Roman Fever by Edith Wharton

Hosting The Wharton Review has been a lovely experience this month.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading reviews and opinions from other bloggers, but the best part has been immersing myself in Wharton's world once again...something I haven't done for over a decade.

Even though some of my experiences with Wharton have been a little hit and miss this month, there is no denying her pulling power & her way with words.

Getting to know her via her memoirs and bio has given me a richer understanding of her works and her times. It has been fascinating and rewarding.

This past week I've been enjoying some of her short stories in Roman Fever, including the title story.

Set in Rome, Mrs Slade and Mrs Ansley, two old friends sit side by side overlooking the Forum, watching the sunset.

There is a tension sitting between them too.

As the sun goes down, personal revelations begin to slip out. It becomes a dangerous game of one-up-manship. The reader is forewarned about the ultimate revelation & even though we can see it coming, it still provides a delicious little shock when it's delivered.

The Other Two describes the tightrope walked by a newly married couple, as they both come to terms (socially and emotionally) with her twice divorced status.

The story is told from the third husband's point of view about how he manages to accommodate the two ex-husband's into their life. However, at the end, you are left feeling the wife's awkwardness as she once again tries to live her life by another man's rules.

Thank you to everyone who popped by to say hello and a special big thank you to all those who read and reviewed Edith Wharton books this month. I would like to give one more plug to Miss Bibliophile's link of The Mount - her photographic journey through Edith Wharton's home.

The link on the masterpost will be live for two more days to give you a chance to finish off final posts.

I hope to see you all again next May for The Wharton Review 2015.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I had grand plans to start and finish this extraordinary biography about Edith Wharton during May & The Wharton Review.

Grand plans indeed!

The book has 756 pages with another 66 pages of notes at the end. The font is the smallest font allowable to still be legible!

There are three sections spaced evenly throughout the book with four pages of photos each.
I am still 70 pages shy of the first group of photos!

I have been reading this book in conjunction with Wharton's autobiography A Backward Glance, which helped to make ABG a more palatable read.

Lee strikes the right balance between revealing Edith's story (in her own words) and making informed comments.

Many of Wharton's comments in ABG appear snobbish & snooty, but Lee sympathetically reveals the class based prejudices that Edith grew up with.
From the great aunt Joneses' (who it is claimed the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" was coined for) to

"no greater service can be rendered to children than in teaching them to know the best 

and to want it." (from The Decoration of Houses).

Lee also reveals many of the complex relationship details that Wharton carefully avoids in her memoirs including lovers & mental health issues.

All this in just the first 150 pgs! 

Anyone interested in getting to know Edith Wharton and the world she grew up in will delight in this majestic chunkster. It is thoroughly researched & conversational in tone.

I will leave the last word to Lee,

"This, then, is the story of an American citizen in France. 

She was a European on a grand scale who left her old home and made new ones for herself...

but who could never be done with the subject of American and Americans. 

Over and her over again, in a spirit of complex contradictions, 

she returned to the customs of her country, and to versions of herself 

as the daughter of her family and her country....

In almost every one of them (her books) there is a cultural comparison or conflict, 

a journey or a displacement, a sharp eye cast across national characteristics."

Armchair BEA - Authors I've Had the Pleasure to Meet.

Thanks to my job in an Indie bookstore, I have had the pleasure of meeting lots of authors over the past 6 years. Some visits are arranged by the publishers. But many of them are pop in's - just to say 'hi' and to sign a few books.

Local author Hannah Richell - author of The Shadow Year & Secret of the Tides. 

 Local author Jennifer Walsh has written 2 children's books set in our suburb called The Tunnels of Tarcoola and Crooked Leg Road. As Jenny Spence she has also written an adult crime novel, No Safe Place.

 Local author Steve Worland has written 2 crime novels, Velocity and Combustion.

Another local author (and actor), Steve Bisley wrote his memoirs last year, Stillways.

It was shortlisted for this years NSW Premier's Literary Awards Non-Fiction.

 Sydney based crime writer Michael Robotham popped in to sign copies of Watching You.

 Sophie Masson is an award winning children's author, with too many titles to list!

 Melbourne based author, Graeme Simsion (aka Rosie Project) has popped in a few times too :-)

 I was delighted to host a storytime with The Gruffalo a few years ago!

(sorry for the fuzzy pic - I asked one of the kids to take the photo.)

New Zealand writer, songwriter & musician Craig Smith entertained us with his hit song and books Wonky Donkey and Willbee the Bumblebee a couple of years ago.

 One of my favourite author events was last years launch of Josephine Moon's The Tea Chest.

It was a high tea on the 15th floor overlooking Sydney's Botanic Gardens.

Josephine was charming and wrote a lovely piece about booksellers on her blog (click link above).

There have been so many more wonderful author events, including a trip to the Opera House to hear Edmund de Waal discuss The Hare With the Amber Eyes. 

I am very fortunate, I know. 

Writing this post for Amrchair BEA has reminded me of how much I love my job!

A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton

I've been putting off writing this review for Wharton Review month, because I love Edith Wharton's books and I don't want to write something negative about her!

A Backward Glance is her autobiography first published in 1934 - only three years before her death on the 11th August, 1937.

Wharton's strong control of the story of her life is very evident. We only know what she wanted us to know.
Part of this is her (valid) concern for privacy, but I also think it is partly her ability or inability to stop telling stories.

Stories are at the centre of her life, according to this book.
Each event & each relationship is discussed only as it helps or hinders her on her (inevitable) journey to be a writer.

Wharton spends whole chapters listing friends and acquaintances in a gossipy manner.
She relates "delightful little tales" that they've told. Given the famous nature of some of these people and the times they all lived through together, these anecdotes should have been fascinating.
Instead, we found ourselves skating very close to name-dropping boredom!

One of the things I love about Wharton's stories is how they delve into the deepest motivations and complex feelings of her characters. However, her personal stories were, disappointingly, all surface fluff.
The nuanced insights & revelations that Wharton revels in in her novels, were sadly missing from her life story.

The only positive from this reading experience, is that I have been reading Hermione Lee's Biography at the same time.

Lee fills in all the gaps as well as showing the discrepancies between Wharton's 'glance' and the messier facts (as they've come to light in later documentation).

We all spend our lives writing and rewriting our stories; Wharton was no different in that regard. I had just hoped for more perception & penetration from such a wonderful novelist.

The cover of my book is the one at top right...perhaps if I'd had the book with the cover on the left, I might have enjoyed it more :-P

Armchair BEA 2014

I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I'm winding up The Wharton Review, I'm a third of the way through my latest Classics Club spin book & I'm waiting for Angela Carter Reading week next month.

Surely I can fit in Armchair BEA as well?

The Introductory post asks us to answer five (out of ten) questions as a way of getting to know each other.

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from? 

I'm a 40-something bookoholic from Sydney, Australia. 
I've been blogging for 4 years and 11 months. 
Up until 6 years ago I was a preschool teacher. I'd been teaching for 18 years...but I burnt out. I was at a loss about my next career choice. While I was dithering about, I picked up a temporary job at my local indie bookstore. 
Within 6 mnths I was managing the kids section of the shop and I'd started my own book blog as a way to assist teachers and parents in selecting appropriate books for their children.
However, I found this type of reviewing very constraining and ultimately, unsatisfying. It was taking the pleasure out of reading! 
As a result, my blog has now evolved into a more personal book journey.

2. What genre do you read the most? I love to read because ___________________ . 

I love historical fiction and the classics. I love to read for the pure joy and escapism. I also love to read for knowledge - self-knowledge as well as the bigger, wider world of knowledge about the meaning of life & man's inhumanity to man.

3. What was your favorite book read last year? What’s your favorite book so far this year? 

It's not easy to pick just one favourite for 2013 so my favourite children's book was The Cloud Hunters by Alex Shearer and my favourite adult book was 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Although 2013 was also the year I read my first Pym (the beginning of a lifelong love affair I suspect!)

2014 - children's favourite by far Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Australian author Karen Foxlee. The adult choice is a tie between The Railwayman's Wife by another Aussie author, Ashley Hay and the Anne Tyler classic, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

4. Share your favorite book or reading related quote. 

It may be a little obvious or predictable, but one of my all time favourite books is To Kill A Mockingbird and my favourite quote from it is...

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... 

Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

5. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 books would you bring? Why? What 3 non-book items would you bring? Why? 

3 book; 1 deserted island?

Persuasion by Jane Austen & To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee because they are my favourite rereads & 1001 Books You Must read Before You Die so that I could remember all the rest!

3 non-book related items?

First up - Mr Books (for all the obvious reasons!) 

Secondly, my pocket knife and third - a mixed pack of vegetable and herb seeds.

You can follow me on facebook, twitter and Instagram.

I'm looking forward to my first Armchair BEA - a great way to travel without jetlag!

Xingu by Edith Wharton

Well, isn't Xingu a wonderful little surprise package?

I first heard about this Wharton short story earlier in the year when there was a run of reviews for it out there in blogger land.

When I decided to host The Wharton Review this month, I had The Reef, A Backward Glance and the Hermione Lee bio on my pile and thought that was more than enough to tide me over.

Until yesterday that is.

Yesterday, Mr Books & I were out driving getting a few jobs done.
When we were done, we stopped at Bondi for a coffee break.

Gertrude and Alice, Bondi

We found a sweet little second bookshop/cafe up the hill from the beach called Gertrude and Alice.

Initially if felt too crowded and hemmed in for my tastes, but after relaxing with my peppermint tea, I began to explore...and to my delight I found Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton tucked away on the bottom shelf!

Serendipity! Without any fuss or bother, I suddenly had a hard copy of Xingu in my hands!

It seemed fitting somehow - A Backward Glance was discovered 4 years ago in Mr Pickwicks secondhand bookshop in Katoomba and The Reef was unearthed during our recent family holiday to Port Douglas in its secondhand bookshop, The Book Lounge.

Xingu is satire at its best, from start to finish.

Wharton brilliantly describes a very snobbish bookclub - "indomitable huntresses of erudition"- whose views on books and reading range from Mrs Plinth's

"Books were written to read; if one read them what more could be expected?"

to Mrs Ballinger's

"For my part, when there are so many books one has read, 

I wonder how any one can find time for those that are merely amusing."

Mrs Roby is the odd one out.
She reads for pleasure if she reads at all.
The bookclub is seriously thinking of letting her go in light of her "hopeless unfitness to be one of them."

The climax arrives with the celebrated authoress Osric Dane. She throws the entire group into disarray with her pompous, elusive, evasive attitude "There was an agonising pause, during which each member of the club secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others."

The day is saved by Mrs Roby and Xingu...or is it?

If you're looking for a good Edith Wharton starting point, Xingu is a quick, funny way into her world.

The Wharton I've discovered (from reading her bio and memoir this month) is a book & intellectual snob herself which makes this short piece written in 1911 ironic as well as satiric.

When I started researching this novella, I was delighted to see that it had been turned into a play that is regularly performed at The Mount - Edith Wharton's home.

(If any of my North American blogger friends have ever been to The Mount or seen a version of the play and would like to write a post about it this month, I would be eternally grateful.)

Later:
The lovely Miss Bibliophile has provided a link to her blog post. She visited The Mount in 2012. Please take the time to visit - her photos are wonderful.

Ode to Autumn - John Keats

We have been enjoying the most glorious of autumns in Sydney this year. 

The warm, sunny days, stunning sunsets and balmy nights have everyone extolling the virtues of autumn.

A trip to Mudgee last weekend reminded me of my favourite autumnal phrase from John Keats 

"season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." 

I was first introduced to this poem at a teaching conference many years ago.

It was autumn and the lecturers obvious passion for this poem shone through every word & phrase 

until I had goosebumps on my arms and the hairs on the back of my neck were shivering in pleasure.

I have never forgotten that day, or this poem or how it made me feel.

Ode To Autumn - John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, - 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday

and Flashback Friday.

Longlists and Shortlists Take 2

This is the week of the Sydney Writers' Festival.

Realistically though, the whole month of May can be taken up with major book events.
For anyone in Sydney or in the book trade this can be a big deal.

I'm in both!

Last week I had my book sellers cap on and attended two invitation only events.

One was hosted by Harlequin to meet two of their authors - Karen Brooks and Ryan Campbell.
It was an impressive event held at Otto's on Woolloomoloo Wharf. The wine flowed freely as the authors did their spiels. Afterwards we relaxed around the table to chat and laugh.
As for the food - exquisite!

The other event was hosted by Random House for booksellers to meet our former Prime Minister Julia Gillard!

Gillard has written a memoir about her time in politics and this was the first step into the limelight for 'My Story'.

I didn't always agree with her politics, & the Labor way of running a political party leaves a lot to be desired, but I went from being proud, to uneasy, to appalled by the vitriolic and extremely personal comments that were made about Gillard in the press and by media personalities.

It is in my mind again today with the whole Tony Abbott wink incident. The first problem is that this issue takes over the media cycle. It's being discussed and debated and most people think it's pretty off, but curiously the shock jocks seem to be very quiet about this and the opinion just seems to be "oh well some blokes like to wink, no harm in that love!"

(I know, I know, don't get me started!)

(This is not a political piece or a critique on the state of journalism in Australia or even a commentary on the etiquette of winking, this is a bookish blog...)

(arghhhhhhhhhhhhh - okay back on track....)

I also had the pleasure of attending Gillard's first outing last year, after she was toppled as leader, at the sell-out event held in the Opera House.
It was hosted by Anne Summers who wrote The Misogyny Factor.

At both events I was impressed by Gillard's warmth, intelligence & humour. She was gracious and down to earth.

It was a great start to the festival.

But this week I have caught a nasty flu bug and have failed to attend any of the wonderful events on offer.

I'm hoping to feel well enough to attend the Saturday sessions at Walsh Bay, but for now I thought I would update the Longlists and Shortlists post from last month.

The Stella Award this year went to Clare Wright for her non-fiction work The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

The Miles Franklin Shortlist now looks like this:

The NSW Premier's Literary Awards were announced on the 19th May.

The winners included:
Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction & Book of the Year)
Fiona McFarlane's The Night Guest (UTSGlenda Adams Award for New Writing)
Joint winners:
Michael Fullilove's Rendezvous with Destiny & Kristina Olsson's Boy, Lost (Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction)
Katrina Nannestad's The Girl Who Brought Mischief (Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature)
A J Bett's Zac and Mia (Ethel Turner Prize for Young Peoples Literature)
Ashley Hay's The Railwayman's Wife (People's Choice)  Yippee! One of my favourites this year :-)

The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) had their annual conference last weekend in Melbourne where they announced their Bookseller's Book of the Year - Hannah Kent's Burial Rites.

Christine Piper's After Darkness won this years The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award for unpublished manuscript.

The Victorian Premier's Literary Award for fiction went to Alex Miller's Coal Creek. While their People's Choice Award went to Hannah Kent's Burial Rites.

There is now also a 'reinvented' Australian Book Industry Award (whatever that means!) that will be announced tomorrow night.

I'll keep you posted!

Happy Sydney Writers' Festival!


PS. I have entered this post as a 'cheat's post' for the Armchair BEA. I hope you don't mind that it covers several topics as well as the topic of 'author meetings'.

Wildlife by Fiona Wood

I wanted to like Wildlife more than I did.

It was well written with familiar teen characters doing many unfamiliar things (i.e. godmothers who organise a photo shoot & billboard campaign for their 15 year old goddaughters, spending a whole term of Year 10 at a sport & rec camp).

Before starting this review I spent some time reading all the love for this book out there in blogger land by bloggers much younger than me.

I am not one of those adults who look back on my teens years as being some sort of golden age or the best years of my life.
In fact I would never ever want to repeat those years of insecurity & angst!
But I accept that we all have to go through this period of blundering blindly towards adulthood trying to make as few long term ghastly mistakes as possible.

And that's what Wood has recreated so perfectly with Wildlife (& why I probably struggled to like the book).

The manipulative best friend, the romantic & sexual experimentation, the fear of missing out, who am I, what's right & what's wrong and getting caught up in other peoples dramas & gossip.

It all came rushing back - the reasons why being a teenager once in a lifetime is more than enough!

This is a YA novel. It contains lots of chat about sex & foreplay as well as actual sex. It is realistic, awkward, embarrassing and confusing.

Wildlife has been shortlisted for this years CBCA and the NSW Premier's Literary Award.

The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn

One of the books I had to read (way back when) at school was Z For Zachariah by Robert O'Brien. I approached it reluctantly at the time, but ended up loving it.

I think it's when I realised that my love of reading was bigger than genre or topic. As long as the book was well written, engaging and had something to say, I could not only get into it, but come to appreciate it & love it as well.

The Sky So Torn also deals with a nuclear winter and post-apocalyptic world but this time set in the Blue Mountains of NSW. It also comments on the nature of science, politics and power.

The wall dividing the city to keep the refugees out and protect the supply of food and water for those on the inside was quite a telling moment in light of Australian politics right now.

Zorn references Conrad's Heart of Darkness a few times, a book on my Classics Club TBR list, so I can't be sure (yet) if there are parallels beyond the obvious ones of civilisation, morals & racism (all themes that she discusses with a light touch in The Sky So Torn).

Zorn leaves the ending wide open. Just like Ann in Z For Zachariah, we see the main protagonists heading off hopefully to find a band of survivors down south.

The Sky So Heavy has been shortlisted for the CBCA awards and Aurealis awards.
It deals with mature themes and contains some swearing.
Recommended for 15+ readers.

The Reef by Edith Wharton

I'm not sure how I'm going to review The Reef without revealing spoilers, so read ahead at your own peril.

Firstly, I'm not even sure if I enjoyed The Reef!

I read The Age of Innocence, House of Mirth, Custom of the County and Ethan Frome in my twenties. I remember loving them, especially TAOI. I loved the angst, the tortured social niceties, the scruples, the rumours, the temptations & foibles of an age long gone.

Somehow The Reef seemed to just miss all these marks.

I found it difficult to get into. I struggled to truly empathise or feel for any of the main characters. The main love affair felt contrived; the young lovers were obviously all wrong and the shocking affair that stained all the characters by the end simply felt ridiculous!

I also didn't get that sense of time & place in The Reef, like I did with her other novels that were based in New York & the US. The French countryside around Givré somehow felt Americanised, although maybe that was a deliberate comment on the American influence of Anna on her environment?

So why did I read it all the way through?

Hope - that I would find a connection or a way in.

Memory - of how much I had loved Wharton's previous works.

Faith - in the pulling power of Paris.

Trust - the main theme of the book and also my trust in Wharton.

Writing - it's impossible to describe how wonderfully Wharton writes. It's just that this time, I loved the writing, but felt that it missed heart and soul. Maybe I was too busy admiring the writing to properly engage with the story?

But the ending? What was with that ending?

I knew that Wharton liked to leave her endings open & ambiguous from old. I also knew that happy endings were not her forte.

But Jimmy Brance again at the end? The young man who was tied up with Darrow, Sophy and Lady Ulrica at Mrs Murrett's place before the novel begins.
How did he become attached to Sophy's sister at the end?
What is Wharton trying to say by reminding us of the early chapters where Darrow explains his experiences with different types of ladies?

I'm all confusion and a mess of unresolved story lines.

I'd love to know what you, dear reader, thinks of all this.
What did you make of The Reef?
Can you clear up my muddle?

Flashback Friday - The Gunslinger series

When I was a sweet young thing of 19, Mr Books first introduced me to Stephen King, by giving me It for Christmas (so romantic I know!)

But it was love at first sight on both accounts.
It was also a love that waxed and waned over the years on both accounts!

After nearly 15 years apart, Mr Books and I found each other again only to discover that our love for each other and SK had kept apace.
We had both lost faith with King during the 90's but we had also found our way back into the fold by the time we found each other again.

For me it was The Gunslinger series that brought me back.

I read the first two (The Gunslinger(1982) and The Drawing of the Three(1987) in the late 80's & The Wastelands(1991) a couple of years later.
I adored them. They were rough, they were cruel, they were dark and gritty, but they were also romantic and spell-binding.

Roland is the gunslinger - a mysterious man - who has been chasing an even more mysterious dark man through time and worlds for a very long time. He is joined by a young boy, Jake in his quest and later Eddie and Susannah join the ka-tet.
All are reluctant and unwitting participants in the quest. But as they go along a bond forms and the quest takes on different meanings for all of them (including me the reader).

King liked to use lots of references from his other novels through out these books. Sometimes it was characters or places that popped up and sometimes it was shared events & experiences. Shared or parallel worlds also occurred to keep the King devotee really on their toes!

My three books are some of the original covers which include gorgeous colour plates throughout.
They were reread several times with no hope of ever seeing the end of the quest. King kept publishing other books; I thought the Gunslinger had been forgotten by everyone but me.

Imagine my delight when I discovered a fourth book in my local bookshop in the year 2000! My only disappointment was the non-matching covers and the fact that Wizards and Glass (1997) didn't actually move the story of the quest forward. Instead , King spent an entire book on Roland's back story.

The next wait was not so long, and was well rewarded.
In a flurry of activity and purpose King published Wolves of Calla (2003), Song of Susannah (2004) and The Dark Tower (on his birthday 21 Sept 2004) within 12 months of each other.

The quest was over (or was it?), Stephen King made an appearance in his own book (yes, really!) and a companion book Through the Keyhole was released in 2012.

I have read since, that King revised the original Gunslinger in 2003. I'm not sure if I want to read the new version or not. I'm not sure I even have the stamina to reread the whole series again.

But I did love this fantasy world of quests and journeys.
It still lives fresh in my mind to this day.
Roland and Flagg are part of my mythology now; a shared experience with Mr Books (who shares a birth date with Mr King - really!)

When Mr Books and I combined libraries, our King shelf proudly declared that we two, were indeed, two of the devotee's.
Plenty more Flashback Friday's in that pile!

Wondrous Words Wednesday

I'm reading The Reef by Edith Wharton as part of my Wharton Review month.

I've just passed the half way mark and so far, Edith has thrown up a few curly words that I thought I would share on Wondrous Words Wednesday.

Today I have used The Oxford online dictionary for my definitions.


"but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations."

1. The habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance:
eg. 'the words have a similar range of collocation'

• 1.1 A pair of words that are habitually juxtaposed:‘strong tea’ and ‘heavy drinker’ are typical English collocations

2. The action of placing things side by side or in position:
eg. 'the collocation of the two pieces'

"From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a level drive, also shaded by limes..."

1. A shield or emblem bearing a coat of arms.
2. escutcheon plate A flat piece of metal for protection and often ornamentation, around a keyhole, door handle, or light switch.


"There's the whole pusillanimous truth of it!"

Showing a lack of courage or determination; timid.


"Through the crepuscular whiteness the trees hung in blotted masses."

• 1Resembling or relating to twilight.
• 1.1Zoology (Of an animal) appearing or active in twilight.

"Arguments, expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away from him..."

VERB

• 1 Make (a disease or its symptoms) less severe without removing the cause:treatment works by palliating symptoms pharmaceutical drugs palliate, they do not cure
• 
  
• 2Disguise the seriousness of (an offence):there is no way to excuse or palliate his dirty deed
• 2.1Allay or moderate (fears or suspicions):this eliminated, or at least palliated, suspicions aroused by German unity

Palliation

NOUN

"in the ladylike and lachrymal sense of the term"

• formal or • literary Connected with weeping or tears:that hysterical, then lachrymal, then guilt-ridden hour
This ended up being a lengthier post than first anticipated, but I think that crepuscular could become my new favourite word as I sit on my front verandah watching the sunsets.

Stepmother Love edited by Sally Collins

This weekend in Australia was Mother's Day.

I grew up in a family where Mother's Day was not actively encouraged.

My mother often expressed concern about the Americanisation of our culture as we were growing up. She also believed that one shouldn't need a day of the year to be told to tell your mother that you love her (the irony being that my family never said 'I love you' at any time!)

As we got older, we all deplored the commercialisation of the day and actively avoided buying into it. During our adult years, Mother's Day evolved into a phone call if we lived away or a luncheon if we were visiting.

It took a lot of time, maturity and emotional work in my 20's and 30's to see how my parents showed their love for us in lots of practical ways every day, year after year...because as a child, all I ever wanted was for someone to say a smultzy, American-style 'I love you'.

When my first serious boyfriend told me he loved me at the age of 16, I was in danger of laying down my life for him and doing anything he wanted, simply to hear those words again, again and again. Those three little words were incredibly powerful; they made me feel so good about myself; they made me feel safe and secure; they made me feel special. For the first time I felt truly validated.

Allowing myself to love and to be loved has been the main work of my adult life. Learning how to express this love has been my on-going thesis.

When I became a stepmother I didn't initially feel that Mother's Day was for me.
I was content if my efforts to make our new family a happy one were acknowledged, but I was not the boys' mother. I didn't see myself as trying to replace her or transplant her place in their lives.
Thanks to my teaching background and a growing brood of nieces and nephews, I saw my role as more of a live-in aunty with a few handy behaviour management techniques under my belt!

Over time, our roles and relationships have evolved a lot. I do a mother's work. I wash, I clean, I feed. I keep the peace, I listen, I nag. I cheer from the sidelines, applaud at school assemblies & welcome their friends into our home. I look after them when they're sick, I hold them when they're hurt. I spend hours and hours discussing their futures, their personalities, their behaviours with their father. And I love and protect them with a fierceness I didn't know was possible 9 years ago.

We're now a typical family unit with complex, nuanced, interwoven threads of feelings, experiences & beliefs. We have a shared history, family jokes & personal grievances. We've created family traditions & rituals (including our own version of Mother's Day appreciation). Sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but most of the time, we sail along pretty smoothly.

What has got me thinking about all these issues?

Over the weekend I started reading Stepmother Love by Sally Collins.

The cover says it all. Ten stories about women living similar but different lives to me.
It has been validating to read of common fears and frustrations particular to being a step-parent.

However I gradually realised with each story that Stepmother Love was highlighting something that I already knew but didn't know that I knew!

Stepfamilies & blended families are just like any other family.
Some are good; some are bad.
But most families simply muddle along somewhere in the middle - doing the best they can - with love in their hearts & good intentions in mind.

Sally also has a website and blog devoted to being a stepmother.