Grace

I bought Grace on impulse from Brotherhood Books because I love Jill Paton Walsh, even though I knew nothing about the book. It's a young adult novel, published in 1991, telling the story of 1830s heroine Grace Darling. I knew the broad outline of her feat -- that Grace, a lighthouse keeper's daughter, had helped to row a boat to rescue survivors from a shipwreck, and became famous enough to have a pub in Collingwood named after her, on the other side of the world -- but no more than that.

Maybe because I had no expectations, I thought Grace was amazing (see what I did there). The first part of the novel faithfully recounts the events of the rescue and what followed: Grace swiftly became a folk heroine, an exemplar of courage and strength which went against Victorian expectations of what a young woman could achieve. In the second part of the novel, Paton Walsh allows herself to imagine more freely the effect of this sudden and overwhelming attention on Grace, who was only twenty two, though she sticks to historical sources where they're available. Grace is showered with gold medals, public concerts raise money for her, she receives thousands of letters and gifts, all of which require a reply. 

The dark side of this fame is something that I had never suspected. An official lifeboat from the mainland also set out to rescue the survivors from the rock, but arrived there just after Grace and her father had plucked them to safety. Though they were equally brave and faced the same violence of sea and storm, lifeboat crews were rewarded according to the number of survivors they saved, and the Darlings had gazumped them. Grace and her father did their best to make sure that the crew were also recognised and paid for their efforts, the avalanche of public attention and money heaped on Grace caused bad feeling in the local town. In Paton Walsh's story, Grace becomes increasingly tormented that she might have performed her brave deed for the sake of the reward, not from pure altruism. Tragically, Grace died from tuberculosis only a few years after the Forfar rescue.

I found Grace a totally engaging ethical and moral examination of fame and courage, and the consequences of celebrity. As Grace herself recognises, it became impossible for her to marry -- she was too rich to be a suitable mate to a simple, ill-educated fisherman, but at the same time, she was too socially lowly to marry a man from a higher station in life. She became famous all over the world, but her fame was a terrible burden from which she could never be free. This was an unexpectedly moving and thought-provoking novel.
 

Winter's Gifts

Another Rivers of London novella from Ben Aaronovitch. Winter's Gifts takes us across the Atlantic to snowbound Wisconsin, with FBI agent Kimberley Reynolds as our protagonist. While she mentions (and once telephones) Peter Grant and the Folly in London, the focus is entirely on her and her hunt for a mysterious and vengeful supernatural creature.

I very much enjoyed this foray onto another continent, and Kim is good company: smart, resourceful and capable. There's a satisfying amount of action, with explosions, severed limbs, several frantic pursuits, a tentacled beast rising from a frozen lake, and even some pashing. We meet a Native American spirit in the form of a fourteen year old boy, which is a nice touch. I must admit that I wasn't entirely clear at the end of the story exactly what the evil object was, but maybe that was due to my inattentive reading -- I do tend to let the details wash over me when I'm reading Rivers of London books and just enjoy the ride.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star

Darkest Night, Brightest Star is a fantastic inclusion on the CBCA Notables list -- a really timely, pertinent and immediate book about Australian masculinity. Barry Jonsberg is an elder statesman of Australian YA writing, and he turns his former teacher's eye on the kind of boy I bet he saw a lot of in his classrooms. Morgan is thirteen, not interested in school, growing up with his dad and older brother after his mother left the family when he was just two. Morgan is not articulate; he keeps himself to himself, and not surprisingly, he's internalised a lot of not-great messages from the men in his family, who believe in never showing emotion (especially not vulnerability or fear), belittling women, and physical toughness as the measure of a man. But Morgan befriends Gray (who turns out to be gay); he'd rather look after plants than kick a ball on the soccer field; and his innate kindness comes to the fore when he starts helping out an old woman, Mary, who has a muddled idea that Morgan might be her own long-lost son.

Darkest Night, Brightest Star has a tight cast of characters. Sometimes the reader is able to draw connections that Morgan is a little slower to make. Morgan makes plenty of mistakes as he goes along, but he's lucky to have a handful of people in his life who really care about him, and at the end of the day, that's all any of us can ask for. The book doesn't wrap up everything in a tidy bow, but there is hope for Morgan (maybe not for his dad, who is not a great guy -- though Jonsberg drops us some hints about he became the damaged person that he is, and how he's passed on that legacy to his elder son). I hope boys read this book and perhaps see something of themselves in Morgan. I really liked it. The only element that Jonsberg hasn't tried to deal with here is the pernicious influence of the online 'manosphere' (I wish we had a better name for it), but maybe that's too big a topic to shoehorn into a short novel.

Fahrenheit 451

It came out during dinner with friends that I had never read Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, and Sue immediately jumped up to pull it from her shelves. It made a big impression on her when she studied it at school, and many of the details, as well as the central message, had stuck with her for decades.

I can see why it's become a school text staple. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel of ideas, first and foremost. In a society where books are outlawed and ritually burned when they're discovered, the population are kept docile on a diet of shallow entertainment provided by screens and ear-'seashells' and war is a constant threat, it's no wonder that in some ways Bradbury's novel seems even more relevant today that it was in 1953. Fireman Montag works at setting fires, not putting them out, and over the space of a few days, becomes first quietly questioning, then fully radicalised to oppose the prevailing social structure, ending in a thrilling pursuit and a cataclysmic ending.

But... it didn't really work for me. Apparently it was written in a frenzy and needed quite a bit of editing to pull it into shape. I wasn't totally convinced by the world-building, though the ubiquitous screens certainly seem prescient -- there are plenty of logical holes in the story and the characters' reactions don't always make sense. But the size of the concepts and the breathless pace of events would sweep younger readers along, and the ideas the novel raises definitely need to be aired. Maybe if I'd read it when I was 14, it would have worked magic on me? 

The Jane Austen Book Club

I'm not at all surprised that Karen Joy Fowler's 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, became an international bestseller and was made into a movie. I checked out the trailer and was disappointed that I only could only recognise a couple of the characters, so I suspect they were cast without close reference to the book. I don't think the movie performed all that well. The novel, on the other hand, was a delight, easy to read, with subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to Jane Austen's novels, without assuming an intimate knowledge of Austen in the reader.

Fowler presents us with six characters, mostly middle aged ladies, but including one younger daughter and one bloke. The bloke, Grigg, is a lot of fun -- he is a computer geek whose first literary love is science fiction, and who has never read any Jane Austen before. The ladies' initial bristling suspicion of him is lovely, and I adored the scenes where he and Jocelyn meet -- he is at a sci fi con and she is at a dog breeders' conference, and there are some gorgeous crossed wires. 

There is a section at the back of the book where Fowler gives synopses of each Austen novel, and a hilarious collection of reviews, starting with Jane's own family and friends and moving through two hundred years' worth of admirers and detractors. I doubt anyone would approach this book unless they were already a Janeite, but fans of Austen will find comfort and pleasure in these pages. 
 

He

I have been re-reading Helen Garner's trilogy of diaries, which roughly follow the story of her relationship with author Murray Bail, anonymised in the diaries as 'V' (though it's certainly not hard to find out his real identity). At one point he objects strongly to the idea that she is writing about him in her diary, and anticipates with horror and dread the day when they might be published, or read by academics, and her private portrait of him and their marriage will become public -- which is exactly what has happened, and it's true, the image of him that emerges from those pages is far from flattering. She argues back that she can't live fully without writing in her diary, that the diary is what makes it possible for her to live her life at all. Eventually she agrees not to write about him except in the barest, most functional way, a resolve which is soon broken. But I thought, from some sense of fairness, that the least I could do was to read Bail's own account of himself, and see how things looked from his side.

He is not exactly an autobiography. It's composed of fragments of memory and reflection, some floating free of context, all couched in the safely distancing third person point of view. He does mention his first and second wives (Garner was number two), without naming them, and expresses admiration for Garner's writing without disclosing their relationship! In her diaries, Garner often bemoans V's refusal to admit to feeling or expressing emotion, and it would be hard to imagine a more clinical piece of autobiographical writing, in which the word 'I' never appears!

He is, however, a beautiful work, filled with evocative images and remembrance, though the meaning of each fragment and their connection to each other is left for the reader to put together. I did feel I had a bit of an advantage in understanding Bail's character after seeing him through Garner's eyes -- at first intrigued, then in love, then increasingly frustrated, and finally devastated. Reading He was an interesting exercise, and a window into a certain kind of man's perception of the world. But I'm not sure I want to spend too much time inside his head.
 

What Rhymes With Murder

Disclaimer: I made friends with Penny Tangey at a posh school literature festival in Queensland when I was a relatively baby author and she had just published her first novel, Loving Richard Feynman, which I absolutely adored. Already her trademark droll wit was much in evidence, and it's been a consistent element of her work whether she's writing for a middle grade or young adult audience, or now for adults. (Recently I loved Music Camp.)

What Rhymes With Murder? is a mystery story, but the real pleasure of this book lies in the voice of Frida, a new mum who is anxious about everything, especially harm coming to her six month old baby, Finn, after an earlier miscarriage. Tangey is superb at interweaving genuine emotion with humour, and the reader's heart goes out to poor panicking Frida who can't get down the stairs from her apartment, as well as laughing at her put-upon, passive-aggressive hints to her partner about the housework.

 I pop Finn on his playmat and check on the machine. I plonk the clean washing into a basket then carry it to the lounge room, where I wrench open the balcony door. Outside I drop the basket with a thud.

    Ben asks, 'Are you okay?'

    'Yes. Just hanging out the wash.' As per usual.

    'Do you want me to do that?' 

    I shake my head. I don't want him to do it. I want him to have done it already.

There was an extra delight for me in the East Melbourne setting: my elder daughter has just moved into a tiny apartment in East Melbourne and I loved recognising the parks and thinly-disguised cafes of the area (I bought my copy of the book at the General Store which is surely the model for the 'Gipps St Cafe'.) There is a lot of coffee in this novel!

But there are serious themes here too, mostly about reproduction. Frida's post-natal mental health battles, anti-abortion activists, a local reproductive clinic suffering attacks from the same group, a group of three co-parents, a yearning grandmother, a childless professional -- and much of the action takes place at the library! What Rhymes With Murder? is very Melbourne and a lovely read.
 

What Abigail Did That Summer

What Abigail Did That Summer is a novella, less than 200 pages, set during the same time as Foxglove Summer. There's some suggestion that this is a young adult spinoff, designed to draw in younger readers to the Rivers of London series, which makes sense. Our narrator is Abigail Kumara, Peter Grant's thirteen year old cousin, who also has magical abilities and is beginning to be mentored at the Folly. 

There are a lot of reasons why this story might appeal to younger readers -- there are talking foxes! Missing teens (who are all returned unharmed). A sassy, streetwise, smart-mouthed heroine who can summon up river goddesses for advice. And the plot of What Abigail Did is a fair bit milder than most of the Peter Grant novels, which can contain some very dark material. The thing is, I'm not sure that Rivers of London needs a special YA gateway; I'm pretty sure that YA readers are quite capable of discovering and enjoying the regular novels all on their own. And I'm also not sure that Abigail's voice is totally convincing as a thirteen year old Black girl? (I must say that Abigail narrated parts of Stone & Sky and her voice was better handled in that later novel.)

Having said all that, I really enjoyed What Abigail Did, and especially the poignant source of the mystery, which is a house that's kind of come alive and kidnaps teens to act out memorable scenes from its past (shades of Tumbleglass). One aspect of the Rivers of London books I really relish is the awareness and inclusion of history. Those references just sit a tiny bit uneasily in Abigail's mouth, for me.
 

Project Hail Mary

My younger daughter is a big fan of space, and she loved Andy Weir's previous book (and the movie) The Martian, so she was very excited both for this novel and the film which has just been released, starring another favourite, Ryan Gosling. (She went to see a preview of Project Hail Mary at IMax, and we are going together to see it again next week.)

Andy Weir is very good at writing about science and using science to solve specific problems. There's no hand-wavery here (not that I can detect, anyway). In The Martian, we saw a marooned astronaut figuring out how to survive on Mars. Project Hail Mary widens the scope of the drama to put the entire Earth in jeopardy, when a light-feeding life form starts devouring the sun. The whole of humanity unites to solve this problem (pity we can't seem to do this for the climate crisis) and it ends up with, again, a single astronaut, Ryland Grace, far, far out in space, having to work out what to do to save the world. This time our sole survivor is joined by an extra-terrestrial who looks like a spider, uses hearing instead of sight as their primary sense, and 'speaks' with sound, who has come from his own home world to solve the same emergency, which he calls, 'bad bad bad.'

Some of my favourite scenes in the novel are the ones where Grace and Rocky are working out how to communicate with each other and work together, despite the differences in their physiology. It's lucky that Rocky's culture is broadly compatible with that of an American high school science teacher and they can get along so well. I had a quibble when Grace noted that Rocky calls him the Eridian equivalent of the word 'grace,' which, given the religious and historical freight of that word in English, raised more questions about Rocky's planet than could possibly be answered.

Weir does an excellent job of continually raising the stakes and throwing obstacles at his characters; he also skilfully uses flashback and Grace's initial amnesia to reveal the backstory of events on Earth. Honestly I was more interested in the Rocky/Grace timeline but it was all fun. I can't wait for the movie, which my daughter reviewed as 'amaze! amaze! amaze!' 

Hour of the Heart

Irvin Yalom is well into his nineties, still writing and until relatively recently, still practising as a therapist. Hour of the Heart was published in 2024 with the assistance of his son Ben, who has a background in theatre but has now also trained as a therapist. Hour of the Heart was written after the death of Irvin's beloved wife Marilyn; he realised that with his unreliable memory and lowered energy levels, it was no longer possible for him to offer long term therapy to patients, but instead decided to try single sessions with a new client each day, often over Zoom. 

Hour of the Heart presents a score of stories from these sessions, which involved clients from all over the world (interestingly, there were a few from Melbourne, perhaps reflecting the high anxiety and distress caused by prolonged Covid lockdowns here). Yalom is upfront about the limitations of offering a single therapeutic session, just one hour, but he also recognises that with his vast experience and established authority, he can cut through more quickly than other therapists might. Sometimes this backfires, as patients are over-awed by his reputation or project father difficulties onto Irv and become tongue-tied, but Yalom finds some tricks to accelerate insights -- he reveals more of his weaknesses and fears to establish a quick rapport, and he turns the tables and invites clients to ask him questions. This techniques can produce some surprising results.

But finally, sadly, Dr Irv finds himself in a confronting conversation with a doctor who has begun to suffer the effects of dementia. To his horror, when he comes to write up the session, Yalom finds he has completely blanked out what they said to each other, perhaps because this subject matter brushed so close to his own anxieties about getting old and becoming incompetent. According to son Ben, this was the last session Yalom ever held with a patient. It's a sad ending to an extraordinary and generous career, but Hour of the Heart is also a wonderful testament to Yalom's willingness to keep learning and experimenting for as long as he possibly could (and apparently yet another book is in the works, this time the final, final work).
 

Dancer in the Wings

I bought Dancer in the Wings (1958) at the same time as Principal Rôle, which was a bit of a self-indulgent impulse -- I've now acquired five of these Lorna Hill ballet books in hard cover, purely from childhood nostalgia. 

Dancer in the Wings is definitely a second tier Lorna Hill (unless all the Lorna Hill titles are less good than I've remembered??). It centres on Annette Dancy (is that a bit lazy, Lorna?) who is a member of the Cosmopolitan Ballet company, but finds herself in a precarious position when her mentor teacher dies. I always enjoy stories about intra-company politics and rivalries, but quite soon we escape this scenario when Annette takes off for Scotland, shaken by the news of her mother's unexpected second marriage, which turns Angus MacCrimmon from a vague love interest into her stepbrother -- no, wait, he's still a love interest. I guess that is okay, though I'm pretty sure my daughters would say 'ick.'

In some ways Dancer in the Wings resembles Principal Rôle, with Isle of Skye taking the place of the Slavonian Alps in providing the scenic backdrop. There's actually a shout-out to the Slavonian setting of the previous book in this novel. There is however quite a bit of actual dancing in this book, as Annette pays her passage to Skye by performing on board ship. I think Dancer in the Wings was right at the tail end of the heyday of ballet books, as the swinging sixties was about to hijack the glamour of ballet with pop and fashion. No, I see that Hill kept writing ballet books until the mid-1960s, though she did switch tack after that to The Vicarage Children series, though I would have thought that vicarage children might be on their way out by then, too!
 

Mr & Mrs Gould

Grantlee Kieza is a prolific author of Australian history and biographies. My younger daughter gave me Mr & Mrs Gould for Christmas, because she figured the combination of Australian history and birds would be a winner, and she was mostly right. It's a shame that Mr Gould himself wasn't a more attractive character, which took the shine off his story a little bit.

John and Elizabeth Gould arrived in Australia in 1838, already established as pre-eminent naturalists and producers of wildlife books; The Birds of Australia would make Gould more famous and very rich. John organised and carried out the collection of specimens, while Elizabeth, who at the time of their Australian trip was into her seventh pregnancy (at 34 -- when I was just getting started! Gulp), was responsible for the extraordinary illustrations, many of which are reproduced in this book. Kieza has done his research thoroughly, and provides all kinds of social and scientific background; it appears that it was humble John Gould who first suggested to Charles Darwin the possibility of natural evolution.

John Gould was a hard taskmaster and a relentless worker who didn't treat his subordinates very well, and he was a bit rough round the edges in a world people largely by gentlemen amateurs. However, he does seem to have been genuinely loving to his wife and grieved her deeply when she died, though Elizabeth never received her full credit for his commercial success. Mr & Mrs Gould is a readable and engaging popular history which taught me a lot about early colonial Australia and its abundant ornithological wonders. And the pictures are gorgeous.
 

Notes to John

I felt quite conflicted about reading this book -- Notes to John is not even really a book, it's a collection of notes that Didion made after sessions with her psychiatrist, ostensibly addressed to her husband, John Dunne. Mostly Didion and Dr MacKinnon discuss Dunne and Didion's daughter Quintana, who was struggling with alcoholism, but they also talk about Didion's childhood and her own psychological battles. The material is extremely intimate and personal; was it ever intended to be read, let alone published? The papers were found in Didion's desk after her death.

However, Didion, Dunne, Quintana and Dr MacKinnon are all dead now; there's no one left to be hurt by any revelations. It's impossible to believe that Didion didn't discuss these sessions with Dunne as they were happening, in fact she says as much. So perhaps these papers were not really intended as letters or private communications, but functioned more as memory aids or journal entries. Does that make them fair game? I'm still not sure.

Ethical dilemmas aside, I found Notes to John absolutely gripping and very moving. I'm a sucker for anything about psychology or psychiatry sessions, though most of the books I've read have been fictionalised -- but I'm also thinking about Couples Therapy on SBS, which I am addicted to. There is so much here about love and family, dependence and independence, parenting and separating from parents, addiction and alcoholism. My elder daughter also found it irresistible, and terribly sad.
 

Catch

  

What a fantastic start to my traditional (since last year) read-through of the CBCA Young Adult Notables list! I knew as soon as I began Sarah Brill's Catch that I was going to like it. It has a quite bizarre premise: over the summer holidays, sixteen year old Beth has grown tall and hot, and she's also developed an unexpected gift -- she can anticipate when someone is going to fall, and she can catch them. At first her strange ability is a secret. She can tell when a catch is coming because she starts to feel nauseous, then she's compelled to run to the location where she positions herself, and confidently, competently, no matter how heavy or awkward the person or how far they're falling, she catches them. 

Some falls are deliberate, and Brill doesn't sugar coat this reality; some (most) are accidental -- kids falling out of trees, a collapsing scaffold. But Beth has other problems to deal with, like her crush on neighbour Etienne, who for the first time seems to like her back, and her slightly older sister Meg, who is pregnant (for ages I thought the book would end with Beth 'catching' Meg's baby, but it doesn't). As more and more people find out about Beth, her life becomes more complicated.

Brill gives us a first person narrator in Beth, but she also deploys a technique of reporting a lot of conversations indirectly, rather than in direct dialogue, which gave the story an interesting, slightly flattening feeling which I enjoyed. I suppose Catch is magic realism? Brill definitely thinks through all the real world implications of Beth's unlikely gift (for one thing, she becomes amazing at basketball). Her mysterious ability is never explained; it just is. My only quibble is that the novel didn't really resolve, it just kind of... finished. Perhaps there is a sequel on the way, and Brill has left it deliberately open-ended? Despite this niggle, I loved Catch and I hope it makes the shortlist.

Stone and Sky

Since the first Rivers of London novel appeared in 2011, the universe of Peter Grant has expanded to include ten full length books, graphic novels and several novellas. I must admit I've pretty much stuck to the novels, though I'm tempted to sample some of the other products (if I can find them). I've been waiting for months for Stone and Sky to arrive on my reserve shelf at the library, and though I confess I have lost track of some of the characters and events, I'm always eager to plunge into a new Ben Aaronovitch. He can't seem to resist the temptation to invent new characters and fresh phenomena with every Rivers of London story; some of them can be successfully woven into the new material, some inevitably get left by the wayside (there wasn't nearly enough Nightingale in Stone and Sky for my liking, but I was happy to spend lots of time with Abigail, Peter's feisty younger cousin).

In Stone and Sky, we relocate from London to Aberdeen, an area of Scotland that I'm not hugely familiar with, to deal with murdered selkies, sexy mermaids, other dimensional panthers and homicidal gulls, as well as talking foxes, river goddesses and gigantic magical horses. Even if I no longer have a firm grasp on the outer reaches of Peter Grant's universe, I'm always along for the ride. Aaronovitch produces a perfect (for me) marriage of magic and the supernatural with police procedural, two of my favourite genres, and it's always hugely good fun.
 

Sweet Danger

I was prompted to read Margery Allingham's Sweet Danger by Susan Green, and also the Secret Life of Books podcast on the Golden Age Queens of Crime; Allingham was the only one I hadn't yet sampled. Sue was right; Sweet Danger is an absolute romp, with lots of action, a preposterous plot and attractively eccentric (and also sinister) side characters, including the smart and lively seventeen year old Amanda, who is destined to become Campion's wife in a few books' time.

I knew that in the early 1990s, the BBC had made a couple of seasons of Campion, starring Peter Davison, and I found one story, Mystery Mile, (two episodes) on YouTube, which I watched to get the flavour of it. This might have been a mistake, because the two stories were quite similar in feel, and some of the characters from Mystery Mile were even referenced in Sweet Danger, and I might have confused myself about some of the plot details. In Davison's autobiography, he regrets that the BBC didn't make more Campion, but points out that they were quite difficult to adapt for television because the plots were so complicated! Apparently the BBC splurged 25,000 pounds on buying the ancient red Lagonda that Campion and offsider Lugg drive -- it worked out cheaper than hiring it for the duration and they were able to resell it at the end of the production and it cost them virtually nothing.

I enjoyed Sweet Danger a lot, and I think I might check out Tiger in the Smoke, which was the novel discussed on SLOB and is considered Allingham's post-war masterpiece.
 

Ruptured

I expected that I would find Ruptured difficult to read; and I did. I've been increasingly aware that, despite always being fascinated by and sympathetic to Judaism, at the moment I exist inside a decided pro-Palestinian bubble. One of my daughters is determinedly pro-Palestinian, to the point where, to me, she's become uncomfortably anti-Israel. I can't defend the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza, but I wanted a clearer understanding of why Israel has been behaving that way.

Australia is a small world. I didn't expect to find essays in here from an ex-housemate and from my former school captain. I also had to remind myself that this book was published before the Bondi shooting of December 2025; I can only imagine how much the deep anguish and fear expressed in these essays has intensified since then. One thing that became immediately obvious that that although I myself find it simple to separate the nation state of Israel and its actions from the Jewish people, these Australian Jewish women experienced no such easy distance. For them, Israel and being Jewish are inextricably intertwined, so that criticisms of Israel's action are felt directly as anti-Semitism. It's much more personal than I'd realised. Any critique of Israel is felt as a denial of Israel's right to existence. Also, the events of October 7, when Hamas attacked and murdered Jewish citizens, was such a violation, so painful, that no amount of bloodshed in Gaza seemed to touch it; there was no comparison, no equivalence. (I'm aware that my words are clumsy and indeed I'm struggling to clearly express the emotions that rose so painfully from these pages.)

I'm not sure that I really found the clearer understanding that I was seeking from Ruptured, but I'm much more aware of the genuine suffering that these women have endured and are still enduring, and the mutual incomprehension that seems to lie between the Jewish community and the pro-Palestinian protesters (I'm talking about peaceful marchers like my daughter, obviously not the terrorists who have firebombed schools and synagogues, and definitely not the Bondi shooters.) It's all such a horrible, agonising tangle, and I don't know how it can ever be smoothed out so everyone can live in peace together. Here and now, it seems impossible, even in my city here on the other side of the world.
 

Principal Rôle

Principal Rôle was an impulse buy -- I have a weakness for Lorna Hill's Sadler's Wells ballet series, and this one, along with Dancer in the Wings, were a couple of titles I hadn't come across before, and I couldn't resist. This one is from 1957, and honestly, it barely qualifies as a ballet book! The ballet element is quite tangential. The story centres on fifteen year old (not eighteen, as the cover blurb claims) Princess Fazia of the imaginary kingdom of Slavonia, capital Drobnik, which all sounds quite Yugoslavian, except that it's vaguely nestled in the Alps somewhere. Anyway, it's been overthrown by Communists and her brother Leo is king in exile. So far, so Eva Ibbotson, and this novel shows that fascination with the Alps which was current in the early 20th century.

In fact, it's King Leo who is really keen on ballet, particularly one ballerina. We're told that though Fazia is an incredible dancer, she's not really that interested; and her young governess Elizabeth Lister, whose viewpoint we share in the first part of the book, did ballet at school but is far from professional standard. The story veers around quite wildly and comes to a screaming climax with one character catching on fire, a hospital bedside proposal, an assassination (off screen) and (spoiler) Princess Fazia assuming her Principal Rôle as... Queen of Slavonia (weirdly no one seems particularly worried that she might be assassinated).

I don't regret this purchase and it has a very pretty cover, but it's a very slight piece of work! My expectations for Dancer in the Wings are now quite low.
 

My Sister the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer probably isn't the kind of book I would normally pick up, but my interest was piqued after reading a recommendation on a book thread where someone was looking for novels from different countries (I think they were aiming to read a book from every country in the world). I'm very conscious that my reading pool of nationalities is tiny, so I made a note of Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel and found it at the Athenaeum.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is no mystery story -- the very title gives it away, and the first page begins with a murder, clearly not the first. The tension in the story comes from wondering if the narrator Korede will keep covering up for her homocidal sister, or betray her to the police; and from the imminent danger to Korede's crush, kind and hunky doctor Tade, who has the hots for Ayoola. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a very easy and engaging read; I flew through half of it while giving blood. The chapters are short and punchy, the action is swift. In some ways it reminded me of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, in that it does provide some plausible excuses for Ayoola's behaviour, and I really enjoyed the glimpse into Nigerian culture (albeit an upper class, 'nice' family). I wouldn't exactly call it a fun read, but it's effortless and very enjoyable, so far as a novel about a serial killer can be, and it does actually have some serious observations to make about intergenerational violence and co-dependent relationships.
 

Taboo

West Australian Noongar author Kim Scott has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I've shied away from his novels, fearing they might be too harrowing for me. But I was persuaded to pick up his 2017 book, Taboo, by my book group friend Cathy, and I'm so glad I did.

Tilly is a schoolgirl who's recently discovered the truth about her Aboriginal parentage; she finds herself caught up in a kind of cultural camp for Noongar people, returning to their Country after a long exile and horrific history which has rendered that place forbidden until now. The narrative about the adults exploring their heritage, tentatively recovering language, making traditional tools and painting, singing old songs, enveloping young Tilly in a family she's never known, is extremely moving. But there is deep darkness in the story too, not just in the form of past massacres, murder and rape, but in the present, between vulnerable Tilly and sinister Doug, who is also connected to the community.

Taboo contains both horror and humour, and a touch of magic realism that weaves First Nations spirituality through a gothic, haunted story. The book ends with the hint that eventually Tilly will make peace with both sides of her inheritance, despite all the pain that has come before.
 

My Brother the Orangutan

Disclaimer: Heather Gallagher is an old friend of mine. We met at ante-natal classes before our first babies were born, and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common -- not just living in adjacent suburbs, but Heather and I were both aspiring children's authors. It's hard to believe that was nearly twenty five years ago.

My Brother the Orangutan is a lively, fun body swap story in the best tradition of Paul Jennings. Esther and her brother Rex have newly arrived from the country to the city, where their dad has a new job working at the nearby zoo (every kid's dream, surely). But the family are also grappling with the recent death of Esther's beloved grandfather, and moving in with their eccentric grandmother, whose cooking tends to produce dishes like salmon and lychee souffle, or tuna and pineapple muffins. But the trouble really starts when Rex swaps bodies with Harta the orangutan and Esther finds herself sharing a bedroom with an ape in a boy's body, while her little brother is stuck in the zoo.

Resourceful Esther's hero is Sherlock Holmes and it doesn't take her long to start putting the vital clues together. But there's only so much an eleven year old can do to persuade adults that something truly bizarre is going on.

My Brother the Orangutan mixes a warm family story with a twisty magical mystery and plenty of laughs. It would make a fabulous read-aloud and I can see it appealing to reluctant readers, too. Lots of fun.
 

Clock Dance

Anne Tyler is one of those reliable authors where you always have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get, and you can relax in the knowledge that you're in safe hands while you get there. (I'd put Noel Streatfeild, Agatha Christie and Eva Ibbotson into the same category.) In one respect, Clock Dance departs from Tyler's usual MO -- instead of revolving around a nuclear family, or a couple of generations, this one consists of a few mostly unrelated individuals who end up forming a kind of chosen family.

Willa has two grown up sons, with whom she has little contact -- not because of conflict, they've just drifted apart. Widowed young, she's on her second husband, an honourable but pedantic and unbending man. Peter is most put out when Willa is unexpectedly called to the rescue of her son's former girlfriend and her young daughter, but he heroically accompanies her from Arizona to Baltimore so that Willa can step in. However, his willingness to be a hero is strictly limited and soon Willa finds herself torn between competing duties.

Clock Dance is a really sweet read. Willa is quite a passive character, but I recognised a fellow Phlegmatic type -- averse to conflict, resisting through inaction, a calming presence. It's lovely to see her gradually being appreciated by this bunch of neighbourhood strangers, even as her supposed nearest and dearest dismiss and overlook her. At the end I almost stood up and cheered.
 

This Way Up

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters) by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman (otherwise known as the Map Men) was a Christmas request from my younger daughter which I've since borrowed, and a very entertaining and educational read it was, too. The Map Men have a popular YouTube channel and have produced loads of short, entertaining and educational videos all about maps, which are quite addictive if you fancy getting lost down a cartographic rabbit hole.

This Way Up focuses on some truly bizarre map issues, like the weird history of regional television stations in the UK and why the areas they serviced bore almost no relationship to actual, you know, geography. (This chapter led to me and younger daughter watching nearly an hour of YouTube footage of ITV logos through the years.) There's a chapter about maps that omit New Zealand altogether (there's also a Reddit group that catalogues these -- I'm telling you, this book has sent me down many internet black holes). There's the story of how some completely non-existent mountains came to feature on maps of Africa for decades until someone worked out that they weren't actually real. And there's a chapter about Polynesian navigation by 'reading' the feel of waves, believe it or not -- incredible stuff.

The Map Men go to some lengths, probably not strictly necessary, to mix up their formats; one chapter is in the form of a (fictional) podcast script, one is a long poem. But honestly the subject matter is so fascinating that these flourishes and the liberal sprinkling of bad jokes really isn't needed. This Way Up is a total hoot, and I learned a lot.

The Middle of Nowhere

I like Geraldine McCaughrean's books. I loved The White Darkness, and she's written 170 books and won numerous awards, so she's clearly doing a lot right. The Middle of Nowhere is a pacy, often frightening, high stakes drama set in the Australian Outback in the late nineteenth century. Comity's father is a telegraph operator on a remote repeater station; her mother has just died from snakebite. Comity is comforted by her friend Fred, an Aboriginal boy. But when the new assistant, Quartz Hogg arrives, he has brutal schemes up his sleeve...

As an historical adventure story, I enjoyed The Middle of Nowhere. But I did have a few problems, starting with the cover of my edition, which unlike the one shown here, features a silhouette of an Aboriginal figure in a stereotypical pose, standing on one leg and braced by a spear. I appreciated Fred's use of language throughout the book, but his ostracism from his mob didn't quite ring true -- I just couldn't believe it when Comity told her father, 'Fred has no people.' (This shunning was sort of explained in the text, but I didn't buy it.) There were other small weird moments, like when Comity's father gives her dollar coins, or when Horse suddenly changes gender for part of a chapter. I'm sure McCaughrean took pains to achieve historical and cultural accuracy, but small slips kept pulling me out of the story. Would I have noticed or cared if the novel had been set in, say, Venezuela? Absolutely not, and I'm sure I've brushed past the same kinds of errors in Eva Ibbotson's books that would have driven me crazy if I were actually Venezuelan.

On the other hand, McCaughrean doesn't flinch from showing the racism and cruelty of settler society (though Comity's family are almost too progressive to be true). So a mixed review from me. 

These Precious Days

Thank you to Susan Green for alerting me to the existence of this second volume of Ann Patchett's essays, These Precious Days. The longest and most moving of these pieces is the title work, which tells the story of how Tom Hanks' personal assistant, Sooki, ended up living with Ann and her husband during her cancer treatment -- a supposedly temporary stay that became long term when Covid restrictions descended. What began as a favour to a near stranger became a deep and cherished friendship.

The other piece that made me cry was about the death of Patchett's father after a long and debilitating struggle with pain and increasing disability:

I felt sad about my father all the time. When I closed my eyes at night I saw him lashed to a raft in a storm-tossed sea: dark rain, dark waves, my father crashing down again and again as he waited to drown. 

When her father, after years of this, eventually dies, she doesn't feel 'terrible.' What she feels is joy.

This essay struck particularly close for me, though my father is still aboard his own storm-battered raft. I don't know yet how I'll feel when he goes under, but Patchett has given me a glimpse of a few possibilities.

Lyrebird

Lyrebird opens with an irresistible hook: a biologist deep in the forest hears a lyrebird mimicking the sounds of a brutal murder, and a woman's voice crying for help. But twenty years go past before this killing can be properly investigated and a whole sordid scheme is eventually uncovered, involving trafficked women, sexual abuse and multiple murders.

Jane Caro clearly relishes making her lead detective a sixty year old woman, hauled out of retirement to take charge of this cold case. It's nice to see an older woman with some life baggage in a leadership role -- a bit like Jane Tennison in Prime suspect, only more likeable. The threat of climate change hangs over this novel, too, this time in the form of bushfire, which makes for an action-packed climax. Lyrebird is less twisty and convoluted than Chris Hammer's thrillers, but the largely female perspective makes it a satisfying and relatable crime mystery.
 

The Fire of Joy

In my ongoing battle to acquire a taste for poetry, I bought this collection as an experiment. Clive James, at the very end of his life, found solace in remembering the many poems he'd memorised by heart; The Fire of Joy collects about eighty of them, with commentary and anecdote by James. For the last couple of months, I've been reading one poem per night, just before going to sleep (I whispered them aloud to myself if possible, as per his instructions), which has been a lovely ritual, and I certainly developed a new appreciation of many of these poems, most of which were new to me, though some were old acquaintances.

I had an idea that I might also memorise these poems and thus be able to access the same joy and comfort that James obviously felt on his deathbed, but I fear it might be beyond me. I have tried to learn Louis MacNiece's The Sunlight on the Garden by heart, which is my favourite, and which I'd partly copied onto my collage study desk in Year 12; but so many of these poems are so long, and I don't like them all equally, so I don't think that the project is going to take off after all. It would be a wonderful thing to have a fund of poetry to repeat to oneself in moments of stress or crisis, which is what Clive James says he did during health emergencies. Traditionally poetry and I don't get along very well. The Fire of Joy has been at least one step towards reconciliation.
 

Music Camp

I absolutely love Penny Tangey's books for middle graders; they are the perfect blend of wry humour and important questions. In Music Camp, we see events through the eyes of flautist Juliet, bookish loner, and bolshie recorder-player Miley as they negotiate making new friends, loving Miss Lin (who teaches them both) and the politics of Grade 6 music camp. Juliet's father has died; Miley and her mum have lost everything in recent floods. Neither of them wants to talk about it. Climate change gently but persistently hangs over the story, but never in an overwhelming or hopeless way.

Tangey is so good at sketching characters through young eyes. We can see for ourselves that Renee has issues with OCD and that Clara might have ADHD, without it being spelled out for us. Minor characters are beautifully outlined -- Ollie, who is a total player on the music camp scene but is apparently a bit of a dork at school; Liam the eager gossip; Mr Broadbent, who is reluctant to accept the sponsorship of the big fossil fuel company; Miss Lin, who is more focused on the benefits their money can bring the kids she teaches. There is a lot of Tangey's trademark droll humour in Music Camp.

I can't get enough of Tangey's writing and I'm so excited that she has an adult mystery out now, set in East Melbourne, What Rhymes with Murder? I can't wait.
 

Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul

I have a feeling I might have read this biography of Dorothy L. Sayers before -- I think I borrowed it from the Stockbridge Library in Edinburgh in 1991, I'm sure I remember reading it in Jo and Alyson's flat in East Claremont St. Anyway, I had forgotten almost everything except the rather astonishing fact that she had a son in 1924, out of wedlock, telling no one. Fortunately she was able to foster the baby with her discreet cousin Ivy, who did this for a living, and was able to keep in contact with her son and support him for his entire childhood, until she 'adopted' him at the age of about eleven. He suspected that she was his biological mother but was not able to confirm this until after her death. (Also, apparently adoption as we know it was not legal in the UK until 1926! How extraordinary.)

Barbara Reynolds focuses a lot on Sayers' religious work and spiritual philosophy, which is of less interest to me than her detective fiction, so I skimmed over the last section of this book fairly quickly. I am intrigued to find her radio plays, The Man Born to Be King, which at the time were a revelation in their realistic presentation of Jesus' life. Something I'd forgotten was that Sayers pronounced her name 'Sairs' and strongly disliked the pronounciation SAY-ers, which is of course how I've said it my whole life. Whoops. Sorry, Dorothy. 

I don't think Dorothy Sayers and I would have agreed on much, but she had a brave, rich and resourceful life and I celebrate her.

The Blessing

I found this omnibus edition of three of Nancy Mitford's novels in a secondhand book shop. I already own a very well-thumbed copy of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate so I just bought this for The Blessing, which oddly I have never owned and I don't think I've read it since high school (a long time, anyway!)

The Blessing, while not reaching the comedic heights and poignant depths of the other two novels, stood up very well, though I expect I would have got more out of it if I knew more about French high society in the 1950s. Womanising Charles-Edouard is of course yet another portrait of Gaston Palewski, this time elevated to a dukedom and terrifically handsome. Despite being married to beautiful, languid, easy-going Englishwoman Grace, he can't keep his eyes or hands off other women; the central cultural conflict of the novel lies between the worldly, sophisticated French attitude to these affairs, and the uptight priggish English intolerance of such behaviour.

All through the story, Grace is urged to adopt a kind of radical acceptance of Charles-Edouard's roving eye, even when she catches him in flagrante. It occurs to me that Charles-Edouard could equally have exercised some radical self-control, but hey. The real villain of the piece is the couple's young son Sigi, who shamelessly manipulates them both to keep them apart and enjoy the fruits of their undivided attention. I have no idea what the contemporary attitude to extra-martial affairs is in France these days, but I suspect it might be a little less forgiving that it was in 1951. 

A Matter of Death and Life

A Matter of Death and Life is a beautiful, sad book. When Marilyn Yalom, married to author and psychotherapist Irvin Yalom and an accomplished academic and writer in her own right, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she suggested that she and Irv should write a book about their experience together. In the first two thirds of the book, they write alternating chapters, charting Marilyn's treatment, her acceptance that the end is near and her wish to take control of the process, along with Irv's panicked denials and terror at the thought of losing her. The last few chapters are written by Irv alone, grieving, observing himself, missing her so much he can't bear to look at her photograph. At 88, he is sure that it won't be long before he dies, too -- but, incredibly, as I write this, he is now 94 and remarried!

There are many interesting, heart wrenching observations: Irvin is shocked that he's besieged with obsessive thoughts of sex after Marilyn's death; he knows perfectly well intellectually that she is dead, but he can't help taking photos and storing up anecdotes to tell her (apparently this reflects different functions of the memory in the brain); he acknowledges for the first time that he has never really known loss before, and that his therapy clients who accused him of being smug and insulated in his own happiness were quite correct.

Marilyn quotes a beautiful poem that I hadn't come across before, by Jane Kenyon, who herself died tragically young.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

 

Silver

Fittingly, I read most of Chris Hammer's second novel, Silver, in a seaside town, though one located on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne rather than the north coast of New South Wales like the fictional town of Port Silver. Silver takes place in the months after Scrublands; journalist Martin Scarsden has finished his true crime book (don't we all wish we could bang out a whole book in a month or so?) and is joining new partner Mandy and her baby son Liam in his old hometown where she's inherited a house. Overlook the coincidence -- there are more to come.

Silver is a well-constructed mystery with the now familiar Hammer ingredients of shenanigans around real estate, buried secrets and unsuspected connections. I really enjoyed the sections where Martin is schlepping around with Liam; we don't often see investigations carried out with a toddler in tow, and the detective having to worry about nappies and baby food (conveniently, Liam falls asleep in the car a lot). Martin's own traumatic family past is fleshed out for the first time, and we meet his uncle Vern and his Aboriginal wife. The pace is less frenetic than in Scrublands, but there's plenty of action -- a corpse in the first few pages, several historic violent deaths, a fist fight on the beach, and a mass poisoning before the novel's end. Martin often acts like a dick, despite his bonding with Liam (luckily there is private childcare available whenever it's not possible for either Mandy or Martin to look after him), and Mandy gets realistically fed up with him.

Silver forms the basis of the second season of Scrublands, available on streaming, and now I've polished off the book I can't wait to get stuck into the TV version. If it's anything like Scrublands season one, it will simplify the plot considerably and delete a few storylines to compress it into four episodes instead of 560 pages. 

Cuckoo's Flight

Cuckoo's Flight is the third and final volume in Wendy Orr's Bronze Age trilogy, and Leira from Swallow's Dance makes a reappearance as Clio's grandmother. This time the town is in danger from raiders, and it seems that one of the young girls will be chosen as a sacrifice to appease the Goddess. Clio's family are potters, but Clio's true love is her father's horses. After an accident that damaged her leg, Clio will never ride again; but her father has an idea for a chariot that might be almost as good...

Orr wrote Cuckoo's Flight during Covid lockdowns, and she says she realised while she was writing it that Clio was going to be disabled, as she herself is now. Female family relationships and friendships are strongly emphasised in this book, like the other Bronze Age stories, and it's so refreshing to read a novel set in a matriarchal society (even if the Lady and the Goddess are sometimes unreasonable in their demands). Life is harsh in these times, with orphaned Mika being beaten by her brother, ill-treated slaves in the purple dye works, and brutal battles; but there is kindness and rejoicing, too.

Cuckoo's Flight was the last book I rescued from the Allen & Unwin clearout, and I'm happy to have all three volumes of the trilogy safe on my own shelves -- it would be worth it for the covers alone, created by the brilliant Josh Durham who was also responsible for the cover design of Crow Country.
 

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage was a recommendation from my book group friend Kirsty; it's a non-fiction collection of essays and articles by Ann Patchett, and I think I enjoyed it even more than Bel Canto. 

The essays about applying to join the Los Angeles Police Force in the wake of the Rodney King riots, and the long history of her relationship to her now-husband were hugely engaging; each was a complicated story. Patchett's father was an LAPD police officer, and while she did want to explore what kinds of people applied to join, she also wanted to acknowledge the difficulties of the work and honour her father (he was really keen for her to actually join, not just write about it). The marriage story is actually largely about divorce, but it has a gorgeously happy ending. The final story, about her friendship with an elderly nun who used to be her primary school teacher, was beautiful and moving.

I did find the essays about caring for her elderly grandmother and the death of her beloved dog were a bit close to the bone for me at the moment, which is another way of recognising their power and truth. The only essay I didn't particularly enjoy was the one about writing. Patchett's advice is blunt and robust, basically just get on with it -- which I know is true -- I just don't much feel like hearing it!
 

Journey to the River Sea

Journey to the River Sea must be about the last of Eva Ibbotson's books for older readers, and I've been saving it up. It's her most awarded novel, and in many ways it distils all that we love best about her work. Maia is the brave, kind heroine; orphaned Finn is the exotic young love interest; Miss Minton is the stern but loving guardian; the horrid, selfish Carters are unmitigated villains. We are transported to the Amazon in 1910, one of Ibbotson's favourite settings, and again we learn that what makes life worth living is nature, music, kindness, curiosity and books, a message that never gets tired.

I'm glad that of all Ibbotson's books, Journey to the River Sea is one that I decided to buy; it really is one of her best.
 

Daydreamers Anonymous

I was so desperate to read this novel that I broke my strict no-purchases-through-Amazon rule -- it was literally the only way I could access it. Samantha Rose Parker has published (I suspect self-published?) Daydreamers Anonymous, the story of Clara, who is thirty five and a compulsive daydreamer. Stuck in a boring office job, living in a basement room in an unsatisfactory share house, Clara's real life unspools inside her head. But she knows she can't go on like this, and she joins a support group, led by the charismatic Dr Hill, who claims to have cured himself. As the back cover blurb says, Clara 'meets her people, but she's not exactly sure she wants them to be her people: there's Jax, who lives a double life as a detective; Bob, who has an invisible family, and Janice, who's been married to Tom Cruise in her head for 30 years...'

Confession time: all through my teens I was a compulsive daydreamer, just like Clara. There's one character in Clara's support group who fantasises herself as 'Dr Who's assistant,' which is pretty close to the content of my own parallel life. It's not going too far to call this kind of daydreaming an addiction. Whenever I  had the chance, I'd slip into my inner narrative, assuming an alter ego who was smarter, prettier, braver and more lovable than me. I had one friend at school who also had an active fantasy life; she's the only person (apart from one therapist) with whom I've ever discussed what my friend and I dubbed 'etcetera.' Like Clara, I genuinely felt that my secret life was my true life and the most important thing about me; the outer me was just going through the motions. And like Clara, I realised that this was a dangerous path. When started uni, I tried to give up cold turkey -- it was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it took a long time to shake the addiction. I've relapsed from time to time, but I seem to have lost the urge, maybe even the ability, to lose myself in daydreams like I used to. And I'm honestly kind of sad about that. I could easily have ended up like Clara, and I'm glad I avoided that fate, but there's a loss and grief there too.

Daydreamers Anonymous obviously had a special resonance for me, but it's a funny, moving, poignant novel in its own right, with no easy answers for what is a genuine psychological problem. 

The Twelve

UK writer Liz Hyder's YA novel, The Twelve, was recommended by my book group friend, Cathy, who guessed correctly that it would be right up my alley. The blurbs all over the cover talk about Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, which is a signal to parents of my generation rather than a recommendation to young readers themselves these days, I would think. The Twelve certainly has strong echoes of both authors, but notably it's written in a much more modern style -- present tense, first person narration, without which apparently no contemporary young person will pick up a book (what a fuddy duddy I sound like...)

Kit is about fifteen, staying in a caravan over Christmas with her eleven year old sister Libby and her mother. The Christmas timing and the twelve mysterious Watchers harks back to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, and there are shades of early Alan Garner in Kit and her new friend Story's pursuit of the vanished Libby into the distant past and their battle against a dark enemy. There are lovely invocations of the teeming wildlife in the largely unpeopled historic times that Kit and Story visit: birds, insects, fish and mammals everywhere (I should add the novel is itself set in historic times, in 1999, though I have trouble thinking of a mere twenty five years ago as being historical fiction!)

I really enjoyed The Twelve, and I hope young readers thirsty for fantastical novels strong on landscape and character will relish it as much as I did.

Becoming Myself

I've long been a fan of American psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, especially his two wise books about coming to term with death, Creatures of a Day and Staring at the Sun. In Becoming Myself, Yalom recounts his life story, and it's just as insightful, compassionate and insightful as his writing about his therapy clients (I haven't yet read Yalom's long fiction, but Becoming Myself has piqued my curiosity).

In many ways, and he admits this himself, Yalom has had a blessed life. He married his soul mate, Marilyn, early, they have four healthy children, he has taught and written and seen clients for many decades, he has travelled all over the world and spoken to huge and adoring audiences, and espeically in latter years, he has enjoyed enormous acclaim and popularity. At the time of writing Becoming Myself, he was 86; he's now 94 and still with us.

Yalom is cheerfully candid about his own luck and his failings and regrets -- he allowed Marilyn to shoulder the bulk of child rearing, though she's had a demanding academic career of her own; he made mistakes in handling some patients; he wishes he'd had more empathy toward his difficult mother. He freely discusses taking marijuana, opium, LSD and ecstasy, which didn't shock but did surprise me. He is such an engaging writer and so open about his experiences, Becoming Myself was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Next I'm going to read A Matter of Death and Life, written a few years later by Irvin and Marilyn together, after Marilyn's diagnosis of terminal cancer. Yalom is frank about his fear of losing Marilyn, and I wonder how they handled it together.

The Names

I think I first heard about Florence Knapp's debut novel, The Names, on The Bookshelf on Radio National, and I was immediately hooked by the premise. In 1987, Cora is taking her newborn son to register his name, and on the way she tosses up between three alternatives -- Gordon, the name of her overbearing husband; Julian, her own preference; or Bear, the choice of her young daughter, Maia. The narrative then splits into three strands, each following the the consequences of a different naming decision.

I already have a weakness for names, and I love alternate timelines, so this was an instant must-read for me. I had to wait for months until my reservation came up at the library, and there are 144 people waiting behind me (they have to wait a little longer, as my daughter is currently reading it, and she doesn't normally read fiction, which again testifies to the appeal of this novel). The Names is a hugely readable and engaging story which nonetheless explores some big questions about fate and destiny, family violence, the power of small decisions, loyalty and money and power. The Names is a wonderful example of strong domestic fiction -- it deals relationships within one small family, but it spirals out to encompass a wider field thanks to the three parallel storylines. I did read one review by a person who apparently launched into the book without realising what was happening with the structure and was initially bewildered, but I honestly can't believe they could have been confused for long.

I whipped through The Names in a weekend and it would be a terrific recommendation for reluctant (adult!) readers.

EDIT: My daughter absolutely loved it and can't wait for the inevitable movie.