J is for Elizabeth Jolley

Monica Elizabeth Knight was born in Birmingham, England on the 4th June 1923.
She was privately tutored at home until age 11, before being sent to a Quaker school in Banbury for her highschool years. By all accounts, her childhood was not a particularly happy one.

She then trained as an orthopaedic nurse in London. It was here that she met and fell in love with one of her patients - Leonard Jolley (1914 -1994) who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. When Leonard was transferred to Birmingham as a librarian, Monica followed. Unfortunately he was already married to Joyce.

In a bizarre romantic triangle, both women fell pregnant to Leonard at the same time. Elizabeth even moved in with Leonard & Joyce for a while. 
Her daughter, Sarah was born in 1946, 5 weeks before Joyce's daughter, Susan. 
Joyce was told that Elizabeth's daughter was fathered by a doctor dying of TB.

In 1950 Leonard left Joyce & secretly married Elizabeth. They had another two children, Richard and Ruth.

In 1959 they emigrated to Australia with their three children. They settled in Claremont, Perth where Leonard was appointed chief librarian at the University of Western Australia.

Curiously Leonard told his English family that he had emigrated with Joyce & Susan. Elizabeth helped maintain the ruse by writing to the family as Joyce!

Elizabeth began writing in early twenties, but had nothing published until 1976.

In the late 70's she began teaching at Curtin University (or WA Institute of Technology as it was called then). Her most well-known student was Tim Winton.

Elizabeth Jolley (courtesy SMH)

Elizabeth developed dementia in 2000 & died in 2007.

Andrew Reimer:  "Jolley could assume any one of several personas – the little old lady, the Central European intellectual, the nurse, the orchardist, the humble wife, the university teacher, the door-to-door salesperson – at the drop of a hat, usually choosing one that would disconcert her listeners, but hold them in fascination as well."

Susan Swingler:  "It was one lie leading to another, you do one thing to deceive and then how do you undo it. It snowballs and accumulates until it gets so big that you can't stop it."

Drusilla Modjeska:  "Her novels are so deftly entangled with the material of her life that she has both laid out the terrain and erected a very effective shield."

Romona Koval:  "She wrote about lesbians and surrogate mothers, murder and rape, incest and adultery. Her characters were nurses and loners and cleaning ladies. She was drawn to stories of family misunderstandings."

Novels

• Palomino (1980)
• The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981)
• Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1983)
• Mr Scobie's Riddle (1983)                     Winner Age Book of the Year
• Milk and Honey (1984)                Winner NSW Premier’s Literary Award (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction)
• Foxybaby (1985)
• The Well (1986)                      Winner of the Miles Franklin Award
• The Sugar Mother (1988)
• My Father's Moon (1989)                   Winner Age Book of the Year
• Cabin Fever (1990)
• The Georges' Wife (1993)                    Winner Age Book of the Year
• The Orchard Thieves (1995)
• Lovesong (1997)
• An Accommodating Spouse (1999)



Portrait of Elizabeth Jolley by Peter Kendall 1986

• An Innocent Gentleman (2001)

Short stories and plays

• Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976)
• The Well-Bred Thief (1977)
• The Travelling Entertainer and Other Stories (1979)
• Woman in a Lampshade (1983)
• Off the Air: Nine Plays for Radio (1995)
• Fellow Passengers: Collected Stories of Elizabeth Jolley (1997)

Non-fiction

• Central Mischief: Elizabeth Jolley on Writing, Her Past and Herself (1992)
• Diary of a Weekend Farmer (1993)
• Learning to Dance: Elizabeth Jolley: Her Life and Work (2006)

Biographies

Doing LIfe by Brian Dibble (2008) 
The House of Fiction by Susan Swingler (2012)

Order of Australia for Services to the Arts (1988)
Elizabeth was made a Professor of Creative Writing at Curtin University in 1998.

My one and only Jolley novel is The Orchard Thieves.

I fell in love with the cover and impulse bought it based on the promise of a story about a family of sisters (I'm one of four sisters).

But I struggled to get into it. I struggled to connect to any of the characters & I failed to fall into Jolley's writing style.

But I was only in my twenties.

A few years ago I decided to reread a few of those pivotal, amazing, life changing books from my 20's. They all fell flat. They no longer said anything to my 30-something self.

And that's okay. Some books are meant to be read and loved by 20-something's only.

I also believe that there are some books and some authors that need to be read when you are older and more experienced (in a literary sense as well as a life sense).
When I read The Orchard Thieves I knew it was being wasted on my 20-something self.

Writing this post has made me very curious about Jolley's very secretive life. I suspect a Jolley bio is on my 40-something horizon!

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday.

I is for If She Rings by Dorothy Porter

Christmas, New Year and our summer holidays got the better of me.

I missed a couple of Alphabe-Thursday posts in my Aussie Author Challenge *tsk tsk!

And now we're up to the letter I...eek!
To make this letter work for me I've had to stretch my rules a little to find an Australian author that I've actually read.

Therefore this week I give you Australian poet Dorothy Porter and her poem, If She Rings.

Dorothy Porter was born in 26th March 1954 in Sydney. Her parents were Jean & Chester Porter. Chester was the QC who defended Lindy Chamberlain.

She attended Sydney Uni, graduating in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts (English & History). One of her teachers was poet, writer & essayist David Malouf.

In 1993 she moved to Melbourne to be with her partner, writer Andrea Goldsmith. They shared a cat called Wystan, named after WH Auden.

In different articles and interviews over the years, Porter cited Emily Dickinson, Basho, Raymond Chandler & Dorothy Parker as important influences on her work.
According to friends, 'lucid' and 'feral' were her two favourite words.

Dorothy Porter: " Music has been the key for me since I was a teenager ... I wanted to tap into that dark potency of rock'n'roll, and I still write to music every day."

 "The poetry scene in Australia is small, querulous, and has always been distinctly unglamorous. The advantage I had early on was that I studied acting, and I was a very good performer at a time when poetry was basically mumbled. I could dramatise and that got me noticed."

"I'm longing for poetry that just smacks me across the head."

Andrea Goldsmith:  "Her work is romantic without being sentimental; it’s lyrical, insightful and emotionally resonant. And it is sharply contemporary in its honesty, its imagery, its unwavering grasp of the jugular. Most of all it illuminates love, which is, after all, the most powerful of human experiences."

David Malouf:  "She had such a vitality and a grasp of life, I think you see that in the way she made her poetry work, in very spare tight verse ... she had enormous energy."

Tim Finn:  "She was a very real person, with no bullshit, and this raw honesty. You would want to meet her on that level. Her work was streetwise and sensuous. She could write with heightened language, and never be waffly or precious, and there was always the unexpected image. She was a really great writer."

Michael Brennan:  "Porter is a defiant voice against the obscure and effete in poetry, unafraid to see poetry as a popular art form in the twentieth century, a feast open to all, immersed in the sweat, blood and tears of contemporary life, its hum-drum realities and headlong rush."

Porter died of breast cancer on the 10th December 2008. At the time of her death, she was working with Tim Finn on a rock opera - I would have loved to have seen (and heard) that!

Porter was one of the few Australian poets fortunate enough to actually make a living from her work.

Poetry collections

• Little Hoodlum (1975)
• Bison (1979)
• The Night Parrot (1984)
• Driving too Fast (1989)
• Crete (1996)
• Other Worlds: Poems 1997–2001 (2001)

  

  Dorothy Porter by Rick Amor (2001-2002)

• Poems January–August 2004 (2004)
• The Bee Hut (2009, Posthumous)
• "Love Poems" (2010, Posthumous)
• The Best 100 Poems of Dorothy Porter (2013)

Libretti (with composer Jonathan Mills)

• The Ghost Wife (2000)
• The Eternity Man (2005)

Verse novels

• Akhenaten (1992)
• The Monkey's Mask (1994)
• What a Piece of Work (1999)          shortlisted for the Miles Franklin
• Wild Surmise (2002)          shortlisted for the Miles Franklin      
• El Dorado (2007)            shortlisted for the inaugural Prime Ministers Award

Fiction for young adults

• Rookwood (1991)
• The Witch Number (1993)

A film of The Monkey Mask starring Susie Porter & Kelly McGillis was released in 2001 (thank you wikipedia).

I have read The Bee Hut and The Best 100 Poems (compiled after her death).
It has been wonderful to have an excuse to browse through them again for this post.
Reading Porter's poems is a very sensual, earthy and heart-wrenching experience. Repeat visits are a must.

I don't find it easy to review a book of poetry as I never read the poems in one sitting or in order. I pull out the pieces that speak to my mood of the moment. I return to favourites, I circle verses, underline words & asterix whole sections.
I love spotting a heavily marked poem that obviously meant a lot to me on one reading, but now I go 'meh'!
Rereading my books of poetry would be a quick, easy way to view my emotional growth & life journey (if only I dated my scribblings!)

But for now I will leave you with a few of Porter's 'I' poems.

If She Rings (from The Best 100 Poems)

she said

she'd ring in a week

two weeks ago

we were walking along

Balmoral Beach

we were almost

holding hands

we were watching

seagulls

our salty lips

her nervy hand

skipping chips

through the sand

she said

she was marking essays

she said

she'd ring in a week

two weeks ago

this morning

I'm not witing by the phone

this morning

I'm packing my bags

if she rings in an hour

I'll be on the train

if she rings later

I'll be on the plane

if she rings tonight

I'll be in Brisbane

at least a hundred beaches

away.

IV: I Touch  (Poems from the Verse Novel El Dorado)

 

I touch her lovely wild

face.

I've been here before.

The white beach.

The glistening trees.

The staring savages

on the shore.

Imagination  (from The Bee Hut)

Sung with hypnotising allure by a counter-tenor

dressed in very dirty black silk pyjamas

I'm your real world

I'm your bottomless pool

of sucking

black mud

trust me 

trust me

I'm so soft and warm

and dirty

trust me

trust me

you can sink

so sweet and safely

right to the calling

and calling

bottomless

of me

I prmoise

I'll make the journey 

worth you while

trust me

trust me

the dark and fabulous

things

you'll learn and know

from the dissolving roots

of your hair

to the soft slow burn

of your lost lost

toes

the dark and fabulous

things

I'll show

will never leave you

will never let

you go

I'm your real world

your bottomless pool

of black and sucking

mud

I'll seep right

through you

I'll change forever

your bones, soul

and blood

I'm your real world

trust me

trust me

I'm so soft and warm

and dirty

trust me

trust me

take my journey

take the plunge

you can sink

you can sink

so sweet and safely

right to the calling

and calling 

bottomless

of me.

I've always loved how Porter's poems stir & disturb my conservative emotions, but typing up these three poems, one by one, word by word, has been extraordinary. 

Her words got right under my skin, they sunk in, black & sucking, soft and warm until they felt a part of me.I suddenly felt lucid...and well, a little feral!

How glorious that someone else's words can have such an immediate & physical effect.

I really must read one of her verse novels soon.

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday as well as being my very first post for the AWW2015 challenge.

F is for Stella Miles Franklin

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is named after Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin who was born on the 14th October 1879 on Talbingo station in southern NSW.

Franklin's family moved a little to the east to Brindabella Station when she was a child.

She was the eldest daughter of two Australian born parents (which is noteworthy for the time as most of the population were new immigrants). In fact, one of Franklin's great-great grandfathers was a convict on the First Fleet.

Franklin's most famous novel, My Brilliant Career, is a coming of age story about a feisty, rural, feminist Sybylla. Franklin wrote this during her teenage years loosely based on her own life.

It was published in 1901.

Many of Franklin's family & friends were upset by the publication of the book as they felt that she was parodying them in the book.

In 1902 Franklin's family moved to a property near Penrith as they struggled with downward mobilty & declining fortunes.

In 1906, Franklin moved to the US and worked as a secretary for a number of years before suffering ill health & spending time in a sanatorium.

In 1915 she travelled to England, then Europe, engaging in war work as a hospital cook.

Back in London after the war, Franklin worked for the National Housing and Town Planning Association. In 1924 she organised the women's international housing convention.

In 1931, Franklin's father died and she returned to live in Australia.

Franklin struggled to live up to the success of her first novel. She published several books under other names to avoid recognition and comparison, but sadly, poor reviews dogged her later years.

Franklin died on the 19th September, 1954 in Sydney.

Her will set up an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases".

Novels

My Brilliant Career (1901)
Some Everyday Folk and Dawn (1909)
Old Blastus of Bandicoot (1931)
Bring the Monkey (1933)
All That Swagger (1936)
Pioneers on Parade (1939) – with Dymphna Cusack
My Career Goes Bung (1946)
On Dearborn Street (1981)
Under the pseudonym of "Brent of Bin Bin"
Up the Country (1928)
Ten Creeks Run (1930)
Back to Bool Bool (1931)
Prelude to Waking (1950)
Cockatoos (1955)
Gentleman at Gyang Gyang (1956)

Non-fiction

Joseph Furphy: The Legend of a Man and His Book (1944)
Laughter, Not for a Cage (1956)
Childhood at Brindabella (1963)

Biographies

Miles Franklin in America: Her (Unknown) Brilliant Career by Verna Coleman (1981)

Miles Franklin Her Brilliant Career by Colin Roderick (1982)

Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe (2008)

Other Stuff

• The Canberra suburb, Franklin is named in her honour. 

• A movie was of My Brilliant Career in 1979 directed by Gillian Armstriong & starring Judy Davis. 

• The new Stella Prize celebrating Australian women's writing is also named in her honour. 

It has been many years since I read My Brilliant Career or watched the movie.

I confess that both annoyed me at the time. The teenage Stella came across as a whining, demanding, OTT brat.

Sadly, I recall nothing about the quality of the writing or the other details of the book...so we all know what that means! It's time for a reread!


Have you read anything by or about Stella Miles Franklin?

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday & Authors by Alphabet.

E is for Sumner Locke Elliott

Sumner Locke Elliott was born on the 17th October 1917 in Sydney and died on the 24th June 1991 in New York. 

Elliott’s parents were Helena Sumner Locke and the freelance journalist Henry Logan Elliott. 

His mother died of eclampsia one day after his birth. Elliott was raised by his aunts, who engaged in a fierce custody battle over him, which was later fictionalized in Elliott's autobiographical novel, Careful, He Might Hear You.  

Elliott wrote his first play when he was twelve & joined the Sydney Independent Theatre whilst still at school.

In 1942 Elliott was drafted into the Australian Army, but instead of being posted overseas, he worked as a clerk in Australia. He used these experiences as the inspiration for his controversial play, Rusty Bugles. The play toured throughout Australia in 1948-49 and achieved the notoriety of being closed down for obscenity by the Chief Secretary's Office.

Elliott moved to the United States in 1948. His first broadway play Buy Me Blue Ribbons, had a short run in 1951.

He continued to write live television dramas, writing more than 30 original plays and numerous adaptations for such shows as Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One and Playhouse 90.

In 1955, he obtained United States citizenship and did not return to Australia until 1974. It was only in later life that Elliott openly declared his homosexuality by living with his lover Whitfield Cook in New Hampshire.

Elliott's best known novel, Careful, He Might Hear You, won the 1963 Miles Franklin Award and was turned into a film in 1983 starring Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin & Nicholas Gledhill.

He won the Patrick White Literary Award in 1977.

Novels

• Careful, He Might Hear You (1963)
• Some Doves and Pythons (1966)
• Eden's Lost (1969)
• The Man Who Got Away (1972)
• Going (1975)
• Water Under the Bridge (1977)
• Rusty Bugles (1980)
• Signs of Life (1981)
• About Tilly Beamis (1985)
• Waiting for Childhood (1987)
• Fairyland (1990)

Short stories

• Radio Days (1993)

For my author posts I'm trying to only highlight authors that I have read, but the letter E was one of the tricky ones!
I have not read any of Elliott's works, but I have seen the movie of Careful, He Might Hear You many years ago. The main thing I remember from it was how sad I felt for the little orphaned boy. I'm glad he grew up to be a successful writer even if he wasn't able to completely lay to rest all his childhood demons.

Sharon Clarke wrote the only biography about Elliott called Sumner Locke Elliott: Writing Life in 1996.

"I think autobiography happens automatically for me. Memory is the strongest power I have, it's my lifeline to the truth."

 This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday & Authors by Alphabet.

D is for Robert Dessaix

Robert Dessaix was born in Sydney on 17^th February 1944.

He was soon adopted & given the name Robert Jones. 

Young Robert was educated at North Sydney Boys High School and the Australian National University. He then studied at Moscow State University during the early 1970s, and taught Russian Studies at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales from 1972 to 1984.

After attaining his PhD, he changed his named back to his biological name, Robert Dessaix.

From 1985 to 1995 Dessaix presented the ABC program Books and Writing - which is where I first came across him.

I then read (& loved) Night Letters when it came out.
I devoured his story in Secrets (as well as Modjeska’s & Lohrey’s – oh, especially Lohrey’s one on singing – that was magic & hit just the right chord in my life at the time! Pun intended.)

I also read (And So Forth) when it came out. I found his life story fascinating. I also felt a deep personal response to his intellectualism at a time when I was feeling intellectually isolated .

Every time a new book came out, I thought, I must read that - that sounds like my kind of fascinating - even the Russian one (which seemed to put some people off). But something always got in the way.

As I'm writing this post, I'm again reminded of how much I learnt from his earlier stories and non-fiction & how I felt so connected to what he had to say about life & living. I wonder anew at why I haven't read absolutely everything he ever wrote!

WH Chong on Crickey.com.au talks about his encounter with Dessaix live, that reflects how I feel about his writing...

"The other night at the Wheeler Centre, where I seemed to have camped out lately, we saw the celebrated writer Robert Dessaix take the stage for one of his brilliantly sly and penetrating performances. 

By penetrating I mean how he seems to cut into the moment — loosing the sap? the blood? — and make it tremendously vivid, so that we all felt very awake and present. 

And when I say performance, he is performing the persona he’s been refining for a long time — ‘Robert Dessaix’ is a talker, full of dramatic and witty intonations, dry and disconcertingly direct. Bluntness somehow fused with charm. And that low voice with its rainbow glimmerings of fugitive accents."

Novels

Robert Dessaix 1998 by Robert Hannaford
(my photo from the National Potrait Gallery earlier in the year).

• Night Letters: A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy Edited and Annotated by Igor Miazmov (1996)
• Secrets (with Drusilla Modjeska and Amanda Lohrey, 1997)
• Corfu (2001)

Autobiography

• A Mother's Disgrace (1994)
• Arabesques : A Tale of Double Lives (2008)

Non-fiction

• (And So Forth) (1998)
• Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev (2004)
• As I Was Saying: a Collection of Musings (2012)
• What Days Are For (2014)

Edited

• Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: An Anthology (1993)
• Picador New Writing (1993)
• Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia (1998)
• The Best Australian Essays 2004 (2004)
• The Best Australian Essays 2005 (2005)

 “...'undertow'. It describes (...) how underneath our own everyday lives - the shopping and squabbles and weeding and trips to the vet - there's a sense of being dragged slowly off, not against our will but regardless of it. And fighting the undertow, as children are quick to learn, is not usually the best way of getting back to the beach. Floating along with it, on the other hand, can be fatal.

It's really the struggle, the argument with oneself, that interests...”
  Robert Dessaix, Picador New Writing 

Dessaix now lives in Tasmania with his long time partner (& fellow author) Peter Timms. 

I found this lovely article in last month's Mercury featuring Robert & his latest book, What Days Are For. 

I hope (plan!) to read more of Dessaix's work sooner rather than later. This post has reminded of a long lost friend that I want to get back in touch with again.

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday & Authors by Alphabet.

C is for Nancy Cato

Nancy Fotherington Cato was born 11^th March 1917 in Glen Osmond, SA.

She studied English Literature at the University of Adelaide, then went onto work as a journalist and art critic.

She married Eldred De Bracton Norman in 1941 - they had two sons & one daughter.

They moved to Noosa in Qld where Cato became heavily involved in environmental and conservation issues. 

In 1984 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to Literature & the environment.  In 1991 Cato received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Queensland.

Cato died on the 3^rd July 2000 

She now has a Park and restaurant in Noosa named after her as well as a street in the new Canberra suburb of Franklin.

Cato is most well-known for her All the Rivers Run trilogy. 

It took her a decade to write but quickly became a bestseller. It was the success of this story in the US market that allowed Cato to give up journalism to focus on writing & conservation issues. 

Since the 1970’s the trilogy has usually been published as one book. It was made into a TV mini-series in 1983 starring Sigrid Thornton & John Waters, and of course, the Murray River!

This was how I was introduced to Nancy Cato and Philadelphia Gordon. Cato specialised in creating strong, gutsy outback women; as a young teen, I revelled in these types of romantic, heroic female stories. Mum also obviously loved this series because she bought the book soon after. We both devoured it.

Three years later we had our first family holiday to Victoria. 

We didn’t go to Melbourne or travel the Great Ocean Road or go to the snowfields...no! we went to Echuca to travel on a paddle steamer just like in All the Rivers Run!

A few years later I read Brown Sugar, but didn’t really enjoy it – my reading tastes had moved on by then. Although I did learn a lot about the Kanaka slave labourers used in the cane fields of Qld and Northern NSW in the late 1800’s.

Novels and short stories

• All the Rivers Run (1958)
• Time, Flow Softly : a novel of the River Murray (1959)
• Green Grows the Vine (1960)
• But Still The Stream: a novel of the Murray River (1962)
• The Sea Ants: and Other Stories (1964)
• North-West by South (1965)
• Brown Sugar (1974)
• Queen Trucanini (1976) (with Vivienne Rae Ellis)
• Nin and the Scribblies (1976)
• Forefathers (1983)
• The Lady Lost in Time (1986)
• A Distant Island (1988)
• The Heart of the Continent (1989)
• Marigold (1992)

Poetry

• The Darkened Window (1950)
• The Dancing Bough (1957)

Plays

• "Travellers Through the Night" in Noosa One-act Winners. Volume 2 (1994)

Non-fiction

• Mister Maloga : Daniel Matthews and his Mission, Murray River, 1864–1902 (1976)
• The Noosa Story: A Study in Unplanned Development (1979). Second edition: 1982. Third edition: 1989
• River's End (1989) with Leslie McLeay

Edited

• Jindyworobak Anthology 1950

“Cato was a good journalist, and her novels are strong on historical and environmental detail, 

less so on characterisations and narrative tension.” 

Susan Sheridan (2013)

Did you also get sucked into river life & want to travel along the Murray River thanks to All the Rivers Run? 

Have you had a favourite author/genre from your late teens that didn't survive into your adult reading years?

This post is part of Alphabe-Thursday with Jenny.

B is for James Bradley

Aussie Author Challenge #2

This week we visit a contemporary Australian writer, poet & critic.

James Bradley

Born 15th May 1967 in Adelaide, SA.

Bradley stuudied at the University of Adelaide where he studied law & philosophy.

He now lives in Sydney with his partner, the novelist Mardi McConnochie, and daughters, Annabelle and Lila.

Novels

• Wrack (1997)  - Shortlisted for Miles Franklin Award & the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book.
• The Deep Field (1999)
  
• The Resurrectionist (2006)
  

Poetry

• Paper Nautilus (1994) 

Editor

• Blur: Stories by Young Australian Writers (1996)
• The Penguin Book of the Ocean (2010)

James Bradley by Bronwyn Rennex

I thoroughly enjoyed Wrack & to a lesser degree The Deep Field.

Both books deal with time, loss & self-discovery.

Wrack delved into the historical myths & truths surrounding the 'discovery' of Australia. Set on the beautiful south coast of NSW & moving between several time periods, I found this book absorbing & moving. Over a decade later I can still bring to mind the beach shack & the wild coastal storms that featured strongly in the story.

Wrack has now been included as one of the possible texts for the new HSC Discovery module.

  "In the end, nothing is true, save that which we feel. Nothing we remember, nothing we believe, all are just stories and echoes. The past is a shifting sea where nothing is certain, and where the things we seek cannot be found, a place where we seek lands that rise from the mist into the glare of the sun and then vanish again, as quickly as they arrived. A shifting sea with nothing at its centre, except illusions, and loss." (Wrack)

The Deep Field was set in the future - a future only a decade on from the publication date (I will have to reread this to see how the futuristic stuff holds up).
Sadly the only thing I remember about this book is the ammonites.

Historical stories will always grab my attention more that science fiction, I guess.

Blur was a curious mix of stories from new young writers. I wanted to enjoy it more than I actually did.

I have also been eyeing off The Penguin Book of Ocean for years.

"James Bradley presents a dazzling selection of writing exploring this grandest of obsessions, combining fact and fiction, classical and contemporary, to create a collection like no other.

From Rachel Carson's luminous account of our planet's birth to the story of the wreck that inspired Moby-Dick, from Ernest Shackleton's harrowing account of his escape from Antarctica by open boat to Tim Winton's award-winning dissection of the dark side of surfing, The Penguin Book of the Ocean is a hymn to the mystery, beauty and majesty of the ocean, and to the poets and explorers it has inspired."

If you'd like to read about Bradley & his novel Resurrectionist - check out the PanMacmillan page here.

His personal blog is called City of Tongues where he talks about, amongst other things, his latest novel, Clade, to be published in January 2015.

Bradley on winning the Pacall Prize for Australia's best critic 2012.

"As for principles, someone once said that the only bad writing is dishonest writing, and I tend to agree. The best thing you can do is write from the heart and talk about how you felt and what you think. Part of that is about being honest about what you thought, but it's also about acknowledging your own prejudices and being prepared to acknowledge critical judgements are always provisional."

Have you read anything by Bradley? One of his novels, or maybe one one of his newpaper articles?
Do you have a favourite author that writes about the beach?

This post is also part of Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday meme.

A is for Thea Astley

Suzie @ Suz's Space recently put out the challenge for Australian book bloggers to follow her example with Authors by Alphabet.
Her focus is science fiction writers.
Susan @ Reading Upside Down has chosen Australian children's authors.

And I decided to do Australian (adult) authors.

However two weeks have now gone by & I have failed to get started.
Mostly because I got bogged down by what I wanted to do. But also in how I was going to fit another challenge into my AusReading Month schedule AND my State by State project (see tab above).

It took a visit to Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday meme (that I join in occasionally) to finally get me motivated.
I saw that she was, for the ninth time, coming to the end of the alphabet. And she has, despite ill health, decided to continue with Alpabe-Thursday for the tenth time.

I hope that Jenny and friends wont mind me hijacking their favourite meme with my own Aussie Author Challenge.

I plan to alternate between male & female authors & I will endeavour to choose authors that I have read so that I can add a personal touch to the bio's.

So let's begin at the very beginning...

Thea Astley

Born August 25th 1925 in Brisbane
Died 17th August 2002 Byron Bay

She studied arts at University of Queensland & also completed her teaching training.
In 1948 she married Jack Gregson & moved to Sydney.
She taught in various highschool & tutored at Macquarie Uni until 1980.
Astley then retired to Kuranda, North Queensland with her husband, to focus on writing full time.
She also lived near Nowra for a time & Byron Bay.

Novels

• Girl with a Monkey (1958)
• A Descant for Gossips (1960)
• The Well Dressed Explorer (1962)                     Miles Franklin winner
• The Slow Natives (1965)                                    Miles Franklin winner
• A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968)
• The Acolyte (1972)                                             Miles Franklin winner
• A Kindness Cup (1974)
• An Item from the Late News (1982)
• Beachmasters (1985)
• It's Raining in Mango (1987)
• Reaching Tin River (1990) 
• Vanishing Points (1992)
• Coda (1994)
• The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow (1996)        Miles Franklin long/shortlist
• Drylands (1999)                                                   Miles Franklin winner

Short stories

• Hunting the Wild Pineapple (1979)
• Collected Stories (1997)

Susan Wyndham writes that

"in person and in print, the chain-smoking Astley was unsentimental, wickedly funny and yet had a deep kindness and a loathing of injustice towards Aborigines, underdogs and misfits."

Kerryn Goldsworthy:

"I love its densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics, and its undimmed outrage at human folly, stupidity and greed.... Her body of work [over four decades] adds up to a protracted study in the way that full-scale violence and tragedy can flower extravagantly from the withered seeds of malice and resentment ... The perps in Drylands are all her usual suspects: racists, developers, hypocritical gung-ho civic go-gooders, and assorted unreconstructed male-supremacist swine."

Thea Astley by Michael Clayton-Jones

Helen Garner wrote

"Great story, great characters ... Stylistically, however, this book is like a very handsome, strong and fit woman with too much makeup on ... This kind of writing drives me berserk."

Delys Bird:

"Astley's novels and stories typically present a sceptical view of social relationships among ordinary people, one often coloured by her former Catholicism, and directed through the struggles of her self-conscious protagonists to find an expressive space within their uncongenial surroundings."

I've only read the one Astley novel, A Descant for Gossips. It was recommended to me by a friend who was an English Highschool teacher.

It was quite a while ago.

I remember loving the descriptions of Queensland & the sense of forboding that hung over the characters and the town. I was a teacher in a small country town myself & the difficulties and problems felt real enough & possible. I remember feeling rage at the manipulation & lies of the main character.

I also remember struggling with the flow of the language. It was not an easy read or a happy read.
I guess, the fact that I've never hunted out any more Astley novels, would suggest that I didn't love it enough to dig deeper.
But, neither, am I adverse to reading another one of her books.

Which is just as well, since one of my aims is to read my way through the Miles Franklin winners...eventually!

Have you read any of Astley's work? What did you think?

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

I finished Tsukuru a week ago but have struggled to write my review. I'm not sure what I have to say or how to say it.

Tsukuru is a much quieter story than 1Q84. It's also a lot shorter! The editing and translation felt more succinct; either that, or I'm getting used to Murakami's style.

Loneliness, depression, loss & insecurity are explored as Tsukuru comes to terms with who he is, his past and what this means for his future.

This is all very familiar territory for Murakami & it would seem that his fans, also, cannot get enough of these themes.

I think I'm one of those fans.

Tsukuru's story has got under my skin. The visions of loneliness have struck a chord, the beautiful Liszt music has become a favourite.

I'm always fascinated by stories that explore how we see ourselves because it is often vastly different to how others experience us. Part of Tsukuru's pilgrimage is coming to terms with these two different view of himself. But like real life, there are no clear revelations, no startling turning points & no significant overnight changes in behaviour or attitude.

At the end Tsukuru has more understanding and self-awareness, but he is still the same Tsukuru struggling with self-doubt, loneliness & identity.

I will be reading more Murakami; I'm very curious to see what came before.
What is Murakami's personal pilgrimage with loneliness, depression, loss & belonging? Will he ever work it out? And do we even want him to?

This post is part of Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Reading Challenge & Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday 'P' (is for Pilgrimage) post.
For my previous discussion on the cover and music click here.

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.