2014 – the lost girls ~ wendy james

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Michelle

The woman has come prepared: she takes a recorder, notebook, pens and a small bottle of water out of her bag, arranges them carefully. Close up, the woman is not plain, as I’d first thought, but beautiful – her eyes large and dark, mouth full, cheekbones high. I wonder whether she’s deliberately made herself appear plain, bland. And why.

She clears her throat then speaks quite formally, as if she’s reading from a script.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions…’

I’m lucky enough to be over at Newtown Review of Books today, reviewing Wendy James’s sixth novel, The Lost Girls. Thank you, NRB!

(Also, it’s Newtown Review of Books’ second birthday this year! They’ve got a Donate button on their site – why not make a contribution?)

book to the future bookmarks #3

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Michelle

Welcome to the third instalment of Book to the Future Bookmarks, the fortnightly megapost in which I ramble about what I’ve been reading, and share a few of the many, many websites I’ve added to my Bookmarks folder over the past two weeks.

Maybe you might find yourself adding a few of these links to your Bookmarks list too?

(Ahem. This post might be a few days late, but I’m hoping no-one’s noticed. Let’s get on with it.)

It’s hard out here (for a critic)

One positive aspect of this post being delayed is that it gives me the opportunity to link to this article by Carody Culver, published in Kill Your Darlings yesterday, about The Saturday Paper’s pseudonymous book review policy.

I really like Culver’s discussion of the issues surrounding TSP’s choice to publish pseudonymous book reviews. In fact, it’s helped me to articulate something that’s been bugging me for a long time.

Editor of The Saturday Paper, Erik Jensen, is quoted in the Kill Your Darlings article as saying:

‘Books pages are full of authors reviewing authors, almost always in the uncomfortable position of writing about someone they know and in many cases someone they like’.

Every time I read or hear someone bemoaning the insular nature of the Australian literary reviewing scene, I can’t help but feel a little frustrated. A statement like this assumes so much about the professionalism – or rather, the perceived lack thereof – of Australian critics. And though I’m hardly a critic, I’m a reader of criticism, and I challenge this assumption.

As an outsider, I’m clueless as to why we’re so often encouraged to view our litcrit scene in such a relentlessly harsh light. I’m pretty sure it was Stephen Romei who mentioned exasperatedly at last year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival, on a panel called “The State of Reviews”, that every writers’ festival he’s ever attended has included a panel on the “state” of Australian criticism.

Ben Etherington, in his first Critic Watch piece (“Critic Watch” – even the name implies that critics are a shifty bunch, in need of constant surveillance…) for the Sydney Review of Books, writing about critical response to Anna Funder’s All That I Am, makes the astounding claim that:

Given [Anna Funder's] profile, I would guess that many of the reviewers have met Funder in one capacity or another: at interviews or, perhaps, dinner parties. There aren’t that many writers and critics in Australia, and we cannot expect that reviewers will not encounter their subjects, particularly when so many are themselves authors.

And here’s what I’m really getting at – if there’s really such a concern that Australia’s literary culture is getting too insular, maybe it’s time to consider new critical voices?

While all this handwringing over criticism is going on, there’s a whole heap of amazing literary bloggers out there, casually doing their thing. People who, I can only assume, haven’t yet been invited over to Anna Funder’s place for dinner.

It’s time for something new. Not just new critics, but new forms of criticism, too.

Look, for all I know, I’m making a complete fool of myself – it wouldn’t be the first time – and all the reviews in The Saturday Paper are written by emerging critics. After all, they’re pseudonymous, so I have no way of knowing. However, to me, Jensen’s comment above suggests otherwise. His motivation in publishing pseudonymous reviews doesn’t seem to be because he wants new critics to sit alongside the big names – it’s to allow established writers to feel more comfortable about being completely honest. This from Crikey’s Daily Review:

[Jensen] says The Saturday Paper’s guarantee of anonymity will allow his critics to write what they really think about a work that otherwise they might be loath to express in the small world of Australian publishing.

So, Erik Jensen – if you’re oh-so-bored with the literary pages of other papers, why not do something exciting with your own? Be brave. Engage emerging critics and take an active role in nurturing and developing and expanding Australia’s critical culture rather than bleating about its supposed narrowness.

Will publishing anonymous reviews really do anything to alter the status quo? Somehow, I doubt it.

And, while I’m being all demanding – writers’ festival curators, how about a different type of criticism panel this year? Something different to the usual doom-and-gloom? Yes, I know literary pages are shrinking, but just for once, couldn’t we celebrate Australian critical culture rather decry than its supposed weaknesses? Wouldn’t that be lovely?

(Finally, I don’t think literary criticism should be above criticism, and despite my disdain above, I find the Critic Watch model of comparing responses to a novel interesting. Keeping an eye on criticism is important to make sure that a range of diverse voices are being heard – something that, of course, isn’t possible with pseudonymous reviews.)

A life lived in books

At the start of the year, I came across this rather lovely blog post by Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites, in which she discusses the notebook she’s used since 2008 to keep track of every book she’s read. I found the way she writes about recording her reading incredibly touching, and it made me reflect on the completely soulless way in which I’ve come to document my own reading history.

I use Goodreads to take note of the books I read, setting myself a reading challenge at the start of the year, then feeling miserable when, at the end of the year, I’ve invariably failed to reach my target. But Goodreads, while a useful site, has its limitations. It only allows you to enter a book once, which doesn’t account for books you read for a second (or third, or fourth) time. And, of course, I haven’t entered every book I’ve read since I opened a Goodreads account. When I first joined Goodreads, I used it only to catalogue the books I was reviewing for this blog.

After reading Kent’s article, I found a lovely, unused red notebook on my desk and I’ve started my own list of the books and journals I’ve read so far this year. Next year, I’ll post a progress report.

Art Garfunkel has famously kept a list of every book he’s read since 1968. His list of 157 favourite books makes for interesting reading. It’s probably the only list you’ll find Carrie Fisher and Marcel Proust next to each other, for instance. I can’t help but notice that, at number 157, he lists Fifty Shades of Grey. Oh, Art…really?

Fifty Shades of Grey? I’d much rather Hazy Shade of Winter, thanks.

On Book to the Future lately…

Finally, something to report! In case you missed it, this week, I reviewed Jessie Cole’s 2012 debut novel, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Which reminds me of something that’s been sitting in my Bookmarks folder for a long time. Towards the end of last year, Cole published an absolutely stunning memoir piece in Meanjin. I read it I was on a crowded bus, firmly lodged in an inner-city traffic jam, and had to stop reading at least three times because I was in serious danger of getting teary.

This is definitely a must-read, but save it for when you’re feeling strong. Trust me.

One last thing…

Kirsten Krauth’s first Friday Night Fictions post for the year is online! Friday Night Fictions, published every three months, introduces readers to the work of Australian debut authors. Make sure you head over to Wild Colonial Girl and take a look.

I’ve ranted for much longer than usual (whoops!) and this post is late enough as it is, so I’ll save my usual What I’m Reading ramble for my next Bookmarks post.

2012 – darkness on the edge of town ~ jessie cole

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Michelle

Before I can finally settle into my writing groove for this year (I know it’s nearly March) there’s one review that’s been on my mind lately. It’s been sitting half-finished, on my computer’s desktop for longer than I care to admit. It’s about time I finished what I started – which I can see becoming a theme for the year.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Jessie Cole // Published in 2012

Bruce Springsteen’s best songs celebrate the eternal outcast, still hoping to somehow make things right again.

It’s a thematic preoccupation he shares in common with Australian author, Jessie Cole. Her debut novel, Darkness on the Edge of Town, features a Springsteen-inspired title and a small cast of outsiders that would surely make The Boss proud.

Vincent lives out of town in a rundown shack hidden in bushland on the side of a mountain. He’s nearly forty, with a long string of ex-girlfriends and a physically demanding, dead-end job. His spare time is spent at the pub or coaching the local junior footy team.

The one success of Vincent’s life is his kind-hearted, introspective daughter, Gemma. She’s sixteen, and looks after her father as she would a child, making sure he has lunch to take to work and a meal ready for him when he gets home.

Coming home down the winding mountain road late one night, Vincent finds an upturned car, its engine still running, just outside the entrance to his house. He finds the driver, a young woman, crouching in the gravel by the side of the road, precariously close to the steep drop down the mountainside. One arm hangs limp by her side. In the other, she’s holding a badly injured baby.

Vincent helps the woman and her child inside, and does his best to make them comfortable as they wait for the ambulance to make its way up the mountain.

Days later, the woman, Rachel, unexpectedly returns to Vincent’s house. Bruised and weak, alone, her arm in plaster, she says little. When it’s clear that Rachel has nowhere else to go, Vincent reluctantly asks her to stay. Caring for Rachel’s injuries, both physical and psychological, forces an awkward intimacy between the two.

Gemma is initially suspicious of the beautiful, broken woman her father has brought into their house, as well as his reasons for letting her stay. She’s not the only one. It’s not too long before ugly rumours about Vincent and the woman he’s hiding in his house make their way into town.

When a middle-aged man from the city turns up in town, asking questions about Rachel and her baby, Vincent and Gemma begin to understand what Rachel was running from.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is relentless. Right from the opening scene, Cole manages to strike the right level of intensity and maintains that pace throughout. She writes about characters on the edge – not only literally on the edge of town, but also on the edge of adulthood, the edge of poverty, the edge of language. It’s the precariousness of this balance, this strange, liminal space in which this novel takes place that lends it such an incredible sense of tension.

The novel is narrated by both Vincent and Gemma, in simple, unadorned language that lends an air of authenticity to Cole’s characters. Though the story focuses on Vincent and Rachel, Cole takes great care to ensure that Gemma’s story isn’t lost, and it’s in Gemma’s sections that some of Cole’s most insightful observations take shape. Gemma’s simultaneous longing for her first sexual experience and her dread of it is particularly well-expressed:

I felt my cheeks go hot and I took another sip of the Jim Beam, hoping Dave wouldn’t see me blush. Even though I’d never been in this situation before – two boys, two girls and a bottle of Jim Beam and Coke – there was something familiar about it. Something sad and sick-feeling. I liked Dave, and I wanted him to like me, but I felt like walking into Mel’s bedroom would be following a sort of script. Some path that had been laid down years before, maybe forever. Like I was part of an old bad movie, and I didn’t want to be.

In the gaps between Vincent and Gemma’s narratives, we see a third thread emerge; the story of the relationship between father and daughter. While Vincent is a caring father, he fails to see what’s right in front of him:

She’s sixteen, my girl, and she’s only just reached that girly stage. Nail polish and lip gloss. She came home from school the other day all dolled up. It was photo day and her friends had taken her aside and done her makeup. I reckon she expected me to hit the roof, to tell her to ‘get that shit off’, but I just looked and didn’t say nothing. She washed it off anyway, soon as she got home.

Misunderstandings are rife in Darkness on the Edge of Town, as is silence. After her accident, Rachel takes a while to begin speaking again, relieving her trauma in ways that Vincent and Gemma struggle to understand. As she begins to heal, Rachel begins to express herself through art, attaching fallen leaves to the trunks of trees and preserving red autumn leaves in jars.

Other lapses in communication in the novel are more insidious. As Vincent begins to develop feelings for Rachel, he doesn’t ask her how old she is, secretly worrying that she might not be much older than his own daughter.

Vincent makes a difficult hero. At one point in the novel, as he comforts Rachel, he reflects that although he knows nothing lasts forever, he’s “sort of hoping that it could”. Later, when Gemma confronts him about his relationship with Rachel, Vincent can’t put into words the way he feels about her.

Vincent’s protective nature has its moments of tenderness…but it’s also worryingly posessive. When he meets the father of Rachel’s baby, he becomes livid with jealous anger:

Watching him, I began thinking of how easy it would be to crack him over the head from behind. To take him out, one whack to that creased old neck.

Masculine aggression begins as an unspoken, insidious presence in Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s a lingering threat eventually, perhaps inevitably, makes its way to the foreground – with devastating consequences.

This is a novel with a lot to say. And although her characters often find themselves lost for words, Jessie Cole speaks with perfect clarity and restraint.

Ultimately, Darkness on the Edge of Town is as fierce as it is fearless. It crackles with the same kind of anxious intensity that heralds an electrical storm, gathering energy before it bursts in a memorable final sequence that will leave you trembling.

This is my first review for 2014′s Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can find more about the project here. Or, click here to read the opening passage of Darkness on the Edge of Town over at Jessie Cole’s blog. Once you’ve finished, you should probably head over to Booktopia, where you can buy a copy of your own.

And finally, because I can’t resist, here’s Bruce:

book to the future bookmarks #2

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Michelle

Welcome to edition number two of Book to the Future Bookmarks, a new series of fortnightly posts in which I share some of the many, many links I’ve saved to my bookmarks folder.

I started my first Bookmarks post with a huge picture of current crush, ~~Benedingle Cumberwhatsit~~ Benedict Cumberbatch. But in the grand scheme of things, what’s a mere crush compared to true literary lurve? Nothing! It seems only fitting that I begin the second edition of Bookmarks with…

Original image source here.

…Zadie Smith, of course. If you haven’t already read Zadie’s latest short story, Moonlit Landscape with Bridge, over on the New Yorker’s website, you’re missing out. Here’s a little sample:

“…But he remembered two young men bent over one battered paperback, under a tree in the cleared center of a village. Books had been important back then—they were always quoting from them. Long-haired boys, big ideas. These days, all the Prime Minister read was his bank statements.”

I enjoyed Smith’s novella, The Embassy of Cambodia, released late last year…but it left me feeling a little unsatisfied. I’m not sure whether this was because Smith left the story at a point where I desperately wanted to know what happened next, or whether I was just eager for something longer. Possibly both. Personally, I have my fingers crossed that Zadie (we’re on first name basis) is working on a collection of short fiction…

Anyway. Enough wishful thinking. You can read more about Moonlit Landscape here.

The 2014 Stella Prize longlist is out! The Stella is Australia’s most exciting literary award (and they got it so, so right last year, with Carrie Tiffany’s brilliant Mateship with Birds taking out the inaugural prize). Given the number of Big Novels released by Australian men towards the end of last year (think Alex Miller, Tim Winton, Christos Tsiolkas…), it’s great that the Stella Prize is on the case, making sure that writing by Australian women doesn’t go unrecognised.

…However, I’m yet to read any of the longlisted novels, so I’d better get a wriggle on! Luckily, there’s a review roundup over at the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog.

If you’ve ever wanted to flash Melbourne’s Federation Square, here’s your chance. The wonderful people at Spineless Wonders are looking for flash fiction to grace the big screen at Fed Square during the Melbourne Writers’ Festival this year…why, what did you think I meant? Writers can find out more about the project here.

Look, I know I mentioned Ryan O’Neill in my first Bookmarks post…and the post before that…and I’m beginning to sound like some kind of crazed stalker (sorry) but I’m really enjoying The Drover’s Wives project over at Seizure. O’Neill has taken Henry Lawson’s classic short story, The Drover’s Wife and is re-working it in sixty different ways. So far, The Drover’s Wife has become a self-published book cover, an absurdist play, a horoscope and more. Sadly, not all of the pieces are free to read, but here’s a link to the project so far.

I’m kind of obsessed with these stunning 1920s posters advertising the London Underground. I love them almost as much as I love this collection of sarcastic, witty, puerile – and, ultimately fake Underground signs. Genius. Get me to London, pronto.

I’ve mentioned my longstanding adoration for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince on this blog an embarrassing number of times. When I spotted this article at Brain Pickings about Saint-Exupéry’s manuscript for the book, including the author’s original watercolour illustrations, I was, naturally, all over it. Whether you’re a fan of The Little Prince or not, these illustrations are beautiful. And this, from the accompanying article:

“In April of 1943, shortly after the book came out, 43-year-old Saint-Exupéry shoved his Little Prince manuscripts and drawings in a brown paper bag, handing it to his friend Silvia Hamilton — “I’d like to give you something splendid,” he told her, “but this is all I have.” — and departed for Algiers as a military pilot with the Free French Air Force.”

Just reading this short piece on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex made me feel like picking de Beauvoir’s masterwork up again. I read The Second Sex for for the first time at around the same age as the author of this article, greedily devouring the entire thing over the course of a single weekend.

From France back to Melbourne: Readings has announced a duo of new literary awards. Can we ever have too many literary awards? Somehow, I don’t think so.

And finally, my favourite discovery of the past fortnight is Poet Deploriate.

Other Things I’ve Been Reading…

I’ve been kind of wrapped up with work the past week or so, and haven’t had as much time for reading as I’d have liked…

In my first Bookmarks post, I mentioned I was reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. I drew my reading out as long as I possibly could because I really didn’t want the book to be over. I think it’s kind of appropriate that I read this novel immediately after The Swimming-Pool Library. They work well together.

An odd coincidence: The Paris Review just happened to tweet their Art of Fiction interview with Alan Hollinghurst from 2011 the other day.

Unfortunately, I’ve got no time left to explore more of Hollinghurst’s writing. I’ve got a huge pile of books that has accumulated next to my keyboard, waiting to be read. Also, my ereader is full of unread things, all jostling for my attention.

But the good news? I’ve managed to get a heap of time off work, and I’ve got little else to do but catch up on my (many) unwritten reviews and work my way through the pile of books accumulating on my desk.

My next Bookmarks post is going to be huge. Meanwhile, thanks for reading!