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.
 

An Immense World

A couple of weeks ago, watching TV one evening, I was startled by a huge bang at our back window. We're used to birds flying into the glass during the day, but it's never happened at night before. Flicking on the outdoor light, I was surprised to see a flying fox, seemingly stunned, lying on the ground. As I watched, it dragged itself across the ground to a nearby tree and began to crawl, rather creepily, up the trunk. When I last looked, it was hanging from a branch, presumably recovering; then it disappeared, so I suppose it was all right. 

Such a thing had never happened at our house before, but it turns out that bats flying into windows is not uncommon. Sheets of flat glass, non existent in nature, send back the same sonar signal as clear air, so the bats crash straight into them. It's just one of the myriad ways that we humans make life difficult for the animals with whom we share this world.

An Immense World is a fascinating, very readable exploration of animal senses and how they extend and differ from our own, something we rarely take into account. Birds and insects can see colours we can't see (charmingly, Yong christens these 'grurple' and 'yurple.') Animals can hear sounds that we can't hear, either above or below our normal range, and smell odours that we can't pick up. and they have senses that we find it difficult to imagine, like detecting electric fields or the Earth's magnetic compass.

Yong reminds us that other living creatures exist in a sensory world very different from our own, bounded by different parameters and consisting of an altogether different experience. Yet we are increasing shaping the environment for our own convenience, filling it with light and noise and pollution that is destroying the Umwelt (roughly, lived experience) of the planet's other inhabitants. I think An Immense World came from the same recommendation list that included Wilding, and similarly, it has given me much information and food for thought.