On the Calculation of Volume II

I think I'm becoming addicted to Solvej Balle's series, On the Calculation of Volume. I still think it's not a great title, but in part 2, it starts to make more sense as Tara begins to think of herself as living in a container: a single day, a courtyard filled with sky, the borders of the Roman Empire, with which she becomes obsessed in this book.

I'm not sure how I've become so captured by this story. There is very little incident, and the events that do happen don't have much consequence, because Tara's day resets to 18th November every morning. And yet I'm hypnotised, eagerly turning the pages to find out what she'll do next. The last volume ended with Tara having spent 365 days, a whole year, trapped in 18th November, and hoping that the next morning, time would start to turn normally again, like jumping off a carousel. On the first page of volume 2, we find that's not the case. In this book, Tara devotes herself to trying to construct an artificial year, chasing the seasons north and south to find a copy of spring, summer and winter, instead of her perpetual autumn. Then she takes a deep dive into the world of the ancient Romans, but this doesn't solve anything either. The book ends with a kind of cliff hanger, as we learn that Tara is not alone -- she has met someone else who is similarly trapped in time, but we have to wait till book 3 to discover anything more about him.

I think it's safe to say that I'm hooked. Book 3 is already waiting for me on the reserve shelf at the library. 
 

The Broken Road

I snapped up the third volume of Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel memoir, The Broken Road, when it appeared on Brotherhood Books, though I have yet to read the middle book, Between Woods and Water. The three volumes recall a long trip made by Leigh Fermor on foot across Europe to Constantinople (as it was in the mid-1930s), at the age of eighteen-nineteen/twenty. It's quite a shock when he celebrates his twentieth birthday at the end of The Broken Road and you're reminded just how young he was when he made this great trek, carrying just a rucksack on his back, a few letters of introduction, and relying on the arrival of cash at the next Poste Restante. This volume traces his wanderings through Bulgaria and Romania, ending with a sojourn at Mount Athos in Greece.

Young Patrick enjoyed a lot of advantages in making this journey -- he's confident, fit, posh (or at least well-connected, and able to sometimes stay with ambassadors and the relatives of posh friends). He picks up different languages with incredible ease. He's attractive and charming, well able to talk his way into a bed for the night, whether that's with a casual acquaintance met in a local bar or a shepherd whose hut he's come upon in the middle of a rainy night. His self-confidence is stunning; it's impossible to imagine a young woman of the same age being able to undertake a similar trip, which is not to say that his long walk is without danger, because he sometimes skates perilously close to trouble. Am I jealous? Maybe a bit.

Leigh Fermor's writing is, however, equally stunning. He sketches brilliantly vivid word-pictures, so you feel you're walking beside him and experiencing exactly what he sees. His memory is extraordinary, even in this final volume where he admits there are gaps and blurs in his recollection. Of course he is also often relying on the diary he kept at the time, and the very final section, about his time on Mount Athos, consists of extracts from that diary. I wish I could have written something so lucid, so piercingly observant and erudite, when I was twenty (or now, come to that). Patrick Leigh Fermor's writing is a treat, a journey to be savoured slowly and every moment relished.

 

The Winter King

A few years ago I went on a bit of a King Arthur binge, reading as many versions of the Camelot story as I could lay my hands on. Bernard Cornwell's Warlord trilogy pinged my radar, but when I couldn't get hold of the first volume, The Winter King, at my local library, I let it slide. But now I've remembered that the Athenaeum library has lots of books that local libraries don't have on the shelves anymore, and I thought I'd check this out.

I can definitely see why Cornwell's take on the Arthur legend has been so popular and acclaimed. It's very well written, and an historically quite plausible explanation for Arthur and his knights ('warriors' in Cornwell's story). In this version, narrated by aged monk but one time warrior Derfel, Arthur is no king but a war leader, appointed to defend the kingship of High King Uther's baby son Mordred in the chaotic decades after the Romans left the shores of Britain. I laughed aloud at the unflattering portrait of Lancelot, a vain, boastful and cowardly liar who spreads tales about his own prowess on the battlefield. Arthur is a gifted strategist and inspired leader, but he is also flawed -- breaking a valuable alliance in order to marry Guinevere, maybe a touch vain and arrogant himself. Merlin, a wise but capricious Druid, doesn't appear until about halfway through the novel, though his shadow looms long over the story.

If Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon is the Arthur story from a female perspective (I'm so upset that my conscience will no longer allow me to read it), then The Winter King is told from an emphatically male point of view (though there are a respectable number of strong and complicated women). This is a brutal world of death, battle, rape and sacrifice. Druids slaughter captives to read the future in their entrails. Derfel narrowly escapes an early death when a marauding warrior hurls him into a pit of spikes as a child. Nimue is raped and loses an eye at fourteen. The narrative pivots on battles, described in gory and unflinching detail.

The Winter King ends on an unlikely victory for Arthur which seems set to award him the High Kingship of Britain. I'm not sure whether I'll continue the story through the next two volumes -- I feel I've got the flavour of what Cornwell is doing and it might be a bit strong meat for a wimp like me.
 

Good Girl, Bad Blood

Unusually for me, I came to this book via television, after watching A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on Netflix. A few days later I came across the next two volumes in Holly Jackson's bestselling series, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good As Dead, in a local street library. I left volume three there, but I took Good Girl, Bad Blood because I had seen on Reddit (yeah, yeah, I know) that people adored the books and some felt the TV version was disappointing.

Having now read volume two, I can understand the love for the book character of Pip Fitz-Amobi, though I think Emma Myers did an excellent job of portraying her. She is a dogged, feisty and intelligent sleuth, and if she's rash at times, it just makes the story better. It might stretch credulity that the same village that was the site of two murders five before is currently also home to a serial killer's accomplice, but hey, good girls can't go searching too far for mysteries to solve and it helps if the mystery comes to Pip. Ravi, Pip's boyfriend, and her best friend Cara, are excellent foils, and Pip's parents are remarkably understanding and sympathetic in the circumstances.

I admired Pip's very plausible wrestling with the aftermath of the previous crimes, including the justice system falling short, and her temptation to take matters into her own hands and become some kind of avenging angel. The formatting of the text is a lot of fun, with podcast interviews and text messages woven into the narrative. I can see exactly what the fuss is about, and though I'd half decided not to watch season 2 of the TV version, I just might take a peek after all.

The Friend

 

Sigrid Nunez's short novel The Friend had the potential to be a sensitive read for me -- it deals with the death of a close friend by suicide, and the ageing and decline of a beloved dog, as well as a writer dealing with an inability to write and the ethical dilemmas involved in writing about real life and real relationships, all of which are delicate subjects for me! But I loved it.

Very clearly labelled as 'A Novel,' The Friend nonetheless bears the hallmarks of being drawn at least partly from real experience. The musings on the writing process and the politics of publication and teaching, the pain of dealing with the suicide of a loved one, and the growing mutual love between the narrator and the enormous Great Dane she was (at first) unwillingly saddled with, are all beautifully and thoughtfully handled -- that slippage between narrative fiction and autobiographical musings reminded me strongly of Helen Garner's work.

The Friend was also made into a film starring Naomi Watts as 'Iris,' the narrator, and Bill Murray as 'Walter,' the unnamed mentor and friend who in the novel is addressed only as 'you.' I did wonder how they were going to adapt a slim book which is mostly an internal monologue into an almost two hour movie, but I thought it was actually very successful -- a quietly moving and gentle experience, with deft touches of humour. It's on Netflix if you're interested. And the dog is wonderful.

Shirley Flight, Air Hostess in Storm Warning

My copy of the unwieldily-titled Shirley Flight, Air Hostess in Storm Warning doesn't actually have this cover -- instead the hard cover is prettily patterned with tiny aeroplanes, which caught the eye of my younger daughter in an op shop and made her decide it would be a perfect birthday present for me. It's true, this 1961 book fits beautifully into the oeuvre of girls' career books that were discussed in A Smart Suit and White Gloves, though the Shirley Flight books were sadly not mentioned in it.

After a little digging, I learned that 'Judith Dale,' the author, was actually Edward Reginald Home-Gall, who produced sixteen books in this series, in which Shirley Flight goes to Congo, Spain, China and Hollywood, and tangles with diamond smugglers and the Flying Doctor among many other adventures. Storm Warning sees Shirley's plane downed in Mauritius in response to an impending cyclone. Most of the story centres on Shirley's plucky efforts to secure accommodation for and feed her roster of passengers in a shabby hotel, where of course her charm and ingenuity satisfies even the fussiest 'pax.' The final section of the novel crams in pages of breathless adventure, as Shirley and her 'red-haired pal' Wendy rescue a kidnapped teenager, brave a simultaneous earthquake and cyclone, and foil some 'swarthy' treasure seekers.

Unfortunately the book is marred by some egregious racism, as Mauritius (which to me sounds engagingly diverse) is described in the most unflattering terms as being populated with 'lazy' and 'indolent' persons of various cultural heritages, the names for which I won't repeat here. Even the French hotel proprietor is a purely comic figure, and don't get me started on the sinister Hispanic villains. I suppose at least Storm Warning shows Shirley and Wendy actually doing their jobs as well as pluckily flying into the teeth of storms, climbing cliffs and rescuing victims of abduction.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror

I don't know how I've managed to remain oblivious to this book for so long -- it is so exactly right up my alley, and I only found out about it by accident, and I decided to borrow it on the strength of the title alone. First published in 2017, Mizuki Tsujimura's Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a much loved favourite in Japan, and has been turned into a series of manga volumes and an animated film.

For me, it did take a while for the story to get moving, but the third and final section of the book positively galloped along as all the plot pieces fell into place. Lonely Castle in the Mirror opens with Kokoro, who is refusing school and hiding in her room after being traumatised by bullies. Magically her bedroom mirror opens a portal to another reality -- an enchanted castle where she finds six other junior high students, most of them also avoiding school, and all with their own private problems, and a mysterious wolf-girl who calls the shots and tells them they have access to the castle for a single year, during which they must find a hidden key to a secret room which will grant one of them a wish.

I did find what I assume to be traditional Japanese courtesy and reticence a bit frustrating initially, as it took ages for the seven to start to trust each other and begin exchanging information that allows them to solve the questions of how and why they've been summoned here. (I did pick the twist, she says smugly.) But after the slow start, the plot slides into place like a beautifully made puzzle box. If I were younger and didn't have a gazillion more books on my pile to read, I could imagine re-reading Lonely Castle immediately to pick up the clues. 

But more than a satisfying fantasy mystery, Lonely Castle has a lot to say about bullying, shame, friendship and mental health, and many young readers will see themselves reflected here. 

The Model Murder

I am really enjoying Amanda Hampson's series of Tea Ladies mysteries. This latest installment, The Model Murder, is set in 1968 and times are changing. Protests against the war in Vietnam are in the streets, pop art frocks are on the way in, but Hazel and her friends are once again drawn into a shadowy world of crime and corruption, brothels and bookies.

The Model Murder is a clever title, as we're not sure until almost the end of the novel whether the missing model in question is a victim or the perpetrator of the killing. This book abounds with deceptions, lies and fake identities. Stern, self-righteous Merl has been hiding a secret for thirty years, and when the reason for it is finally revealed, it expands the tea ladies' universe a little more. Betty gets caught up in an avant-garde theatre group, whose members are not all they seem, and whose workshops are painfully funny for any student theatre victim-survivors. Irene finds herself a new weapon, which will no doubt feature in future volumes. And I hope there are future volumes. The Tea Ladies are undemanding but highly enjoyable company.
 

Books That Made Us

 

Books That Made Us by Carl Reinecke is the companion volume to the ABC television series from 2021, and it was a birthday present from one of my daughters. It's turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to the current conversation about the Top 100 Australian books list being put together by Radio National. It's a succinct but comprehensive and very readable summary of the history of Australian literature and publishing, from Marcus Clarke's Term of His Natural Life up to Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip. 

I was pleased to encounter plenty of old friends among these books, but I was also alerted to some big gaps in my reading education. I've still never read anything by Patrick White or George Johnston, for example. But it was wonderful to accidentally listen to a segment on Late Night Live about the poet Lesbia Harford, and recognise the names of her associates Katharine Susannah Prichard and Vance and Nettie Palmer from reading Books That Made Us.

Reinecke has helped me put a context around some authors who came to prominence slightly before my time, like Thomas Kenneally and Frank Moorhouse, as well as writers I feel I know much better, like Helen Garner and Christos Tsiolkas. Books That Made Us works perfectly as an educational guide as well as a Books To Read list and a potted history of Australia itself.

Gullstruck Island

This is the first Frances Hardinge book I've read, and I gather it's a good one to start with. Already I'm in awe of her virtuosic world-building, her vivid characters and setting, and her brilliantly imaginative story-telling. Gullstruck Island opens with a description of the 'Lost,' just the first of many rich ideas: the Lost are gifted but vulnerable members of the community who have the ability to detach their senses from their bodies and travel at will -- what we used to call astral travelling, though I haven't heard anyone talk about that for a long time. The Lost are vital for communicating news, forecasting weather and spotting distant dangers, and when they are all mysteriously killed in the space of one night, the whole island is bereft. The only surviving Lost seems to be quiet Hathin's sister Arilou, and the secret they never mention is that Arilou may not be a Lost after all...

There are wonderful layers of subtext in Gullstruck Island, about race and colonisation, but couched in a fantasy setting that echoes without exactly replicating real world history. 'The Lace' are an oppressed minority with their own culture and dialect, and it's the ancient stories of the Lace that end up pointing the way to everyone's salvation from the conspiracy that threatens the island.

It was quite shocking to read the last portion of the novel, which involves a volcanic eruption with a flood of mud, rock and steam rolling inexorably down the channel of a valley -- exactly like the horrific events in Nepal recently. Though Gullstruck was published fifteen years ago, it felt eerily and horribly contemporary, and impossible to read without recalling the terrifying images from that part of the world.
 

Restless Dolly Maunder

  

After the success of Kate Grenville's exploration of her mother's story in One Life, Grenville went back another generation to explore her maternal grandmother's life in Restless Dolly Maunder. Dolly appears in One Life as a difficult, sometimes cold and demanding woman; in Restless, she comes fully into focus as an energetic, thwarted character who could have achieved so much more if she'd been allowed the same freedoms and opportunities as a man.

Interestingly, while One Life was classed as a biography, Restless Dolly Maunder is published as a novel. I guess Grenville felt that the gaps she had to fill with imagination and speculation were that much larger for her grandmother than for her mother. In some ways, I didn't serve Dolly Maunder well by reading her book straight after One Life, because it covers much of the same ground and I didn't feel I was encountering a new person, though Dolly's story is much more fleshed out and she is more sympathetic than her portrayal in One Life.

I enjoyed Restless Dolly Maunder for the same reasons that I loved One Life: it's a window into a life that would have otherwise gone unremarked and uncelebrated, a life of a courageous, smart, determined woman who did her best with the hand she was dealt, sometimes at the cost of her closest personal relationships. (Her husband's infidelities also played a role, to be fair.) Kate Grenville has mined her family's history to great effect, I could read any number of these stories, but I guess she might have run out of material by now.

The Dark Flood Rises

Margaret Drabble's The Dark Flood Rises has earned a dubious distinction: it is the first overdue book I have had from the local library since I first joined it over twenty years ago (I've just discovered I've borrowed 1379 books in that time, honestly I'm surprised it's not more).

The reason it became overdue is simple: I bit off more than I could chew. Between two libraries, books coming off reserve, birthday presents, and loans from friends, my immediate TBR pile was completely unmanageable. I thought no one else would be urgently requiring the Drabble novel, so I renewed it a couple of times, and it turns out you're not allowed to keep renewing loans indefinitely! Who knew?

Margaret Drabble's The Millstone was the first adult novel I remember reading that I identified with instantly and instantly. Self-sufficient, perhaps lonely Rosamund, with her deep desire to cause no fuss and put nobody out, seemed to be my soul twin (perhaps I should go back and reread it, and see if it lands any differently nearly half a century on). I've kept reading Margaret Drabble's novel, feeling at home with her privileged, inward-looking protagonists, until now we've reached what must be near the end of the road. The Dark Flood Rises is all about old age and death. There are a couple of actual deaths, and a few near misses, but most of the novel is occupied with Drabble's usual meandering meditation around a particular subject, drawing in literary allusions, dream imagery, snippets of social history and entertaining anecdote. It's not so much a deep dive as a thoughtful stroll, as characters briefly touch and separate, images and phrases echo and recur, and the reader is invited to place themselves among the passing parade. Am I more like Fran, frantically distracting herself from the inevitable and determined to be useful? Or like Josephine, burrowing into a safe hole with books and intellectual diversions? Or like Bennett and Ivor, fleeing to the sun and the simple pleasures of food and drink and reminiscence?

At 87, we can expect no more fiction from Margaret Drabble, but my goodness, what a rich legacy she will leave behind. 

On the Calculation of Volume 1

I heard On the Calculation of Volume by Danish author Solvej Balle being discussed on the Radio National Book Shelf program, and because it has a timey-wimey plot, I was instantly intrigued. Main character Tara finds herself trapped in a time loop, where she wakes up day after day stuck inside the 18th November, just like Groundhog Day, except without the comic slant, and with the difference that she wakes wherever she fell asleep the night before, rather than returning always to the same starting point.

Tara is away from home in Paris when the pattern strikes; in a panic, she flees for home and explains her situation to her husband Thomas. But the day is not repeating for him; every 18th November happens for the first time. Again and again Tara has to explain her plight. They experiment together, try to stay awake all night, try to figure out why some things reset and others remain used up or transported. Eventually Tara separates from Thomas, withdrawing into their spare room and living a shadow, unseen life around his movements (he, of course, assumes that she is away in Paris). As Tara draws closer to a full year having passed for her, having experienced 18th November 365 times, she wonders if the loop will close -- or is there some significant action she must take to break the spell?

On the Calculation of Volume has to be the dullest title I've ever heard, especially for such a weird, haunting little book. Maybe it sounds better in Danish? And I can't have been listening properly to the Book Shelf, because I entirely missed the fact that this is just volume 1 of a projected seven book series!I absolutely flew through this novel, unsettled and delighted. Needless to say I have already reserved volume 2. 

We Saw What You Started

 

It's fitting that I've finished the final book the CBCA Notables list during Book Week, just after the winners have been announced. I predicted that Barry Jonsberg's Darkest Night, Brightest Star, with its themes of toxic masculinity, male violence and trauma would be a timely winner this year, so I'm not surprised that it took out the top prize, while I was pleased that Lili Wilkinson's Unhallowed Halls and Jade Timms' Golden were both Honour books in the Older Readers category.

In some ways We Saw What You Started by Carla Salmon is a very typical entrant in the Older Readers list. Set in a coastal town -- tick. Elements of romance -- tick. A mystery/crime plot -- tick (crime is very hot right now). One character with an American background to increase its international appeal -- tick. In fact I didn't mind the American character this time, Otto splits the narration with local Aussie Milly, so the US viewpoint is not overwhelming (apparently as soon as an Australian book mentions the word Mum, it instantly forfeits any chance of US publication).

What gives We Saw What You Started its unique flavour is that the action is centred around the local surf club and the rivalry over championships. Milly's father seems to favour her twin brother Jasper; is Jasper really a bad seed, or just obnoxious? Meanwhile fires are starting all over town, and new arrival Otto keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who is innocent and who is guilty? We Saw What You Started is a satisfying mystery story, and dare I say it, a great beach read.

Discipline

 

I had to wait a looong time for Randa Abdel-Fattah's first adult novel, Discipline, to become available at the local library; the reservations started mounting up as soon as the controversy over her (non) appearance at the Adelaide Festival early this year hit the news. There are still 26 eager readers waiting.

Abdel-Fattah's experience as a writer for young adults shows in her skill at keeping the action moving. Discipline is set in 2021. Viewpoints flip between Ashraf, an academic under siege at his (fictional) university, and Hannah, a young journalist at a mainstream newspaper. Linking these two characters is Jamal, Ashraf's PhD student and Hannah's husband, whose family is under attack as Israeli forces bomb Gaza. All the characters are under pressure to mute their pain and anger at the situation in Gaza, with Hannah and Ashraf's superiors anxious not to offend the Jewish community.

Discipline is not just a chronicle of anguish and frustration. Ashraf and Hannah are both part of exuberant, supportive, tight-knit communities, while Hannah also draws strength from her religious practice. Abdel-Fattah is careful to show that Muslim, Arab and Palestinian identities, while overlapping, are not identical and not monolithic. At times Discipline is uncomfortable to read, as it highlights moments when I might have 'both-sides'd Middle Eastern conflict, or slid unthinkingly into unsupported assumptions. I'm very grateful to Randa Abdel-Fattah for giving me such a vivid glimpse into her reality. 

Raising Hare

Raising Hare is the kind of book that I simply can't resist. It's the perfect intersection of nature and human experience, written in a gentle, thoughtful style by Chloe Dalton, who has mostly worked in politics and foreign affairs, focused on big international events. All that changed during lockdown when she lived in the country, in an isolated barn conversion, and unwittingly rescued a leveret (baby hare) and took it into her home. Against all odds, the hare grew and thrived, drawing Dalton into a hitherto unseen world of predators and prey, hedges and fields. Keeping her doors open so that the hare could come and go, tiptoeing around the sleeping animal, making sure that guests keep their noise down not to scare it, Dalton shapes her life around the hare, and is rewarded with her trust, to the point where the hare gives birth and raises a pair of leverets inside the home.

Dalton admits that before her relationship with the hare, she paid little attention to the natural world. The hare opens her eyes to the rhythms of the seasons, the activities of the birds and animals, the effect of intensive farming practices on the loss of wild spaces like hedges and woods. Raising Hare is not a long book, but it's a beautiful and profound reading experience based on close observation of small and undramatic events, like James Rebanks' The Place of Tides.

The Set-Up Girl

The Set-Up Girl by Sasha Vey is a fun novel about romance, crushes, sexual identity, misunderstandings and friendship. Amalia comes from a Slovenian Catholic family, a background I haven't seen explored before, and one which apparently comes with strict parents and tight extended family relationships. Amalia, her sister and mum are in a book group with her aunts and cousins, which adds a wry commentary to the boy/girl crush and friendship dramas she finds herself in. Amalia's see-sawing attraction to the hot boy and the hot girl felt very plausible, but it was grounded by her deep friendship with Mae, who is having identity and romance struggles of her own.

One element of The Set-Up Girl that I found slightly disturbing, but no one else seems to have a problem with, was Amalia's and her sister's routine deceptions of their parents, sneaking out after dark, setting up 'camping trips' that are a cover for visiting music festivals, secret alcohol drinking, secret dating, and other mild rebellions. It seemed to me that it might be better to open up communication between the generations, especially since both Amalia and her sister are over 18 and technically adults... but neither my daughter nor the members of my book group had any problem with the situation at all. Maybe I'm still in denial about how much (or how little) my own kids deceived me in their adolescent years! Anyway, in a YA book I should definitely be on the side of the kids.
 

One Life: My Mother's Story

I enjoyed Kate Grenville's One Life so much -- more than I expected to. She is just such a readable writer, even when handling material that by her own admission, might seem very ordinary. It's a biography of Grenville's mother, Nance, but it reads like a novel, and I kept eagerly turning the pages.

Mind you, Nance was not really such an ordinary woman. One her friends described her as 'remarkable,' and in many ways she was exceptional, despite living all her life in sleepy Australian towns and suburbs. But even the most ordinary lives contain their own drama and pathos. Nance was the child of an unhappy marriage, of pub owners Dolly and Bert (Grenville has also written about her grandmother in Restless Dolly Maunder, which I might check out next). (The pub owning background was also interesting on the heels of reading Australian Gospel.) Nance trains as a pharmacist at a time when it was unusual for woman to gain professional qualifications, but once she's attained her apprenticeship, she's qualified herself out of a job. She marries Kenneth, a closet Trotskyist, and their partnership has its ups and downs -- he's proud of her for working, but is clueless about taking up the domestic burden. Time and again Nance is thwarted by lack of childcare in her community.

One Life is a loving, clear-eyed tribute to a woman whose story becomes extraordinary in Grenville's hands, and a kind of first hand history of the middle decades of Australia, covering the Great Depression and the wars. I loved it.
 

The Conversion

Amanda Lohrey's novels tend to be a slow burn -- don't come to her books expecting thrills and action. But if you're in the mood for thoughtful observation, interesting ideas and internal development, a novel like The Conversion will hit the spot. 

Zoe buys the small country church that her husband Nick had his eye on, after Nick's death in complicated circumstances involving infidelity. Nursing her grief and anger, Zoe 'squats' in the church, unable to feel at home in the soaring space, with stained glass saints staring down at her. As she sorts through her feelings about Nick and tries to decide how to adapt her new home, she gradually gets to know her neighbours and finds a place for herself in the small community.

In many ways, The Conversion is a story of spaces and places, how we change ourselves to fit the places where we live, or change those places to fit our needs and yearnings. Zoe wrestles with how to alter the vertical orientation of the church, toward God, into a horizontal orientation for human living. Another character abandons his apartment, with its expansive views, for a more narrow but intense view of the sky from a courtyard garden. Zoe is pressured to allow the local high school to perform a play in her living space, and the experience fundamentally changes her relationship to the space and to the memory of her husband, which I sense the church represents.

Lohrey's novels might be quiet and seemingly uneventful, but I find they stick in my mind long after they're finished. 

Brain Rules for Ageing Well

John Medina has written several of these Brain Rules books -- about music, about babies, about work, about teenagers -- and Brain Rules for Ageing Well offers advice (current in 2017) about how to preserve or even improve our brain function as we get older. It's written in a light, friendly style with enough science to be convincing but not enough to overwhelm the reader.

Most of Medina's advice is just sensible: stay connected to friends and family, learn new things, exercise, eat properly, lower your stress (easier said than done). He does devote part of one chapter to the theory of so-called Blue Zones, which unfortunately was recently pretty comprehensively debunked -- for a few years, there was a lot of hype around certain areas of the world, like Sardinia and Okinawa, where people seemed to live well beyond the expected age limit. People got very excited by the supposed lifestyles adopted by these Blue Zone inhabitants -- but it turned out that most of the zones were actually quite poor areas where welfare fraud was common, and the people who were apparently living to 110 had often died years before... Oh,well, back to the drawing board.

One finding in Brain Rules for Ageing Well that initially surprised me was the beneficial effect of marinating in nostalgia. Our brains lay down their most vivid memories during our late teens and early twenties, so reliving those years makes us feel more alive. I can certainly testify that listening to the upbeat music of my youth during my morning walks puts a pep in my step, and when my husband was preparing for a high school reunion last year, the mood rush lasted several weeks as old friends reconnected over group chats and shared memories. So maybe there's something in that -- though I won't be revisiting 80s fashions or hairstyles any time soon.
 

Rapture

 

Emily Maguire's novel Rapture takes the probably apocryphal tale of Pope Joan and builds a convincing life story from the fragments of her alleged legend. Born in Mainz, masqueraded as a monk at her lover's urging, became a learned scholar and eventually rose to become Pope some time in the 800s, and was unmasked when she gave birth during a papal procession. Maguire hangs a luminous and moving novel off these bare bones which is a delight to read.

Agnes (alias John the Englishman) is brilliant, determined, passionate, and refuses to be shut out of opportunities open only to men. While she has few scruples about deceiving the men around her, she has a hardly time justifying her actions to God, and I like the way that Maguire takes Agnes' faith seriously. Rapture made an intriguing parallel read with Karen Armstrong's The Case for God. I also loved the way that Agnes always remains an embodied personality, whether she's burning with sexual desire or starving herself in penance. For a novel centred on religion and medieval history, Rapture is a surprisingly sensual and joyful journey.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

I am trying hard to understand the background to the dreadful situation in Gaza and the powerful emotions evoked on both sides. Peter Beinart's short book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, sets out the history of Palestine and Israel with brutal clarity, and he speaks from the perspective of a Jewish person who has been an unquestioning supporter of the concept of Israel in the past, but who is appalled by the actions of that state against its Palestinian inhabitants (not necessarily citizens).

I struggled reading Ruptured a few months ago, though I could understand that the anguish and the experience of anti-Semitism in Australia described by the various writers is very real; however, there was little acknowledgement of the long and cruel suffering of the Palestinian people that provided a context for the horrific events of October 11. Beinart has no problem recognising this history.

Beinart writes from a US point of view, but much of what he says applies to us here in Australia. Beinart argues passionately that the nation of Israel has betrayed the promise of a Jewish homeland by becoming an oppressor itself. I used to believe that a two state solution was the only possible answer to Israel-Palestine tensions, but I'm coming round to the view that a single state, where Palestinians and Jews have equal rights, is the only way to peace. Whether that's achievable is another question altogether.
 

This Season's Draft

This Season's Draft by first-time author Jason Gent is one of the last YA books from the CBCA Notables list. It's a slender book, not exactly in free verse, but what one of the characters describes as 'just thoughts,/stream of consciousness really.' The big areas of blank page make This Season's Draft easy to read, and any kid who's interested in sport (not just AFL) will find material to relate to here.

This Season's Draft follows six teenagers over a year, the final year of school for most of them, the year most of them hope to get drafted to an AFL side. Smart, level-headed Elias, already thinking about his future after football; Dane, who hasn't thought about anything past the draft; his girlfriend Beth, who has her own life to consider; Zac and Fletcher, best friends who are separated by their own success; and stoic Mason, who has already faced personal tragedy. Though their stories are told in short snippets, we see significant snapshots of a very important year in all their lives, whether that centres on AFL or not.

I really enjoyed This Season's Draft, especially as I'm also re-reading Helen Garner's The Season, and I hope more readers discover this slim but moving novel.
 

The Case For God

Years ago I bought and read Karen Armstrong's A History of God, which laid out the history of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I saw The Case for God on the shelf at the Athenaeum, and was intrigued -- I expected a rebuttal to the strident modern atheists, like Dawkins and Hitchens, who put my back up with their simplistic, reductionist scorn for religion and spirituality. Well, The Case for God was partly that, but not until the very end of the book.

The Case for God is another historical and philosophical examination of human striving for the transcendent, from ancient rituals that embraced wordless mystery and induced an experience of the divine, through evolving ideas about the nature of God that gradually edged toward a conception of Him as a grand designer or remote creator, who ultimately proved to be unnecessary in a world that emphasises a material and scientific understanding of the cosmos, which is where Dawkins and Hitchens enter the picture. And yet, as Armstrong argues, humans still maintain a stubborn yearning for the sacred and sublime, a need for meaning and purpose in our brief, painful lives. 

I found Armstrong's claim that religion is not something we think, but something we do, to be incredibly powerful. The Case for God was written in the shadow of fundamentalist terrorism and the growing influence of Christian evangelism in the US, which has increased even more disturbingly in the 25 years since. I couldn't help thinking of right-wing Zionist actions in Gaza, too, cruelty and destruction in the name of a particular conception of God. What is at fault is our own shallow convictions that we can penetrate and solve the deep mysteries of existence: why are we here? What's the point of it all? And as Armstrong argues, paradoxically, enlightenment will only come when we can accept that we will never know the answers.
 

The Sense of Being Stared At

 

Regular visitors to this blog will have already noted my attraction to the woo-woo side of life: ghosts and dreams and astrology and tarot cards and that kind of thing. Rupert Sheldrake (father of mycologist Merlin Sheldrake) is similarly inclined and has spent his life earnestly investigating what other people call paranormal phenomena, but which he is convinced are actually a natural part of life on earth.

I've previously read Sheldrake's Dogs Who Know Their Owners Are Coming Home (alas, our puppy never showed any sign of unusual awareness of our approach, only jumping up when she actually heard us arrive), and The Sense of Being Stared At examines such phenomena as precognition, telepathy, and of course the power of attention. I'm sure most of us have experienced weird coincidences like thinking of people just before they telephoned us, making people turn around by staring at the back of their heads, or waking up just before our alarm was set to go off. Apparently there are several accounts of people who felt an intuition of danger before the events of 9/11, and it seems such premonitions are not uncommon -- numbers of passengers on trains involved in crashes are lower than on ordinary days, suggesting that some people felt moved to avoid travel on that day.

I'm not sure whether Sheldrake's theory that our minds extend beyond our bodies in what he's dubbed 'morphic fields' is the actual explanation for such phenomena, but it's a fascinating discussion, and in a world of quantum physics where particles are spookily connected across universes and observers influence outcomes just by watching, maybe we shouldn't write off paranormal phenomena just yet.  

Benang: From the Heart

I heard Bruce Pascoe talking about Kim Scott's 1999 novel, Benang From the Heart, as a book that touched him very deeply, a book about the Stolen Generations, and I immediately borrowed it from the local library. I suspect that I wasn't the only one who heard that conversation, as there are now three more reserves.

Benang is not an easy book to read. It's challenging in its structure, leaping backward and forward in time, and with a final massive twist at the end, and its story is filled with confronting pain, sorrow, grief, violence and abuse. It opens with a description of the narrator, Harley, as 'the first white man born,' the first of his family to have his Aboriginal heritage 'bred out' to the point of invisibility. However, as we discover, this is not true. Benang wrestles with questions of identity, both self-ascribed and imposed from outside -- and also, now I come to think of it, recognised by communities.

Benang From the Heart traces a complex history of several generations, and I must confess at times I got lost between characters. There are elements of magic realism, and probably also some autobiographical features: the families' names are given as 'Scat' and 'Coolman,' while Scott mentions the Coleman family in his acknowledgements. I imagine this was a hugely difficult book to write, and it's fitting that it's equally difficult to read, technically and emotionally. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this novel before, though I'm familiar with Kim Scott's work, particularly Taboo and That Dead Man Dance, which are perhaps more approachable than Benang. A confronting, but rewarding and illuminating, reading experience. 

Of Flame and Fury

I was excited to read the next book on the CBCA Notables list, Of Flame and Fury, by Mikayla Bridge, who is a local (Thornbury) author who I might have passed in Psarakos fruit and veg shop. This is high fantasy, set in a world where phoenixes are raced in high stakes, sometimes lethal, competitions. Kelyn is the tamer of her beloved phoenix Savita, and when she's forced to team up with arrogant rider Warren 'Coup' Coupers, sparks fly. But if phoenixes, shrouded in flame, are dangerous, that's nothing to the powerful businessman, Canen Cristo, who dominates the racing industry but also has other, darker plans, involving phoenix immortality.

It's a super idea to use phoenix mythology as the foundation for a gripping fantasy/romance (though I found it hard to take 'Warren' seriously as a romantic hero's name -- to me, it's a name for a problematic brother-in-law) -- the phoenix races are genuinely exciting and tense, and Kel's racing crew are well drawn characters who anyone would want to hang out with. The world of Salta, with its different islands and forms of magic, is begging for sequels.

But.

Of Flame and Fury is sadly let down by poor editing. Bridge thanks three editors across different time zones, and I can't help wondering if some things slipped between the cracks. There is some awkward grammar and occasional clumsy word choices that pulled me out of the narrative -- honing in instead of homing in, aircrafts for aircraft, a single bird moving at unholy speeds. I feel like a grumpy nana pointing out these lapses, and probably some of these choices are acceptable to younger generations, but they did spoil my enjoyment of an otherwise terrific novel.
 

Joy in the Morning

Who could resist that endorsement from Douglas Adams on the cover of Joy in the Morning? I used to read loads of PG Wodehouse in high school, but I'm not sure I've picked one up in the last forty years. Have I read Joy in the Morning before? Who knows? It's a Jeeves and Wooster book (always my favourite genre of Wodehouse, though I also dabbled in Psmith and Blandings), and it involves numerous misunderstandings, fancy dress, secret meetings, a cottage burning down (which event everyone takes far too lightly, in my opinion), a zealous Boy Scout, and an earnest policeman. As usual, Bertie Wooster tries to help out his friends, finds himself quickly out of his depth, and has to call on the inimitable Jeeves for solutions (there was not quite enough Jeeves in this volume for my money, but I'm sure I can rectify that elsewhere). The thing about Wodehouse is, you know exactly what you're in for.

At first I couldn't help hearing Wooster's narration in the perfect voice of  Hugh Laurie (what an inspired piece of casting that was!), but I was soon reminded of why I adored these books so much as a teenager. Wodehouse's reputation took a massive hit in the UK after he broadcast to America from Germany during the war (to be fair, he was stuck there, and the broadcasts were comic, not political), but I feel as if he's gradually been rehabilitated, though he never returned to live in the UK again. Joy in the Morning was published in 1948, when he was probably held in greatest scorn in his native land.

Wodehouse excels at two things: neatly constructed, absurdist plots, and an utterly delightful, idiosyncratic voice. Playful, energetic, mellifluous and uniquely convoluted, every page presents fresh treasures. Opening at random:

There arose before me a vision of this relative by marriage, as he would probably appear directly I mentioned Boko's name -- the eyes glaring, the moustache bristling and the tout ensemble presenting a strong resemblance to a short-tempered tiger of the jungle which has just seen its peasant shin up a tree. And while it would be going too far, perhaps, to say that Bertram Wooster shuddered, a certain coolness of the feet unquestionably existed.

Now, you either love this stuff or you hate it. Me, I think I still love it.

Australian Gospel

  

I think I heard Lech Blaine interviewed by Richard Fidler on Radio National's Conversations and was intrigued by his extraordinary family story. Now having read Australian Gospel, I don't know how he could have compressed the saga into one hour-long interview. Essentially, Lech's parents fostered a gang of other children, including two brothers and a sister, the children of Michael and Mary Shelley (just two of the names they went by, in long and confusing lives). The Shelleys never accepted that their children should have been removed from their care, and engaged in a campaign of harassment, death threats, stalking, attempted abductions and relentless hate mail over several decades. The children regarded themselves as the family of Tom and Lenore Blaine, and never wanted to return to the Shelleys, but this made no difference to the Shelleys' attitude.

Michael Shelley went through various incarnations as a preacher, drug addict and anti-drug campaigner, and he and Mary travelled all over the world (it's not clear how they managed to pay for this travel, as neither of them ever seems to have held gainful employment, or not for long). Mary Shelley suffered from mental illness and spent time in various hospitals (they both also spent time in prison). Tracing their movements across the country and the world, and in and out of institutions, makes the reader's head spin. Lech Blaine's writing style is deliberately succinct and elliptical, which keeps the narrative speeding along; he says that he chose a novelistic approach as a way of handling this mass of bewildering and confronting material, and the life stories of so many (real) people, including himself. (Lech was named after Lech Walesa, the Polish labour activist hero.)

Australian Gospel is a fascinating and disturbing story, but ultimately it's a tale of the triumph of love and persistence over delusion and narcissism.

Never Thought I'd End Up Here

Last year I read Ann Liang's I Hope This Doesn't Find You and was bemused by its transcontinental ambiguity. Never Thought I'd End Up Here is more firmly rooted in an American background, but its characters are swiftly translocated to a two week student trip to China, where the young protagonists can explore their heritage and family language.

Narrator Leah is battling not just her judgmental extended family, but a complicated personal history which encompasses changing schools under suspicion of attacking and injuring a fellow student, being overlooked as plain and dull, and then giving herself an extreme makeover which resulted in a modelling career -- which she has just quit, leaving her directionless. No wonder she's confused! And when the China trip reunites her with her nemesis, Cyrus, the one who accused her of hurting him, Leah is torn between a plan for revenge and ... starting to like him?

I'm sure you can guess how the story unfolds (I definitely did think we'd end up here), but Liang pushes all the right buttons for an audience eager for young adult romance. My school librarian friend assures me that her books fly off the shelves, and she is a New York Times bestselling author, so she's certainly found a winning formula. Never Thought I'd End Up Here is not quite my cup of tea, but an entertaining and polished ride.

The Good Country

When I was working on Crow Country, fifteen years ago, I found it quite difficult to discover exactly what had occurred between the First Nations inhabitants and white settlers on Djadja Wurrung country, though I could assume that dispossession was swift and violent. It turns out that the true history was a little more nuanced than that.

I was alerted to the existence of Bain Attwood's The Good Country by my book group friend Cathy, who is moving to Djadja Wurrung country, and I was interested to see that it was reworked and republished at the urging of Djadja Wurrung elder Gary Murray, who was generous enough to read the manuscript of Crow Country and even wrote a foreword. The Good Country is a short book, but packed with research, and tells a story that was no doubt replicated in different areas of Victoria during the first hectic, brutal years of active colonisation. Some settlers were ruthless and cruel; others were compassionate, and understood that Aboriginal people were losing their access to food sources (one wonders why this wasn't obvious to government authorities), and that their 'theft' of food and stock was largely motivated of hunger and desperation. I was shocked to learn that one of the main causes of death among First Nations clans was due to syphilis (guess how that was spread).

I wasn't aware that one of the first experiments with 'protected' areas for First Nations people was set up in Djadja Wurrung country, primarily as a refuge from the activities of violent settlers; however, when official support dropped away, most of the remaining inhabitants were resettled at Coranderrrk, where they had ties of marriage and kin. However, some Djadja Wurrung chose to remain on Country, and some gained employment on pastoral stations or even took part in the gold rush.

The Good Country filled in a large gap in my knowledge, not just of Djadja Wurrung history, but the history of Victoria and Australia, and I'm grateful to both Bain Attwood and Cathy for it. 

China Court

I think China Court is the last of Rumer Godden's major works that I still had left unread, and I've been hoarding a copy for about three years until I finally crumbled (what if I went under a bus and I still hadn't got around to reading it?)

There is so much to love about this 1960 novel. It further expands and develops on her earlier book, A Fugue in Time, which also examined the history of a house and its family through several generations simultaneously, but China Court is a country house and the prosperous Quin family balances a precarious position between classes. The stories of a handful of outstanding characters and marriages are stranded together in Godden's infinitely skilful way (though the family tree at the front of the book is very helpful). The present day narrative centres on young Tracy, who has returned to the family home just too late for the death of her beloved grandmother, who holds much of the novel together both as the matriarch Mrs Quin, and the village orphan and interloper Ripsie.

The love triangle between bastard orphan Ripsie and the two Quin brothers is devastating; the history of thwarted spinster Eliza in the previous generation is tragic. And I thought I was going to love the present-day fairy tale pairing between Tracy and Mrs Quin's protege, Peter (running the farm but nobly born, natch), until the last few pages, when Peter hits Tracy -- okay, he 'slaps' her and he warns her first, so arguably, she 'provokes' him, but this sudden assertion of old-fashioned masculine domination left a sour taste in my mouth. It's such a shame, because China Court is a really magical Godden novel in so many ways, if not for this shocking ending I think it would have become almost my favourite of her novels (though nothing will ever beat This House of Brede for me).
 

Archer's Goon

It's shallow of me, but I have to confess that the reason I've never picked up Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones' 1984 novel, is because I didn't like the cover. the combination of the lime-green background, the leather-clad thug and the cartoonish children with their gormless mouths open, all convinced me that I wasn't going to enjoy the story inside.

Well, how wrong I was. Archer's Goon (I don't love the title either, to be perfectly honest) displays Diana Wynne Jones at the very peak of her powers. A story seemingly rooted in the everyday quickly takes a twist, veers off in a magical direction and rapidly roars into full-blown but deceptively well-controlled chaos, with one almighty whiplash twist saved up for the very end. 

A book featuring a family of five (counting Fifi, the student lodger) as well as a group of seven warring siblings with superpowers, and other sundry characters, could easily become confusing, but everyone is crisply delineated, funny and vivid. There's plenty of action and confusion to keep the plot racing, and needless to say, Archer's Goon is meticulously structured and pulls itself together at the end with such panache that the reader can only gasp. I'm sure I once read somewhere that Diana Wynne Jones didn't work out her plots in advance, but just started writing and worked it out as she went along, but frankly, I find that very hard to believe.

It's a delight to add another treasure to my Diana Wynne Jones bookshelf, unappealing cover and all. 

A Murder Is Going Down

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate Emery's CBCA Notable from last year, My Family and Other Suspects, and I'm delighted to report that A Murder Is Going Down is more in the same vein. It's not a sequel, but an entirely new story, which opens with our narrator, Heidi, and an older woman called Marianne, stuck in a lift together; Heidi begins to tell Marianne the story of a murder that was committed when her sister-in-law was also stuck in a lift -- the murder of Heidi's older brother Felix. 

From here, the story cuts between the pair in the lift, and the story that Heidi's telling. It sounds grim but fortunately Felix was a very unpleasant person, violent, manipulative and cruel, so we can regard his death with a degree of relief and concentrate on solving the mystery (which matters because if Felix killed himself, as the police might conclude, his lovely wife Elena loses out on the insurance payout). Heidi joins forces with Elena's younger brother, the annoying but charming Patrick, to unravel the clues.

A Murder is Going Down is heaps of fun. Heidi's narration and banter zing, the characters are appealing and well drawn, and the mystery (and the mystery within the mystery!) unfolds in a satisfyingly twisty fashion. The copy I borrowed from the library had already obviously been well read, unlike some of the notables I pluck from the shelves, sad to say, and it's refreshing to read a story set in Perth. I am already a big fan of Kate Emery and I hope she keeps producing these enormously entertaining novels.
 

Capture

I've felt a special connection to Amanda Lohrey ever since I entered an HQ magazine short story competition in 1995. I didn't win, but I was awarded a special second prize of $1000, which was a lot of money for me back then, and I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Amanda Lohrey, who was one of the judges, had gone into bat for my story (it was called 'The Fat Doubloons of Love').

Anyway, I do like Amanda Lohrey's writing, too, quite apart from feeling grateful for that financial boost, and I was especially intrigued by the description of Capture. Jim Mather is a sixty-something academic psychiatrist who is persuaded to make a study of people who believe they have experienced alien abduction. With the help of his assistant, Lucy, he interviews many 'experiencers,' hoping to find common ground between them, but each brings their own meaning to what has happened to them (or what they believed has happened), and Mather grows increasingly restless and irritated by his inability to impose coherence on the group. Meanwhile he has philosophical discussions with Lucy, catches up with an old lover, and has a shiatsu treatment.

This is a short novel, and it's reflective and meditative rather than action-packed (like most of Lohrey's work), but it's packed with thoughtful and provocative moments. What do we believe, and what do we believe in, and why? Do we live in the shadow of death, or bask in the joy of life? One of my friends described Capture as 'weird' but noted that it has stayed with her. I have a feeling it's going to stay with me, too.

Hitchhiker

  

I was a bit taken aback when I read the foreword to M.J. Simpson's biography of Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker. The foreword was written by John Lloyd, now best known as the creator of QI, but at one time Adams' closest friend, and he describes Hitchhiker as 'painstakingly researched and ineffably sad,' and describes Simpson as 'an honest man who has done his level best to present a balanced picture of what can hardly be described as a balanced life,' which at first seemed mystifyingly like damning with faint praise.

However, having now read the biography and gone back to re-read the foreword, it seemed less mean-spirited and closer to the simple truth. Douglas Adams was evidently a gifted and difficult man, and the huge success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy delivered him wealth, fame and opportunities, and simultaneously dragged like a millstone round his neck. He was a fountain of ideas, fired up when he was collaborating with other people, a natural extrovert, but loathed the isolation and discipline of sitting at a desk and doing the lonely work of actually writing, hence his notorious inability to meet a deadline. (Perhaps his most famous quote was, 'I love deadlines, I like the whooshing noise they make as they fly past.')

Adams' was widely loved, but he burned many bridges. He brimmed over with ideas but was hardly ever able to see them through to a finished product. At one point his publisher had to lock him up in a hotel room and physically sit glowering at him until he had finished writing the book he was contracted for. He was a master of distraction and procrastination (it's not considered in this book, which was published in 2003, but I wonder if he had ADHD). Adams died far too young, of a heart attack at 49, when his daughter was only seven years old. That's not the only reason why this biography seems so sad, but also the unfulfilled promise of a huge brain and often lonely heart. 

Golden

Golden by Jade Timms has been short-listed for the CBCA Awards, and it's immediately obvious that it's a cut above the average YA title. Eddy (Edwina) is dealing with untreated PTSD after the drowning death of her brother-in-law Jackson three years earlier; in fact, her entire family is still struggling with his loss. Eddy feels haunted, angry, miserable and very much alone. The story of Golden tracks her turning toward recovery.

I really liked the big cast of characters, mostly Eddy's teen cohort from her small coastal town, including her twin brother Pat. (Timms really likes unisex names -- as well as Eddy, we have girls called Stevie, Joss and George.) The cast is nicely diverse, too, and there's a satisfying web of cross-currents that link and divide the friends/boyfriends/girlfriends/ exes/wannabes. The adults are all pretty useless, though Eddy's dad is doing his best. I also enjoyed that Eddy didn't discover a miracle silver bullet to cure her trauma; it's the sum of a whole lot of different things that end up helping her, including messing with art (I feel as if this might have been intended to take up more of the story at one point, it fades away toward the end), running, friendship, finally talking about her experience, cooking, and first love all playing their part.

While it's not action packed, Golden is thoroughly engaging and kept me turning the pages. Eddy is appealing but plausibly flawed, and I kept wanting to make an appointment for her at a therapist (at the end of the novel, she's going to try therapy again); it was hard to believe that no one in her circle had recognised how badly she needs help in three years. But then, maybe I come from a therapy-positive background! I won't be surprised if Golden wins a medal to match its title.

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman

Lucy Worsley is a well known English historian who has presented many television and podcast series and written several books of historical fiction and non-fiction. I must admit that in the media I sometimes find her 'isn't this thrilling' presentation a bit much, but I must also admit that I found her biography of Agatha Christie utterly beguiling and illuminating. Worsley has a knack for intertwining Christie's personal history with social movements of the time which makes for fascinating reading.

Naturally the hinge of the book lies with the mysterious events of 1926, when Christie disappeared for several days, after her husband had told her he was leaving her for another woman. Her car was found abandoned and foul play or suicide was suspected. She was eventually discovered in a Yorkshire hotel, and the official story was that she had lost her memory. The whole episode was a press sensation, and it didn't take long before nasty aspersions were cast: was it a publicity stunt? A hoax to cast suspicions of murder on her husband? Or an elaborate scheme to lure him back? Worsley takes the view, informed by modern psychological knowledge, that Christie was acting in a genuine fugue state, a recognised psychological condition which is not exactly amnesia but certainly involves acute mental distress and delusion. It seems highly unlikely that Agatha Christie, who fiercely guarded her privacy all her life, would have deliberately staged such an attention-seeking stunt.

Worsley points out that the notion of Agatha Christie stories as cosy and nostalgic has largely arisen from the TV and movie adaptations of her work; the actual books were often acutely modern (for their time) as well as technically adventurous. Though she lost her grip as she grew older (Worsley suggests that perhaps dementia was setting in in her later years), at her peak she was a sharp psychological observer as well as a fiendish mystery plotter. I'm quite tempted to go back and revisit her classics -- I acquired loads of Christie collected volumes from various library sales, but I think they are all in storage with my daughter's stuff...
 

Summerwater

Almost exactly a year ago, I was blown away by Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall (thanks to Penni Russon for the recommendation). I wasn't aware when I borrowed Summerwater that a TV miniseries of it was released last year -- the reviews I've found have been lukewarm at best, but it's a weird coincidence, and if it pops up on my screen I'll probably at least have a look at it. It's an odd choice for an adaptation, because each of the chapters in Summerwater is so internal -- each voiced from the point of view of a different character, and with some overlap of events, but each with a very distinct attitude and each one very self-absorbed. It's not easy to dramatise a narrative which depends so heavily on internal monologues, and it sounds as if the TV writers didn't quite pull it off.

I do love a book written from different perspectives, even one like this which relies on a mounting sense of tension rather than any startling events, until the very end. It traces a single day in a rainy Scottish campground, where half a dozen families and couples are marooned by the weather. It's not a long book, and it would make a good teaching aid for demonstrating what 'voice' is and how it works. My one quibble would be that we don't get to see inside the heads of the 'outsider' family, the Ukrainian mother and her young daughter, in whose cabin noisy parties are held every night to the fury of the other guests. I'm guessing this was a deliberate choice, to keep them firmly in the role of outsiders, but it still makes me slightly uneasy that we don't get the same insight into their lives as we get into everyone else's.

Sarah Moss is a beautiful and skilful writer, but her subject matter is unrelentingly dark. In a way I'm glad that Summerwater and Ghost Wall are no longer than they are.