Himalaya

I'm not much of a traveller. I did a couple of obligatory backpacking trips through Europe and the UK, and I spent a few days in New York, but most of the continents of the world remain untrodden by my feet and seem likely to stay that way. However, I do enjoy a vicarious journey on TV or through books, and Michael Palin is a reliably engaging companion who can suffer all the discomforts and uncertainties of travel on my behalf while I stay cosily on the couch. After tracking him around the world and from pole to pole, this time he tackles Himalaya.

To me, the Himalaya region always evokes the books of Rumer Godden, who has written so magically about her year of living in Kashmir in a simple mountain house with her two young daughters after her marriage fell apart in the early 1940s. Even though her family's time there ended in a nightmarish fashion when one of her servants tried to poison them, her deep delight in the beauties of the landscape, house and people glows through her prose. Sixty years later, Michael Palin journeyed through what was in some ways an utterly altered world, but in some ways still very much the same.

Palin and his team travelled through more than half a dozen countries as they made their way through the mountains, but despite differences in politics, forms of government, and degrees of military presence, the solid fact of the mountains themselves is always present: the sublime beauty, the hardship, and the tough, hospitable people. I don't think I'd be up to a hundred and twenty five days of butter tea and oxygen deprivation, not matter how gorgeous the landscape; lucky for me Palin was willing to do it for me.

Book of Lives

Another quite big brick of a book and another surprisingly speedy read (well, Margaret Atwood is a very good writer). I have been an Atwood reader for most of my adult life. The Handmaid's Tale blew my mind very soon after it was published and I was captivated by Cat's Eye, with its tale of childhood bullying. I faithfully bought and excitedly read the big thick novels that followed: The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, but I think The Blind Assassin must have exhausted me or else I ran out of time for big thick novels because I dropped off after that. I did try Oryx and Crake (which began life in Australia as Emu and Crake) but at the time it didn't engage me. The good news is that I now have several Margaret Atwood books still waiting patiently for me to plunge into.

Atwood's life makes for an interesting story in itself. Famously her naturalist father carted the family into the wilderness for half of every year, which left Atwood with a legacy of environmental awareness and a love of birds in particular. She writes enjoyably about the beginnings of the Canadian literature scene, which I imagine has a lot of parallels to the Australian situation -- it was difficult to persuade publishers to risk printing local stories, and aspiring writers were advised to try their luck in the UK or USA (sadly, I fear that 'global' appeal is again becoming a requirement for publishers to risk their money).

The latter part of Book of Lives is overshadowed by the decline and death of Atwood's second husband, Graeme; another story of grief and mourning. It's remarkable to think that Atwood is now in her late eighties, and yet she is as sharp or sharper than she ever was, making films during Covid and still experimenting. I suppose we might not have her for much longer, but what a blessing to have this chunky, rich and funny memoir from a real literary legend before she leaves us.
 

Death of an Ordinary Man

Novelist Sarah Perry's first non-fiction book, Death of an Ordinary Man, was recommended by Susan Green a few weeks ago. Looking back at Sue's review, I see that she used the exact words I was planning to write here: almost unbearably moving. Perry's father-in-law was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, worsened rapidly and died at home just nine days later. How well I could relate to Perry's panic and bewilderment, her pleas for help, for someone to come round now, now, now, we don't know what to do. And yet surprisingly quickly, caring for David becomes routine and manageable and not scary at all; Perry describes a sensation of a woman's hand on her shoulder and feels the reassurance of generations of carers behind her who have faced this challenge and met it, as she and her husband do, too, folding the process death into part of life.

I was amazed at the speed and compassion (mostly) of the health workers who rolled swiftly into action, delivering a hospital bed, nursing care, morphine, special sheets to David's home with a minimum of fuss. I have no idea if similar systems are in place here; I guess I might find out one day. It might not have been the best time for me to read this book, as I'm currently caring for my ninety-year old mother who was recently in hospital with an infection and is taking a while to recover. But I was also able to recognise myself as one of that long line of carers who find themselves able to deal with incontinence, dirty sheets, coaxing tiny spoonfuls of ice cream into a reluctant mouth, organising medication and all the rest of the work of caring. 

The very last image of the book was so incredibly beautiful, it made me cry.

Sometimes I stand at an upstairs window after dark when the city is getting ready for bed, and watch the lights go out one by one in rooms where strangers live. And if I stand there long enough I find, in compensation for the gathering dark, other lights arriving out of nothing -- the passage of a car turning for home, lamps switched on in bathrooms and bedrooms on the outskirts of town, streetlights marking roads I know quite well. Then I imagine I've walked out of the city and up what passes in Norfolk for a hill, and that I can see spread all around me  this same pattern going on over and over: lights, everywhere, coming on where there was no light, then shining for a moment or an hour before fading slowly to an ember, or being suddenly extinguished. On and on it goes, far ahead and behind me, over borders, horizons, seas, summoned up and going out in their own time -- illuminating barely half an inch or fully half a mile, and each light particular, never to be repeated or replaced: all those other lights. All those other towns.

Bad Behaviour

I was intrigued to read about Rebecca Starford's memoir, Bad Behaviour, on Susan Green's blog (my go-to source for interesting next reads). Starford writes about her year on a rural school campus at fourteen; it's not stated, but it's probably Geelong Grammar's famous Timbertop. Year 9 is a notoriously difficult time for adolescents (though I have heard that Year 8 is the new Year 9). I remember my own Year 9 experience as horribly painful, as friendship groups shifted and I found myself excluded (it all worked out fine in the end).

Bad Behaviour reads like a novel, with memories of events at Silver Creek intercut with reflections of Rebecca's later life, especially her relationships, which were clearly affected by patterns that were set up in that fateful year. I have to say that Silver Creek sounds awful, Starford's experience of it at least. Her dormitory house was ruled by a bully and her clique, who egged on Bec and others to escalating feats of cruel and stupid rule-breaking. It takes a long time for Bec to realise she'd be better off with different friends, and it's hard to comprehend the appeal of the mean girls (I am a steadfast goody-goody, so the glamour of bad behaviour is lost on me). 

Starford writes with compelling immediacy about the ebbs and flows of teen friendship and the weird power that charismatic individuals can wield, though I was less invested in the later relationship dramas of her twenties. Mostly Bad Behaviour made me thankful that I'm not fourteen anymore, and I'd be interested to find out how teenagers would respond to it.

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.
 

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.

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.

 

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!
 

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.

Untwisted

Coincidentally, not long before I spotted Paul Jenning's Untwisted: The Story of My Life on the Allen & Unwin shelves (wow, I really did score, didn't I), it was recommended by my friend Kirsty Murray. It's a fabulous read, a candid, funny and often moving account of Jennings' background and career.

Paul Jennings didn't start writing for children until he was forty years old. Before then, he had an extraordinary career as a teacher and education lecturer, often taking on students with physical or mental difficulties, and teaching youth offenders at what was then called Turana. With his quirky, hilarious short stories and particularly after the huge success of the ABC kids' show, Round the Twist, Jennings found himself rich and famous, and able to indulge himself by buying lots of vintage cars and fairytale cottages in the mountains. However, he is equally frank about his own struggles with mental health and the toll that his ups and downs took on his relationships.

Untwisted is compulsively readable. Jennings is a master craftsman of the art of the plot twist, foreshadowing and the clever set-up, and this makes the story of his own life a real page-turner. I must admit that his stories never had a lot of appeal for me, but my kids loved them, and Round the Twist is of course a classic. I now have a fresh respect and admiration for this national treasure of Australian children's literature. 

In My Time of Dying

Those of you who have been following my reading journey will realise that there is no way I could ignore a book with this title. In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife is not written by a would-be medium or someone claiming psychic powers or the ability to commune with spirits. Sebastian Junger is a hard-nosed journalist, a war correspondent, who has had many encounters with death and near-death, his own and other people's. But the incident that inspired this book was a medical emergency, an abdominal aneurysm that very nearly killed him.

During the moments when Junger was hovering on the border between life and death, he saw something totally unexpected: his dead father, who was a rational, logical scientist and if anything even more hard-nosed than his son. Junger's blow-by-blow account of his medical experience is utterly gripping, and takes up the first half of the book. The second half is devoted to his struggle to understand why he might have seen his father, and takes him into the arcane reaches of quantum theory, the definition of consciousness, and others' accounts of their own near-death experiences, to conclude that perhaps consciousness is woven into the very fabric of the universe, and that we really do rejoin something larger than ourselves when we die. It's a controversial, but (to me) very appealing proposition. I'm certain there is more to reality than our puny brains can comprehend, and it's always seemed the height of arrogance to assume that we could.

Weirdly, just after reading In My Time of Dying, I read Paul Jennings' life story, Untwisted, in which he recounts his own near-death experience, when he saw a cavern filled with people eating and laughing and enjoying themselves, and was drawn to a tunnel that exuded feelings of bliss and tranquillity. He says he hopes when his time does come, that tunnel is still there. Jennings' mother also saw a vision of her sister at the moment of her death, half a world away. Junger argues that there might be biological reasons for many near-death phenomena, but the one that is most difficult to explain is these visions of the dead. I do wonder what is going on; maybe one day I'll find out.
 

Puzzled

 

Another score from the Allen & Unwin book shelves. I love David Astle's columns about language in The Age, and I also hear his evening radio show from time to time, and I like him a lot. But his main claim to fame is as the notorious DA who sets the Friday cryptic crossword, also in The Age, which Melbourne people have long jokingly characterised as Don't Attempt. 

I like crosswords, I do one every day and two on Saturdays. But cryptics have always been beyond my comprehension. I was in awe of a fellow student at college who once tried patiently to explain to me how they worked -- and English wasn't even her first language. So in Puzzled I saw my chance for a crash course in the mysteries of cryptics once and for all.

Alas, after bravely wrestling with the whole book, I can only conclude that I don't have the right kind of brain for cryptic crosswords. Astle starts gently enough with anagrams and double meanings, but soon we're swimming in 'hybrids', 'manipulations' and '&lits' (or perhaps drowning!) Even with Astle holding my hand, I couldn't figure out most of these clues. Fortunately, the course in crossword solving is also interleaved with autobiographical episodes from David Astle's life, which are both entertaining and interesting and which helped me through the difficult patches. Puzzled is a beautifully constructed piece of work, but alas, I'm not much closer to mastering the mysteries than I was before -- my fault, not David Astle's!

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds

I have to confess, I bought Stephen Moss's Wild Hares and Hummingbirds purely on the strength of this lovely cover art (by Hannah Firmin). It's subtitled The Natural History of an English Village, and it's a simple but pleasing concept: Moss recounts the comings and goings of seasonal birds, animals, insects (the 'hummingbirds' of the title are actually hummingbird moths) and plants within a small parish in Somerset. The book is divided into twelve chapters, one for each month, beginning and ending in deep winter.

Wild Hares made a perfect companion read to James Rebanks' more serious English Pastoral. Because I'd already read the latter, observations about the extinction of local birds and wildlife hit home harder. I knew what Moss was talking about when he outlined the consequences of silage replacing hay for cattle feed. Moss is careful to avoid an overtly political stance, but the shadow of climate change falls darkly even over this 2011 book. There are floods in the village, birds and insects respond too early to the change of seasons and find themselves without the proper food, certain butterflies arrive at the wrong time. Not every species is a loser in this shakeup of the natural world, but there are more losers than winners.

But mostly Wild Hares is a celebration of close observation and involvement in the natural world, delighting in the small events in Moss's backyard or familiar lanes and fields. This is a lovely book. Let's hope it's not completely irrelevant in another twenty years. 

English Pastoral

After reading James Rebanks' The Place of Tides, I remembered there was another book of his that I hadn't yet read: English Pastoral. I'm so glad that I hunted it down (thanks, Athenaeum) because it's one of the best books I've read this year.

Rebanks is, famously, a farmer. English Pastoral is divided into three sections. In the first, he recalls growing up on his grandfather's and father's farms, with his grandfather introducing him to the hard work of farming but also the small delights of live on the land -- the birds, the insects, the cycle of life and death, the hedgerows, the wildflowers, the mysteries of the animals. In the second section, James is grown up, his grandfather is dead, and James takes his part beside his father in trying to wring a living from the land. Rebanks sets out in savage detail the modern economic pressures that have rendered this almost impossible. As agriculture has become relentlessly more 'efficient,' with the aid of pesticides, economies of scale, monocultures and artificial fertilisers, the price of food has steadily fallen and the crucial connection between farmer and nature has been whittled away. Farms are now just food factories, run on an industrial scale, with no room for emotion or luxuries like harbouring wildlife.

In the final section of the book, Rebanks describes his attempt to return to some of the old ways of farming and caring for the land. He argues that food has become too cheap; we no longer value it truly. The only way he and his family can stay farming in this way is to bring in income from outside -- partly, I guess, by writing books like this. But it's inspiring to read about the way that Rebanks has made room on his land for things like reinstating hedges, returning river flow to its natural state to soak up floodwater, using animal manure as fertiliser, and welcoming back birds and insects. Not surprisingly, he thanks Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell from Knepp, as documented in Wilding, which I read last year. I've read some critiques of English Pastoral as being too 'all over the place,' but while the style is fragmented, I didn't find it choppy. One thought or observation flows into the next to build a rich and moving mosaic, always engaging and persuasive.

The Place of Tides

James Rebanks was burnt out. A Cumbrian farmer and author (from the same neck of the woods as Rory Stewart), he had spent too many years as a rural activist, not taking enough time with his family, with frustration and anger building building inside. He remembered an old woman he'd met in Norway, on an isolated island, and felt that she could offer him solace; she invited him to come and stay with her.

Anna was a 'duck woman,' a dying breed, who travel to the remote islands where eider ducks nest. They build safe nesting places for them, protect them from predators, and watch over them until the eggs hatch and the ducklings are taken out to sea. Rebanks, Anna and Ingrid, a younger friend of Anna's, spent ten weeks on this island, working hard to tend to the nests, observing the ducks, waiting and watching and quietly spending time together. At first Rebanks felt restless, until he eventually settled into the rhythm of the life and recognised that yes, this was exactly what he needed. But to his surprise, though he'd thought it was solitary time that he was craving, he came to realise that in fact Anna was deeply enmeshed in community, and it was the time spent with Anna and Ingrid that achieved the real healing.

The Place of Tides was only published last year, and I discovered it by accident on Brotherhood Books. It fits perfectly into a category of books my friend Chris calls people and animals -- books like H is for Hawk, or The Company of Wolves. It's nature writing, but it's also a meditation on life, connection and spirituality. The Place of Tides is an absolutely beautiful book, simple but profound, and it took me into another world.
 

Question 7

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan came in at number 65 in the ABC Radio National Top 100 Books of the 21st century countdown, and the description of it prompted me to borrow it from the local library. It was published in 2023 but somehow I'd failed to seek it out; I did realise while reading it that I'd read an extract, or part of the work in progress, at some time, I assume in The Monthly.

Question 7 took my breath away. What an extraordinary, profound, elegant, supple, brilliant and moving book. Part autobiography, part history, part fictionalised history, it is a book that defies categorisation. Broken into short, easily digestible chunks, it weaves together Flanagan's family history (his father, who spent time in the Japanese death camps; his mother, who raised six children in hardship; his shrewd, demanding grandmother) together with the development of the atomic bomb, via HG Wells' affair with Rebecca West, Leo Szilard's campaign for peace, the horrific attempted Tasmanian genocide and Flanagan's own near-death experience of drowning in river rapids at twenty-one.

This is superb writing. I must confess, I have found Richard Flanagan's fiction too strong meat for me -- I didn't even attempt The Narrow Road to the Deep North, though I'm sure it's incredible -- but Question 7 is the best book I've read this year. If I was voting in the Top 100 again, it would be in my list without question (no pun intended).

Searching for Charmian

I discovered the story behind this book through watching Suzanne Chick's daughter Gina win Alone Australia. Suzanne only found out at the age of forty eight that the biological mother who had given her up for adoption was the famous writer, Charmian Clift; Clift is therefore Gina Chick's grandmother. Searching for Charmian was published in 1994, not long after the discovery, decades before Gina found her own fame as Alone winner and writer in her own right.

Searching for Charmian is a highly emotional book, buzzing with questions and unresolved feelings. Suzanne had vaguely heard of Clift, but knew little about her eventful life; the book traces her eager research, connecting with Nadia Wheatley, Clift's biographer (they agreed to cease contact when Suzanne decided to writer her own book) and with friends of Clift and her husband, writer George Johnston, who mined their marriage for material. Famously, the Johnstons lived for years on the Greek island of Hydra and became the nucleus of an artistic and literary community there (young Leonard Cohen was a friend). Tragically, Clift took her own life in 1969, so Suzanne was never able to reunite with her in person. Suzanne presents her own history in parallel with her mother's, showing where each of them was in certain years; amazingly, they almost overlapped at times and could have walked past each other in the street.

Suzanne Chick seems to have inherited her biological mother's gift with words, though she spent her life as an art teacher. Searching for Charmian takes us on a poignant, very readable journey, questioning motherhood, adoption, the demands of creativity, love and loyalty, addiction and grief, beauty and confidence, aging and family. It was fascinating to read that young Gina took comfort from learning of her ancestry, having felt that perhaps her own personality was 'too wild' and over the top (though she seems to have learned to lean into that side of herself in later years). This is an engaging chronicle of an extraordinary family story.
 

The Unsought Farm

The Unsought Farm, Monica Edwards' 1954 memoir about her life on Punch Bowl Farm, was a little birthday treat for myself. I've never read the series of young adult fiction she wrote about Punchbowl Farm, but apparently, like her previous Romney Marsh books (which I love), they have one foot in fact and the other in fiction, drawing on real experiences and her own children to create the adventures of the Thornton family.

Almost without intending to, Edwards successfully bid for the property at auction and then had to face the reality of herself and her husband Bill becoming farmers. After the war (I'm not sure if this is still the case), it was not legal to own arable land without actually farming it, so they gradually built up to owning a Jersey herd and sowing crops, as well as improving the ancient farmhouse. Bill seems to have worked miracles, uncovering inglenook fireplaces, creating bathrooms out of thin air, punching windows into dark rooms, demolishing dangerous chimneys and more. Edwards writes about their trials and tribulations, especially the activities of their many animals (including four Siamese cats), with her trademark warmth and understated humour.

The Unsought Farm is a lovely book. The Edwards stayed at the farm until 1968, when they retired to a nearby cottage, and Punch Bowl Farm was still an active farm well into the 1990s. It's a glimpse into a way of agricultural small-holding life that has become vanishing rare, so its triumphs are tinged with melancholy for a modern reader. In its own way, it's as much of a fantasy story now as any of Edwards' beloved novels.
 

My Year Without Matches

I found Australian Claire Dunn's memoir, My Year Without Matches, on the shelves of the Athenaeum and the subtitle intrigued me: Escaping the city in search of the wild. 'The wild' is something I find powerfully attractive on the page -- in real life, not so much. Dunn herself was a burned-out wilderness and conservation activist when she committed to spend twelve months on a kind of wilderness retreat, a bit like Alone but with more supports in place, and a group of five others taking their own journeys alongside.

As any viewer of Alone will already know, living in the bush invariably becomes as much an inner quest as a physical adventure. At first Dunn struggles with the basics of building a shelter and especially wrestles with trying to make fire without matches (hence the title), to the point where she had blood blisters on both palms from rubbing futilely at the hand drill. She's also driven by mental demons, a constant fear of not 'doing it properly,' self-doubt and existential angst. It's these more spiritual struggles that dominate toward the end of the book, when Dunn has relaxed into the company of insects and snakes, not washing her hair, and sleeping on the ground. More problematic are her fluctuating relationships with the other participants on the course.

My Year Without Matches is a highly readable, relatable account of a spiritual quest that ultimately comes to rest in a realisation that simply being is enough. Fittingly, Dunn now runs nature reconnection retreats of her own. I love the idea of living so close to nature (Dunn vows to only eat meat she's caught and killed herself, and sticks to it) but I know the reality would defeat me, probably on the first night. The next best thing is reading about it.
 

The Royal Butler

Grant Harrold's new book, The Royal Butler, was a birthday present from my daughter, riding on the coat-tails of The Residence which we both enjoyed so much. Not surprisingly, Harrold is a big fan of the monarchy, and his obsession with queens and castles began when he was a small child. Living with dyslexia, Harrold didn't do well at school, but that didn't deter him from writing to lots of people (aristocrats) and asking for work. Before long he'd landed a job in a grand house, one thing led to another, and he ended up working for many years as butler to Princes Charles (now the King) at his country estate at Highgrove. He was made redundant in the lead up to Charles taking the throne, but has successfully parlayed his experience into an etiquette school and a career in media commentary.

There is quite a bit of royal gossip here, a peek into the private lives of princes and monarchs (they're just like us! Only -- special) and fascinating detail about how these grand households operate. The sheer number of staff required to wait on a small family, or even just a couple, is mind-boggling. Harrold keeps pinching himself. Am I really sitting on the stairs of an ancient palace? Am I really dancing with the Queen herself at a workplace party? Did Prince Philip really just nod in my direction? Harrold freely admits this was his dream job, and he is thrilled for just about every minute of it.

There is an uneasy tightrope being walked here, between marvelling at how ordinary and friendly and approachable the royals can be, and the feeling of breathless reverence that Harrold still cherishes toward them. Harrold himself has a sweet, naive-seeming charm, but if the amounts of money spent on royalty make you feel queasy, maybe don't read this book.