Australian Gospel

  

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

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

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

The Good Country

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

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

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

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

Hitchhiker

  

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

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

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

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman

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

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

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

Big Sky: when the emu left the earth

I heard astrophysicist Professor Ray Norris (born in the UK, now living in Australia) and beloved and controversial First Nations elder Bruce Pascoe talking on Radio National about their collaboration, Big Sky: when the emu left the earth, and immediately reserved it from the library. As anyone who's read The January Stars will know, I'm a sucker for astronomy and space (Duane Hamacher, who was the consultant on January Stars, is quoted often in this book).

I was a little disappointed by the astronomy volume of the otherwise excellent First Knowledges series, and Big Sky fills in some of the gaps. It really is remarkable to think that some sky stories, like the Seven Sisters myth, which carries extraordinary similarities all over the globe, may have travelled with the first humans out of Africa. There are other stories from parts of Australia that might recall celestial events like supernovae, comets and meteor strikes, that occurred tens of thousands of years ago. Star maps can act as mnemonics, along with stories, to guide land journeys. The Emu of the title of course refers to the Dark Emu figure visible in the dark patches of the Milky Way.

I was particularly struck by the different explanations of solar and lunar eclipses, often described as Sun-woman and Moon-man having sex, but showing an understanding of who is on top of whom! Some of Norris and Pascoe's examples show that Aboriginal cultures had a more sophisticated understanding of the skies than Renaissance scientists.

I'm not sure that books are the best way to pass on First Nations knowledges; the ideal way is to have an elder explain to you what you're ready to understand. But in the absence of that firsthand experience, books like Big Sky are the next best alternative. 

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.

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.

Ancestral Journeys

Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys was a Brotherhood Books impulse buy, and I didn't really know what I was getting. It's actually quite a scholarly book, though packaged up appealingly with lots of pictures and break-out sidebars to break up the text. It's a multi-disciplinary approach to tracking the movements of peoples across (mostly) Europe during prehistory, drawing on archeology, genetics and linguistics to piece together the likely shifts of population, whether by invasion, wandering, retreat or expansion.

I must admit that some of the detailed explanations of DNA haplo-groups made my eyes water and I tended to skim those sections! But Ancestral Journeys excels at painting a big picture of climate changes, the spread of agriculture, and the rise and fall of empires. I found the sections about language the most engaging -- I'm always up for a discussion of Proto-Indo-European and its descendants in modern languages. Ancestral Journeys covers millennia, from the very first humans emerging from Africa, right up to the Vikings, in a relatively short and easy to digest package: a great overview.
 

Light and Shadow

Mark Colvin was a veteran ABC journalist who died in 2017, about a year after this autobiography was published. Sadly we never got to read the second volume he hinted at in this book. It doesn't seem like nearly ten years since he died; I well remember his mellifluous tones on Radio National.

The subtitle of Light and Shadow is Memoirs of a Spy's Son; clearly the publisher felt this was the strongest hook to draw people in, and it is a fascinating element of Colvin's story. His mother was Australian, his father English, and it was confirmed when Mark was an adult that John Colvin was actually an agent for SIS (MI6). John's most exotic postings (under cover of being a diplomat) were to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and Ulan Bator in Mongolia to keep an eye on the border between China and Russia at the height of the Cold War. (It was while young Mark was visiting his father during this time that he was given the information about the death of Lin Biao who significance he totally failed to realise!)

But Mark's own life also makes a gripping narrative. He fell into journalism at a young age, worked at Double J when it was just starting up, covered wars in Iraq and the Whitlam crisis, started The World Today and for many years hosted the evening current affairs show PM. It was a remarkable career and his family background, which he kept secret, made it all the more dangerous -- he'd been warned by his father never to visit Russia, for example (though he did). Light and Shadow is a thoroughly absorbing and informative read, one of those unknown gems that you pick up sometimes and provide rich rewards.
 

Wild Swans

I am extremely late to the party on Jung Chang's international bestseller from 1991, Wild Swans. If you've been living under a rock for the last thirty years, Wild Swans is the story of three generations of women living in China through the tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. Jung Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine; her mother was a dedicated Communist Party official; and Jung herself eventually studied English and emigrated to the UK.

Wild Swans has been a school text almost from the moment it was published. My younger daughter used it in studying Revolutions and the copy I've been reading is hers. My ignorance of China's history is shamefully almost total, and Wild Swans filled in quite a few blanks for me. I vaguely knew about the Cultural Revolution, but not quite what a horrific period it was, nor the extent of the arbitrary violence and cruelty it unleashed. The tides of being in and out of favour washed Chang's family to and fro; sometimes they enjoyed quite a lot of privilege, sometimes things were absolutely desperate.

For me, Wild Swans started slowly and it took me a while to become captured by the story. The book really came alive for me when Jung Chang herself appeared, and I sometimes found the parts about the internal machinations of the Communist Party head-spinning. However, I was excited when simultaneously reading Mark Colvin's autobiography, Light and Shadow, to come across a section when Colvin was travelling through China in the early 1970s and he was told about the death of important general Lin Biao -- a very deliberate piece of information-planting whose significance young Colvin completely failed to recognise! Thanks to Wild Swans, I already knew the background story of Lin Biao, so this story meant much more than it would have otherwise.

 

The Body Keeps the Score

Apparently, trauma-informed care is all the rage in psychology at the moment, and a large part of that is probably due to this book by Bessel van der Kolk, which has become a word of mouth bestseller since its release twelve years ago. Clearly the message of The Body Keeps the Score has struck a chord with readers and practitioners, and it definitely struck a chord with me. I'm fortunate that I haven't experienced childhood trauma myself, but people close to me have, and so much of this book rang true as I read about people under stress reverting to childhood states of high arousal, fear and helplessness (of course, it can also manifest in anger, aggression or running away). 

The core of van der Kolk's work turns on the realisation that talking or medication alone can be inadequate to touch the deep, embodied memory of trauma (he began his trauma work mostly with returned soldiers suffering from PTSD, but the same conclusions also apply for sexual assaults, accidents or childhood abuse). Van der Kolk uses a variety of techniques to release the deeply held tension in his patients' bodies: breathing, yoga, theatre and singing, as well as quite theatrical role-playing therapy which might seem a little woo-woo to some but apparently can be very powerful in integrating traumatic experiences into a coherent sense of self.

Most intriguing to me is EMDR (Eye Movement Desenstisation and Reprocessing), which at first blush does seem completely woo-woo -- patients relive traumatic memories while watching the movement of the therapist's finger in front of their eyes -- but is in fact extremely effective. This does make sense when you consider that this process mimics the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, during which memories are integrated. A member of my family, who has had a lot of conventional talk therapy, swears by EMDR. 

The Body Keeps the Score is a gripping, lively and persuasive read, and I'm not surprised it's been such a huge success and so influential. 

Jilya

I can't remember where I heard about Tracy Westerman's book Jilya -- I think I might have seen a mention of it on Facebook (sometimes it is useful for some things!) Published in 2024, it's subtitled How one Indigenous woman from the remote Pilbara transformed psychology, and it is concerned with two of my favourite areas of interest: psychology and First Nations culture.

Jilya means 'my child,' and Westerman's focus is squarely on Aboriginal child suicides. The rates of children taking their own lives, especially in remote or disadvantaged First Nations communities, are truly horrific, and should be a huge mental health priority. Westerman has zeroed in on the shortage of psychological supports in these areas as a primary factor, as well as multi-generational trauma and multi-generational difficulties in forming secure childhood attachment.

Jilya outlines some fascinating differences between mainstream Western assumptions and Aboriginal culture -- for example, Aboriginal child-rearing practices that might look like 'neglect' to white, middle class social workers. There is a lot in this book about trauma, including everyday racism, deep grief and loss, and the legacy of familial disruption -- such a heavy burden for individuals, let alone whole communities to bear. But Jilya is also the story of Westerman's own life, and her decades of struggle to establish better data collection and protocols for dealing with Aboriginal communities. There is another whole story there about politics, trying to run a private business, and philanthropy, which I won't begin to try to untangle.

I found the middle sections of the book, about applying specific techniques and practices to First Nations individuals, families and communities, the most compelling, but the whole of Jilya is a riveting and powerful read. More power to Tracy Westerman's arm -- she is accomplishing some amazing work.
 

Your Name is Not Anxious

Anxiety sucks. I've been there, so have most of my family and some of my friends. It's not a place you want to dwell, or even visit for very long. Stephanie Dowrick, who has had her own mental health battles, has written a friendly, approachable guide for sufferers, reminding us that while anxiety can feel overwhelming, it is not our whole identity; that it's vital to treat ourselves with compassion and kindness, rather than blame and guilt; that anxiety is a whole-body experience, not just 'in our minds;' that there are emergency measures we can take in a moment of crisis (breathing techniques, cold water, reducing causes of stress (can be easier said than done!)).

It's all great advice, delivered in short, easily-digested chapters, and the book is designed for dipping in and out as needed, rather than being read cover to cover, which is what I did. Much of the material is reinforced in more than one place, which is helpful -- in my experience, these messages need repeating over and over, and even then they sometimes don't sink in. I can imagine Your Name is Not Anxious as a comforting bedside companion, to be used in times of crisis along with professional therapeutic help, exercise and medication if needed; I don't think it would be enough to pull you out of an episode on its own. There are also personal stories from others who have wrestled with OCD, body anxieties and addiction, and come out the other side, which is always a good reminder. The dark valley can seem like a long, deep crevasse at times, and it's helpful to remember that it can and does end.

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).
 

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.
 

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.
 

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.

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.