of nuclear war -- only much more personal and immediate. Safe sex messages were everywhere, posters of cute boys kissing, labelled with chirpy admonitions. I was terrified of something happening to one of my friends, I wished they would all stay celibate forever (no chance). But gradually treatments appeared, then really good treatments, and eventually HIV became a manageable chronic illness rather than a death sentence.

In The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai draws a deft comparison between the devastation of a generation in the First World War, and the similar catastrophe wreaked by AIDS on a whole community. Her story focuses on Yale, a young gay man, and Fiona, the straight sister of his friend Nico, and it's Fiona who acts as a witness, support, and advocate, and ultimately memory-keeper, for a whole friendship family. The novel alternates between Chicago in the late 80s and Paris in 2015 where Fiona is searching for her estranged daughter, and I found the Chicago sections more compelling. The plot also deals with an art legacy, acquired in Paris in the 1920s, and this theme beautifully highlights the duty of memory, story-keeping and the role of art (with this novel itself forming a part of that witnessing).

I absolutely loved The Great Believers, it's a sensational novel. I also thoroughly enjoyed Makkai's later novel, I Have Some Questions For You, but The Great Believers is, I think, more moving and substantial. Highly recommended.
 

First Knowledges: Innovation

I've enjoyed reading all the volumes in the First Knowledges series (this is the seventh title, and there are at least four more scheduled), but Innovation: Knowledge and Ingenuity, by the husband and wife team of Ian McNiven and Lynette Russell, is one of the best. It serves as a brief, digestible history of Australian First Nations peoples and the adaptations and inventions they have made over their long 65,000 year occupation of this continent.

There has long been a notion that First Nations people lived in a static, changeless world, stuck in a 'Stone Age' lifestyle. In fact, they were quick to adapt and change as their environment changed, willing to develop new methods of hunting and trapping (like the ancient, massive fish traps at Budj Bim), adopting some foreign inventions (like using Reckitt's Blue laundry powder for painting, or glass and ceramic for spearheads) and rejecting others. Even when missionaries attempted to introduce Christianity to First Nations communities, it was usually added to their existing spiritual beliefs, rather than replacing them.

It's impossible to read this book and not come away with a profound admiration for the resilience and ingenuity of First Nations people, both before and after colonisation.

The Hidden Life of Trees

Peter Wohlleben's instant classic, The Hidden Life of Trees, has been around for a while now (published in 2015) and he's followed it up with several other books exploring the world of nature. What made this first volume so electrifying was his portrait of trees as sentient, communicative beings, living not singly but in splendid communities, cooperating and helping each other through chemical communication and widespread underground networks of mycelia.

Wohlleben unapologetically anthropomorphises trees throughout, referring to mother and child trees, cries of anguish, bleeding wounds, migration (of species, not individuals), trees 'stuffing themselves with sugary treats,' happy and unhappy trees. I suspect it's this unashamed attempt to make trees relatable that led to the huge success of Wohlleben's work. And it is genuinely remarkable to discover that trees send nutrients to each other when they're in trouble, that they can count (warm days in a row to discover spring has come) and that still no one really knows exactly how trees draw up moisture from their roots all the way to the tips of their leaves.

As a German forester, Wohlleben naturally focuses on European species: oak, beech, ash, spruce and pine. I don't know if there's an equivalent volume that discusses southern hemisphere and non-deciduous trees, but if there is, I'd love to read it.
 

A School for Lovers

I felt at a distinct disadvantage when I first started reading Jill Paton Walsh's 1989 novel, A School for Lovers, as it draws heavily on Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte with which I am not familiar at all. The book begins in a highly mannered, artificial way with the placing of a bet that the fiancèes of two young men will be unfaithful when presented with temptation. The two young women are then set up in a rambling old house like a stage set while the two young men set out to try to seduce each other's betrothed. Cue farcical scenes of bee stings, quaffed chemicals, extravagant meals, tears and temptations.

The story is saved from total shallowness by the inclusion of a separate couple, Thomas and Anna, who create their own misunderstandings without any assistance from outside forces. Paton Walsh likes to set up moral dilemmas and philosophical arguments between her characters (who often, fortunately, find themselves in university settings) and Thomas and Anna provide commentary on Mozart's opera as well as the vagaries of love itself. Despite some initial resistance, I found myself becoming drawn into the plot, silly as it was, and increasingly interested in Thomas and Anna's analysis of Cosi.

Some of the seduction scenes are hard to read as the young men press their wooing quite hard and without taking consent massively into account, but overall I found this a more diverting read than I expected at first.

Through Time

Through Time was a very niche read, but a niche I was excited to tuck into. Andrew Cartmel worked as script editor on Dr Who during the tenure of the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, a time when the show was striving to reintroduce a proper mystery and power back into the figure of the Doctor, who (in Cartmel's opinion) had suffered from becoming too much of an 'ordinary guy' in his fifth and sixth incarnations.

As a script writer and editor, Cartmel is most interested in the words, but he pays close attention to production details like design and music. He takes us on a selective tour of the Doctor's history, examining a handful of stories from each era to pick out what that made particular Doctor distinctive, the outside pressures and influences brought to bear at the time, and his personal judgement as to whether this was a Good or Bad Thing. 

He approves strongly of what he terms 'proper science fiction' stories (I'm not fussed, for my money the beauty of the Dr Who format is that it can accommodate purely historical adventures as well as weird fables, as long as it's a satisfying story I don't give a toss if it's 'science fiction' or not); and he has strong views about the character of the Doctor, who he feels shouldn't be either weighed down by too much backstory, or become too much of a conventional action hero -- ideally, he (or she, presumably) should be a solitary, strange and powerful figure who always saves the day but in an unpredictable way (I partially agree with this assessment, but again, I love the elasticity that the character can bring).

I wouldn't expect Through Time to appeal or even be of much interest to many people, but for a long time Doctor Who fan, it was a fascinating and intriguing read.

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

I enjoyed this book SO MUCH. It was a rare adult recommendation from my kid-lit book group, but Suzanne and I share very similar taste so I knew it would be a winner. Despite being born in Melbourne and practically exactly the same age as me, AND writing YA, I weirdly haven't come across Alison Goodman before -- but I will definitely be seeking out more from her now. 

It's not quite accurate to call The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies a romp, because it does deal with some quite dark material -- husbands imprisoning and trying to poison their wives, child sex trafficking, and rape and torture in madhouses -- but Lady Augusta Colebrook is a splendid heroine, at 42 a lively and indomitable spinster, independently wealthy, highly intelligent, courageous and daring. Her twin Julia is slightly less bold, but also brave and resourceful, and Gus meets a man worthy of her in Lord Evan Belford. Unfortunately he's an escaped convict and in dire peril of the gallows, but hey, he's really hot and surely he was unjustly convicted (a problem for the next book).

Goodman says she fell in love with Regency settings after reading Georgette Heyer as a child, and she is clearly in command of her historical material. The little details of daily life are fascinating -- like the way posh people would put tea in the pot themselves, to avoid being cheated by their servants -- but they never weigh down an action-packed, exciting plot which turns on the horrendous treatment of women in early nineteenth century  England.

Hanging out for more books in this series, and I will also check out Goodman's earlier books, The Dark Days Club trilogy.
 

More Marlows

The next batch of Antonia Forest's Marlow books includes two of my very favourites, End of Term (the Christmas play one) and Peter's Room (Gondalling). I've also become quite attached to The Thuggery Affair, usually described as flawed but interesting -- but as time's gone on, I find I can overlook the flaws (the complicated Ted-talk, the inherent implausibility of the plot) in favour of enjoying the novel's strengths (adroit characterisation, Lawrie's chicklet adventure, the philosophical discussions between Jukie and Patrick on the run).

Objectively. End of Term is probably the best of the bunch, with lots to enjoy, mostly the shifting friendships between Lawrie and Tim, Nicola and Miranda, and of course the utter wormishness of Lois Sanger, Nicola's nemesis. I always love the last few chapters, where we see the Christmas play unfold through the eyes of Patrick Merrick, and the still silent snowy beauty of the Cathedral before the gigantic blood-for-breakfast row to come.

Peter's Room will always hold a special place in my heart. I actually enjoy the Gondal sections (skipped over by many readers) though only in the light of the real world happenings through which they're interleaved -- I certainly couldn't take a whole book of them. And when will someone take the firearms away from Peter? So far he's shot a Nazi, a hawk and now nearly Patrick (nearly Rowan, too). Though technically it's Patrick holding the gun this time, it's still Peter's carelessness that left the pistol loaded.

Up to this point, the Marlow novels could all be set vaguely 'after the war,' but with Thuggery, we land in the 1960s with a definite bang. Partly this is because we're interacting with the world outside school and Trennels, with cafe bars, cinemas, pop music on radios, and driving through the night, makeup and clothes are important, and the very presence of the Thuggery boys, a particular brand of juvenile delinquents, situate us firmly in one possible decade only.

Coming into the home strait now with only four novels to go. The next two are excellent but unfortunately the last two are my least favourite of the series. Oh well, I'm committed now.
 

Would That Be Funny? Growing up with John Clarke

It's hard to believe that John Clarke died way back in 2017. I can still feel the shock and hollow grief when I heard the news, sentiments shared by many others, as his daughter Lorin Clarke attests. Like the many strangers who have accosted her, I also 'grew up with him,' I also 'loved him so much' that he felt like a part of my family. From Fred Dagg monologues on The Science Show to the brilliant satire of The Games and of course the regular Clarke and Dawe interviews, it felt as if he'd always been part of the furniture.

Would That Be Funny? is a gorgeous tribute to a unique talent, a man filled with gentle mischief and rapier-sharp wit, who delighted in pricking the pomposity of authority and in playing with words and absurdity. The Clarke family home was a place brimming with in-jokes, wordplay and laughter. (Yes, says Lorin, he was just as funny at home.) We also learn about Clarke's rather unhappy childhood, lost youth and eventual rescue by friendships forged at university and his long supportive marriage (albeit low-key on the romance front, to the frustration of Lorin's sister Lucia).

Lorin Clarke is herself best known for the hugely successful Fitzroy Diaries, similarly grounded in everyday observations, quiet humour, gratitude and the quirks of ordinary people. Even if she wasn't John's daughter, she seems like the perfect person to memorialise Clarke the human, complementary to Clarke the comic genius. I stumbled across this book by accident on the shelves of the good old Athenaeum, and I'm so happy that I did. I can't believe that I hadn't heard anything about it before. (It was published in 2023.) Highly recommended.
 

Crow Country

 

Every year I visit several schools to talk about my YA novel, Crow Country. It's a time slip story that deals with issues of First Nations culture and history in a small town in rural Victoria, set partly in the present and partly in the 1930s, and since it was published in 2011, schools have found it a useful text to set, usually for Years 7 or 8.

Is it weird that occasionally I've found myself struggling to answer tricky questions from students, because I can't quite remember all the details of the story I wrote almost fifteen years ago? I thought it might be time to refresh my memory, so I reread it. And I'm relieved to say that it stood up pretty well. There were a few passages that I couldn't remember writing, things I knew I wanted to say but thought I might have left out -- there's quite a lot of material in there. If I was writing it today, I might do it slightly differently, but I'm pleased that on the whole, there isn't much I'd change.

Phew.

The Six

The Six by Loren Grush is a book I probably wouldn't have picked up if my space-race obsessed daughter hadn't urged it on me, but it was an entertaining and educational read. 'The Six' were the first cohort of female astronauts recruited to NASA. The first generation of fighter pilot astronauts were less than impressed with the idea of women competing for their spots in space flights, and the women faced not only push-back from within NASA's ranks but also a lot of patronising and sexist media attention, which must have been pretty tedious. 

The women were all very different personalities and at different life stages -- some single, some married with kids, some straight and at least one gay. They didn't necessarily have much in common but their shared ambition to go to space (even though the Soviets had beaten them to it). But strong friendships and fellowship did spring up and (spoiler) they were all devastated when one of the first recruits, Judy Reznik, was killed in the terrible Challenger explosion in 1986. Sally Ride, another member of the group and the first to actually go to space, was instrumental in the following investigation. It was a sad note to end an otherwise upbeat story about some amazing women.
 

Eve: Her Story

Penelope Farmer is best known to me as the author of my eerie childhood favourite, Charlotte Sometimes. (There is a gorgeous story about Farmer and a companion being invited to a concert by The Cure, who used quotes from the book as well as naming a song after it, and being quite nonplussed by the whole experience.) I was an adult when Penni Russon introduced me to the other books in the trilogy, the hitherto unsuspected Emma in Winter and The Summer Birds (still hunting for my own copies of those.)

So when I spotted her adult novel from 1985, Eve: Her Story, on Brotherhood Books, curiosity drove me to order it. However, curiosity seems to have exhausted itself after that, and it's sat at the bottom of my To Read pile for literally years until I finally picked it up this wee.

Well, it's a weird little novel and perhaps I was right not to be too eager. It's a very 1980s feminist-Virago take on the Genesis creation story, incorporating a lot of research that Farmer put into compiling a collection of creation myths at around the same time. The Garden of Eden turns out to have been quite crowded, with not just Adam, Eve and Jehovah, but also Adam's first wife Lilith, various angels, fallen and otherwise, and 'the serpent' who in this telling is humanoid, though scaly, and the inventor of metal-working, fire and agriculture. I think I'm too ignorant of Jewish folklore and the struggle between ancient matriarchal religions and patriarchal monotheism to fully appreciate Farmer's work. Eve: Her Story was a peculiar diversion but it didn't really grip me.
 

Finding Nevo

 

I read most of Finding Nevo in a school library last week between sessions, then polished it off in another sitting after borrowing it from my local library. Nevo Zisin's memoir makes an interesting companion piece to Yves Rees' All About Yves, both for the similarities and the differences between their experiences. Both live in Melbourne, both struggled with gender identity and ended up seeing themselves as 'transmasc,' but emphatically not as 'men trapped in a woman's body,' though both recognised they might have to say that was the case in order to get the gender-affirming treatment they needed.

However, Rees is an academic, and able to articulate with precision their own confusion. Zisin is less intellectual in approach (and significantly younger), which lends their account a raw immediacy. There are a couple of sections near the end which are particularly moving, where Nevo imagines attending a party with all the versions of their younger self and is able to reassure and comfort them all. Zisin also differs from Rees in holding a strong and confident Jewish identity and community.

I'm learning more and more about the trans experience, principally that it's much more complex than I'd assumed. At one point Zisin says, after beginning to pass as male, 'I went from one gender box into another, but this one had more space.' It's distressing that both male and female gender boxes are experienced as being so rigid, neither can comfortably accommodate someone feeling uncomfortable or alien in their own body. Who made these bloody rules anyway?

A Fugue in Time

Isn't it every reader's dream? You discover that your favourite author has written half a dozen books that you've never come across. You immediately order them, a mix of new and secondhand (despite your vow to buy no more books this year.) And now they're piled in a lovely heap, waiting to be read.

Reading Rumer Godden's autobiography, A House with Four Rooms, alerted me to the existence of these early novels, including 1945's A Fugue in Time (published in the US as Take Three Tenses). A Fugue in Time is in some ways an almost experimental novel, taking place in multiple timelines, often simultaneously. I was glad that Godden had shared the trick that makes it all work so smoothly -- paradoxically, she uses the present tense when describing events in the past, and the past tense when describing events in the present. It sounds so confusing but it works seamlessly on the page.

There are three principle timelines and they weave together, centred on the figure of Sir Roland Dane, who becomes Roly as a young boy, Rollo as a young man, and Rolls as an old man in the present. His glamorous, thwarted mother Griselda, jealous, tightly-wound sister Selina, adopted interloper Lark, and American ambulance driver and great-niece Grizel, dance around him in memories, echoes and ghostly conversations. It all sounds complicated and confusing, but Godden's writing, with its beautiful freshness and clarity, carries it off. 

Apparently China Court, written later, adopts a similar template, but this time with five generations instead of three. I can't wait to read it.