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 Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy #AUSfiction

 

Charlotte McConaghy has written an intense, emotional story about the effects of mass extinction in The Last Migration. I don't normally quote the back blurb of the book, but in this case it so aptly describes the book, I'm really not sure I can top it.

The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of the possibility of hope against all odds.

Our protagonist, Franny Stone, clearly has some major issues going on her personal life, and we can see that she is using this search/hunt/journey to run away from her problems of perhaps find closure. However, McConaghy slowly reveals that her personal issues are actually interwoven into the plight of the migrating birds.

The story is quite angst-ridden and there were times when I wanted to shake Franny into a more sensible, rational frame of mind as she crashed from one scene to the next in her search for personal redemption. But then, I guess it can be hard to be sensible and rational when faced with the reality of a mass extinction of an entire species and the existential loneliness that this climate crisis implies for all of us!

There was a dreamy quality or an otherworldly aspect to this high seas adventure that held the urgency and dramatic tension of the sea voyage at bay. For this reader, they were a welcome relief from the harsh descriptions of life on a small boat in a big sea!

McConaghy references several other authors and poets throughout her book. They are books her characters have read or quote from. I'm always fascinated by this occasional tendency of authors and I like to make a list for future reference. 

Here we Colm Toibin, Mary Oliver (and her poem on geese), Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Margaret Atwood, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I love the ending of Mary Oliver | Wild Geese in particular and share it below.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The other thing that fascinates me is covers and titles. 

Above I have the Australian title and cover.

Below are the cover and title for the USA, a proof copy and Germany. All three of which I prefer way more than the Australian cover. I don't know why so many Aussie covers insist on using a human figure. They turn me off for some reason. 

As an aside, I had been feeling very negative about the new Richard Flanagan, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams. Partly thanks to my experience with his previous book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but also in part to the submerged face of a woman on the cover! However, when I finally picked it up, I discovered that underneath the off-putting face dust jacket is a gorgeous leaf-textured hardcover book and inside is a story that has me completely engaged. Needless to say, I have discarded the dust jacket.

But back to The Last Migration.

I feel the Australian title best describes the story as Migrations suggests that there is more than one migration, when clearly the story is highlighting the very last migration of the Arctic terns. Although now I think about, it could be a plural to allude to the migration or journey taken by our protagonist as well. Hmmm, interesting.

US cover and title

US proof cover?

German cover and title

Eco-dystopian (environmental end of the world as we know it stories) or climate fiction are not everyone's cup of tea, but I have become a bit of a fan, if you can call a mere handful of titles, a fan. The Overstory by Richard Powers is an absorbing, epic climate fiction novel well worth your time, while The Rain Heron and Flames, both by Robbie Arnott are eco-dystopian and also firm favourites of mine. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy is also eco-dystopian as well. 

Epigraph: Rumi

Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

The entire passage reads: “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”

Opening Line: 

The animals are all dying. Soon we will be alone here.

Favourite Quote:

there is meaning, and it lives in nurturing, in making life sweeter for ourselves, and for those around us.

#AusReadingMonth
#Australian Women Writers

A Fairy Tale Revolution

The series, A Fairy Tale Revolution, consists of four picture books from Vintage Classics, that 'remix and revive' well-known fairy tales and give them a modern, feminist twist. Featuring four amazing UK authors - Jeanette Winterson, Kamila Shamsie, Malorie Blackman and Rebecca Solnit - flexing their authorial muscles in a new format.

Like most fairy tales, however, they are not really designed to be read with or by very young people. Fairy tales are cautionary tales offering up dire consequences to those who do not take heed. They're stories created to keep you safe by alerting you to the dangers of jealous partners, controlling partners, death, grief and loss. They warn you of the consequences of selfish behaviour, greed, laziness, arrogance and self-indulgence.

The old tales, pre-Disney, do not mince words. 

If you don't pay attention, you could end up dead. You could be eaten by a wolf, enslaved, lost forever in the forest, cast out of your community, orphaned or maimed. Sometimes it was a stranger you had to beware, but even way back when, everyone knew that the biggest danger lurked much closer to home. 

Domestic violence and the awful way that families can treat each other have always been the main causes for concern in fairy tales. Dressing them up as a story, only took away some of the power and pain. The Brothers Grimm struggled with this harsh image of family life, changing many of the original stories from being about mothers to stepmothers, and fathers to devils, to soften the blow.

Wicked, cruel, selfish mother-figures and strict, controlling, violent father-figures haunt the pages of most fairy tales. Obsessive husbands, manipulative wives, lying, lazy children - families were viewed as toxic danger zones. Safe families could change at the drop of a hat, or the death of a parent. The big, bad world was full of injustice and inequity. 

These were adult stories designed to frighten and instruct. There were always consequences, but not necessarily the ones you would expect. They urged you to be vigilant. Fairy tales highlighted some of the evil, wicked and unfair practices that exist in our world.

Most of the modern retellings sanitise these older tales. The lazy little pigs don't get eaten by the wolf, they merely run to the next house. The wolf doesn't get boiled alive, he jumps out the window and runs away. Cinderella's stepsisters don't lop off parts of their feet to fit into the slipper, birds no longer peck out their eyes. The consequences for being lazy, inept or selfish are watered down. Our darker selves are ignored or discounted, while all the bad stuff is removed, onto an 'other'. The modern retellings take away the morals embedded in the old tales about our own personal development, our dual natures, the good and bad inside us all. All the bad is put out there, away from us. The lesson now is that we're all fine just as we are. The bad people are out there, out of our control, but nothing to do with us. We don't have to change, we just have to be cautious and keep out the baddie (other).

Many years ago I devoured Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. I was fascinated by the idea of children returning to a story over and over again to satisfy some inner conflict. I saw this in my teaching career all the time. Certain stories resonated with some groups and individuals in a very deep way. They had to be read multiple times over an extended period of time, until the need was met.

These stories were always the 'darker' ones. Stories that were considered scary or sad. Stories where someone died, got lost, faced down a fear or suffered a major disappointment. Books like Koala Lou, Dogger, Harry the Dirty Dog, The Spooky Old Tree, The Deep, The Gingerbread Man (where the GM got eaten by the fox), The Hobyahs, The Story About Ping, The Giving Tree, A Lion in the Meadow, and The Story of Ferdinand.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with two particular fairy tales - Snow-White & Rose-Red and Rumpelstiltskin. Bettelheim, observed that fairy tales about siblings often “stand for seemingly incompatible aspects of the human personality.” There was also something in there about trust, and appearances being deceiving and our wild natures that haunted me as well. While Rumpelstiltskin taught me about the perils of bragging, and making bad decisions and why it's important to name the evil forces acting upon us, to take away their power. 

Much of Bettelheim's research has been debunked in more recent times, but his ideas about the darker elements in stories, their psychological impact and how they resonate with children, still holds true. 

These new retellings of Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, and The Ugly Duckling are deep, dark and delicious. They are adult stories dressed up in picture book form. 

Jeanette Winterson in Hansel & Greta turns the known story into an environmental tale of greed, destruction and wickedness. Her word play is delicious and witty. This was probably my favourite story of the four.

Malorie Blackman gives us the very modern Blueblood complete with video surveillance and mobile technology. Nia Blueblood is the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Bluebeard. She is a vigilante outing men who have abused other women and gotten away with it...until now. This was dark and shocking and subversive. I loved it!

Kamila Shamsie's Duckling, is a disturbing tale about body-shaming, fear of the other and bullying. The fate of the outsider, the refugee, and the loner are considered in this sad tale of belonging and being true to yourself.

Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Solnit maintains a more traditional structure until Cinderella and the Prince just become good friends who help each other to be their best selves. Transformation, asking for help and helping others are the main themes. Economic independence and liberation from traditional roles are seen as being good things for both sexes. 

All four stories share feminist twists that delight the reader. At least, they delighted this reader. They also feature woodcut illustrations in the style of Arthur Rackman, by Laura Barrett. Check them out, I think you will love them too.

The Rain Heron | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction

Thank goodness for Robbie.

After a spate of so-so books and DNF's, I finally landed on this beautifully imagined, eco-dystopian tour de force from my new favourite contemporary Australian writer.

My love affair with Arnott started last year, when I read his debut novel, Flames. This is a little of what I had to say about him at the time,

Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

Arnott has matured into a writer to watch. In The Rain Heron he has moved onto a stronger narrative structure on which to hang his story, although, dare I say, it was the shorter stories that began the book, that enthralled me the most. 

The first sighting of the rain heron, in all it's majesty and brutality, was mesmerising. Zoe's early life with her aunt, fishing for squid ink, is something I will never forget. Ren's life, precariously carved out, on the side of a mountain was so powerfully written, that I also felt like I had lived through every hardship and battle with nature that Ren had experienced. 

The invented world that Arnott has evoked feels so real. After the summer we've had in Australia, his dystopian vision of a world battling against itself and against nature in a fight for survival, feels much closer than it once did. In Arnott's world, as the climate and environment becomes more unpredictable and dangerous, humans react with equal savagery.

His nature fable takes us on a journey of survival and resilience, loss and hope that resonates even more strongly during these Covid times. A story that promises redemption through kindness is a story we all need to hear right now.

I'm a fan. A HUGE fan.

The Rain Heron is probably the best book I've read so far in 2020. Arnott takes you on a journey into his imagination - a place where the natural world is one of the main characters - a place exquisitely evoked with words and phrases to swoon over. Arnott’s writing weaves and swoops through beauty and brutality with ease. I was left breathless with wonder, eagerly anticipating his third book.

Facts:

• Flames was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.
• Awarded the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists for 2019.
• Winner of the Margaret Scott Prize 2019 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes.
• Shortlisted for the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary Award.
• Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award.

Favourite Quotes:

Thunder crashed through the walls; lightning licked trees; the wind grew fangs and chewed barns into splinters... 

...her body draped over the branches like a nightgown hung out to dry. 

Perhaps if he had been older, he wouldn’t have done it. With more winters in his bones he may have been kinder, less jealous, more contemplative. Or maybe not-inside this boy there was a bitter kink, and perhaps no amount of time or experience could have untwisted it.

Alternative Covers:

UK Cover

US Cover

About Robbie:

• I'm always fascinated to know how and when writers write. 
• I discovered this passage on Show Your Working over at Kill Your Darlings. The highlights are mine.

Describe your writing practice?

For the first few days of each week I get up at six and write for an hour and a half, then go to work. I usually finish around six, walk home, have dinner, and write for another hour or so until I can’t think anymore. That routine all goes to shit by the end of the week, though. Thursdays and Fridays I always plan on getting some writing done, but barely do any. I have a solid crack on either Saturday or Sunday, then start all over again.

How do you encourage inspiration to strike?

Whenever I don’t know how to solve a problem I’ve written myself into, or if I can’t think of something interesting to write about, I go for a walk without my phone.

The best advice I think I’ve ever heard came from Michelle de Kretser....She was talking about how plot is important, and character is important, but ‘literature lives in the sentences’. Nothing has ever resonated with me so much. Hearing that made me feel like I had a license to obsess over language.

 

Favourite or Forget:

• Unforgettable and a favourite and best read of 2020.

Fathoms: The World in the Whale | Rebecca Giggs #AWW

Fathoms: The World in the Whale was a recent binge read. 

The weather had turned suddenly cold and it was bleak outside. Curling up on the lounge with a throw rug and a good book was the only logical response. Rebecca Giggs was the perfect companion for such a session - engaging, personable and extremely thorough. Her writing was a bright spark, a little bit of magic and poetry on a dull day. Full of the wonder and majesty of the natural world, and the world of the whale in particular. Sadly, it was also a tale of destruction, as her research led her down a rabbit hole of death, illness, pollution and environmental degradation. 

Told as narrative non-fiction, Giggs was on a personal mission to understand why whales beach themselves. She shares her journey - all the discoveries, the joys and the heartaches - to show us and to remind us how interconnected every living thing is on this planet we all inhabit. 

This is the kind of non-fiction I love. It's intimate, yet scientific; it's lyrical and philosophical; it's passionate and reasonable. I learnt a lot and have been left with a lot to ponder. Giggs is not able to answer all the questions she poses. This is not a flaw in the book, it's simply a sign that we lack sufficient evidence and knowledge to fully understand another organism. 

Below are my notes for future reference. I urge you to read it for yourself though. You can thank me later.

• Why do whales beach themselves?
• Natural phenomena
• sick?
• the weakest in the pod? Natural selection?
• Conspiracy theories
• shooting stars, comets & meterorites?
• Naval operations & military sonar that frightens the whales
• "the assumption that deeper streams of logic undercut the frail authority of science."
• Why have whales started eating the wrong things?
• plastic, debris
• heavy metals, pesticides, fertilisers, PCB's
• "Estuarine beluga in Canada had been discovered to be so noxious that their carcasses were classed as toxic waste for disposal."
• whalefall
• when a whale expires mid-ocean and eventually sinks & decomposes on the descent, eaten & nibbled on by birds, fish, crabs & sharks (consuming the toxic chemicals in the whales blubber and body).
• "it is as though the whale were a pinata cracked open, flinging bright treasures"
• "over 200 different species can occupy the frame of one whale carcass."
• "the death of a whale proves meaningful to a vibrant host of dependent creatures, even as it may look senseless from the shore" 
• what happens when we "pollute not just places, but organisms"?
• petroglyphs "capturing the likeness of another creature implies an imaginative or emotional relationship that exceeds the exigencies of survival"

Helen McGrath | Whale petroglyph Yerroulbine/Balls Head, Sydney

• "a petroglyph denoted an intention to generate, or invite change. A petroglyph spoke to the future."
• "Shallow, and growing ever shallower as a result of erosion, a time will come when the whale will lift out of the rock completely. Lichens stipple its head."
• defaunation "the loss of a place's absolute animalness...a depletion of abundance"
• what are the effects of "reducing animal populations - for those animals, their ecosystems, and the cultures that are nourished by them."
• "One underrepresented truth of the world: things that have been removed from the past exert the pressure on the present moment, just as much as the things that persist."
• whale ecotourism industry "we've come to see what we've saved."
• "to contemplate our own species' capacity for temperance. Each cetacean is an evidentiary exhibit of both human care and the resilience of wilderness."
• John Berger (1977) Why Look at Animals?
• "People, confronted by other species, typically reactivate their self-awareness and superiority. They remember that they are, on a fundamental level, a different kind of animal from the animal they are looking at."
• Augenblick "the feeling of a second as measured by a slow eye-blink"
• Cute aggression "a violent impulse towards pictures of adorable animals."

• Chapter: Kitsch Interior - interspersed with examples of specific whales and what was discovered in their stomachs after they died (tracksuit pants, golf balls, surgical gloves, a plastic bucket, a car engine cover, synthetic netting, shredded balloons, dvd case, disposable cigarette lighters, rice sacks).
• "The existence of parasites makes evident the porousness, the uncontained qualities, of life; these things that move under the traction of their own will, into and out of, and across all animals."
• "These creatures are not knowable...the parasite also inched me towards thinking of animals themselves as environments, and nature as a process....They are the shapeshifters of our Earth, blurring the edges, kicking the insides out." Something we've all been reminded of this year as a virus, another unknowable creature, shapeshifted from one animal to another and kicked us from the inside out.

What floats after falling is

flotsam, and what floats when thrown is jetsam.

Whatever sinks is lagan.

Whatever is cast up

is yours.

'Soundings' in Homing (2017) | Shevaun Cooley

Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens #USfiction

When one sets out to read a book, you enter into a contract of sorts with the author. You agree to be apart of their world and to go along for the ride. As I've discussed before, we all have our own criteria by which we judge a book and whether we will pick it up off the shelf, or not. Or whether we will look inside it, or not. Or whether we will read beyond the first page, or not.

We all have expectations that we want a new book to meet. We all have moods and daily lives that dictate what might appeal at any certain time in our life, or not. When you find a book that grabs you from page one and you agree to go with the author all the way to the end, it's a truly magical moment. I usually know from page one, if this will happen or not.

Not all the books I read are Literature with a capital L.
I enjoy lighter reads, comfort reads and pot-boilers at times. The Jonathan Coe trilogy I've been reading recently are lightly, humorously written. They are flawed, but utterly, utterly engaging. I have agreed to go along with Coe's premise and we have a lot of fun together. I love the early Liane Moriarty books for the same reason. I am prepared to be entertained by her, and entertain she does.

Both these authors write with a warmth and affection that sucks me in from the start.
But I will not suspend believability for anyone. I can live with obvious. I can live with tropes and stereotypes. And I can live with working out what will happen early on, simply to enjoy the 'I knew it! I told you so' at the end. But I have to believe. It has to be plausible.

For such a major, best selling book, I managed to hear very little about Where The Crawdads Sing. Readers have merely gushed about their feelings about the book - all glowing - without revealing any spoilers. They all insist I should read this book, that I will love it, it's the best story they've read in a long, long time and they can't wait to see the movie version of it.

So when my book club nominated Where The Crawdads Sings as our March book, I was happy enough to go along with the hype. I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

I knew I was in trouble from the first page though.

I wasn't seduced by the writing or the story. Well-worn tropes and stereotypes abounded and by the 30% mark I was getting angry at the lack of believability. I seriously thought about stopping, but I didn't finish my last book club book either. Guilt set in and I started skim reading.

For my own amusement, I decided to make predictions (**below**) about what I think will happen.

**My guess is that Kya will be hassled by Chase as they become young adults, she will fall in love with Tate, but there will be issues about whether she deserves to be loved or not. Chase will take advantage of her somehow, until she snaps and kills him. She has obviously done a good job of covering it up, so I am curious to find out how the bumbling police officers work it out.**

So why does Where the Crawdads Sing resonate with so many readers?

I can see that the nature writing might be lovely in places. I googled the Great Dismal Swamp, and I can see that it is (now) quite beautiful. It's history as a hideout for runaway slaves, outcasts and hermits is fascinating stuff. I'd love to watch a wildlife/social history documentary about the area.

Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina

Murder mystery is a genre that has wide appeal, as is the overcoming poverty, hardship and ghastly childhood trope. Books about prejudice, social injustice, domestic violence and war veteran PTSD can enrage, upset and move us. They can open our eyes and hearts to those living a life different to our own. However, romanticised versions of 'white trash done good', like this one, do little to advance that cause. The nature/nurture debate is also one that can attract a lot of interest, but I still insist on believability for this to be effective as a trope. The Reese Witherspoon book club nod obviously boosted book sales too.

**At the 60% mark. If Kya keeps quoting Amanda Hamilton poems, I may have to fling my book across the room! And enough with all the nature similes about animals killing their mate after sex - we get it. We get it!**

**90% mark. Really! She wrote a book!! Three books!! I flung MY book across the room!
Kya's chat with Jodie about isolation, and the consolations of nature, might have been moving, but the Jodie scar memory, just before he turned up out of the blue, was so clunky and so convenient, I flung my book again! And don't get me started on the totally unbelievable provincial court room drama!**

**100% At least Tate agreed with me about how awful the Amanda Hamilton poems were! I had my satisfying 'I knew it' moment. I'm just surprised it took everyone else so long to work it out. And why isn't there an online outrage about the protagonist getting away with pre-meditated murder?**

I have now found another reviewer (Lit & Leisure) who failed to be captured by this book so now I don't feel so alone in my stand.

I usually shy away from negative reviews, because I rarely read a book these days that I don't want to read. Thanks to my day job, I have a wide array of book choices that can be picked up and put down without any financial sacrifice. If I don't like a book, I simply stop reading and find a book I do like. Where the Crawdads Sing is a book that wouldn't have passed my usual 'first page' test. But since I felt compelled to read this for book club, I persisted.

Not every book can suit every reader.

I certainly don't want to trash someone else's favourite book of all time, but I do feel a little disheartened that such an ordinary book can gain so much attention. Maybe in these difficult times, though, an easy to read, romantic murder mystery is the escapism ticket that many readers need.

I'm curious to hear why some of my book club members loved this book so much, and why some are saying it's the best book they've read in a long time. I remember being just as confused and bemused by the success of Fifty Shades of Grey years ago. It's great that these books can get so many people reading again, I just wish they could be ones that were better written!

A Poem for Thursday Dub Leffler

Photo by Christoph von Gellhorn on Unsplash

Dub Leffler grew up in the small western NSW town of Quirindi. He is descended from the Bigambul and Mandandanji people of south-west Queensland. He is an illustrator of children's books, including one of my favourites from 2011 Once There was a Boy (which he also wrote) and Sorry Day (2018) with Coral Vass.

NSW is currently in the grip of the worst start to the bushfire season in living memory. Over two months of non-stop fires, that have now joined up to create a 'mega-fire' zone north of Sydney, with no end in sight. I understand that Leffler's reasons for crying in this poem run much deeper than the current environmental crisis, still, it seemed appropriate to visit this particular poem today.

I Cry for You, Country
By Dub Leffler | 1 February 2019 | Cordite Poetry Review


I cry about this country.
As I travel about in between the sliced stone mountains.
The train is a salt dipped saw.
Sawing back and forth in the wounds.

I watch the relentless invasion of lantana. We open the cuts and rip off
Bandaids
I cry for you country.

A tree’s single scream lasts years.

When I die, you will have my body.
You take my water, you take my bone.

When we have our dead days,
I will think on you.

The day we finally go, is the day, we finally return.


Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I enjoy sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her whenever I can.

City of Trees by Sophie Cunningham

City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest by Sophie Cunningham was one of the books I took on holidays a couple of months ago (along with Richard Powers, The Overstory) to Far North Queensland on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest. Both books seemed very appropriate for the occasion. And except for the last two chapters, I had all but finished City of Trees whilst surrounded by all those beautiful tall stands of trees.

I finished those last two chapters during the week.

The two books complemented each other perfectly. As I finished each of the nine origin stories in The Overstory, I needed a break to absorb their content. It was constantly amazed how often the next chapter or two of City of Trees reflected or enhanced the individual experiences that I had just read about in the novel. It came as no surprise to me that Cunningham had read (and loved) The Overstory as well and referenced it in some of her essays.

Cunningham has included line drawings of trees and some of their inhabitants throughout the chapters. Each essay is also littered with family stories and personal memories. Her reflections on grief and loss were particularly moving. However, it's her love of trees and the knowledge she has gained about them over the years that is the centre piece of this work.

As you would expect, the environmental messages in this book are active and strong. They colour Cunningham's view of the world. Since I share similar sensibilities with her, I found her essays to be beautiful, heartfelt and undeniable.

And endlessly quotable:

• A tree is never just a tree. It speaks of the history of the place where it has grown or been planted.

• There are individual giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) still living that are older than Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism.  

• Walking provides an excellent opportunity to argue with people in your head.

• For reasons that include increases in both temperatures and fuel loads, fires are burning hotter and becoming more dangerous....When forests do burn, old-growth forests don;t do so as intensely as younger forests.

•  James Bradley - Grief teaches us that time is plastic. A lifetime is an ocean and an instant. It does not matter whether something happened a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago: all loss is now. Grief does not stop, or disappear. It suffuses, inhabits us. The dead are both gone and never gone, living absences we bear with us.  

• Logging advocates exaggerate both the market for old-growth timber and the quality of the timber....In what universe would a reasonable person think it is okay to cut down an 800-year-old tree and reduce it a few hundred dollars' worth of woodchips? 

You can follow Sophie on Instagram with her #treeoftheday hashtag.

Book 18 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

Sydney 15℃

Dublin 20℃

Strong in the Rain by Lucy Birmingham & David McNeill

Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was not exactly what I was expecting.

Before visiting Japan for the first time last year, I read Richard Lloyd Parry's Ghosts of the Tsunami. Parry, like his American counterparts, was (and still is) an (English) journalist based in Japan. His book focused on the effects of the tsunami on one small town on the coast where an entire school of children was lost to the overwhelming wave. His book evolved over several years of interviews with survivors and was finally published in 2017, six years after the tsunami.

Strong in the Rain (published in October 2012) was a more immediate response to the disaster of 2011 and focused on the reaction of the government, media and locals to the nuclear threat that teetered on the brink of major catastrophe for days and days and days.

As a result, it was more report-like in structure and execution than Parry's book which was more personal, and told in a narrative non-fiction style. Both styles have their place and perhaps if I had read Strong in the Rain when it was first published I would have been more engaged with it.

Not that it wasn't interesting, it just didn't grab me the way Ghosts of the Tsunami did. That sense of immediacy had passed.

I did learn that the title came from a well-known Japanese poem by Kenji Miyazawa which has been translated below by Roger Pulvers.

Strong in the rain
Strong in the wind
Strong against the summer heat and snow
He is healthy and robust
Free from desire
He never loses his temper
Nor the quiet smile on his lips
He eats four go of unpolished rice
Miso and a few vegetables a day
He does not consider himself
In whatever occurs
His understanding
Comes from observation and experience
And he never loses sight of things
He lives in a little thatched-roof hut
In a field in the shadows of a pine tree grove
If there is a sick child in the east
He goes there to nurse the child
If there’s a tired mother in the west
He goes to her and carries her sheaves
If someone is near death in the south
He goes and says, ‘Don’t be afraid’
If there are strife and lawsuits in the north
He demands that the people put an end to their pettiness
He weeps at the time of drought
He plods about at a loss during the cold summer
Everybody calls him Blockhead
No one sings his praises
Or takes him to heart

That is the sort of person
I want to be

It's easy to see how this poem could embody the Japanese national spirit, although not so sure about the blockhead part!

Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan 2011

Birmingham and McNeill interviewed six survivors in six different areas to personalise the disaster. As you would expect, all their stories were compelling and heart-breaking. For someone who has never experienced that extreme type of earthquake and tsunami in person, it was often hard to fathom the extent of the destruction. But I could admire their courage in resilience in carrying on afterwards.

One of the relief workers talked about 'post traumatic growth' where 'people have power to face their own grief and gain control of their lives.' I first came across this idea in Leigh Sales book Any Ordinary Day and find it encouraging to know that it is possible to not only survive a traumatic event but to ultimately use it as a growing experience.

I learnt a lot about the history of quakes and tsunamis in Japan and the various preparations that the Japanese had put in place - seawalls, breakwaters and floodgates, early warning sirens and action plans - so many of which completely failed.

But it was the total failure of adequate preparation surrounding the Fukushima power plant that Birmingham & McNeill focused on. From the government, to TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) officials and media outlets that failed to prepare, report or acknowledge what was really happening. Obviously scaring everyone unnecessarily does no-one any good during a crisis, but denying and ignoring the facts could be equally devastating and even life-threatening.

One of the shocking facts that came out of the court case afterwards, was TEPCO arguing that it was not responsible for the radioactive fallout as it didn't "own" it. "Radioactive materials...that scattered and fell from the Fukushima No. 1 plant belong to the individual landowners there, not TEPCO."

OMG!! Surely this ridiculous claim was challenged at subsequent court hearings.

The Epilogue went on to provide some information on how various towns were coping with the clean up, preparing new and improved warning systems and commemorating the event. From ocean parks, to cherry tree plantings to mark the high water mark, to elevated housing. 

I'd be interested in finding out how things have progressed seven years on. If you know of any more current books on this topic, please leave me a note in the comments.

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. This week I snuck my poem into the review!

6/20 Books of Summer Winter
Sydney 16℃
Dublin 16℃

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I do love to theme my holiday reads where possible. A recent week long Far North Queensland break in beautiful, sunny Port Douglas on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest, gave me a chance to finally read this year's Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Power's The Overstory. (I also packed a book of essays called City of Trees by Sophie Cunningham as a companion read - to be reviewed soon).

The Australian cover of The Overstory has been one of my favourite designs throughout 2018 and it is now one of my favourite reads of 2019. In trying to work though my feelings about this book though, it's hard to go past Benjamin Markovits' Guardian review of The Overstory, where he said,

It’s an extraordinary novel, which doesn’t mean that I always liked it. Martin Amis’s brilliant description of what it’s like to admire a book – the stages you go through, from resistance to reluctance, until you finally reach acceptance in the end – is probably more linear than what usually happens. Because reluctance and acceptance can go hand in hand...

It’s an astonishing performance. Without the steadily cumulative effect of a linear story, Powers has to conjure narrative momentum out of thin air, again and again. And mostly he succeeds. Partly because he’s incredibly good at describing trees, at turning the science into poetry...

There is something exhilarating, too, in reading a novel whose context is wider than human life. Like Moby-Dick, The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference. Time matters differently; you look at the trees outside your window more curiously. Suspiciously, even.

Yes, yes, yes! It really is extraordinary and astonishing and exhilarating, with some qualifications.

Initially I thought that following the narratives of nine individuals would be hard to track and I made a few character notes on each one, during their origin chapters, but I didn't really need to in the end. Most of the characters was so fully realised which such rich backstories, that they were all clearly delineated in my mind.

I found the story mesmerising and haunting. Trees crept into my dreams and I found myself touching trees and smelling them on my morning walks, more so than usual. Our day trip into the Daintree even gave me a chance to hug an old, old tree with gratitude.

I also learnt so much. About the catastrophic chestnut blight and the so-called nature strips left by the logging companies on the side of the road, so that from the car you cannot see that entire mountainsides of forest have been logged behind them. About how trees migrate and communicate with each other. How they protect themselves and those around them from infestations. How intricate a forest system really is. And about how quickly we're losing the old forests of the world.

My qualifications?

At times I was concerned the story might tip over into earnestness or become too worthy for it's own good, but Powers reined it in each time.

I experienced resistance a few times - especially during the activism phase of the novel. Adam, the reluctant activist character was the one who helped me through.

At times it felt a bit too easy or convenient to create a divide between those who wanted to save the old growth forests and those nasty, greedy capitalists, who didn't. We all know it's not as black and white as that and that there's a lot of nuance and complexity in between.

The really hard part, though, is coming away from this story, wanting to help, wanting to make a difference, wanting for everyone to see how important it is for all of us to maintain diversity of species, but coming up with no real solution. The activism section of the book showed how futile it is in the face of rampant materialism and capitalism. Those advocating jobs and usefulness (in the name of making more money for themselves) will never see the point of long-haired layabouts, sponging off government handouts. And any scientific study is dismissed, ridiculed or declared 'unclear' - needing more time and more study before any action can possibly be considered - as another forest is cleared.

The only option Power leaves us with, in the end, is,

The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

The Overstory is a good story. It's poetic, urgent, timely, rich in detail, epic in nature and wears it's heart on it's sleeve. It is meaningful and satisfying.

I'm not sure we can say that this leaves us with a particularly optimist view of the human race, although, we can feel pretty sure that the trees will survive, somehow, somewhere, no matter what.

My copy of The Overstory in the Daintree Rainforest

Favourite Quote:

My simple rule of thumb, then, is this: when you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.

Favourite Character: The entire Hoel family who start this novel off with such a powerful generational story.

Favourite of Forget: Unforgettable

Facts:

• Shortlisted 2018 Man Booker Prize
• Winner 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• Winner 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award

1/20 Books of Winter
The Overstory was read during my week in Far North Queensland - where the average daytime temperature was a glorious 27℃. The same week in Dublin had a chillier average of 17℃.
#justsaying

Flames by Robbie Arnott

It's a long weekend in Australia, and for the first time in over a year, we've enjoyed a lazy, nothing-to-do-but-flop-around-the-house kind of weekend. It has been blissful. Even with the ghastly high temps and even higher humidity, or maybe because of, it has been the perfect time for reading, snoozing and listening to music as we sporadically clean and tidy the house.

Typing up reviews has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Lots of changes (the good, positive, life-going-forward kind of changes, but changes nonetheless) are coming our way this year - starting next week when B18 goes away to Uni.

The teenage years are not easy for anyone to live through, which is maybe Nature's way of making it easy for both teens and their parents to let go. But as tough as the last few years have been (and there were times when I thought my sanity would not survive intact), I wouldn't now swap them for anything.

Which brings me to Flames by Robbie Arnott. Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

The Tasmanian environment is one of the prominent characters throughout this genre-defying story which Arnott uses to stress the interconnectedness between us all. Fire, water, trees and the gods play their parts too.

Flames has a fablesque quality and is mythological in tone with different writing styles to suit each characters story. Arnott plays around with magic realism, an epistolary chapter, report writing and the fabulous chapter with the female private eye that reads like a Tasmanian Philip Marlowe, just to name a few. It should have felt disjointed and all over the place, but just like a teen, it somehow made sense and seemed like just the right thing to do at that time.

Through his various characters, Arnott explores the wild, raw nature of grief, mourning and love. We watch them come to terms with letting go of what they thought they knew as they learn to embrace the unknowable future and whatever it might bring. No matter how far apart you may seem to be, you are still family, you are still connected, and it will ultimately keep you afloat, if you let it.

Arnott is a young Tasmanian copywriter. Flames has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, and the Queensland Literary Awards: University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 2018.

Facts:

• Longlisted | 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
• Winner | Margaret Scott Prize | Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019
• Longlisted | Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction 2019
• Shortlisted | UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing | NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award 2018
• Shortlisted | Kathleen Mitchell Award 2019
• Longlisted | ALS Gold Medal 2019
• Longlisted | Miles Franklin Literary Award 2019
• Longlisted | Voss Literary Prize 2019
• Shortlisted | Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize UK 2019

A Walk in the Bush by Gwyn Perkins

I feel that the CBCA has slightly tweeked their judging criteria this year. The categories for the Early Childhood Prize and Picture Book of the Year have been clearly differentiated by how the illustrations are used and by the ages of their readers.

CBCA Book of the Year: Early Childhood:
Entries in this category should be books suitable in content and style for pre and beginning readers for children in the age range 0 to 6 years (infants and pre-school level). This include works of fiction, poetry, wordless, board and concept books. The illustrations reflect all the text on the page and often do NOT add extra meaning to the storyline.

CBCA Picture Book of the Year:
Entries in this category should be books of the genre in which the text and illustrations achieve artistic and literary unity and the story, theme or concept is enhanced and unified through the illustrations. A picture book can be written and illustrated by a sole creator or a collaborative effort between two or more creators. The text and illustrations work cohesively. The illustrations are an integral part of, or extend the meaning on the page. The age range for this category is 0 to 18 years.

Gwyn Perkin's A Walk in the Bush has won this year's Picture Book of the Year Award. Perkins is both the author and the illustrator.

He uses simple pen drawings, a soft colour palette & Photoshop to create an evocative, heart-warming stroll through the Australian bush. Perkins is based on a little island in the middle of Pittwater in northern Sydney, he also spends a lot of time in the Blue Mountains. All three areas are lovingly depicted in this book.

Perkins is obviously an advocate for mindful walking as opposed to serious hiking. His granddad character takes the time to listen to the birds, notice changes in the flora and smell the gum leaves. He tells bad granddad jokes to his grandchild/cat character and is constantly encouraging Iggy to engage with the natural world around.

One of the big successes here is Perkin's ability to tell so much of the story via believable, tender body language (instead of dialogue). There is genuine affection and caring between the two characters, even when they sit quietly enjoying the peace of the bush. Meanwhile the watchful wildlife constantly bring your attention back to the connection between the granddad and Iggy.

Each picture is a double page spread. Words are kept to a minimum while feeling oozes from every detail. Sharing this book with my colleagues produced oodles of laughs and bucket loads of awww's!

A worthy winner indeed of a book prize the celebrates the beautiful and meaningful combination of art and words.

Perkin's follow up book, A Day at the Show is equally as charming, funny and delightful. I also loved the nostalgic feeling I got from wandering around an old-style country show with granddad and Iggy...and chook. A 2019 contender for sure!

Book 19 of #20booksofsummer (winter)

The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young

You know you're in for a real treat when the book you pick up starts with a letter from Alan Bennett.

The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young was first published in 2003 and is a lovely little book full of anecdotes about the cows (and hens, pigs and sheep) on her farm, Kite's Nest in Worcestershire.

Alan Bennett wrote about his reading experience with this book in 2006. He then added the diary entry to his 2016 biography, Keeping On, Keeping On. On the strength of this, the wonderful people at Faber & Faber decided to reprint The Secret Life of Cows.

I'm so delighted that they did and that they did so with such a lovely hardback, illustrated gift edition. (You can see some of Anna Koska's beautiful illustrations here.)

It's the perfect read for me at this time of the year when I'm SUPER busy at work and constantly feeling too tired to read anything complicated or challenging. It was also good for soothing my sometimes cynical and often jaded soul at this time of year.

Young and her family have a lovely, creative habit of naming each cow and bull. We meet Dolly I & Dolly II, Fat Hat, July Bonnet, Wizzie, Mr Mini, the Bishops of Gloucester and Worchester and the utterly charming Amelia, just to name a few of the characters that grace these pages.

Young provides amusing stories about cows who sniff car exhausts, learn to open gates or don't like muddy hooves, and more poignant ones like mothers who help their daughters calve, cows who seek out human help when in trouble and cows who grieve.

Kite's Nest was an organic, free-range farm before such terms were coined. The cows (& other animals) live good lives here. They are encouraged to eat what they like, when they like and they're allowed to roam (within reason) to seek out family, friends and favourite places to relax and socialise.

This is not a scientific treatise. It's a memoir with cows. As such, each lovely anecdote meanders on to the next, revealing quirky personalities, medical curiosities like their ability to self-medicate with thistles, willow and stinging nettles and the extraordinary, often life-long relationships that develop amongst the cows themselves, as well as with their human carers.

The Secret Life of Cows is perfect for anyone with a love of animals or the simple life, or for anyone who needs to be soothed and calmed by a gentle read.

Rockhopping by Trace Balla

Rockhopping is Trace Balla's follow up book to Rivertime with Clancy and Uncle Egg once again getting ready to head off an eco-adventure.

I love these books a lot.

I love their gentle pace and laid back attitudes.

I love their environmental credentials and back to nature ethos.

I love their attention to details.

I love their emphasis on problem solving, responsibility and being capable.

I love their zen-like, go with the flow, be in the moment philosophy.

But most of all I love how these books remind us that we are all a part of nature. Our natural environment is affected by our interactions with it whether we live in the city or the country.

As Balla says in the Teacher's Notes produced by her publisher, Allen & Unwin,

When you stop trying to get anywhere and just be, a whole world of wonder can open up to you. And when you stop going with a plan and follow the flow, you may find a world of unexpected opportunities revealing themselves to you. The more you look the more you find out. It’s also about realising we are part of the natural world, rather than separate to it, and that we are not alone, but surrounded by other life. Themes of growing up and realising what we are capable of are also explored.

Rockhopping is also respectful to the indigenous tribes of The Grampians (Gariwerd) in Victoria. Balla uses traditional names and common names for places as well as referring to aspects of Aboriginal culture throughout the book.

Commonsense, logic and thorough preparation are also applauded. There is a page of items that Clancy and Egg collected before they went off on their adventure. Practical handy survival tips are interwoven into the story at various points.

Balla adds an historical perspective to one of the sections. Day five shows a timeline with Clancy and Uncle Egg discussing the value of a good walking stick on a big bushwalk. The timeline then shows the same stick being used by a logger, a goldminer, a Chinese market gardener, a squatter and a Jardwadjali woman to dig.

Several trips to the region were integrated into ongoing discussions with local indigenous elders which helped Balla ensure that the local knowledge was authentic and up to date.

Balla received lots of support from local elders. She said in an interview on Reading Time that,

Milipiri Elder Wanta Jampijimpa has given me encouragement to keep doing these stories, that he says are about ‘reading country” and giving hope. Renowned environmental educator David Suzuki has also given me encouragement about my books inspiring kids to be in nature. These two elders encouragement points to passing on wisdom that we often lose sight of in our modern, often urban culture.

Rockhopping has been shortlisted for this years CBCA Younger Readers award.

Florette by Anna Walker

Anna Walker's whimsical water colour illustrations appeal to my inner child. Last year the CBCA award winning Mr Huff captured my attention while the gorgeous storm-tossed Peggy won my heart a couple of years before that.

Florette is another urban story about moving and adjustment and finding home wherever you are. Environmental concerns are addressed as Mae takes us on a nature journey in her new city - we experience first hand the impact of nature on our moods and attitudes. We also see the importance of having a passion, expressing your creativity and keeping busy as ways of helping us to adjust to change.

From small beginnings much bigger things can grow. You just have to start. And that small start can lead to friendship, good health and happiness.

Walker taps into an emotional truth as well as the gentle innocence of childhood in each of books. I predict another CBCA nomination ahead for Florette.