Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my (often fruitless – no pun intended) search for books that explore vegetarianism. The Lost Dog doesn’t give details about the foods the characters choose to eat, but it does advance a very definite humane and positive attitude to animals.
Importantly, there’s the lost dog himself. The book is structured into ten chapters charting the ten days Tom spends looking for his canine companion. He searches and worries and loses heart and searches again in a way which reinforces the significance of the dog in his otherwise messy life. In desperation, Tom calls his estranged ex-wife to confess that he has lost the dog. He ponders on the efficacy of telling his mother. But it takes until page 287 of this 342 page novel for de Kretser to write; “ …to love even one animal boundlessly might make it unthinkable to eat any.” She goes on; “When eating out with friends, Tom had noticed the fashion for naming the animal that had supplied a dish. I’ll have the cow. Have you tried the minced pig? An ironic flaunting was at work: I know very well that this food on my plate was once a sentient creature, and that doesn’t bother me. Euphemisms are symptomatic of shame; to avoid them was to deny shame, deflecting it with cool.” (That last part, thinking that meat-eaters are ashamed, is almost Pollyanna-ish of her in my opinion, but then I am in a state of continuous incredulity at the persistence of meat-eating in otherwise thoughtful egalitarian people.)
de Kretser creates Melbourne with great affection, almost nostalgia. She describes the neon signs, graffiti, railway lines, old warehouses ripe for developers with a sense of gloom for what is being forfeited to an increasingly profit-driven world. Her characters see the value, the quirkiness and novelty of recycling. The way they utilise other people’s junk is a critique of our wasteful society. Another issue close to my heart.
What else is the novel about? Art and creativity feature large. Nelly, Tom’s (oblique) love interest, paints pictures and then takes photographs of them, destroys the original painting, and shows the photographs. There’s something here about authenticity, about the reproduced contemporary life.
The writing is beautiful. In an interview on Radio National’s Book Show Robert Dessaix twitters on as only he can about the exceptional way she uses language – and for once I agree with him. Rather than say something is like another thing, for example, de Kretser describes a particularly uptight man as; “an umbrella tightly furled.” You know she is referring to that event known as “9/11” when she writes, almost casually; “On the September night when he stood in a bar with Nelly watching towers sink to their knees…” de Kretser has a way of capturing the quintessential in the everyday.
Quibbles? Well, there is a mystery in the book involving the disappearance of Nelly’s husband, which de Kretser appears to explore almost nonchalantly. I wonder if she thought she needed to include something more plot driven, but in the end it didn’t sustain her interest? The husband himself was a highly unlikely partner for Nelly, unless the point was that she changed greatly after his departure, but that’s never made clear. And, only occasionally, that wonderfully lyrical descriptive talent can come across as too clever by half.
But that’s all very minor. The Lost Dog is a great book by a writer who is growing stronger with each novel.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield
Margaret Lea lives for books. When she is offered the challenge of writing the biography of the most famous writer in England, she finds uncanny parallels with her own life.
The Thirteenth Tale is a book for greedy bibliophiles. It’s a book for all those of us who know books as places to loose oneself, books as vehicles for travel in time and space, who feel sentimental about books as objects. Albeit if that sentimentality sometimes tips over into indulgent soppiness. Who cares? This is a sometimes silly, entertaining, enchanting and engrossing story, with all the ingredients of a gothic novel. Set on the Yorkshire Moors, with massive old houses falling into decay, abandoned babies, topiary gardens, and undiscovered ancestry, it lays out a mystery which twists and turns through ghostly imaginings and haunted characters.
The thrill of this book is its challenge to the site of truth. What tells us more about the past, subjective unreliable narrative or factual evidence?
This is Dianne Setterfield’s first novel, though she is very well versed in 19th and 20th century French literature. All the way through this book, you get the feeling that she is having a great deal of fun playing with genre and image and language to produce a lovely bibliomystery.
The Thirteenth Tale could be criticised for its shameless evocation of the Brontes and Dickens, but that would be churlish. It’s not highbrow. It has a certain whiff of upstairs-downstairs. But as a whole, it’s a book to read in one gulp, curled up in an armchair, beside a pile of unread tomes!
There is an absolutely beautiful website to accompany this book. Enjoy the book and then explore the connections so skilfully offered here (though it’s a shame that the online conversation about the book has been taken over by junk mail trumpeting free online betting and sex with Brazilian transsexuals!)
The Thirteenth Tale is a book for greedy bibliophiles. It’s a book for all those of us who know books as places to loose oneself, books as vehicles for travel in time and space, who feel sentimental about books as objects. Albeit if that sentimentality sometimes tips over into indulgent soppiness. Who cares? This is a sometimes silly, entertaining, enchanting and engrossing story, with all the ingredients of a gothic novel. Set on the Yorkshire Moors, with massive old houses falling into decay, abandoned babies, topiary gardens, and undiscovered ancestry, it lays out a mystery which twists and turns through ghostly imaginings and haunted characters.
The thrill of this book is its challenge to the site of truth. What tells us more about the past, subjective unreliable narrative or factual evidence?
This is Dianne Setterfield’s first novel, though she is very well versed in 19th and 20th century French literature. All the way through this book, you get the feeling that she is having a great deal of fun playing with genre and image and language to produce a lovely bibliomystery.
The Thirteenth Tale could be criticised for its shameless evocation of the Brontes and Dickens, but that would be churlish. It’s not highbrow. It has a certain whiff of upstairs-downstairs. But as a whole, it’s a book to read in one gulp, curled up in an armchair, beside a pile of unread tomes!
There is an absolutely beautiful website to accompany this book. Enjoy the book and then explore the connections so skilfully offered here (though it’s a shame that the online conversation about the book has been taken over by junk mail trumpeting free online betting and sex with Brazilian transsexuals!)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." That’s the stunning opener of Alice Sebold’s new novel, and the rest of the book bears out the auspicious beginning.
The main character, Helen Knightly, has lived her life being a rock, or perhaps a martyr, for her mother, her father, her husband and her daughters. She has habitually sacrificed herself for some idea of a bigger or greater good, and unlike the trajectory of thousands of women who do just that until they die, she finally responds to the welling inner rage and suffocates her helpless mother with a towel.
Surely nobody’s relationship with their mother can be that bad? It’s a hugely gratifying aspect of this book that over the ensuing 300 pages the layers of hurt over a lifetime are laid bare, incident after shocking incident, in a way which makes the reader conclude that any woman, in these circumstances, would do the same. Alice Sebold’s central project – that violence is commonplace, that victims and perpetrators are all of us, that it effects everyone – is explored in all three of her books (Lucky, The Lovely Bones and this one).
Sebold herself says that Almost Moon is about; “the relationship between love and duty, what you owe to others versus what you must do to have your own identity in the world. It is a book very much about the dangers of self-erasure.”
So, does she speak particularly to this current generation of women in their forties and fifties? Those of us who have carried the torch of feminism, have had careers (and often, children), been domestic goddesses and bread-winners, but who perhaps still haven’t worked out where the boundaries are when faced with looking after other people? Taking care of others makes the world go around, and is a feminine trait we would surely want to keep (and wish that it extended to more men). But we also know it’s a trap – and the younger women in this book, Helen’s daughters, reject that unconscious, routine caring which ultimately destroys the carer.
The book is also about the legacy of family. Helen asks; “When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes or bone density?” It’s a thought that hits in the middle of the night, months after a messy relationship break-up or a tricky interaction with an adult child. Alice Sebold wanders through that emotional space where the partner and the children have gone, where what’s left is the necessity to re-group, and the search for the optimism and energy to do so.
There were times reading this book when I had to drop it on my lap and simply marvel at her skill with words. Most notably, her writing is often very funny (and I reveal my own prejudices about Americans having no real sense of humour, or at least, irony). In her head Helen congratulates elderly neighbours for winning the longevity competition, curses young men’s fumbling sex, accepts the inevitable in the ravages of aging on her body and others.
The title of this book is a bit wishy-washy. I would’ve preferred something with a bit more bite – like Don’t clean ‘em up – knock ‘em down or even Shit Happens. But overall, a great read.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a very different view of The Almost Moon, read Joan Smith’s review in the Sunday Times Online – a wonderful hissy fit against melodrama and a lack of moral backbone! How brave – the damning (or even critical) review is so rare these days.
The main character, Helen Knightly, has lived her life being a rock, or perhaps a martyr, for her mother, her father, her husband and her daughters. She has habitually sacrificed herself for some idea of a bigger or greater good, and unlike the trajectory of thousands of women who do just that until they die, she finally responds to the welling inner rage and suffocates her helpless mother with a towel.
Surely nobody’s relationship with their mother can be that bad? It’s a hugely gratifying aspect of this book that over the ensuing 300 pages the layers of hurt over a lifetime are laid bare, incident after shocking incident, in a way which makes the reader conclude that any woman, in these circumstances, would do the same. Alice Sebold’s central project – that violence is commonplace, that victims and perpetrators are all of us, that it effects everyone – is explored in all three of her books (Lucky, The Lovely Bones and this one).
Sebold herself says that Almost Moon is about; “the relationship between love and duty, what you owe to others versus what you must do to have your own identity in the world. It is a book very much about the dangers of self-erasure.”
So, does she speak particularly to this current generation of women in their forties and fifties? Those of us who have carried the torch of feminism, have had careers (and often, children), been domestic goddesses and bread-winners, but who perhaps still haven’t worked out where the boundaries are when faced with looking after other people? Taking care of others makes the world go around, and is a feminine trait we would surely want to keep (and wish that it extended to more men). But we also know it’s a trap – and the younger women in this book, Helen’s daughters, reject that unconscious, routine caring which ultimately destroys the carer.
The book is also about the legacy of family. Helen asks; “When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes or bone density?” It’s a thought that hits in the middle of the night, months after a messy relationship break-up or a tricky interaction with an adult child. Alice Sebold wanders through that emotional space where the partner and the children have gone, where what’s left is the necessity to re-group, and the search for the optimism and energy to do so.
There were times reading this book when I had to drop it on my lap and simply marvel at her skill with words. Most notably, her writing is often very funny (and I reveal my own prejudices about Americans having no real sense of humour, or at least, irony). In her head Helen congratulates elderly neighbours for winning the longevity competition, curses young men’s fumbling sex, accepts the inevitable in the ravages of aging on her body and others.
The title of this book is a bit wishy-washy. I would’ve preferred something with a bit more bite – like Don’t clean ‘em up – knock ‘em down or even Shit Happens. But overall, a great read.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a very different view of The Almost Moon, read Joan Smith’s review in the Sunday Times Online – a wonderful hissy fit against melodrama and a lack of moral backbone! How brave – the damning (or even critical) review is so rare these days.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Two Lives; Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm is a writer to admire. Notwithstanding her long court case against Jeffrey Masson (who I have a great deal of respect for, particularly after hearing him speak at the recent Cruelty Free Festival at Petersham Town Hall – but that’s another very happy story) Janet Malcolm applies her dazzling intellect through a psychoanalytic lens to other people’s lives - Chekhov, Sylvia Plath and now Gerty & Alice.
The partnership of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas has been raked over so much that we could be forgiven for thinking that the earth is now bare. But the fact that scholars continue to debate their significance is a mark of success for Gertrude. She was a genius because she said so, and a pox on anyone who said differently. For her, and for Alice, living their lives was a work of brilliance in itself. And Gertrude had the money to ensure that all her contemporary artists and writers maintained the image. They were forerunners of modern vacuous superstars – Paris Hilton comes to mind, but I expect that is sacrilegious.
The central question of the book asks how Gertrude and Alice, a pair of elderly Jewish lesbians, lived through the Second World War in bucolic, if straitened, style in a village in Vichy France. How did they survive the Nazis? Why was their survival so scantily covered in their copious, and in Gertrude’s case, immensely egocentric writings of the time? What was the meaning of Alice’s involvement, after Gertrude’s death, with an escaped ex-Nazi?
Gertrude and Alice don’t emerge smelling of roses. Which poses the problem of dislike, or perhaps even distaste, for the subject and how it effects the reader (and the writer) You won’t like Gertrude and Alice when you finish this book. But you will be enlightened about the methods and vagaries of literary research and the position of the biographer in relation to her subject. More importantly, you will be taken aback by the unoriginal but mind-numbing truth that if a person doesn’t want to see something (to wit – 6 million Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and dissidents being slaughtered on their doorstep) they won’t.
The partnership of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas has been raked over so much that we could be forgiven for thinking that the earth is now bare. But the fact that scholars continue to debate their significance is a mark of success for Gertrude. She was a genius because she said so, and a pox on anyone who said differently. For her, and for Alice, living their lives was a work of brilliance in itself. And Gertrude had the money to ensure that all her contemporary artists and writers maintained the image. They were forerunners of modern vacuous superstars – Paris Hilton comes to mind, but I expect that is sacrilegious.
The central question of the book asks how Gertrude and Alice, a pair of elderly Jewish lesbians, lived through the Second World War in bucolic, if straitened, style in a village in Vichy France. How did they survive the Nazis? Why was their survival so scantily covered in their copious, and in Gertrude’s case, immensely egocentric writings of the time? What was the meaning of Alice’s involvement, after Gertrude’s death, with an escaped ex-Nazi?
Gertrude and Alice don’t emerge smelling of roses. Which poses the problem of dislike, or perhaps even distaste, for the subject and how it effects the reader (and the writer) You won’t like Gertrude and Alice when you finish this book. But you will be enlightened about the methods and vagaries of literary research and the position of the biographer in relation to her subject. More importantly, you will be taken aback by the unoriginal but mind-numbing truth that if a person doesn’t want to see something (to wit – 6 million Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and dissidents being slaughtered on their doorstep) they won’t.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Dora B: a memoir of my mother, by Josiane Behmoiras
My mother, who lives in England, will be 80 next April. She regularly rings me with cheerful news of her bingo friends, her grandchildren, the goings-on of the neighbours in her block of council flats and what she’s growing in her patch of garden. Every time I speak with her I feel an overwhelming thankfulness for her health, her independence, her intellect, her optimism and her enduring love.
Josiane Behmoiras also loved her mother dearly. It’s a testimony to the strength of their love that mother and daughter remained firmly connected through terrible hardship and poverty, prejudice and violence.
Josiane was born in Paris in 1953 and spent her first few years with her mother wandering, scavenging for food, sheltering in hostels and eventually being arrested for vagrancy. Short sections of the book capture poignant moments of childhood memories of rejection and desperation. Dora lived in France for thirty-six years, but being Jewish, she is deported to Israel. Dora struggles to make a living for the two of them in the stark landscape of a migrant camp, but every time she begins to make progress, her difference is identified by a tormentor, and her enterprise is crushed.
At times, Dora appears simply eccentric. But eccentricity develops into full-blown mental illness for which she receives no treatment, and which Josiane manages at great cost to herself. Growing older, Josiane works to support her mother, eventually meets her partner and moves to Melbourne to have children of her own. Dora thwarts every effort to bring her to Australia, and ends her years living rough as a bag lady in Tel Aviv.
The book opens and closes with descriptions of the painful, disconnected phone calls that Dora makes to Josiane.
One question remains unspoken but always present while reading this book - what more could Josiane have done to relieve her mother’s suffering? And the answer is nothing. Josiane navigated the opposing pulls of the need to respect her mother’s choices with the need to force care upon her. In general, protecting her mother’s freedom was the overriding responsibility. Even if that freedom exposed her to personal danger and ill-health.
A beautifully written, brave and very moving book, which I read with a feeling of sorrow for Josiane Behmoiras and a guilty sense of gratefulness for never having to face such pain. I’m going to send it to my mother. No doubt she’ll ring me and tell me how much she enjoyed it.
Josiane Behmoiras also loved her mother dearly. It’s a testimony to the strength of their love that mother and daughter remained firmly connected through terrible hardship and poverty, prejudice and violence.
Josiane was born in Paris in 1953 and spent her first few years with her mother wandering, scavenging for food, sheltering in hostels and eventually being arrested for vagrancy. Short sections of the book capture poignant moments of childhood memories of rejection and desperation. Dora lived in France for thirty-six years, but being Jewish, she is deported to Israel. Dora struggles to make a living for the two of them in the stark landscape of a migrant camp, but every time she begins to make progress, her difference is identified by a tormentor, and her enterprise is crushed.
At times, Dora appears simply eccentric. But eccentricity develops into full-blown mental illness for which she receives no treatment, and which Josiane manages at great cost to herself. Growing older, Josiane works to support her mother, eventually meets her partner and moves to Melbourne to have children of her own. Dora thwarts every effort to bring her to Australia, and ends her years living rough as a bag lady in Tel Aviv.
The book opens and closes with descriptions of the painful, disconnected phone calls that Dora makes to Josiane.
One question remains unspoken but always present while reading this book - what more could Josiane have done to relieve her mother’s suffering? And the answer is nothing. Josiane navigated the opposing pulls of the need to respect her mother’s choices with the need to force care upon her. In general, protecting her mother’s freedom was the overriding responsibility. Even if that freedom exposed her to personal danger and ill-health.
A beautifully written, brave and very moving book, which I read with a feeling of sorrow for Josiane Behmoiras and a guilty sense of gratefulness for never having to face such pain. I’m going to send it to my mother. No doubt she’ll ring me and tell me how much she enjoyed it.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Penitent by Isaac Bashevis Singer
A strange choice for me, but here’s why. I’m a vegetarian (that’s no meat and no fish, thank you). I’ve been a vegetarian for 30 years. I don’t have rickets or anaemia or any debilitating diseases. And I am daily amazed at what a blind spot otherwise progressive people have, lesbians and feminists included, about consuming the flesh of dead animals. To me the choice to be vegetarian makes sense in so many compelling ways – producing animals for food damages the environment, wastes resources, fills human bodies with hormones, cholesterol, puss and other undesirable substances, stands as a signifier for patriarchal power, and is downright inhumane to other sentient beings. There that’s my diatribe.
So maybe that’s why I could tolerate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s rant that runs unfettered through this book. I’ve been purposefully seeking out novels where there is a theme of vegetarianism. And there aren’t many of them. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 – 1991) was a vegetarian, and many of his books have vegetarian characters.
An orthodox Jewish man, Joseph Shapiro (“The Penitent”) meets the author at the Wailing Wall, and tells his story. Having fled Poland at the Nazi invasion, he ends up in New York, where everything revolves around business and sex. The emptiness of this life drives him to Israel, and traditional Judaism. And vegetarianism; “I had long since come to the conclusion that man’s treatment of God’s creatures makes mockery of all his ideals and of the whole alleged humanism. …I’ve thought more than once that when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi.”
Despite being published in 1984, there’s a very contemporary feel to Shapiro’s railing against the evils of modern society. He describes lawyers as people whose function is to teach murderers how to avoid punishment so that they can kill more innocent people. And he is particularly scathing when he sees the Jewish community adopting this modern emptiness; “We already publish Hebrew magazines that describe in detail which Hollywood harlot slept with what Hollywood pimp."
Which forces me to admit that while Shapiro may be a good vegetarian, he is also a shocking misogynist, regularly describing women in terms of their projected propensity to draw him into sexual depravity, and referring to them as wenches and whores. And he’s a dreadful homophobe, even if he expresses it in an interesting way: “When a man sleeps with a modern woman, he actually gets into bed with all her lovers. That's why there are so many homosexuals today, because modern man is sleeping spiritually with countless other men. He constantly wants to excel in sex because he knows that his partner is comparing him to the others.”
This book is open to many readings, which is what makes it interesting. Is Shapiro’s exploration of faith and religious practice designed to persuade us to turn our back on materialism and reach out for spiritual fulfilment, or does it expose the intolerance of fundamentalism? Does Isaac Bashevis Singer, the author, agree with the moralistic outbursts of his main character? And does this book “work”, when it is so light on plot or narrative, and so grindingly heavy on polemic?
Harold Bloom published an interesting view of The Penitent in the New Yorker
So maybe that’s why I could tolerate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s rant that runs unfettered through this book. I’ve been purposefully seeking out novels where there is a theme of vegetarianism. And there aren’t many of them. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 – 1991) was a vegetarian, and many of his books have vegetarian characters.
An orthodox Jewish man, Joseph Shapiro (“The Penitent”) meets the author at the Wailing Wall, and tells his story. Having fled Poland at the Nazi invasion, he ends up in New York, where everything revolves around business and sex. The emptiness of this life drives him to Israel, and traditional Judaism. And vegetarianism; “I had long since come to the conclusion that man’s treatment of God’s creatures makes mockery of all his ideals and of the whole alleged humanism. …I’ve thought more than once that when it comes to animals, every man is a Nazi.”
Despite being published in 1984, there’s a very contemporary feel to Shapiro’s railing against the evils of modern society. He describes lawyers as people whose function is to teach murderers how to avoid punishment so that they can kill more innocent people. And he is particularly scathing when he sees the Jewish community adopting this modern emptiness; “We already publish Hebrew magazines that describe in detail which Hollywood harlot slept with what Hollywood pimp."
Which forces me to admit that while Shapiro may be a good vegetarian, he is also a shocking misogynist, regularly describing women in terms of their projected propensity to draw him into sexual depravity, and referring to them as wenches and whores. And he’s a dreadful homophobe, even if he expresses it in an interesting way: “When a man sleeps with a modern woman, he actually gets into bed with all her lovers. That's why there are so many homosexuals today, because modern man is sleeping spiritually with countless other men. He constantly wants to excel in sex because he knows that his partner is comparing him to the others.”
This book is open to many readings, which is what makes it interesting. Is Shapiro’s exploration of faith and religious practice designed to persuade us to turn our back on materialism and reach out for spiritual fulfilment, or does it expose the intolerance of fundamentalism? Does Isaac Bashevis Singer, the author, agree with the moralistic outbursts of his main character? And does this book “work”, when it is so light on plot or narrative, and so grindingly heavy on polemic?
Harold Bloom published an interesting view of The Penitent in the New Yorker
Monday, June 11, 2007
Careless, by Deborah Robertson
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of how much I admired Sylvia Martin’s book about the wonderful Ida Leeson. Ida should be dripping with literary accolades. She should have grabbed all the literary prizes for 2007. But Ida has regularly missed out, and was pipped at the post for the NSW Literary awards by a book by a West Australian writer, Careless. So, to be honest, I opened Deborah Robertson’s book with a teeny bit of resentment.
But Careless is a good book.
Firstly, it gives an excellent account of contemporary Australia. You wouldn’t think that was noteworthy, but historical novels are so pervasive that the description of narrative worlds where the characters live in units, drink Coke and watch flat-screen televisions feels recklessly innovative.
Careless explores the impact of a violent tragedy on a range of vaguely connected characters. Children feature large, or rather the relationships adults have with children, in all their variety. The subtlety of Deborah Robertson’s portrayal of being a parent was striking. She doesn’t romanticise. She describes the everyday love, ambivalence, exasperation, fun and occasional neglect of normal parenting. I enjoyed that very much.
The book is also about grief, and ambition, and creativity, and raises questions about what makes a fitting memorial to the dead. It uses the image of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in multiple ways to represent, I imagine, the layers of grief and love which can stand strong while a forceful undercurrent seeps below. The hope which emanates from a beautiful building built by a man who had experienced great tragedy. The idea that we can reshape the future but that life flows on. I enjoyed this too.
But in the end there was something unfulfilling in this book, also noted by other bloggers (Lucy’s blog, Tea&Tattered pages ). Which leads me to a perennial speculation about whether writers would be well advised to conduct UAT (User Acceptance Testing – common practice for websites and virtual spaces) with Josephine Blow to get more honest feedback than they get from commercial critics and literatis.
But anyway, perhaps it was the Epilogue which failed. It was far too late to introduce new characters. But ultimately, that let-down feeling is because of the absence of any kind of optimism for the little girl, Pearl, whose strength is impressive, but who is destined to be always held back by her mother and her sense of responsibility.
Careless won the 2007 Kibble Award for women’s life writing, and has been short listed for a swag of other prizes. It’s a good book, but not a patch on Ida. Then again, how healthy is Australian writing when, in one year, we get a range of books to read of this calibre?
But Careless is a good book.
Firstly, it gives an excellent account of contemporary Australia. You wouldn’t think that was noteworthy, but historical novels are so pervasive that the description of narrative worlds where the characters live in units, drink Coke and watch flat-screen televisions feels recklessly innovative.
Careless explores the impact of a violent tragedy on a range of vaguely connected characters. Children feature large, or rather the relationships adults have with children, in all their variety. The subtlety of Deborah Robertson’s portrayal of being a parent was striking. She doesn’t romanticise. She describes the everyday love, ambivalence, exasperation, fun and occasional neglect of normal parenting. I enjoyed that very much.
The book is also about grief, and ambition, and creativity, and raises questions about what makes a fitting memorial to the dead. It uses the image of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water in multiple ways to represent, I imagine, the layers of grief and love which can stand strong while a forceful undercurrent seeps below. The hope which emanates from a beautiful building built by a man who had experienced great tragedy. The idea that we can reshape the future but that life flows on. I enjoyed this too.
But in the end there was something unfulfilling in this book, also noted by other bloggers (Lucy’s blog, Tea&Tattered pages ). Which leads me to a perennial speculation about whether writers would be well advised to conduct UAT (User Acceptance Testing – common practice for websites and virtual spaces) with Josephine Blow to get more honest feedback than they get from commercial critics and literatis.
But anyway, perhaps it was the Epilogue which failed. It was far too late to introduce new characters. But ultimately, that let-down feeling is because of the absence of any kind of optimism for the little girl, Pearl, whose strength is impressive, but who is destined to be always held back by her mother and her sense of responsibility.
Careless won the 2007 Kibble Award for women’s life writing, and has been short listed for a swag of other prizes. It’s a good book, but not a patch on Ida. Then again, how healthy is Australian writing when, in one year, we get a range of books to read of this calibre?
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