Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner

Seven Little Australians was published in 1894 but first came to my attention in the mid 1970's thanks to a wonderful 10 part tv series on the ABC. I was only about 8 or 9 at the time but I was blown away by the story. After the tear-jerker tenth episode ending, I sat down for my first reading of the book.

I have now reread Seven Little Australians a handful of times. Each time it makes me cry.
Correction - every single time I have to put down the book so I can sob out loud!

But enough about me.

Seven Little Australians is one of the few Australian books that has never been out of print. And the only Australian book to have been in continuous print for over 100 years.

It is set in suburban Sydney in an area called Lindfield. In the 1890's this area was completely rural. Now it is in the middle of the northern suburbs area of Woodlands, Killara.

The story follows Judy and her 6 siblings and step-siblings.
They're an unruly bunch, allowed to run wild by a too distant father and a too young step-mother. They play pranks, argue and tell tales on each other. They go to Luna Park for an outing and have picnics. They sneak into your heart and take up life long residence there!

The young actress who played Judy in the ABC series is Jennifer Cluff.
Years later I moved to Mudgee to take up a teaching position and learnt that Jennifer was a Mudgee girl herself. I was delighted to learn that one of my best friends had gone to school with her and her sisters and that I had been teaching a number of her nieces and nephews. It gave Judy's story another lease of life to me.

And now, thanks to writing this review for Flashback Friday (the one and only & original FF hosted by Lisa) I've discovered that there is now a Seven Little Australians park in Killara.

But the old Turner home is another matter.
Instead of becoming a national cultural & heritage centre celebrating the life and times of the author and the book it has been allowed to wallow in uncertainty awaiting a philanthropic miracle.

To say that I can feel a visit to both park and house coming on is an understatement!

Below is the youtube link to the first episode of Seven Little Australians from 1973. It's lovely to see a young Ruth Cracknell and Leonard Teale at work.

A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale For the Time being is the book that has kicked off my Booker shortlist campaign for this year. And it nearly stopped me in my tracks.

It's not that I didn't enjoy it.
I did.

That is, I really enjoyed the middle section when I finally got going on it last weekend.

The first 10 chapters or so, I had been reading at night, before bed when I was tired and I was struggling to engage with it completely. I wanted to like it; I felt that I probably would like it; I just needed a good run at it. Nao's teenage voice started off a little annoying and Ruth, the author as narrator seemed a little too convenient.

But last weekend was the trick.

I found myself engaging with the characters and I let myself get carried away by the story.

I loved the references to Japanese culture that I knew next to nothing about. I adored all the fascinating ideas & philosophising about the nature of time. Oliver's scientific explorations were equally intriguing (I learnt about gyres, the Great Western Garbage Patch & quantum physics!) There was also Zen Buddhism, Proust, manga and cyber-bullying. What more could you want in a book?

The switching of POV between each chapter developed a nice rhythm as the book went along as well. One chapter was Nao's diary written in Japan a decade before while the alternate chapters belonged to Ruth, a Japanese/Canadian author who discovered the diary and other artefacts washed up on the shores of her Canadian island home.

This gave Ozeki lots of room to play with ideas about authorship, the nature of writing, reading and the power of words.

We were going along swimmingly - until last night!

I can only describe the last (small) section of the book as some kind of writers flight of fancy. Quantum physics merged with dreams, mythology and computer science in a way I found rather unsatisfactory. Perhaps it was an attempt at magic realism? Or simply an authors attempt to tie up all the loose ends?

Since writing the above I have visited The Guardians 2013 Booker Hustings link to this book.

I'll finish with a quote that I thought many of you in blogger land would appreciate as much as I did,

"This agitation was familiar, 
a paradoxical feeling that built up inside when she was spending too much time online, 
as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. 
How to describe it? 
A temporal stuttering, an urgent lassitude, 
a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind."

Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

This weeks Friday Flashback is a modern day classic that regularly features on school reading lists and 'must-read' Australian books lists.

It won the CBCA award for older readers back in 1981.

And it was made into a movie in 1986 (see below).

Ruth Park wrote novels for adults and children. She was born in New Zealand but moved to Australia when she was 25. She married Australian author, D'Arcy Niland (who wrote The Shiralee) and had 5 children. Her youngest daughters were twins, Kilmeny and Deborah, who became well respected illustrators for children's books.

Playing Beatie Bow is set in Sydney in modern times. Abigail is facing all sorts of family upheavals and spends a lot of time wandering around her local area of the Rocks to avoid the tension at home. A bizarre meeting with a young (lost) girl called Beatie Bow causes Abigail to travel back in time to 1873.

Park provides an evocative and memorable journey around the streets and slums of colonial Sydney as Abigail tries to find her way home again.

Curiously, to the 21st century reader, it's the scenes set in 1980's Sydney that jar the most. They sound dated and almost cringe-worthy. Or maybe that's just me - since I was also an out-of-place teenager in the '80's!

Penguin Australia have now released new editions of Australian children's classics with lovely hardback covers, including Playing Beatie Bow.