Tag: suggested books

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.

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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 – March 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

Water by John Boyne, Doubleday, 2023

I’ve never read anything by John Boyne before but plenty of other people obviously have because the list of books he’s published comes in at 23 (including the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas).

You learn a thing or two after writing that many books and most noticeable for me was how well he did a first-person female narration. Vanessa Carvin goes to a remote Irish island to escape her recent past and think about her role in it. Initially all you know is that her husband is in jail and that there was scandal surrounding his trial. She had two daughters but one of them is dead and the other one won’t return her messages.

This is a great read about power, the choices we make and the silence we allow.

North Woods by Daniel Mason, John Murray 2023

You know me. I love short stories, so I love a novel which can stand as it is or be seen as a collection of connected shorts and you can’t deliver four centuries of a single house deep in the woods of New England, Massachusetts without changing characters. This was a lush book. His use of language is exquisite and I always know I’m in the hands of a master when I grieve one story ending but am completely absorbed by the next one within a few pages. How to pick a favourite from the apple-obsessed ex-serviceman, the spinster twins, the fated bohemian lovers or the fake mystic who actually saw ghosts. I loved the variation of the inhabitants and the different styles used for their narratives, a mix of straight first-person, diaries, letters, third-person, newspaper articles and even an imagined speech given to a local historical society. It also includes the most intense insect sex-scene (or perhaps the only) I’ve ever read.

Tin Man by Sarah Winman, Tinder Press, 2017

I love Sarah Winman. I should say that right up front. After reading Still Life I’ve been steadily reading through her back catalogue and listening to interviews. This is great one on The First Time Podcast. Tin Man has been hailed by many people as one of her best. I liked it. A lot. But I didn’t love it as much as the others. It is a story of grief and loss and all the things which never were. Amidst that of course, is life and love and all the things which happen instead but the weight of Ellis and Michael’s recollections as they look back on their lives was too heavy for this reader at this time.

Women & Children by Tony Birch, UQ, 2023

Joe Cluny isn’t looking for trouble. The nuns just don’t appreciate his spirit. He has scars on the palm of his hands from their punishment which he hides from his mum. When Joe’s Aunt turns up at their house bloody and bruised, he sees the violence men are also capable of. His mum and sister are the strongest women he knows, but even they are powerless to stop it happening again. It’s a loss of innocence to realise that it’s it everywhere despite the silence, women and children on the other end of men’s violence.

I’m looking forward to hearing Tony Birch talk about this book at the Newcastle Writers Festival next week.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2006

Yep, it’s back-to-back Maggie for me. I think I only have one or two books left on her backlist and one of them is already sitting on the bookstack for next month (The Hand That First Held Mine). If you’re looking for objectivity, don’t read any further. I just love her!

Esme Lennox is what they used to call ‘a handful’. She was an embarrassment to her colonial family in India and on moving to Edinburgh, becomes the cross her grandmother must bear. At 16, she is committed by her father to an institution and remains there for 60 years. When the facility is closed down, she’s released into the care of Iris, her sister’s granddaughter who never even know she existed. Families. Siblings. Secrets. And the dynamics are all pitch perfect. Told you she can’t do any wrong for me. 

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The bedside bookstack – February 2024

What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.

This Must be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2016

She’s at it again. Maggie O’Farrell just being bloody brilliant! She does family dynamics with such precision and nuance. No one is perfect or a monster, more the composite of traits that come from their life experiences.

What I loved about this one was that each chapter was from the POV of different characters, sometimes really on the sideline but bumping up against our main crew in life somewhere. It could easily be read as a collection of short stories within a novel and as a short story lover, I’m a big fan of that – something Anne Tyler also does quite a bit.

I am. I am. I am. By Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2017

Yes, it’s back-to-back Maggie for me! And guess what? She’s just as good with non-fiction as fiction. This is seventeen essays about brushes with death, hers and those close to her. It makes for beautiful reading and is a reminder of our mortality and how slender and unknown our relationship with it is. I loved it.

Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar, Picador, 2023

Till is running. She has been ever since her best friend was taken from their Kindergarten playground by a man. When she finds an abandoned train station in a remote South Australian town, she stops and starts to make a home. But there’s someone looking for her and as serious assaults start to happen in this quiet middle-of-nowhere town, she knows they’re getting closer. I read this book constantly looking over my shoulder.

As in her previous novels, the environment both natural and built plays its own part in the narrative. There’s also an interesting parallel memory narrative when Till spent lockdown with her parents. Lockdown is in novels now and always it’s interesting to read the fictionialised version of something we all lived through.

Eventually Everything Connects by Sarah Firth, Joan, 2023

This graphic novel of eight essays on uncertainty was something completely different in my reading pile. I’ve never experienced stream-of-consciousness in a visual format but this was it, a completely honest, curious, reflective and unpredictable journey along Sarah Firth’s thoughts on everything from the self to desire and joie de vivre. I loved her letting us be in her head!

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, Affirm Press, 2017

Did I mention I’m writing something which has an actor as a character? So, anything I’m reading which is also about actors, theatre, film etc, is great because it also counts as research. Tick.

A cross between Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and a complete edition of Shakespeare,

this is set in a prestigious American Arts college where the acting students only do Shakespeare. The seven 4th year students live and study in each other’s pockets. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, you’re going to love how effortlessly they can chat cutting lines from comedy to tragedy. But it’s their final year and while some students want to get out of type, others are finding it harder to distinguish between what’s real and on stage. Things get more tense and build until there’s a real body in the lake. If you don’t love Shakespeare or have much interest in behind-the-curtain details, then you’ll do a lot of skipping, but it was a total page-turner for me.

Harmoney by Whitney Hanson, Penguin Life, 2023

This collection of poetry is by a young TikTok poet. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like poetry which makes me feels stupid. None of that here. These poems read more like diary entries. Thoughts. Asides to oneself. They are heavy with the grief of losing a best friend, which she did when she was 16. She’s 24 now and so time has passed and though the loss is still there, it shares a space with life, with the sun rising and bare feet on dry soil, with the shade of a favourite tree. The loss was very heavy to read page after page and we’re all just trying to stay afloat, so halfway through, I was happy to flick forwards and read the more hopeful pieces.  

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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 – July 2022

What’s teetering on the bedside bookstack this month

Still Life by Sarah Winman, Random House, 2021

I’m going to say it, I think this is a masterpiece. Book of the year, decade, maybe the Century thus far? Art is supposed to move you and I’ll feel the tremors of this book for a long time.

Still Life spans 30 years and moves from London to occupied Italy and France and then back to liberated Florence. During the war, young English soldier Ulysses Temper crosses paths with ageing art historian Evelyn Skinner. It sets off a chain of events that echo through the decades and change both of their lives. At its heart (and this book has just sooo much heart) it’s about love, art, war, family, Florence, food and Forster (E. M. that is).

I’m not doing it any justice. You’ll laugh and cry within a page. Just read it, read it, read it! But not too fast. These characters will stay with you. Savour and enjoy because saying goodbye to people that you love is never easy.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Bloomsbury, 2011

I’ve never read the Odyssey, always intended to but it seemed like hard work. I also get very confused very quickly about all the players both mortal and immortal and apparently I’m not the only one, so Madeline Miller, Classics Professor, has taken the story of Achilles and written this gorgeous version for us in the modern world.

And somehow, I can keep track of the Kings and Goddesses with their eternal feuds and grudges. She fills in the background details seamlessly, not as speech-bubble asides but as an organic part of the narrative.

It’s a tale as old as time, love, war, pride, prophecy. We’re so used to happy endings that the chaos of the gods is sometimes hard to take but we love and lose within these pages as the prophecy always said we would.

Could. Not. Put. Down. Loved it. So glad that I read this 10 years after it came out, it meant I could move straight on to her next book Circe.  

Circe by Madeline Miller, Bloomsbury, 2018

Other attempts to read Greek mythology feel like a listing of lineage and I can’t hold the connections together but Madeline Miller slows it right down and sticks to the story of one player. Thus, all the other knowns, the heroes and immortals wash in and out and you can follow the links and legacies, the unions and betrayals. And for all the gods and their caprice, there is a timelessness to the themes, ideas of home, loyalty, inheritance, purpose, power, pride. It seems the gods share more with us than they think.

I loved that she brought a female goddess to the centre of the story and made the heroes and gods orbit around her journey for a change. Exile, motherhood, power and purpose, family, home, love, sacrifice. Circe lives it all in her eternity. She’s a fascinating character and it’s a pleasure to share her exile with her. And I guess now I just have to wait and hope that Madeline Miller will have something else out soon.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Bloomsbury Circus, 2019

Such a great book! How did she do it? Kiley Reid gives us race relations in contemporary America with the moral ambiguity ratchetted up because race sits at the centre of it all, explosive and undiscussed.

Emira is twenty-something and drifting. She has multiple part-time jobs, one of which is babysitting for a wealthy white family. Things aren’t the same after she’s accused of kidnapping the child that she’s looking after.

This book is whip-smart and has no easy answers. There are parts that are a slow train wreck. You’ll laugh and cringe and have plenty to think about. It’s also not easy to have small children as narratives characters but the relationship between Emira and 3 year-old Briar is just so well done.

Are you my mother? By Alison Bechdel, Jonathon Cape, 2012

You may know the Bechdel test for film and tv? Or not, you can look it up on the link. Anyway, this is that Bechdel. This is the graphic-novel memoir about her relationship with her mother that came out when she was writing a memoir about her father and is really an access all-areas pass to her trying to figure out with her psychoanalyst and some help from Virginia Woolf, Donald Winnicott and Freud, among others, what the relationship is that she has with her. This is dark, visceral and about as honest as it gets. They’re both so fascinating and yet their dance is the familiar one of an unfulfilled parent who was constrained in her own way by society and her family who then can’t give their child what they need. And something about it in the graphic novel format lays it all the more bare. Humans, we’re fascinating, aren’t we?

People from my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami, Granta, 2020

This is a slim collection of linked short stories from one of Japan’s most popular contemporary novelists. She’s known for her offbeat literary fiction which I wasn’t aware of because I haven’t read her before. I’d agree. If you like your tales short and quirky with a touch of magic realism, then these are for you.

I love linked collections. I like the time-lapse of people and a place over the years. This starts as an old post-war neighbourhood not far from Tokyo.  It’s subject to the usual gentrification that comes with proximity to a big metro city. I like how the ghosts of some of these characters remain (both figuratively and literally) despite all the change.

Machines like me by Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape, 2019

He likes a moral clusterf*#k, doesn’t he, ol’ Ian McEwan? And AI presents plenty of moral and ethical dilemnas that I’ve enjoyed watching in movies like Zoe and ExMachina. This book is an interesting set up with a love-triangle and questions of truth, justice and human unpredictability, contradictions and hypocrisy.

Charlie buys a new model AI called Adam. Adam falls in love with Miranda, Charlie’s girlfriend. Miranda’s lies have put someone in prison but she had her reasons. How does machine learning that is sentient interpret bad things done for a good reason? People doing wrong things for noble reasons and doing the right things for the wrong reasons is interesting territory and that’s where this book as it its best but I did a bit of skimming and skipping in this one. There was a lot of philosophising and background on AI and computer engineering that just took me too far from the narrative.

The Best of me by David Sedaris, Little, Brown, 2020

I love David Sedaris, so was very smug about settling into this tome of a collection. But then I skipped the first piece, the second, the third, read the fourth, skipped another three, read the next one…

I’m not a big skipper but I realised, I usually read his non-fiction. This collection has a lot of fiction that just didn’t hit the right note for me.

I think David Sedaris is at his best when he’s writing about himself and his family, so maybe go for one of his non-fiction collections instead – apart from Squirrel seeks Chipmunk of course, which is fiction and a whole lot of fun.

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10 Essay Collections for Can’t-Concentrate Readers

Rescue Reading for Troubled Times Part 5

This week’s rescue reading is suggested essay collections. Don’t worry, none of them will feel like homework. I’ve cast a wide net and there’s something for everyone with travel writers, food writers, ground-breakers, satirists, novelists and quiet observers.

If this doesn’t sound right for you try last week’s Men’s Mixed Bag of Male Short Story Writers, 10 female Australian short story writers you should read or 20th Century female short story writers.

The Details – On love, death and reading by Tegan Bennett Daylight, Scribner, 2020

And that’s exactly what this beautiful book of essays is about. She’s writing as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a reader and a writer and she’s so generous with us in what she shares whether it’s her mother’s last days, her love of Helen Garner or George Saunders or childbirth-related vaginal issues.

Her eloquence and intelligence are such a pleasure to read. There was no snacking on these essays. I devoured them in two nights. This one was also on my August bedside bookstack.

True Stories by Helen Garner, Text Publishing, 1996

This collection gathers together pieces she has written from over 25 years. The subject matter jumps from giving birth to visiting a morgue, to a school dance. But it doesn’t really matter what she writes about, it all turns to gold in her hands. I think this is her true gift, the ability to find moments we all recognise and hold them still for long enough to take in the complete picture.

She’s a joy to read and these pieces are short and thus perfect for rescue reading. I also love the inscription in my second-hand copy of this book: Christina, surround yourself with good friends, good music and good books!! Love Julie.

Her collection Everywhere I Look would be another good rescue reading recommendation.

The New Journalism edited by Tom Wolfe and E.W. Johnson, Picador, 1975

This collection is for anyone interested in how the essays and non-fiction we read today came to be such a varied bunch. New journalism was a step in the direction of creative non-fiction, using literary techniques to capture real events. There’s an extract from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as well as seminal pieces by Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Bloomsbury, 2000

It doesn’t matter how you feel about his food shows, the late Anthony Bourdain could write. These essays are a great read – pacy and perfect if you’re looking for something speedy but satisfying.

This book was like the New Journalism moment for food writing. Here was a chef-written page turner about sex, drugs and haute cuisine. He was unconventional and an insider and I’m glad I now know not to order the seafood special on a Sunday.

The Global Soul by Pico Iyer, Bloomsbury, 2000

I’m a big Pico Iyer fan. He’s my favourite travel writer. I think he has such gentle, generous and intelligent observations of the world and his restlessness and desire to seek out corners of the world is very satisfying for one’s own global curiosity.

This collection is subtitled jetlag, shopping malls and the search for home. It’s an accurate one-liner for what you’ll get in this collection.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Abacus, 2000

Actually, I could just as easily list any of his other collections. These are perfect if you’re looking for something lighter. They’re ridiculous, funny and short.

David Sedaris is a humourist who works his comic magic on ordinary moments. His observations and wit will be a welcome relief from the pandemic plod.

Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole, Faber, 2016

I’ve been dipping in and out of these pieces and get something completely different every time. Politics, photography, travel, history and literature are just some of the topics Teju Cole covers.

So far, I’ve gone from Kenyan coastal folklore to the poetry of Derek Walcott, portrait photography and drones. His curiosity and knowledge blend seemingly disparate ideas so that you’re never quite sure where he’ll lead you until you’re there.

This is the story of a happy marriage by Ann Patchett, Bloomsbury, 2013

It seems Ann Patchett can write non-fiction with just as much talent and flair as she does her fiction. This collection is definitely one for writers and readers who like to get the personal behind-the-scenes tour of a writer’s ideas and life. There are essays on how she wrote her first novel, book tours, opening an independent book shop and her obsession with opera which led to her novel Bel Canto.

Columbus’ Blindness and Other Essays edited by Cassandra Pybus, University of Queensland Press, 1994

This collection was my introduction to essays as a form to be read and enjoyed. As a writer, this was my first taste of essays beyond the high school classroom.

The titular essay has stayed with me all these years. It is written by that master of sentence-level perfection; Delia Falconer. It lays a period of unexplained illness that Christopher Columbus had on the return of his second journey against her father’s Alzheimer’s disease. Both are treated with her usual eloquence and it just blew my mind that such beauty was possible in an essay.

Best Australian Essays, Black Inc, 1998 – 2018

Obviously, a collection that has already curated the best of a bunch over a year should be added to the rescue reading list. The variety of topic, style and tone will keep things interesting and the choice of twenty years’ worth of back catalogue means you’ll always be covering new ground.

Some of these may be out of print or hard to find. You can find the closest library copy of a book, anywhere in the world, through world cat.

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