18.3.24

The Borrowers Afield and Afloat

 My copies of The Borrowers Afield and The Borrowers Afloat are of course contained inside the omnibus volume I bought at the op shop, so I've picked my two favourite covers to share with you instead. Afield picks up exactly where the first story left off, with the three borrowers racing for their lives from the big house towards the dubious sanctuary of the badger's sett where they think their relatives might be living. 

Most of Afield sees the borrowers camping outside, sleeping in an abandoned boot, gathering berries and hiding from owls as well as humans. This book sees the arrival of the enigmatic Spiller, almost a wild borrower, infinitely resourceful and fortunately willing to help Pod, Homily and Arrietty. Afield ends with the reunion between the Clock family and their relatives -- no longer living in the badger's sett but safely in a cottage.

Alas, the happiness is short-lived, as we discover in Afloat -- the cottage, with only two human inhabitants, can't support all these borrowers, and anyway, as Arrietty learns, even those two are leaving. So our family decamp, with the aid of Spiller, for a thrilling adventure down a drain and along a stream, where they are almost caught again by a human from the previous book, but escape in the nick of time.

I'm so torn about these books, because the adventures are exciting and the whole concept of tiny people, living alongside us and repurposing our discards, is wonderful. But, sadly, some elements of these books are, shall we say, of their time (though I think they could be altered with no harm done) -- Mild Eye, the human who tries to capture them, is a gypsy, with all the squalor and 'foreignness' that implies in children's books of this era. Homily protests that she doesn't want to work 'like a black slave' and a head covering is described as having a 'Klu Klux Klan (sic)' appearance. If I was reading this aloud to a child of today, I would have some explaining to do.

And yet the borrowers themselves are so courageous, inventive and resilient, they are great role models for small people who also feel themselves helpless and vulnerable in a large, unfriendly world.

15.3.24

Blood on the Wattle

I can't believe it's taken me this long to read Blood on the Wattle, Bruce Elder's book about Aboriginal massacres and mistreatment which was first published as far back as 1988. There really is no excuse for saying 'we didn't know;' Elder collects together previously published material into one numbingly awful litany of slaughter.

Bruce Elder is not an academic, but a journalist, and he suggests that this might be the reason why he and this book were largely spared the attacks that the so-called 'black armband' historians received in the 1990s. There is a chapter included in this edition where Elder explains why the objections of the anti-black armband crew don't stand up; it beggars belief that all these stories, passed down through oral history in First Nations communities, should be invented or exaggerated, especially when there is plenty of other proof to be found, as David Marr's Killing For Country demonstrates.

There is no real central thesis or narrative here, it is a painful list of events which do start to almost blur together. Blood on the Wattle is not as beautifully written as Killing For Country, and Elder makes no attempt to pretend he is being 'objective' -- he is sickened and ashamed, and rightly so. Blood on the Wattle has been used as a school text for decades, and yet it does seem that the average white Australian is still ignorant of this basic history, or worse, knows about it and doesn't care.

Feeling depressed.

13.3.24

The Scent of Water

Inspired by the reluctant dragon I borrowed this first edition of The Scent of Water from the Athenaeum. It has a delicious scent itself, the smell of old books, a scent that takes me back to the small dark Mt Hagen library of my childhood. These days, of course, most old books are weeded from the shelves of modern libraries, so they never have the chance to develop this nostalgic fragrance.

I'm sure I've read The Scent of Water before. It has so many ingredients of a classic Elizabeth Goudge novel -- it may even be the ur-Goudge of which all the others are mere shadows. There are the delightful children, one sensitive and at least one slightly comic and ernest; a seeker (Mary Lindsay, a middle aged single woman who comes to live in the village); someone bitter (Valerie, who sees herself as a martyred wife to her blind husband); a gifted artist (Valerie's writer husband Paul). There is the refuge of the church, a forgotten history of saintly monks, the wonders of the natural world.

The Scent of Water features several varieties of what we would now recognise as mental illness. Mary's older relative, also called Mary Lindsay, suffered from episodes of 'madness' -- perhaps bi-polar disorder. The Vicar's sister, Jean, struggles with acute anxiety. Valerie is probably depressed (luckily, it only takes some masterful behaviour from her husband to snap her out of it). The no-good son of the heroic old couple would probably today be diagnosed with PTSD; in 1963, when the novel was published, he has no support or sympathy at all after his traumatic war experiences, except from his indulgent parents.

But while Goudge can be judgemental, she is also compassionate, and she strives to understand why each of these flawed characters has ended up the way they are. Indeed, the explicit message of The Scent of Water is that love alone is not enough, without understanding.

The miniature treasures featured in this novel (the 'little things') would make perfect gifts for Borrowers; both books also include a cat named Tiger!

10.3.24

Killers of the Flower Moon

I managed to struggle through the film version of Killers of the Flower Moon -- at three and a half hours, it was too long to watch in one sitting. I did appreciate the elaborate, expensive scene setting and the cultural details, but the action moved at treacle pace, and Leonardo di Caprio gives me the irrits (sorry, Leo). However, it's such a horrifying and intriguing story that I wanted to know more.

David Grann wrote the book on which the film was based, and unbelievably, the facts turn out to be even more shocking than the movie version. When the Osage tribe were forced onto what seemed to be worthless land in Oklahoma, no one dreamed that they were sitting on a fortune in oil fields. Before long, the Osage were sharing immense wealth from 'headrights' -- unalienable rights to the minerals beneath the land. However, the white townsmen found ways to grab themselves some of that wealth -- by grossly inflating the prices of goods sold to Indians, by having themselves appointed as 'guardians' to control Osage spending (no full blood Osage was deemed to be 'competent' to manage their own finances) and, most horrifically, by marrying into an Osage family and then conspiring to murder them so they would inherit their fortune.

The film focused on one family -- Mollie Burkhart and her sisters, Mollie's white husband Ernest, and Ernest's conniving uncle Bill Hale, a powerful local figure who was eventually convicted of plotting the murders of several Osage. However, Grann's work shows that there was a wide conspiracy to plan, carry out and cover up Osage killings, and that probably the victims numbered in the hundreds rather than the dozens. It's a truly chilling tale and while Ernest Burkhart and Hale ended up in jail, it's likely that many more men escaped justice entirely.

What's most distressing is the utter cold-blooded racism behind the murders, and the deep, scarring paranoia and fear that this history has left behind for Osage descendants.
 

7.3.24

The Borrowers

I'm trying not to buy new books this year -- I have the most enormous backlog to work through:

Plus, now I have a whole new library to explore... But when I found this Borrowers omnibus in the op shop for $2, I just couldn't resist. I loved the original Borrowers book as a child, and I managed to acquire The Borrowers Afloat from a library book sale years ago, but some of these six titles I have never even read before. It would have been churlish to walk away -- right?

Anyway I have now reread The Borrowers and I remember why I was so enchanted. There is something magical about a world in miniature and I remember that what captivated me most as a child was the way that Pod, Homily and Arriety repurposed human possessions for their own uses -- a cotton reel as a table, postage stamps for art, sliced chestnuts toasted like bread, a ring worn as a tiara. It's a very simple story, bookended by the device of Mrs May telling the Borrowers' tale to young Kate. I had completely forgotten Kate and Mrs May, which is surprising as I tended to latch on to any character sharing my name.

Funnily enough I am also reading Elizabeth Goudge's The Scent of Water, which features a collection of 'little things' -- tiny precious treasures which cast a spell over several generations of little girls. And my daughter, though not a little girl anymore, has just been putting together a miniature scene in a tin, which also clearly caters to this thirst for the tiny and detailed. I wonder where this fascination comes from and what purpose it might serve, and whether it is truly universal?

May Norton said that she began thinking of the Borrowers as a story during the years of World War II; perhaps the experience of feeling very small and vulnerable beneath falling bombs triggered a fellow feeling for these very small and vulnerable, though resilient and inventive, people?


5.3.24

Square Haunting

A loan from my dear friend Chris McCombe which I have enjoyed making my leisurely way through. Francesca Wade's Square Haunting is right up my alley of interest -- a study of five women who all lived in a single Bloomsbury square in the first half of the twentieth century. HD (Hilda Doolittle) was a modernist poet; Dorothy L Sayers, an mystery author and scholar; Jane Harrison, a classicist who first suggested the possibility of matriarchal and goddess-worshipping societies pre-dating the familiar male-dominated pantheon; Eileen Power, an economic and medieval historian who pioneered educational broadcasting (and probably ending up spawning a gazillion podcasts); and last but not least, the ground-breaking novelist and feminist, Virginia Woolf.

Using Mecklenburgh Square as a common element in all these women's lives is inspired -- some of them knew each other, some even lived in the same house. As free-thinking, unconventional women, they were all drawn to the area of London where bohemians gathered. In my uni days I was inspired by Virginia Woolf; I've loved Dorothy L Sayers since high school; and at uni I became slightly obsessed with HD and the modernists and the women who congregated on Paris's Left Bank (I wonder what happened to that book...). But I had never heard of Eileen Power or Jane Harrison and I'm dismayed that they disappeared from view so rapidly given the important work they did.

Square Haunting highlights the struggle of these early modern women to be taken seriously, and to live full lives with their personal integrity intact; but it also celebrates the value of the communities they belonged to and the strength they drew from one another. I absolutely love the detail with which the book ends: Virginia Woolf's former house has been replaced with a huge international college, but in the approximate space where her study used to sit, a room is made available each year for a woman scholar, complete with a copy of A Room of One's Own.

4.3.24

Cold Enough For Snow

Jessica Au's award winning novella, Cold Enough For Snow, was the other extra book I picked up from the Athenaeum Library last week -- at less than a hundred pages, it doesn't really count as a book, right? 

Wrong. Reading Cold Enough For Snow is like taking a leisurely swim in cool, still water -- bracing, but refreshing. It's a meditative little book, following a trip to Japan by a mother and grown up daughter. The daughter reports their small excursions, interspersed with memories of her childhood, working in a restaurant, travelling with her husband to his childhood home. There's no plot. We observe the weather, the path through the woods, the museum exhibitions; we see the daughter's attempts to please her mother, usually not guessing exactly right; the book seems to be about our essential inability to really know other people, the way they are sealed inside themselves, occasionally revealing glimpses of their inner, private lives, and perhaps our inability to know ourselves. (This theme echoes the similar preoccupations of Virginia Woolf, who I was reading about at the same time in Square Haunting.)

I admired Cold Enough For Snow and I can see why it's won so many accolades. It's unusual and pleasurable to experience a novel so different from so many contemporary novels with their emphasis on 'hooking' the reader from the first page, delivering non-stop action or plot twists. Au's book is a reminder that novels can also be small and quiet and beautiful and thoughtful. I think Cold Enough For Snow will stay with me when some novels are quickly forgotten.
 

3.3.24

Gender Queer

I went to the Athenaeum Library intending to restrict myself to borrowing two books. Needless to say I came away with four... Gender Queer was one of them. I was aware of Maia Kobabe's 2022 graphic memoir vaguely as one of the most banned books in America, and there are some elements of this book that might be a bit 'graphic' for younger readers, but honestly, most teens will see much more explicit content than this on the internet every day.

Gender Queer is a detailed, honest and moving account of Maia's journey through questioning eir gender identity and sexuality (Kobabe uses Spivak pronouns, e, em and eir, which I wasn't aware of before, but which I quite like). It was super easy to read -- I almost finished it on the tram on the way home -- funny, engaging and very relatable. It really makes plain that every person's experience is different and nuanced, and it underscores the ridiculously arbitrary nature of the boxes we put ourselves into. (As an old school eighties feminist, I probably incline more towards the ideal of removing the boxes, rather than creating more and more of them, but that seems to be the way society is moving.) Maia doesn't feel comfortable identifying as a woman, but also doesn't see emself as a man -- ey are looking for gender balance, are attracted to androgyny, and are delighted when people aren't sure if ey are male or female.

I really enjoyed Gender Queer. I don't think it's anything to be afraid of, and I certainly don't support it being banned anywhere. I found it a helpful, enlightening and fascinating story, clearly and simply told. More power to you, Maia.
 

29.2.24

The In-Between

Full disclosure: I used to be sort-of friends with Christos; we had mutual friends in our twenties. Though I haven't seen him for years, I follow his work with warm interest and admiration. I sometimes find Christos's novels confronting, and they certainly aren't comfort reading, but I know he would say that that's not what fiction should be.

However, The In-Between is much closer to 'my sort of novel' than some of his other work. It's essentially a love story, about two middle-aged men who connect later in life, with all the compromises and potential and baggage that entails. Two chapters are from Perry's point of view, and two from Ivan's, and the novel finishes with a section from the point of view of the daughter of Perry's former lover, a woman seeing the couple from the outside. The In-Between is mostly set in my Melbourne -- Preston, the city, the bayside suburbs where my husband's family live (though I'm having trouble exactly placing Perry's Preston apartment -- perhaps Christos... invented it???)

There is simply no better Australian writer on class, and the central section of the novel is the strongest and the most excruciating to read. There is a dinner party where all the shifting fault lines of Perry's milieu are laid bare -- between middle and working class, women and men, gay and straight, parents and non-parents. Conversations about politics become painfully personal, and accepted moral stances are paraded. Do we all have to think the same about everything?? There is raging against the timid conformity of Australia, our inability to face passion, life and death.

The In-Between is a visceral novel, packed with smells and sex, undercurrents of fear and loneliness and violence. But it's also a very tender, compassionate novel, shot through with everyday beauty and yes, love.

28.2.24

The Goblin Emperor

Katherine Addison's novel The Goblin Emperor was published almost ten years ago, but I hadn't come across it before. It was a recommendation from author Francis Spufford; I know we share very similar taste in books because I was captivated by his 2002 memoir, The Child That Books Built. So I was pretty sure I was onto a winner, and so I was.

The Goblin Emperor is high fantasy, set in a steampunk world of airships, pneumatic messages, elves (white skinned and blue eyed) and goblins (dark skinned and orange eyed). When Maia's father, the emperor, and his three older brothers are all killed in an airship explosion, this eighteen year old half-goblin finds himself unexpectedly ascending to the throne and having to negotiate the intricacies of court intrigues and competing political interests. As Spufford says, Maia succeeds by 'being nice to everyone,' and while it's not quite as simple as that, the story is all the more satisfying for having a solid moral heart of kindness.

The world building underpinning this novel is extraordinary -- trade, language, formal courtesies, food, technology, racism -- nothing is forgotten (there is an extensive glossary at the back of the book and some helpful notes, which I wish I'd read at the beginning). The Goblin Emperor is filed under adult fantasy in my local library, but it could easily be a young adult book (except there's not much sex or romance, which seems to be mandatory for YA books these days), or even a sophisticated older primary reader who would love to be immersed in this complete, complex world.

23.2.24

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Yes, I'm still Obsessed With Trieste. I was excited when I found Jan Morris's last book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, in the Athenaeum Library catalogue, but imagine my dismay when I searched the shelves and there it... wasn't. The helpful librarian couldn't find it either, but promised to reserve it for me and let me know if it turned up. It transpires that it had been pulled from shelves to be discarded, because it's been ten years since it was last borrowed -- I saved it just in time! (On the other hand, if it had been discarded, it might have been put on the For Sale trolley and I could have bought it for $2... Oh well.)

Reading Jan Morris's wistful 2001 description of the city and its history has made me all the more determined to visit one day. Trieste is a city marooned by accidents of geography and history. At the top of the Adriatic, just opposite Venice, it once served as the major seaport for the Austro-Hungarian empire, and its architecture reflects this Germanic flavour -- majestic squares, grand orderly buildings. But when the empire broke up and Trieste was returned to Italy, it lost its purpose (though in the 21st century, it seems to have reinvented itself as a scientific hub). It was a meeting place for many cultures, the Slavic nations to the south and east, Italy to the west, and Austria to the north. Morris describes a city of 'true civility' and just general niceness (we'll gloss over the brief period of Fascist dominance), and really good coffee.

Trieste seems like a melancholy city, a haunted city, with that air of shabby grandeur that I find so irresistible. More than ever I'm longing to wander the waterfront, to inspect the ill-fated castle of Miramar, explore the medieval old town and fortress, take the funicular up to the harsh wilderness of the karst, stare out over the glassy sea, and shiver in the pitiless gusts of the bora. One day.

 

22.2.24

The Night Watchman

Louise Erdrich is a relatively new author to me. I read her 2012 novel, The Round House, last year, which I thought was amazing, and I've just finished The Night Watchman (which I didn't realise had won the Pulitzer Prize until I was searching for this cover image online -- congrats, Louise!) and which is even better.

I'm not sure which I find more compelling, Erdrich's rich story telling, or the Native American world of her novels. The Night Watchman is partly based on her own grandfather's life and his fight to halt the planned termination of Indian tribes in the 1950s, which was framed as an opportunity for Native Americans to fully assimilate with other Americans, but was really a grab for reservation land, and would have meant annihilation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe. This actually happened to other tribes. But Erdrich beautifully and movingly weaves in aspects of Native American culture and belief through the political story -- there are ghosts and spirits here, plant medicine, cradle boards and dreams.

Not surprisingly, there are many parallels between the treatment of Native Americans and Australia's First Nations peoples -- a history of dispossession, attempts at assimilation (in America, often through boarding schools; in Australia, through the Stolen Generations), and of course intergenerational trauma, sometimes leading to alcoholism and domestic abuse. But what is most remarkable is the strength and determination of the survivors.

It's so thrilling to discover a 'new' impressive author, especially when they have a massive back catalogue to explore, and even better, when your new favourite library has them all lined up on the shelf.
 

20.2.24

La Vie de Château

My daughter recently returned from a trip to Europe, and one of the gifts she brought me was this slim children's book by Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat, La Vie de Chateau. Never having studied French at school, I've been plugging away for a couple of years at an online language program, which has enabled me to at least pick out commonly used words from the subtitles of Call My Agent. La Vie de Chateau was just the right level for me, in that I could get the gist of the story pretty easily, while looking up two or three new words per page.

Briefly, eight year old Violette is orphaned and is sent to live with her uncle, who is a cleaner at the Palace of Versailles. At first Violette is miserable and silent, but she gradually warms up to her new home and her uncle -- but now the authorities have decided to send her away... (I think this book is based on a short animated film.)

It's been a long, long time -- so long I literally can't remember -- since I had to work to read a book. I took it one page at a time so I didn't feel overwhelmed. It was frustrating at times. Sometimes I got the translation wildly wrong, sometimes I deciphered it on the first attempt. I was relieved when a big illustration shortened a chunk of text; I gulped when I was confronted with a long slab of words. It's been a really good reminder of just how hard this reading caper can be. But the sense of triumph and satisfaction when I reached the end was absolutely wonderful.

19.2.24

The Narnian

Another gem from the shelves of the Athenaeum Library. I have read quite a lot about C. S. Lewis but I'd never come across The Narnian. It's not an exhaustive biography, because Alan Jacobs focuses above all on the development and expression of Lewis's inner life -- his ideas and imagination. As a Professor of English and university director of Faith and Learning, Jacobs is particularly interested in Lewis's Christianity, which was of course the central foundation of his work. 

I have to confess I've never read any of Lewis's apologetics or even his adult novels (though I have a dim memory of attempting The Screwtape Letters in high school), but Jacobs does a good job of outlining his arguments. I think Jacobs is right when he says that Lewis's great strength was not actually in debate or philosophy (even though 'no one could best him'), but in depiction -- he shows us a world where goodness and virtue become rich and delightful, and makes us want to live in that world. Could there be a better description of Narnia? Jacobs emphasises Lewis's 'willingness to be enchanted,' for which I am prepared to forgive his dated attitudes.

One aspect of Lewis's personal life which struck me particularly after reading Wifedom was his long devotion to Mrs Moore, his friend's mother, about which Lewis's brother Warnie was apoplectic with fury, seeing his busy, gifted brother running around filling hot water bottles, taking out the dog et etc instead of getting on with his work. For a start, it seems clear that Lewis and Mrs Moore at least at one time were sexual partners, and no one would bat an eyelid if the gender roles were reversed, and a younger wife were caring with equal tenderness to an older, demanding husband, no matter how creatively gifted she might be, and how much her work suffered in consequence -- not that that would be an ideal situation, either, but part of Warnie's horror surely stems from the perceived 'unnaturalness' of Lewis's position. Anyway, it doesn't seem that Lewis's work actually did suffer all that much, and as Jacobs points out, this experience probably taught him much about suffering, and patience, and love, and duty, which helped him toward greater depth of wisdom and compassion in the long run.
 

14.2.24

Everywhen

I pounced on this book from my new favourite place in the world, the Atheneaum Library, on the strength of the title alone: Everywhen: Australia and the language of deep history. When I give school talks on Crow Country, I try to convey something of the pre-invasion First Nations world view -- the deep interconnectedness of Country, the importance of secrecy and accuracy of knowledge in an oral culture, and their different attitude to time. In the simplest possible terms, while Western cultures tend to conceptualise time like an arrow, or a conveyor belt, moving inexorably from the past into the future, First Nations cultures have a much more cyclical experience of time, tied to the movement of seasons and stars, and a sense of the on-going events of the Dreaming as existing in a kind of living, eternal present, rather than in a distant, far removed past. My understanding is pretty shallow, but the authors of this collection bring a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to this idea.

Honestly, if I'd realised just how scholarly Everywhen was going to be, I might have thought twice about borrowing it, but I'm so glad I persevered. Some of the essays are deeply personal, like Jakelin Troy's account of standing between the snowy mountains of her ancestors and the sky, or Shannon Foster's reflections on being locked away from rock engravings around Sydney, on D'harawal land, in order to 'keep them safe.' There are pieces here that examine the role of music and song, that outline the way performance of ancient songs and stories helps to bring the deep past into the present moment, or the challenge for linguistics of trying to recover the languages lost since white settlement.

After the shock and despair of reading Killing For Country, it was heartening to explore these essays and to realise that there are so many people working so earnestly to preserve, to recover and to engage with the oldest living culture in the world, and hopefully to share a new perspective on what it means to live on and with our fragile planet.