AWW Challenge 2015 - roundup

In 2015 I committed to reading to Miles level (6 books) in the Australian Womens Writers Challenge.

21 books read - smashed it!  This was my 3rd year participating and I've have valued greatly the focus of the challenge and supporting local women authors.  To see the books I've read - check out my Goodreads AWW 2015 Shelf.

My favourite was the short story collection of Maxine Beneba Clark, Foreign Soil.

The Challenge was set up to help overcome gender bias in the reviewing of books by Australian women and encourages readers and bloggers to read and review writing by Australian women.

I am not a confident reviewer but I gave it a go for some of the books and contributed many of them to the Libraries ACT Facebook page.  

Reading time is the first to go when I get busy, preoccupied or stressed.  And while all of those things happened this year, I also had a couple of weeks away for work which gave me a heap of plane and hotel reading time.

I'll be doing the Challenge again this year.  But that's another post.

The Strays - an opinion

The Strays by Emily Bitto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Publisher's blurb:
On her first day at a new school, Lily meets Eva, one of the daughters of the infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. He and his wife are attempting to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work with them at their family home. As Lily’s friendship with Eva grows, she becomes infatuated with this makeshift family and longs to truly be a part of it.

Looking back on those years later in life, Lily realises that this utopian circle involved the same themes as Evan Trentham’s art: Faustian bargains and terrible recompense; spectacular fortunes and falls from grace. Yet it was not Evan, nor the other artists he gathered around him, but his own daughters, who paid the debt that was owing.

This is more a response than a review.  I'm very tired this week and have not the patience or energy for a better structured or thought out review.

Emily Bitto's first novel is a well written  exploration of intense female childhood and adolescent friendship. A bit long through the middle; some editorial pruning would have helped.

This passage, for example, while it spoke to me and I was delighted to find it, was not really necessary for Lily's mother's character development.

For the information of knitters reading this - the following passge is the only reference to knitting.

p. 117

My mother began to knit again, a pale yellow jumper she was making for me.  We had picked out the pattern together; it was to have a pearl button at the neck and slightly puffed sleeves.  Over the following days my mother knitted almost without stopping: while she ate; while she talked to the nurses; while she sate by my father's bed.  She fell asleep knitting in the chair beside him, woke up, continued to knit.  She was like one of the fates, sullenly, determinedly knitting out the griefs of the world. Somehow my mother's anxiety, and my own, became entangled in the wool of that jumper, caught up in the purl of its weave so that it would always be tainted for me, as if it had absorbed the medicinal stink of the hospital, the image of my father, ashen, with his eyes closed, the thick sheets drawn up under his arms, the knobbly cotton blanket tight across his chest and over the bulky casts encasing both his legs, his toes protruding from the bedclothes so that their colour could be monitored - my mother and I had to fight the urge constantly to pull the blank over them to keep them warm.  I would never wear that cumper.


In the end I didn't really care about any of them. Particularly the cruelly manipulative Trenthams but not even very much about Lily.

Was going for 3 stars - really it's 3.5.



My 7th book for the Australian Women Writers' Challenge 2015.

Source: Libraries ACT

View all my reviews

Heat and Light - a review

Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beyond knowing that it is shortlisted for the 2105 Stella Prize, I knew nothing of this work.

I deliberately didn't read the blurb or go looking for reviews.  I want to have as few preconceived notions about what I am about to read as possible.  I want to allow for the possibility of being surprised.

I was captivated on page one.

Structurally, this work of fiction is interesting.  It is not a novel.  It is divided into three sections, the first and the last being sets of short stories, the middle being a novella.

"Heat" is the first section and explores a single family from many points of view.  It is heat fanned by wind. Part fable, part imagined documentary; I enjoyed this section immensely.  The slow and unflinching unfolding of layers of family history was hugely satisfying.

The second section, "Water", is near future speculative fiction exploring issues of colonialism.  It is infused with a sense of historical de ja vu, and hasan urgent pace.

The third section, "Light", is the least optimistic of the three sections. There is truth here. The stories are not without emotion, but difficult themes of belonging and the desire to escape are explored without overt judgement.

Smoothly written and eminently readable, all of the stories show a steady, honest gaze.  Indigenous and queer voices should be heard more often. I look forward to reading more of van Neerven's work.

This is the sixth book read and reviewed for the Australian Women Writers' Challenge 2015. I have completed the challenge I set myself, but there are oh so many more to read.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Source: LibrariesACT

Madame Bovary's Haberdashery - a review

Madame Bovary's Haberdashery by Maurilia Meehan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Funny, subversive, the point in the universe where Emma Bovary and Jane Marple intersect.

I was worried, at first, the author Meehan knew a little bit too much about how I spent my 20s - overweight knitter with a penchant for op shops in a co-dependent, not particularly healthy relationship with a promiscuous, artistic best friend.  Fortunately the similarities end there.

Everyone in this charming, engaging and darkly sly humourous novel is delusional, narcissistic, criminally manipulative, misogynistic, fraudulent or many of these in combination..

Odette, the beautiful free spirited potter who, "lurching unreflectingly from one style to the next, one man to the next, saw herself as living in wild freedom, just like any male artist" shares a house and a lover, Zac, with her friend Cicely.  Odette and Cicely have been best friends since primary school.  Their relationship is fractured by the manipulative, jealous and intellectually fraudulent Zac.

"Cicely has opinions, but she keeps them to herself".  Cicely has published a mildly successful erotic novel and keeps herself in tea and wool by creating knitted pieces to sell in Miss Ball's Haberdashery.  Cicely is overweight and suffers from hallucinations brought on by her failing vision and later by her dependence on pain medication.  It is through her hallucinations that Miss Marple assists Cicely solve the mystery of Odette's disappearance.

All of the male characters are unpleasant, misogynistic manipulators; while the women are competitive and manipulative.

I worry that Odette is returned to Cicely and is "redeemed" through murder and childbirth to, presumably, be held captive in Odette's dream haberdashery.  But perhaps that is the joke at the heart of the book.

While I enjoyed the novel (not least for the primary role of the fibre arts and the confirmation that crochet is evil, or at least created under hallucinogenics) I might have understood it better if I was more familiar with Flaubert's Madame Bovary.  I suspect I shall read it before long, even if it is written by the antithesis of an Australian woman.  I am better acquainted with Miss Marple and loved how Maurilia Meehan imagines her for Cicely.

I am also glad that Cicely achieves her dream of owning her own shop, the haberdashery of the title, and a room of her own.  But are we all such manipulators and are all our dreams realised at the expense of others?

View all my reviews

SOURCE: Libraries ACT

Who We Were by Lucy Neave - a review

Who We Were by Lucy Neave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


On finishing this book - my initial notes read:
Sparse and elegant prose but for a novel about passion and betrayal, strangely devoid of emotional connection.  I gave it 3 stars (out of 5)

Nearly a week later and I am back on Goodreads changing my score from 3 stars to 4.  I continue to think about this novel and divine why I couldn't connect.  I talk to friends and colleagues about it and wonder out loud to them why that was - should it have been a series of novellas to explore the effects of the political environments in which they find themselves and the significant issues such as scientific ethics, the effects of the Depression, WWII and the war in Asia in particular.

It's a very, very accomplished first novel.

I keep comparing Bill to Dorrigo from Flanagan's Narrow Road to the Deep North.  Similar experiences, similarly flawed but Bill just isn't sympathetic.

Also, the suspense which might have built in the Cold War period just didn't get there.

Perhaps I wasn't meant to connect.  Annabel and Bill save their passion for each other and their work, and in Bill's case, a political cause.  Annabel is a perpetual outsider, even in her marriage, and theirs is a very exclusive club so maybe I was meant to feel excluded.

I would recommend this book, but if you enjoy the emotional connection to character, you might not find it.  You will, however, have much food for thought.

This novel is shortlisted in the ACT Book of the Year Award.  For the first time this year you can vote in the People's Choice Awards, but get your skates on, voting closes soon.

For information on previous awards, a committed and passionate librarian has created this resource.

SOURCE: Libraries ACT

View all my reviews

A Fig at the Gate

"I used to love nightclubs, now I love nurseries."

That quotation from Kate Llewellyn's "A Fig at the Gate", is a good summary of the book.

Published in 2014, it is subtitled "The joys of friendship, gardening and the gaining of wisdom".  The memoir documents a several years in Kate's life in the creation of a new garden, spending time with the oldest of friends and gaining new ones, and the consolations of age.

I wavered between enjoying very much being directly addressed by Llewellyn and reading her personal diary and having an uncomfortable feeling of TMI.  I suspect it is because I am starting to feel my age as well.  And while I am considerably younger than Kate, I am past the half-way mark by a few years now.

"It may be that gardening creeps up on one when some of the fury of youth falls away."

Some of my discomfort I experienced initially with this work is not the writing or the format (a series of diary entries), but that we see the joys of gardening differently. Llewellyn, initially, sees gardening as a subsitute for sex, I see it more a channelling of the nurturing impulse.

I became less uncomfortable as the years pass (she chronicles 2009-2012).  Perhaps the because really we have a simile for a relationship.  The initial obsessive and physical joy gives way to the creation and nurturing of new life and the grief of death.

Llewellyn explores the joys of the flesh through her garden as well as the more emotional connection of the company of her family, her oldest friends, creating new life, and making new friends.

I loved that this book made me think and address some of my own assumptions and it gives me hope for my own future.

My third book of 2015 and number 3 in the Australian Women Writer's Challenge.  Earlier reviews here and here.

SOURCE: Libraries ACT

The Engagement

No, not ours, although that progresses well, thanks.

Chloe Hooper's second novel, The Engagement is my second Australian Women's Writers Challenge read of 2015.

It is a modern gothic novel of psychological suspense.

The premise is that Liese Campbell, deeply in debt and working in her uncle's real estate business, begins charging loaded Gippsland farmer Alexander Colquhoun for sex.  When Liese announces her return to England, Alexander invites her to his property for a final weekend.

The novel is not about sex, and certainly isn't erotic, but there are sexual passages.  The novel is about power and control and desire and fear.

The set up is a bit clunky and belief must be suspended, but go with it - the psychological thriller bit is worth it.  And it certainly does prompt thought. 

I read Chloe's first novel, A Child's True Book of Crime (2002), last year and this is, in my opinion, the better of the two. 4 stars from me, and would be a good book for a reading group.

Finishing this presented me with a dilemma, though.  It seems I have become a monogamous reader sometime in the last few years.  I forgot to bring a new library book home - there are two waiting for me - and I finished this book early in the evening. I am reluctant to have more than one novel on the go at a time.  Just as I was about to download a magazine from the library, I found a literary solution with a volume of short stories.  I can read a couple of short stories without fear of cheating on my next book. 

While I try to borrow from the library where I can, in this instance a small number of unread books at home is a blessing.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

I think I am the last person to read this book.  It is justifiably well-regarded and has won 9 literary awards and been shortlisted for as many again.

TOF and I listened to most of the audio-book borrowed from Libraries ACT on a recent journey and I finished it yesterday.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book - it is a "speculative biography" of the last woman executed in Iceland.  Firmly based on historical research, the book reproduces a number of translated documents of the period, which appealed to me as an archivist.

Another appealing factor - the historical detail of women's work, in particular their textile work.  Knitting, spinning and weaving are inherent elements of the text and I thrilled at each mention.  I could imagine a pattern book based on traditional Icelandic patterns for socks and mittens based on this book, just as we have seen other "inspired" pattern books.

The book is a satisfying, fresh, feminist reading of a moment of Icelandic history and you don't need to be a knitter to enjoy it.

If this wasn't enough to make me just a little bit in love with Hannah Kent, this quotation from a recent blog post sealed our relationship.

"If you can't afford new books, buy second-hand books. If you can't afford second-hand books, get a library card. Get a library card anyway." Hannah Kent's Rules for Writing, blogged 26 November 2014

SOURCE: Libraries ACT

Booked

For the last two years I have joined the Australian Women Writers' Challenge.  The Challenge was set up to help overcome gender bias in the reviewing of books by Australian women and encourages readers and bloggers to read and review writing by Australian women.

In 2014 I pledged to read 4 books by Australian women writers.  This is the Stella level.  Circumstances were such that, I read 20 books by Australian women writers.

Some were brilliant, others were meh, but it was very much worth the time.

So I'm signing up again this year.  I can't guarantee another few weeks of of bath rest (yes, bath rest - long story), so I will sign up to the Miles level - 6 books read.
Want to join me? The details are on the AWW blog.

Don't know where to start?  The Stella Prize long lists are a very good place to start. 2013 is here and 2014 here.