A Room Made of Leaves

 

Attentive followers will have noticed that I've been on a bit of a Kate Grenville binge lately -- I intended to have a break after Restless Dolly Maunder, but then I came across this beautiful hardcover copy of A Room Made of Leaves in Savers, and it was too much of a bargain to ignore.

A Room Made of Leaves sees Grenville return to the early years of Australian settlement, this time through the eyes of Elizabeth Macarthur, and to one of her favourite subjects, the hidden history of women's experience. In Grenville's telling (historically plausible), Elizabeth is an intelligent, sensitive woman, shackled to an overbearing, quarrelsome and selfish husband who needs to be carefully managed. Grenville quotes from Elizabeth's actual letters, but puts her own ironic spin on the words, and she also softens Elizabeth's attitude to the First Nations people her successful sheep farm displaced. 

I really enjoyed A Room Made of Leaves. It's beautifully readable and vivid, and the portraits of John and Elizabeth Macarthur are compelling. Grenville allows herself to show a secret side to William Dawes, who was the subject of her earlier novel The Lieutenant -- not supported by historical evidence!

On the Calculation of Volume IV

 

With the fourth volume of Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume, Tara finds herself in a radically different situation from any she's encountered before. Squatting in an empty mansion, her small group of fellow-strandees in 18th November are inundated with more and more people in the same predicament, until the bedrooms and conservatory and kitchens of the big house overflow. They learn there are groups set up in other cities; people travel back and forth. The days are spent, no longer alone, in busily foraging for food, managing the household, and in endless conversations about their situation.

 Towards the end of this book, the group holds a conference to more formally discuss the matters that preoccupy them: matters of language (what should they call themselves? what should they call the people who live through the same 18th November unawares? Loopers? Returners? How should they mark their own eccentric passing of time? Divide the days into hundreds, or centia, or tens, decia?), preparations for their own aging, the weird similarity between everyone who's found themselves thus stuck, the possible causes. Some disturbing facts emerge as they compare notes: a mysterious earth tremor on the first 18th November, not repeated; the loss of a pregnancy. And at the very end of the novel, the most unexpected occurance of all -- Tara's husband Thomas, far away in rural France, for the first time ever on the 18th November breaks his usual pattern and calls her. 

The book ends with Tara once more aboard a train, speeding home toward Thomas. Is the glitch in time beginning to break apart at last? I love the way Balle ends each book on a cliffhanger of sorts, though again there is little in the way of plot development. I'm wondering if OTCOV is a meditation on life itself? Does it trace a journey: beginning with the infant's awareness of the isolated self, then the individual existence of a few important others, then widening out to embrace a whole tribe? If Tara can reconnect meaningfully with Thomas, will we see the (re)discovery of love?

On the Calculation of Volume 3

 It may look as if I have been reading nothing but Solvej Balle, but I assure you that's not the case! Book 3 of On the Calculation of Volume picks up where Book 2 broke off, with Tara meeting up with another person who's found themselves trapped inside the 18th November, a man called Henry Dale. The two become fellow travellers, moving in together and comparing notes on their experience, but eventually agree to part, Henry to visit his young son in America and Tara to return to her husband Thomas. But it's becoming harder and harder to maintain any connection to Thomas -- over five 'years' have passed for Tara, while for Thomas, not even a single day has gone by.

The world of the novels gradually opens out still further, as Henry and Tara discover another two people in their same predicament, and at the very end of the book, even more castaways arrive, with the prospect of a large scale project to be undertaken (I must confess I don't fully understand the impetus of this particular character, Ralf, to try to 'perfect' the day -- preventing accidents, collecting data -- when everything resets anyway?)

I'm wondering if I'm feeling attracted to this story because I myself am feeling pretty stuck at the moment with caring responsibilities? I can't say that every day is exactly the same, but there isn't a lot of variation and not much to look forward to. Anyway, I'm still loving the Calculation of Volume ride.

Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke's novel Yesteryear is super hot right now -- there are 230 people waiting to read it at my local library, and coincidentally I ended up reading it at the same time as my elder daughter, who was lent it by her boyfriend's sister (I acquired my copy from the good old Athenaeum). For a while I was ahead, then I got a late night call: 'Mum, have you finished it? We have to talk about the ending!'

It's hard to discuss this book without giving away the twisty plot. Suffice to say that it begins with Natalie, a trad wife influencer, whose perfectly curated online life doesn't match the messy reality behind the scenes. But then it seems that Natalie has been transported back in time, to a genuine pioneer existence which is a lot less airbrushed than her internet lifestyle... I really can't say any more!

Yesterday is perfectly pitched to address our current unease with the slippage between truth and reality, deceit and curation. We have a collective longing for a simpler time, when we baked our own bread and our children played in nature; but does that have to involve constant child-bearing and submission to our husbands? There are multiple layers of deception and self-deception operating in this novel, and it unspools with dizzying and addictive pace. Yesteryear is compulsively readable, and there are powerful ideas stirring beneath its surface. For once, I agree with the verdict of the masses. Yesteryear is a wild ride, and it's one book that deserves its bestseller status. 

One caveat: I'm certain that someone, somewhere, is planning to turn this into a film or a streaming series, but I don't know how they'd be able to make that work. Stick to the book.

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 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.
 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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).
 

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.

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.
 

The Correspondent

  

I heard about Virginia Evans' novel, The Correspondent, at the Sorrento Writers' Festival, where it was discussed by a panel of psychiatrists. I was going to reserve it at the local library, but balked when I realised there were 143 people ahead of me in the queue! Eventually I found it on the shelf at my reliable Athenaeum so I was able to gobble it down.

The Correspondent is that delightfully old-fashioned thing, an epistolary novel, something which has become much rarer since texts and email have pretty much replaced the snail mail letter. Most of Sybil's correspondence is via pen and paper, but there are also emails. The short format of most of the letters keeps the pace humming along, and the elliptical references to past events and current relationships let the reader do just enough work to piece the story together -- it's very cleverly done.

Of course a clever structure is wasted if the central narrative isn't also engaging, but Sybil's story has plenty of hooks. She's old, she's isolated, she's stroppy and doesn't mind picking a fight; she's estranged from her daughter and divorced from her husband, who now both live overseas; one of her sons died as a child, and we suspect that Sybil's troubles can be traced to this source. But she also seems to have a sinister stalker, and a couple of suitors, and a teenage boy to mentor, and it's through all these relationships, hostile, friendly and affectionate, that Sybil is gradually drawn back into the world. 

The Correspondent is a satisfying, fun and gently moving read, a perfect marriage of form and substance.

Mariana

My adult fiction pile has been a bit slender lately, so I was casting around for something to read, when I remembered that there were a couple of novels in this collection of Monica Dickens' books that I hadn't ever got around to reading. I'd bought it yonks ago mostly for One Pair of Hands (memoir about working as a domestic servant in the 1930s) and One Pair of Feet (memoir about working as a nurse).

Mariana was first published in 1940, after One Pair of Hands, when Dickens was only about twenty three, and apparently it's quite autobiographical. It's very much a young author's book, focused on Mary's childhood and adolescence, and her various misadventures in love and career. Ostensibly the message of the novel is something about becoming an individual and growing into one's own unique personality -- it's just a shame that Mary seems to accomplish this mostly by meeting the perfect man. 

Mariana is a gently funny novel, but plot-wise there is not much at stake here (though Dickens does her best to ratchet up the tension by making Mary's husband's ship sink on the third page -- and of course we don't yet know exactly who that husband might be). Nonetheless it's engaging, and the details of daily life in 1930s London are the main drawcard for me: dances, theatre, nightclubs, fashion, fog, appendicitis (which means weeks lying luxuriously in hospital and then convalescence at the seaside afterwards). Nowadays they probably kick you out the same day as the surgery!

The Death of the Heart

I have very dim memories of reading this copy of Elizabeth Bowen's 1938 novel, The Death of the Heart, as a teenager in the 1980s. I have a feeling that my mother might have been studying it when she did HSC English as an adult.

The Death of the Heart is regarded as Bowen's best work. Sixteen year old Portia comes to live with her half-brother and sister-in-law in London after the death of her parents, and finds herself lonely and adrift in a social world whose rules she struggles to comprehend. Frankly, her sister-in-law Anna is a bit of a selfish bitch, who reads Portia's diary and makes no attempt to welcome her; her brother is at a loss; Anna's erstwhile toyboy, Eddie, is a self-absorbed dick who can't resist flirting with Portia. The only person in the household who seems to have any real relationship with poor Portia is the maid, Matchett, inherited from Thomas and Portia's father.

This is an incredibly sad novel, in which various isolated and self-loathing or bewildered characters orbit around each other without ever making any real contact. The figure of Major Brutt, in his shabby hotel, imagining he's friends with Thomas and Anna, is absolutely heart-breaking. The one character I couldn't feel too sorry for is the 'charming' Eddie, whose company I couldn't bear even for a few pages; of course Portia falls in love with him, but he's such a pretentious little shit, I felt like throwing him across the room. 

It's possible that I didn't finish reading The Death of the Heart the first time around, because I found a possible bookmark wedged in its pages about how to care for ear-piercings, which would have to date from 1990 (so slightly later than I first thought). If that's the case, I only made it about a third of the way through. 

Plainsong

I had never come across the American author Kent Haruf until my friend Elizabeth put Plainsong into my hands. What a revelation! I'm not usually drawn to American novels, but I was completely won over by Haruf's spare, deceptively simple prose, which matches the austere landscape of (fictional) Holt County, Colorado.

This is a very cinematic novel, though the action is mostly subtle, with occasional bursts of violence. We are never told how characters feel or what they're thinking; instead, we witness their words and actions and make our own interpretations. Haruf takes 'show, don't tell' to the extreme, but it works beautifully across a range of characters, who are all isolated in their different ways, and who end up interacting unexpectedly. A pair of elderly brothers on their remote farm; a pregnant teenager; middle-aged teacher Tom Guthrie, whose wife has withdrawn and finally left him with his two young sons; warm, humorous fellow teacher, Maggie Jones, who is the catalyst who brings the McPheron brothers and young Victoria together.

Plainsong is true to its title -- unadorned, no fuss, but deeply moving. Elizabeth has promised to lend me two more Haruf novels and I can't wait.