The Living Sea of Waking Dreams | Richard Flanagan #AUSfiction

 

I know there is a lot of love for The Living Sea in Waking Dreams out there already. 

It's not that I didn't love it, or even admire what Flanagan was trying to achieve, but it's not easy to read a book where you feel like you're being smashed over the head, not just with a hammer, but with the biggest, heaviest mallet that Flanagan could find, on every single page, at every single turn. With such a convoluted title, I was expecting more nuance and intellectual word play. Instead I got whack after whack of anger.

Flanagan has a lot to be angry about.

Last summer was ghastly for all of us in Australia. The bush fires were the worst we'd ever experienced. Our skies were grey with smoke and ash for month after month. The smell was inescapable, the heat was oppressive, the news catastrophic. It was easy to feel like it was the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning.

Writing a book while all of this is happening around you, can take its toll. It can be hard to find perspective. It can be hard not to rave and rant in absolute frustration. It can be hard to resist a good old preachy sermon. Flanagan did not resist.

There was nothing subtle in his story about vanishing body parts, a dying mother and a world in flames. The ghastly siblings, Anna & Terzo, who refused to let their mother die with any dignity or grace, were so implausible, I struggled to spend my time with them. Their brother, Tommy, was much nicer company and more realistically drawn, as was Anna's son, Gus. But then, Tommy was the actual carer. He was on hand in Tasmania to care for their ailing mother, while the other two simply jetted in and out whenever there was a problem to be solved. And Gus' response to a world on the brink of catastrophic climate change is to withdraw into a world of gaming and Youtube videos. 

Flanagan ranted several times about social media and smartphone use. Clearly he is not someone who properly understands these online tools. Nothing about the way his characters engaged with their online world actually reflected anyone I know. He had all the right words, but just like Mr Books & I discussing Tiktok or Snapchat or memes with our boys, we show our ignorance at every turn, much to their amusement.

I feel like I'm the one ranting now!

I didn't not like the book. 

It was an interesting read and an interesting concept, with all the vanishings that nobody noticed, that spoke for, or to, something even bigger and scarier that nobody is noticing either. However I felt no emotional connection to anyone in the story, except pity - a huge amount of pity, in fact - for the undying, lingering, suffering, decaying mother. I found myself talking out loud to Flanagan throughout the book, telling him to get out of the way of his own story.

I love it, though, when I discover the title in the story.

It wasn't enough for Terzo that their mother had not died. It wasn't enough that she lived in her sea of waking dreams. In Terzo's view, she had to live like us, rationally, in a rational universe.

Except of course, Terzo's world, or his idea of living, were not as rational as he thought.

In the end, though, the occasional insights and beautiful writing were not enough for me to rate The Living Sea of Waking Dreams particularly highly. 

It astonished her that he had a view as deeply held felt as hers and yet entirely opposite, and which he held with an equal conviction. And in the face of someone who would not be persuaded by her, she did not seek to see the world for a moment as he saw it but instead was simply angry with him that his world was not her world.

I'm in the process of putting together my best 20 reads of 2020. This one will not make the cut.

Epigraph: 

John Clare | Remembrances

To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey;

And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak's narrow lane

With its hollow trees like pulpits, I shall never see again:

Inclosure like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain,

It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill

And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running still,

It runs a naked brook, cold and chill.

Opening Lines:

1.

Her hand.

2. 

It's impossible to say how the vanishing began or if it was already ended, thought Anna.

Other Opinions:

• The Conversation | 8th Oct 2020 | Tony Hughes-d'Aeth

The brilliance of Flanagan’s story and the deep power of this novel is in our witnessing of the end of the world. The death of Francie opens up a black hole in the family drawing Anna, Terzo and Tommy into its implacable singularity.

• The Guardian | 16th Oct 2020 | Beejay Silcox

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams [is] at its best when it balances its vehemence with its beauty, when it leaves space for the reader to wander and wonder – eucalypt leaves swinging down like “lazing scimitars”; a moth thrumming its “Persian rug” wings.

• Lisa @ANZ Lit Lover found more to like than I did.

UK Cover

I've been trying to take a photo of the beautiful green textured feather design on the hard cover underneath the glossy black dust jacket, that would do it justice. You'll have to take my word for it. It's much more interesting than the dust jacket image. The next time you're in a bookshop, carefully open the jacket and take a peek for yourself.

The Dutch House | Ann Patchett #20BooksofWinter

The rave reviews are the hardest, aren't they?

It took me a few chapters to fall into this story, but when I fell, I really fell! The Dutch House turned out to be one of those wonderful, rich reading experiences that you wish would never end. Part gothic fairy tale and part psychological study of two siblings trying to come to terms with their loss and grief as they did battle with a wicked stepmother. Eventually expelled from their childhood home, they spent their adult lives searching for forgiveness, atonement and a way back home.

The character driven storytelling was absorbing, poignant and immersive. Maeve and her brother, Danny were characters that felt real - flawed but lovable. Their shared obsession with the childhood home helped them to gloss over their other losses. Money and possessions didn't matter; they simply worked hard and made good on their own. No parent? No worries; they had each other. 

But this is Ann Patchett we're talking about here, so there are many more layers to the story than that. Mothers and mothering played a big role as did materialism, greed and poverty. The different ways that kindness and love can be expressed and then experienced were explored. Do we ever really know our loved ones or do we waste a lot of time and energy trying to make them fit into the world view that we already have?

And we cannot talk about The Dutch House without talking about the house itself. As a metaphor for childhood and mother we see Maeve and Danny's mother reject and leave both the house and the children. As a place of shelter and protection, it clearly moved away from being a place of safety and security after the mother left and the stepmother wheedled her way in. 

As a symbol for self and personality, it's easy to see the Dutch House as an ongoing search by Maeve and Danny for a way back in, for integration. Their sense of being outsiders, abandoned and alone affected all their relationships. The weight of the grudge they carried around almost became another character, like the house. Spending so much time in the car together, looking at the house from outside, facilitated a kind of therapy session for both of them. Although I was in a constant panic that the stepmother would discover them and that things would turn ugly, but that could just be my fear of conflict!

It's curious that a book that seems designed to discuss mothers and mothering is narrated by Danny. In fact, for the first few chapters, I assumed that Danny was a sister, not a brother. He acknowledged that 'after our mother left, Maeve took up the job on my behalf but no one did the same for her'. Maeve considered herself lucky simply because she'd had many more years with their mother than he did. At every point Danny benefited from all the women in his life who took care and made sacrifices for him, but when their mother finally turned up again and Maeve forgave her and immediately moved to recreate a relationship with her, Danny was pissed off that he's been displaced. I accepted that he didn't want to forgive or let his mother back into his life, but I did resent that he wanted to deny Maeve the chance to decide for herself, when it was so obvious that Maeve was dying to feel mothered again.

But maybe that was one of Patchett's points. It's okay for fathers and men to be distant and absent, we can admire them for their ambition and worldly ways, but when a mother does it, she is lambasted and denied forgiveness or understanding.

Maeve and Danny were not the only siblings in this story. We also had Jocelyn and Sandy, the women who helped run Dutch House before and after the mother left, until they were also expelled along with Maeve and Danny. The wicked stepmother arrived with two children of her own, Bright and Norma. None of these characters were fully fleshed out for the reader as we only ever got to really see them through Danny's eyes. He didn't even realise that Jocelyn and Sandy were sisters until he was about 11 yrs old. He simply accepted them, unquestioningly, as part of the fabric of his young life, as most children do. 

I'm glad that Patchett never gave as any insight into why the stepmother was the way she was. She obviously had her own demons to behave the way she did throughout the story, but those demons remain part of the mystery. All we know is that her parenting style also completely alienated Norma and Bright. Bright didn't even return when her mother was ill and dying.

Patchett was inspired by something Zadie Smith said about writing autobiographical fiction, 

She was saying that autobiographical fiction didn’t have to be about what happened — it could be about what you were afraid might happen. She said the character of the mother in Swing Time was autobiographical because that was the mother she didn’t want to be. I thought that was brilliant. It explained something I’d always been doing but had never put into words. I adore Zadie Smith. At that moment, sitting on a stage with her at Belmont University, I thought, I want to write a book about the kind of stepmother I don’t want to be.

Our book group had a great discussion about all the elements in the story and it was one of the few books where everyone agreed on how much we loved it. A number of them had even read the book twice, saying they got so much more out of the story second time round as they were able to tease out some of the nuances even more.

The Dutch House is a keeper. 

I think this is my first 5 star rating for the year.

Favourite Quotes:

But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.

We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it.

Norma said that childhood wasn’t something she could imagine inflicting on another person, especially not a person she loved.

Facts:

• Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
• Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2020

Cover Love

• I agree with Ann, this is one of the best covers for a book ever. 
• You can listen to how this came about in this short video.
• It's not often that an author gets to have so much control over what ends up on the cover.
• It's not often that the same cover gets used for the US, UK and Australian editions of a book either.

Book 3 of 20 Books of Summer Winter - I'm a little behind schedule this year!

The Wonder Child by Ethel Turner

The Wonder Child is a gentle juvenile story about a family forced to be separated for years due to the gifted talents of one of the children. Challis plays the piano like a dream and goes off to Europe with her mother to make the family fortune.

The other four children stay at home with their hapless, but lovable father. Mr Cameron is a dreamer. He struggles to make his way in life, preferring to write verses, compose melodies and paint pictures. He doesn't seem to have the necessary skills to hold down a job and he relies on his more practical, responsible wife to manage their finances. Mrs Cameron obviously loves her creative husband, but also has to live with his flaws on a daily basis. After five children, and constantly being forced to ask family and friends for help, a job is arranged for Cameron in western NSW as a Crown Land Agent.

Wilgandra is a fictional town, but it sounds just like most of the small country towns I've known. Turner tells us it is -

three hundred and seventy-three miles back, back, away in the heart of the country - the farthest town to which the Government sent its Land Agent....

The climate was intolerable in the summer, there was little or no society, the only house they could have was not over comfortable.

It doesn't sound particularly promising or inspiring.

After their mother goes off to Europe with Challis, Hermie, Bartie, Roly & Floss are cared for by a very competent female 'lady-help' and their State girl Lizzie, carefully selected by Mrs Cameron before she left. However this arrangement only lasts six months, until the very competent young woman is snapped up by a local romeo to be his wife.

Hermie and Lizzie attempt to run the household, until even Mr Cameron is forced to acknowledge that this isn't working properly. Along comes the gentle, ineffectual Miss Browne. She's a spinster who has been unable to hold down any other job and whose ways are even more hapless than Mr Cameron.

A gradual decline sets in. Compounded by Mr Cameron losing his job as a Land Agent.

The family is forced to move out of the home the state provided, to take up possession of a lean, mean selection out of town.

Their father's selection stretched before them, eighty acres of miserable land, lying grey and dreary under the canopy of a five o'clock coppery sky, summer and drought time.

Five years drag on...five years of disguising their misfortunes from Mrs Cameron and Challis, until the day the letter arrives confirming the date they are due home from Europe. A Europe of adoration, comfort, new clothes and fine lodgings.

I don't normally provide a summary of the story in my posts, but this is one of Turner's lesser known works and I felt it deserved a fuller treatment.

Although this could be classified as a children's book, the themes are wide ranging and topical (for 1901). Turner discusses her views on religion and atheism via Mrs Cameron beliefs -

She said she did not try to explain or understand God, only to believe in him. She is quite right. It is the hard names, the popular orthodoxies, the iron creeds, that take the souls and heart and warmth out of religion. When you were little, she did nothing but show you God as your Father, and Christ as your Saviour, to be tenderly loved and obeyed, and gone to for refuge and comfort.... 

She wanted the love of God to be a living thing to you all - a glad, warm, spontaneous thing, like the love you bore us, only deeper. She would have no lines and rules and analyses of it while you were small. It was not a thing she actually spoke about very often....Not to understand, only to believe.

She includes some lovely descriptions of the bush -

Wattle in bloom made a glory of the uncleared spaces, the young gums were very green, the older ones wore masses of soft white upon their soberness.

Farther away there browsed brown sheep, but this was the season for lambs, a dozen little soft snowballs of things had come close to the cottage and gambolled with the children.  

They drove up the road that wound out of civilised Wilgandra away to parts where the bush took on its wild character again, and rolled either side of them in unbroken severity and loneliness for miles.

The air was fragrant with the bush scents that rise after rain. A cool, quiet breeze swayed the boughs pf the ocean-waste of tress, here and there it lifted the long string of warm-coloured bark - autumn's royal rags - that hung from the silvered trunks.

And the Boer War experience is covered off via the neighbouring squatter, Morty. Mortimer Stevenson is the youngest son of a strict father who runs off to war to avoid a romantic disappointment. Turner doesn't glorify the war (too much). She describes the Macquarie St parade as -

And now the crowd took the reins off itself, and gave head to its madness. It hurrahed itself hoarse; it waved its arms, and its handkerchiefs, and its hat,and its head; it flung flowers, and flags and coloured paper; it hung recklessly from roofs, and walls, doors, chimneys, fences, lamp-posts, balconies, verandah-posts.

We also see young Roly embrace the war talk. He renames the selection Transvall Vale, sets up camp in the yard and spends his days fighting imaginary enemies. But it is Morty's time in South Africa that hints at a more realistic and perhaps personal, view of war -

his first battle, with its horrid nightmare of flashing lights and thundering gins, its pools of blood, its contorted human faces, its agonised horses writhing in the dust.

She also shows us the other side with a quick glimpse into the life of a South African family who provide Morty with a place to sleep after he helps them bury their son/brother. -

it is the same everywhere; our lovers, our husbands, our sons - all gone from us! Some will come back, of course, but crushed and mutilated.... 

you must know why we are fighting....but our men don't know. They have been told they will lose their liberty and homes if they don't fight....your men, of course they come because they are sent, and they fight their best because they are brave and obey orders.... 

We are no different from you. We pay a few great men to do the thinking for us, and if they say it's got to be fighting, then, whatever it seems to us individually, collectively we just shoot.

As I said, for a juvenile story, Turner has managed to include lots of meaty topics. Including a very brief view on Indigenous life in a colonial outpost -

Two or three aboriginal women were coming back from a journey to the house, cloths full of stores and broken food slung over their shoulder. Stevenson forty years ago had had to break up a big camp of them on the land he had just taken up, and drive them farther west. Ever since he had not felt justified in refusing food to any of their colour.

Let's not forget young Hermie either, as the book is ultimately her coming of age story -

I can't tell you how silly  and small I have been - thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and never looking at what they really are.

Just like, Turner's more famous story, Seven Little Australians, The Wonder Child embraces it's sense of time and place. Her characters are unapologetically Australian in sound and attitude. Their lives always teetering on the brink of hardship and poverty, with large family life being shown as chaotic. We see young children shoulder responsibility and adult cares at a far earlier age than we expect now and where most people lived their daily lives far removed from government interference or regard. Individuals and families fell through the cracks all the time. Life was hard work, money and resources were scarce and getting by was the best most people could expect from life.

According the Brenda Niall's biography of Turner on the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Her writing showed a continuing tension between her enjoyment of popular and commercial success and her wish to break free from the restrictions of juvenile fiction. Ethel's publishers always insisted that her work should remain within the range of the sheltered young reader.

I sensed this tension throughout the book. The meatier, adult subjects were dressed up in neat moral bows suitable for the edification of younger readers. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into a world gone by and I'm grateful that Turner has another 40 or so such stories for me to enjoy at my leisure.

Facts:

• Published in 1901 but set in the time just prior to the Boer War (1899-1902).
• My CC spin #21 book.
• My flashback review of Seven Little Australians.
• My review of The Story of a Baby.
• My review of In the Mist of the Mountains.

Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach

I wasn't sure that I would like Confession with Blue Horses. The blurb and the cover made me think this would be a bit too kitsch or light for my usual reading tastes.

Tobi and Ella's childhood in East Berlin is shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in London, their past in full of unanswered questions. Both remember their family's daring and terrifying attempt to escape, which ended in tragedy; but the fall-out from that single event remains elusive. Where did their parents disappear to, and why? What happened to Heiko, their little brother? And was there ever a painting of three blue horses? 

In contemporary Germany, Aaron works for the archive, making his way through old files, piecing together the tragic history of thousands of families. But one file in particular catches his eye; and soon unravelling the secrets at its heart becomes an obsession. 

When Ella is left a stash of notebooks by her mother, and she and Tobi embark on a search that will take them back to Berlin, her fate clashes with Aaron's, and together they piece together the details of Ella's past... and a family destroyed. 

Devastating and beautifully written, funny and life-affirming, Confession with Blue Horses explores intimate family life and its strength in the most difficult of circumstances.

However, this was chosen as my next book group read and I haven't read very much about East Germany so I decided to tackle it for this year's Dewey's 24 hr readathon.

What a great decision!

Yes, it was a lightly told story but it was well-told. There was a sense of it being solidly based on oodles of research without being smacked in the face by said research. It was a quick, easy read that kept me engaged and on tenterhooks for the entire readathon. I had never thought about the number of children that had been taken from their families in the GDR and what it must mean for them now, that modern research techniques are allowing people to find lost children and lost siblings again.

I didn't know that there were people working away at old shredded Stasi documents to put them back together. But reconstructing old documents from the GDR is an ongoing task that helps individuals to recover the story of their earlier lives or those of their family.

By the end, I was very curious about Hardach's own background story. Was there a personal element to this story or was it simply journalistic curiosity. Her online bio briefly states:

Sophie is a journalist and the author of two previous novels, The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Fraud Marriages, and Of Love and Other Wars. She started out as a news reporter for Reuters in Italy, Japan and France, and eventually settled in London where she now writes for a range of publications. Sophie was born and raised in Germany, and still counts Berlin as one of her favourite cities.

She has written extensively about the German experience in her newspaper articles. I even recognised some of the intimate details in the book as coming from what she had learnt via survivors that she had interviewed.

It's obvious that for Hardach, this journey of discovery is personal and professional. In the London Library Magazine, Spring 2019, Issue 43 - Stories from Behind the Wall (pgs 22-25), she says about writing this book,

I tried to capture the tensions and contradictions of life in the GBR....I wanted to show the coping strategies that people developed, the humour, solidarity, poetry, love and friendship. I grew up in West Germany, but my mother's family was from Berlin and the far eastern German provinces that are now part of Poland and Russia....The Wall has not not been there for longer than it was there. And yet, for those 28 years, it felt permanent, and left permanent marks.

It's that sense of permanent damage that I was left with when I finished the book. Even though, Hardach left us with a hopeful ending in this case, it seemed apparent that most real-life reunifications were far more complicated and distressing.

Timing is everything, they say.
For walls to come down or to read a book at a certain time.
In less than two weeks time, it will be thirtieth anniversary of the Wall coming down.
Opinion pieces are starting to appear as everyone with a story to tell reflects on the various effects and changes since that time. I will retro-add some of the relevant articles below.

I'm now keen to read some of the books and authors that Hardach referenced in her article above - Christa Wolf, Helga Schütz (Gute Nacht du Schӧne 1991), Maxie Wander (Guten Morgen, du Schӧne 1977) and Anna Mundry (Gute Nacht, du Schӧne 1991).

Other books to consider:

• Günter Grass - Germany to Germany
• Wolfgang Hilbig - The Sleep of the Righteous
• Peter Schneider - The Wall Jumper
• Herta Müller - Traveling On One Leg
• Anna Funder - Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
• Christa Wolf - Patterns of Childhood
• Jana Hensel - After the Wall
• Deborah Levy - The Man Who Saw Everything

Movies:

• The Lives of Others.
•  Never Look Away

Opinion pieces:

• German novelists on the fall of the Wall | The Guardian | 3 November 2019 - five authors tell their stories.
• Watching the fall of the Berlin Wall | The Guardian | 9 November 2019 - five German writers share their thoughts.
• In place of Berlin's Wall now stands a barrier of sullen resentment | The Guardian | 10 November 2019 - Neal Ascherson opinion piece.

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

I decided to read How Green Was My Valley for this year's #Dewithon for several reasons. The first, and most obvious reason, is the Welsh setting of the book. Secondly, the book was actually on my TBR pile. Thirdly, the author's surname is the same as my Nan's maiden name - it's weird how a shared name can make one feel a sense of kinship to a complete stranger.

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Huw and his large family. It's hard not to love the Morgan's. They're big-hearted, community-minded, salt-of-the-earth folk. But it quickly became apparent to me that there were a number of issues surrounding this work and the author.

My first alert was when Karen @Booker Talk mentioned (in a comment/post that I cannot now find) that Llewellyn was not a Welsh author after all. I googled.

Wikipedia discretely told me that Llewellyn was born in 1906 to Welsh parents. "Only after his death was it discovered that his claim that he was born in St Davids, West Wales, was false."
But Britannica.com still publishes his birth place as being St David's, Wales, not Hendon, London, where he was actually born.

The next controversy surrounds Llewellyn's claims about how he attained his knowledge to write this book. He claimed to have spent some time down the mines in Gilfach Goch, whilst visiting his grandfather, but there is no record of him ever having done so. It is now believed, that at best, he had conversations with miners from Gilfach Goch, but every bio site I checked had conflicting information around this.

It's quite possible for authors to research their topic and write a fabulous story, without actually experiencing it themselves. Authors do it all the time. The problem lies when you claim to have had that actual experience that you're writing about, that somehow there is an element of memoir in your story. The trust between writer and reader becomes diminished by the deception.

The other confusion, for a number of the websites I looked into, was around dates. Llewellyn wrote HGWMV in the late 1930's before publishing in 1939. A number of sites also claimed that the book was set during this period of time. However, the book was set much earlier, during the reign of Queen Victoria, which means the majority of the book was set during the 1890's. Given that several of Huw's older brothers were also instrumental in establishing a miner's union in their area, the time frame could be even a decade earlier as most of the South Wales unions were first established during the 1880's. I'm also sure I remember one of the characters referring to the Queen's Jubilee early on which would probably be her Golden Jubilee in 1887 rather than her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. In 1895 one of Huw's older brothers went to Windsor with the Welsh choir to sing before the Queen and one of the big moments towards the end of the story, centred around the disastrous miners strike of 1898. There were several passages describing the effects of the sliding scale on the community as well as the impact that the six month long strike had on the miners and their families.

My initial love for the story was tempered by these confusions and misconceptions. It was a case of google getting in the way of an entertaining, heart-warming tale.

Despite these reservations, I learnt a lot about the mining industry of southern Wales. The slag heap issues were particularly alarming, as the piles slowly, gradually, inevitably crept down the hills eating farms, rivers and homes, until entire villages were drowned in slag. I also loved Llewellyn's use of the local Welsh dialect throughout the book.

A sense of nostalgia oozed through the story from the kind-hearted, socially-conscious, politically aware Morgan family, to the scenery of the Welsh hills. Most of the time I happily went along for the sentimental journey, but every now and again it was so saccharine sweet, that I had to put the book down for a while!

Favourite character: Bronwen (of course)! She not only had a great name, but her sense of loyalty, generosity and courage were admirable qualities that never wavered.

Favourite passage: 

All along the river, banks were showing scum from the colliery sump, and the buildings, all black and flat, were ugly to make a hurt in your chest. The two lines of cottages creeping up the mountainside like a couple of mournful stone snakes looked as though they might rise up and spit rocks grey as themselves. You would never think that warm fires and good food would come from them, so dead and unhappy they were looking.

Our valley was going black, and the slag heap had grown so much it was half-way along to our house. Young I was and small I was, but young or small I knew it was wrong, and I said so to my father.

"Yes, Huw," he said, and stopped to look. "I told them years ago to start underground, but nobody would listen. Now, there are more important things to think about. That is something that will have to be done when you are grown up. there will be plenty for you to do, indeed."  

Environmental damage through human activity has been a known problem for over a century, and still we say, let's leave it to the next generation to do something. Wales is attempting to regenerate the old mining areas into tourist destinations, although, sadly, it looks like the South Wales Mining Trail, mentioned in the link, has yet to come into being.

Favourite or forget?

Normally this is a very easy decision for me. Due to the overwhelming amount of books in my house, I only keep the extra-special ones. The special editions, the much-loved favourites that have been read and reread or those books that I loved so much, that I just know I will reread them one day. The rest get passed onto family and friends or get book-crossed. How Green Was My Valley is one of the few that has me unsure about this process. And while I feel undecided, it will, therefore, stay on my shelves, for now. I might reread this one day; it's also hard to let go of one of the few books with my name in it!

Penguin Modern Classics 2001

First published 1939

448 pgs

Dog Stories

I delightful batch of dog stories have turned up at work this month. I loved all three for different reasons, but my favourite of the batch was The Tales of Mr Walker by Jess Black.

Based on a true story, Mr Walker is a delightful illustrated chapter book about the Labrador Ambassador at the Park Hyatt in Melbourne.

The books is full of charming, funny and heart-warming tales. Featuring his first day in the hotel to helping out with a marriage proposal, to preparing for a charity ball, stopping a gang of thieves and entertaining a celebrity pianist. Mr Walker spreads love and happiness wherever he goes.

It's a wonderful family read aloud book or a treasure for your favourite 7 yr old to curl up with.

Royalties from the sale of this book go to Guide Dogs Victoria.

The Dog Who Lost his Bark by Eoin Colfer is a darker dog tale for a more mature reader.

When I was little, my mum had to ban me from watching Kimba the White Lion and Lassie as I used to get too upset whenever Kimba or Lassie got lost, scared or in trouble (which seemed to happen every episode!) Even now, I struggle with books or movies that feature animal violence or cruelty in any way (The Lion King makes me blubber every time).

So the first two chapters of The Dog Who Lost His Bark were very tough going for me. P. J. Lynch's sweet black and white illustrations helped me keep going though...a dog this cute and adorable had to be okay in the end surely.

Sensitive souls beware though, the first two chapters are harrowing.

However the pay off is worth the initial angst. Without giving anything away that the cover doesn't already tell you, our cute adorable dog finds a happy home AND finds a way to show his gratitude for being rescued and loved so well, when things go wrong for young Patrick.

Colfer has created a heart warming, gentle story that is perfectly complemented by Lynch's realistic drawings.

I loved it.

Good Rosie! by Kate DiCamillo is a picture book suitable for younger readers.

Rosie is a good dog, but she's also a little shy and nervous about leaving the house and playing with other dogs. The park is a bit too busy and the other dogs too noisy and active.

This is the story of how Rosie overcomes her fears and embraces new friends. Charming and delightful with some slightly odd-ball moments, Good Rosie! is a picture book designed as an early graphic novel with nine short chapters.

All three books have illustrators who have captured the movement and poses of the dogs to perfection. The dogs are portrayed in such an authentic, loving way, that it's impossible not to love them simply from their front covers. As you get to know each one via their stories, the pictures highlight their adorable little quirks and ways that make them unique.

I have spent most of my life being scared of dogs - too big, too boisterous, too many teeth. But I have always responded strongly to dog stories (as long as they don't talk! But that's another story). These three dog books celebrate a dog's life through the eyes of the dogs themselves. When the world seems like a cold, harsh, unloving place, a good dog story can save the day.

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

I loved the full-on angst of Anne Tyler's earlier works, they matched my view of the world, family and relationships at the time. They were complex works of realism that took the reader on an emotional journey not easily forgotten.

Roll forward to 2018 and Tyler still has an eye for family drama and odd relationships but she has mellowed with age and now offers her readers a more forgiving, gentle attitude. Her characters still have issues, they are still the fully developed, quirky individuals of old, but everyone just seems to be a little kinder and a little more aware of their own possible impact on others. 

The character of Willa dominates Clock Dance (Tyler's 22nd novel).

We get a brief glimpse into her childhood, and as you would expect from Tyler, there is a complex, difficult, selfish mother at the heart of the drama - the kind of personality the rest of the family spends the entire time treading carefully around. The damage ripples through the husband/wife relationship, effects the two children in different ways as they grow up and away from their parents and each other.

Willa's young adult relationships see her drifting into a marriage with a complex, difficult, selfish man (so completely the opposite of her own father, but oh so the male version of her mother) which then ripples down through onto her relationship with her own children. It's painful, frustrating and almost inevitable in Anne Tyler's world.

So when Willa finally does something out of the ordinary, we hope that she is finally going to shake off the compliant habits of her past and embrace a new life.

If I try to think of some common thread, I really think I’m deeply interested in endurance. I don’t think living is easy, even for those of us who aren’t scrounging. It’s hard to get through every day and say there’s a good reason to get up tomorrow. It just amazes me that people do it, and so cheerfully. The clearest way that you can show endurance is by sticking with a family. It’s easy to dump a friend, but you can’t so easily dump a brother. How did they stick together, and what goes on when they do? — all those things just fascinate me.

New York Times, July 5, 2018


One of the young characters in the novel loves a TV show called Space Junk. She describes it as 'this bunch of total strangers' who are kidnapped by aliens who 'take them off to study them' as they want 'to learn how families work'. The perfect explanation of Tyler's own writing style!

Clock Dance felt more old-fashioned than her previous books, even as she explored her familiar tropes of family, marriage, estranged siblings, chance events and change over time. There was an equal number of family relationships and 'stranger' relationships. Tyler seemed to be exploring the idea of individuals, estranged from their families of origin, coming together in a neighbourhood setting, to form a different type of family support network.

Ultimately, though, I wished that Willa had more spunk. Like her father, who was too understanding, too compliant, too forgiving, Willa keeps to the background, not rocking the boat, constantly smoothing the ruffled feathers of others, often at her own expense.

Perhaps one day she will 'rent a room somewhere' and try something new, but perhaps she won't.

Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant
The Beginner's Goodbye 

Book 17 of #20BooksofSummer (winter) - drop-in title
21℃ in Sydney
16℃ in Northern Ireland
I read this book during the July #reversereadathon

Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates

My first experience with Yates was way back in 2012 when I read Young Hearts Crying. It was so depressing, I haven't been able to try another one until now!

I love the covers that Vintage have selected for all their Yates books, they capture the melancholy and dissatisfaction that seems to infect all of his characters in one way or another. Cold Spring Harbor was no different, although ultimately less emotionally exhausting than Young Hearts Crying.

So many hopes dashes, disillusionment and mental health issues. Media reports often comment on the rise in mental health problems in our modern world, but Yates' novel remind us that they were always there, just not diagnosed and often self-medicated with copious amounts of alcohol.

Belonging was obviously a major theme in Yates' own life that carried through into all of his novels. His parents divorced when he was four, he moved around a lot, always short of money. His mother drank too much, he was bullied at school, joined the army in WWII, became a journalist, married, had children, divorced, remarried and had another child. He also drank too much, smoked and suffered from bouts of bronchitis, tuberculosis and bi-polar behaviours, before dying at age 66 of emphysema.*

In Cold Spring Harbor we have alcoholic mothers, absent fathers, divorced families, a family who moves around a lot and is always short of money, prep school bullying and army life. Everyone seems to be living a life of quiet desperation.

'My characters all rush around trying to do their best, trying to live well within their known and unknown limitations,' Yates explains. 'Doing what they can't help doing, ultimately and inevitably failing because they can't help being the people they are.'*

It's bleak stuff, on the very edge of hopeless. As with Young Hearts Crying, I got to the end and wondered what was the point of all that angst? Did I learn anything new about human nature? Did the characters learn anything new about themselves? Was there some political or social commentary being made by the author? I think it's probably a big fat no to all of that!

Cold Spring Harbor was most likely Yates' final attempt (it was his last published book) to work out his own sad life story. I can't decide if Rachel's closing words to her new born son were a sign of hope, wish fulfilment or irony on Yates' behalf.

"Oh you little marvel," she said. "Oh you're a wonder, that's what you are. You're a miracle. Because do you know what you're going to be? You're going to be a man."

* Nick Fraser Rebirth of a Dark Genius, The Guardian 17th Feb 2008

Book 6 #20BooksofSummer (Winter)
20℃ in Sydney
16℃ in Norther Ireland

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

After returning home from our trip to Japan, I wasn't ready to let it go, so when I finished Memoirs of a Geisha, I turned straight to this glorious historical fiction set in Korea and Japan for solace. Not that Pachinko was a comforting read as such. There was tragedy, sadness, grief, loss and war. But there was also love, loyalty and strength of character.

Basically Pachinko is an epic multi-generational story. The consequences of a brief love affair by a young Korean girl with an older married man impacted several generations. The repercussions of the affair brought about great change and great joy as well as tremendous suffering and opportunity. 

Min Jin Lee explores the nature of belonging via all her characters. I hadn't realised how many Koreans had immigrated to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 -1945 and how much discrimination they faced, and continue to face. After the war they were given the opportunity to move back to Korea, and some tried. But they often found that they had become so Japanese to their Korean neighbours that they were rejected. The political division into north and south Korea also prohibited the return of many former nationals. Yet they didn't belong in Japan either. 

To belong somewhere, is it country, language, culture, education, family, nature or nurture?

The Japanese call the Koreans who came to Japan during this time zainichi (foreign resident staying in Japan). They are a distinct minority group in Japan that are differentiated from even the Koreans who immigrated to Japan in the 1980's.

The Japanese, like most countries in the world, have not readily or gracefully accepted cultures and peoples who differ from themselves. Sunja's story highlighted all the discrimination, subtle and institutional, that this group of Koreans endured and the impact it had on individuals, families and the community as a whole.

I didn't like the cover at all when I began the book (I preferred the prettier pachinko-style smaller format and international covers) but by the end I became quite attached to the young woman on my cover. Her stoic stare gradually revealed the pain and determination to survive in an hostile environment. And I got to wondering who was this woman and what was her story.

As Lee found when she researched this book,

the Korean Japanese may have been historical victims, but when I met them in person, none of them were as simple as that. I was so humbled by the breadth and complexity of the people that I met in Japan that I put aside my old draft and started to write the book again.

It is this human complexity that she conveys so well in Pachinko.

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty

Regular visitors to my blog know that at Christmas time I need safe, easy reads to get me through the crazy season in one piece. This year Three Wishes played its part perfectly.

The story of a set of triplets - two identical, one fraternal, seemed a bit contrived at the outset, but after a little settling in period, I was quickly on board with Moriarty's very first story concept.

She had me hook, line and sinker, by the time her characters were dancing to Bananarama's Venus - the song Mr Books and I danced to on our very first date 30 years ago! This book is also Moriary's most Sydney-centric story. Her characters go to Balmain markets (when that was the thing to do), eat out in the city, and live in houses with glimpses of the harbour. Reading books set in your own neighbourhood that make your own life and your own story seem book-worthy are powerful things indeed!

But the thing that makes Moriarty so readable is her authenticity. Her main characters are just so REAL. They could be your best friend, they could be your neighbour, they could be your colleague...they could be you. Her characters fart during yoga class, get drunk and make out with the boss and send emails and text messages when they shouldn't.

Relationships are what keep her stories spinning round - sisters, brothers, parents and children are the focus of this story with all the steps, halves and ex's that our modern society expects. Her characters love far more drama and self-imposed complications that I would be comfortable living with, but that's part of the fun. Revelling in the foolishness and over the top behaviour of others is what makes Moriarty's books just so darn enjoyable.

This may be Moriarty's very first book, but it's a stand out story and a very impressive debut. Her books always have plenty of heart and soul and humour - Three Wishes is no different. And I will never view forks and their projectile possibilities the same way ever again!

I'm now all caught up with Moriarty's back list. Which means waiting patiently for her next book...which I believe is scheduled for later this year - wahoo!

Chronological Order:

Three Wishes (2004)

The Last Anniversary (2006)

What Alice Forgot (2010)

The Hypnotist's Love Story (2011)

The Husband's Secret (2013)

Big Little Lies (2014)

Truly Madly Guilty (2016)

My Favourites - from most loved to not so much:

Big Little Lies

What Alice Forgot

The Husband's Secret

Three Wishes

The Hypnotist's Love Story

The Last Anniversary

Truly Madly Guilty

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty

I am a fan of the Moriarty sisters -  Liane, Nicola and Jaclyn - they have all gone off in different directions, genres and target audiences but the one thing they have in common is thoroughly engaging stories, believable characters and the ability to suck me into their world.

Jacyln's previous series that wowed my socks off was The Colour of Madeleine trilogy. These books were aimed at an older teen audience - light fantasy, a little romance and a great concept. The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone is for younger readers - about 10 plus. It's another light fantasy with a great concept, but more concerned with family and friendship than romance, although I'm still wondering about Aunt Isabelle and the Butler!

Bronte begins her story with the sudden death of her parents. This is not as sad an event as you might expect as Bronte was left by her parents on Aunt Isabelle's doorstop when she was a baby. Bronte's feelings about her parents, are therefore, complicated.

Things quickly become even more complicated when the terms of their wills are revealed. Bronte is to go on a quest, an adventure no less, to visit all her aunts (there are ten more besides Aunt Isabelle!) The timing for each visit is very specific as are suggestions for places to eat, gifts to give each aunt and the very definite condition that Bronte travels alone. She is only ten years of age. Aunt Isabelle is horrified, but the will is cross-stitched in faerie thread which means that if Bronte doesn't follow the instructions exactly as stated, if she breaks the terms, then her home town will also break.

This is pretty serious sounding stuff you have to agree. But Bronte heads off on her quest with oodles of optimism, trust and commonsense.

She encounters dragons, rescues water sprites and goes on the run from pirates. She saves a baby in danger of drowning, befriends a girl running off to join the circus and meets a mysterious boy with no shoes.

Each aunt has stories to tell Bronte about her parents. She gradually learns some of their secrets as well as learning some startling new things about herself. Moriarty does all of this with a lightness of touch and a great deal of charm.

Kelly Canby's quirky line drawings are scattered throughout the book. They highlight the sense of fun that permeates the whole story as well as giving this lovely hardback edition a dash of style.

This would be a fabulous bedtime read aloud book to enjoy together as a family. Highly recommended.

The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola

I cannot thank Fanda @Classiclit enough for once again hosting #Zoladdiction2017 - one of my favourite readalongs each year!

I used this year's readalong to go back to the very beginning of the Rougon-Macquart series, a little worried that reading out of order might muck up the flow of the stories. However, reading part of Brian Nelson's Introduction before beginning, set my mind at ease,

the very nature of The Fortune of the Rougons as the founding text of the Rougon-Macquart series means that a knowledge of the later novels will make it all the more rewarding to return to the 'origins'.

I say 'part of' the Introduction, as Nelson warned that 'readers who do not wish to learn details of the plot will prefer to read the Introduction as an Afterword'. Because I knew very little about the Second Empire era of French history, I read the Introduction carefully for the historical notes, leaving the plot discussion for later.

Zola's aim was to show one family and it's various members through the time of the Second Empire. 'though they may seem at first glance totally dissimilar from each other, (they) are, as analysis shows, linked together in the most profound way. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.' (Preface)

I can now never know what it would be like to read this origin story without some knowledge of the later novels, but exactly as Nelson suggested, I found it extremely gratifying to see where the unforgettable Nana and Etienne had sprung from.

My Oxford World Classic edition of The Fortune of the Rougons has a fabulous family tree at the front which I referred to often. Nelson also listed which characters appear in which book. I was fascinated to see that Anna (Nana) and Etienne (Germinal) were half brother and sister and that their grandfather was the drunken, brutish, undisciplined Antoine. Their mother was the beaten and abused daughter, Gervaise (L'Assommoir) who had her first baby at fourteen. She also took to the bottle.

However the story actually begins with a potted tour of the fictional town of Plassans (which was based on Zola's Provençal childhood home of Aix). This area of rural France maintained the strongest republican resistance against Louis-Napoleon's 1851 coup.

Young Silvère (cousin to Gervaise) is in love with the even younger Miette. Their love is platonic and idyllic in nature while their passions are fired up in defence of the Republic. They get caught up in the insurgent's march for liberty and head off together singing the Marseillaise.

The middle chapters of the book then detail the family history of the Rougon's - starting with the mad matriarch - the sensual, scandalous Adélaïde. Zola eventually weaves his way through the various branches of the Rougon's and Macquart's, back to modern times and the role each member plays in the birth of the Second Empire.

He (Pascal) pondered over the growth of the family, with its different branches springing from one parent stock, whose sap carried the same seeds to the furthest twigs, which bent in different directions according to the ambient sunshine or shade. For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.

This includes a hauntingly beautiful chapter about what befalls our two young idealistic lovers, Silvère and Miette.

If you have yet to embark on your own Zoladdiction journey, I urge you to get started as soon as possible. Although I didn't start with The Fortune of the Rougons, I wish I had, purely for the pleasure of starting where it all began.

Zola's writing is quite raw and angry compared to the more measured tones that I found in Nana and Germinal, but right from this beginning, he impresses with his descriptive power, his attention to all the sordid details and his commitment to the naturalist form of story telling.

Now I just have to decide whether I read the rest of the Rougon-Macquart series in chronological order, or in Zola's recommended reading order!

#Zoladdiction2017

My earlier reviews for Nana and Germinal.

Fanda's review of The Fortune of the Rougons is here (and her dedicated Zola blog here).

O @Behold the Stars has her review here.

The Books of Emile Zola website has a review written by Lisa @ANZlitlovers here.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name is Lucy Barton might seem like just another simple mother/daughter story, but like all of Elizabeth Strout's stories there is much more going on under the surface than first meets the eye.

Lucy Barton is in hospital for an extended medical procedure. Her husband, busy with his work and their two young girls, arranges for her mother to come and stay awhile to help out while Lucy slowly recovers.

Simple, right?

However, we soon learn that Lucy and her mother haven't spoken in years, that Lucy's mother naps in the bedside chair rather than staying in a hotel or with her son-in-law, that they avoid talking about Lucy's husband or children or her New York life and they tread very carefully around Lucy's childhood memories.

How do we find out what the daily fabric of a life was?

The effects of abject poverty and dysfunction, the understanding that people can only do they best they can in any given situation and that that best is often not enough for those dependant on them, imbue this slight book.

We all love imperfectly.

Perspective, memory and compassion are also significant themes for Strout. Themes that she loves to tease out and explore via her characters.

She was not telling exactly the truth, she was always staying away from something.

I suspect that My Name is Lucy Barton was also a chance for Strout to address some of her ideas about the nature of writing and being a writer.

I like writers who try to tell you something truthful.

She wrote about people who worked hard and suffered and also had good things happen to them.

Her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.

I wonder if anyone ever 'accused' Strout of writing with a softness of compassion like they did her character, Sarah Payne? And why anyone would think that that was a bad thing?

The power of language and words to hide, reveal or obfuscate the truth gets a look in,

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

as do some simple home truths on how to treat (or not treat) others.

I think it's the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.

Do not ever think you are better than someone.

I don't normally fill a post with book quotes, but I just adore Strout's use of words. I love how she can pack a great deal of emotional truth into a few simply turned phrases.

They deserve to be highlighted and savoured.

My Name is Lucy Barton was longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize and the Man Booker Prize.

I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb

I seriously hope there are some Wally Lamb fans out there who can tell me what all the fuss is about or at least that I'll Take You There is simply not an example of his best work.

I acknowledge that I am jet-lagged after our big trip away and now a yucky summer head cold has caught up with me too. My ability to concentrate is severely impaired, which is why I had to put down Herodotus' The Histories for a bit.

I'll Take You There seemed light enough and interesting enough for my tired brain to cope with. A bit of a ghost story with a bit of time travel sounded fun. A family drama with secrets, revelations and personal insights sounded just right.

However, no matter how hard I tried, this just ended up feeling like a baby boomer's nostalgic trip down memory lane. The ghost story felt contrived. I couldn't see the point in the time travel aspect of the story. All the characters tried too hard to be smart, sassy and hip.

My care factor plummeted by about chapter five and never really revived as a skimmed through the rest. I wanted to find out what Lamb's answers were to 'life's biggest questions' as the New York Times quote on the back jacket promised.

I didn't have a problem with his final response as such, but it was nothing new or startling or thought provoking.

What did I miss?

This was my first Wally Lamb, and at this point, my last, unless someone can convince me otherwise.

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar

One of my good friends has been raving about Salt Creek for nearly a year now. I knew I would love it - it has all the things I usually look for in a good book.

Strong, interesting female protagonist, fascinating setting (Younghusband Peninsula in South Australia), a lovely cover design and historical fiction based loosely on real stories.

Hester is the eldest daughter in a large family fallen on hard times thanks to their father's dubious business investment ideas.

After the failure of his sheep run and the sudden death of two baby siblings, the grieving family is forced to sell up and move to the Coorong region.

Treloar's writing is beautiful, even lyrical at times, but the story that is told is tragic.

The earth still turned and we had almost reached the sun.

There was nothing there but a strong feeling of absence.

A person might appear to be complete and be invisibly crumbling, or might appear to be falling apart and yet persist despite all expectations. 

Poverty, hard work, more loss, death and business failures dog the family throughout their time at the Coorong.

However, it is Hester's strong will and hopeful nature that keeps them together, or at least moving forward as best they can.

They befriend a young man from one of the local tribes, Tull.

For me this is one of the highlights of the story. The disconnect between the two worlds is so vividly and perceptively drawn. Both parties tried so hard to get to know each other, to learn from each other, but you just know it will end badly. This imbues the story with sadness and frustration.
You know what's coming; we just don't know the details of how Treloar is going to bring it about.

Treloar's indigenous perspective is definitely coloured by Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth, which she acknowledged in her afterword. For me this is historical revisionism at its best.

If you loved Kate Grenville's The Secret River or The Lieutenant, I think you will love this too.
Salt Creek is heart-achingly good and deserves to be widely read.

And I'm not the only one to think so. Treloar won the 2016 Dobbie Literary Award and the Debut Fiction section of the 2016 Indie Book Awards. Salt Creek was also shortlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin Award.

Whether we will ever make something complete I cannot know. It is a fractured thing, life; it is in its nature...and broken people can survive and find each other and become whole.

This review is part of my Australian Women Writer's challenge.

I'm Supposed To Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman

A good memoir is a true delight and I love it when I find one that catches me by surprise.

Memoirs, good memoirs, have the power to heal, to connect, to normalise, to reach out, to understand and to promote empathy.

When I picked up the ARC of Spiegelman's I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This at work, I had no idea what to expect.

I didn't know who she was or why she needed to write a memoir or how it was that she was deemed worthy enough to even be published.

However, I quickly learnt that her father is Art Spiegelman of Maus fame and that her mother is Françoise Mouly, art director of the New Yorker. Nadja, therefore, has a fascinating family story to tell.

And she can write.

From page one I was hooked by her style and what she had to say. Her fascination with memory and the different stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives spoke to me.

Pure memories are like dinosaur bones, one neuroscientist wrote, discrete fragments from which we compose the image of the dinosaur. They are only flashes.

The stories we use to create our sense of self - are also the ones over which we have most heavily embroidered. They have been altered by the moods and settings in which we have told them. They have been altered by what we needed them to mean each time.

Somewhere along the way, the episode had passed from memory to story to myth. 

I've always been secretly envious and also slightly repulsed by people who have such intense, physical and passionate relationships with their mothers and grandmothers. As I read Nadja's story though, I realised that even those of us with more distant, reserved relationships, we still have a lot of the same angsty issues going on within our family stories, it's just there is nowhere for all that feeling to go.

Perhaps that's what makes me feel envious as I read memoirs like this? People being able to express their emotions as they happen. It's a much better way than bottling everything up.

Nadja's bravery in asking the tough questions and tackling the heavy issues within her family was an inspiring act of love and trust that helped three generations to find a more peaceful and hopeful way forward.

20/20 Books of summer (winter)