Classic Readers: ALIA Retirees

The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien

2011-12-23T20:50:00.006+11:00

Books discussed in this blog generally fall into one of two categories: they are well-known works from earlier times by writers with an established place in the traditional canon (Austen, Dickins, Conrad, etc.); or they are recent works by writers with a reputation as authors of serious fiction.

The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien (1897-1974) does not fit easily into either category. It was first published in 1940 by an Irish writer who did enjoy a certain literary prestige in her time but who is far from a house name today. The fame she does enjoy is probably due in large part to her reputation as a feminist writer. The feminist publishing house Virago republished The Land of Spices in 2001.

Superficially the book is a school story. It is largely set in an Irish convent boarding school run by a French order of nuns in the early years of the twentieth century. One of its two central characters is a pupil, Anna Murphy, who is sent to the school from a disfunctional home at the exceptionally early age of six. A major concern of the novel concerns Anna's growth and development at the school, in the course of which she learns some hard lessons outside the classroom as well as within it. But unlike most school stories, this is not to any significant degree the story of its central character's interactions with other pupils. Anna is neither isolated nor immensely popular: she never becomes the heroine of the school, and we learn relatively little about schoolgirl friends and enemies.

O'Brien is more concerned about Anna's relationship with her other central character, the school's headmistress, Reverend Mother Marie-Helene Archer. The reverend mother is a highly intelligent women from a cultivated background in England and Belgium who has entered the religious life rather unexpectedly (for her and others) after a traumatic experience that is only gradually revealed. She brings great abilities to her religious career, but finds the task of heading a convent in the rather raw and unsophisticated Irish environment challenging and unsatisfying. Early in the novel we encounter her writing to her superior in Belgium asking to be relieved of the post. In a curious way the six-year-old Anna leads her to change her mind. It is the first of a number of occasions in the novel where one of the two main characters very significantly impacts on the other, and towards the end of the novel Mere Archer intervenes rather more dramatically to ensure that Anna gets the opportunity to go to university in the face of opposition from her domineering grandmother.

This account might well make the novel seem a bit predictable and sentimental: an intelligent teacher recognises intelligence in a young pupil, grows to like her despite their differences in background, age, and status, and eventually enables her to fulfil her potential. The reality in the novel is far more subtle. Reverend mother and pupil do not become close friends and allies: Anna is in fact not especially likeable, and their close interactions are not frequent.

Not all the action takes place in the school. We learn a good deal about Marie-Helene's early life in Belgium, and about the troubled home life of Anna and her relationship with a beloved younger brother. There may be parallels between the two characters,but they are far from obvious.

O'Brien's success lies in her creating of vivid scenes and convincing dialogue, and in her very shrewd and perceptive evocation of upper middle class Catholic Ireland, simultaneously smug and anxious, in the years immediately before the First World War. There are many memorable scenes, some of them very amusing in a quiet way. The book is not without flaws: the lengthy passages in which the characters are analysed can become a bit tedious, and O'Brien makes no concesssions to the linguistically challenged. The German quotations are short, but it is useful (though by no means essential) to have a reading knowledge of French, for several letters between the Irish convent and headquarters in Belgium are in that language and left untranslated.

It is strange to realise now that the novel was controversial, at least in Ireland, when first published. I understand that a copy was formally burnt in the grounds of the convent school O'Brien had attended (and on her experiences of which she drew). There is one brief 'sex scene' of the utmost delicacy, but one suspects the problem was actually the suggestion that the sisters in a convent are capable of jealousies, rivalries, and petty acts of meanness and snobbery.

I found this a beautifully written and evocative book. I believe it deserves to be far better known.

Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson

2011-12-09T17:57:00.014+11:00

This short novel was first published in 1978 . I remember reading it about then and being very impressed. My recent re-read left me still very impressed but with a different realisation and thoughts about it. I did not remember ironically enough - just how much it was about memory and the need to put aside painful experience and memory in order to survive at times .However I did remember it gave me a strong sense of the survival drive of the main character, Nora, as she reminiscences and brings out the story of herself as a child, a young person, a confident career woman, and lastly as an older woman . The accompanying theme of self realisation and learning is the main thematic thrust of this novel. By comparison with other more recent writers with high reputations Anderson weaves psychological insights in illuminating prose effectively and without didacticism. It is story telling of the first order.

We meet Nora , our first person narrator ,when she is about 70 years of age . She has returned to her childhood home in Queensland after many years living and working in London. As she recovers from pneumonia brought on by her travels she is remembering people and events from her past. Her places of memory are outer Brisbane where she spent her childhood , Sydney where she lived for a few years after her marriage and London where she lived and worked until her return at the age of 70 to her childhood home. Anderson's fine writing illuminates this life and the situations with shining , economical clarity . We get to know Nora as she is growing up and can watch this progress , mistakes etc.

In fact the whole book illustrates a self realisation and insight which Nora is working through - here is just one sentence towards the end of the book which gave me a thrill when I read it . Nora is talking with a visitor , Jack, who mentions a name of someone from her past and she thinks "My globe of memory has given one of its lightning spins, and i am dumbfounded not only by what it shows, but by the fact that it has remained on the dark side for so long". A mystery is beginning to unfold in her mind and we travel with her along the path of memory. The blending of the dialogue Nora has with her visitors over the couple of weeks of her sickness and convalescence , and with her thought processes and observations is the structural basis for the novel and it all works easily and seamlessly for the reader.

Another feature of the book which delighted me is the sense of places in the book and the fine graphic descriptions thereof. Details of natural and built surroundings are an important part of memory for our narrator, thank goodness . For instance, we are treated to a wonderful picture of life in some terraces in the Woolloomoolloo area in the thirties which were home to artists, writers ,dressmakers - men and women living and working in the City of Sydney when King's Cross and the Darlinghurst areas were havens for them in a puritanical town. This is an important learning environment for Nora so that when her sad marriage ends and she sails to London she is open to new friendships and experiences. There is a note at the beginning of the book which as well as saying the characters are imaginative constructions notes "only the houses on the point are taken from life" and Anderson brings those Woolloomoolloo houses on the point to "life". I smiled when i read that information after finishing the book and am grateful for her writing about that era and those places with such sensitivity.

The evocative title ,Tirra Lirra by the River comes from the Tennyson poem The Lady of Shallot and its inclusion in the texts fits the themes of the novel very well. The Lady was required to view the beautiful Lancelot and life through a crystal mirror and Nora , lover of poetry and life learner , is shining the mirror on herself and life and getting "it" in a way. Nora at 70 is a bit curmudgeonly but likeable and along with her resilience maintains humour and an interest in people. The people in her life are well drawn too.

However the character of Nora is central to the story and is a perfect characterisation. This ability to get to the heart of the female persona with empathy but without sentimentality is a feature of first class female writers. In the Australian context I think of Olga Masters, Elizabeth Jolley and Amy Witting - contemporary with Anderson who are a group to conjure with in this regard. They all published in their later years around about the 1960s to 80s and signified a particular flowering of literature in Australia . Their success and abilities co-incided with the womens liberation movement of that time and I believe the social change was an factor in their success and opportunities - their high literary abilities were strictly their own however. It was just fortuitous in time.

Whatever, Tirra Lirra is a strong, evocative , poetically written book of special insight into character,relationships of a wide range ,perceptions, suburban life styles and settings - which has stood the test of time for me.

Njal's saga

2011-10-12T20:32:00.008+11:00

I have just finished rereading Njal's saga. There is probably no book length work I have read, in English or Icelandic, more often since my first encounter with it as an undergraduate student in 1967. I enjoyed it this time, as always, but my enjoyment was tinged with concern. What would any readers of this blog make of it?

It was not hard to identify aspects which could be offputting. The genealogies, which the old Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson Penguin version relegated to footnotes, are one. If you know saga literature, there is an interest in encountering names you have met in other sagas, and in tracing interrelationships, but for the reader new to sagas they are probably an irritation. The Njal's saga author's apparent fascination with legal technicalities, which distinguishes this saga from all the others, does have some historical interest and serves to raise the tension before the great fight breaks out at the Althing, but it probably tries the patience of most readers.

But perhaps the main stumbling block for modern readers is the seemingly incessant cycle of 'tit-for-tat' slayings, often involving improbable sword strokes which hew off heads or limbs. (They have been described as the fantasies of a people who had to live with blunt and far less effective weapons.) I think one has to accept that this had an interest for the saga author and his original audience that it does not have for us. The original hearers and readers, and Icelanders for centuries afterwards, doubtless believed that they were hearing about the deeds of ancestors. The characters had a reality for them that they do not have for us.

Hopefully the modern reader can accept these things as aspects of a literature from a different time and place, and as contributing to one of the glories of this saga, its rich and rounded picture of a society. To a remarkable degree Njal's saga ranges over Iceland, and over virtually all levels of society. It has a rich gallery of memorable characters, and while there are stereotypes, even minor characters are often interestingly fleshed out. (A fairly minor example is Bjorn the White, who when first introduced seems no more than a comic cowardly boaster, but who turns out to be capable of just a little more, and gains stature as a result.)

Njal's saga is remembered particularly for its major characters, notably Njall, Bergthora, Gunnar, Hallgerd, Flosi, and Kari. It probably needs to be acknowledges as rather 'masculine' literature, but some of the female characters do take on considerable depth and complexity.

Another powerful characteristic is its success in creating memorable scenes. Few readers forget Gunnar's fateful decision to go back to his farm and abandon plans for exile abroad (the wording of which most educated Icelanders have by heart), his last stand in the presence of his treacherous wife, or the burning of Njall, Bergthora, and their family. But even minor scenes can be well done. An example is the first scene in the saga, which sees the brothers Hoskuld and Hrut together at table, and Hoskuld very realistically seeking praise from his brother for his beautiful daughter Hallgerd, then a child. Hrut does what is asked, but cannot quite refrain from adding a note of foreboding, creating for a time a coldness between the brothers. Hallgerd, of course, does turn out to be a thief, and far worse. It is noteworthy that we last encounter her as the friend of Killer-Hrapp, a worthless rogue who is strangely attractive to women.

I would share the general view that this is the finest of the Sagas of Icelanders. Perhaps now I am a bit less certain that I would recommend it as the one to be read first. Maybe The Saga of the People of Laxdale , also in Penguin, might have been a better choice. Seriously proposed as possibly having a female author, the saga has a central narrative focusing on Gudrun Osvifsdottir (mentioned briefly in Njal's saga), her four marriages, and her central role in a famous 'eternal triangle'. Or perhaps two short sagas, The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga, translated in the Penguin volume The Vinland Sagas, might be a better place to start. They tell a fascinating story about the Norse discovery of America about the year 1000 and the attempts to found a settlement there, but they are also interesting stories of family life in Greenland and the attempted American colony.

I do look forward to reading some reactions to this saga.

Icelandic sagas

2011-10-06T16:40:00.003+11:00

The Icelandic word 'saga' has found its way into English and most other Western European languages. It means 'narrative' or 'history' and is used today in Iceland both for histories and for novels. But when speakers of English refer to 'the Icelandic sagas' they normally have in mind prose narratives composed in Iceland during the Middle Ages. Generally they are thinking primarily of one genre in particular, referred to in English as the 'Sagas of the Icelanders' (or as the 'Family Sagas', though this latter term is somewhat out of favour as many of the sagas in questions focus on individuals, or the inhabitants of a district, rather than on a family).

There survive about forty 'Sagas of Icelanders'. All are anonymous. During the second half of the twentieth century the usual view was that they were mostly composed in Iceland during the thirteenth century, but more recently the idea that they may be largely fourteenth century in their present form has gained currency. These sagas deal mainly with the deeds of people who are said to have lived in Iceland during a hundred year period, the so-called 'Saga Age', extending from about 930, shortly after the initial colonisation of Iceland was completed, to 1030. Thus the sagas are dealing with a period several hundred years before the time in which they were composed. Clearly it was regarded by later generations of Icelanders as a seminal period.

Two questions have long exercised the minds of saga scholars. Are the Sagas of the Icelanders history or fiction? And are the sagas as we now have them literary compostions by writers not very different from modern authors, or should they be regarded as faithful reproductions of oral stories told around the firereside by storytellers? The general view today is that there may be elements of history in them, but that what we have are in large measure works of fiction (a little like modern historical novels), and that while the sagas doubtless owe much to oral tradition, the versions we now have are in large measure literary compositions.

The Sagas of the Icelanders are works from the European Middle Ages, but they are unusual for their time. They were written by Christians but they are not overtly religious, nor do they have the aim of hammering home a moral. They strike modern readers as realistic narratives, though emanating from a society a bit more superstitious and credulous than our own: ghosts may briefly appear, and wise men and women may have some ability to foretell the future, but we are not in a world of superheroes and dragons, nor do they deal with chivalric knights and beautiful princesses. The Sagas of the Icelanders deal with the feuds of farmers and farmer's wives, and the men and women we encounter in them are readily recognisable to any reader of modern novels.

Icelandic narrative prose is one of the glories of saga literature. English translations inevitably cannot do it full justice, though good English translations do a reasonable job. The prose is remarkably lucid and subtle, and well suited to the presentation of dialogue, which is prominent in most of the Sagas of Icelanders. Saga objectivity is famous: we as readers seem to be presented with the facts as an observer on the scene might encounter them. We are not generally told how to judge a character, or how to respond to a scene. We are not told what characters are thinking: we have to work it out from what they say and do. (In fact there are subtle clues as to how the writers want us to react, but they are indeed quite subtle.)

'Njal's saga', at which we will be looking in Classic Readers this month, is the longest of the Sagas of the Icelanders - about 300 pages in the Robert Cook translation for Penguin Classics. It is almost universally regarded as the finest of these sagas. It has some features that may deter modern readers, such as the large cast of characters with names unfamiliar to English speakers, and genealogies that usually accompany the introduction of a significant figure into the narrative. But its characterisation is exceptionally rich, and it tells a powerful and moving story which moves inexorably to a satisfying conclusion, providing a vivid picture that extends beyond Iceland to Norway and Ireland at the time of the famous Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

2011-09-30T15:36:00.010+10:00

"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green." This evocative first line sets a strong tone for "Of Mice and Men" which is continued throughout the short novel. The clarity of scenery along with ominous possibilities and yearnings are present on every page of this beautifully realised, theatrical story. The arresting title comes from a Robert Burns Scottish poem "To a Mouse" . A translation from the second last stanza has the line "the best laid plans of mice and men" in it - referring to the way schemes go askew and leave us nothing "but grief and pain". It is most apt for this tragedy.

The novel was published in 1937, early in Steinbeck's career. It tells a poignant story of two itinerant farm labourers in California during the Depression years looking for work and yearning and hoping to save for a better life with a small farm they could call their own. They are an unusual couple - Lennie is large, powerful, lumbering, friendly and slow witted whilst George, his companion , is wily, short and dedicated to looking after Lennie. George has promised Lennie's dying Aunt who was Lennie's only relative and carer, that he would always look after Lennie for her. George keeps his promise on a day to day basis with forbearance and at the climax carrying out a dramatic and ethical dilemma action with selfless love.

The story of two such men may not sound very exciting but it is. A key to this reading satisfaction , along with the strong visual nature , theatricality and central ethical drama, lies with the insightfully drawn characters. I cannot think of many better novels in this regard. There are no caricatures here but real people representing human endeavours : longings and hope , jealousies, kindness, meanness, cruelty, weakness and strength sketched economically and supported by keen dialogue. The story has been successful as a stage play , movie films and opera. It is very adaptable to these story modes and as I see it the fine characterisation is a key here.

Steinbeck's portrayal of the slow witted Lennie and his relationship with George cleverly depicts for us the complexity of human self knowledge and cunning in connecting with the" other". Lennie needs George and George , in his own way ,needs Lennie . There is a particularly poignant section of the book where the only Black person on the farm who is everyone's rouseabout , tells of how the Blacks have been moved off the farms in the area and he, Crooks , is alone . He bemoans the fact that none of the white men listen to him or talk with him. He muses regretfully to simple Lennie "George can tell you screwy things , and it dont matter. it's just talking. It's like bein' with another guy . That's all" We get such a graphic picture of isolated loneliness in the racist context told with breathtaking economical dialogue. We learn indirectly that several of the men in the bunkhouse are somewhat envious of Lennie and George and their friendship and the way they need each other.

The scenes shift quickly in this novella - and after that scene above with Crooks the drama heats up and Lennie who does not know his own strength and has an obsessive interest with softness in all living things, mice, puppies and fatefully the soft hair of women. The only female character in the story, the wife of Curley, a boss, is central to the sad ending of the story . She is simply but sympathetically drawn as a dissatisfied wife looking for excitement. Whilst this is a stock characterisation in a way - this description of her after her accidental death pulls our sympathy in a different direction " Curley's wife lay with a half covering of yellow hay and the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple…."

To me this book is above all about relationships - and the essence of them. Steinbeck has captured so much of this in "Of Mice and Men " to put it in the classic, treasure category. A book to be savoured.

"The Secret River" by Kate Grenville

2011-07-16T16:15:00.022+10:00

"The Secret River" by Kate Grenville was first published in 2005 to critical acclaim. It is an historical novel set around the Hawkesbury area near Sydney in the first two decades or so of the nineteenth century. The main character is William Thornhill ,who was transported to New South Wales aboard the ship Alexander “for the term of his natural life” for stealing some timber he was delivering as part of his work as a ferryman on the Thames. His wife Sal, a free woman, was allowed to come on the transport to Sydney too - in a separate section of the ship.

In the first chapter “Strangers” we meet William lying awake beside his sleeping wife and new born child in a wattle-and-daub hut in Sydney in 1806 listening to the eerie sounds of this new strange place . He gets up from the bedding and goes outside into the night and comes face to face with an Aboriginal man - the “strangeness” of it all is palpable. This first chapter sets out the tone and the powerful themes of the book - fear, courage, ambition, greed,usurpation, misunderstanding and the great difficulty of communication across cultures .

After this first chapter the book goes back to London and places the story in its context with what life was like for William and Sal growing up and marrying, leading up to their transportation to New South Wales . The research undertaken by the author illuminates this background chapter in an exciting way. We feel we know these people through their young life stories and expectations and therefore have empathy with them as they struggle to work out an existence in the new colonial settlement of Sydney.

The main adventurous part of the novel however takes place in the Hawkesbury River and upper reach farmland area near Sydney . William gains his emancipation certificate after a few years in Sydney and moves to the Hawkesbury , takes up some land and plies his old trade of ferryman by shipping farm produce from the farms to Sydney which hungers for it and returns with goods for the settler farmers. Life is very hard for these river settlers who for the most part have simply squatted on these lands , fenced them rudely and started out growing corn etc. The Aboriginal owners who live in and around the countryside and the river area foraging, fishing, hunting, camping and celebrating are pushed further and further away with often tragic outcomes.

The central tragedy in the story is a massacre by the settlers of an Aboriginal clan who were seen as the enemy - a very sad story of violence and counter-violence. William takes part in this tragic violent act , albeit reluctantly . It has a lasting effect on him.

However the story moves on as do the dispossessed Aborigines . The Thornhill’s prosper and set themselves up with a comfortable life with their five children. At the end we see an ageing William sitting on his sandstone verandah at "Wiseman's Ferry"looking pensively through a telescope at the wooded cliffs wondering if “they” were there.

“even after the cliffs had reached the moment at sunset where they blazed gold , even after the dusk left them glowing... even then he sat on, watching, into the dark”.

This descriptive language ,whilst economical throughout the story , lends the book its special beauty both in the sketching of the natural surroundings and in setting up the relationships and the inner thoughts of the main characters.

The characterisation of the Thornhills , William and Sal, their children and the other settlers is very believable. Sal, for instance, is striving to return home to London and we learn she sees herself with “a five year sentence” before she can achieve her dream , yet we know William is yearning to be a landowner and make a new life for himself and family. Each is nervous about their separate dreams and careful to protect each other from the other’s yearnings as they toil to live in the very harsh circumstances for the first several years. There are caring people among the settlers as well as selfish, unthinking and at times violent people . Grenville brings these minor characters illuminatingly to life and the story is the richer for this.

All the more remarkable ,then, was the decision by the author to not use pidgin English for the Aborigines in the first encounters in order to gain as much verisimilitude with what would have been happening and how the experience would have been from the settlers point of view and the Aboriginal people of the area. I think this works and we see the Aboriginals in the story as real people - caring for their way of life . Their tragedy of being misunderstood , treated condescendingly and often with contempt and violence gives the story much of its poignancy and power.

Kate Grenville wrote another book about how she came to this story and the research she undertook for it - “Searching for the Secret River” . This is recommended too because it brings out so much of interest for the reader about the writing of engaging historical fiction. There was some controversy with some historians at the time of publication - Grenville was thought to have claimed too much historical significance for the novel. “Searching....” is a very thorough answer to this issue in my opinion. We know , for instance, that Grenville’s ancestor was Solomon Wiseman who settled in the Hawkesbury area and is remembered in the town name of Wiseman’s Ferry. Wiseman , a Thames ferryman, was transported for theft , along with his free woman wife , Janet , in the “Alexander” which was an actual convict ship . The Wisemans arrived in Sydney in 1806. The author’s research in London for original records and local colour is well set out in this latter book too. Grenville has said in answer to the controversy that she does not claim her novel as a work of history as such and that there has been some misunderstanding of her words in an interview re the historical nature of the work. Her website contains this information and story for anyone who wishes to explore this further.

However in the end what we have is a work of fiction , beautifully written and realised ,informed by research and strong personal interest. It brings a section of Colonial Australian history to life and allows the imagination to ponder the circumstances surrounding these people both colonisers and original owners with empathy and some wonder.

'Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead' by Paula Byrne

2011-06-22T17:17:00.009+10:00

Unlike the subjects of almost all the previous postings to the Classic Readers blog, the book now under consideration is not a novel. It is instead essentially a biography - of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. But unlike several earlier biographers of the novelist, Paula Byrne very deliberately sets out not to provide a 'cradle to grave' account of her subject, but instead to focus on his relationship with a family and the stately home of that family, and to explore the ways in which that relationship fed into the creation of what is probably Waugh's most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited.

The family in question is the Lygons, the children of the seventh Earl Beauchamp, and the house is their country house Madresfield, commonly referred to by the family and their friends as 'Mad'. Waugh first visited it as a young graduate in 1931, and over the next few years he was a frequent visitor who greatly enjoyed the opportunities to partake of its comfortable aristocratic splendour and spend time with the family, and in particular three of the daughters, with at least two of whom he developed close and lifelong platonic friendships. The situation at Madresfield in the early 1930s was unusual, in that neither the earl nor his wife was present, and the young people had a fully staffed and functioning major English country house at their disposal. The earl had left England in disgrace to avoid the legal and social consequences of a homosexual scandal, and his wife had divorced him and moved with her youngest son to a house near a home of her brother, the Duke of Westminster, the earl's fiercest enemy. Waugh had known two of the Lygon brothers William and Hugh at Oxford, and had been particularly close to the younger, Hugh, generally agreed to be the main model for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead, though at least one reviewer has expressed misgivings regarding Byrne's ready acceptance of the view that the two were involved in a homosexual relationship.

Paula Byrne vigorously asserts in her preface that she is writing a new kind of biography, and states that the heyday of the comprehensive biography is past. This has clearly somewhat riled some reviewers, who claim that most of what she presents is not new, though they acknowledge that she has ferreted out some previously unknown details, notably regarding the divorce of the earl and his wife, and Evelyn's Catholic confirmation in Rome. Whatever the merits of this criticism, Byrne had undoubtedly written a lively, entertaining, and generally very readable book which evokes the world it describes very vividly.

I found particularly fascinating the parts dealing with Waugh's boyhood and his time at Oxford, and the account of the Lygon family before Waugh's first visit to Madresfield. The narative of the visits, and his interactions with the Lygon's during the few years between 1931 and the house's passing into the ownership of the eldest Lygon son and his wife on the death of the seventh earl, is interesting, but perhaps the detailed account of this world of nicknames, in-jokes, and special jargon which united the participants does untimately become just a little tedious. The milieu described does seem to have been rather frivolous and self-indulgent.

A significant part of the book is involved in tracing the links between the Lygons and the characters in Brideshead Revisited , and between the house Madresfield and Brideshead in the novel. The existence of such a relationship has been known from the time the novel was first published in 1945, and Jane Mulvagh dealt with the topic in her book Madresfield. The extent to which one feels such analysis contributes to a literary appreciation of the novel will depend on one's approach to literary criticism. I had a literary education which discouraged exploration of such parallels and insisted on a focus on the novel itself, but it must be admitted that Byrne presents a lot of interesting material.

Eveyln Waugh (1903-66) has a reputation as a considerable writer and a rather unpleasant person - snobbish, rude, and curmudgeonly. Byrne sets out to correct this view of his personality, and she provides much evidence that he could be a loyal and generous friend. She suggests that to some extent he became a victim of a persona he created, acknowledging that it did in fact largely take over his being later in life, when he found himself increasingly out of sympathy with the postwar world and the post-Vatican II Catholic Church.

Mad World is an easy and entertaining read. For this reader, it dragged just a little in the middle, but it was thoroughly enjoyable as a whole.

"The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2011-04-07T17:01:00.021+10:00

Reading this grand and long work for the first time achieved a long term ambition of mine - and I am glad I have read it at last. I read
a Penguin edition published in 2003 , translated by David McDuff in 1993.

The themes and story line
The book explores a number of strong themes including - ethics and patricide , jealousy , religious commitment and doubt, guilt and redemption, childhood and children, psychological insights into an individual's behaviour , exploitation of lower classes and women and a time of political change and social change. It is often deeply philosophical and then by contrast becomes , in the second half especially , a very dramatic story. This story revolves around a family of reasonable but not great wealth consisting of a father and his three sons . The story is set in a small town community in Russia . The central drama is the murder of the father and the consequent suspicion of patricide by one of his sons.

Leading up to this drama , which includes the collection of evidence and a long court room scene, there are whole chapters and passages setting out the background of each of the main characters and the social and religious world surrounding them . For instance , we dont just hear about the monastery and monks who are important in the early part of the story , we receive extensive insights into their dogmas and practices . There are whole arguments put before us of the way to salvation and otherwise. In fact the extent and intent of the religious discussion in the book surprised me . I think a reader of Victorian English classic fiction is not really familiar with this depth of discussion about conscience, for instance. I became enmeshed in the very "Russian" atmosphere depicted here which was a large part of the enjoyment.

Humour and farce are also strong characteristics of the novel. The rollicking nature of the work at times amuses considerably and gives balance to the starker aspects of the social scenes and the story itself. A series of Chapters in Book IV called "Crack-ups" presents some humorous and even ridiculous scenes in drawing rooms and other settings involving affairs of the heart and various mix-ups. It is pertinent to note here that one of the sub-plots revolves around the rivalry of the father of the family and one at least of his sons for the love and affection of Grushenka a worldly , yet put-upon young woman . I found reading about her and watching her reactions , as described by the narrator, particularly insightful into the restrictive yet changing society we are presented with. Here I would like to mention that I also found the work distinctly full of the sounds of society - the talking , calling out and singing of the people and other sounds of the countryside and the town. It resonated very strongly for me.

Some of the Characters
The father of the family, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov exploits his own sons , is self indulgent , and , has been indifferent to and at times cruel when bringing up his sons. We meet this ageing patriarch at a slightly more sympathetic if pathetic , vulnerable time of his life . He delights in almost childlike , outrageous behaviour at the expense of others . His personality casts a strong and ambiguous shadow over the drama.
His three sons are Mitya, Ivan and Alyosha . Mitya , the eldest , was the child of Fyodors first wife and Ivan and Alyosha are the sons of the second wife. Both of the mothers died before their sons were grown up and the boys were looked after by foster parents . Mitya has a full-on personality a little like his father but he has a kinder nature . He is accused of the murder but who is really guilty and of what does guilt consist? Ivan is very thoughtful and working painstakingly through the philosophical considerations of an atheist. Alyosha is saintly by comparison to his brothers and considers becoming a monk but decides against it. He forms a vital link with all the players in the story . Smerdyakov, thought to be an illegitimate son of Fyodor who keeps him as a servant, is more than likely the actual murderer. Of the female characters , Grushenka ,is perhaps the most fascinating whilst several other of the women have relatively minor but socially poignant roles. One of the sub-plots revolves around a group of school boys and the lingering death of one of them - with the boys characters and roles dealt with in some depth.

A note on the structure and influences
The story is told to us by a narrator who is in turn a character. He has opinions and observations about what is going on which are entertaining in themselves. He has been described in the introduction to my edition as a sort of "grotesque… Hoffmanesque" character. He is conservative and sometimes crabby, particularly about women . The author's voice comes through as well at times and the result is a mixed, far from simple rich sound and a scenic tapestry - requiring one to concentrate and listen well. It is worth the effort may I add. It was originally published in serial sections over about 18 months . It was then published in book form in 1880 only a few months before the author died. Dostoyevsky experienced deep tragedy in his life including penal servitude in Siberia and the loss of a dear young son from epilepsy just before he started on this work. He went on a pilgrimage to a hill top Orthodox monastery before he started the novel when grieving for the loss of his son. These experiences are said to have informed some of the action and concerns of the work.

My overall impressions
"The Brothers Karamazov" introduced me to a new and unexpected reading experience - even "War and Peace" did not prepare me for the richness of style and range of emotions set out for us in this tragic family saga. There are many sub-plays going on and it deals a lot with personal psychology. There are also wonderful descriptions of Russian small town life, the countryside and the ways of going about day to day life to fill many a novel. The inter- reactions of groups of characters including inter-generational ones are engrossing , sometimes dangerous, and also often tender.
One is of course reading a great classic in translation . The David McDuff translation read lyrically and well - further evidence for me that the work is lyrical in the original also. It is a kaleidoscopic work and I know I cannot do it justice in these few words - I hope to give you the impression however - this is a major reading adventure.
As someone reasonably familiar with the English Victorian classics , "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880) was different from the English greats of the near period , Dickens and Elliot for instance , - engaging yet a little difficult too. It required concentration and imagination to picture the amazing social and action scenes and follow the philosophical arguments and thought processes of the characters. I would be delighted to hear from any other reader who is familiar with the work and to hear of your reactions.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

2011-03-29T14:34:00.007+11:00

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) the Polish born former merchant seaman and ship's captain who learnt English as an adult and established himself firmly in the canon of great English novelists, was irritated when admirers used to ask him 'when are you going to spin us another yarn of the sea'. His annoyance was understandable: far from being a casual spinner of tales, Conrad was the most painstakingly and consciously artistic of writers. But the thoughtless questions were at least somewhat understandable: Conrad's novels do often concern the sea, and they are very often set in parts of the world which in his time seemed exotic to British and American audiences.

Heart of Darkness, a short work probably best described as a novella, is mostly set not at sea but on a great unnamed river (in fact the Congo in what was then the Congo Free State, a vast African domain brutally ruled as a private estate by the Belgian king Leopold II). But the setting is certainly exotic, and in a literal sense the journey up river is a journey into the interior, or heart, of what in 1899, when the work was first published in part form, was often called the 'Dark Continent'. It involves encounters with naked black people who are unquestionable presented as primitive and cannibalistic, and an attack by them on the Europeans' steamer is a major incident in the book. But a lot more is involved, and Heart of Darkness has become one of the most discussed and debated books in the 'canon' of twentieth century literature.

Darkness is a pervasive element in the book. The African jungle is dark and sombre, its people lack the civilisation of Europe. But Europe and Europeans are no strangeness to darkness. The book opens with night falling on a ship moored in the Thames, where the narrator Marlow relates the story to four listeners, and a major scene towards the end takes place in a darkening drawing room in Western Europe. We are reminded that the Thames and England probably once seemed as dark and frightening to visitors from Rome as Africa does to people of the narrator's time. The symbolism of light and darkness in the novel is a major element.

More important than physical darkness is the darkness which can overwhelm the human soul. The purpose of the river voyage is to bring out from the interior a man called Kurtz, who is said to be behaving very strangely in his isolation from all other Europeans, and who, it emerges, has used barbaric brutality to make himself into a sort of god for the native people. Kurtz, however, is in many ways an exceptional person, intelligent, multi-talented, and idealistic. He towers above the other Europeans Marlow encounters in Africa, who emerge as petty, stupid, indolent, and greedy. It could be said that Kurtz (despite his intellect, or because of it) has entered into a personal heart of darkness, and gone mad as a consequence. His last words as he dies on the voyage back to the coast -'The horror! The horror!' is a comment on what he has found.

T.S. Eliot used a black servant's announcement 'Mistah Kurtz - he dead' as an epigraph for his major poem 'The Hollow Men' but arguably the novella is more about the journey of the narrator Marlow than about Kurtz. Like many other aspects of the book, the impact of Marlow's physical and spiritual journey is not easy to summarise concisely or with confidence. Certainly the journey profoundly affects him, and makes him more dissatisfied with life in Europe, but it is difficult to know what to make of the climax of a strangely memorable scene near the end of the book, when Marlow falsely tells Kurtz's fiancee that her intended died with her name on his lips. A desire to spare a grieving women further grief? A chivalric wish to help her maintain her illusions? A failure in honesty and courage on the part of Marlow? A reflection of his awareness that only those who have been to the heart of the darkness within themselves and within humanity can really be expected to understand it, and it is pointless to try to explain it?

Some have seen Heart of Darkness as a book condemning colonialism and imperialism. Certainly it gives no nobility to the Europeans in Africa, emphasising their rapacity, and suggests that the Africans who accept European ways become rather ridiculous figures. The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe famously denounced the novella as racist, denying Africans a voice and a humanity, and we must probably conclude that in his attitude to them Conrad was of his time, or only a little ahead of it.

Heart of Darkness is not always easy reading. It is immensely vivid, but the piling up of detail came seem overwrought, as no less a figure than F.R. Leavis suggested. It is an enigmatic work in many ways. But at the end of the few hours required to read it one feels sure one will never forget it.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

2010-12-19T23:01:00.003+11:00

In October this novel won its author the 2010 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It was highly praised by the judges: Andrew Motion, the chair of the panel, described it as ‘a marvellous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize’. Much of the published critical reaction has also been very enthusiastic. However, a check of customer reactions on the Amazon.com website tells a different story. There is certainly some enthusiasm, but a lot of the commentators speak of their disappointment, and of finding the book tedious, boring, and impossible to finish.

Although by his own admission not an observant Jew, Jacobson is a writer very conscious of his Jewish background and heritage, and this, apparently like many of his other books (though Redback set in Australian academia is an exception) focuses very much on the experience of being Jewish today. Set in London, its primary focus is on Julian Treslove, a melancholy middle-aged and middle class man who seems never to make much success of anything he tries. Prominent in the novel are two Jewish men, both recently widowed, the elderly Libov, who once had a successful journalistic career which brought him into contact with celebrities, and Samuel Finkler, a former schoolmate of Treslove’s but now a media celebrity on the basis of his work popularising (and trivialising) philosophy. Treslove and these two frequently meet together, and could be regarded as friends, though there is a good measure of rivalry and jealousy in the relationship between Treslove and Finkler.

Central to the novel is Treslove’s mugging one evening by a woman, who says something to him which he interprets as possibly being ‘You Jew’. This heightens in Treslove a desire to possess qualities he believes Jews to possess, and to become a Jew himself, a ‘Finkler’ as he calls it in his own mind, and much of the novel, which has little in the way of a ‘story line’, is concerned with his exploration of what being Jewish involves. (Perhaps surprisingly, the theology and religious beliefs of Judaism has little role in this. The emphasis is on social and attitudinal aspects of Judaism.) There is much introspection on Treslove’s part, and he and the reader encounter a great many varieties of Jewish experience, much of it involving anxieties and misgivings. A group called ‘ASHamed Jews’, in which Finkler plays a major role, though not without challenge, is prominent. This takes place against a background of significant anti-Semitism, which several of the Jewish characters, and one strongly suspects the author, see as a major problem threatening the physical and social well-being of Jews in countries like Britain today.

If the frequent suggestions that the novel is ‘very funny’ encouraged anyone to read it in the expectation of a good laugh, he or she would be disappointed. There are amusing moments, but much of the humour consists in the presentation of the bizarre, the offbeat, the hyperbolic – such as the Jewish man trying to reverse the physical effects of circumcision. Some critics have praised the characterisation, but readers may find it a problem that the characters are presented with little warmth or humanity. Treslove is a rather tiresome ‘loser’: he does not conspicuously display qualities of decency and honesty which redeem other losers in literature, and the fact that women are attracted to him, albeit some briefly, and two have borne sons to him, strains credulity. Finkler is frankly rather unpleasant, and Libov does not emerge far from the ‘elderly Mitteleuropa Jew’ stereotype. The female characters rarely if ever become more than foils to the men – this is perhaps most noticeable in the case of Hephzibah, who becomes Treslove’s partner in a relationship which seems to offer remarkably little to her.

Perhaps the greatest success of the novel is in its treatment of male grief. Neither Libov nor Finkler had a perfect marriage relationship, though Libov came a lot closer than the frequently unfaithful Finkler, and each feels quite complex emotions as they come to terms with their loss. Jacobson must also be credited with writing prose that is invariable lucid, and which carries the reader on even when he or she is suppressing an inward groan when yet more angst rears its head. The Finkler Question is probably to be regarded as a work for the connoisseur, no more readily and instantly enjoyable than the new classical music composition that the orchestra conductor slips in between the Rossini overture and the Tchaikovsky symphony, but it is interesting as an example of what expert opinion regards as outstanding novel writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Sense and Sensibilty by Jane Austen

2010-11-20T12:16:00.007+11:00

Oh - isn't it great to read Jane again? I have enjoyed myself very much in this reading. I hope some of you are enjoying it too and will share some thoughts and favourite scenes or passages with us. This book should be shared aloud. I confess it took me 50 or so pages to get back into the rhythm of her prose but once having achieved that I smiled and sometimes laughed all the way through the book.

Sense and Sensibilty (1811) was Austens first published novel . The story centres around the Dashwood young women , Elinor and Marianne , their mother , a step brother and his family and a host of family friends and occasionally, would-be enemies. It is a first rate domestic comedic drama with a very simple plot line - and there in lies the genius. The dialogue between the characters and the musings of Elinor , her sister and others bob along with wit, incisive observation on character ,in the small and larger matters of love life , enough to delight anyone. The main twists in the story are related to who is going to marry who and the very important associated issue of how much money each couple is going to have for their reasonably relaxed and indolent lifestyles. In this novel as contrasted with some of the later novels - Emma for instance- no one is observed, even obliquely , working at earning a living - men or women. Whatever farming supervision and management is undertaken on estates owned by some family members gets very little or no mention - it all gets done out there somewhere but doesn't impinge on the plot line at all . We don't meet any dependent governesses needing salvation or support either.

But who do we meet ? A wonderful array of people who in the course of the novel exhibit for us love, selfishness, wisdom, cunning, generosity, meanness, cleverness, stupidity etc etc. In fact just about all the juxtaposed qualities used by many of us in our day- to- day lives. If the social scenery we are observing is relatively contained, even by comparison with other Austen novels, it is so so stylishly presented from the point of view of Sense and Sensibility. I think the very restricted view concentrates the minute observation so clearly. I particularly love the author's obvious delight in summarising foibles so well. One passage among many illustrated this point well for me - a summary of the characters of two of the least attractive women in the book , Lady Middleton and Mrs Dashwood junior - the wife of the step brother , not Mrs Dashwood senior - mother of Elinor and I quote:
"There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they symathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding". Ch 34 - Ouch.

Austen , in this early novel, uses this strong criiical approach to behaviour and communication to bring home her acute observations time and time again - but , of course in the end the good girls get the right husbands . But then also, the more selfish ones manage allright also - particularly if they have a good income. This work is possibly the most romantic of her novels yet spiced with the most acerbic observations of relationships, interdependence and enlightened self interest. A passage toward the end of the novel shows this intent very clearly . Lucy Steele ,a young woman of no fortune who needs to marry well , curries favour with her wealthier relatives and family acquaintances to get by and move in "Town" (London) circles .She successfully and surprisingly marries Robert Ferrars, a man of good income, by a circuitous and dubious route - much to the shock of most of the people who know her. The author summarises as follow and I quote:
"The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience" Ch 49. Ouch again.

I just love it - do you?

Going back to look at some of the other characters - First , the sisters Elinor and Marianne are central to the story . We have the opportunity to view their romances through a range of betrayals and misunderstandings to eventual successful marriages at the end of the book. Elinor is a typical Austen heroine - wise and her family's rock of sense. Marianne is lovely but with a little too much sensibilty although very kind hearted and bright . Mrs Dashwood senior, their mother , loves her family of three daughters unselfishly .We know very little about Margaret , her youngest daughter, mostly because she is not of marriagable age and therefore of no use to the storyline. Mrs Jennings , a would-be duenna with wealth to spare, is a great character who bubbles along talking and indulging in written communication continuously. Her misunderstandings are an important humorous element in the novel. There are a range of fairly cardboard cut-out men who have important associatve roles too in exemplifying mores of selfishness and occasionally , nobility.

I think you will be pleased with this book about a certain class of English country folk at a certain stage of society going about the important task of achieving and arranging marriages by one of the best novelsts ever. Love to hear your take which will be bound to be different from mine.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

2010-10-21T17:35:00.009+11:00

In June and July 2010 a dramatisation of the Charles Dickens novel Little Dorrit was shown on Australian television. The dramatisation was the work of Andrew Davis, famous in part for his dramatisation of Jane Austin's Pride and prejudice. Being based on a far more sombre work, Davis's Little Dorrit inevitably lacked the grace and good humour of his version of the Austin novel, but it produced several hours of very watchable television in a lavish production which generally adhered closely to the novel (though there were some fairly minor changes: Mrs Merdle, for example, is last seen in the television series amusingly planning a 'midlight flight' along with the daughter-in-law she despises, carrying what portable property she can salvage from the financal wreckage of her husband's bank. In the novel she settles into genteel poverty, accepted by High Society as a victim of a villainous husband.)

The novel originally appeared in monthly parts in 1856-57, when Dickens (1812-70) was at the height of his powers, but we encounter it now in a long volume (of over 850 pages in the Penguin edition). It was relatively unpopular when first published, being widely criticised for its somber tone and excessively complicated plot. More recently, however, several critics have argued it is among the finest of Dickens's novels, and even his best work. One doubts, nevertheless, that it is among the better loved or better known of his novels.

The novel is set, mainly in London but also in France and Italy, about 1825. The plot is elaborate, and the novel is in a real sense a mystery story. The plot opens in a prison, and prisons, particularly the London debtors's prison, the Marshalsea, figure prominently. Amy Dorrit, 'Little Dorrit', the eponymous heroine, initially appears as the daugher of a longterm Marshalsea prisoner. Imprisonment is in fact a major theme of the book, and we see that in all sectors of society, from high to low, among good and bad, people are prisoners. Little Dorrit's father and brother, Arthur Clennam, the novel's hero, and the villainous Rigaud, alias Blandois, are among those who are literally prisoners at one stage or other, but the fabulous wealthy financier Merdle, who generally holds himself as if he were being taken into custody, is clearly a prisoner of his own dishonesty and deception, and the fanatical religious puritain Mrs Clennam (who appears to be Arthurs' mother until late in the novel) is a prisoner both of her ill health, which apparently keeps her confined to one gloomy room, and of her gloomy and vengeful religiosity.

A great range of social classes and categories of people appear in the novel, and this vivid richness is one of the pleasures of reading it one hundred and fifty years after it was written. Dickens shows, sometimes in ways that stretch credulity, that quite unlikely people are related, sometimes by family ties, more often by sharing a common fate (as when the crash of the Merdle bank brings down high and low). The novel can indeed by sombre, particularly in its first half, sub-titled 'Poverty' and largely set among those living hand to mouth in the bottom rungs of society, but it can also be highly amusing and entertaining. The pretensions of those who pride themselves as being 'Society' are amusingly satirised. A well-known feature of the novel is the 'Circumlocution Office' a far more biting satire on the civil service of the time, presented as existing only to prevent anything useful being done in Britain and to feather the nests of the extended Barnacle family that controls it. (Opinions will probably differ, but for this reader the Circumlocution Office satire was rather heavy-handed and soon became unfunny and unconvincing.)

One cannot long consider the novel Little Dorrit without considering the character Little Dorrit. A small, frail young woman in her early twenties she is very much in the tradition of Dickens's blameless, meek and gentle, pure and noble heroines. We are told ad nauseum how small and how good Little Dorrit is. One might describe her as saintly, except that most real saints seem to have relatively flawed personalities by comparison (and, except in one melodramatic scene near the end, when she is confronted by the puritanical Mrs Clennam and utters some banal pieties, Little Dorrit is not portrayed as religious). The unrelentingly sentimentality lavished on Little Dorrit is probably a stumbling block for most modern readers, and given that other novelists of the period, such as the Brontes and George Eliot, were able to give their readers far more human female characters, it probably reflects Dickens's willingness to pander to the sentimentality of his mass audience (and perhaps his own curious ideas about ideal womanhood). It must also be said that the melodramatic ending of the novel is far from convincing, even if we take into account the belief of time in the reality of coincidence in human life.

Reading Little Dorrit is a major project, and not always an easy one. Dickens's prose is unfailingly graceful, except when he deliberately mades it otherwise for effect (as in Flora's amusing but also somewhat poignant monologues), but his sentences can make demands on us to which we are not now accustomed, and the sentimentality is offputting. But one does feel in the presence of a major work, and moments of real enjoyment are far from rare.

"Running in the Family" by Michael Ondaatje with commentary by Faye Lawrence

2010-10-01T15:36:00.014+10:00

Michael Ondaatje is well known for his Booker winner, the novel "The English Patient". . As well as being a very successful novelist he is a noted poet, literary editor, academic and film maker. Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka , in 1943 , moved to England with his mother and attended senior school there before migrating to Canada. He became a Canadian citizen in the 1960s where his literary talents have been recognised with many awards. He lives in Toronto.

"Running in the Family" , published in 1982 , is a memoir about his family in Sri Lanka which reaches back and forwards over several generations to tell a highly personal , yet historically and culturally fasinating story . It has all the hallmarks of a poet and imaginatve novelist - wonderful imagery, incredible story-telling , atmosphere you can feel, emotion and humour. Ondaatje tells how he was drawn to travel to Sri Lanka to re-connect with his family and his roots by a "the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold onto". The memories , smells and sounds of Sri Lanka called him . He writes of "wanting to touch them (his relations) into words".

A special feature of this lyrical , explorative memoir is the story of Sri Lanka itself . The physical, cultural and historical background is beautifully , often humourously and graphically portrayed. One is constantly reminded of the physical surroundings - heat, rain, floods, cool shade, wonderful animal life , colonial architecture , spices, tea plantations , winding roads, jungle , plants, flowers etc.

In this sensual setting we hear equally wonderful stories about recent generation family members no longer alive .The recollections by friends and relatives of the authors father and maternal grandmother and both amazing and touching. The Grandmother is depicted by relatives as an Aunty Mame character with a penchant for picking flowers from friends or public gardens and presenting them as gifts. The stories are gleaned from family members and friends recollections as the author travelled around and visited many places in this small and vibrant island which he knew as a child - and in the hands and mind of the poet novelist they take on a fictional/family legend quality of sometimes alarming and always entertaining qualities .

Interwoven with the more fanciful, entertaining family stories is the authors visceral , dreamlike recollections , reconstructions and analyses of the family history going back some centuries but mostly looking back at two previous generations. At times the reader can be puzzled by the multiple story tellers Ondaaatje is employing in the narrative - however it tends to fall into place as you go along . I was confused at times but delighted overall and found the style and technique added to the character of the relatively small memoir - aptly so about a small but altogether fascinating country.

I was intrigued by the historical vignettes about Sri Lanka which come through the memoir via the family background. You get a tantalising view of the colonial past and the multicultural legacy of centuries and centuries of migration , conquest and assimilation - often via poets or writers of the past. I dont mean to give the impression that there is an attempt to chrionicle this long, fascinating history but the author in talking of his family connections going back centuries does offer some intriguing insights into its nature , its difference, its fascination for locals and foreigners.

There is one particular chapter "Don't talk to me about Matisse" which delighted me with the literary refrences and feel for the place. In this chapter the author writes of an ancestor Dr William Charles Ondaatje, a Tamil, who was a Director of the Botanical Gardens in the mid 19th Century "who knew at least fifty-five specimens of poisons easily available to his countrymen" and wrote them up in journals. D.H. Lawrence found Ceylon very difficult and in typical style strongly wrote of his feelings and distaste. Michael Ondaatje comments in this context "Heat disgraces foreigners" The lyrical , often sad Ceylonese poetry quoted contrasts with these observations. The line"Dont talk to me about Matisse" comes from such a poet.

"Running in the Family" then is not the usual run- of- the- mill family memoir .The reader goes on the explorative journey with the author and picks up a lot of information on the way about this multicultural , unique part of Asia with which Australia has many close connections - not only from this difficult current time but of the past 50 or so decades .For instance I was motivated to follow up on the Sri Lankan Cultural groups and found from my google search that Melbourne has a large community of citizens of Burgher origin from Sri Lanka - folk with some Dutch background . Yasmine Gooneratne , a Professor at Macquarie University ,and a fine novelist in her own right is mentioned in the book as supplying information and background. Sri Lanka is then more than just a sum of its parts - it is a significant and influential part of our world. Michael Ondaatje in his exploration of his heritage has opened this up to me. I hope it met his needs in finding his roots.

Coonardoo by Katharine Susannah Prichard - commentary by Faye Lawrence

2010-08-09T17:28:00.012+10:00

I have just returned from a trip to the Nothern Territory where I had nine days visiting dramatically beautiful and highly significant cultural sites in Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks. I re-read "Coonardoo" as my evening reading whilst I was travelling around this region which was both a poignant and poetically apposite experience to add to the magnificence of the terrain and the cultural intensity of the country. The novel is set in Northern Western Australia however the countryside is sufficiently similar to be evocative of the country I was in.

Coonardoo is the Aboriginal heroine of the story which was first published in 1929. It is a tragedy and a love story. The love story is particularly remarkable because it was between an Aboiginal woman and a white cattle station owner. As is often mentioned, the fact of sex between Aboriginal women and white men was not unusual in the remote parts of Australia at that time but a story of actual love was daring in the extreme and caused somewhat of a scandal.

Katharine Prichard was writing of her time as any writer would be but she was stretching the imaginitative limitations at the same time. The passages where the love between the two is explored are few in the book but they are strong and touching. Throughout the book we are constantly reminded of the womanly affection and love which Coonardoo has for Hugh - the station owner - whilst the love Hugh has for Coonardoo has to be explained in the context of his (and white Australias) limited understanding of the Aboriginal society. Hugh cannot entirely face the fact of his deep affection until towards the end of the novel. Hugh's morality, meaning that he will not live in partnership with an Aboriginal woman, is explored warts and all by Prichard. Hugh is a decent man by the standard of the day , kindly and respectful to his Aboriginal indentured workers which in turn adds to the poignancy of the situation. Coonardoo is a tragic victim as much of his decency as of the overall racism , ignorance and roughness of the remote country. An excellent essay on the novel "Coonardoo" by Drusilla Modjeska for the 1990 edition outlines this thesis very well and is recommended.

The novel is remarkable on several other levels - we are treated to poetic descriptions by Prichard continually . She paints clear exciting pictures of the scenery, the birdlife and the atmosphere. One description of heat in this country shows off her wonderful writing and observation and I quote from Chapter 19. "The air, at a little distance, palpitated, thrown off from the stones in minute atoms, visible one moment, flown to invisibility the next. Weaving with the sun for shuttle. the air spun heat which was suffocating." and then a little later in the paragraph "And stillness, a breathless heaviness, drowsed the senses, brain and body, as if that mythological snake the blacks believed in, a rock python, silvery grey, black and brown, sliding down from hills of the sky, were puttting the opiate of his breath into the air, folding you round and round, squeezing the life out of you"

This one example of her powerful descriptive writing also serves to bring out a couple of other strong points about the work. Namely that it is of its time - mention of "blacks" collectively and other terms are stated simply and leave a modern day Australian somewhat shocked. But along with this there is the honest attempt to give the Aboriginal way of life as she saw it and researched it a dignified and very significant part in the story. It is a view from "the homestead verandah" of inter-relationships of the two cultures but it is a very empathetic and intelligent one. Prichard lived at Turee station in the Kimberleys for several months with some family friends and was inspred by her time there .She had known very little of Aboriginal culture or Station life before this . She had gone there from Perth to have quiet time to finish "Haxbys Circus" but stumbled upon this incredibly rich aspect of life in Australia which provided her with the background for this inspired, imaginative work. The detail she absorbed of Station life, white Australian prejudices and ignorance , Aboriginal life, storyline and language, droving and horsebreaking etc are woven into the story with great skill.

The characterisations in this two culture novel are inevitably uneven. We know a lot about Coonardoo but we cant know her thoughts very well - because the author will not have her think like a white woman . There is therefore an uneveness in the portrayals of the main Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal characters . The Aboriginal characters other than Coonardoo are depicted by their actions set in cultural patterns . In this context they are honestly drawn and illuminate the Aboriginal tapestry of this story and are vital to the richness of it. However they are not characters perhaps in the usual novelistic sense.

Of the white characters , Hugh is somewhat problematic but his mother , Mumae, who valiantly worked the beloved catlle and horse station, "Wytaliba" whilst Hugh was away at school hovers over the story even after her death. Mumae is portrayed as an astute "verandah" observer - a decent hard working woman of the outback who treated her Aboriginal workers (indentured who work for food only ) with kindness but firmness as if they were children . She is pivotal to our understanding of where the story is going. In death she hovers ,it is believed ,over all in the guise of white cockatoos. Other white characters are intriguing - Sam Geary - awful but honest, Cock-eyed Bob, Saul, Hugh's wife Mollie who is well drawn, Phyllis, Hugh's Kimberley loving daughter - all add to the many dimensions of this fine and highly readable. novel.

I recommend this fine novel by a writer of rare sensitivity for her time who is , I think , being rediscovered. She is one of those very special women writers who have contributed so much to the Australian cannon by their sensitivity to the country and people and by their rich talent.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

2010-06-25T14:45:00.006+10:00

First published in 1955, The Quiet American is probably one of the best-known and most admired of Greene's many novels. It is based in part on the writer's experiences as a reporter living in Saigon in the early 1950s. The setting is Vietnam during the war between the then colonial power, France, and the Viet Minh, the largely Communist rebel movement seeking to end French rule, in the period shortly before the definitive French defeat iat Dien Bien Phu n 1954. But in another sense the setting could be said to be what has often called 'Greeneland', the exotic, corrupt, decadent world of several of Greene's novels. (The Mexico of The Power and the Glory may spring to mind.) However, to say this is not to imply that there is something formulaic or unconvincing about the novel's portral of Vietnam, which in fact comes vividly to life for readers of the novel. It may be a bit of a cliche, but one does feel almost able to see the colours and smell the smells of the times and places Greene evokes.

There are a few memorable minor characters, such as the Pascal-reading, devoutly Catholic senior police officer Vigot, but this is essentially the story of three people. The narrator, Thomas Fowler, is a middle-aged English reporter, cynical and a bit world weary but happy enough living an unambitious life in Saigon with Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. Into his world comes Alden Pyle, the 'quiet American' of the title, an idealistic Harvard graduate convinced that he has a mission to help Vietname by fostering a 'Third Force', a democratic nationalism which will provide an alterantive to both colonialims and Communism. Pyle also develops an interest in Phuong, and determines, with temporary success, to win her away from Fowler, with a view to marrying her and taking her to America. Central to the novel is the relationship between the two men, not really a friendship (despite Pyle's earnest efforts) but never really open hostility either. At one stage Pyle saves Fowler's life during a Viet Minh attack, and at the end Fowler appears to be complicit in Pyle's murder, having discovered that Pyle's activities include supplying the wherewithal for a rebel general to mount murderous attacks on Saigon civilians. Fowler decides that however noble Pyle's motives may be, his actions make him a menace that must be removed.

It has been suggested that the three main characters, Fowler, Pyle, and Phuong, to some extent 'represent' Europe, the United States, and Vietnam (or the colonised Third World more generally). There is probably a measure of truth in this, but the two men at least are individualised sufficiently to make them more than stereotypes. Phuong is a more problmatic case, and there have been accustations of both sexism and Orientalism in her portrayal. We do find statements like this comment by Fowler to Pyle on Phuong: 'She'll suffer from childbirth, and hunger and cold and rheumatism, but she will never suffer as we do from thoughts, obsessions - she won't scratch, she'll only decay.' However, it must be kept in mind that though Fowler is the narrator, he is also a character with biases, and that he cannot just be assumed to be presenting the author's views for us to endorse.

When first published the novel was denounced by some as being anti-American. Certainly it suggests that in some respects American idealism of the kind Pyle represents is likely to create greater suffering and mayhem than cynicism and pragmatism. But today it is difficult not to see the novel as more prophetic than ideologically biased. We inevitably read it in the light of the Americans' own war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and its pictures of the French, fighting what is clearly a losing war while pretending officially that all is well and victory is folllowing victory, is uncannily reminiscent of what we know was to come later, in the years leading up to the ultimate American defeat. (Some might see disturbing parallels to the Afghanistan war of today.)

The Quiet American may not display the most profound characterisation. Its picture of the Caodaist religion (which still claims seven to eight million adherents in Vietnam) may be a comic opera travesty. But is a beautifully written book, vivid, entertaining, thoughtful, and very enjoyable despite the disturbing elements of its subject matter.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

2010-04-14T17:29:00.016+10:00

I read this very well known and loved, Gone with the Wind - published in 1936, for the very first time just recently and I am glad I did - all 1,000 plus pages of it. It is a very exciting story , very well written backed by incredible research and based around personal background knowledge. It is peopled by several memorable characters , with a mighty setting around a great historical event which all makes for a tale on a grand scale. For me however the most outstanding and enthralling aspect of it all is the fictionalised historical background to the Amrerican Civil War from the point of the view of the South and in particular the aftermath Reconstruction period and its affect on Southern society. This was a part of this terrible war history that I was ignorant about . I am sure we are getting a very Southern view of this period from Margaret Mitchell , a proud and biased Southener, nevertheless it is fascinating one and has made me more aware of the background and some of the differences, sensibilities and perceptions in US Society even today.

Margaret Mitchell obviously knew this society so well - and even though she was writing about an earlier generation -it reads , in some ways, like a personal account of these happenings. The background detail of the society is incredibly strong . The desciptions and insights into Plantation life and the City of Atlanta are engrossing. All the prejudices about race, the impossible ideal of the southern white belle , the southern white male who must bear arms and fight to defend his and his family's honour against lesser mortals and northeners at any time , the fearful Ku Klux Klan - are so clearly and powerfully displayed in this story. The film was very good , followed the story quite well but it didnt really bring out the points about Reconstruction, Racism and and the Society mores near as well as in the book. Apparently this was a deliberate decision by Director Selznick- the racism and Southern bias was just too mush for his and Hollywood's sensibilities - the film came out in 1939 and was an instant success as was the book. We know Margaret Mitchell took 10 years to write it and that she published no other novels. The sales and the film made her very wealthy.

Re the characters one could go on and on about them - Could someone like Ashley really exist outside Scarlet's imagination ? Is Melanie too good for words? I understand that most young American women of the 50s and 60s considered Melanie was the main heroine to be admired and emulated whereas recent surveying in US schools has young women choosing Scarlett as their favourite and most admired character in the book. Margaret Mitchell is said to have thought Melanie was the main heroine - the perfect example of Southern womanhood - but I suspect Scarlett developed a life of her own for the author. For me, some of the very best minor characters are the white older dowager Women of Atlanta society - they are drawn affectionately by Mitchell - warts and all and are essential to the "feel" of the place. The sad racism means that none of the black characters can be believed - charicature and stereotyping are the norm .

My main thought is that one can enjoy and read this for the excitment and grandeur of the story and the clever writing however a current day reader gets most from it as as a major social and historical novel giving special insight into the regional mindset of some folks in the Southern (Dixieland) States of America. I think it is well worth reading. I would be delighted to hear from others about their experiences of reading it recently or years ago.

“Truth” by Peter Temple

2010-03-25T12:44:00.004+11:00

Readers who first came to read Peter Temple through his very popular and lyrical “Broken Shore” may be a little surprised with “Truth” – I am one of those - I was surprised that is -but then not disappointed.

“Truth” features Inspector Villani, chief of the Victorian homicide squad who was a Melbourne based senior colleague of Joe Cashin in the earlier, novel which was set in a sylvan Victorian country setting. This one by contrast takes place almost wholly in the urban setting or at least it feels like that.

It is a tough uncompromising style of cop novel. There are a couple of gruesome murders being investigated by Villani and his squad. Along the way there are several compromising issues and incidents involving the inspectors and their seniors. Villani himself, is faced with leadership issues, moral questions and a series of major personal versus career crises – with his wife, daughters, brother and father for starters. It is realism plus and all takes place over a relatively short period of a week or even less It is packed with detail brought out with terse dialogue and in depth backgound detail - a movie almost in the making I think.

On the dialogue which is a special feature of the novel’s style – one cannot help but note how terse and realistic and probably authentic it is. I found I needed to read very carefully to keep up with what was going on in the different scenarios and to understand the conversations between the police especially. Temple makes no compromises - he has said that he likes to challenge the reader and indeed he does. You have to literally sit in on conversations – and work out was has gone on before between the conversationalists; fill in the dots; remember earlier references – a sort of literary and concentration puzzle - I think rewardingly so. Apparently his American publishers have requested and are getting a 200 words plus dictionary for the book in order to clarify the Victorian police patois for fans there. In this book especially Temple does remind us of some of the very best of American detective and thriller writers. I wonder, is Melbourne the new crime capital of the world?

I also liked the personal dilemmas Villani faced in this fast paced story involving his daughters, his superiors, his lover and especially with his father. The father is an idiosyncratic character who will not leave his semi rural property with the advent of nearby bushfires. Villani senior’s sons – the chief inspector and his doctor brother are involved in a remarkable series of scenes on this theme towards the end of the book. So there is plenty of personal, family interest throughout the novel along with the action. Villani is a well-drawn successful career policeman and maybe the authenticity of the writing holds up best in encapsulating for the reader what it is like to “live” an intense career like this. I think this is a very fine thriller which meets the criteria for being a work of literature.

What is the “Truth” herein? - Varied I think. The quickly realised truth at the end is a little stunner but then the realism of the book has conditioned you for it.

Faye

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2010-02-11T20:07:00.006+11:00

Wolf Hall was the 2009 winner of the Man Booker Prize, probably the most prestigious award for novels in the English speaking world. Unlike many winners of the award, it is not a dauntingly challenging work, demanding dedication and concentration from the reader. Wolf Hall, though a book of 650 pages, is acccessible and readily enjoyable, whilst being intelligent and stimulating.

It is an historical novel, set in one of the most colourful and dramatic periods of English history, the years 1529 to 1536 during which Henry VIII divorced Katherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, and during which the English Church broke with Rome. The cast is a large one, though rarely confusing, and a very wide range of social settings and types of people appear. But at the centre is Thomas Cromwell, a man of humble origins who rose during this period to be the king's most trusted adviser, and the possessor of great wealth and influence. The novel is recounted in the third person, and usually in the present tense, and we encounter Cromwell in a wide variety of situations, and intereacting with everyone from the king to labourers and people on the fringes of society.

Mantel creates an attractive Cromwell. He is a man of affairs and no otherworldly saint, but he is a loyal servant first of Cardinal Wolsey and then of the king, a good friend, an often compaasionate opponent, a devoted family man, generous to the underdog. He is the most competent of men, a lawyer, administrator, and financial manager of immense skill, a competent linguist in several languages, but also able to turn his hand to cooking a splendid dinner or shoeing a horse. Perhaps as a central figure Cromwell is a bit too perfect, but Mantel is very skillful in making a somewhat unlikely hero attactive to the reader.

Mantel's skill in evoking early Tudor England is immense. She clearly has done extensive reaearch, but her learning is worn lightly, and the world she creates is fascinating, vivid, and convincing. There is no sense of anachronism: one does not have the sense here, as often with historical novels, that some of the characters have twentieth or twenty-first century mindsets inside clothing from centuries past. The language is modern but not jarringly so: the reader is not challenged by any of 'ye olde Englishe speeche'. It is, however, not always easy to know who is speaking. Mantel avoids guidelines of the 'Cromwell replied' kind. The reader will probably find it useful to assume that he' normally means Cromwell.

Modern attitudes to Thomas Cromwell have probably been shaped in large part by Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons, which commenced life as a radio play in 1954 but is better known in the 1960 stage version and the 1966 film. In Bolt's work Cromwell is an unscrupulous and ruthless opportunist who contrasts with Thomas More, the saintly martyr for freedom of conscience. There is evidence (including an interview available on YouTube) that Mantel set delibertely about presenting a diametrically opposite view. Her Cromwell is clearly a true 'man for all seasons'; her More, though achieving a certain dignity as his end (which is also the end of the book) approaches, is a shabby, mean-spirited, cruel, religious fanatic. He is probably the closest thing to a villain in Wolf Hall , which generally allows its characters to speak for themselves, and to engender in us some sympathy for their situation and point of view.

It has been suggested that Mantel uses the freedom of the novelist to shed new light on the history of the period, but her work is of course not history, and leading Tudor historian David Starkey has described it as 'tosh'. Certainly not all historians views Cromwell so sympathetically. Past generations admired him as an important creator of the early modern English administrative system and as a man who did much to make England Protestant, but more recently he has been widely viewed as vicious, unscrupulous and cruel, and outraqesously avaricious.

Mantel is said to be working on a follow-up novel dealing with the remaining years of Cromwell's career (which of course ended on the executioner's block, like that of so many who served Henry VIII). This reader looks forward to it with eager anticipation.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

2009-12-23T20:55:00.008+11:00

Carson McCullers(1917-1967) was born in Georgia , USA - and is identified with a very highly regarded group of white Southern women writers of the early/mid twentieth century including Katherine Porter, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty. All of these women are particularly fine writers of both short stories and novels and add a special dimension to our understanding of the social Southern experience of the time, including domestic race relations. The above four are all well worth reading - I like Eudora Welty and would recommend her but Carson is a special favourite of mine and I am very happy to introduce this gem of a novel. By the way these four are referred to as the Southern Gothic Writers - which I imagine comes from the similar story backgrounds and settings and the fact that there is often a seemingly ominous feel to the short stories especially. Carson , who has written short stories, is best known for her novels several of which are regarded in American literature as masterpieces, particularly the one we are reading and , "The Heart is a lonely hunter" and "Ballad of Sad Cafe" - all of which were made into films.

"The Member of the Wedding" takes place for the most past over a couple of days in a small Southern town in the United States. It was published in 1946 and was also a very successful play as well as film starring Julie Harris. It is a simple plot about an imaginative precocioius girl of 12 years who fantasises that she can escape her humdrum life as she sees it by teaming up with her brother and his new bride on a grand adventure tour of the world - hence the title. Frankie imagines she is a part of their lives and they will want to take her with them as they start off from the wedding. Read in one way it is a novel about escape by an immature person who wants glamour in her life - a novel about adolescent misunderstanding and just reading the world wrongly . As such it sounds overly simple but what sets this novel on another plane is the imaginative range of the telling and its insights; the three main characters and their intense exchanges around the kitchen table and the dark humour and drama which is beautifully worked through by this very fine writer. Frankie is a real character in her own right - not a charicature.

The novel explores 'connectedness" via the thoughts and conversations of the three main character, Frankie Addams ; the coloured housekeeper and minder of the motherless Frankie- Berenice Sadie Brown and a six year old cousin John Henry West. These are such memorable people by the time you have finished the book that , it is not a cliche to say, you feel you know them. The three share an evening meal and talk but also Frankie has a few adventures in the town - one of which is troubling with a soldier from a nearby camp .

All the dimensions in this novel are strong - the atmosphere in the town, the weather, the ambient sounds , the domestic arrangements and the meal and details like the inappropriatness of the clothes Frankie has chosen for the wedding . The dialogue is cleverly interwoven with Frankie's thoughts especially at the memorable kitchen meal of the three on the night before the wedding . Frankie in simple terms makes a fool of herself at the reception and we see it coming . But Frankie is not really alone - she is supported by her caring adults - her father and Berenice and moves on as most adolescents do .

The book is full of memorable sequences - I think of the piano tuner in a nearby house - the significance of this sequence is the affect the sound of the ascending notes as the piano tuner does his work has on the three conversationalists. The passages where the author has Frankie helping out a monkey and his grinder minder down town is tender and full of wonder. Perfect descriptions abound - like "A jazz sadness quivered her nerves" and when Frankie goes into a down town bar for the first time she notes "the beery odour reminded her of a room where a rat has died behind a wall".

The race relations are handled without sentimentality and are salutary to read. Sadie is a pivotal character in the book from various viewpoints not the least of which is her open discussion on the way she would like the world to be - the connectedness theme again. Little John Henry is a well described charater too . They are each very important to the strength of the book.

I recommend this strongly for the brilliance of the writing and psychological exploration. It is a small treasure and a very strong work . I hope you will enjoy it.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

2009-11-24T22:03:00.004+11:00

Anyone visiting an art gallery, particularly one with a collection of works by Old Masters, is likely to encounter paintings simply entitled 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'. The phrase normally refers to a self portrait painted early in the artist's career. In using the phrase as the title for his Bildungsroman Joyce is probably suggesting that the work is in some respect a portrait of himself, in some sense autobiographical. But he is also emphasising that it is an artist who is the central figure. The work is not the equivalent in words of a photograph: it allows itself artistic freedom in what it presents, and its focus is not merely on growing to maturity, but on artistic development (or perhaps more accurately on the intellectual and emotional development which provides a basis for an artistic career).

There are clear and obvious autobiographical elements. James Joyce (1882-1941), like the novel's central figure Stephen Dedalus, was born into a Dublin-based Irish Catholic family which in his early years was well off. Like Stephen in the novel, Joyce attended the elite Jesuit Clongowes Wood schook, and later Belvedere, and like Stephen he studied Arts subjects at University College Dublin. The Joyce family, like Stephen's descended from wealth into dire poverty, thanks largely to the improvidence of the father. James Joyce, like Stephen, considered and rejected a career as a Jesuit priest. But Stephen Dedalus is an artistic creation, and it would be naive to believe that everything he thinks, feels, and does reflects similar elements in Joyce's own life.

Portrait is a relatively conventional novel, and presents the reader with little of the obscurity for which Joyce later became famous, or notorious. But it does employ elements of a stream of consciousness technique that was still radical when the novel was published in 1916. Perhaps the most striking and impressive examples of this occur early in the book, when Joyce presents the impressions and sensations of a very young child.

The now ageing Penguin Modern Classic edition in my possession quotes in its 'blurb' the verdict of H.G. Wells: 'By far the most living and convincing portrait that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing'. Certainly it was this element of the book which remained most in my memory from last reading the book thirty-five years ago. The Christmas dinner argument over that once classic Irish bone of contention, Parnell and the Catholic Church's attitude to him, is a vivid, shrewd and humorous portrayal of an encounter beween people determined at all costs to have the last word, though aware that it is not the time or the place for such a dispute. Not easily forgotten either is the vivid hellfire sermon preached by Father Arnall during a retreat when Stephen is a sex-obsessed teenager at Belvedere school. But readers expecting primarily a narrative of what it was like to grow up Irish and Catholic in an age of growing nationalism and repressive religiosity may be disappointed. The primary focus is not on the typical but on the individual. Stephen's development towards being an artist, his passage through the conventional to a realisation of a distinctive destiny which seems to require the rejection of everything in his upbringing, is at the centre of the novel. There is much in the later pages about aesthetics, and much of this may well seem a rather dry read to many readers. It is probably near heresy to say it about one of the most generally acknowledged masterpieces of twentieth century fiction, but this reader was at times bored, if never blind to the power of the presentation of the central character, whose limitations and sometimes bombastic characteristics Joyce presents vividly.

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

2009-10-18T13:52:00.005+11:00

Robert Graves first published this autobiographical work in 1929,when he was thirty-four years old. What we generally encounter today, however, is the revised edition he published in 1957. The new edition does not extend the story of his life past 1929, except for a three page 'Epilogue'. In a 'Prologue' dated 1957 Graves indicates that he revised the original substantially, improving the writing, correcting errors, adding more anecdotes, and restoring proper names 'where their original disguise is no longer necessary'. There are some, however, who regret what they see as the partial loss of the ragged power and anger of the original version, and Graves made deletions as well as additions. Notably, Laura Rider, the American poet, who was his partner and collaborator from 1926 to 1939, has disappeared entirely from the 1957 version.

The Penguin copy I read has a painting of World War I battlefield desolation on its cover, and GTAT is best remembered for its powerful and vivid portrayal of the Western Front, to which Graves went as a teenage officer in 1915, and where he served until wounded about half way through the War. Our view today of what trench warfare was like probably owes a great deal to Graves's account, the work of a masterly prose writer who describes his experiences in for the most part remarkably objective and dispassionate terms. Graves became passionately opposed to the war, and he suffered severe depression and other traumas in the years following it, but there is a strong matter-of-fact quality to his description of the horrors. The book was hailed as a vivid account when it appeared a decade after the war's end, and it sold very well, though some 'patriots' condemned it roundly for its unheroic portrayal of the conflict. (Its descriptions of people encountered also lost Graves some of the friends he had not entirely alienated during the years before 1929, notably his fellow poet and officer, Siegfried Sassoon.)

The book is not entirely devoted to the War, however. A significant portion describes Graves's schoolboy life at one of the leading English 'public schools', Charterhouse, which he hated. A major part also describes his experiences as a young married man with a growing family and limited resources in postwar England. Name-dropping does figure rather prominently here, though as many of the names are those of major writers of the period, the section is not as dull as it might be. But it is less interesting and far less powerful than what has gone before.

Graves's background could be described as 'upper middle class', and he had aristocratic connections, particularly in Germany, which he visited several times as a child. His perspective remains that of someone from an educated middle class background, even though he rejects many of the values of that background and embraces a kind of socialism, at least for a time. He may be in part ironic when he tells us in his epilogue that during World War II he was not prepared to travel third class in a train along with people such as a common policeman, insisting on the first class to which his status as an officer on the pensioned list entitled him, but his saying 'Goodbye to all that' before leaving England to go to live in Majorca was by no means a total rejection of his background. Herein, perhaps, lies a major part of the book's success: Graves describes the upper middle class English world of the early twenty century as someone who understands it intimately, shares many of its values, but also sees many of its limitations.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2009-09-28T15:49:00.005+10:00

The novel, "Half of a Yellow Sun" is based around the Nigerian-Biafran War 1967-70 and as such is a fascinating telling of the conflict from a Biafran/Igbo point of view. I found it very moving to be reminded so lucidly about these tragic events of such a short time ago. In a note about the book, the author tells of her father's stories about the war and the fact that he always ended his stories with the phrase "war is very ugly". This book re-inforces that truth very convincingly. So there is a lot about human suffering but it is told always with graceful prose and fine characterisation. What is more it is an exciting, pacy read - and even though told from the Biafran point of view it is certainly not simplistic and provides fascinating insights into recent history and this wealthy part of modern Africa - Nigeria. Also it is fair to say that the first approximately half of the events of the novel take place before the civil war starts and sets the scenery so well for us that when the conflict unfolds it is all that more sad because of what is cast aside with the conflict.

Having started off my comments about the conflict based part of the novel I would like to emphasise the fine style of the writing especially the liveliness of the personal stories throughout and the brilliance of the novels composition. This comes out particularly for me in the narrating style. It is not told in a first person style - the story is played out through the experiences of three main characters and several secondary and also important characters. You don't get the sense of one all-knowing-narrator telling you about whats going on either - the characters show it to you. The writer uses these three and other characters to carry the story along - in particular - Olanna , an female upper middle class Igbo academic , who marries a Igbo/Biafran academic and patriot; Ugwu - their houseboy who is undertaking self improvement and education as the action paced story goes along and Richard, an English journalist and lover of Olanna's twin sister, Kainene. Consequently it is a visually clear, easy flowing style of a novel - I think it is very well constructed. We as readers are watching and feeling the episodes unfolding as the characters experience and learn of them too. The fine personal stories and detail contribute greatly to the liveliness of the book.

There is such a lot to enjoy in this book - fast paced story-telling, humour, romance, sex , colourful background, and there is a lot to ponder. Along with this good read stuff there is the background of world politics as it affects the civilians sruggling to survive and protect each other from the ravages of a war fought all around them in villages and towns. I would recommend it from several points of view not the least of which is that the author is an exceptionally fine writer. She manages to deliver a complex story seemingly effortlessly.

August is shared short review month

2009-08-21T13:21:00.004+10:00

In the last month or so I read two recent Australian biographies which bring to life some fascinating aspects of Austalian social life and history.

1." Joan in India" by Suzanne Falkiner - This biography is about a relative (Joan) of the author who married an Indian Prince in 1939/40 . Joan was a member of the wealthy grazier socialite family and left Melboune by boat to go to india and marry her Prince. It was a big cause for gossip and amazement in Melbourne of the day. Joan was a beautiful - her Prince was Indian, Muslim , quite a bit older than her and had one other wife. The marriage was apparently successful. The book is well researched and gives the reader a wealth of fascinating information about the politics of India including Independence and partition. Well worth reading, strongly written and not at all salacious.
2. "An Exacting Heart : the story of Hephzibar Menuhin" by Jacqueline Kent. This book tells us about the life of the beautiful Hephzibar - fine concert pianist and sister of the renowned Yehudi Menuhin. Hephzibar married into the wealthy Nicholas family of Melbourne (Aspro fortune) as did Yehudi in late 1930s- brother and sister married brother and sister. Hephzibar came to live on a property outside Melboune and threw herself energetically into her new life which was so different from her European experience. An amazing woman from an incredibly talented family - she performed concerts for the ABC as well as threw herself into the life of countryside. Her life in Australia and after she left and remarried is engrossing and very well told.

I would recommend the above to any lover of well written biographies and current social history.

Please tell us a good book you have read lately.

Faye Lawrence

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2009-07-21T09:45:00.002+10:00

I first read Wuthering Heights in 1964, when I was sixteen years old and it was required reading for the NSW Leaving Certificate exam. I did not re-read it between then and July 2009. I wondered how much I would recall of my experiences and reactions forty-five years ago. In fact, it seemed it was not very much. It is hard, moreover, to know how much of what I thought I remembered is genuine memory of my adolescent reading, and how much stems from the fact that Wuthering Heights is a part of the cultural heritage shared in the English-speaking world even by people who have never read the novel. Over the years I have seen comedy sketches in which the novel is swiftly evoked by a stormy moorland scene, a dark and sombre figure called Heathcliff, and a blond heroine called Cathy. A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit Haworth parsonage, home for most of their short lives of Emily and her sisters Charlotte and Anne (though plans to walk to 'Wuthering Heights' were thwarted by lack of time). The town of
Haworth lives as much by the Brontes as Stratford on Avon lives by Shakespeare.

I do recall being warned as a schoolboy that Wuthering Heights is not just the story of the passionate romance between Heathcliff and the elder Cathy, a mistaken view which the famous 1939 film, starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon, encourages, as it presents only the first half of the book, stopping soon after the elder Cathy's death. On rereading the book I in fact found this celebrated love affair a bit tedious and melodramatic. I appreciate that this is probably an heretical view, and may be in some eyes almost a sacrilegious one The introduction to the edition before me claims that 'There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of passionate love that Wuthering Height' and it is indeed true that the novel is no uncritical celebration of the love of the Heathcliff and Cathy. One sees clearly its limitations and its destructive power. But there is something very adolescent about it (as is realistic - the chronology of the novel reveals that the elder Cathy is not yet nineteen years old when she dies, and Heathcliff seems only slightly older). For this reader, at least, most of the other character interactions are more interesting. It is impressive how Emily Bronte makes convincing what is really a wildly improbable plot: two small households living a few miles apart are linked in a couple of generations by no fewer than four marriages.

A small world is brilliantly evoked. Though popular culture encourages us to think of the setting as bleak and stormy, summer and sunshine on the moors are presented no less vividly than winter. Even relatively minor characters emerge vividly: Lockwood, the narrator who purportedly is writing the book, is an amusingly self-obsessed and emotionally limited representative of the 'outside' world who briefly finds his way into the Wuthering Heights world, and Nelly Dean, who tells most of the story to entertain Lockwood while he is unwell, clearly has her own quirks and prejudices. Even Joseph, the sanctimonious servant, emerges as a distinctive figure, comic in his hypocrisy (though he is not always easy to understand!).

The 1939 film ended, basically, and controversially, with the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy united and wandering the moors. The novel has a more life-affirming conclusion, with the prospect of happier times emerging from the union of the younger Cathy and Hareton. But perhaps more memorable at the end is the description of the last days of Heathcliff, in which the monster (for so he is, in most respects) wins a measure of our sympathy that most of his career does little to evoke.

Wuthering Heights is a novel of its times and of the circumstances in which it was created. It is frequently melodramatic and improbable. But it is beautifully written, magnificently plotted, and possesses an archetypal power which helps explains why it enjoys a place in our culture matched by only a handful of novels .

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

2009-06-27T10:32:00.002+10:00

Afetr reading this book again I now feel as though I know the sisters Makioka - Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko . It was written after WW11 , and translated and published in English ca 1957 . The main story however takes place over a few years in the late 30s and early 40s in Regional Japan - Osaka , Kobe, and Kyoto and also Tokyo. Much has been said about it as a record of the changing way of life of an era seen through the fading fortunes of a once great and rich family and this is fascinating aspect of the book, The beauty and great strength of the book for me however is the individual characterisation . Each of the four sisters becomes known very thoroughly by her conversation, letter-writing and thought and feeling processes which the author details for us. Sachiko is very well drawn and we know more about her thought processes than the others but they are each richly drawn.

Re the plot - this is a domestic, family saga at one level (the big problem for the household is the imperative to have the two younger sisters married - in the right order - a familiar idea perhaps to readers of Austen and 18th century English novels). What perhaps sets this novel apart for me is the realism of the writing - there is some humour but there is huge sympathy and respect for the characters and the way of life. The scenes are always very well set - you are conscious of a japanese artistic quality - poetical and visual . Naturalism and realism are the backdrops against which this poetical but robust story plays out. There are also a fair share of dramatic events -a horrific death scene , and a dangerous typhoon for example. The typhoon flood and rescue scenes are told as realistically and excitingly as any good Australian author would do in describing a flood or bushfire drama for instance. However the plot does revolve around the need to arrange a husband for Yukiko -various women act as marriage brokers including one marvellous hairdresser character. The traditional roles of women and men in these exercises are engrossing.

Another major aspect of the book is the detailing - we get to know so much about the way of life pre-antibiotics through the health episodes of which there are plenty in the novel - beri-beri was a common complaint with the Makioka women - we learn also for instance that when dressed as a geisha to dance the woman would eat small amounts only and place the food directly onto her tongue so as not to touch her makeup. There is much loving commentary about Kabuki theatre , actors of the day , artists etc.

The book starts about mid 1930 and goes up to about the beginning of 1941. The backdop of the horrific world events is touched upon only - we know there is a feeling of austerity in the provinces of Japan e.g.In the later years of the novel, the traditional cherry blossom promenades in Kyoto are undertaken in a more austere fashion - less jewellry and finery is worn for instance. The Chinese-Japanese war is referred to as the China Incident and the war in Europe is seen from the German point of view. However this is merely occasional background comment . The novel is focused on the domestic , social concerns.

I enjoyed this novel even more the second time I read it - I will be very interested to hear other including dissenting opinions

The Plot against America by Philip Roth

2009-05-05T16:45:00.002+10:00

The Plot against America is probably not what would be regarded as a typical Philip Roth novel. There is little sex or sweating in it likely to offend anyone. It is in part an 'alternative history', imagining what might have happened in the USA had Franklin Roosevelt been defeated in the 1940 presidential election by Charles Lindbergh, the weathly, handsome, personable and still relatively young aviator who had captured national attention by his solo flight across the Atlantic, and who won widespread sympathy when his small son was kidnapped and murdered. Lindbergh has many charismatic qualities, but in the book, as apparently in real life, he also displays significant anti-Semitic tendencies and a relatively tolerant attitude towards the German Third Reich.

But this is not just a political novel. It is told through the eyes of a partly fictional child, Philip Roth, a young Jewish boy growing up in an America which is gradually becoming a less and less attractive place in which to be a Jew. The novel is at one level a bildungsroman, and the family at its core, Philip, his older brother Sandy, and his parents Bess and Hermann, are vividly and convincingly created. There is clearly a limited autobiographical element - Philip in the novel was born in the same year as the novelist and haa a similar name and background. At one level this is a story of growing up in a Jewish enviornment at the time the novelist himself was growing up. By no means everything that happens in the family is the result of the political enviornment outdoors (though we do see its influences impact on the family and on its personal relationships).

Roth displays considerable skill in making his early 1940s America seem real. I particularly enjoyed the evocation of the family's big but sadly half-spoilt holiday in Washington. The gradual development of the anti-Semitism seems very well portrayed: we are not presented with Nazi Germany thinly disguised as America, Things start gradually and in ways that could be seem as innocuous. Some of the initiatives, such as 'encouraging' Jews to leave areas domianted by Jews and scatter among the rest of the community in rural areas, are shown to be supported by some members of the Jewish community, incluiding a leading rabbi, who seem prone to flattery and blind to their more sinister implications. Roth's world, with radio as the dominant communication and entertainment medium, and stamp collecting an obsession for small boys, seems convincingly real.

The book does have weaknesses. The ending, which sees Lindbergh mysteriously disappear after taking off on a solo flight and Roosevelt return to power, is not at all convincing. One critical has compared it to the deus ex machina said to be used to tie up opera plots in earlier centuries. An interest in the politics of the time would probably be an asset is one wished to enjoy the novel.

The novel has apparently been seen as a roman a clef about the George W. Bush administration, of which Roth was an open critic. Those who take this view note inter alia that the more forceful and unpleasant characters are those around the president, such as the vice president, rather than Lindbergh himself. However, Roth has denied the validity of this interpretation, and I cannot say the idea crossed my mind until I read some criticisms of the novel (which has been praised as one of Roth's best written works in years but damned as dull and as maligning the dead, Catholics, middle America, etc.)

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

2009-04-16T10:51:00.007+10:00

Catherine Meeber, aka Sister Carrie, is a compelling character to read about. She leaves her Wisconsin home at 18 years to come to Chicago to make a living. She has dreams and yearnings but the simple reality of work in the tough non-unionised shop conditions of the 1890s is hard. She is just not able to cope with it all. The attentions of a dapper travelling salesman save her from an inevitable return to her home in Wisconson as a failure. She moves in with the salesman, Charles Drouet. Life becomes reasonably pleasant but her dreams continue . She yearns to be happy,stylish and admired and we follow her yearnings throughout her young life as she leaves Drouet and ends up in New york with her next lover George Hurstwood. From then on the plot takes on a paricularly socially realistic atmosphere.

The way in which the story is told through the characters experiences is fascinating - the all-knowing narrator makes no moral judgment of the actions of his three main characters - Carrie, Drouet and Hurstwood. The reader fears there are slippery slopes for them to negotiate- especially for Carrie and Hurstwood - the tension in this seemingly simple story line is very strong . The tension moves to heightened reality with the misfortune of Hurstwood who steals from his employers , regrets this and makes restitution but cannot regain his sophisticated hold on life. Carrie, throughout the graphically described decline of Hurstwood , is still yearning for the better life - she has luck with chorus line work then as a successful broadway actress in New York where she is living as a defacto with Hurstwood. She leaves him for her own ambition and betterment and his life goes from bad to worse in a harsh unemployment environment - he is literally cold and starving towards the end of the book . She is a success and is well to do. He ultimately commits suicide in a flop house without her being aware of his whereabouts.

This rush through the plot of 'Sister Carrie" serves as a backdrop to emphasise Dreisers non-judgemental approach to his characters which contributes so much to the interest in this fascinating book. Carrie is a victim at times - she is actually tricked by Hurstwood into going away with him and leaving Drouet but on the other hand she has shown herself somewhat willing to be compromised by him whilst she is still living with Drouet. So the reader cannot stay with one theme of sympathy only - there are no goody two shoes here and no real monsters either. Dreiser's moral concerns are with poverty , excess materialism as a religion and loss of opportunity. The scenes of starvation and degredation in the second part of the book are reminders of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Orwell and Lawson. The masterful telling of a strike and scab situation and the plight of the workers and police involved on a tramway service in New York is chilling .

Dreiser had difficulty getting this, his first novel, published . It was refused by Doubleday despite the enthusiasm of their editor. It was published by Heinemann in London in 1900. Some of the controversy about it has to do with its depiction of non-marital social relationships and of course, an immoral, successful woman . Carrie was a financial success - albeit as an actress - the career open and suitable for fallen women. Sinclair Lewis said about Sister Carrie in 1930 when receiving his Nobel Prize, " Dreiser"s great first novel, Sister Carrie, which he dared to publish thirty long years ago and which I read twenty-five years ago, came to housebound and airless America like a great free western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since mark Twain and Whitman" .

Dreiser went on to write several other works notably his acclaimed "An American Tragedy" which was made into film on two occasions including the much awarded "A Place in the Sun" with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. It seems the American tragedy which is wrapped up in the American Dream is a powerful theme in American literature exemplified by "The Great Gatsby". I think "Carrie" can be see as fitting into this contextual way of thinking to some extent. Did Dreiser see Carrie herself as really successful ?- the two major endings of the book which went through many editing changes have it finishing with the death of Hurstwood or the alternative ending with the additional philosophising which sees Carrie sitting in her rocking chair oblivious of Hurstwoods death, "Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day when she would be led forth among dreams made real" . Dreiser edited the book somewhat himself and others did as well - to make it more morally acceptable to the reading public and the publishers. There is a large number of web site links to information about all this and much scholarship as you would expect.

I have read that Dreisers verbal style is viewed by some critics as inept - I dont go along very far with this but I can understand why this would be said. For example I sometimes found his philosophising passages obscure. He revels in the contrasting comment about a set situation to sometimes an overblown level. However the substantial power in his prose sustained my enjoyment along with the intense examination of the human condition told in a uniquely strong and descriptive story.

Finally, a couple of other very interesting scenarios in the book which readily come to mind are the early scenes in Carrie's sister's apartment and her relationship with her sister and brother-in-law - strangley cold and sad. By vivid contrast the physical descriptions of a developing industrious ,retail Chicago are wonderful - Dreiser did like Chicago i think. Overall this is a fascinating piece of social writing.

Breath by Tim Winton

2009-03-08T15:14:00.004+11:00

Like The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll this is a recent Australian novel by an author already enjoying a considerable reputation. Both novels are set mainly in 1970s Australia, and both are characterised by exceptionally lucid, often rather lyrical prose. But the differences between them are considerable.

Breath could be regarded as a bildungsroman, a novel of growing up. Told by a middle-aged narrator, Bruce Pike (Pikelet), who works as a paramedic, it focuses on a time when he was aged about eleven to fifteen. Living with rather colourless parents in a Western Australian logging town close to the sea, he befriends and is befriended by a boy of a similar age, Ivan Loon (Loonie), who is far rougher and wilder than the somewhat bookish Pikelet but shares with him a love of the daring and the risky. The two boys are taken under his wing by Bill Sanderson (Sando), a somewhat enigmatic ex-surfing champion in his mid-thirties who lives a somewhat hippy existence on the coast with Eva, his embittered wife. Coached by Sando the boys embark on a series of ever more extreme and dangerous surfing adventures, until Pikelet eventually indicates that he does not wish to take the risk involved. This produces a split: Sando and Loonie head off on a series of overseas trips without Pikelet, who in their absence becomes sexually involved with Eva, a physically handicapped ex-champion in a form of extreme skiing who can derive sexual satisfaction only from a procedure involving asphixation almost to the point of death. The relationship ends when Eva becomes pregnant, Sando and Eva more away, and Pikelet returns to his studies.

This is a novel about surfing, but only in the sense that the novels of Joseph Conrad are about the sea. Winton seems to know surfing, and gives the non-surfer a sense of its attractions, but his real interest is in facing risk, confronting one's fears and death, and getting to know oneself. The writing is powerful and often very graceful, and the short but powerful work is easily digested.

Reviewers I have examined all praise the book very highly. Their main criticism is that the ending is unsatisfactory: it is described by some as too long, by others as rushed. Paradoxically, both criticisms probably contain some truth: what we learn about the future careers of the four main characters is a bit unsatifying, and it might have been better either to have omitted it, or to have treated it in more detail.

For this reader the character of Sando is a problem. For Pikelet and Loonie he is for a long time a macho superhero to be worshipped. We do see another side through the comments of Eva, who suggests his friendship with the boys more than twenty years his junior reflects a refusal to acknowledge he is growing older and who reveals that she and Sando live on trust funds provided by her family (though there is more than a hint of darker sources of income). Winton' s portrait of him is quite sympathetic: Sando is exceptionally well-read, we are told, a meticulous planner, and ultimately a very successful businessman. We do see the dangers into which he leads the boys, and the longterm harm he does them, but one wonders if Winton, like Lawrence and Hemingway, may not be a bit enamoured of the idea of the powerful, ruthless Adonis. Arguably Sando is a criminally irresponsible idiot who wants to be 'king of the kids' and the fact that his foolhardy activities do not kill or seriously maim his young disciplies owes as much to good luck as good management. The samples of his philosophy we encounter are trite in the extreme.

The 1970s are well evoked. Winton seems correct in pointing out that the friendship described between a mature man and two young boys would not have been regarded with immediate suspicion then as it would now. (One review erwrites of 'thinly disguised homoerotic tension' but I do not detect this.) On a more trivial note, however, I do not think male speedos were called 'budgie smugglers' in the 1970s, or that they were then regarded as unduly revealing beach attire!

The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll

2009-02-14T11:11:00.003+11:00

This novel which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2008 is the third part of a trilogy. Probably needless to say it reads perfectly well if you havent already read the earlier two - which I havent yet but intend to. The novel is set in Melboune outer suburbia and around a City University in 1970. There are a small set of characters who each speaks for him/herself as he/she faces a change in a relatively ordinary life which is also reflected in the change in society as a whole which is happening apace at that time.
It is a quiet, philosophical novel played out with beautiful prose - it is also painterly , I think. You feel and see the ordinary suburban surroundings , the main characters and the people of the town very strongly.

The plot device is Progress in the suburb which is deemed to be 100 years old in 1970 and the Town luminaries celebration of the landmark occasion, however the book is about much more.

To me it seems to be about - the way people think as they go about their lives - it is philosophical and a book of the mind . By saying this I dont want to give the impression it is difficult - on the contrary but it does repay quiet , careful reading.

Time is an important theme in the novel - Time , present, past and what may come. Relationships is another important theme - dealt with sadly often, but in a particularly gentle way.

I will come back with some other thoughts but I do hope there are some comments forthcoming on this book because I think there is so much one can say about it.

Your FAVOURITES - 2008

2009-01-23T15:22:00.004+11:00

On the theory that most readers like to hear suggestions from others - Classic readers are requesting suggestions on favourites you have read for say the past year or so. If you would like to please go ahead and whet our appetites - Just tell us why .

I will start the ball rolling with three Australian books I read or re-read last year which I would recommend for one reason or another.
Tim Winton's ' Breath ' - Tim Winton has not been one of my real favourites but I was reading this for another group and I have to say that I found such a lot to admire in this work that i would recommend it. The lyrical, easy flow of his language really bears close examination. It is beautifully written without a loose sentence in sight. I am now convinced he is one of the best . This is a most unusual story set in Western Australia of course - it is at the one level a paen to surfing and youthful daring .The lyrical descriptions of this boys own and rites of passage stuff is wonderful. Along with this aspect of the book there is another hard theme about what daring can do to a person and linking it to loss and sexuality . Overall it is the writing itself which won me over - it is no wonder he took several years to write it.

Miles Franklin's 'My Brilliant Career" - Having read this years ago and been influenced and impressed by it (and loving the film too) I was fascinated to pick it up again . What an astounding work it is - a novel written by an 18 year old in the late 19th or early 20th in the Australian countryside about an 18 year old . I had to keep reminding myself this was not a mature woman developing the character of Jo March for our edification and delight , nor an established adult writer exposing Holden Caulfield to us - the writer is only as old as her heroine. Have a look at it again. No wonder we thought it a marvel when we were young as did Henry Lawson when he was given the anonymous manuscript to appraise. He loved it and he rightly picked it was written by a woman - despite the name she adopted. It was originally published in England because A & R rejected it. It has a lot of faults but it is a glorious read.

Dorothy Hewitt's "The man from Muckinupin'. Dorothy is another of the daring women of Australian writing and in this play she wrote a classic. The Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney is showing it this year and I cant wait . It is a Melbourne theatre and 30th anniversary production. One of the characters called a "Touch of the tar" personifies a statement of pure resonance. In my preview notes from Belvoir, Hewitt is referred to as one of our great poets and ratbags. It is a little bit wheatbelt Shakespeare in comedy mode. It is a musical also. See it if you can - and read it anyhow - It reads very well.

Father and Son by Sir Edmund Gosse

2008-12-17T15:50:00.005+11:00

This is one of the most personal of biographies I have ever read. It was first published in 1907. It is also of its time a masterful document of religious thinking of the Non-conformist , puritan groups in England in the period from fifty years before. It is much more besides - a brilliant set of memories of early childhood and the way of thinking as a child. The stories of the relationships between each of his parents - the naturalist, non-conformist minister father, his incredible , stoic mother who died when he was only seven and the son himself in turn with them are breathtakingly told. The characters of his father and mother are wonderfully and tenderly observed. The writing is crytsal-like about religious feelings and the philosophy of the family members .

There is amazing material in this short memoir - ( It is a strong social history I wish I had read it when doing 19th British History) - highlighting the dilemma of the Creatonists with the new Lyell/Darwinian Natural Selectionists and their dramatic findings. Chapter five where the author Edmund Gosse described the almost personal destruction of his Scientist/Bible believing father when his compromising published work fails to gain the kudos he had hoped from his fellow scientists at the Royal Academy is perfectly realised and written.

Having said all of the above this memoir is also delightfully humorous at times and is so inciteful about the country folk in Devon where his father takes the young Gosse to live after the death of the beloved wife and mother. - to be near the sea where they can collect sea shore specimens. The chapel people here are wonderful.

If you have half an interest in the way our ideas have been formed over the last 150 years please read this superbly written shortish memoir and then please discuss.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

2008-12-17T15:30:00.002+11:00

This novel is a literary a well as a social satire . We are used to Austen as the first rate commentator and writer about social manners but in this one she is having fun in a different way. The author is spoofing the type of writer very popular at the time at which it was written , ca 1803. Catherine , the heroine, is addicted to Gothic romance novels and is on the lookout for any real life applications of the fantastic story lines of those novels - in applying this logic she makes the usual mistakes . But it is no way as serious a comment on the behaviour and thinking processes of self centred young persons as in Emma , for instance. I enjoyed it very much when i first read it . I would be delighted to hear what others think. I will be adding some further comments also a bit later.

Midnights's Children by Salman Rushdie

2008-12-04T09:56:00.002+11:00

I am still reading this amazing book - will be finished in a few days time. Please feel free to comment and tell us your view if you have already read it. I was a little taken aback to have been reading it whilst the Mumbai terror episodes were before us in the news but on reflection it has been a positive experience for me and added to my understanding. The reason for this is that the book is such a wonderful evocation of the multicultural and multi religious strength and vibrancy of Mumbai , Once again I find that good fiction educates us as much as any other text can do. I look forward to sharing a few more specific thoughts on this magical book just a little later.

2008-10-16T10:21:00.006+11:00

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wow! - or in the words of dear Oscar as a rough estimate " was that copacetic or What! "
For my enjoyment this was a very fine work of kaleidoscopic fiction . But as soon as I say fiction I have to pause to realise there is so much historical data in the clever footnotes to give it a social history feel as well. I loved the background - the larger than life stories about the Dominican Republic - the small and big players - I learnt so much I didnt know about the Diaspora of that part of the world and especially the extent of the migration to the east coast of the USA . There is a lot of toing and froing by the main characters in the book between New Jersey, New York and the DR - and one gets the impression this happens with Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba as well - a very bustling, active part of the world which it was eye opening to read about in this well crafted stylish work.

The language in the work ( with Spanish phrases lightly peppered throughout the strong American English ) is a delight and adds to the colour and vibrancy of the settings and feel . Language is a special feature of this inventive novel - Fine English, Spanish, Patois and American slang words and phrases - all combined in this heady linguistic , migrant story. As an example of the unique strength of the prose - it can be noted that even though the Latino male libido is ever present in the stories , I dont recall seeing the word Macho written at all. It is an original in so many ways.

A major theme in the work is Oscar's growing up - he is a nerd who likes reading and watching science fiction , anime and playing computer games who has poor success with women but who has the yearnings of a great lover and hero . Although he suffers often in his tender and teen years he is lovable and his family are very protective of him.

The book is constructed around individual family member stories over three generations which make up the history of Oscar and his family - both in DR and the USA. These stories are riveting , often harrowing when set in the Trujillo years , however leavened with humour and the very earthy and often surprising scenarios.

The male narrator is a part of the story and associated with the family - although we know relatively less about him. The dialogue fits in neatly with his story telling and adds to the linguistic energy . Even though it is a book which is ostensibly a lot about males and their sexual concerns - the females are strong , well drawn and vital to the enjoyment and verisimilitude of the work.

A very fine book indeed is my judgement and I am really glad I read it. It won the recent Pulitzer for fiction , the two before if I remember correctly being March by Geraldine Brooks and The Road by Cormac McCarthy - two exceptional works as well. Especially The Road I must say. So it is a formidible prize and Diaz is fitting in that company.

The Gathering by Anne Enright

2008-09-07T14:52:00.004+10:00

The Gathering. which won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2007 , is set mostly in urban Ireland-Dublin. Veronica who narrates the story is in her late 30s with two children. She (and her siblings) are part of the newly prosperous Irish professional middle class . The occasion of her narrative is the arranging for a funeral and the coming together of the large family following the death of one of her brothers for whom she had particularly strong affection. Thereby hangs a tale with many stings. Veronica is reflecting on her family's lives and events and the passage of time. In going over her memories she is undergoing quite a bit of personal suffering throughout and as we find out - up to about 6 months after the funeral. The device is very cleverly used and the prose is particularly fine.

I don't want to make this sound like a simple family saga however - because it is a rich mine of social commentary , characterisation and analysis told in a story with insight and often humour. When the family members do come together the kitchen table drama is masterful and funny. But the big themes are always being examined - particularly Marriage , and the Church and the use and abuse of power and the effects on the lives of ordinary people especially children - often tragic ones. It is a very well structured novel which has some surprising and heartfelt twists and turns . Whilst Irish readers would identify the social settings and the changed details of urban life in Ireland from the 1930/50s to the 90s - there is a considerable relevance to Australia also.

A good critic and a teacher of literature I know commented that Anne Enright is one of the very best novelists around . She thought that her finest work was yet to come - the thought being when that happens it will be outstanding indeed. Whilst we await that I would recommend The Gathering as an introduction to the strong writing talent of Enright. I would love to hear some views on it. It should be readily available in libraries and as a paperback purchase - Jonathan Cape, 2007.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2008-08-04T14:44:00.004+10:00

The book for our on-line readers for August is the American classic [sometimes called masterpiece] , the Great Gatsby, of the 1920 period . The novel features Jay Gatsby who had grand vision and a murky past - a sort of American Dream/tragedy theme. When I have finished reading it again I will add to my thoughts on it but feel free to start making comments whenever you wish. I enjoyed it very much when I first read it and recommend it warmly. It is colourful and very easy to read.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a larger than life literary character himself whose tempestuous marriage to his writer wife Zelda has been the subject of various films and popular stories. - See also Sheilah Grahame, newspaper columnist who had an affair with Fitzgerald.
A current work which has received critical acclaim in the US and elsewhere - Netherland by Josph O'Neill - has been compared to Gatby in that it amplifies the theme of the American Dream and Tragedy.

Additional note from Faye
I am delighted to have read this again - it has well and truly stood up with a second reading for me. I think it is close to perfect prose. The first person narrative by Nick Carraway - the sympathetic observer of Jay Gatsby - is convincing and engaging. A fair bit of melodrama keeps the interest up along with the characterisation . The observation of nature and general description of the surroundings are both fantastic. J. B. Priestley writing fulsomely of Fitzgerald's talent in an introduction for the older Bodley Head Edition I have been reading says of his writing power he has " an uncommonly acute sense of time and place , and an unforced and easy and very economical power of what I can only call symbolic effect" This smallish novel book contains all of this yet remains a relevant and entertaining read.

The ending of Gatsby really blew my mind this time - I re-read the last 4 pars several times - they are magic. I realise i didnt really know what the American dream meant and now I do . It is a more complex and more expressive idea than I had realised or remembered. This novel hold your interest throughout with the story line and finishes as well as it starts. No wonder it sits there firmly in the pantheon.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (second post)

2008-07-23T19:29:00.007+10:00

Now that I have finished my second time reading, I am adding a few comments on some sections of the book in the latter part of the story which illustrate elements of the story for me . As I mentioned earlier I think the dialogue is the outstanding aspect of this book along with the masterful characterisation. The dialogue takes up about 30 to 40% of the text so it reads a bit like a script or a play. The book is very intense for this reason especially. It gives it a cinematic quality accordingly.

The edition which I read and that which is normally readily available in Australia is the Text Publishing Co Edition 2007 reprinted four or five times since 2005. It has no chapter headings so I have listed page numbers in my references which I hope will make sense to readers.

1.Page 228 Par 2 and 3. In this small section we are reminded about Cashin having taken up reading seriously (Conrad , Austen, Dickens etc) during his recuperation following the gunfight with the criminal Rai Sarris in Melbourne when one of Cashin's colleagues was killed and Cashin injured - this all happened before our story began . We get a picture of how nervous he is with the love interest Helen in his seaside rural shack as he takes her through to the kitchen. These few lines illustrate humour and the way in which a little conversation means a lot in this story. and I quote ...

"this is where you go after balls" said Helen . "The less formal room . It's warm"
"This is where we withdraw to", he said "The withdrawing room" . He had read this term somewhere, hadnt known it before Rai Sarris, that was certain.

2. Page 285 and the chapter following when Cashin goes to the Daunt Aboriginal settlement to talk with Chris Pascoe is brilliant - it's tough with strong vernacular but clear and full of the personalities of the people involved. Very good realism.

3. Page 335 - the chapter where Cashin confronts Erica Bourgoyne with the facts relating to her brother and step-father and her cold overseeing of the dreadful revenge on the paedophile is very stark . The reactions of Joe Cashin and Erica are brilliantly laid out through the spare and pointed dialogue .

These are just a few sections towards the end of the book which indicate, I hope, the range of the plot in this very literary thriller - it has many turns and is played out with a very well drawn cast of characters.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple

2008-07-01T15:06:00.008+10:00

The Broken Shore , an Australian crime thriller, was first published in Melboune in 2005 by Text - a small clever local publishing house. It has won prizes internationally (Inc the UK Dagger and the Australian Ned Kelly -and isn't that a great name for a crime writing award? ). The book has been very positively reviewed and published in many countries. Temple is often referred to as a literary crime writer. Kerryn Goldsworthy writing in the Australian said of it as a book of the year selection "The writing is tight, the plot gallops along, the atmosphere is intermittently spooky with truly chilling moments, the characterisation is masterful" . I totally agree with this quote which I think is a succinct summary of the main attributes of this book.

I read it first about 18 months ago, enjoyed it then and that is why i am now recommending it. I am now half way through reading it again and finding that I like it even more and getting more out of it.

Some of the special elements I would highlight, along with those in the quote above, are the brilliant dialogue and the evocation of atmosphere with attention to unusual detail. The dialogue is as good as it gets. The richness of the characterisation comes through the masterful way the dialogue unfolds. The scenic and other narration details round out the tapestry well. Dog and animal lovers will find much to wonder at and the Victorian countryside and southern coastline are painted as well as an artist might.

The book requires careful reading because it is so tightly written and evokes authenticity. I note the major US Publisher, Farrar Strauss needed a legend re the vernacular for its US edition. I dont read very much in this genre however Temple is one I admire very much- and if you as with me don't venture into this category much - please try Temple. In summary - it is a tough plot with very fine characterisation, vernacular dialogue and verisimilitude re the country side and Australian social reality. It is a surprisingly rich tapestry for a crime thriller - and by the way there is an engaging investigating cop - Joseph Cashin who gets you in.

I am yearning to get some feedback on this one - I will post with some of the sections which illuminate special aspects of the book a little later when I have finished my second reading.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

2008-06-13T09:53:00.006+10:00

New York, New York - a wonderful town - here depicted from the point of view and life style of the wealthy high society in the 1870s. It is a fascinating mannered, historical view of this iconic metropolis outlining the day to day lives and concerns of the very privileged and wealthy of Dutch,French and English heritage. Washington Square, Fifth Avenue, On the Hudson and Newport - locations to conjure with. Edith Wharton herself grew up in this society and class and I think presents a warm view via her many characters and the detailed pictures of their surroundings and way of life. Whilst I dont think this is humorous as such there is considerable irony and some parody of several of the family situations and characters.

The book was published in 1920 - Wharton had lived and worked hard for dispaced persons in her chosen home town of Paris during World War 1 so she had seen great social change first hand. She had not lived a simple or an idle life herself by any means. The changes that were to come in New York society after 1870 would therefore be seen clearly by readers in 1920 when the book was published - overall , as mentioned, I think it is a warm picture but not a sentimental one.

The main plot revolves around a romance which has more in common with the grand Russian romance stories of Pushkin and Tolstoy than say, Austen. I thought the author portrayed Newland Archer well - I was caught up in the drama of the romance and the way in which the author uses the device to portray her key individuals, their beliefs and their relationships. Archer's thinking is narrated throughout the story so we can get to know a lot about him. The two main female characters - May Welland and Countess Olenska - are vital to the purpose of the book in examining the way in which the individuals live out and maintain their family and societal obligations.

The structure of the work - with smallish chapters - seems to suit the scenic , almost theatrical style of book . In fact one of the continuous activities in the book is theatre going. Along with the strong emphasis on the importance of belonging to the right tribe and doing the right thing by the family - the deep sense of business probity was a little surprise to me. However a career in politics as such was not worthy of the gentlemen of this group ( and it is interesting to note that the period is just after the Civil War which is mentioned only briefly in the book). A new generation has taken its place at the end of the story and all manner of changes are afoot.

The authors control of the narrative is tight and the style is fluid and for me, very enjoyable and easy to read. I think it is a powerful social and psychological look at a very particular group in society in a very particular City at an interesting time in its history. What do you think of this American classic?

JOHNNO by David Malouf

2008-05-03T14:19:00.008+10:00

Johnno is Maloufs first novel - published in 1975. It is set mostly in Brisbane in the 40s and 50s. This is a Brisbane of colonial, weatherboard, verandah homes and pubs - even in the City Centre. After studying at University the young narrator travels and works in Britain for several years - then comes home to find a Brisbane already changing in say, the late 50s. The story is about young people, their relationships and change - it has many sub themes - friendship of young males, the mythology and pull of place and its effect on us, the difficulty of understanding others . The eponomous Johnno is a character who fascinates the narrator - a school companion of his at Grammar school in Brisbane. The novel follows them for a couple decades as their lives touch from time to time in Australia and Europe and then back to Brisbane. Exploration of the narrator's views and adventures with Johnno and often, despite Johnno, form the intellectual basis of the plot . The sense of place and environment are palpable. I could feel the heat of the day at times with powerful descriptions such as coming out into the glaring Brisbane sun from a cool , dark interior. There is a wonderful description of the old State Library and its clientele ,in chapter 5, which must be essential reading for all Queensland librarians - and the rest of us can identify and enjoy it too. "The Library had its own people. You never saw (them) anywhere else in the City...." will ring a clear bell with most of us. By the way - Malouf's descriptions and settings are lovingly detailed with a poets eye.

I found it a very satisfying and challenging read. It provides strong incites to relationships and personal development - however I have some questions . The big one for me is - is Johnno believable ? And does the narrator pull off the relationship fixation ? - I just about think he does but I would love to hear others views.

David Malouf , b 1934, has a most impressive body of work which now includes several novels , short stories along with volumes of poetry, memoirs and libretti. He has won international literary prizes and several Australian prizes . There are many literary criticisms and biographical notes on him in databases and web sites. Johnno is in print - Penguin at $22.95 (approx 170 pp) and is readily available in most Australian libraries. As a major Australian writer who has never ceased to explore the options of style and genre in developing his communication - it is important and enjoyable to look at where he started.I recommend it the experience.

2008-04-21T10:34:00.001+10:00

Dickens - a map

2008-03-28T18:53:00.002+11:00

David Perdue's website has information about Dickens's life and work and lists many more sites around London connected to him. It also includes a map of both biographical and fictional sites.

Great Expectations

2008-03-25T16:06:00.006+11:00

Why don't we get started with that great classic from Charles Dickens, Great Expectations? This is our choice for the month of April. If you have already read it please do a refresher and comment. If you havent yet read it , you are in for a treat. Tell us what you liked or disliked about it. Think about the narration style, the social settings, the language/s used, the range of characterisations and character development, and many more elements - present aplenty in this rich, extensive story. I certainly have a positive prejudice about it. We've linked to the Project Gutenberg copy but you might already have it on a shelf at home and it would be held in your local library. It is readily available for purchase in Penguin Classics.