blog

The bedside bookstack –February 2025

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, Text, 2022

This is the coming-of-age story of Ned West recollected over a lifetime. Ned lives on Limberlost, an apple orchard in a Northern Tasmanian river valley. His mother is dead and his two brothers are away at war. One sends letters, the other they have no news from. His father is silent and sister distant.

Ned traps rabbits and reams of escape on the boat their pelts will help him to buy. It’s always part myth with Robbie Arnott (but this one is a bit of a deviation from the magic realism of Flames and The Rain Heron) and the natural world is ever-present in all its mystery and majesty. By the end of it, you’ll want to lay your hands on the smooth grain of Huon pine and smell the spice of it, which is conjured in such great detail. For me this gorgeous read is his best book so far. I can’t wait to read his newest book Dusk.

Australian Gospel by Lech Blaine, Black Inc, 2024

This memoir is a reminder that love really does conquer all. Lech Blaine’s parent’s Lenore and Tom Blaine foster 5 children over their life time. All of these children become a permanent part of their family. Three of them are biological siblings. They’re the children of Mary and Micheal Shelley, Christian zealots who have also had one other child removed from their care. The Shelley’s spend nearly two decades trying to get their children back through any means including kidnapping, coercion, harassment, and stalking.

This is the story of how the Blaine family survived the Shelley siege but not without cost.

In Memoriam by Alice Winn, Viking, 2023

You’ll need a quiet moment as you read this to grapple with the pointless loss of life that war is, for everyone, on any side. And even those that live, aren’t necessarily surviving.

This is a beautiful heartbreaking book about a handful of boys from a prestigious British boarding school. They’re clever and cocky and charming and they are so so young. Two of them, are in love. As war breaks out some can enlist and others have to wait until they’re older. The details of their days and the emotional attrition of the front is so evocative and well written. I didn’t think I needed to read another war book but this one is something special.

Long Island by Colm Toibin, Picador, 2024

This is the sequel to Brooklyn. Again, it centres on Eilis Lacey. 20 years have passed since the love story from Brooklyn. She’s Eilis Fiorello now, happily married with two teenage children. One day a man visits to tell her that his wife is having her husband’s baby and that he’ll drop it off with them when it’s born.

Eilis has made a decision about this. She won’t have that child brought up in her family and she hopes that her husband Tony will come to the same conclusion while she goes back to Ireland to visit her mother. Everyone’s lives back there have continued, including Jim Farrell who she was briefly together with in the past.

I liked but didn’t love this one which was a surprise. Usually, I’m instantly in for anything written by Colm Toibin but there was a distance between the main characters which made it difficult to emotionally connect – which comes back to the question of characters and if they have to be likeable or not, or what it is you need to give the reader as consolation if they can’t latch onto their protagonist.

i want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki by baek sehee, Bloomsbury, 2018

I picked this book up because of the ‘runaway Korean bestseller’ exclamation on the front and because I wanted to know what tteobokki is. It’s Korean street food, a hot spicy rice cake.

Baek Sehee has dysthymia which is a state of constant light depression. This is a record of conversations with her psychiatrist over 12 weeks. I think readers of this probably fall into four categories; those who feel seen and heard that someone else is articulating what they are feeling, those who are fascinated with our own internal journeys, those who are trying to stay buoyant with their own baggage and don’t need to be reading about anyone else’s and those who are bored by the granular details of another person’s thoughts.

She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark, faber, 2024

This collection of short stories is clever and original. It’s a dark read. Its inversions and examinations take some of the worst that the modern world has to offer especially when it comes to gender relations and violence. It’s not what my head needs at the moment, so despite the writing and ingenuity, I didn’t get very far.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack –Summer 2024/2025

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Chatto & Windus, 2022

It was impossible for me to not be completely immersed in this and invested in the characters. It’s friendship, creation, loss, collaboration, loyalty and love that isn’t romantic set against the backdrop of late nineties gaming (both the design and playing). A huge surprise to this non-gamer how fascinating it can be. Gave me lots to think about re the creative process and how much of yourself you need to put into art and what that then means for collaborations. So clever. So interesting. A real surprise. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it.

Sidelines by Karen Viggers, Allen & Unwin, 2024

Anyone who has ever stood on the sidelines of a kid’s sports team will find familiar territory here. The junior development league sounds exhausting. As the stakes get higher for this team, what is supposed to be a game, is clearly much more, at least for the adults involved.

We’ve all got a story behind us and with each chapter dedicated to a parent or team member, actions and behaviour make more sense. This looks at kid’s sport as a way for parents to live out unrealised ambition, personal inadequacies, and competitive tendencies. A sobering take on gender, ambition and how we all play a part in turning something fun completely toxic.

Stoneyard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, 2023

I’m always curious about what a writer is trying to nut out for themselves when they write their novels. Some circle around the same themes, some keep core ones and swap others in and out.this novel feels very much like a reckoning with ageing and mortality, looming environmental changes and disaster, regret, forgiveness and grief.

There’s plenty of time for our main character to reflect on all of this after she joins an isolated religious order near her hometown in regional New South Wales. Contemplative, she works over and again areas of her life she hasn’t yet reconciled, rhythmic and reflective just like her days. 

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, Viking, 2021

Elle Bishop and her family have summered in Cape Cod for generations. One summer she meets Jonas. The two spend all their time together. In the opening pages we find her with three children and a husband. It’s 20 years after she and Jonas met and the night before she slept with him for the first time.

Get ready, you’ll go forwards, backwards and side-step into her parents’ early life and subsequent marriages. It builds up all the layers of what leads to the night between her and Jonas and what will happen after it. I was totally absorbed by all these characters and didn’t want our time to be over.

I spent Christmas day in bed with food poisoning (I know, it feels like a metaphor for something) and was so happy to have this tome on loan from my sister – the absolute perfect summer read (bed-ridden or otherwise). As an Australian reader, the only thing I wished was that I could read something equally as nostalgic and reminiscent of an Australian summer.

Diving, Falling by Kylie Mirmohamadi, Scribe, 2024

One of the reasons I miss Twitter is because I no longer see Kylie Mirmohamadi’s insightful tweets about writers, writing, Virginia Woolf, nature, food and family among many other things. She’s on Instagram but as anyone who remembers the good times knows, you can’t share in the same way. However, you can still find her Writers on Writing list which is ever expanding and an amazing resource for those who love reading about personal process. So, it was like a peep-behind-the-curtain to see a lot of her loves share space in Diving, Falling, her debut novel.

Leila Whittaker is now the widow of a famous Australian artist. He is almost as large in death as he was in life. Leila also has two adult sons. As they all navigate their grief, Leila decides she’s had enough of the eternal people-pleasing and passive acceptance of the-way-things-are. This covers the thorny territory of a family renegotiating their dynamics as new people come into their lives and old habits are shed.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton, Fig Tree, 2023

Alan and Jen have just broken up. Alan didn’t see it coming and is completely heartbroken. His career as a comedian has also flatlined and he has too much time to wonder where it all went wrong.

This came with a v high-praise back cover (quotes about tears by page 5, endless laughs and stop-you-in-your-tracks-heart-wrenching), so I feel like a bit of an ice queen for getting a bit ho-hum reading about Alan’s misery. Can’t figure it out. Heartbreak is the absolute worst and I usually have a lot more sympathy for it but his neediness was a lot to carry. I guess now we know how Jen felt.

Florida by Lauren Groff, Penguin Random House, 2018

You’re always in good hands with Lauren Groff. These short stories are so rich and dense, maybe because we revisit some of the characters again, so it’s not just a one-off slice of their life. The narrators are not all likeable which makes for an even more interesting read. And Florida is always there with its extremes of weather, its endemic creatures (god, there’s always a snake curling around something which was a lot for this non-snake lover) and its sticky humidity in this already warming world.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen, Random House, 2013

Rebecca Winter moves to a small forest cabin in upstate New York to cut costs and retreat from the uncertainty that comes with waning creative fame. Her iconic photographic series ‘Still Life With Bread Crumbs’ doesn’t bring in royalties or requests to appear any more.

This is a slow burn but a really nice read about making changes, second chances, creativity and unlikely love.

Stories by Helen Garner, Text, 2017

This is a collection of 17 of Helen Garner’s short stories. I’m a big fan of Garner. I love hearing her speak, reading her diaries and essays and articles but here’s something which feels like blasphemy, I didn’t get beyond the fourth story in this collection. I know. And I really tried but at this end of the year when there are so many other things waiting to be read, if you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it, regardless of the name behind it. I think I needed more narrative and less lens-on-a-moment for it to be a short story. And if the title wasn’t Stories and I was expecting diary entries, would I have read it differently?

Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane, Harper Collins, 2022

Just what the summer ordered, a Mhairi McFarlane rom-com with a cad, a catch, a totally capable and sassy protagonist and of course the possibility of a happy ending. There’s flatmate-proximity, coercive control, online trolling, loyalty in friendship and misleading first impressions. Done. Easy comfort read sorted.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – November 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Sceptre, 2024

I just loved this book to bits n pieces and back again. Sooooooo good! It’s the unlikely but somehow perfect mix of literary, sci-fi and romance touching on ethics, race, identity and your place and actions within a system and society. It’s also incredibly clever and funny. I know! That’s a lot to pack in but you’ll want to read it, even if you’re tired!

Hmm, how to offer the premise and do it any justice? Time travel is possible. It’s just that they don’t know a lot about it’s effects on the human body and mind, so people who are going to die in the past are brought to the present for observation. They’re assigned a ‘bridge’. This person will live with them and help them assimilate into the 21st Century – enter our unnamed female narrator and Commander Graham Gore, a Royal Navy Commander from the failed Franklin Arctic Mission.

All Fours by Miranda July, Canongate, 2024

This is like reading popping candy. It weaves here and there, narrating familiar terrain but in a completely unique way. Our narrator is a semi-famous artist in LA. She’s 45 and it’s all starting to happen, the mood swings, the insomnia, anger, despair, a sudden realisation that desire might be running out, or at least her role in it. So, she doubles down on everything and instead of driving from LA to New York like she planned to do, she stops off and holes up at a roadside motel for 2 weeks after paying $20000 to get it decorated. She’s a total original and this one just needs to be read cos none of this is doing it any justice.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, Corsair, 2022

You might remember from the September Bookstack how blown away I was by Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Well, she’s at it again, being brilliant and writing another story-cycle using some of the cameo characters from A Visit From the Goon Squad.

She explodes it out into the near future where memories and consciousness can be uploaded and shared. It’s another one that you just need to read, cos my words can’t do justice to all the craft and cleverness she gets up to in this one.

Love, Death & Other Scenes by Nova Weetman, UQP, 2024

Nova Weetman is usually known for her YA novels but this beautiful and generous memoir is about loss and grief in all facets of her life as a partner, parent, child and creative.

Anyone who has nursed a loved one to the end will recognise the sickbed vigils, the last days, the doorstep dinner drop-offs and the strange space of post funeral days.

And then this, “So much of parenting young children is waiting for them to grow. And so much of parenting older children is wishing they hadn’t.” Oof. That one left me reeling. Again and again, she hits on the universal in such an eloquent way.

All You Took From Me by Lisa Kenway, Transit Lounge, 2024

Lisa was my November Books at the Bowlo guest with this, her debut psychological thriller. It was great to talk to her about content and craft getting into memory and consciousness, emotional isolation, atmospheric settings and the writing (and re-writing) process.

Clare Carpenter has just woken up in a hospital bed after a serious car crash which killed her husband. There’s a strange man watching her in the ICU ward but her amnesia means she doesn’t know who he is. Clare is also an anaesthetist and as her journey to recover her memory gets more frantic, she considers what risks she would take to find out what happened.

First Year by Kristina Ross, Allen & Unwin, 2024

This one is an intense but compelling ride travelling alongside 17-year-old Maeve in her first year at a prestigious drama school. It’s all there, the leading lady and rising stars, the student-faculty liaisons and power dynamics, the rivalry, the chemistry, the new family created by proximity and shared experience, the vulnerability of young hungry creatives and the very fine line between breakdown and breakthrough when learning a craft. Some of the questions it brought up were like those I had when I watched Miles Teller in the movie Whiplash. How much pushing is OK before it becomes harmful and more an exercise in power and domination than teaching?

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – October 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

Solider Sailor by Claire Kilroy, faber, 2023

Soldier speaks this story Sailor, to her baby boy. She tells him of his birth and the early months of his life. She advises him on what to be and not to be in this world and she apologises for the backdrop to his first years when she and Sailor’s father fought and she nearly let all of them go.

She speaks like a madwoman telling all our truths and she is mad with the lack of sleep, the exhaustion, the relentless repetition of those early days of motherhood and the sudden gender division of labour. This is such a sucker punch of read – visceral and all-consuming. You feel like you’re drowning with her, so maybe one for when you’re out of the trenches and sleeping through the night again yourself.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Random House, 2024

Six astronauts orbit around the earth over a 24 hour period. That’s it. That’s what happens in this book but it is beautiful and poetic and slowed me down until it felt more like a meditation than a narrative.

As they go about their daily tasks, they think about their lives and their loved ones. They look down on the world as life down there wakes up and goes to sleep again. They record the growing fury of a typhoon for meteorological services back on earth and they wonder about the vast space that opens up when they look in any direction other than earth. Grand in content and contained in style, this is like the space version of a Claire Keegan book. Just gorgeous.

Sky Song by C. A. Wright, Pantera Press, 2024

CA Wright was our October Books at the Bowlo guest. It’s always a treat to read a book and then get more insight into it from both a craft and content angle.

Oriane is the Skylark. She sings the sun and a new day into being every morning. To many she is just a myth. Her father has kept her hidden in safety but as she grows so does her curiosity about what is out there beyond their isolated home in the woods. There is another myth. This one is about the Nightingale who sings forth the darkness each evening and if Oriane is real, perhaps the Nightingale is too.

This is based on a Hans Christian Anderson story. I don’t know the original but I’m always curious about what was kept and shed in the rewrite.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maas, Writer’s Digest Books, 2016

Boom!! That was my head exploding into smithereens while reading this book. Donald Maas is New York literary agent and after reading thousands of manuscripts he started to wonder why some brilliantly plotted and/or written books still didn’t make much of an impression on him.

His analysis is that it is the emotional impact and connection with a book which makes it stand out from others. He lays out different methods for achieving emotional engagement and includes excerpts and exercises with each. This book is a brilliant mix of theory and practice and is now in my Top 3 Writing Books. Yep. That’s saying something.

Oh, what are the other 2 you ask. George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I just keep going back to them again and again and I can see how this will be the same.

The Writer’s Library by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager, Harper One, 2020

I know, no one needs more to add to their book list but….I’m a big fan of reading about writers and certainly very happy to take their book recommendations. Each chapter is dedicated to a writer and set out in Q and A style from their early reading to reading which made them want to write, reading which influenced certain works of theirs and what they’re reading now. And instead of having to take notes and add books as you’re reading it, there’s a list at the end of each chapter for all the books which were mentioned!

Just as a warning, it’s an American book, thus US writers only which could be limiting for some readers but I picked and chose a bit and loved that my current fiction fan-girl recipient, Jennifer Egan, was featured.

Wall by Jen Craig, Puncher & Wattman, 2023

An artist returns to Australia to clear out her father’s house after his death. She has plans to turn it into an installation but the reality of a hoarder’s house and the history it holds for her make it a much more complicated task. I’ve only just started this. The stream-of-consciousness prose is densely packed, almost like the narrator’s thoughts are mirroring the clutter she stands in. She jumps from art theory to family memories to her current situation in the same way that she notices and moves on from the objects around her. Not a tired bedtime read, methinks.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The Bedside Bookstack – September 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Corsair, 2010

Is it a novel or a collection of linked short stories? It doesn’t matter. I just loved it. You could feel how much she was enjoying setting limits and making up her own rules – no POV twice, show the passing of time, write a short story in as many different styles as possible. I mean, a short story through Powerpoint slides, that’s just genius!

Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha work together at Sow’s Ear record label. Forwards, backwards and to the side, each chapter gives us a little more of their story through friends, lovers, colleagues and family. How did I not know about this?? It’s been out for ages and even won a Pulitzer. Ne’er mind. Crisis averted. I know about it now and have the Candy House, her latest book, ready to go.

The Love That Remains by Susan Francis, Allen & Unwin, 2020

I had an author chat with Susan Francis for the September Books at the Bowlo and it was such a pleasure to read this book again in preparation. Full disclosure, Susan is the first writer friend I made when I moved to Newcastle, so I write this as a friend and reader.

Her beautiful memoir is proof that the story isn’t always the story and truth is certainly stranger than fiction. She starts out looking for her birth parents, moves to Granada with her husband and then discovers a secret from his past. There’s a lot I’m not saying so you can read the book without any spoilers but it was humbling to share this intimate story.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey, Europa, 2022

This is the first book I’ve ever read which is narrated by a magpie, Tama. It took me a little bit to get used to but then it seemed just as it should be for a magpie to be charting the toxic marriage of his owner and the random fame their magpie-human relationship has brought to the quiet hill-country farm they live on. Tama’s father always warned him about humans. He wasn’t right about all of them but he certainly has a point.

The Bookshop Woman by Nanako Hanada, brazen, 2024

My mistake was thinking that this was a novel, so I struggled and wanted it to be more than it was. Once I realised it was the author’s own story of meeting strangers and giving them book recommendations, it all changed. Then it became a fascinating insight into the rich and diverse world of Japanese books and literature and its own list of suggested reading essays, novels, manga, haiku and so many short story collections! The only disappointment was seeing all the asterisks next to the list of books, meaning they aren’t available in an English version.

I loved that she recommended Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap. I don’t think it was ever published in Australia. I only know about it and have my copy because many moons ago I was an intern at the Berlin International Literature Festival and he was one of the guests. Nice guy. Great book.

Australiana by Yumna Kassab, Ultimo, 2022

Following on from A Visit from the Goon Squad, this is another novel/short story-cycle. When is something a collection of short stories rather than a novel? I guess when there is a continuing narrative. I’m a big fan in any case (another one to check out is Melissa Manning’s Smokehouse).  I love following a character at a point in time, magnifying in on them, then panning back out to follow someone they’ve brushed up against until we put together the bigger picture of a community and its unique characteristics. This is what Yumna Kassab did in her debut The House of Youssef with an urban setting. Australiana comes after she spent 3 years in Tamworth. This feels like a darker collection with heat and drought and desperation driving many of dynamics.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Penguin Classics, 1986

I’ve got a pile of classics sitting at home. Every time I consider reading one, I think of the tiny font and the curly sentences and I’m already tired. But somehow, I made myself pick up Turgenev and give him a go (I loved his short story in the George Saunders collection A Swim in a Pond in the Rain).

The pleasant surprise is that he’s really easy to read. It didn’t feel like the mental effort of some others, like an assigned task to suffer through. Style wise, it was a real pleasure. However, I ditched it more than half way through because I was getting impatient with the long philosophical conversations about nihilism.

I know, I know, the whole point is the generational divide, in this case also showing the new ideas for a new Russia of the sons against the more stuffy traditional and institutional ideas of the fathers but after a while it just felt like men shouting at me and by page 189, I just wanted some peace and quiet.

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas, Bloomsbury, 2016

Yep, I’m back in the ‘Court of…’ spicy romantasy franchise. I’ve heard things taper off in the next few books, so I might leave it here but what I appreciated was that the deeds Feyre committed in the previous book and her transformation from mortal to immortal have left her with some pretty severe PTSD and rather than move on neatly to the next thing, a good portion of this book is a slow recovery from that trauma…..albeit aided by a new love interest.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – August 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

Loved & Missed by Susie Boyt, Virago, 2021

Ruth’s daughter Eleanor is an addict. Their absence of a relationship and Ruth’s inability to change it shape her days. But then Eleanor has a baby, Lily, and Ruth gets a second chance to be a mother.

This is a beautiful book. She gets to the essence of it all, life’s beginnings and endings and the muddle that comes in between. She also has the knack for humour when you thought there couldn’t be any and her side-kick best friend is so vivid and possibly my favourite character. It came out in 2021 but seems to be everywhere at the moment. Not sure if it’s because delayed publication in Australia or just a zeitgeist thing.

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan, Faber & Faber, 2007

This was an interesting read. It was definitely Claire Keegan in style but these stories were written before the novels she is so well known for now (Small Things Like These and Foster) and you can see how she has grown as a writer since then. The quiet way of telling a story with space around it is already there as are her observations of Irish life on a local level that speak of bigger cultural themes and there are still sentences that need to be reread or written down just for the truth and beauty in them:

“There’s pleasure to be had in history. What’s recent is another matter and painful to recall.”

And at a wedding, “Any time promise are made in public, people cry..”

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland, Fourth Estate, 2022

Esther Wilding is trying to out run the grief of losing her sister Aura but Tasmania is a small island and she’s got to go home some time. When her mother presents her with Aura’s diary, there are questions that can only be answered by going to Denmark and finding out what happened in the three years Aura lived there.  

Nature and the elements play a starring role in this as well as female relationships and emotional matrilineal inheritance. It made me want to hug my sister and swim in saltwater.

This tale is built around the idea of myths and story, from Denmark and the Faroe Islands in particular, just a note if you don’t fancy fairy tales and origin stories.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas, Bloomsbury, 2015

This is my first foray into spicy romantasy territory and I get the hype. In fact, I finished the book and looked up the rest of the series. Too bad there are another four books, my TBR list is already way too long.

Feyre Archeron is human and has grown up hearing about the fae wars and brutality. The lands of Prythian are strictly forbidden and a one-way ticket for her kind. When she kills a shapeshifter wolf his fae kin, Tamlin, comes to collect her according to an old treaty.

Tamlin is high fae and has a court which is facing its own internal threats. You might spy the enemies(captor)-to-lovers trope which works just as well with magic as it does in any contemporary romcom.  

Love Objects by Emily Maguire, Allen & Unwin, 2021

Lena’s Aunty Nic is her favourite person in the world. She’s the reason Lena feels safe enough to move back to Sydney and go to uni which is way out of her comfort zone. It’s a complete surprise when she discovers Aunty Nic has had an accident, is a hoarder and can’t go home until her place is deemed safe enough. As she is trying to clean things up in wanders her brother who hasn’t been seen much since a prison stint after their dad died.

There’s a lot going on here, multigenerational trauma and grief, sex tapes, sibling rifts and a lot of clutter. But there’s also a family in crisis that looks to their past so they can fix the present.

Fifty-two Stories by Anton Chekhov, Penguin, 2020

It’s Chekhov, right? He’s always going to do what he always does – present something seemingly simple which then adds up to way more than the sum of its parts, so that you’re left asking how exactly he pulled it off.

This is one I love to pick up and put down, a few stories at a time so they can marinate. It’s permanently on my bedside table, like actually up there on the sacred space and not on the dusty floor pile. I know.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – July 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

The Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, One World, 2023

I’m completely spent after finishing this terrifying read. Things that happen in ‘other’ places like emergency law, surveillance, disappearances of loved ones, unlawful detention and state brutality are suddenly happening in Ireland, to a normal family.

Eilish is a working mother of four. She has two teenagers, a tween and a baby. One day her husband is taken into custody and kept as a prisoner. A few weeks later her oldest child is ordered to leave school and attend compulsory military service.

There are mass protests and arrests. It’s unclear who can be trusted and what survival looks like under this new regime. I was quite paranoid and sick reading this and often furious at Eilish for her actions but what would any of us do put into that situation?

It’s a good reminder of why art is important and not to take what we have for granted. 

The Miller Women by Kelli Hawkins, Harper Collins, 2024

Three generations of women drive the narration of Kelli Hawkins’ new psychological suspense. Joyce, Nicola and Abby Miller all have secrets. When one of Abby’s schoolfriends goes missing, her mother Nicola, worries more that Abby might have something to do with it because the Miller women are capable of darker deeds than their gardening and baking lead you to believe. 

I was lucky enough to talk to Kelli at our July Books at the Bowlo about some of the inspiration behind this story and her process. It’s hard to such much without straying into spoiler territory but it has great female dynamics and questions of family and inheritance at its core.

Mrs Hopkins by Shirley Barrett, Allen & Unwin, 2024

Two years ago, I gifted myself Invocations #3, an art work by Helen Brancatisano when my brilliant cousin, artist Miriam Cullen, held an exhibition with her. It’s three girls in a tree and some abstract cockatoos in the sky. It looks like such a moment of joy and freedom and seemed like a good reminder to play and stop taking everything so seriously.

Then Helen told me that it was part of a series she did based on Cockatoo Island where girls had been locked up for being poor and homeless. The girls rioted about their conditions and the picture was actually them trying to get the attention of a busy working harbour. I liked it even more, now it was also about pluck, freedom and courage.

So, I was thrilled when I found out that Shirley Barrett’s final book was about the Bileola School for girls on Cockatoo Island, the girls who live there and Mrs Hopkins the new school mistress. I ripped through this horrified by colonial NSW and the powers that be but fascinated by the story of those on the island.

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff, Hutchinson Heineman, 2023

This book is a love letter to nature and the resilience of the human spirit. A young girl is running, escaping a plague-ridden frontier town in 1600s America. Her hunger and fear keep her moving ever onwards through the unfamiliar wild country. It’s winter but she is clever and resourceful and after so much time in the natural world, she becomes part of it.

This is written almost like a fairy story, not the Disney kind but one of the older M-rated ones. It’s visceral and dark with danger all around and no guarantee of a happy ending.

Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings, Orion, 2021

Magnolia Parks is part of London’s It scene. She’s gorgeous and rich and so are all her friends, particularly BJ Ballentine. BJ and Magnolia are made for each other and were together for years. But then he broke her heart. Now ‘it’s complicated’ and they spend a lot of time doing what people who love/hate each other do.

If only toxic relationships didn’t make for such addictive reading, cos really most of the characters are repulsive and treating each other badly and every cliché of rich and entitled you could imagine…and yet I kept turning those pages like I press ‘next episode’ on a streaming series.

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, Profile Books, 2019

As a reader and a writer, book shops are one of those cherished places. Secondhand bookshops maybe even more for the serendipity factor. You can’t know what you’re going in for because you can’t know what you’re going to find.

I like these bookseller books that diarise their days. Each one has it’s own feel depending on where it is. Shaun Bythells’ bookshop is in Wigtown, Scotland. It’s frequented by locals and tourists and from his anecdotes it’s clear that ‘there’s naught as queer as folk’.

His buying trips were also a good read. He spends a lot of time driving out to remote castles and manors houses looking through their libraries, uncovering originals and rarities. For someone in Australia, it’s crazy how calm he is about having books from the 16th Century on the shelves!!

I did a little search and was happy to see that his bookshop is still open. He survived COVID and thus far the Amazon encroachment of all things retail. Wigtown is also home to The Open Book, an airbnb you can rent if you want to run a book shop for a week – apparently booked out for the next 3 years. Who knew?

Cool Water by Myfanwy Jones, Hachette, 2024

The Tinaroo Dam is a piece of history for the Herbert family. Victor Herbert was the butcher for the temporary town that serviced the workers. His son, Joe Herbert, used to take the family there and now his son, Frank Herbert is there for his daughter’s wedding.

But history isn’t water under a bridge (or low in a dam) and each of the Herbert men lives with ghost of the previous generation.

Set in the 1950s and now, this is the gnarly landscape of family dynamics and all that’s been left unsaid for too long. Oh humans!

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – June 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

In the Middle of the Fields by Mary Lavin, New Island, 2016

Mary Lavin is known as one of Ireland’s best short story writers. Colm Toibin writes a beautiful introduction in this edition, about how she doesn’t fetishise Ireland for foreign readers (many of her stories appeared in the New Yorker). She writes more about people’s dynamics and inner life than politics or culture. Her Irish women especially, are more than the stereotype of widow, tired mother or spinster. She’s so evocative, conjuring isolation or grief or joy in a few simple sentences and then keeping it there while she moves the story ever onward.

I’m dipping in and out of this collection, having decided that gorging on an anthology like I often do is theft to the individual stories. Consuming them one after the other doesn’t let me savour them or reflect.

The Raptures by Jan Carson, Penguin, 2022

It’s early nineties Northern Ireland and the Troubles are in full swing. Every night on the telly there are stories about bombs and fighting. In the small town of Ballylack a primary school child gets sick and dies. Then another one. And another. These are Hannah’s classmates. Her family aren’t Catholic or Church of England. They’re Evangelical, so she was already an outsider before the dead kids started talking to her.

There’s communities, conflict, faith and magic realism in this book, which sound like much more of an awkward mix than they turn out to be on the page.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, Vintage Books 2018

Celestial and Roy have only been married 18 months when he’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit and sentenced to 12 years in prison. They remain married on paper but by the time he’s released early, they haven’t spoken in two years.

This is a big one. Like a Tolstoy tableau, one marriage plays out as a reflection of modern America with race, incarceration, inherited trauma and questions of loyalty and ownership at its heart.

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson, Viking, 2021

In a South London pub a man and woman meet. Something starts between them, a connection that dodges definition. They’re both creatives, both scholarship kids who tried to fit in with their white peers, both sick of their friends matching the appearance of someone police are looking for.

This reads like stream of consciousness, a rhythmic parallel to the soundtrack of our narrator. It’s a very cerebral read and I picked it up with a flu fogged head and gave it a good go. I stayed the course for more than 100 pages but then abandoned ship. Not for me for right now.

The Grazier’s Son by Cathryn Hein, Harlequin, 2024

As mentioned, it’s been a bit of month, so it was nice that this month’s Books at the Bowlo author was rural romance writer Cathryn Hein. After hearing her talk about daydreaming along country roads, hero helicopter pilots and vintage fashion, I thought this might be just what I needed. Joining Stirling and Darcy on their bumpy road to happiness via embezzlement, infidelity, injuries and a surprise inheritance from an estranged father was just what I needed amidst my sneezing and sniffles.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Grove Press, 2015

A communist sleeper agent narrates this story during occupied Vietnam and in America after the fall of Saigon. I haven’t finished it yet but it’s right down there in the details. His voice is so distinct, incredibly dry yet conflicted about the compromises that are made and the moral questions of what he does. The bloody mess of war is not some aerial shot in this book. It’s right up close. The body count keeps climbing but unlike the faceless and expendable lives in an action movie, these people have names and families and lives they were living.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – May2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

It’s more a small collection than bookstack this month. I need to get onto research for my manuscript and had to put a ban on novels because I just wasn’t getting the research reading done. But one cannot live on obligatory reading alone, so there are also some essays and interviews I’m including.

Beside Myself – An Actor’s Life by Antony Sher, Nick Hern Books, 2001

The main character in my manuscript is an actor, thus the multiple actor autobiographies I’m reading. This one has a lot about Sher’s early life in South Africa, his family dynamics and their formative nature. He had a distant father who never seemed to understand who he was and a mother who always championed him and believed he was destined for greatness.

I’m always curious about people’s emotional excavations into who they are and how they got to be that way but for my purposes, the real gold was in his detail about productions. It’s fascinating the fragile ecosystem that exists within this web of people brought together so intensely for a period of time. I also loved reading about the emotional preparation for his roles, how some of them fit and others never quite worked.

A lot of his work was with the Royal Shakespeare Company, so it was also a refresher on plays I hadn’t read in decades and an insight into others which I’d never read or seen staged.

Shakespeare – The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench, Michael Joseph, 2023

Continuing on with Shakespeare is Judi Dench’s book which is an extended and ongoing interview with actor and director Brendan O’Hea. If Shakespeare doesn’t interest you, then move on because the title gives it away.

This is two people who know and love their stuff asking all the right questions and giving the answers that you can after a professional acting life that has spanned decades. Again, the detail and deconstruction that is needed by the actor when playing a character is incredible to read about and gives me a much deeper understanding of the texts.

Dear Life by Alice Munro, Vintage, 2012

Alice Munro died this month and so in honour of one of the greatest modern short story writers, I had to pull a collection out in memoriam. What is there to say? She’s measured and quiet in tone but there’s nothing empty about her stories. There is always much more going on under the surface and she’s a great witness to life’s contradictions and unpredictability. After this reminder, it’s time to go back to some of her earlier collections which I haven’t read yet.

Paris Review articles on Alice Munro

The Paris Review is famous for its interview series with writers The Art of Fiction. These are extended interviews written out in complete question and answer format. For a limited time the Alice Munro – Art of Fiction 137 interview is available for all to read.

The Paris Review also wrote an obituary for her What a Goddam Writer She Was as well as an essay Inside Alice Munro’s Notebooks.

Jenny Erpenbeck on the Death of her Mother, Granta

I’ve also been thinking about Jenny Erpenbeck’s personal essay in Granta Open Book-keeping ever since I read it.

She writes about her mother’s death and then in detached but loaded detail continues with the bureaucracy you need to deal with after someone dies. It’s a lot of work to finalise someone’s life and though the person isn’t left, their ‘things’ still are.

This resonated with me because my mum has recently gone into residential aged care and I’m going up and down between Newcastle and Sydney slowly clearing her place out with my brother and sister. There’s a lot to discover about a person you only knew as a parent and plenty of decisions about ‘things’ and ‘stuff’, what matters and means something and does that then mean you have to keep it.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The bedside bookstack – April 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

Aphrodite’s Breath by Susan Johnson, Allen & Unwin 2023

Susan Johnson and her mother pack up their lives in Brisbane and move to the Greek Island of Kythera together.

This book is alive with the sensual delights of life – eating, drinking, swimming, dancing and romancing. It’s also a contemplation of self, family dynamics, ‘home’, the writer’s life, how to live a good life and of course the Greek Island Kythera which is as much as main character as Susan and her mother Barbara.

The island with its seasons, history, culture and unique landscape is so vividly conjured and all the while there is the evolution and examination of her relationship with her mother. How can we be adult parents and still find ourselves almost back at the beginning with our own parents? There is so much love in this relationship but she’s honest enough to write in the frustrations and distances which also shape their time together on Kythera. Such a beautiful  and rich book. I’m still thinking about it.

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

This book runs as two parallel narratives of Lexie moving through Soho and the London art world in the 60s and Elina and Ted both finding their way in the aftermath of the traumatic birth of their first child. The impatient reader in me wanted to join the dots sooner than the story allowed.

Maggie has written plenty of dual and multi narrative novels but I think my impatience was that each narrative was smaller than hers usually are, couples with a few people clustered around them. I think what I really missed were her vast and fascinating family dynamics. For me, that’s when she is the absolute master, writing about families.

All the Unloved by Susan McCreery, Spineless Wonders, 2023

Thank you, Spineless Wonders for championing short form fiction! I’m a huge fan of short stories and novellas but I know that they’re a notoriously hard sell for publishers and most of the big houses avoid them. Thus, go you good thing Susan, to have a stand-alone novella out in the world!

Jade lives in block of flats with her mum in 90s Bondi. She’s awkward and adolescent and doesn’t need everything else around her to be changing too but it is. Her step-dad moves out. So does one of the women from the couple upstairs. An interesting but introverted tenant moves in downstairs and then there’s her mum’s client Rebecca, who everyone seems just a little in love with.

Darling by India Knight, Penguin 2022

This was soooo much fun!! Nancy Mitford fans, not sure how purist you are but if you’re open to a modern retelling of The Pursuit of Love, then pick this one up. Everyone else, you’re fine because you won’t be holding it up against anything else.

Darling is about lovely eccentric rich people in the English countryside and eventually London and beyond as well as truly awful rich people but everyone, even the cringey cameos are just so vivid and enjoyable. The Radlet family especially move on at a merry clip with their own vernacular and idiosyncrasies and it’s just such a pleasure to join them.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Vintage Classic, 2000

It’s tricky for a book that comes to you loaded with its own success and place in the canon. I thought it was time I read some Vonnegut and I have now. I didn’t love and didn’t hate it. He’s definitely doing some interesting things with non-linear plotlines, which would’ve been even more original at the time of its original publication in 1969.

The narrator, who says he’s the author, wants to write about the fire-bombing of Dresden during the second world war but he can’t seem to get into it for himself. So, he writes about Billy Pilgrim instead who is being held as a POW but is simultaneously flashing forwards and backwards in life to another planet as well as old age. I know, I know, it’s metaphor and satire and a very specific comment on the atrocity of war. Just not what I was expecting it  to be.

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent, Sandycove, 2023

This thriller comes with plenty of accolades and No 1 spots. It’s pacy, original and a good read. Sally Diamond has problems with empathy and connection. Since her mum died, she’s lived an isolated life with her father on the outskirts of a small Irish town. He tells her that when he dies, she should put him out with the rubbish, so when he dies, that’s what she does. The police get involved and it hits the headlines because Sally Diamond is not who she thinks she is.

For me, it was a reminder why I’m not a big thriller reader. As good as a story may be, in the brief time I have available to read, I don’t think I love hanging out with the darkness and crimes that you need for the tension and twists to work.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to hear about the next bookstack, subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter below.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.