Lola Bensky by Lily Brett

I've enjoyed the Lily Brett novels, short stories and articles I've read over the years.

And Lola Bensky was no exception.

You know exactly what you're going to get with Brett.

You know there is going to be lots of Holocaust survivor issues, body weight issues and a protagonist who was born in a displaced persons camp, grew up in Australia, married twice, had three children and moved to New York.

I love trying to untangle the autobiographical truths from the fiction.

And I always love Edek.

This story is a little different from her earlier work as the focus is on Lola/Lily's time as a rock journalist during the late sixties.

Lola works for an Australian magazine, but travels to London and the US to interview people like Cat Stevens, Barry Gibb, Mick Jagger, Cher, the Mama's and Papa's, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin. She hangs out with Lillian Roxon and Linda Eastman. She gives her diamante-lined flase eyelashes to Cher, she discusses diets with Mama Cass and shares her parents experiences in Auschwitz with Mick Jagger.

Brett rolls out this story with humour, pathos and warmth.

Lola Bensky wasn't as strong or as moving as Too Many Men in my mind, but it was comforting to return to such familiar characters and such a charming style.

Update: November 2014 

Lily Brett is the first Australian (and only the fourth woman) to win the Prix Medicis Etranger for Lola Bensky. The French literary prize is given to an author whose novel has been translated into French from another language.

Previous winners include Doris Lessing, Milan Kundera, Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Paul Auster and Orhan Pamuk.

Shadows by Ilsa J Bick

Shadows is book 2 in the Ashes trilogy.

I enjoyed the first book immensely.
It raced along with lots of action, suspense and left us with a fabulous cliff-hanger ending.

I was looking forward to Shadows release date with great anticipation.

And... well... it's okay.

Sorry, that's the best I can do.

Shadows is so full of action and drama and bloody showdowns that character development and plot have gone out the window. I'm tempted to say that they were sacrificed in a gory zombie feeding fest half way through the first chapter!

The muliple viewpoints doesn't work very well either - it allows for lots of quick shifts in action, but it provides little opportunity to get to know anyone or feel like you care what happens. About half way through I thought,  "Oh for god's sake, release the zombies and just kill everyone off and be done with it!"

Having said all that, I can't help but think that this trilogy would make a great fright-night movie. You know - one of those movies with so much action and scary makeup that you don't realise how slight the story actually is until someone asks you at the end what it was about!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I wasn't sure what I was expecting from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I've seen a lot of online hype about the forthcoming movie starring Emma Watson.
I've also watched our sales improve at work, week by week, as the buzz increases.

I was curious.

I thought this was a going away to college/coming of age story.

Almost, but not quite.

This is aimed a little younger than that.

Charlie is 15. He is befriended by a group of seniors and we see their final year of school through Charlie's filter.

This is also a big year for Charlie as he learns to "participate" more in life and come to terms with some of his own demons.

Although it's never spelt out, Charlie appears to have some form of Asperger's, depression or social anxiety issue.

It is not easy for Charlie to engage with the world; he prefers to watch from the sidelines. He is gifted, extremely emotional and prone to thinking too fast and too much.

All his friend's have issues too. They struggle with love, sex, drugs, drinking, school work and family.

They survive by sticking together - by being open, honest and willing to stuff up. Their music, books and films define their time, help them belong and give them a feeling of being "infinite".

The book is full of quotable quotes - google is littered with them! They're all about growing up, self-awareness, change, hope and love.
























Charlie's voice is stuck in my head - "things are good with me, and even when they're not, they will be soon enough. And I will believe the same about you."
His story is one that creeps up on you, grows on you and becomes a part of you.

I'm glad I read the book.
And I'm really looking forward to seeing the movie soon.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This book took me a while to get into.

The main reason for this procrastination was my serious dislike of both Amy and Nick Dunne right from the word go. They were selfish, thoughtless and oh so fake.

It took me a while to realise that just because I didn't like them didn't mean I couldn't enjoy watching them self-destruct page after page, chapter after chapter!!

This is a difficult book to review because there are a number of U-turns, OMG moments and red herrings that to review it properly would spoil it completely for anyone wanting to read it.

The basic plot is that Amy goes missing under very suspicious circumstances on their 5th wedding anniversary.

The story is then told in alternating chapters starting with Nick's current day voice detailing the investigation. Followed by chapters from Amy's diary charting the course of their early romance and eventual marriage.

Curiously I found Gillian's male characters more convincing than her female ones. My husband also remarked how well she inhabited the male psyche.

This book could be a good book club book. The two main characters would create a lot of heated discussion and everyone could compete over how soon they worked out some of the twists and turns! It's definitely a book you want to talk to someone about afterwards.

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

It was with much anticipation that I took Kate Morton's latest book on holiday with me recently.

I loved The Distant Hours and I was expecting another gothic mystery. The cover looked inviting and appealing in an historical fiction kind of way.

I started the book on the plane flight expecting to be whisked away into another Daphne du Maurier style story.

It didn't quite happen that way.

I thought I was tired and distracted.

So I persevered over the next two days...until I found myself skimming paragraphs, then whole pages and finally, I skimmed my way to the end to see if I had solved the 'secret'...and I had.

I was so disappointed I nearly cried.

The story was so slight, so easy, so uncomplicated I was bored. It felt lilke Morton was going through the motions, writing to a formula that was missing the 'x' factor!

You can read the first chapter for yourself here.

Maybe I was just having a bad day. But I ended up leaving my copy of the book in the B & B we stayed at - perhaps someone else will enjoy it!

(Wo)Man Booker 2012

I was delighted to wake up this morning to the news that Hilary Mantel was the winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies.

There has been a lot of media speculation over the past week or so with most commentors agreeing that they (the Man Booker Prize people) rarely give out a second Booker and certainly not one for a second book in a series.

I struggled with these observations.

Surely if the book is good enough then it shouldn't matter if it was a second win or a series. Surely the Man Booker Prize is awarded to the best book of the year!

Thanks to Bring Up the Bodies this was never going to be like this years Pulitzer nominations where they couldn't pick a clear cut winner.

I haven't read any of the short-list this year - the Classics challenge has diverted my reading attentions elsewhere! So I cannot tell you how the other five books compared to Bring Up the Bodies.

All I can relate is how much I enjoyed both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Mantel not only writes absorbing, engaging, intellectual stories, but she is also popular across a wide range of readers.

So bravo! Man Booker for picking the popular favourite.
Bravo! for picking someone who has already won a Booker.
Bravo! for selecting the first female two times Booker winner.
Bravo! for selecting the second book in a series.

My faith in the whole award malarcky has been restored...for now!

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

I find that stories set in South America often have a similar tone and style.

Over the years I've read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nicholas Shakespeare as well as many historical accounts about the coming of the Spanish.
There is something about this continent and it's writing that both attracts and repels me.

The drama, the pathos and the tragedy is writ large. The clash of culture, religion, ideas and class that somehow melds together to create the chaotic, sprawling, magical world that is South America in literature.

I love these themes, but I often feel detached and unmoved by the writers of South American literature that I've read so far.

These writers seem to be inspired by the mystical, magical and otherworldly nature of South America. Here more than elsewhere are stories of gods and power and hubris. 

 

Perhaps it's the harsh environment - soaring mountains, deadly jungles, flooding rivers, killer animals and extremes in temperature that inspire these artists.

This is not a country for gentle family dramas to unfold at a leisurely pace!

Wilder didnt actually visit Peru úntil 1941, which makes it remarkable how well Wilder conveys the feel of Peru. 

 

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a slim volume that discusses the big, fat, juicy themes of free will and the meaning of life!

 

There is a fatal disaster up front.

 

We know from the beginning that 5 people die for no good reason, with no purpose and unfairly. Brother Juniper, a witness, decides to research the five people killed to see he can resolve the question of whether or not "we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan."

 

The book then becomes a conversation with the church and god and self about the value of an individuals life in the larger scheme of things. How does one live with chaos? How does one create a purpose in life? What is the value of a good life if the good and the bad die equally?

The book is littered with beautiful prose and images. My favourite was "There was something in Lima that was wrapped up in yards of violet satin from which protruded a great dropsical head and two fat pearly hands; and that was its archbishop."  

The Bridge of San Luis Rey was thought-provoking and beautifully constructed, but I felt alienated the whole time I was reading it. I never really cared for any of the characters or what happened to them. There was a lot of talk of passion but I felt cold.

Until the end.

****This is now my official spoiler alert.
I'm about to quote the final sentence of the book because I loved it so much.
It moved me so much I reread it several times. 
It summed up the book perfectly with a lovely piece of imagery.
If you'd like to discover Wilder's gem on your own, then stop reading here.

"Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

The Bridge of San Luis Rey was published in 1927 and won the Pulitzer for 1928.

Adelaide by Kerryn Goldsworthy

I have a very good reason for being so quiet over the past ten days and it has nothing to do with the previous post.

I've been on holidays!

My husband and I had a 6 night child-free excursion to South Australia - specifically Adelaide and the Barossa Valley.

I'm a pretty organised kind of person. We both like to book early, research possible itineries online, check weather forecasts and ask lots of questions of family & friends (thank you Girl Booker).

I also like to read ahead - travel guides as well a books set in or written by people from the area we're going to.

For Adelaide the obvious choice was Kerryn Goldsworthy's city book.

I've been reading the Sydney city book by Delia Falconer for a while now, on and off (I save it up for trips into the city when I know I will be hanging around the Botanic Gardens - it seems only proper to read it whilst sitting in the heart of Sydney somehow!)

So I knew that I liked the concept of this particular series...a local author writing about the city they grew up in.

I started Adelaide over a month ago. Reading a chapter here and there, over lunch.
By the time we boarded the plane last week I only had two chapters to go.

It was the perfect choice.
Goldsworthy's personal reflections on Adelaide were littered with fascinating snippets on cultural events, historical information, socio-political comment and geography.

Looking east along North Terrace

As my husband and I strolled around the city streets I impressed him with the breadth and depth of my knowledge!!
I named statues, picked out restaurants and cafes and told him who lived where. Almost every street or square had a Goldsworthy anecdote I could retell - it felt like we were getting a private tour of Adelaide.

When we headed up to the Barossa I turned to something different for inspiration.

A new travel guide series called While Away Guides has been in store now for about a year. New titles are being published regularly. As luck would have it, the guides for the Barossa and the Adelaide Hills were due out the week before our trip.

The guides are pocket sized (or in my case, hand-bag sized) concertina snapshots of an area. The authors have obviously been to, researched and enjoyed each area that they publish (well the two that I've read so far). They pull out the best bits, the most interesting bits and provide helpful hints (like make sure you book ahead for this restaurant - FermentAsian - this winery does great reds, this one, great whites etc!)

We browsed in shops recommended by the guides, we ate meals in their recommended restaurants, drank coffee in their recommended cafes, visited wineries, farms, markets, lookouts and drove along roads all recommended by the good folk at the guide. They were spot on each time.

We will definitely use the While Away Guides again.

What a great gig - travelling the country - testing, tasting, trying out all the fun things to do then writing about it!

Perhaps there is a job opportunity more appealing than working in an Independent bookshop after all!!