Nothing to See Here | Kevin Wilson #USfiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End We Start From From by Megan Hunter

There is a lot of space in Megan Hunter's The End We Start From. Known as a poet until now, her debut novel is written almost like a poem, but not quite. It's not prose as we know it either. It's fragmentary, somewhere in between.

Stark, sparse paragraphs, poetic words, no names, just letters of the alphabet. Everything is pared back to the bare minimum to create a startling story about the end of times. The End We Start From got under my skin.

Hunter's choice of epigraph was a poem by T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets,

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. 

She then shows us the end of our known world (via an environmentally disastrous flood that covers London) through the eyes of a young woman about to give birth to her first child. The story reads almost like her journal entries. Brief snatches of time captured through the lens of baby love.

Many reviewers talked about the not-so-new idea of comparing first-time mothering with the end of the world. Curiously it wasn't this particular idea that captured my attention. I was intrigued by how this baby (and the other newborns) will be growing up in this new world which will be the only world that they know and understand. They won't have to accommodate or change or adapt to this new world order; it is their world. They won't spend their lives thinking about and regretting the wonderful old ways and wishing it could be like that again. They won't be climate change deniers or head-in-the-sander's; they will know, they will be living with it as a fact. They will belong to this new world. This is our hope and the way forward.

The story is contained not only within the carefully chosen words but also in the gaps and all that is unspoken. Hunter mentioned several times that she was trying to find a way to move between poetry and prose to find a form that suited her. It worked for me just fine.

London. Uninhabitable. A list of boroughs, like the shipping forecast, their names suddenly as perfect and tender as the names of children.

The cupboards reveal themselves more by the day: their wooden backs, the greying corners we never used to see.

Days are thin now, stretched so much that time pours through the. 

Z has learnt to smile. He has cracked with it. The smiles built up inside him, R and me smiling madly into his face until it couldn’t hold any more. It cracked, and out came his smile, urgent, almost demented.

Hunter also interspersed these fragments with flood mythologies. They reminded us that since the beginning of recorded time, humans have been grappling with the chaos that mother nature throws our way. We make up stories to help us make sense of the unknown. It made me wonder what stories would then be made up for future generations about this disaster.

My only quibble was the ending. However so many authors these days fail to capture a satisfying end note that I'm becoming used to that feeling of let down after a great read. So much thought seems to go into the epigraph but the search for an equally apt epilogue is not always given the same care.

Benedict Cumberbatch's company has apparently bought the movie rights to the book.

A shout-out to the brilliant cover design by Naomi Clark and illustration by Kazuko Nomoto. I picked this book up for the first time purely thanks to the lovely, lovely cover.

1/20 #20booksofsummer (winter)
16℃ in Sydney
20℃ in Northern Ireland

Avalanche by Julia Leigh

Writing a book about your experience with the IVF program comes with many emotional pitfalls and landmines. It crashes into the brick wall of other people's preconceived and often strongly held opinions.

The trick, obviously, is to connect emotionally to your reader very early on.

I find that books like this, about topics like this, are a lot like friendships.

There are those friends that you meet that you click with straight away - you feel like kindred spirits. It can be quite intense and full-on, but as you get to know each other better, you realise that there are some stark differences. Some friends survive this phase; some don't.

Other friendships start off cautiously. They seem okay, but the timing is never quite right to jump into a deeper conversation. You regard them fondly, kindly, but don't them very well...until something happens that forces you to get to know each other. Some friendships surge forward after this and a closer bond is formed that lasts forever; but others just drift away once the crisis is resolved.

Then there are the friends who you dislike at the start. They say or do something that puts you off or they see at your worst and so you avoid each other, wondering what other people see in them. Then one day you get invited to the same BBQ, or you end up sitting next to each other at a school event, or you run into each at the doctor's surgery and you start chatting. Suddenly you're having coffee together and laughing about those crazy first impressions.

There are some people who you can never get beyond that dislike phase. Every encounter simply confirms your bad opinion or brings out the worst in you.

But most people, that vast mass of humanity on the periphery of your life, are benign, potentially sympathetic souls, willing to leave you be to live your own life as best as you see fit just as you leave them to be happy in their own way. You might connect at a work thing one day, have a friendly chat, but never think of each again.

I suspect that page one of Julia Leigh's Avalanche: A Love Story will cause most readers to dive into the intense kindred spirit type friendship or leave them feeling dislike at first sight.

For me, it was the first friendship.
I connected instantly and intensely with Julia's beginning.
The rekindling of a love affair in her late 30's with the man she loved at uni is my story too. However, at this point, our paths diverged.

That initial burst of fellowship that engaged me and drew me into her story, began to feel too fierce. I began to judge her actions by what I feel I would have done or did do in similar circumstances. I recalled the many, many discussions with friends during my twenties, thirties and forties about babies and motherhood. The choices people made - all that heartbreak, joy and hard work. The expectations about relationships and parenting that everyone contends with - from their families, society, but ultimately, themselves.

I read Leigh's story through in two very quick, vivid reading sessions. I marvelled at her gutsy approach - laying it all on the line for us to comment on. I respected her attempts to take other people's perspective into account and to analyse some of her own behaviours and actions thoughtfully.

No-one is perfect. We are all flawed individuals, often blindsided by our own desires. Leigh attempts to bring some of these to light,

There is comfort in purpose. Part of me wanted to have a child just so I could have an inviolable reason for being. Sweet purpose. Sweet dark purpose, secret of secrets: a child would save my life.

By the end of Avalanche, I had swung back around to feeling friendly and sympathetic. This is one woman's journey; it's not one I would choose for myself, but this is not my story. Leigh is giving us a chance to see inside the heart and mind of someone who makes a certain choice. As Atticus Finch said in To Kill A Mockingbird,

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Leigh gives us this opportunity.

I'm not sure if she also fully appreciates the searing indictment on the IVF industry that emerges through her story. Perhaps that is my particular lens kicking in though.
The money being made off older women and couples emotionally desperate to clutch at any baby making straw was truly startling. The odds were never in their favour. Yet still they try.

Leigh's book helps us to understand why.

Avalanche has been longlisted for this year's Stella Prize.

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

Danny the Champion of the World is a homage to good parenting, especially good parenting by a loving father.

It's also about courage, loyalty and a little bit of class politics.

Danny extols the virtues of working class values, but as with all Dahl books, he subverts it a little. Honesty and the concept of being a law-abiding citizen are given a little Dahl-esque tweak.

Danny could be read as a modern day Robin Hood, except the class divide commentary is never really fully resolved here.

The local rich guy is too obviously the baddie and the idea of poaching being an art form is just a tad too convenient.

We all know that the simple, clean, wholesome life that Danny and his dad enjoyed is not the real picture of working class poverty. There may not be any magical elements in this particular Dahl story, but there is a lot of wish-fulfilment and whimsy.

Danny is rightly concerned about the ethics of stealing the pheasants. Having the entire village in on the scheme, doesn't really make it proper. But Dahl doesn't confront or challenge this dilemma at all which I found very curious and the one thing that would stop me recommending this book whole-heartedly.

Perhaps, though, it could become a good discussion about what to do when the adults in your life are doing something illegal? Or about the shades of grey that exist within some laws and some traditions? Or it could even be the opportunity to tackle the big question of class inequality - why some people are poor and don't have enough to eat well while others wilfully waste the abundance that they do have?

Even Dahl's final message to the reader is loaded with ambiguity and class tension.

As a child I would have found this message quite confronting because I knew from a very young age that your didn't always get what you deserved, let alone what you wanted.

A Message 

to Children Who Have Read This Book 

When you grow up 

and have children of your own

do please remember

something important

a stodgy parent is no fun at all

What a child wants

and deserves

is a parent who is 

SPARKY

Danny is part of my 1001 Children's Books to Read Before I Die challenge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she can write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20/20 Books of summer (winter)

Stepmother Love edited by Sally Collins

This weekend in Australia was Mother's Day.

I grew up in a family where Mother's Day was not actively encouraged.

My mother often expressed concern about the Americanisation of our culture as we were growing up. She also believed that one shouldn't need a day of the year to be told to tell your mother that you love her (the irony being that my family never said 'I love you' at any time!)

As we got older, we all deplored the commercialisation of the day and actively avoided buying into it. During our adult years, Mother's Day evolved into a phone call if we lived away or a luncheon if we were visiting.

It took a lot of time, maturity and emotional work in my 20's and 30's to see how my parents showed their love for us in lots of practical ways every day, year after year...because as a child, all I ever wanted was for someone to say a smultzy, American-style 'I love you'.

When my first serious boyfriend told me he loved me at the age of 16, I was in danger of laying down my life for him and doing anything he wanted, simply to hear those words again, again and again. Those three little words were incredibly powerful; they made me feel so good about myself; they made me feel safe and secure; they made me feel special. For the first time I felt truly validated.

Allowing myself to love and to be loved has been the main work of my adult life. Learning how to express this love has been my on-going thesis.

When I became a stepmother I didn't initially feel that Mother's Day was for me.
I was content if my efforts to make our new family a happy one were acknowledged, but I was not the boys' mother. I didn't see myself as trying to replace her or transplant her place in their lives.
Thanks to my teaching background and a growing brood of nieces and nephews, I saw my role as more of a live-in aunty with a few handy behaviour management techniques under my belt!

Over time, our roles and relationships have evolved a lot. I do a mother's work. I wash, I clean, I feed. I keep the peace, I listen, I nag. I cheer from the sidelines, applaud at school assemblies & welcome their friends into our home. I look after them when they're sick, I hold them when they're hurt. I spend hours and hours discussing their futures, their personalities, their behaviours with their father. And I love and protect them with a fierceness I didn't know was possible 9 years ago.

We're now a typical family unit with complex, nuanced, interwoven threads of feelings, experiences & beliefs. We have a shared history, family jokes & personal grievances. We've created family traditions & rituals (including our own version of Mother's Day appreciation). Sometimes we rub each other the wrong way, but most of the time, we sail along pretty smoothly.

What has got me thinking about all these issues?

Over the weekend I started reading Stepmother Love by Sally Collins.

The cover says it all. Ten stories about women living similar but different lives to me.
It has been validating to read of common fears and frustrations particular to being a step-parent.

However I gradually realised with each story that Stepmother Love was highlighting something that I already knew but didn't know that I knew!

Stepfamilies & blended families are just like any other family.
Some are good; some are bad.
But most families simply muddle along somewhere in the middle - doing the best they can - with love in their hearts & good intentions in mind.

Sally also has a website and blog devoted to being a stepmother.

All Joy and No Fun by Jennifer Senior

If you're looking for a book that offers parenting advice and useful techniques, then this is not the book for you.

If you want to read a book about how and what you should do bring about the best possible outcomes for your child's social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, then do not read this book.

However, if you're curious about the history and evolution of childhood and adolescence as we now know them, then stop right here.

If you want to read about how having children affects the parent's social, emotional, physical and cognitive development, then pick up this book.

If you'd like to ponder the bigger picture about why we parent the way we do and you want to become a more conscious participant in this process, then open All Joy and No Fun.

Jennifer Senior explores the different ways our western culture has viewed childhood over time - with a focus on our more recent history.
She is well versed on the research of modern sociologists and anthropologists such as Mead, Freud, Erikson, Kagan & Spock.

All Joy and No Fun discusses the modern dilemma of the work/life balance, the division of labour in the home, the specific changes in our society brought on by the end of WW2, the 'prolonged, protected child' syndrome and the 'happy, well-adjusted child' syndrome.

As a former teacher, I found her historical perspective & observations fascinating.

As a step-mother of two teenage boys, I found her chapter on adolescence affirming and enlightening.

As a human being I found her final chapter on the nature of joy and happiness, memory and purpose, experience and connection insightful and uplifting.

He'll Be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men by Celia Lashlie

It's quite simple really.

If you have a teenage boy in your life, then I strongly urge you to read this book from cover to cover. Now!

He'll Be OK is heart-warming, affirming, informative, humorous and thought-provoking.

Lashlie pulls no punches as she shares the insights she gleaned from her work on the Good Man Project in 25 boys schools in New Zealand.

Combined with her 15 years as a prison officer, Lashlie has had plenty of opportunity to see men and boys at their best and at their worst.

Her voice is authentic and no-nonsense. Her suggestions are balanced and focus on the positive. The whole way through this book, I felt like I was in the capable hands of a dear and trusted friend. I felt that Lashlie not only had my best interests at heart, but also those of my two gorgeous stepsons and my good, good husband.

I'll finish with a quote from the back cover...

"Do you think you'll ever have a life plan?"
No
"So how will your life sort itself out?"
Oh, that's easy. I'll be about 25 and some gorgeous-looking chick will walk past. She'll have a great plan, so I'll just hook onto her.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers by Nigel Latta

You can probably guess something about the term we've just had by my latest choice of reading matter!

Teenagers! Hmmmm.

This book was recommended to us by our brother-in-law. It has been the perfect remedy.

Not so much for the advice (which was useful) or the information about teenage brains (which was enlightening), but for the humour.

Anyone with teenagers in the house will appreciate how important it is to find a reason to laugh.
Nigel Latta's approach to parenting had me laughing out loud as I recognised ourselves and chuckling with glee at some of his inventive solutions.

The case studies are also a good release valve as you realise that your kids are not as extreme as the ones in the book! The sense of fellowship is important but so is the reality check!

Nigel's approach to parenting is realistic, do-able and sensible.

If I had to summarise his approach in one sentence it would be "we need to give them (teenagers) a reason to be good...but we also need to give them a reason not to be bad."

Nigel also has a website (and several other parenting books) to help out with all the ages and stages.

Highly recommended for anyone who suddenly finds themselves living with a slothful grunter or neanderthal caveman.