Tag: reading

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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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The bedside bookstack – November 2023

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

Tom Lake By Ann Patchett, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023

It’s lockdown and Lara’s three daughters have come back home to their cherry farm to help with the harvest. In between the picking they demand that it’s time to hear the full story about their mother’s life as an actress and the summer she spent with Peter Duke who is now a famous actor but was just starting out like the rest of them back then.

This is Ann Patchett. She knows what she’s doing and a dual narrative comes off just fine in her hands. She also knows how to get in there a play around with personal dynamics and ideas about loyalty, love, creative ability, ambition and ageing. I loved the present sibling and family narrative as much as the summer at Tom Lake. This’ll be a great summer read, settle in for some seasonal nostalgia.

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Blatt, UQP, 2022

Sometimes poetry makes me feel stupid. I read it and just can’t find a way in. I don’t like feeling stupid, so I don’t read a lot of poetry. But that’s a shame, because it isn’t all like that and I’m so glad that this won the 2023 Stella Prize and was on the radar enough for me to pick it up.

It doesn’t make me feel stupid. It makes me see the world with fresh eyes. It makes me even more curious about words, sounds, rhythm and pace and how I could use it to better effect in my own writing. She has a lovely way of dusting some words off as well, that have been sitting on the shelf for a long time and deserve to find themselves on a page again.

For me, this collection is at its best when she recalls her father and his 20-year deterioration with Parkinson’s Disease and subsequent death. There isn’t anywhere for poets to hide with the omnipresent ‘I’ and she’s so generous with what she shares.

A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman, Tinder Press 2015

Sarah Winman is one of my literary heroes. I just love her to bits and pieces for bringing Still Life into the world. She has so much heart and humanity in her writing and that’s present not just in a masterpiece like Still Life but also in a quieter novel like A Year of Marvellous Ways.

Marvellous Ways is a 90-year-old woman who lives in a caravan on the sea. Francis Drake is a 28-year-old soldier who had nothing to come back to in England after the war. When their paths cross Marvellous gets a chance to relive the past and Drake finally looks to the future. If you didn’t like Still Life or you need total realism in your narrative then give this one a miss. Otherwise, savour as it’s another Sarah Winman delight.

For any Winman fangirls like me, this interview she did on The First Time Podcast confirms she’s just as warm and wonderful a human as you’d think she would be.

Amy’s Children by Olga Masters, Text Publishing, 1987

I’m ashamed to say that this is the first Olga Masters I’ve read. I feel like I owe more to an Australian female writer publishing at a time when the scene was so male. Ne’er mind. I’ll be looking up her backlist now.

Amy’s husband leaves her and her three young daughters during the Depression. Living on the family farm in rural NSW, she then leaves her daughters to try and find work in Sydney. Work is scarce but no one will hire a married woman, so she makes herself slightly younger and unmarried on any applications.

This is a fascinating insight into Depression and war-time Australia, especially society’s ideas of women and the paths open to them. It’s also a nuanced offering of a mother leaving her children and atypical mother-daughter relationships. People will come down on all sides about Amy leaving her children and pretending when her eldest daughter arrives in Sydney, that she’s actually her sister. Definitely an Australian classic!

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, Virago, 2009

This book opens post World War One in rural Warwickshire. You’ve got the landed gentry in their slowly crumbling Georgian manor, the two house staff they can afford, a local doctor and a family of new money just moved from London.

This is beautifully written. I feel like I’m in an episode of Downton Abbey and so obviously in good hands. However, I’m 136 pages in (of 500) and it’s starting to get creepy. There are unexplained incidents in the house and a few people are starting to admit to feeling a malevolent presence. And it’s around about now that I think I’m going to put it down. I do most of my reading at night and I still haven’t totally squared myself with the dark. I don’t love scary, so I’ve called time on it. All those who like a bit of Henry James’ spooky house spirit vibe, read on.

Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty, Thorsons, 2020

Like many of us, I’m on a journey to get a bit more calm in my life and improve the way I deal with stress. I heard Jay Shetty on the Dear Therapist podcast (my version of voyeurism which also happen to have good life advice) and they talked about this book.

After working in finance in London, he ends up moving to India and being a monk for three years. It isn’t out of the blue – he’d been spending his summers in an ashram throughout uni but it was still a huge life change. He shares his experiences of that time and teachings mixed in with modern examples to offer suggestions to ‘train your mind for peace and purpose every day’. If you’re already interested and open to these ideas, you’ll enjoy it.

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The bedside bookstack – June 2023

What’s teetering on the bedside bookstack this June.

Salt and Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones, Ultimo Press, 2022

I need to take a big breath in just thinking about this book. It was all consuming, in the best of ways. Remote island. Wary locals. Myths and stories of selkies and witches. A mother and her children steeped in their own grief and secrets but looking for a fresh start. Wind and water, endless amounts of both, shaping the people and the place. 

There’s such vitality in this book. I felt buffeted around and truly exhausted by the end but also elated by human connection, history, family, sisterhood and survival. Read it. Read it now!!

There was still love by Favel Parrett, Hachette, 2019

This is the story of a Czech family, sliced in half by history. Eva and Máňa are identical twins. In 1938, their father only has enough money to buy false papers and get one girl out of the country. So, we start in 1980s Melbourne where Eva now lives with her husband and granddaughter ‘Little Red Fox’ then cross to Prague where Luděk lives with his grandmother, Máňa.

It’s Luděk and Little Red Fox who observe the family in their separate worlds and we loop back in time to London and to Prague in the 60s to give us the past and fill in what children can’t know from living in a perpetual state of the present. This is a beautiful story of family, culture, love and loss.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, doubleday, 2023

Well, this was a lot of fun and I demand that someone turn into a movie immediately. Sally Milz is a comedy writer for a long-running late night tv skit show. The pace is fast and the vibe is cynical and platonic. She writes a piece called the Danny Horst effect about the trend of her male co-writers getting together with famous women out of their league. When Noah Brewster, a famous singer, comes on the show, it looks like the rule might not only apply to men. It’s true, Noah is a bit one-dimensional, but this book definitely delivers on its title. Also, incidentally, a fascinating insight into the process of comedy writing, pitching, edits and the making of a weekly tv show.

A little give – the unsung, unseen, undone work of women by Marina Benjamin, Scribe, 2023

This gorgeous book is part memoir, part essay, part feminist meditation on women’s work. She shares the fascinating story of her Iraqi-Jewish émigré parents, how they came to settle in London and how that equalled another sort of settling, of not really being able to stretch and fulfill their potential. Then there is caring for these parents as they age and her experience of child-rearing, menopause and an empty nest. It’s written so beautifully and personally and is full of food for thought about what the philosopher Ivan Illich calls ‘shadow work’.

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The bedside bookstack – September 2022

What’s teetering on the bedside bookstack this month.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Vintage, 1979

Holy heck what are these stories and how have I never read Angela Carter before? High gothic, these stories are fairy tales without any of the froth or frosting. She takes familiar tales (Bluebeard, Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots) as her starting point and then continues with the sex and violence which she believes was originally implied but omitted because of the young audience. This was a specific project, so I’m curious to read what else she has written and see if this is the exception or norm for her.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, Bloomsbury Circus, 2022

Cushla lives in the divided Belfast of the 1970s. She’s a Catholic school teacher but works in her family’s pub in a protestant area. Bombs, checkpoints, an army presence and divided communities are part of her daily life. When she starts having an affair with protestant barrister Michael Agnew, her life and loyalties are split even further.

This was a brilliant read with family, love and politics playing equal starring roles.

The Lessons by John Purcell, Fourth Estate, 2022

It was particularly hard to turn the light off at night or call time on my lunch break when I was reading this one. Starting in the sixties this beautiful book is about sexuality, class, creativity, power and the tangle people make of love.

Full disclosure, I know John from chats on Twitter. His literary knowledge is vast and astute. I love hearing what he’s reading and getting his suggestions. There are nods here to Hardy, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dickens and he did it so well that he also conquered one of my pet peeves – main characters who are writers. Here it didn’t feel lazy or like a chance to show-off. I loved the literary references and inclusions.

If you’re interested in structure, this it’s a great example of how to do multiple POVs (across time). He has chapters narrated by his main characters Jane, Daisy, Simon and Harry and it doesn’t feel cluttered or make you dizzy as you move from one to the next.

Will now have to get my hands on his first book, The Girl on the Page.

The Employees A workplace novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, Lolli Editions, 2020

A lot of rave reviews for this one. It was called experimental but I think it’s just scifi that’s being read by a non speculative-fiction audience. The first few pages just throw you right in there with no context. Apparently, I like more orientation from my narrative because I nearly abandoned ship. I’m glad I read on though, because the transcripts and testimonies from the staff aboard the six-thousand ship were quite beautiful despite the sometimes shocking and tragic events they narrated.

The six-thousand ship is crewed by humans and humanoids. After ’objects’ from the planet New Discovery are brought on the ship, things begin to change. The narrative is a series of interviews with employees about their emotional reactions to the objects and the new longings they have for their old planet. Their statements are a reflection on ideas of work, productivity, purpose, connection, memory and meaning.

Cold enough for snow by Jessica Au, Giramondo, 2022

I took a while to settle into the style of this book where all details are catalogued and it’s intensely internal with memories and thoughts. But after a while, it starts to feel meditative. Everything occurs at the same level whether it’s big or small.

A young woman travels through Japan with her mother. The distance between them is unsettling. I wanted it fixed, bridged by their time together. But that intimacy doesn’t match with everything that’s been revealed about both of them and probably says more about my desire for a mother-daughter relationship happy ending.

Fun House – A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, First Mariner Books, 2006

This graphic novel is the precursor to Alison Bechdel’s Are you my mother? Here, she’s looking at her father, their relationship, her discovery that he was gay and his suicide when she was in her early 20s.

In this graphic novel memoir, she openly likens the the events of her father’s life to written narratives perhaps trying to sift through the fictions herself.  He is an English teacher who loves books and her mum is an actress, so there is an element of life playing out fictitiously. Sometimes it feels like you shouldn’t be reading this. It’s so personal and private…but also fascinating.

Beach Read by Emily Henry, Penguin, 2020

January believes in romance and writes women’s fiction. Gus is a cynic with a literary bestseller behind him. These old college classmates wind up living next to each other and set up a challenge to swap genres and hopefully change their current broke and bookless states.

Again, another book with my ol’ pet peeve, the main character as a writer set up. But it works here. There may have been be a few similes on steroids but there was also a fun story which did a very clever take on popular versus literary fiction, more often played out as ‘women’s fiction versus literary fiction’. How are there such ordinary rom-coms around when there are books like this just waiting to be turned into a script? Movie please someone!

In Moonland by Miles Allinson, Scribe, 2021

Joe’s dad drove his car into a tram stop. Joe wants to understand why and thinks that tracing his ashram days in India, in the 70s, might be the key.

This book takes you backwards and forwards in time through Joe, his dad and daughter. These soul-searching journeys sometimes snag me. People are trying to make sense of the past but ignore their family who need them in the present. So the story moves on but I’m I still back thinking about the women who look after the kids while all the soul-searching happens.

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The bedside bookstack – November 2020

What I’m reading and what’s gathering dust on the bedside bookstack this month.

Sisters by Daisy Johnson, Jonathon Cape 2020

By some random literary luck, I picked up three novels this month that could be loosely described as modern gothic. This one definitely felt like it was a firm fit for the genre. It was as compelling as it was unsettling and at times it felt like I was caught in the pages of a Henry James novel.

July and September are sisters. They’re a slim 9 months apart but their connection is more like twins. After an undisclosed event at school, their mother moves them away to a remote house owned by her ex-husband’s sister. The house has history for all of them but there is a sense of things closing in metaphorically rather than the freedom and release of being remote.

September, the older sister, has a ravenous love and control over July. And the mother, in her own fog of grief and depression fears September as a version of the violent husband who fathered her.

I read it a bit franticly, trying to keep up with the action and get to the final reveal. I read so fast that I was sure I was missing something important and wasn’t quite putting all the pieces together but I didn’t want to slow down and in the end it all comes out.

A warning that it’s always raining – everyone is always wet and muddy and cold. There’s a lot of stumbling around in the dark and I longed for some warm waterproof clothes and a few sunny days to dry everything out. Not very gothic of me, I know.

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld, Vintage 2020

I think this book would have to be in my top five for 2020. I just loved it. It’s the second of my accidental gothic novels this month with parallel narratives about three women all linked by family, location and a haunting. The bristling and elemental Scottish coastline is very much a character too.

Violence and aggression against women is a common thread through these narratives from the extremes of stabbed bodies to the attrition of emotional manipulation and insistence.

There is the idea that these women aren’t to be trusted and so they doubt themselves when really, it’s the men in their lives who should be viewed suspiciously.

They’re often frozen by their own doubts about what’s going on and revert to the shamefully familiar thought -‘I shouldn’t make a big deal about it.”

This was a real ‘wow’ read for me.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, Scribner 2020

Kim Jiyoung is the Korean every-woman. She’s named for the most popular girl’s name in that year. She is a normal girl with a normal family who follows the ‘normal’ path. Normal starts to unravel for her after having a baby when she briefly takes on the persona of other women in her life.

This book reads like a diary or catalogue. It lists, in a very understated way, the norms of Jiyoung’s life as a woman, especially a young one.

The preferential treatment of male siblings, classmates and colleagues made my blood boil. And the endemic misogyny in workplaces was a sobering reminder that things have only changed very recently and the fact that I tutted with recognition when I read it makes me wonder how much has actually changed.

Thank god this book was written and that a million copies have been bought breaking the code of ‘keeping quiet like a good girl’.

Sweetness and Light by Liam Pieper, Hamish Hamilton, 2020

I stayed up late last night to finish this one. It was a real page turner for me and should replace ‘The Beach’ as the definitive backpacker book. I liked the premise of an Australian expat in India who scams tourists in a beach town who then gets himself in too deep. Worlds collide when he runs into an American woman looking for a spiritual experience and a way to move on with her life.  

Anyone who has done any travel, especially backpacking, through south-east Asia, will love the familiarity of it all. Overnight trains, touts and tea stalls, seekers and surfers are all brought to life in a familiar but sometimes uncomfortable light.

I didn’t know how or where this one was going to end – which is a great thing and I recommend it as a perfect summer read.

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings, Picado, 2020

This was the last of my accidental gothic trio of books this month and is by the very talented Kathleen Jennings whose gorgeous and other-worldly cut-paper silhouettes deserve their own mention.

But I digress…Bettina lives in the quiet rural town of Runagate with her mum. Her brothers and father have disappeared and there are rumours about strange creatures that have been sighted nearby.

I have to confess, I was very tired when I read this and was kind of unmoored from the start. I was never clear on when and where we were exactly and what was going on. It was described as part folk tale, part mystery, so there’s an intention for the reader to be unsettled and uncertain. They sure were for me.

The love of a good woman by Alice Munro, Vintage 1998

I picked this up at a garage sale and I love finds like this because they seem to arrive so serendipitously. I’d just been thinking I needed another Alice Munro on my shelf. I only have Dear Life thus far.

Haven’t read a word of it yet but am always happy for the bedside bookstack to have a few anthologies when I’m between books or just want a little slice of something. I’m sure I’ll get some in over the summer break.

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, Vermilion 2016

This tome of a thing is sitting at the bottom of my bookstack. Not at all the kind of book I usually get, I bought it because of the eloquent recommendation that Katherine Colette gave it on the First Time Podcast.

The subtitle is: the tactics, routine and habits of billionaires, icons and world-class performers. So, there’s obviously going to be some interesting stuff in there but how and when to find it?

I already have another couple of writing/business books sitting around unread. The problem is that I do most of my reading at night and this is a ‘work’ book, so when am I going to choose that over the pleasure of a narrative?

Being realistic, it’s only going to get opened if I put it in as part of my working day.

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