The Vanishing Half | Brit Bennett #USfiction

 

I suspect, like me, many of you have heard about the basic premise of this story. The book seems to be everywhere (which is partly why it was selected as our October book club book). It features a fictional town inhabited by African Americans who have light skin, 'lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift.' People who felt like they could not, and did not, belong in a white world or a black one. Mallard was a town for those 'who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes.'

The story is about identical twins, Desiree and Stella, who grow up in this town. One marries a dark man and has a very dark baby, horrifying the inhabitants of Mallard, and the other decides to 'pass' as white and disappears from all their lives.

However, this is not the only vanishing or 'passing' or pretending to be someone else, that is considered by Bennett in The Vanishing Half.

The idea of 'passing' is examined alongside gender identity, transgender, drag queens and the games that many twins play, pretending to be the other to confuse their family and friends. Bennett also makes one her characters an actor to discuss what is real, what is make believe and our ability to inhabit a character to tell a story. Another character is a 'hunter' who helps to find people running from the law, bad debt and bad people. He helps find those who want to disappear. He understands disguises and subterfuge and the lies people tell when they create a new life. Mixed in with all of this is the common, every day desire we all feel at different points in our lives, to start over - the end of a bad marriage, the death of a partner, to escape childhood friends etc. 

Do we create our own identity? Or do we spend our lives deconstructing other people's ideas of who we are (or should be)?

It was fascinating stuff.

Naturally, the contrast between one twin living a life as an African American and the other as white is the predominate theme. The life of plenty and ease for one, compared to the hard work, living on the edge of poverty and fear for the other. Yet it's not all ease for one and it's not all fear for the other. Bennett's story is far more nuanced than that.

Passing requires one to be constantly vigilant and constantly 'in role'. A back story has to be created and remembered. The fear of being exposed creates tension and keeps one on guard the whole time. It's impossible to relax or feel like you completely belong.

Bennett covers off a lot of very complicated, complex ideas about who we are, how identity is determined or created and how we judge and classify others. She shows us how the childhood experiences of each twin leads to the choices they make. We see it play out again, with their daughters, growing up in very different worlds, struggling to find who they are, where they belong and with whom. The whole idea of nature or nurture is woven through each story line, and each character, in that messy, mixed up way we all experience.

Coincidence plays a part in the story, which could be annoying for some readers. As can the omnipresent narrator. But both devices worked for me. Bennett incorporates both successfully to negotiate the various time jumps within the story, the 'seeing forward and backward at the same time', that allows the reader to see what all the characters are experiencing. We see that 'passing' or changing identity, can be permanent or temporary, tragic or fun. It can be liberating and painful. A relief and guilt-ridden at the same time. 

Bennett leaves us with the lies, or stories, we all tell our selves and our families. Are they really lies? Or are they a natural desire to reframe our lives into the one we really want? That 'better' self that makes us feel whole or complete or more like our real selves? 

Who gets to decide what is real or not, in the first place? The performer or the audience? Are we pretending, performing or projecting? Are they secrets or an act of privacy or a bid for personal safety? Bennett doesn't judge or moralise. She doesn't ask us to condemn Stella for her choices, or Reese, or Barry, or Jude, or Kennedy, or Early or Adele. 

Stella is not made to pay the ultimate price, usually asked of characters in her position. There is no dramatic moment of exposure. There is no guilt-ridden martyr sent back to where she came from, in disgust and ridiculed, welcome nowhere and understood by no-one. The moral of the story is not to stay with your own kind at all cost. It's about making your own life in whichever why that feels right to you. 

There's a whole lot more to say about this story and I'm sure my book club will go there tonight. 

Favourite Quotes: 

• The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.
• That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone.
• Jude wanted to change and she didn't see why it should be so hard or why she should have to explain it to anyone.
• You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it.
• The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.

The Gravity of Us | Phil Stamper #TeenFiction

Teen romance, The Gravity of Us never quite reached the stars it was aiming for. 

It took me ages to finish this cute story about budding online journalist Cal and 'astrokid', Leon. The romance was sweet, tender and funny and the stuff about NASA's astronaut program that both families were caught up in, was fascinating too, but when I compare it to Oseman's Heartstopper trilogy, it doesn't.

The reader could feel the effort required by Stamper to put the book together. It often felt like he was trying to do too much. But it also had some lovely, lovely moments and ideas around belonging, taking risks and living in the moment. It was also nice to see social media being used by the characters as a positive, pro-active tool to bring like-minded people together and to effect change, although I also suspect, it is this very social media use that will date the story very quickly.

The moments that felt most forced, or clunky, were around Leon's anxiety issues and Cal's reporting, when Stamper's storytelling became earnest and informative. 

So, it's a bit of an odd read really. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I appreciated it's good intentions and tender heart, but sometimes the execution left me cold. I'm obviously not the target audience, having left my teen years behind me many, many moons ago, but at that age I was looking for romances that felt believable. Perhaps that's where this one doesn't quite hit the mark. Everyone was too exceptional to be real.

Fun but forgettable.

Book 13 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

Homeland Elegies | Ayad Akhtar #USfiction

I had to remind myself of the exact definition of elegy as I was reading Ayad Akhtar's latest novel, Homeland Elegies: A Novel. In a promotional video on the Little Brown publishing page, he mentioned this book was not only about that longing for the home country that his parent's generation felt, but an elegiac response to the death of his mother and the decline of his father.

An elegy is a poem of serious reflection written, usually, as a lament for the dead. In more modern terms it can also be a lament for a tragic event, expressing mournfulness and sorrow. Or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge says in Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol 2 (1835)

Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to the poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future.

Documenting the regrets and desires, sorrows and loves of Muslims in America over the past fifty years is the aim of Homeland Elegies, but most of the drama plays out in more recent times. Akhtar himself is our reference point, as he explores the changes in America post 9-11 and post-Trump, via the lens of his own family. His sense of being 'other' or an outsider informs his perspective. He explores the hope and eventual disillusionment of his parents generation as they struggle to be American, to belong and to be accepted.

The confusion I experienced when I started to read Homeland Elegies was a deliberate device used by Akhtar. It worked. I got very caught up in trying to work out what was real and was not, because the story reads like a memoir. Akhtar is our main character. He is a writer and playwright, who writes about the Muslim experience in America. He is a writer who needs to 'deform actual events enough to be able to see them more clearly.'

I found myself googling Akhtar and reading his wikibio to try to sort out the truth from the fiction. It wasn't easy. Again, it was the video linked above that revealed Akhtar's intent to play fast and loose with the facts, pushing the boundaries between reality and fiction. He wanted to write a story that collapsed real life into a tale. He wanted to confront our fascination with fake news; how a good story has become more important than the truth. Or more accurately, how a good story (or even a bad story) has become confused with the truth until no-one is certain where the truth lies anymore.

It was a discombobulating read.

It was also rather sad. The story revealed a family and a country in decline. It was an indictment on a country that claims to be proud of it's migrant history, accepting the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and the tempest-tossed. But not really. Unless you happen to be uber-rich. Being non-white and non-Christian and not rich is a problem every single day for anyone who is different. Especially since 9-11. Especially since Trump.

Akhtar has written a fascinating, absorbing and heart-breaking story. 

Facts:

• Akhtar was born 28th October, 1970, Staten Island, New York
• Grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2013 for his play, Disgraced
• In 2017 he won the Steinberg Playwright Award
• Homeland Elegies is a September release with Little Brown.

Favourite Quotes:

• the treachery of an American society that abandoned the weak and monetized the unlucky.
• the incompetence - even malfeasance - so abundantly on display at the municipal level. It was startling to see in this picture of America a nation so much like the one my parents described in Pakistan, where cutting corners, taking bribes, selling perks - all this was just business as usual.
• justice is the will of the strong borne by the weak.
• We were a nation in thrall to our own stupidity.
• students' growing intolerance for difficult ideas....they slap you with moral rhetoric about why you're wrong to make them do something they don't want to do.
• College was now a consumer experience, not a pedagogical one.
• "I'm here because I was born and raised here. This is where I've lived my whole life. For better, for worse - and it's always a bit of both - I don't want to be anywhere else. I've never even thought about it. America is my home."

Book 8 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

Redhead By the Side of the Road | Anne Tyler #USfiction

I don't know why I've been dragging my feet about writing this post. I loved this return-to-form story by Anne Tyler, one of my favourite character-driven authors. Perhaps, it's simply because I don't have a lot to say about it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how Tyler teased out the unique behaviours of her main character and embedded him firmly within a large, messy, chaotic family that was full of love, even if somewhat suffocating at times. I loved the resolution to this slim tale and can highly recommend it to those of you who love a gentle exploration of a sympathetically drawn character. What more can I say?

The Redhead By the Side of the Road, without giving anything away, is actually a fire hydrant that our slightly myopic protagonist, Micah mistakes for a child in a hoodie, every single morning when he runs by without his glasses. Its a gentle nod to the main theme of the story. Perception, and how we see ourselves and how others see us in return. One of my all-time favourite book themes! And one that Tyler has mastered. 

Like many of her stories, absence or loss is the driving force behind helping our protagonist to change. When Micah's girlfriend calls things off, he cannot understand why and it takes him a while to understand that the weird feelings going on for him are grief and heartache. Or, as Micah, so eloquently says late in the novel, "I'm a roomful of broken hearts." How could you not take him back?

My one and only beef is that Redhead By the Side of the Road is not as meaty or as angsty as her earlier books. I guess it's a good sign that she has worked through her childhood issues and found a more peaceful writing place, but I do still love a rich, engrossing read full of childhood angst!

Anne Tyler has published 24 novels, of which I have now read four (plus seen the movie for An Accidental Tourist). Tyler, like myself, is the eldest of four children, But unlike myself, she grew up in a Quaker family in a commune in North Carolina. She didn't attend formal schooling until age 12, where she found herself in the outsider role. She feels this has helped her to be the writer she is today.

 

I believe that any kind of setting-apart situation will do (to become a writer). In my case, it was emerging from the commune...and trying to fit into the outside world.

She graduated high school at age 16 and moved to Duke University on a full scholarship. In 1963 she married Taghi Modarressi, an Iranian psychiatrist, at age 22. They moved to Baltimore and had two daughters, both of whom she eventually enrolled in the local Quaker school, even though she no longer felt it was something for her.

Although her parents were believers, she gave up on religion when she was seven, the age she feels was in some ways "the climax of my life, when you finally know who you are. I started thinking very seriously about God and I thought I just can't do it, so that was sort of that."   The Guardian | Lisa Allardice | 14 April 2012

Tyler's writing is classified as literary realism. She has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including the Pulitzer (1989), the Women's Prize for fiction and the Booker.

Tyler doesn't see herself building up to "the great book." "I think of my work as a whole. And really what it seems to me I'm doing is populating a town. Pretty soon it's going to be just full of lots of people I've made up. None of the people I write about are people I know. That would be no fun. And it would be very boring to write about me. Even if I led an exciting life, why live it again on paper? I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances. It's lucky I do it on paper. Probably I would be schizophrenic--and six times divorced--if I weren't writing. I would decide that I want to run off and join the circus and I would go. I hate to travel, but writing a novel is like taking a long trip. This way I can stay peacefully at home." Anne Tyler, Writer 8:05 to 3:30 by Marguerite Michaels | 8th May 1977 | NY Times

Clock Dance
The Beginner's Goodbye
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line | Deepa Anappara #WomensPrize

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line attracted my attention initially thanks to the cover. That big eye seemed to follow me around everywhere I went and after a season of blue/green covers, the bright yellow stood out a mile on the bookshop bookshelf. However I made an early assumption that it was nasty crime fiction, and therefore, not for me...until it was longlisted for the Women's Prize and I looked a little closer. There was a mysterious crime - disappearing child in the Indian slums - but it also had a child narrator to take the sting out of the nastiness. And this is why, in the end, love them or hate them, I appreciate literary awards - they make me pick up a book I may have otherwise ignored or pre-judged as not of interest to me. 

Discovering hidden gems is the best thing about a literary longlist. 

I tend to have fairly firm opinions about which books should make certain lists or not, so I will either be delighted or devastated when the lists are announced. Recently, I was so disappointed that The Yield did not win this year's Stella Prize, that I'm not sure I will be able to make myself read the chosen winner - ever. Even when The Yield finally got the nod for the 2020 NSW Premier's Award plus the People's Choice Award, the sting from the Stella still stayed with me. 

But then, a few years ago, one of the Stella shortlisted book was The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by little known Iranian/Australian author, Shokoofeh Azar. I may never have come across this stunning story, if not for the Stella, except that now it has also been shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. It deserves all the attention it gets and if award nominations are what it takes to get it out there, then so be it. 

It doesn't have to win, but the nomination brings it to our attention. 

It may not be a high-minded, literary, five-star read, (although in both these cases they were five stars for me) but an amazing four-star reading experience is not to be sneezed at. Considering I only rate a handful of books five stars every year, four is still a damned good book! 

I really only star rate books to satisfy the goodreads criteria for reviewing. I find it a completely flawed system. The number of times I want to/need to adjust my star rating months later is ridiculous. A few times I realise a book is staying with me for far longer than I had anticipated. It keeps talking to me, whispering in my ear to reread it one day. Those books will get bumped up to five stars. But more often than not, my initial four star love wanes into a warm memory that drops down to a comfortable, middle-of-the-road three stars.

Both The Yield and Greengage got bumped up to five stars. Djinn Patrol is currently sitting very happily in the four zone. I may not be feeling the itch to reread it, but I am very keen to read anything else that Deepa Anappara might write in the future. She brought the sounds, smells and tastes of India to life. Living in a basti might seem unbearably grim and difficult to outsiders, but from our young narrators point of view, this is the only world he knows. This is where his family lives and works. Jai is cared for by neighbours and goes to school nearby. There are all sorts of underlying caste/class issues that play out on the streets and in the classroom, but that's all Jai knows. He accepts his life and his lot, yet hopes that one day, rather then becoming one of the kids picking through the rubbish heaps, they might be able to afford to live in the rich apartments overlooking their slum.

That is, until some of the local kids start to go missing, one at a time.

Jai and his two friends decide to solve the mystery. They start to question the world they live in and wonder why these awful things have to happen.

The anger at corrupt police, racial stereotyping and the constant fear of violence and poverty are seen through a child's eyes. Jai's humour and innocence softens the blows for the reader, until it comes too close to home for anyone's comfort. 

Anappara has written an engaging, tense and vivid story that will stay with me for a long time. Please don't dismiss this book. It's a beauty and well worth your time. 

Facts:

• Debut writer
• Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
• Winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2018

Favourite or Forget:

• Unforgettable.

Actress | Anne Enright #Begorrathon

I have to ask straight up - who is Norah's father? Could you work it out? I wasn't sure. There didn't seem to be any repercussions or exposition after the reveal. Was it all about the #metoo element? But since you kind of figure that out for yourself very early on, it wasn't so much a shock revelation, but a quieter 'I thought so' moment. I'm confused.

Anyway, let's put that all that aside for now and talk about the lovely, lovely writing in Anne Enright's Actress. I loved her descriptions of Norah and her mother, the famous Katherine Odell, her observations of daily life and her empathy for the thinking of a 21 yr old.

• We had the same way of blinking, slow and fond, as though thinking of something beautiful.
• I think I mentioned that my mother was a star. Not just on screen or on the stage, but at the breakfast table also, my mother Katherine O’Dell was a star.
• The boiling eggs chittering against each other and along the metal bottom of the pan.
• My life felt like an imitation, and I was terrified it might become the real thing.

Actress was an fascinating story but there were many times when it felt rather like trying to drive a car and forgetting to put it into gear. The engine was revving sweetly, but we were going nowhere! Which is maybe why I felt the father revelation late in the story was more of a frustration than anything else. I was waiting patiently for a burst of speed that never happened.

I enjoyed my time in Enright's hands, but it's not the best example of her work.

#Begorrathon2020 #ReadingIrelandMonth2020

Epigraph:

• 'the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act.' In Search of Lost Time

Enright Reviews:

• The Green Road -  my favourite Enright to date. 
• The Gathering

The Forest of Wool and Steel | Natsu Miyashita #JPNfiction

I wanted to love The Forest of Wool and Steel far more than I did in the end. 

A coming-of-age story about a piano tuner from a remote mountain region in Hokkaido had all the right ingredients for me - one as a former (very amateur) piano enthusiast and two, as a recent visitor to Japan. It was beautifully, elegantly written, with gorgeous chapter illustrations showing a piano slowly being returned to the wild. Nature, naturalness and nurturing were ideas that ran through the piece. It's tone was pianissimo (softly, softly), it's tempo larghissimo (as slow as possible).

I'm beginning to realise that even though I like the practice and philosophy of Zen, it's not enough for me in a story. I prefer richer, epic, detailed narratives - something I can really sink my teeth into.

I've been slow in working out that I prefer my Japanese Lit with a twist of magic realism and a decent dose of kookiness. Think Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami, my two favourite Japanese writers to date. The Forest of Wool and Steel was simply too sedate for me!

Despite the lovely, lovely passages about music, listening, tone and nuance, I was never really fully engaged in the story. The emotional heart alluded me. The story failed to take flight or go anywhere.

Facts:

• Published in Japan 2016 as Hitsuji to Hagane no Mori
• Made into a movie in Japan in 2018.
• Translated in to English 2019 by Philip Gabriel (who also translated most of Murakami's books).
• Winner of the 2016 National Booksellers Award.

Sadly, I had the same problem with Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami, but in this case I was unable to finish the book. I simply didn't care enough about either of the protagonists to continue. Which is odd, as stories about loneliness and being alone are ones that generally draw me in. Perhaps the trick with stories about disconnection is not to disconnect your readers! Odd-ball romances have never really been my thing either.

I have since heard that Kawakami finished the book with a twist of magic realism, which is intriguing, but not enough in my current reading frame of mind to make me pick it up again. If I hadn't just finished a wonderful #slowread experience with Moby-Dick, I might be concerned that my modern technology brain has changed too much to appreciate a more gentle paced meandering story.

Facts:

• Published in Japan 2001 as Sensei no kaban.
• Translated by Allison Markin Powell in 2017
• Published as The Briefcase in the US in 2012.
• Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize.

Both books were read (or not) for Meredith's Japanese Literature Challenge 13.

My other Japanese Lit reads  over the years:

• If Cats Disappeared from the World | Genki Kawamura
• A Cat, A Man And Two Women | Junichiro Tanizaki
• Convenience Store Woman |  Sayaka Murata
• Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow | Banana Yoshimoto
• Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles | Hiro Arikawa
• On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho
• The Guest Cat | Takashi Hiraide
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Haruki Murakami
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage | Haruki Murakami
• The Sound of the Mountain | Yasunari Kawabata
• 1Q84 | Haruki Murakami

Nothing to See Here | Kevin Wilson #USfiction

Nothing to See Here made nine of the 'best of' lists as compiled by Kate at the end of 2019, with comments like 'laughed so hard', 'a most unusual story of parental love' and 'hilarious' leaping out at me everywhere I looked.

I was expecting a belly laugh or two, at least. But no. It was way too sad for that. Even though the story was told with a tender, light touch, and some of Wilson's phrasing and imagery was amusing, I couldn't bring myself to laugh at the plight of any of these loveless characters, all so desperate to find someone to love them and care for them properly.

From the Senator, who had the emotional life of a gnat, and ran for office simply because of family tradition, to Carl the body guard, who just did what he was told. Madison and Lillian, the best friends from high school, from vastly different backgrounds, but both with equally shitty parents. To the poor, poor ten year old twins, who could burst into flames when angry or upset, but not be harmed, who watched their mother kill herself and then got stuck living with their crappy grandparents, until their father, the Senator, finally brought them home.

But not really home. A house on the family estate that has been converted to withstand fire and be very private, where they could be looked after by Lillian discreetly, away from the public eye.

In some ways this is a story about parental love. Lillian's growing love for the twins gives her life meaning and purpose. Her own dysfunctional upbringing allows her to empathise with the twins, and once the bond is formed, makes her determined to turn things around for them. The twins, in turn, trust her because of her vulnerability. They can sense her desire to protect them (in a way she was not protected) against all odds. Madison has a similar relationship going on with her own young son, Timothy. Determined to do better than her own upbringing, but also determined to get ahead with a career and life of her own. She is able to spin a story at the drop of a hat, a valuable asset for a politician's wife!

As much as I enjoyed this book, and was utterly engaged in the story from start to finish, there was nothing hilarious about this level of human damage. There is humour in the set-up and the satirical gaze at politics, privilege and power. It's also amazing how quickly you accept that children can self-combust.

Nothing to See Here is an unforgettable book. It was the perfect choice for a mini-break weekend away. Mr Books and I can both recommend it; just don't expect to laugh.

Middle England | Jonathan Coe #UKfiction

I do love the Costa Prize. It regularly throws up a new-to-me author or a book that I come to adore. The Costa folk have a happy knack of selecting engaging stories, quirky ideas and immensely readable books. There was a lot to love about the 2019 Fiction winner, Middle England.

Set in Brexit England, with a cast of characters that made previous appearances in Coe's two earlier books, The Rotters’ Club (2001) and The Closed Circle (2004). Although I hadn't read the first two books, I was able to jump straight into Middle England thanks to the in context flashbacks and remembrances of the main characters. These main characters were obviously much loved by Coe. They were written with such affection, that it was hard not to like them as well.

I would suggest that Coe's political view of the world basically coincides with my own, so even though I learnt a lot about the Brexit process and gained some insight into how it happened, my views were not challenged. The Remain characters were drawn sympathetically, but were also portrayed as being racist, sexist and/or homophobic. The genuine fear (of change, of the 'other', of difference) that many Remain voters feel, was never really brought forward and the many issues with the EU body politic were only briefly touched on. Perhaps the least sympathetic character, was young Coriander (she was always going to be difficult with a name like that!), the extreme left-wing militant who took offence at pretty much everything.

This all might sound a bit heavy and boring, but let me assure you, it was far, far from that. I had some genuine laugh out loud moments and was entertained from start to finish.

I particularly enjoyed the other serendipitous book moments that happened along the way.

Our English Lit character had a conference in Marseille, that turned into a mini-Count of Monte Cristo homage, culminating in a visit to the Château d'If where Edmund was wrongly imprisoned in his story. I was very envious.

Half way through, most of our characters sat down to watch the Opening ceremony of 2012 London Olympics, which I had just read up on thanks to my recent read of The Tempest. I loved seeing it through the eyes of so many different people.

There was also a passing reference to McEwan's Saturday that coincided with me selecting it for my most recent Shelf Life post. I love it when my book worlds collide.

Middle England is infused with a very British nostalgia, a huge heart and a sense of increasing bewilderment. The politics of Brexit is made personal as this group of family and friends discuss, fall out and learn to live with each other's different view points and opinions.

I will definitely go back to read The Rotters' Club at some point; I'm curious to know how Benjamin and his family and friends started out. 

Quotes:

• Ian Sansom suggested these books were “the closest thing we have to a contemporary middle-class, middle-England Dance to the Music of Time”.
• John Boyne said: “Millions of words have been and will be written on Brexit but few will get to the heart of why it is happening as incisively as Middle England.”

Facts:

• Costa Book Awards Fiction Winner 2019
• 2019 nominee for The Prix Femina étranger

Such A Fun Age | Kiley Reid #USfiction

I had no intention of reading Such A Fun Age. The premise sounded mildly appealing/interesting:

When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for 'kidnapping' the white child she's actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.

But really, I'm rather over the whole adulting trope with a world peopled by no-one but twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Yet it was hard to completely resist the buzz surrounding the release of this book.

It was everywhere.

Then a colleague read it and came back with a surprisingly good reaction, so I decided to turn Such A Fun Age into a lunch time read.

It's the perfect pick-up, put-down book, ideal as a holiday read or a complete change of pace between your usual fare.

While the dynamics were initially quite tantalising, not being quite sure in which direction this story was going to go, it quickly settled into a book about other people's self-made dramas. The only likeable characters were Emira, the babysitter, and the toddler, Briar. They had some genuinely awkward moments to contend with, but they just got on with life and didn't make a fuss. They didn't spend their time over-thinking every action and reaction, they just got on with having a mutually heart-warming and caring relationship.

Everyone else was pretty annoying. Alix and her friends were ghastly, Emira's friends were tiresome, the husband was a non-event, the children accessories and the boyfriend, Kelley was just creepy.

Class privilege, racial and gender issues bubbled away behind the scenes but were never really resolved. Perhaps there was more actually going on here that an American reader would pick up on, but I simply got weary of all the talk about clothes and hair and social media status. But maybe I'm just showing my age!

There was some interesting stuff about memories, personal bias and how we perceive ourselves compared to how others actually see us, but since no-one really rose above their stereotype it was hard to know what to make of it all. It's this more than anything that leaves me feeling disappointed. A world peopled by no-one but more people of the same age is ultimately dull and an unhealthy place to be. It felt much like watching an episode of a more ethnically diverse Friends.

Don't get me wrong. Reading this book was a tremendous romp and if I'd been lying on the beach as I did so, it would have been perfect! It's only as I've started to think about it more deeply to write this post, that I see how fluffy and flawed it is. But then, not every single book has to be high literature. Some books are just for fun, at any age.

Girl, Woman, Other | Bernardine Evaristo #BookerWinner

I'm still trying to catch up on posts leftover from my magnificent Christmas reading binge.

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel by Bernardine Evaristo is the final one. It is certainly not the least though. In fact, it very nearly overtook The Yield as my favourite book for 2019.

What stopped it from doing so?

Mostly time.

I have lived with and loved The Yield for many months now. It's wonderfulness has been a part of me for a much longer period of time than Girl, Woman, Other. It also has the advantage of being home grown. Poppy's very special Indigenous language dictionary is another stand out feature that I think about often.

But this is about Girl, Woman, Other and it definitely deserves it's own time in the sun to shine.

The twelve interconnected stories about growing up, living, working and loving in London by mostly black British women of various ages, had me hooked from the very first voice, Amma. Via these women, Evaristo talks about feminism, double standards, gender, racism, sexism and ageism.

The twelve chapters read like twelve separate portraits, with Evaristo revelling in the characterisations of each and every one. Her loose-flowing poetic prose was full of vitality and complexities. I was engrossed by each and every story, not wanting them to end, but then getting caught up in the next biography and wondering how they might interconnect.

The diversity and otherness suggested by the title, was explored on many levels. Part of my enjoyment came from reading such a fresh perspective and experiencing a reality different to my own. Note to self, read more diversely in 2020 (most of my 2019 reading was Australian and Indigenous).


Evaristo, herself, said:

I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which otherness can be interpreted in the novel – the women are othered in so many ways and sometimes by each other. I wanted it to be identified as a novel about women as well.

Finally, I will tackle the co-winning of the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. I have read both and enjoyed both, but Girl, Woman, Other is by far the richer, more interesting and certainly the more original of the two. Labelling a book 'the best novel of the year', obviously leaves things very open to individual interpretation, but to my mind, Girl, Woman, Other stands head and shoulders above any of the others shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and deserved to win in it's own right.

Facts:

• Joint Winner of the Booker Prize 2019
• Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019
• Named one of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2019

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson #USfiction

I'm struggling, at the moment, to find the right words to describe my reading experiences, yet at the same time, I'm going through an amazing reading phase, with three back to back stunners. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout, Girl, Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo and now Red at the Bone.

My journey with Red at the Bone began about three months ago when our rep gave me an ARC and said 'watch this one, it could take off.'

I then spotted it on several of the lists that Kate @Books Are My Favourite and Best listed on her list of lists for 2019.

When I finished Olive, Again the weekend before Christmas, I wanted something completely different, new and slim. Red at the Bone jumped out of my TBR pile for all those reasons...and I'm so glad it did.

But how to review such a splendid reading experience?

Normally I avoid Goodread reviews and other blogs until after I've finished reading and reviewing the book myself, but when I'm struggling to write, I will turn to outside sources to find inspiration, or in this case to find a spark to fire me up.

Most of the reviews reflected my time with the book. They loved the writing style, they loved the family and their strength and resilience.

However, one reviewer caught my eye. She talked about the misery heaped upon misery that made it impossible for her to read or enjoy this book. I was left wondering if we had even read the same book! As the day wore on, I could feel a response forming, a rebuttal building up that had to be proclaimed.

I didn't know whether to feel sad or envious that someone could see the events depicted in this novel as misery upon misery. Had this reviewer had such a fortunate life that they and their extended family had never experienced any of the things within this story? Or was there something else at play that I wasn't aware of?

In the lifetime of the three generations in this particular family, we had some racial and gender discrimination events, a teenage pregnancy, a move, illness, some LGBTQ issues and eventually a death or two. We also had love and hope and resilience. We had a family living in the times they were born into as gracefully as they could. Different personalities coped in different ways. The times they lived in impacted on the choices they could make.

This was a family that valued hard work and education...and family. Because ultimately, during those times in all our lives when things go pear-shaped, it's the love and support of family that gets you through. I couldn't see any of these events as misery heaped upon misery. I just saw well-lived lives full of the joy and drama of human existence. Things most of go through at different times.

I understand that a structure that jumps between time lines and points of view is not for everyone. If it's just a device to hang a story on, then I get frustrated too, but Woodson used the different time lines and points of view to circle around one big event, that changed everything for those left behind. The poetic writing style may not suit everyone either, but I love elegant distillers of beautiful language, so I happily went along for the ride.

I didn't know anything about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, but I do now. It wasn't necessary to have a full understanding of this event, to appreciate the choices the family made, as the story was about the consequences of those choices rather than an expose of the event itself. It was simply part of the family back story, much like the Depression and WWII informed my grandparents and parents views of the world. A powerful memory for those who lived it, but fading to insignificance for the generations that follow, who have their own demons or life-changing events to negotiate. Woodson was adept at exposing this generational divide.

As an outside observer, I'm acutely conscious of the race issues that plague America. They play out on our screens, in the books we read and on the news. In Australia, we have enough of our own issues to go on with, yet somehow, the American experience seeps into ours as well. Such complex topics are not easy to solve or discuss and they attract a wide variety of opinions, including the 'let's draw a line in the sand and call it done' approach. Simplistic solutions like this will never work all the while there are people alive who remember. Because memory becomes story, which then gets passed down from one generation to the next. All the while there is memory and story, that line in the sand will constantly shift.

However, we can choose which memories we turn into stories. And we can choose how to tell those stories. We can choose what lessons we want to learn and which ones we want to pass down to future generations. Woodson has chosen trauma triumphed by love.

I for one, will be looking out for more work by Woodson. Her voice and style appealed to me and I want to know more.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout #USfiction

In some ways this will be the easiest book response I've ever written. Quite simply, Olive, Again is all the same wonderfulness that was Olive Kitteridge. If you loved the first Olive; you will adore the second.

I don't want to say too much so as not to spoil your own reading experience. Except that Strout has once again employed the use of short stories to tell us about Olive. Most of the stories are from Olive's perspective, but there are some from her family and various other town people. Olive has a cameo appearance in these particular chapters as we get to see her through the eyes of others. In one memorable scene, Olive is also given a chance to see herself through the eyes of someone else.

One of the special delights, for me, was suddenly realising that we were getting a brief glimpse into lives of the Burgess boys and Amy & Isabelle years after the events that Strout wrote about in their books. These intersections felt perfectly natural and reinforced the idea that all our small stories are interconnected and woven together in ways we can never dream of or fully comprehend.

Olive has mellowed somewhat with age and she has finally learnt the value of moderation - she no longer has to say out loud every single thing that pops into her head.

Strout also explores the ageing process in unsentimental terms. Not only with Olive but the other characters that flit through the story.

However since the words are still failing me at the moment, let me list some of the comments that others have written about Olive, Again on Goodreads.

Jacqui - Sometimes a book is just so perfect that it feels wrong somehow to break it down, as if by doing so one destroys the magic or fails to capture what makes it so special.

Jaline - The world within and the world without.

skilful
keen observer
larger than life
subtle
wrenching emotional honesty
emotionally radiant
fierce
compassionate
beloved curmudgeon
recalcitrant
psychological complexity
indignities of ageing
autumnal years
profound loneliness
estrangements and secrecy
vulnerable
authentic
meticulous
magnificent
tour de force

To finish I will leave you with the words of Strout herself on why she felt compelled to write a sequel for Olive.

The New Yorker | Elizabeth Strout on Returning to Olive Kitteridge | Deborah Treisman | July 29, 2019.

I never intended to return to Olive Kitteridge. I really thought I was done with her, and she with me. But a few years ago I was in a European city, alone for a weekend, and I went to a café, and she just showed up. That’s all I can say. She showed up with a force, the way she did the very first time, and I could not ignore her. This time, she was nosing her car into the marina, and I saw it so clearly—felt her so clearly—that I thought, Well, I should go with this.

Facts:

• Strout's 'guilty reading pleasure' is War and Peace.
• Her greatest influences are William Trevor and Alice Munro.
• She has not yet read Moby-Dick.
• Won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge.

Favourite Quote: 

All love was to be taken seriously.

My response to Olive Kitteridge.
And The Burgess Boys.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Australia

In 1989 Saul Adler (a narcissistic young historian) is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is apparently fine; he gets up and goes to see his art student girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They have sex then break up, but not before she has photographed Saul crossing the same Abbey Road. Saul leaves to study in communist East Berlin, two months before the Wall comes down. There he will encounter - significantly - both his assigned translator and his translator's sister, who swears she has seen a jaguar prowling the city. He will fall in love and brood upon his difficult, authoritarian father. And he will befriend a hippy, Rainer, who may or may not be a Stasi agent, but will certainly return to haunt him in middle age. 

In 2016, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is rushed to hospital, where he spends the following days slipping in and out of consciousness, and in and out of memories of the past. A number of people gather at his bedside. One of them is Jennifer Moreau. But someone important is missing. 

Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying new novel examines what we see and what we fail to see, until we encounter the spectres of history - both the world's and our own.

This is my second Deborah Levy story, so I now know that this style of writing - the slightly off-kilter structure, narration and characters combined with oodles of symbolism and mythology - is her usual way of telling a story. However, The Man Who Saw Everything isn't haunting me (yet) the way that Hot Milk still does, three years later.

Spectres of the past, though, are a big part of this story with personal and European histories haunting the daily lives of our characters. These ghosts of the past didn't get under my skin, like they did in Hot Milk. I suspect the reason lies in the face value issues on display in each book - Hot Milk was a mother/daughter passive/aggressive thing; The Man Who Saw Everything was more father/brother/son stuff with a narcissistic, self-absorbed narrator. Mother/daughter angst will always resonate here.

Saul is an historian of totalitarianism and the psychology of male tyrants. His research project is about the cultural resistance to Nazism in the 1930's. It is 1988, one year prior to the Wall coming down, when he leaves London (via Abbey Road) to go to East Berlin to work. He seems incredibly naive and light-weight to be tackling such a heavy topic.

His thoughts seem to be caught up in light-weight matters like tins of pineapple, photo shoots and who to kiss next. For Saul it is all about him. How he looks to others and what others think of him. His relationships are messy and confusing. He's aware of the Stasi and that they are probably watching him move around East Berlin, yet he is painfully careless with his actions and words.

Levy deliberately throws in the occasional confusing phrase or comment to make us wonder when or who is telling us this story and what is their purpose. Is this a rewriting of history, a whitewash? Or is this an attempt to uncover a truth?

I did not want to know, as well as wanting to. I could not break into her thoughts and feelings. Or my own, I could not break in.

Mostly though, this first half is a relatively straight forward Cold War drama which suddenly shifts in the second part, to 2016 Brexit London. Saul has been involved in a second accident on the Abbey Road crossing, this time more seriously. He is in hospital, coming out of a coma, surrounded by a confusion of visitors, real and ghostly.

I suspect this section is deliberately confusing for all of us. Was the 1988 story a dream? Has Saul been in a coma for 28 years? Or was he revisiting old haunts trying to piece together the story of how he ended up where he found himself in 2016? We all tell ourselves stories to make our lives more habitable. These stories are not only reinterpreted by our present understandings but our present is also influenced by our beliefs about our past. Levy seemed to enjoy poking holes into Saul's preferred story, until he was forced to face the inconsistencies. For a while anyway.

Sadly, for Saul, he failed to recover any degree of self-awareness. All his relationships continue to be messy and fraught with cruel comments and actions. Perhaps the damage of his childhood ran too deep. The early death of his mother combined with a strict disciplinarian, distant father and an elder brother who bullied him. Saul's fluid sexuality from a young age that only alienated his more conservative father and brother even more. They all processed their grief differently, but in ways that hurt each other - forever. 

Saul, our extremely unreliable narrator, was not the man who saw everything, Far from it. Saul could barely see anything beyond the end of his own, very pretty, nose. The man who saw everything was Walter Müller.

He was always looking at me and I think he could see everything that was good and bad and sad in me.

In 1988, Walter was smitten and then deeply hurt by Saul's careless love. He kept a safe distance thereafter, yet couldn't escape completely. Their lives were irrevocably intertwined and Walter was very, very careful to never reveal the full extent of their ongoing connection. Protecting others from the damage that Saul could do, became Walter's modus operandi.

Saul's Stasi report concluded with the phrase 'he is harmless to other people.' Walter, however, declared that this was false - he was, in fact, VERY harmful to others.

It is only as you make your way through the second part of the story that you begin to see all the red herrings and foreshadowing that Levy left behind in the first. It's like a puzzle that shifts and changes shape as you put it together. Saul is enigmatic to the end. A mystery unto himself and to others.

We are haunted by our past - individuals as well as countries and continents. Marx and Stalin continue to haunt the GDR and Russia. Hitler's actions haunt people all around the world to this day. We are also haunted by pop culture. The Beatles music is everywhere and lives inside all of us. Images also haunt us, whether it's four men crossing a road on an album cover, or scenes of the Wall coming down in 1989 or photographs of the Holocaust survivors being liberated from the camps. The images have become part of our collective memory, even if we weren't there to witness it ourselves.

Which brings me to book cover choices. The Australian cover heads this post. I'm fascinated how and why different countries get very different covers. The Bloomsbury and Canadian versions remind me of the US cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I love the Portuguese version that clearly relates to the fateful crossing of Abbey Road. One, less sympatico Goodreads reviewer said, So, this is a novel about how some people need to be more careful crossing roads. This cover would be perfect for them!

Bloomsbury

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Canada

Relógio D'Água Editores Portugal

It's not only Abbey Road that features in The Man Who Saw Everything. One of the characters loves the Beatles song Penny Lane. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise that some of the lyrics was interwoven into the story - the barber and the nurse spring to mind - a reread would be necessary to spot them all, I suspect.

In 2009, McCartney reflected:

"Penny Lane" was kind of nostalgic, but it was really [about] a place that John and I knew ... I'd get a bus to his house and I'd have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story. (source)

If you're planning on reading this book soon, here are the lyrics to take with you:


Penny Lane | The Beatles | 1967

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain, very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain, very strange

Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane

Epitaph Philosophy:

I'm always fascinated by the epitaphs chosen by authors to lead us into their stories. Given Levy's penchant for symbolism, I wanted to unpack what she might have been trying to tell us with the two epitaphs at the start of The Man Who Saw Everything.

• Karel Teige, The Shooting Gallery | 1946

Poetic thought, unlike rootless orchids, did not grow in a greenhouse and did not faint when confronted with today's traumas.

Teige was an avant-garde Czech 'agent provocateur and seismograph, at once provoking action and debate and yet simultaneously reacting with the utmost sensitivity to the shifting political spectrum of his time.' (Kenneth Frampton, Introduction, Karel Teige / 1900–1951: L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde | 1999)

He was an editor, writer and artist during the 1920's and 30's. He was a Marxist, but not the card carrying kind. After the 1948 takeover by the Communists, he was not considered to be toeing the party line. Teige was denounced and forbidden to publish or speak out.

Sadly, it would seem, that Teige did in fact, succumb to the traumas of his time, as all reports claimed that he died a 'broken man' in 1951.

It looks like poetic thought can be a as fragile as an orchid. Though, here we are, over fifty years later, still able to read his words, despite the secret police claiming to have destroyed all his papers.

• Susan Sontag, In Plato's Cave | On Photography | 1977

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.

Sontag also claimed that the proliferation of photographic images had developed a 'chronic voyeuristic relation' within people. I wonder what she would think of the selfie?
She also believed 'that the individual who seeks to record cannot intervene, and that the person who intervenes cannot then faithfully record, for the two aims contradict each other'. Was Jennifer merely having a conversation about the nature of beauty as she claimed, or was she trying to capture the real Saul? Perhaps she wanted to show Saul how others saw him or maybe she was objectifying him?

In 2003, Sontag published Regarding the Pain of Others, where she revised some of the opinions she had expressed earlier. She was now concerned that 'people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs ... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding—and remembering. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture'.

Saul definitely had trouble remembering what was real, what was imagined or what he wanted to be true.

Favourite Quote:

I have sex all the time but I don't know if it's the sex I had thirty years ago or three months ago. I think I have extended my sexual history across all time zones, but I did have a lot of sex before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After that it's a blur but I think I had less sex in social democracies than I did in authoritarian regimes.

Facts:

• Shortlisted 2019 Goldsmith Prize
• Longlisted 2019 Booker Prize
• My 2016 Hot Milk post.

In the Garden of Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey

Don't let me mislead you into thinking that In the Gardens of the Fugitives is a book about gardening, food and recipes, even though I'm going to start with a recipe. 

Apparently one of the food items uncovered during the excavations of Pompeii, was a medallion of ham flavoured with bay leaves and fig slices. Normally a mere reference to a meal in a book wouldn't be enough to have me scrambling for recipes, except this week the Christmas ham has been on my mind.

I have a lovely recipe for a marmalade, dijon mustard & whole clove glaze that I inherited from a beloved aunt, that has been my go-to for the past decade. I'm not sure that family tradition will allow me to mess with this on Christmas Day, but I'm now dead keen to try the Pompeian version at some point. Boiling a ham and wrapping it pastry isn't my usual thing though (which seems to be how the Ancients preferred their ham), so I've found an online recipe that tweeks these old flavours by basically swapping them out with my usual ingredients. 

It looks a little something like this:

1 whole, cooked leg of ham
about 16 bay leaves
about 30 whole dried figs (I might even experiment with fresh figs in the autumn)

Glaze
1 cup smooth fig jam
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
2 teaspoons dry English mustard
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

The idea being to insert half a bay leaf into the scored sections of the ham, as one would the cloves, then cover with the glaze. Towards the end of the cooking time, add the dried or fresh figs to the juice in the bottom of the pan for about 15 mins.

To finish it off the meal, à la Romaine, float rose petals in one's glass of wine.

Sounds delish!

The flip side of feasting is death. The ancients had always understood that. A banquet is life in miniature. You arrive hungry, eat and drink your fill, make merry, then go to sleep. All feasts, all lives, must come to an end. Death, tugging your ear, says: Live, I am coming.

AD 45-79 | Still-life wall panel from the House of the Chaste Lovers |
Cockerel pecking at pomegranates, figs, and pears.

Okay, so how did we end up in Pompeii talking about figs and ham and rose petals?

I haven't read Dovey's first novel, Blood Kin, but I did read and adore her kookier second story collection, Only the Animals. This collection felt like an emerging writer still playing around with what kind of writer she wanted to be. The stories were fun and clever but they also showed that Dovey had some bigger ideas that she was prepared to play with. In the Garden of the Fugitives the writing and style felt more assured and the themes more autobiographical. It feels like she has now arrived as a fully-fledged writer.

Dovey explores, via a letter writing regime between the older mentor figure with regrets, Royce, and the younger, lost soul, Vita, themes of obsession, confession and atonement. As she says early on journeys need a point; a narrative arc. Both narrators, the letter writers, have very distinct voices and stories that intersect at times.

They are both lonely and seem to be overtaken by various forms of guilt, melancholia and nostalgia. Vita's story is more a coming-of-age one, whilst Royce is looking back on his life from his deathbed. Vita is still searching for a place or space to belong, whereas Royce spent his life trying to find someone to belong to. Neither of them ever seemed to feel at home in themselves.

Each and every one us contains a whole world of suffering.

Royce's voice sounded cultivated and charming. He was clearly educated and erudite. His letters were searching, teasing, insidious even. Vita's voice was more confronting. Harsh at times, sometimes cruel and to-the-point, she was often cool and distant. Their letter writing attempts to reinterpret, revise and reassess how they got to where they currently are. We all have a story to tell; and that story evolves with each retelling.

They both shared complex relationships with place. For Royce, place was caught up in how he felt about the people within the spaces. He said that it is impossible to experience a place like Pompeii outside the prism of your own desires. And certainly for Royce experiencing anything, including human relationships, outside the prism of his desires would be nigh on impossible. He had the emotional range typical of most narcissists.

However, his stories about his time in Pompeii, excavating the site known as the garden of fugitives, with his first obsession, Kitty, were utterly compelling. I could have had a whole story just about this time in Italy. 

Once you can inspect your own history like an artifact, you're a step closer to liberating yourself from it.

It took me a while to warm to Vita's story, even though I have shared many of her feelings of confusion about belonging. Perhaps it was the distance at which she liked to keep people, even her readers. Vita was often hamstrung by indecision, doubt and guilt. Her relationships reflected this muddle.  

One of the places that Vita was trying to fit into was Mudgee, NSW. The town I called home for 18 years. Naturally I was curious to hear what Dovey, via Vita, had to say about it.

To people just passing through, Mudgee is charming. The town's quaint sandstone buildings and wide streets, and, further out, the wineries and orchards in perfect rows, the shaded paths along the Cudgegong River. The natural beauty of the surroundings blinds most casual visitors to the town's unexpected strangeness, its schizoid social self. Itinerant labourers, gentleman farmers, amateur winemakers, corporate wine overseers, fly-in-fly-out mine workers, tree-changers, bogans, all bumping up against one another. 

There's the cheap cafe serving pies next to a hipster cafe serving artisanal brews. The old shitty pub with greasy carpets and pokies beside an organic wine bar. The farmers' market displays vegetables with authentically soiled roots and handmade cheese, but the explosions from the coal mines ringing the valley regularly destroy the peace. 

I fit in here because I, too, am caught between identities.

I suspect these comments are true of most small towns in Australia. Especially those that attract visitors and weekenders from the bigger cities around them. Mudgee is definitely one of those towns. But I lived there for a long time and never heard the sound the explosions from the coal mine at Ulan. Although it's quite possible that her character, living amongst the wineries on an olive farm, was on the Ulan side of town. Her descriptions made me think of the hills out past the cemetery and airport, on the way to the mines. Perhaps from there you could hear the blasts.

However a big part of Vita's story was about South Africa. She was born there, but her parents moved to Australia when she was young. She inherited not only their white guilt about Apartheid, but she suffered from her own version of guilt. Her time with a counsellor with an interesting excursion into

political will, individual culpability and responsibility. She not only reflected on the injustices and generational effects of Apartheid, but also the Australian colony experience, American slavery, Germany & the Holocaust. 

One comment struck me in particular, as I was able to relate it to the current debates around climate change politics. I hear many Gen Z's talking about climate change with a similar refrain. 

It wasn't me, I shouldn't have to feel responsible for decisions I didn't make. This way of thinking can lead to the false conviction that the injustices of the present are similarly outside your influence, that things will remain the same regardless of what you do or don't do.

I also learnt about psychohistorians. I didn't even know it was a thing, but learning about the 'why' of history and examining the differences between stated intentions and actual events sounds exactly like something I'd like to explore further.

The rallying cry of psychohistorians is that history repeats itself because of the propulsive effects of humiliation....They believe that the traumatised country, like the traumatised individual, has a psyche that is fractured. It has an unconscious. It buries painful memories, It indulges wishful fantasies through national myths....The Germans have developed an entire vocabulary and classification system for the different kinds of guilt suffered by different generations.

There's a whole lot of stuff about archaeology and Pompeii and Royce's reasons for feeling guilty and remorseful, that I haven't gone into here. Both Kate & Lisa explore these angles further, if you're interested. Like both Kate & Lisa, In the Garden of Fugitives will be added to my best books of 2019 list.

Kate @Books Are My Favourite and Best review.
Lisa @ANZLit Lovers review.

Favourite Quote:

Not one of the wise elders whose path I was privileged to cross in my years there ever said to me: No human being should have to go through life alone; do everything you can to find your person, the one who makes it bearable, the one who will love you back. Or everything else will be for naught anyway.