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.

Foxspell

Foxspell by Gillian Rubinstein won the CBCA Book of the Year for older readers in 1994. It's a seamlessly accomplished mix of social/family drama, and eerie supernatural story, and I'm not surprised that it won. Tod and his mother and sisters have moved to the fringes of Adelaide to live with Tod's grandmother after his English father has returned to the UK for an indeterminate period of time. Tod has learning problems and isn't particularly invested in school; his older sisters are starting to be interested in boys, his mother wants to be a stand up comedian, his brisk grandmother is busy with her hens and her vegie garden. As Tod starts to explore the quarries and bush that surround Grandma's house, he becomes fascinated with the foxes that live there, and one fox in particular offers him a chance of a very different, wild, fierce kind of life.

Rubinstein is clever in her handling of the foxes, acknowledging that they were imported from far away, just like the white inhabitants, and don't belong in this landscape. I've just realised that the foxes in the book only hunt other imported species -- hens, rabbits, cats -- neatly sidestepping the issue of the damage they do to native animals. It's a narrow line to tread, recognising the attraction of these cunning, beautiful animals but also the fact that they should never have been brought here.

The book ends on a breathtaking climax, leaving the resolution to the reader's imagination. I think my copy might have belonged to a teacher who could have been reading it aloud to two separate classes -- there are pencil notes in the margins marking (I guess) where each class is up to. It would make a wonderful read-aloud, appealing to both those who like realism and those who love fantasy. For a thirty year old novel (gulp, I feel old!), Foxspell holds up incredibly well.
 

Dogsbody

This will be the last of my Diana Wynne Jones re-reading festival. I picked up this copy of Dogsbody years ago from the library book sale. I'm not a massive fan of this cover, which is not at all representative of the story, and I'm not normally much of a fan of books told from the point of view of animals, but Dogsbody is an excellent novel.

'High Effulgency' Sirius (not quite a god, but certainly a powerful celestial being of some kind) is sentenced to exile in the body of an ordinary earth dog, and takes a while to remember who he really is and the task he must perform to save himself and recover his position -- to find a mysterious object called a Zoi and prevent it being found by rival celestial beings. But poor Sirius is of course hampered by ordinary dog-sized obstacles, like being locked in the backyard or fighting with the household cats.

Wynne Jones brilliantly juggles the foggy dog-nature awareness of 'Leo' as he is rechristened by loving Kathleen, and the 'vast green thoughts' that lurk inside and belong to his former exalted station. This is a gripping adventure, often funny, and really touching as Kathleen struggles to cope with her horrible relatives (more horrible relatives!) Human and canine, and various kinds of super-powerful beings (including the Sun, Earth and Moon) all assist Sirius in his quest, and while the ending is not exactly neatly happy, it is supremely satisfying.

The Other End of the Leash

The Other End of the Leash was a street library find, written by Patricia McConnell, an animal behaviour specialist who owns four dogs and has worked with hundreds of others. She has some amazing insights about the clash between our human/primate ways of behaving, and the preferences of dogs/canids. For example, we humans love to interact face-to-face, and to embrace chest to chest. But for dogs, this is deeply uncomfortable -- their natural preference is for side-by-side company. It's true, if you leave it up to the dog, she will snuggle by your side, and they can find staring into their eyes confrontational, though we might experience this as loving. 

McConnell has similar tips to offer about behavioural training, emphasising dogs' preferred behaviour. For instance, if you want to persuade a dog to come to you, it's better (if counter-intuitive for a human) to turn away from the dog, which will encourage it to follow you; moving toward the dog, which most of us would do instinctively, will only encourage it to move away from you (dogs love chasing). We humans also insist on repeating ourselves; if Spot doesn't obey our command to 'sit,' we're likely to just keep saying 'sit, sit, sit' in a more agitated, louder voice, which the dog will just hear as the equivalent of excited barking.

However, I was just as interested in her stories about the differences in her own dogs' personalities and ways of relating to each other -- she owns three Border Collies, all of different temperaments, and a Great Pyrenees, a breed I hadn't come across before. McConnell writes movingly of the death of a previous dog, and the night-long vigil she and her other dogs held with the body. Each dog had a different reaction to the dead dog's body -- one ignored it completely, one sniffed it all over in utter confusion, one recoiled in seeming horror and distress. Absolutely fascinating.
 

War Horse

Michael Morpurgo's 1982 short novel War Horse, the story of Joey, a horse who is pressed into service in World War I, is a modern classic. I think it's been constantly in print, made into a film, and adapted into an extraordinary stage show with life-size puppet horses (coming to Australia in 2020, I see).

Therefore it feels slightly churlish to admit that I wasn't completely enamoured of Joey's adventures. Now that I'm thinking about it, it reminds me a lot of Black Beauty, which I read several times as a child -- it shares the same calm, slightly ponderous first person voice, and the same panoramic sweep of potential equine experience. One difference is that Joey doesn't converse with other horses; he makes friends with them, but it's a silent communion. He does overhear many human conversations, on both the English and German sides of the fighting, and he experiences even-handed kindness and cruelty from both sides.

The aims of War Horse are admirable, showing the humanity and futility of the conflict and the way in which innocent animals (and people) became caught up in the machine of war. But somehow I couldn't completely sink myself into the narrative. I've always had a bit of resistance to stories told from an animal's point of view; perhaps this is just my prejudice showing. I'll be interested to see what the rest of my book group make of it.

Flora and Ulysses

Kate DiCamillo's Flora & Ulysses is our junior fiction choice for the Convent Book Group this month, on the theme of Friendship. It's very sweet. Flora is a human girl, a sceptic who doesn't believe in romance. Ulysses is a squirrel who undergoes a magical transformation when he is accidentally vacuumed up -- now he can understand human speech, fly and type out poetry! But the pair have a number of potential villains to foil and allies to win, before they can live happily ever after.

The story is adorable and the illustrations perfectly match the sentimental, slightly melancholic mood. I know I should be suspending my disbelief (magical vacuum cleaner, squirrel with the gift of flight etc) but it did bother me that the squirrel could suddenly type in perfect English... I don't know why I balked at that particular aspect but it did bug me. Not enough to spoil the book for me, though. Flora & Ulysses won the Newbery Medal a few years ago and it's not hard to see why.

Peggy & Me

We ADORE Miranda Hart at our house; her self-titled sit-com is one of those rare things that we can all enjoy together 'as a family,' as it very much were (slipping into Miranda-speak there). There is something about Miranda's loveable awkwardness, her very English self-deprecation, that we all relate to. We went to see her stand-up show when she was in Australia a couple of years ago, though Evie was the youngest person in the audience by several years, and it was a fabulous night.

So now Miranda has written a memoir about her gorgeous dog Peggy -- what a perfect Christmas present for Evie, and obviously Father Christmas agreed. Poor Miranda actually wrote this book twice -- the first time she finished it, her laptop was stolen just before she sent the final manuscript to her publisher! What a nightmare. But this re-written version is a sweet, funny, surprisingly philosophical read. Miranda has learned many lessons from Peggy, which other dog-owners will relate to: mindfulness, relaxation, playfulness, and even trust in a higher power. She acquired Peggy at a low point in her life, and found that caring for her dog re-connected her with the world and helped to lift her out of depression.

This is just a lovely, light book, like having Miranda chat in your ear -- and charmingly illustrated with pencil sketches. What-I-call, an absolute treat.

The Voyage of QV66

This is one of the books I picked up in Castlemaine. I was chuffed to add it to my collection of Penelope Lively's children's books, which are among my favourites. But I'm kicking myself that I didn't also buy A Stitch In Time, because I wasn't sure if I already had it -- does this ever happen to you? I lose track of which books I actually own and which books I just wish I owned. Anyway, I was pretty sure I had A Stitch In Time, but of course when I got home and checked, I didn't. Bugger. Then I would have had them all!

Published in 1978, The Voyage of QV66 is a funny little book, whereas A Stitch In Time is a classic Lively time-slip. The heroes of QV66 are a dog, a horse, a cow, a kitten, a pigeon and Stanley. At the beginning of the book, no one is quite sure what kind of animal Stanley is, and the book narrates their quest to find out. (Spoiler: you can see him on the front cover, so there's not much doubt in the reader's mind, at least, that he's a monkey.)

In a way, this is a kind of time-slip book; it's set in a vague future England where apocalyptic floods have necessitated the mass evacuation of humans (apparently to Mars!), leaving the Earth populated with animals and the detritus that People have left behind. And there is a weird episode at Stonehenge, which is very Penelope Lively, where some animals (crows, oh dear) seem to have slipped into a kind of barbaric pagan ritual. In fact there is a lot of oblique commentary on the foolish ways of humankind, as played out by the animals, including prejudice against those who are different, the exercise of power through violence and religious ritual, even pointless bureaucracy. Much of this would probably fly over the head of a child reader, but the animals' journey is eventful and amusing enough even without the social analysis. This would be a great read-aloud for a seven or eight year old, and would probably provoke lots of discussion -- like 101 Dalmatians did at our house.

Animal Books

Charlotte's Web, Black Beauty and The Hundred and One Dalmatians are the only 'animal books' that really captured my imagination as a child. By animal books I mean books told pretty much from the animals' point of view. I'm not counting pony books, where the main characters were the aspiring pony-owners, not the horses themselves; I read a ton of those!

But stories focused on the experiences of the animals left me pretty cold, on the whole. Ring of Bright Water (otters) was recommended to me, but it didn't grab me. The Incredible Journey was a favourite of  some of my friends (from memory, two dogs and a cat cross country to get home) -- to me, giant yawnfest. I did read Watership Down (rabbits) in high school, but only once, and I think I dealt with that by forgetting that they were rabbits.

This has left me at something of a disadvantage in later life, because Evie is a voracious reader, but she really prefers her books to have non-human protagonists, and I'm a bit stuck for recommendations. Her current favourites are a seemingly endless series of books about clans of cats in the wild, called the Warrior books. The appeal seems to be the tangled set of relationships, alliances and feuds that unfold between the cats. She says that sometimes sad things happen, but it's easier to deal with sad things when they're happening to cats, not people (she is very sensitive). She's been getting through Warrior books at the rate of one every couple of days -- they are 300-odd pages each -- and I'm getting worried about what she's going to do when they run out!

What she would really love would be a similar set of sagas about a pack of wolves -- but not too tragic. Any ideas?