What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this Summer.
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2013
Wow!!! I already loved Maggie O’Farrell and marvelled at how it is she does what she does in Hamnet. I liked The Marriage Portrait and After You’d Gone but this is one of those books where I just had to keep putting it down for a moment and taking it in. The thought on repeat was Yep, that’s exactly how it is!
She just nails it in this one with her observations of young children, her recreation of parenting, her family dynamics which are that perfect mix of infuriating and endearing and of course how irritated and scratchy everyone gets in the heat. I loved everything about this book and want to reread it again to see if I can pinpoint the alchemy and find how this perfection is possible.
The Body Country by Susie Anderson, Hachette, 2023
This collection of poetry captures all moments great and small, the memory of a mother or riding on the back seat of the school bus. She shares how sacred some of life’s simpler moments can be. There is a strong sense of place, Country and culture throughout the collection and it’s just as good to have on the bedside and read one at a time as it is to just gobble up.
Complement this with her interview on the First Time Podcast. She has some sage and beautiful words about process which I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny, 4th Estate, 2023
Love short stories. Tick. Big fan of Katherine Heiny. Tick. So, obviously her short story collection was very welcome under the Christmas tree. If you’re not familiar with Heiny from Early Morning Riser or Standard Deviation, let me prepare you. Expect giggles, bad decisions, regrettable sex, characters who walk to the beat of their own drum, plenty of ‘oh no she didn’t’, the quotidian at its very best and worse and moments of truth so uncomfortable that you just need a moment to let it sink in.
Lioness by Emily Perkins, Bloomsbury, 2023
If you like angry ageing women having a gutful and shedding their usual social niceties, then this cracker of a book is for you. Throw in some wealthy voyeurism and pitch perfect blended family dynamics, personal identity and the ethics of privilege and it still doesn’t do justice to the energy and breadth of this story.
Therese comes from humble beginnings but has married older and into money. When her developer husband is accused of corruption she starts to question blind loyalty. At the same time her neighbour, Claire, is suddenly liberating herself from everything she’s been told to be as a woman – mother, wife, employee. She’s made strong by presence of something primal and innate and proximity to this makes Therese wonder who she is anymore after all these years of adapting and who she might be if she too just dropped the act.
The Sitter by Angela O’Keefe, UQP, 2023
In the early outbreak of COVID, an Australian writer sits in her Paris hotel room trying to write a book about Hortense Cezanne, Paul Cezanne’s wife. She often struggles with it and eventually it is her own story that comes out as a gift for her daughter.
Hortense narrates the story. She’s been released from the past and watches the writer as she moves through the motions. There’s a touch of the Claire Keegan in this story, in the unhurried actions and observations as women’s lives and regrets play out quietly.
Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, Chatto & Windus, 2018
This is only my second Anne Tyler. French Braidwas my first andI love loved how it was put together almost as a set of linked short stories. Clock dance is similar except the stories always follow Willa Drake and the final one is much longer than any of the others. We see the 24 hours her mother goes missing when she’s a teenager, the day she is incidentally proposed to in her twenties, the accident that kills her first husband 20-years later and the phone call she gets to come and look after the daughter of her son’s ex-girlfriend.
It’s hard to describe Anne Tyler but she’s all about the quotidian and relationships and for me that’s where all the gold is!
Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt, Fremantle Press, 2023
The previous three books I’ve read have been set in New York, Baltimore and Paris, so it was brilliant to be back under Southern skies in Molly Schmidt’s debut. It made me realise how important local stories and publishers are.
Set in Noongar country in South Western Australia, this follows the Tetley family and its five children in the immediate aftermath of their mother’s death. Grief, racism, legacy and family all play out under the hot sun and long days of a summer of loss.
Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain, Chatto & Windus, 2023
Marianne falls in love with Simon Hurst when she’s still at high school. She loses her virginity to him and they swap letters but then he moves to Paris. It’s 1960s England and her options to ‘make something of herself’ are down to marriage or secretarial work. She’d happily marry Simon but that’s not going to happen.
This is the story of a broken heart and how life does goes on, eventually.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, Vintage 2009
I only knew this as a movie from the mid-noughties. It had Kate and Leo who made it look good like they do with everything. I now know that though they’re good at what they do, a large part was because they had excellent material to work with.
The story is actually pretty depressing, two people who thought that they’d make more of themselves or for themselves desperately trying to revive (Him) and survive (her) their life together in the suburbs with two young kids.
It’s so oppressive and stifling but so magnificently written. With a light touch he scratches the surface and there it all is the gaslighting, power plays, dishonesties and desires that can get normalised in relationships and parade themselves around as love.
Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley, Bloomsbury, 2022
Lola is the chronically cynical, pithy quipping thirty-something we’ve come to expect from New York narrations. She’s engaged but unsure and suddenly starts bumping into ex-boyfriends everywhere.
I didn’t finish this one. It’s clever and funny and there’s plenty of people who love the super-cynic but I was sick in bed and needed a little more wonder and a little less over-everything in my life.
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Nina Cullen 