Understory

  

Inga Simpson's Understory is an irresistible mix of personal memoir and nature writing. She begins the narrative with an account of finding a property on the inland Sunshine Coast with her partner. At first all goes well. The family discover the local wildlife, adjust to their leaky, creaky home, and make their home. Each chapter begins with a description of a species of local tree, which ties into the memories which follow. But a growing sense of dread begins to pervade the pages, as Simpson and her partner, N, 'begin to make some bad decisions,' buying the property next door, starting a business, and realising their property is under threat from a proposed powerline development.

The tension in this book builds like a thriller, which makes an unusual contrast with the more meditative style of most nature writing. I actually had to flip to the end to make sure everyone was going to be okay (I don't do well with suspense). There are also flights backward in time to Simpson's childhood, and earlier stages of her life (not among trees) which cast light on her reactions. I had previously read and loved Simpson's novel, Willowman, not coincidentally featuring woodwork and cricket, but Understory made me appreciate that novel even more.

Ultimately Understory is a moving, sometimes devastating personal story intertwined with beautiful vignettes of connection with the forest, as well as with individual trees and animals, as well as Simpson's own writing and publication journey. I loved it all the more for being so thoroughly Australian.

The Myth of Normal

Another book group recommendation (thanks, Chris). I had this book on reserve at the library for months, but when my husband brought it home for me, I almost fainted. The Myth of Normal is a BRICK! Subtitled Illness, Health and Healing in a Toxic Culture, Gabor Maté and his co-author, son Daniel, explore the ways in which our modern lives are quite literally making us sick. Maté argues that not only is modern civilisation literally poisoning us with a cocktail of toxic chemicals, pollution, poor food and
 environmental destruction, we are also psychologically suffering from a disconnection from the natural world and the supports of community. 

Maté makes a strong case for these imbalances and stressors being expressed in our bodymind -- physical manifestions of mental and emotional stress. He draws on his own long clinical career as well as others' observations to point out examples like the fact that 'nice' people, mostly women, seem to suffer disproportionately from motor neurone disease, and postulates that it might be the result of being TOO nice, squashing down their own needs to help others. I'm not entirely sure that I buy this particular example, but it's definitely an interesting concept and well worth exploring.

It's hard to disagree that we would be a healthier culture if we were better connected to each other, if we thought of ourselves as part of nature rather than separate from it, if we prioritised the joys of life rather than accumulating money and power. Isn't it odd how all these books end up coming to very similar conclusions? Perhaps the ancients were wise after all.

Finding Phoebe

Finding Phoebe by UK writer Gavin Extence was a recommendation from my book group. I'm not sure I would have picked it up on the strength of the cover, because Phoebe (presumably) looks quite miserable, and that's not the tone of the book at all, though there are definitely moments of sadness and stress and confusion. What makes this novel distinctive is Phoebe's voice: she has ASD, she is extremely articulate and observant, but the disconnect between her intellectual precision and her misunderstandings of social interaction and subtext is where much of the humour of the book resides. 

It took me a couple of chapters to ease into Phoebe's voice but once I was there, I was utterly charmed and delighted to spend more time in her company, which mirrors the character's own social experiences. She is 'weird,' but she is also very intelligent, kind and insightful. I loved that this is mostly the story of a friendship between two girls -- Phoebe and Bethany have been friends all their lives, and when Bethany gets into trouble, it's Phoebe who comes to the rescue in all sorts of ways. That's not to say that Phoebe is perfect -- she reacts strongly, she doesn't always recognise her own emotions, and she is clinging to some illusions about her own family that she has to learn to let go.

Extence says he wrote this book for his own ASD daughter, who is not yet a teenager but is coming up to it fast, so that she would have a character to relate to. But I think everyone, and not just young people, would benefit from seeing the world through Phoebe's eyes for a while.

All About Yves

Yves Rees' memoir, All About Yves, is subtitled Notes from a Transition, and it's a fascinating and often moving account of a search for identity. Yves' story is very relatable; they are a Melbourne person, they hang out on the north side of the river, work at La Trobe University, and went through the gruelling Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. I was very impressed by the nuances of their journey, and the pressures from all sides to conform to gender stereotypes -- including transgender stereotypes! Yves describes a crucial assessment from a psychologist during which they felt obliged to downplay the fact that they were not particularly 'tomboyish' as a child, playing with Barbies and dressing up in sparkles, because in order to be judged as 'properly' trans, the conventional narrative is that one is supposed to reject all things from the assigned gender as early as possible.

Yves has tried on various identities -- straight, lesbian, transmasc, non-binary -- before settling on simply 'trans.' I loved the way they describe trans as resisting all the boxes, not necessarily on the way to a particular destination, but forever travelling. It was interesting to read about their struggle with feminism, having worked as a feminist historian, and then wrestling with what it meant to reject the identity of 'woman' in that context (fortunately it is possible to be a feminist without being a woman).

All About Yves is a nuanced, thoughtful and engaging account of one person's story -- a story that's not over yet. It gave me a lot to think about.
 

Antonia Forest Again

It's been a few years since I last read Antonia Forest's Marlow books, and I'm not sure that I've ever had the opportunity to read them straight through, as a series, back to back. It's difficult to come to them fresh, being so familiar with the later volumes and all the fan canon, but I still think Forest does a masterful job of juggling multiple complex characters, giving us insight especially into Nicola's mind, and handling engaging (if occasionally implausible) plots. But character is her real strength, and it's a testament to her talent that she presents us with three strong stories in three quite different genres, with pretty much the same cast: Autumn Term is a school story, The Marlows and the Traitor is a spy thriller, and Falconer's Lure is a country holiday story, complete with ponies and a local performing arts festival to showcase everyone's various gifts. However, in each book there is a twist of difference -- instead of succeeding at school accomplishments (netball, Guides, academia) as they'd planned, the twins find an entirely new way to shine (the play). The Traitor turns out to be someone the children find appealing, sometimes kind, and even worthy of pity. And the emphasis in Falconer's Lure is really on the hawks rather than the ponies.

Some themes definitely begin to emerge as the characters are fleshed out. Quirky, self-absorbed Lawrie; poor selfless Ann, despised by all; Peter, perpetually battling his own perceived cowardice and realising that it's just going to be 'one paper hoop after another' for his whole life; brusque, sensible Rowan; and perhaps most poignantly of all, pretty Ginty, who coasts through life but tends to fail at any real test. It's a bit harsh when her father, at the start of FL, says 'she should have got over it by now,' when in the previous book, she's been kidnapped at gunpoint, locked up in a lighthouse, very nearly drowned, and faced the prospect, as a claustrophobic, of being forced into a Nazi submarine... and then forbidden to discuss any of it! The stiff upper lip required by this class, at this time, and particularly in this family, is a constant refrain in these books, and the examination of how that affects each of these young people differently is what really sets these books apart from conventional YA.

The Gift of Asher Lev

I read My Name is Asher Lev in high school (from memory, my mum had been studying The Chosen in adult education, so naturally I read it, too, and that led me to Asher Lev). I was very moved by the conflict between Asher with his genius for drawing, and his disapproving Hasidic religious community, especially his father. Asher's art-making was clearly presented as something he was compelled to do, a gift from God just as much as the words of the Torah or the wisdom of his elders. I didn't realise this sequel existed until I found it recently in a street library.

Years on from Asher's exile to France, he's now married, a celebrated painter, and has two children of his own. He and his family are brought back to Brooklyn by the death of his uncle, and his parents' desire to spend time with their grandchildren leads to their stay becoming extended, though Asher insists that they will have to go home to France soon. Gradually Asher (and the reader) becomes aware that the venerable Rebbe, the frail and elderly leader of the community, is harbouring a succession plan that involves Asher's six year old son, and most of the novel concerns Asher's internal wrestling with this scheme.

The Gift of Asher Lev is a slow-paced novel but I really enjoy the way that Potok builds up the story, brush stroke by brush stroke. We see everything through Asher's observant eyes but he lets us know what he's feeling only rarely, either in occasional emotional outbursts, or through his drawings, or through his description of his body's reactions to what he's seen or heard -- fingers tingling, spots before his eyes, a sensation of dizziness. It's very cleverly done, and so much more effective than giving us direct access to Asher's feelings.

The Gift of Asher Lev was published in 1990 and set in 1988, and it was striking how the litany of the world's troubles hasn't changed that much. In Brooklyn, they swelter though a cripplingly hot summer, the summer that first made the American public aware of global warming; there are elections in the US and in France, and in France there are fears that 'that racist Le Pen' might be elected -- of course it's the present Le Pen's father, and that particular outcome seems to have been averted for the present. The eager Zionism of Asher's father and the Rebbe is hard to read about, as is their agenda for Israeli politics; but this isn't really the point of the story. It's a very personal, intimate account of a war within a family, a war conducted largely without words, through hints and parables, meals and pictures, even dancing, and a war fought ultimately inside one man.
 

Grief Works

Julia Samuel's Grief Works was recommended at the back of With the End in Mind, though it deals with a slightly different angle on death. Samuel is a therapist, and there is possibly no genre of non-fiction writing I relish more than psychological case studies. Each chapter of Grief Works tells the story of one person's grief, divided into sections like death of a partner, death of a parent, death of a sibling, and, most shatteringly, death of a child.

Obviously a handful of individual stories can't possibly cover every facet of the grief experience, but it's nonetheless illuminating to see how different people approach their loss and learn to live with a new reality (while never 'recovering'). I have a Facebook friend who is in absolute anguish after the death of his partner, and another friend whose partner died over a year ago, and even from this tiny sample I can see how different their experiences have been, though the depth of their pain is very similar. The stories in Grief Works, though brief, are very moving. One interesting observation was that it was the generations before ours, who suffered through the immense losses of two world wars, who had to suppress their mass grief to enable society to keep functioning, and it's that suppression that's been transmitted unhealthily down to us.

The books finishes up with helpful advice both for the bereaved themselves and for their friends and family trying to support them. The main thrust of that advice is just to be there, and above all to listen, and to expect grief to last much longer than perhaps we believe it will. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing often paralyses us, and we shouldn't allow it to -- not saying anything is far more hurtful than saying something that's not perfect. Grief Works was a sensitive, fascinating and valuable contribution to my death investigations.

The Golden Child

Having discovered Penelope Fitzgerald, I'm now investigating her entire ouevre, and I thought I may as well start with her first published novel, 1977's The Golden Child. It's a dry, sometimes farcical, sometimes violent satire, taking in museum politics, espionage and a quite nerdy mystery. This is another slender novel, under two hundred pages, though apparently the original manuscript was much longer. Fitzgerald's publishers demanded the excision of a whole subplot, several characters and multiple chapters. I'm not saying they were wrong, because this is a tight, weird little book that skims along (after a rather slow start).

I most enjoyed the chapter where conscientious underdog Waring Smith is dispatched to Russia to check the authenticity of an artefact with a Russian expert (who turns out to be fictitious). His few days in Moscow are surreal and Kafka-esque, as he is shadowed by a mysterious man who is not who he seems to be... After his return, events escalate with alarming speed and several bodies to a terrifically taut and frantic climax. 

Fitzgerald wrote The Golden Child partly to amuse her dying husband, and to have some digs at the 1972 Tutankamen exhibition in London. She was also getting revenge on someone at the museum who was rude to her while she was researching another book; I think I can guess who that character might be! I might not have loved this book if it was the first Fitzgerald I read, but her economical style and absurdist wit is already in evidence, and I'm looking forward to exploring the rest.
 

The Sitter

When I was younger I loved big fat novels that I could lose myself inside for days, but these days I've become a fan of the slim novel. Angela O'Keeffe's The Sitter fits the bill, in fact it's so slim that when I was looking for it on the library shelf, I overlooked it at first and had to go back and search more carefully. But sometimes slender books can pack a hefty punch (eg Cold Enough For Snow, The Gate of Angels) and The Sitter beautifully weaves together big themes in relatively few pages.

The story is partly told by Hortense, the wife of Paul Cezanne, who sat for 29 portraits, and the subject of a novel being written by an Australian writer, currently stuck in Paris in 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic. We see the unnamed writer (she later calls herself 'Georgia') in her hotel room; writing about Hortense, who is watching her; writing an email to her daughter in Sydney. All these narratives intertwine to build layers of reflection about art and story, points of view, love and sacrifice, men and women, distance and closeness, darting between France and Australia.

These very short novels can behave almost like poetry, each line carrying more weight than it might in a longer narrative. The Sitter is an accomplished, graceful work, easy to read but hauntingly sad.

With the End in Mind

My parents are both still with us, but they are getting frailer and I'm uncomfortably aware that I'm not well prepared for the day when they will leave us. I also have a friend who works in palliative care, and I'm keen to understand more about what she's dealing with. Come to that, I'm not getting any younger myself and it's just as well to start thinking about the pointy end (though I'm not planning to arrive there for a long time yet).

Considering all this, I'm so glad I borrowed Kathryn Mannix's wonderfully calm and matter-of-fact book about death, With the End in Mind. Mannix has worked as a palliative care doctor in the UK for decades and has been present at thousands of deaths. Perhaps the very first chapter is the most comforting, as she talks a terrified patient (and us) through the typical progress of an ordinary death, through growing tiredness and diminishing energy, through periods of sleepiness and brief unconsciousness, to increased unconsciousness and breathing changes, to the very last breath. Most deaths, she emphasises, are peaceful and painless (though of course there are exceptions).

Each chapter is a case study of a patient Mannix has encountered, and the chapters are grouped in themes, beginning with the physical process of dying and moving through psychological questions to the spiritual aspect of the end of life. Death is a subject that we, as a society, are not good at talking about. I recommend With the End in Mind as way of starting that conversation.
 

You Are Here

I'm not sure if David Nicholls visited Australia recently but he was certainly all over the radio spruiking his new novel, You Are Here. As a big fan of One Day, I was primed to enjoy this new one -- a middle-aged romance, both poignant and humorous, set over a long walk across the UK (mind you, a coast-to-coast walk from west to east takes less than a week, so 'long' is a relative term.)

You Are Here centres on WFH copy editor Marnie, settled into hermitude since Covid lockdowns, and geography teacher Michael, licking his wounds after the relatively recent breakup of his marriage. They've both actually been set up with other people by mutual friend Cleo, but they are getting along well and Marnie extends her intended stretch of the walk to spend more time with Michael. But although they both definitely feel a spark, they are both carrying baggage (literally as well as figuratively) and they both make mistakes.

You Are Here is a charming, wry and gentle novel that is honest about the difficulties of falling in love the second time around. Michael and Marnie are delightful company, and there are moments of darkness and pain as well as humour and fun. Realistically, there's no simple epiphany at the end of the trek, in fact it's bloody awkward, but by the end of the novel things are looking hopeful. You Are Here is comforting and refreshing as slipping into a warm bath at the end of a long wet hike.