The Dictionary of Lost Words | Pip Williams #AUSfiction

 

Many years ago, the year 2000 to be precise [I know this because], I read and loved Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words. Curiously and more sensationally, it was retitled The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary for the US and Canadian market. Either way it was an utterly absorbing story about the chief editor of the first Oxford English Dictionary, John Murray and one his more colourful contributors, a US army surgeon imprisoned in the lunatic asylum in Crowthorne, Berkshire.

At the time I didn't think about how male dominated the story was. What else could one expect from a story written about the period of time from 1879 - 1915 (the years that Murray worked on the OED before his death on the 26th July)?

Thankfully Pip Williams didn't leave it at that!

One of the main consultants and contributors to the OED was historian Edith Thompson (1848-1929), originally brought in because for her knowledge of historical terms. However, by the C and D volumes she was also proofreading and sub-editing, providing thousands of quotations, along with her sister, Elizabeth Thompson.

Edith, or Ditte, is one of the real characters in Williams fictional story of the early days of the OED. Ditte is the godmother of our fictional protagonist, Esme. Williams weaves Esme's childhood habit of sitting under the sorting table in the Scriptorium, while her father worked above, into an explanation for how and why the word 'bondmaid' came to be missing from the first real-life edition of the OED.

I spent ages searching the internet for more information or a photo of Edith Thompson, but except for a few small notes on the OED contributors page, there was nothing but this one slip in her handwriting. 

These postcard-sized slips, devised by Murray, were used to collect, collate and organise all the words that came in from contributors all around the world. Pigeon holes lined the walls of the Scriptorium (the rather fancy name given to the shed at the bottom of his garden where he worked) where all the slips were sorted in alphabetical order. Every word and quotation was checked and double-checked for relevance, historical accuracy and usage. Many words instigated long debates between the three main editors as they disagreed over what was colloquial, crude or jargon. 

Many words were left out of the dictionary. Each word had to have a history of use and written quotes to back it up. If a word was in daily use, but had no written record it did not get used. Therefore the OED became a dictionary of the words that educated, literate men (and a few women) used and wrote throughout English history.

William's story turns the lens back around to the everyday words that women and the working classes used, as we watch Esme gather and collate her own dictionary of the words not included in the OED. 

Given the time frame spanned in this story, the women's suffrage movement and the effects of WWI also feature throughout. We experience both through the eyes of Esme. Both events provide her with even more opportunities to collect words that might otherwise be lost.

The Dictionary of Lost Words is a wonderful, rich historical fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I'm grateful that my book club gave me a good reason to finally pick this book up. My only quibble is that I failed to feel a deep emotional bond to any of the characters. I was completely absorbed by the story and the ideas, but I was curiously unmoved by the drama of their daily lives. First person narratives can do that to me sometimes, especially when the narrator is so reserved and quiet.

This book has left me with a thirst to know more about James Murray and his family. All of his eleven children helped work on the dictionary at various times, especially, his fourth daughter, Rosfrith, who spent most of her life working on the dictionary. I'm very grateful to Williams for highlighting the lives and work of the women who were involved in the creation of the OED. 

I'd also be keen to read more about Edith Thompson and her sister. Please let me know if you know of any such books, articles, texts.

Favourite Quote: 

The Kaurna are the Aboriginal people who called this land home before this great hall was built, and before English was ever spoken in this country. We are on their land, yet we do not speak their language. 

Favourite or Forget:

• Definitely a favourite read right now, but I suspect it won't stick in my mind by the time I come to compile my favourite reads of 2020.
• Why?
• Not enough emotional impact.
• But I will ALWAYS be fascinated by the origin story of the OED.
• The various titbits about how the Scriptorium worked will stay with me a long time.
• If I ever get to England again, a trip to 78 Banbury Rd, Oxford, will be on the cards.

Rodham: A Novel | Curtis Sittenfeld

What a fascinating premise!

What a fascinating story!

What an amazing story teller!

Rodham: A Novel is hard to define, and even harder to classify or deconstruct. What is real and what is fiction is the thing that haunts you the whole time you're reading this story. At least it did for me.

The idea of sliding doors, alternate histories or the road not taken have always intrigued me, so it was only natural that I would be sucked into Curtis Sittenfeld's world, where Hillary Rodham refused to marry Bill Clinton.

Living on the other side of the world, my understanding of the nuances of American politics is basic, though. I suspect a lot of the references to real life stuff passed me by. Especially once we moved into the alternate story of a single Hillary, forging a career path unhindered by a husband or children (sorry Chelsea). I didn't know enough about what Hillary Clinton actually did do, to know how different things were for Hillary Rodham. Was that youtube video in Ohio something that really happened? Did she really go on a cooking show and was there some gaff about baking cookies? 

So I had to read the book assuming that the basic relationships were based on reality (with family, friends, colleagues, senators, media and backers etc), but that the paths they took were changed by her third 'no' to Bill. 

I assumed that all the conversations were purely imagined and the sex scenes nothing but fantasy! Please let the sex be nothing but fantasy. It was like reading about your parents having sex. You know they probably did it, but you definitely do not want to know any of the details. Ever!

After reading a couple of other reviews (Susan @The Cue Card and Girl With Her Head in a Book) I believe that being on the other side of the world and far removed from many of the incidents and people referred to, I did miss some of the cleverness and the humour. I spent a lot of time worrying about what was real and what wasn't. And I certainly found the middle section of the book rather dry and dull, as only stuff about politics can be dry and dull to the outsider.

It wasn't until we got to Trump and more recent times, that I was able to appreciate the changes that rippled out from that third 'no', to bring Rodham to her third run at the presidency in 2016. It was highly amusing seeing Trump's own words being used against him here, to support Rodham against her long-ago ex, Bill Clinton, who was running against her in the Democratic nominations. With Trump's support, Rodham was able to move into the White House on her own terms!

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book, was the thinking involved in Hillary's decision to leave Clinton back in the 70's. For two pages, Sittenfeld's shares the internal dialogue of a woman torn by her love for a man and her growing concern about his philandering ways. Should she stay and accept his wandering eyes (and hands and lips and penis) or should she go? Should she stand by her man or put her own needs first? Which choice could she live with? 

In the book, she decides (with Bill's support) that she should go her own way. This changes everything (and sometimes) nothing for both Hill and Bill. 

Sittenfeld said in an Esquire article in May 2020,

it's really thinking about fate versus free will and the butterfly effect and how potentially small choices that any of us make can have... Do they have huge consequences, or does our life resemble itself no matter what small choices we make?

I'm not sure that I believe in fate, or soul-mates or even that everything happens for a reason. Even though my life story with Mr Books could be held up as a perfect example of all three. In the end it's the stories we chose to tell ourselves about our lives that make all the difference.

In real life Hillary chose to stand by her man, warts and all. The love they felt for each other was strong enough to get them through the tough times. The compromises made, were ones they chose to live with. They embraced the life they made together. I don't imagine that they have ever imagined different lives for themselves than the one they have lived through together. They do not seem to be the kind of people who live with regrets.

Sittenfeld has not imagined a world of regret either. Instead, she has cleverly shown us how a completely different life might be possible. How bit by bit, experience by experience, it's possible to evolve into someone else if another path was taken.

I found Rodham to be fascinating in a voyeuristic kind of way, sympathetic in a very human way and fun and delicious in a rather daring kind of way.

Book 2/20 Books of Summer Winter

Fictionalised Biography or Biographical Fiction?

Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

As most of you know by now, I love and adore historical fiction. It's my preferred genre, although I will have a go at most things if it's well-written, has an interesting premise or I'm in the mood. However my go-to, when I need a guaranteed read, a read I can simply fall into with comfort and ease, it will always be historical fiction.

In and around this are books that might be classified as alternate histories (think 1984 or Stephen King's 11/22/63) where the author plays with what might have happened if just one event changed. We can also have books that are historical now by default. I guess you might call them period piece fiction as they are now historical to us, but they were once contemporary (think Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott). The historical time and setting of these novels now plays an important part in understanding what's happening to our beloved characters.

Historical fiction, for me then, pretty much covers everything else. That is, an author sets their book in a period of time before their own and populates it with fictional characters (think Thomas Keneally, Geraldine Brooks, James A. Michener). To refine this even further, you could include authors who write about the immediate past. A time they may have lived through themselves or perhaps their grandparents lived through, providing a personal perspective to the historical context (think Tolstoy, Zola, Harper Lee).

Included within this group, is the fictionalised biography.

Or is that, biographical fiction?

Whichever way you look it, it's where an author takes real events and real people and makes up stuff about what they said and did to make a story. I love this sub-genre. When done well, it can provide insights into a time and place or a much-loved person that would be impossible to know otherwise, due to the sparsity of primary sources (think Hilary Mantel, Robert Graves, Philippa Gregory).

One of the things I love about this particular genre is it's ability to view history through a different lens. A lot of authors are exploring history through a feminist lens or an Indigenous lens (think The Secret River or Alias Grace). Given that the historical record favours the winners who also usually happen to be men, being reminded that other people were involved and impacted is a good thing.

Historical facts are not static; they have always been open to manipulation. Revisionism and re-interpretation is a natural human process. We all adjust our personal stories as new evidence comes to light and as experience and maturity enhance our ability to see beyond our own biases and prejudices.

The history of the world is no different. The stories around the facts, change with time. New information, fresh perspectives and the advantage of hindsight can all have an impact. It opens the doors to exciting possibilities and original ideas.

Which brings me to the massive disappointment I feel, when this story telling process fails to work it's magic over me.

It may be that the weird times under which we now live, are adversely affecting my reading habits. I do seem to be leaning more towards narrative non-fiction lately. But let me tell you about two of the disappointments.

Firstly, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell.

Shortlisted for this years Women's Prize and claiming to tell the story of Shakespeare young son who died at age 11 in 1596, this is a lifelong fascination for O'Farrell come to fruition. It sounded so promising.

I loved the first chapter that shows us a young Hamnet playing with his twin sister Judith who suddenly falls ill. She puts herself to bed and Hamnet goes searching for a family member to help, but everyone is out. This is unusual. Hamnet's search becomes more desperate and tense when he suspects that Judith may have caught the Plague.

But then we switch to back story. The wild, untamed daughter attracts the attention of the dissatisfied tutor to her brothers. Yuck! Her witchy habits means she is an outsider and considered dangerous to know. He knows he shouldn't, but he does, anyway. Blah, blah, blah.

I picked it up and put it down three times, hoping it was just my bad mood or tiredness. But no. This is just trite and awful. Not even the stuff about the Plague was enough to keep me interested (if only a few more world leaders had been like Queen Elizabeth I though "The playhouses are all shut, by order of the Queen, and no one is allowed to gather in public.")

My next fictionalised biography disappointment was a bit closer to home.

I've been looking forward to the new Kate Grenville for some time now. It's an embargoed title until the 2nd July, but some pre-publicity stuff tells me that the premise of this story about Elizabeth Macarthur hinges on the sudden discovery of some "shockingly frank secret memoirs." 

Uh-oh!

I many give A Room made of Leaves closer attention in July, just to make sure, but the blurbs unnecessary use of the words 'notorious', 'miraculously' and 'playful' have turned me off, as has this particular paragraph.

Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none- this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear-at last!-what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.

Yuck!

That has to be one of the worst written blurbs ever. It's made the story sound like some kind of bodice-ripping, pot-boiler.

I am now feeling rather nervous about starting the final book in Hilary Mantel's (so far) magnificent trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror and the Light. The reports coming in from customers and other bloggers are encouraging, so all I have to do I is make the time to reread the first two!

A copy of Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is also lurking on my TBR pile. I love the idea of an alternate history story line with a feminist lens, but what if the writing is dull and awful? I've never read any Sittenfeld before, so I don't know what to expect.

Despite the above, I do in fact, love this genre. Remember how much I enjoyed In Love With George Eliot by Kathy O'Shaughnessy earlier this year. And my most recent Zola (surely the master of fictionalised history), and my current chapter-a-day read of War and Peace plus a whole stack of other classic and period piece books devoured this year alone (ranging from Katherine Mansfield to Angela Thirkell to Mena Calthorpe and just this week Martin Boyd).

I'm certainly not done with fictionalised biographies, but I am a little more wary of late. As always, I'm happy to consider your favourites, in this genre, for future reference.

In Love With George Eliot | Kathy O'Shaughnessy #UKfiction

Kathy O'Shaughnessy has written an utterly delightful and immersive story about the extraordinary Marian Lewes, otherwise known as George Eliot. The book follows Marian from the early days of her unconventional 'marriage' to George Lewes through to her writing days, fame, second marriage and eventual death.

In Love With George Eliot not only refers to the people that surrounded and feted Marian throughout her lifetime but also three modern characters who love her work and are fascinated by her story. O'Shaughnessy herself, as well as her modern-day inventions, Kate, Ann and Han are just as immersed in Eliot's life story as we are. In a few brief chapters, inserted amongst the main story about Eliot, these three organise an Eliot conference in contemporary London and Venice, as they explore their own ethical quandaries. I wasn't completely sure that we need these chapters, but they irked me less as we went along.

As a fiction writer, O'Shaughnessy is able to enter areas considered no-go to a regular biographer. She is able to get inside Marian's head to speculate and wonder. She can imagine conversations and occasionally put people in the room who weren't really there. But it's not all supposition and imagination, the story is littered with direct quotes from Marian's letters and diaries as well as those from others. The research is there, as is the reverence and the curiosity.

I read Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss a lifetime ago. I've always wanted to read more and I hope to one day revisit Middlemarch in particular. My sense is that O'Shaughnessy, not only loves Eliot, but has written a homage to her. In Love With George Eliot feels like reading an Eliot novel. There is perceptive insight, a careful pacing and elegant set pieces with the characters moving and talking amongst each other, sometimes with great insight and sometimes at a complete loss to explain themselves.

Dear Sara,

There is always an after-sadness belonging to a brief and interrupted intercourse between friends - the sadness of feeling that the blundering efforts we have made towards mutual understanding have only made a new veil between us.... We are quite unable to represent ourselves truly - why should we complain that our friends see a false image?

...I have blundered, as most of us do, from too much egoism and too little sympathy. If I am too imperfect to do and feel the right thing at the right moment, I am not without the slower sympathy that becomes all the stronger from a sense of previous mistake.

In Love With George Eliot is a rich, immersive read, best enjoyed slowly and thoughtfully. It's not a story to rush, but to savour.

Now I just have to work out how I'm going to read more Eliot sooner rather than later!

FranKissStein by Jeanette Winterson

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time wondering how best to write the title of this book - FRAN KISS STEIN like the cover, FRANKISSSTEIN like the title page of the book or Frankissstein like Goodreads.
FranKissStein appealed to me, but it's not a version I've spotted anywhere else.
Whatever you call it, though, Frankissstein: A Love Story was fascinating stuff.

• I was never bored except in the company of others.

After reading McEwan's Machines Like Us earlier in the year, I was in the mindset to be thinking about AI, robots and what our future world might look like as technology takes hold or even takes over. It was very interesting to be able to compare and contrast two such prominent authors and their approaches to the topic and their different ways of weaving a story around it.

• The timeless serenity of the past that we British do so well is an implanted memory - you could call it a fake memory...where the turbulence of the past is recast as landmark, as tradition, as what we defend, what we uphold....History is what you make it.

Last year I also read Shelley's Frankenstein and a bio about her and her mother (Romantic Outlaws). All of this gave my reading of Frankissstein a much richer experience as my knowledge of the original story and details about Shelley, and her mother's life, were still fresh in my mind.

Winterson weaves together several strands of story. We start with a reimagining of Shelley's time in Italy with her husband, Percy, her sister, Claire, Lord Byron and Dr Polidori where she first develops the idea for her story Frankenstein.

• Percy - the mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.

We then jump to now, or perhaps a now just minutes away, where sex bots, AI, cryopreservation and cephalic isolation are becoming the norm. Our modern characters are called Dr Ry Shelley (a transgender doctor/journalist), Ron Lord (the sexbot king), Claire (the admin assistant who keeps popping up everywhere in different roles), Poly D (the Vanity Fair reporter) and Prof. Victor Stein (a TED talking scientist).

• Victor - I want to live long enough to reach the future.

Later on, Winterson also brings in an alternate ending for the original story, with some time in the lunatic asylum, Bedlam. Frankenstein has been admitted by Captain Walton, after he found him floating by his ship on an ice floe. To make it even more interesting, the director of Bedlam, Mr Wakefield, then invites Mary Shelley to his facility to talk with the patient who claims he should have 'perished on the ice'. Love it!

• Ry - I am what I am, but what I am is not one thing, not one gender. I live with doubleness....I am in the body that I prefer. But the past, my past, isn't subject to surgery. I didn't do it to distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself.

To round out the tale, we finish with a glimpse into the life of Ada Lovelace, Byron's mathematician daughter.

• Ada - It was hoped that numbers would tame the Byronic blood in my veins....My life in numbers has been as wild as any life lived among words.

There are so many ideas to explore within these pages - gender, duality, consciousness, religion, soul, history, change and knowledge - just to name a few. What's real and what's false? Does history repeat itself? What's the difference between privacy and secrecy? Is history memory or fact? Are inventions dreams or machines? What does it mean to be alive? Can technology be bad or good, or is just the use it gets put to?

• Byron - we are haunted by ourselves, he says, and that is enough for any man....The human race seeks its own death. We hasten towards what we fear most.

We also have books in books, with references to Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood and Ovid.

Winterson's delicious imagery emerges from page one and draws you into the various strands of story, with a poetic, Romantic writing style for the 19th century sections morphing into a more jarring, rapid speak for the now.

• every solid thing had dissolved into its watery equivalent.
• We were all around the fire that night, the room more shadows than light, for we had few candles.
• We update ourselves individually and generationally. We can adapt within a generation to a changing world.

Ultimately, I found Frankissstein to be the more satisfying, complex read. Machines Like Us failed to excite me or fully engage me in the discussion that McEwan was aiming to stimulate. Whereas Winterson stimulated me from start to finish. But, I've just realised, none of that really tells you why I enjoyed this story so.

The technical stuff obviously played its role, but the stuff I'm still thinking about two weeks later is all the discussion around gender, personality and who we really are.

What is it that really makes us human? From the stories well tell about ourselves to the way we chose to present ourselves to the world. It's an age-old process that flows over into the kind of future we end up creating for ourselves. We merge fact and fiction, dreams, beliefs and misconceptions, until we have something that makes us unique. Or does it?

Favourite Quote: Humans: so many good ideas. So many failed ideals.

Favourite Character: Ry Shelley, who seemed to inhabit quite a bit of Winterson's own persona, and certainly captured my own doubts and questioning way of viewing pretty much everything.

Favourite or Forget? Loved it. It would make for a great book group discussion.

Facts:

• Longlisted for 2019 Man Booker Prize

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

I've had a lovely run of Homeric stories retold from a feminist perspective this year - Madeline Miller's Circe and The Song of Achilles, and now Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls.

After Miller's wonderful, rich storytelling, I was looking forward to seeing what Barker would come up. I was thrilled that her story was going to be told from Briseis' point of view, as I enjoyed the brief glimpse that Miller gave me into a possible story for her in The Song of Achilles.

Briseis, the wife of the King of Lyrnessus, Mynes is one of the women and girls captured as spoils of the Trojan war. She is given to Achilles as a war trophy, but becomes a disputed object between Achilles and Agememnon which leads the reader into the central crisis in Homer's The Iliad.

Barker doesn't shy away from the sexual nature of these transactions. The women and girls knew they were going to be enslaved, raped and abused. Knowing this, I'm not sure why more of them didn't leap from the top of the tower, like Barker described two young women doing early on, as the Greeks crashed through the front gate.

Maybe there wasn't that much difference between their husbands and their new masters? Or perhaps the violence wasn't as horrific as I imagined and Barker suggested? Maybe a form of love or tenderness bloomed between master and subject? Perhaps the Greeks were looking for the comforts of home not more violence?

We will never really know, which is why I'm so fascinated by these modern retellings.

However, in the end, Barker's was a fairly straight version of events as originally told in The Iliad.

I enjoyed the first person narrative of Briseis, but found the occasional third person narrative from Achilles point of view very clunky. There only worth was to highlight just how objectified the women in the camp were to the men. They were sexual objects for barter and to show off. Barker showed these men as being unable to remember the names of the women that they took to their beds on a regular basis, dismissing their words, their presence and their humanity.

I also struggled with the language. Barker's writing style abounded in cliches with her characters often behaving in implausible ways. The dialogue in particular was banal and didn't seem to lead anywhere or show anything. I was disappointed to say the least.

So for now, this ends my run of Homeric retellings with a feminist twist. I still have Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad to look forward to one day and Gareth Hinds graphic novel adaptation of The Iliad on my TBR pile...maybe the next readathon?

Favourite Quote: I didn't underline one single phrase or sentence.

Favourite or Forget: Forgettable.

Facts:

• Costa Novel Award 2018 Shortlist
• Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 Shortlist
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

9/20 Books of Summer Winter
Sydney 19℃
Dublin 18℃

A New England Affair by Steven Carroll

In close to one of the worst book cover choices I've ever seen, A New England Affair by Steve Carroll is a classic case of a book that should not be judged by its cover!

Yes, a woman heading out to sea (to the Dry Salvages) is a central part of the story, but the woman (Emily Hale) is elderly and is meant to be carrying a satchel, stuffed with letters and journals (detailing her life long love affair with T. S. Eliot), slung over her shoulders. I'm sure that pink dress was fashionable once, but nothing about that cover says 'pick me up and look inside'. Fortunately Steven Carroll's name is in large print, and that is now enough to make me look twice.

I adored The Lost Life, Carroll's first story in his planned T. S. Eliot quartet and admired A World of Other People. Curiously I didn't feel anywhere near as passionate about AWOOP, as I did about TLL, although I remember far more about it.

The premise of the four stories is loosely linked to Eliot's Four Quartets, which had the potential to make the books too clever for their own good, but the link is loose and you could read all of the books in any order, as stand alone stories, without any knowledge of the poems. Which is how I started off.

Of course, I couldn't stay out of the loop for long!

I sourced a copy of Burnt Norton during my reading of The Lost Life, then hunted down Little Gidding for A World of Other People. Naturally I also printed off a copy of Dry Salvages as soon as I started A New England Affair. I now also have East Coker ready for the final book in the series.

My memory of The Lost Life is passion. The early, heady days of a young love, a new love, a moment in time, suspended by heightened emotions. Two young lovers wander the grounds of Burnt Norton and spy an older couple - lovers of a different age, a different time - acting secretly in the distance. The older couple are Tom Eliot and Emily Hale. I remember the intense emotions, the secrets and the garden. It was sumptuous and delicious.

It was hard for A World of Other People to live up to the high expectations I had set it. Carroll jumped in time to the start of WWII and once again we view Eliot through the eyes of another. A young poet, Iris, who shared the firewatch during the Blitz with Eliot. This book was heavier on the poetry as Iris observed how Eliot turned their nighttime duties into a poem. Intertwined is the story of an Australian pilot, the only survivor of a crash that Iris and Eliot observed from atop their building. It was a memorable, moving story, but didn't capture my emotional state as much as The Lost Life.

With the third novel, A New England Affair, I'm realising that we have only ever seen Eliot through the eyes of others. I wonder if the fourth book will finally be Eliot's story?

This time it was Emily Hale's story. Although we also get to see Emily via the eyes of one her 'girls'. Carroll enjoys playing with time and how we (Eliot and Hale) look and how our lives appear to younger generations.

I confess that by the end of this book, I came to the conclusion that Eliot was a bit of a dick. Selfish and self-important. I guess it takes a certain kind of bravado and bravura to live a complete creative life.

I felt for Emily's lonely plight, but ultimately wondered if she didn't buy into the whole T. S. Eliot thing to suit her own agenda. Her search for meaning and belonging was almost as desperate as Eliot's need to be loved and adored.

The various time frames and perspectives were a little confusing at the start, but I ended up enjoying seeing Emily through the eyes of young Grace and Ted. Their mid-60's sensibilities provided a midway point from which to judge the relationship. They saw themselves as being a modern couple, and Grace was able to live a more adventurous, independent life than Emily ever could have. But our 21st century gaze saw both couples as being dated, old-fashioned and of their time. Just like our kids and grandkids will one day view us. On and on it goes!

The 'girls' that Emily shared her love letters with, reminded me of Miss Jean Brodie and that need both women had to have someone observe their lives and give them purpose and a sense of specialness.

How accurate Carroll's depiction of this lop-sided love affair is/was, will not be fully resolved until 1st January 2020 when Hale's collection of over a thousand of Eliot’s letters to her will be opened by the current caretakers at Princeton. But for now, we can sit back and enjoy the wonder of Carroll's considerate, thoughtful imaginings.

White Houses by Amy Bloom

White Houses was my latest book club pick, chosen by me. I felt a weird sense of pressure to enjoy the book on that account. But the best I could summon up in the end was a mild kind of appreciation.

It took me a while to pinpoint my disconnect. 

The first person narrative was a start. I'm not philosophically opposed to first person as a device, but I have to feel a real connect to said person to go along for the first person ride (like the young narrator in Washington Black that I'm reading and loving right now). I struggled to feel that kind of affection for Lorena Hickok. I felt a tremendous amount of compassion for her horrific childhood and admiration for her ability to rise above it. In fact, that's one of the human conditions I find most fascinating - in fiction and in real life. Why do some people with horrific childhoods, succumb to its sordidness, always the victim, yet others find a resilience and sense of agency to remake their adult selves? It's the stuff of great story. A mix of genetic predisposition, environment, the power of education (usually), luck (sometimes) and a mentor/someone who believed in them all along (often but not always). All wonderful tools for a story-teller to play with. But Bloom didn't really go there with Hickok's back story. I'm still none the wiser about the how or why she overcame her ghastly childhood.

When a story is based on someone's real life story, the fiction writer has some boundaries and proprieties that may restrict their creativity. And the reader (or this reader at least) often has some reservations and frustrations around what really happened and what's made up. Which is my usual beef with fictionalised biographies/histories. I love a good story and I love narrative non-fiction, but combining the two just doesn't seem to work for me. It seems to be a literary lesson I am slow to learn!

Second was the whole jumping around with time thing. Again, I'm happy to play with multiple timelines, but I need to know when it's changing. The second half of the book lost it's way thanks to so many unannounced jumps in my opinion.

Thirdly, the writing. I kept waiting for some sparkle that never quite arrived. The was a flatness, a dullness that sucked all the emotional possibility of the story. At first I thought this may have been a deliberate technique to illustrate the bleakness of Hick's early life (which as I said above, I found very intriguing), but when the circus story, then the romance itself also failed to come to life, I concluded that the writing was just not working for me.

My fourth problem took longer to pinpoint, until I remembered my reaction to reading Hazel Rowley's Franklin and Eleanor biography about seven years ago. By the time I got to the end of the bio, I realised that I had come to strongly dislike both Franklin and Eleanor as people. I admired their politics and public service, but they treated the people who loved them and worked for them appallingly. They both made tremendous sacrifices and compromises to the do the good that they did do, but those sacrifices and compromises usually also sacrificed and compromised those around them.

Hickok's story in White Houses brought all these thoughts flooding back.

A friend who read and loved this book, was moved by the descriptions of love, whereas I found it hard to see the love story at all. The love felt so one-sided to me. Not quite unrequited, more desperate and needy perhaps and completely controlled by Eleanor to suit her schedule and agenda. Hickok gave up so much to get the little crumbs of love and friendship that Eleanor handed out.

This one particular paragraphed moved me beyond words though,

I don't care why the light burns. I think that even if you are both old ladies riding side by side on the second Avenue subway, with one of you going home to three grandchildren and a doddering husband, you can lock eyes, and remember when you weren't. You remember that very pleasurable and surprising thing that was done to you by the wrinkly old bag of bones next to you and you breathe in memory the weight and the mortality and the sensible shoes are just costume, falling away, and your real selves rise up, briefly, dancing rosy and naked, in the middle of the subway car.

One paragraph in a whole book is not enough to sustain my interest though. I pushed myself to finish White Houses and resolved to never read any more books about Franklin or Eleanor!

Just Flesh and Blood by Jane Caro

It feels like I've been waiting a VERY long time for Jane Caro to finish her Elizabethan YA trilogy. Just A Girl was first published in 2011, Just A Queen in 2015 and now, finally we have Just Flesh and Blood.

I'm sure that Caro must get asked all the time, why Elizabeth? In her acknowledgements at the back of Just Flesh and Blood, she says, 

I want to express my gratitude and admiration to Elizabeth Tudor herself. Her existence and commanding presence in history has always mattered to me. Whatever her mistakes and cruelties - and she was a monarch of her times so they were many - she proved to me when I most needed the proof that women could lead, they could wield power at least as well as any man, and they could do so on their own. I hope she helps young readers new to her story in the way she helped me when I was a girl in search of a hero.

Her Elizabeth is based on facts and known history, but she imagines what it must have been like to be this lone woman, in power, surrounded my men trying to manipulate her and use her for their own purpose. Caro explores the life-long impact on Elizabeth to have lost her mother at so young an age and in such horrific circumstances, at the wishes of her father. The ultimate act of domestic violence in fact.

Caro paints a very human queen, full of desires, impulses and incredible strength of will. A monarch who had to know her own mind in public, but was full of doubts and questions in private.

Just Flesh and Blood brings us to the end of Elizabeth's reign and life. She spends the book reflecting on the important, defining moments of her childhood as well as many pivotal events from her long and glorious reign. I found her voice, in all three books to be authentic and believable.

During an interview with L.J.M Owen on her blog: The Emotional Journey of Writers: Jane Caro, Feb 14 2018, Caro described her writing style as 'an act of imagination...an act of empathy',

I never set out to write her as a teenager or an old woman. I don't think about that. In the same way as in life, you don't think, 'Oh, I'm a teenager… Oh, now I'm an old woman'. You are just you, and so you just write as you.

That's what Caro brings to this story, a new, very personal and intimate way of viewing Elizabeth I. It's a chance for Elizabeth to step outside the history books and for us to see her in all her human glory, warts and all. There's a lot to admire.

Just A Girl
Just A Queen

Sugar Money by Jane Harris

A big thank you to the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction for shortlisting Sugar Money by Jane Harris otherwise I may never have stumbled across this gem of a story. Based on real events in Grenada in 1765, we follow young Lucien and his older brother Emile as they attempt to convince the hospital slaves to runaway, on behalf of the French priests of Martinique who used to own them when the French were in control of Grenada.

It's a story that shows up Anglo-European greed, manipulation and disregard for human life.

A few horrific, disgusting acts of violence were described by the slaves that almost defy belief. They were hard to read. I can't imagine how they were borne by the people they were inflicted on. Except that the scars inflicted during this time still linger on today. How it is even possible for one human being to think up these atrocious acts of torture let alone commit them against another human being is one of those things I have struggled with all my life? Man's inhumanity to man seems to know no bounds, whether it's in concentration camps, gulags, refugee camps, the slave trade or the modern-day human traffickiing problem. We've moved on from that time, but not that far.

Fortunately, Sugar Money is also a story about family, loyalty and courage.

The bond between the two brothers is complicated by the usual jealousies and age differences. Lucien's voice (that narrates the story in the patios of the time) is funny and vibrant. The story reads like a boys own adventure story (thanks to Lucien's attitude) with lots of action and tension to keep the pages turning. It's a period and place that I know very little about, so I was on tenterhooks the whole time, fearing what might happen next and suspecting that a story about slavery was never going to end happily ever after.

Issues around white appropriation of a black story are bound to be raised when a slave narrative is written by a young white woman - is this just a softer version of the greed, manipulation and disregard that allowed slavery to occur in the first place? I can't quite subscribe to this idea, but I appreciate the concerns. Yes, I'm another white person discussing this issue, but I learnt a lot about the horrors of the slave trade via this novel. Stuff I may never have learnt otherwise.

It is this particular curly issue that has caused me to delay this reader response for so long. In the end, though, I believe that any book or story that allows the reader to walk in another's shoes or bear witness to human tragedy is a powerful tool towards understanding and empathy, whatever the race, religion or gender of the author. Not every single survivor can bear to talk about their suffering, and nor should we expect them to relive their trauma for our edification. Add ancestral guilt (or pride) to the mix and we could talk around and around this topic until the cows come home.

Harris' story has got under my skin. I was horrified and fascinated in equal measure. She brought the cast of secondary characters vividly to life, as well as the lush landscape of the Caribbean, but it was the wonderful voice of Lucien that gives this book the sparkle and magic that will make it live in my memory for a long time to come.

3/20 #20booksofsummer (winter)
15℃ in Sydney & over 33 ml of rain
19℃ in Northern Ireland

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

I wanted to read The Lady and the Unicorn thanks to the exhibition currently on at the Art Gallery of NSW. As a long-time cross-stitcher, the tapestries fascinate me. I've been to see them twice so far, & hope to see them one more time before the exhibition ends later this month.

This is only the third time that the tapestries have left France in 500 years. Designed around 1500 in Paris, they are an extraordinary example of medieval art. Very little is known about their exact provenance which has created much speculation. Chevalier has used 'sensible suppositions' to weave her fiction.

Initially I was dismayed by what I felt was lacklustre writing. By the end of the first chapter, I wasn't sure I would be able to continue.

I may have been too critical as I was coming off the back of the incredible Sugar Money by Jane Harris written in the patios of 1765 Martinique and Megan Hunter's poetic cli-fi story, The End We Start From where the poetry existed in every word as well as in the gaps between. After two such innovative, exciting narratives, perhaps any regular story would have been a bit dull.

I'm glad I persisted as Chevalier's suppositions were enlightening and entertaining. She obviously researches her subjects thoroughly, then weaves this knowledge through her story with a deft touch. 

With a tapestry you stand close as you would to a friend. You see only part of it, and not necessarily the most important part. So no thing should stand out more than the rest, but fit together into a pattern that your eye takes pleasure in no matter where it rests.

Chevalier took the time to show us (via the faces of the women and the stories behind them) that not only can an artists intent and interpretation change with time but that different people view different things in the work, depending on their mood and experience. All theses ideas are valid as well as being the very thing that makes all art such a personal and rewarding experience.

I learnt a lot about the life and times of medieval France, the art of weaving and the lot of women in a strict patriarchal society.

Unlike many of the books I've read recently, Chevalier wrote a good old-fashioned ending complete with epilogue and a what-they-did-next wrap-up. Very satisfying.

2/20 #20booksofsummer (winter)

19℃ in Sydney

22℃ in Northern Ireland

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

During the planning stages of my trip to Japan I asked around and checked on Goodreads for the best books set in Japan. At the top of nearly every list I came across was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

When it was first published in 1997, and later when the movie was released in 2005, I avoided it at all costs. My impression was that it would be some kind of tacky white American male wish fulfilment fantasy story. Not at all my cup of tea, green or otherwise!

However I succumbed to popular opinion and packed it in my travel bag with many reservations. At best, I thought it would be a good book for the plane when I needed something light and easy to consume.

As it turned out serendipity was on my side.

I also took Murakami's Kafka on the Shore to Japan. In fact, I had started reading it a few days before departure. My review for it will turn up here soon. I finished it, about halfway through our time in Japan, as luck would have it, on our first night in Kyoto.

Starting Memoirs of a Geisha in Kyoto was an inspired thing to do. We stayed in the Higashiyama area, just a handful a streets away from Gion, the main geisha area in Kyoto and where the book was set.

I knew about the controversy surrounding the author and whether or not he had permission to name the geisha who provided him with a lot of the information for the book. From this I had assumed that the book was based on her life story. It wasn't until I finished the book and read Golden's acknowledgements page that I realised this assumption was not entirely correct.

Although the character of Sayuri and her story are completely invented, the historical facts of a geisha's day-to-day life in the 1930's and 1940's are not....Mineko Iwasaki, one of Gion's top geisha in the 1960's and 1970's, opened her Kyoto home to me during May 1992, and corrected my every misconception about the life of a geisha.

 A quick check on the internet, showed that Golden had been sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by Iwasaki who claimed that Golden had agreed to protect her anonymity. Golden claimed otherwise, saying he had tapes and notes to the contrary. They eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money. Iwasaki then went on to write (with Rande Gail Brown) an autobiography titled Geisha of Gion (2002) which claimed to tell the real story.

Both books were best sellers and both books have been loved and hated in equal measure on Goodreads. Golden for paternalistic inaccuracies and Iwasaki for grandiose, emotionless boasting.

From what I have been able to ascertain (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there were various levels or ranks of being a geisha. The highest ranking geisha were from the Gion, Pontocho and Kamishichiken districts. A lower rank of geisha were the so-called onsen geisha, or hot spring geisha, who worked in towns famous for their hot spring baths. Lower still were the ones who worked in a jorou-ya (brothel). A maiko was a junior or apprentice geisha.

Geiko Tomeko 1930's

Another controversy surrounded the mizuage ceremony as described by Golden in his book. This is the process by which a maiko became a fully fledged geisha (or geiko as geisha were called in Kyoto). Golden describes his character's virginity being sold off to the highest bidder. It was a pretty ghastly moment in the story and I wondered at the time just how true it was.

Initially I was relieved when a google search indicated that Iwasaki strongly refuted that this ever happened to her and that no such custom ever existed. However further reading seems to indicate that it was in fact a common practice, even for the higher ranking geiko (Sayo Masuda and Liza Dalby). 1959 is the key date here though, as this is when mizuage was made illegal along with other acts of prostitution.

Mizuage still exists as a form of initiation from maiko to senior maiko, but without the sex. The ceremony now focuses on the change of hairstyle and 'turning of the collar' on the kimono. According to her autobiography, Iwasaki became a maiko at age 15, in 1964, five years after the change in law.

So after all that, did I actually enjoy the book?

Yes, I did.

I read it as historical fiction, not as a memoir, and thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse into another world in another time. It was a quick, easy read. The romantic element felt unbelievable, rather Cinderellish really. For me it let down the historical aspects that I enjoyed learning about. It also happily mentioned the names of streets, buildings and streams that I was able to walk down, through and around, imagining what it must have looked like 70 years ago.

I could do nothing but step into my shoes and follow her up the alleyway to a street running beside the narrow Shirakawa Stream (that's a tautology by the by - kawa and gawa means river or stream). 

FYI: Hitler adopted the swastika from an ancient Hindu, Buddhist symbol denoting a temple.
It is still used in Japan (& other Asian countries) to indicate the site of a Buddhist temple.
Confronting to the Western eye, but true.

Back in those days, the streets and alleys in Gion were still paved beautifully with stone. We walked along in the moonlight for a block or so, beside the weeping cherry trees that drooped down over the black water, and finally across a wooden bridge arching over into a section of Gion I'd never seen before. The embankment of the stream was stone, most of it covered with patches of moss. Along its top, the backs of the teahouses and okiya connected to form a wall. Reed screens over the windows sliced the yellow light into tiny strips.

Pompeii by Robert Harris

Pompeii by Robert Harris is my first bookclub read for 2018. 

I confess that Robert Harris is not a usual go-to author for me, although I've said that without ever having read any of his books before. I figured Pompeii would be okay as I'm always interested in anything Ancient Greek or Ancient Roman and Pompeii in particular has always fascinated me.

I visited Pompeii in 1991 on my grand European tour. It was an incredibly hot day which made it a little difficult to enjoy the sights and sites properly. But it left an impression on me that has lasted all these years.

Given that we all know what happened in Pompeii over those fateful few days in August 79 A.D. how could an author create enough tension or doubt to keep the reader guessing and turning pages?

By focusing on the role of the new aquarius for the Aqua Augusta, Harris achieves a great deal of suspense and believability in how someone might have actually survived the explosion. Knowing what happened also reminds us, the reader, of how futile and inconsequential our daily squabbles and conceits are in the face of complete annihilation. As aediles manoeuvered between power plays and slaves planned for the day they would be freed, as locals haggled for food in the markets and celebrated a public holiday, Vesuvius had even bigger plans that trumped anything and everything else. All of those schemes and hopes and dreams ended, leaving barely a trace behind. Human beings reminded once again, that our time here is brief and fragile and can be brought to an abrupt end by forces outside our control with barely a moments notice.

Lesson learnt?
By all means make plans for your future and dream about the things you'd like to do and be, but enjoy life NOW, act NOW and be the best you can be right NOW. Love where you are, who you are and the people you're with right NOW. All you really have is right NOW. Everything else once was or might be one day. All that stuff is fleeting and even as I write this, hundreds of moments of NOW have slipped by into my past, never to be retrieved again. The only person who cares about my NOW is me. So I might as well make it the best NOW that I can.

For me, right NOW, that's writing the best book post I can to reflect my reading experience with Pompeii.

The book wasn't necessarily the style of writing that I prefer, but the topic fired my imagination and prompted me to do some additional research - something that I LOVE to do. At times it felt like Harris stacked the story with as much of the information he had learnt about Pompeii as possible, but mostly Pompeii was an excellent yarn told by a storyteller who loves what he does.

My research found Pliny the Younger's letters about the eruption of Vesuvius as well as a recent article about the discovery of the charred and carbonised scrolls found in a library in Herculaneum - perhaps the same ones that Rectina was trying to save at the end of Harris' story.

In my search for the lost scrolls of Herculaneum, I discovered this interesting BBC documentary on the recent archaeological finds in the lesser known neighbour of Pompeii. If you have an hour to spare, I recommend taking a look; it complements the historical information included in Harris' novel beautifully. 

The Commandant by Jessica Anderson

The Commandant came recommended to me in a roundabout fashion. Earlier on in the year, I attended an 'Honouring the Author' event at the State Library, NSW. The author in question was Jessica Anderson.

Anderson won the Miles Franklin Prize twice (in 1978 & 1980), but not for The Commandant.

By the end of the honouring event, though, I was convinced that The Commandant was the book for me to start my Jessica Anderson journey with (and not one of her two more contemporary award winning books). Historical fiction based on real life events and people will always win me over.

The Commandant is based on Captain Patrick Logan, the man in charge of the Moreton Bay convict settlement on the present day site of Brisbane.

Moreton Bay Settlement 1835

He was a cruel task master, feared by all the convicts.

But the story is told mostly from the point of view of his young (fictional) sister-in-law, Frances, recently arrived from Ireland.

In some ways, this story could be seen as a simple drawing room story about two sisters, but of course, the outside world intrudes regularly on their domestic dramas. There is a strong message about the role of women in the early years of colonisation and how they coped with the isolation, the lack of modern amenities and the constant fear of the unknown. Frances is told by one of the other women,

'Whatever course you take,' she said, half-shutting her eyes, 'no doubt in ten years or so you will arrive at the state of the most of us - simply of making do with what one has. Surprisingly enough -' she opened surprised eyes - 'it is an art in which one may progress. I thought I knew all about making do with what one had, but now I find I can do more with it than I dreamed.'

Anderson's deceptively straightforward plot also hides many viewpoints and tensions.

We see the doubt and confusion that the soldiers and their wives feel about Logan's actions. The young doctors, who have to tend the battered backs of the recently whipped convicts, have another story to tell. The threat of a highly publicised court case in Sydney to deal with the rumours of Logan's cruelty bubble away underneath the surface, only to rear up every time a ship arrives with mail. The menace of the convicts, who far outnumber the soldiers, is felt throughout the story. How the convicts view the settlers and how they, in turn, view the convicts is a tension that Anderson plays with deftly. 

Underlying all this, though, is another viewpoint. The local Aboriginal population are spoken of and seen fleetingly by our main characters. They know they are being watched, rumours and myths are rampant. Yet the reader can also see this little settlement, barely clinging onto the land around the Brisbane River, through the eyes of the Aboriginals, wondering who on earth where these strange people with their stone walls and inappropriate clothing and guns. 

Image source

Even further away, are the Sydney based journalists and intelligentsia who are driving social change and asking questions about reform, mercy and justice for the convicts. Frances represents this new world order while her brother-in-law represents the old world order of duty, a firm hand and punishment. Logan is understandably confused and even, hurt, by the possibility of change. Anderson portrays his loneliness and brooding behaviour in a sympathetic light, thanks to the tender, loving concern he evokes in his young wife (a woman with a lisp not unlike the one that Anderson, herself battled with all her life).

It is not just Logan's right to rule that is called into question here. Anderson also leads us to see how tenuous and uncertain these early settlements actually were. A so-called civilisation perched on the edge of wilderness, halfway round the world, for the spurious idea of containing the poor and dispossessed of England, was always going to be fraught with danger. Most of the poor and dispossessed ended up on the wrong side of the law as a result of the Industrial Revolution. So many of the convicts were shipped off to Australia for one single offence, often stealing food or clothes. The colony of Australia became the dumping ground for a problem the English didn't want to face. Instead of dealing with the problem of a growing divide between the haves and have-nots at home, they shipped as many of the have-nots off to the other side of the world to basically fend for themselves.

Image source

Anderson's story brings to vivid life this period of history. There are fabulous, meaty characters, shifting points of view and a pervading sense of mercy. Logan's demise is deliberately left as confused and murky as the official reports of the time. Anderson doesn't try to give us the answers that weren't available to her characters at the time.

The story ends, as it began, with Frances on board a ship, musing about her fate. The innocence and conviction of her beginning has been tempered by experience and sympathy.

I'm so grateful to Text Publishing for bringing such tremendous Australian stories back into print. I hope they never go out of print again.

#AusReadingMonth
#Australian Women Writers challenge

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

I was feeling a little cautious about reading Lincoln in the Bardo. Anytime I had heard someone talk about the book, they would mention the ghosts, the many, many voices and the grief. It sounded like it might be hard work or a bit too clever for its own good.

Fortunately, though, a reading copy recently came my way at work. And I was tempted.

Bardo is the transitional phase after death and before ones next rebirth when the consciousness is no longer connected to the physical body. After trawling the internet I found a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead that allowed me to see inside. It gave me one of those ah-ha moments - the  fragmentary multi-voice story telling format that Saunders used throughout his book, reflected the format used in this Buddhist classic.

Saunders made use of this device for both the historical and the ghostly sections of the book. I found it to be effective and affecting how he combined the fragments to make a kind of cohesive narrative whole.

I also wanted to know if the primary sources quoted by Saunders during the historical record sections of the novel were real or fictional. I found this review by Maureen Corrigan from earlier in the year that answered that question for me.

One thing bothers me about this extraordinary novel — more of a question, really, than a quibble. Throughout Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders intersperses chapters packed with quotes from historical sources. He gives citations for these historical sources and some are legit — like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Lincoln, for instance. But other sources are made up. All the historical passages are tossed together indiscriminately. 

It's not like Saunders is doing anything new here: novelists have been playing with historical narrative since the term "postmodern" was invented. But, I wonder if just in the past couple of months, our taste and tolerance for this kind of melding of fact and fiction has diminished?

There was a brief chapter early in the book, that I believe Saunders used deliberately to play with this idea about what is fact and what is fiction. His historical sources are talking about the moon the night of the White House dinner when Willie was extremely ill. Some recalled the 'beautiful moon', 'the brilliance of the moon' or 'the golden moon', while others remark that 'there was no moon that night', or 'a fat, green crescent hung above' or 'the night continued dark and moonless' or 'the full yellow moon hung among morning stars'.

When I read this section, I was reminded of the comment often made by police officers about the fickle nature of eyewitness accounts when at the scene of a crime, and how all the witnesses will describe the victim and the perpetrator in completely contrasting terms. The unreliability of our memories only intensifies as more time goes by.

Perhaps Saunders is trying to say that even primary sources cannot be trusted to tell the 'whole truth and nothing but the truth'?

The Lincoln Family 1861 - Willie is seated at the front.

The ghosts in Lincoln in the Bardo are certainly not to be trusted. They're still very attached to the idea of their physical bodies. They have failed to grasp that they are in fact dead as they spend their time in bardo going over and over the thing that led them to this point. Knowledge and acceptance is what finally allows them to pass over with a 'matterlightblooming phenomenon' into the great unknown.

This will be a book that divides its readers. The many voices and the blurring of fact and fiction will annoy some and delight others.

I was one of those delighted.

The scenes of Lincoln's grieving were so very touching as were those featuring Willie coming to terms with his own death. Ultimately, Lincoln in the Bardo is a story about letting go. Letting go of the one you loved and letting go of the life you once lived.

Lincoln in the Bardo has been longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize.