Cass Moriarty (Author of The Promise Seed)

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing Exploded View by Carrie Tiffany	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Author Carrie Tiffany was one of the first Australian writers to instil in me a love of writing and an ambition that I could perhaps write myself. Her previous books Mateship with Birds (which won the inaugural Stella Prize) and Everyman’s Rules for ...more
18 hours, 37 min ago · 1 like · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Recently I interviewed Kat Mulheran, the owner of Bent Books, a second-hand bookstore in West End, and while wandering around afterwards, I picked up a copy of Cory Taylor’s book Dying: a memoir (Text Publishing 2016). It has been on my TBR list for ...more
Apr 15, 2019 04:52PM · 1 like · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it Clock Dance by Anne Tyler	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Just like a box of chocolates, Anne Tyler’s writing is comforting and moreish, but unlike Gump’s chocolates, you do generally know what you’re going to get: well-developed and engaging characters; tricky family situations or relationships; and great ...more
Apr 15, 2019 04:23PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Clock Dance by Anne Tyler. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Clock Dance by Anne Tyler <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Jonathan Cape Penguin Random House 2018) is by Ottessa Moshfegh, the author of the dark novel Eileen, which I absolutely loved. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is similarly dark – blackly funny, keenly observed and intr ...more
Apr 13, 2019 06:29PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it The True Story of Maddie Bright by Mary-Rose MacColl (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Brisbane Writer Mary-Rose MacColl’s latest novel The True Story of Maddie Bright (Allen & Unwin Books 2019) is an historical mystery that revolves around the royal family and explores the complicated dynamics of power within relationships. With t ...more
Apr 09, 2019 06:47PM · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing The Aunts' House by Elizabeth Stead	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Aunts’ House (UQP 2019) by Elizabeth Stead is a curious, quirky, strange and wonderful story set in Sydney in 1942 and featuring the feisty and clever eleven-year-old Angel Martin, recently orphaned and sent to live in a boarding house full of ec ...more
Apr 04, 2019 06:36PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing The Place on Dalhousie by Melina Marchetta (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Australian author Melina Marchetta may be best known for her seminal young adult novel Looking for Alibrandi, published in 1992, but she has published nine novels since then. Her most recent, The Place on Dalhousie (Penguin Random House Viking 2019), ...more
Mar 31, 2019 05:43PM · 4 likes · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing Accidental Feminists by Jane Caro (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
You know that any book by social commentator Jane Caro will be chock full of fascinating facts and statistics that she somehow manages to condense into a highly readable, engaging, poignant or frequently funny book. In her latest work Accidental Femi ...more
Mar 28, 2019 05:15PM · 1 like · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it The Shining Wall by Melissa Ferguson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The blurb of The Shining Wall (Transit Lounge Publishing 2019) tells us that author Melissa Ferguson is ‘a cancer-fighting scientist who loves to explore scientific possibilities through fiction’, and in her debut novel about the dystopian society of ...more
Mar 24, 2019 03:21PM · 1 like · like · see review
Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Rather ashamed to admit that I had not yet read Claire G. Coleman’s award-winning Terra Nullius (Hachette Australia Books 2017), but after meeting Claire at a Griffith Review launch, this book was immediately moved up the TBR pile. And what a clever ...more
Mar 21, 2019 04:57PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Author Carrie Tiffany was one of the first Australian writers to instil in me a love of writing and an ambition that I could perhaps write myself. Her previous books Mateship with Birds (which won the inaugural Stella Prize) and Everyman’s Rules for Author Carrie Tiffany was one of the first Australian writers to instil in me a love of writing and an ambition that I could perhaps write myself. Her previous books Mateship with Birds (which won the inaugural Stella Prize) and Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living are both wonderful examples of a writer who truly loves words and delights in the craft of writing. Her recent novel Exploded View (Text Publishing 2019) is a slim volume narrated from the perspective of a young girl who doesn’t speak (and in fact there is almost no dialogue at all in the book), and recounts with spare and beautiful prose her abusive life and her dreams of escape.
Set in suburbia in the 1970’s, the 12-year-old lives with her brother, her mother and her stepfather, whom she calls father man. Father man is an unregistered mechanic who by day does dodgy vehicle repairs in the shed behind the house, and by night harasses and torments his family with the power he wields. The girl holds dear a tattered Holden workshop manual and uses it to gain precious knowledge about what matters most to father man. The book first introduces us to the girl and her family at their home, then takes us with them as they go on an insufferable road trip – eight days’ driving, three days’ staying at a place none of them enjoys, and eight days’ driving back again, eating at roadhouses and sleeping in the car. The other main aspect of the book’s narrative is the girl’s nocturnal activities – she rebalances the notion of power the only way she knows how, by tampering with father man's engines and completed repairs, and using her mechanical knowledge (gained from many nights of tinkering with other people’s cars in the dark) to subtly undo his work: a handful of needles, dirt or feathers added, or merely the loosening of screws or the piecing of tubes. She takes the cars for joyrides too, secretive night-time drives, and also quietly breaks into the houses of neighbours when they are out, watching the television or using the bathroom. In this way she wrests some control from a life that is otherwise very much determined by others.
Exploded View is an exquisitely-written book. Not a word is wasted. Every sentence feels real and honest and true. This family is achingly broken and disturbingly unsettling. The hints of abuse are so understated and matter-of-fact – a line here, a word there – that you could almost miss them at first. But gradually the references build and the sinister nature of father man becomes apparent.
There are so many perfect phrases in this book. One of my favourite, which I think sums up the book really well, is this simple sentence: ‘I don’t know what other families are doing, but I know they aren’t doing this.’ The girl realises her life is not normal but she has no idea what normal is, or how she could attain it. She can only make the best of what she has. Her acts of sabotage balance the otherwise lack of agency she has about what happens to her.
Because Exploded View is narrated by a child, the perspective is through the prism of a child, and some of the views she expresses and the comments or thoughts she makes in her head are naïve and sometimes views that we would criticise in an adult (eg her dismissal of the ‘fat woman’ next door). This obliviousness, candour or unsophistication may be uncomfortable for some readers, or be seen merely as childish vulnerability and guilelessness by others.
The title Exploded View refers to the diagrams that depict the working parts of a car or engine, with each part labelled and separated out around the main section. I think it also refers to this family and their life, how each character is separate and apart, and about what it would take to make it whole. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

Dying: A Memoir
by Cory Taylor

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Recently I interviewed Kat Mulheran, the owner of Bent Books, a second-hand bookstore in West End, and while wandering around afterwards, I picked up a copy of Cory Taylor’s book Dying: a memoir (Text Publishing 2016). It has been on my TBR list for ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it

Clock Dance
by Anne Tyler

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Just like a box of chocolates, Anne Tyler’s writing is comforting and moreish, but unlike Gump’s chocolates, you do generally know what you’re going to get: well-developed and engaging characters; tricky family situations or relationships; and great Just like a box of chocolates, Anne Tyler’s writing is comforting and moreish, but unlike Gump’s chocolates, you do generally know what you’re going to get: well-developed and engaging characters; tricky family situations or relationships; and great arcing overviews of a life in all its stages. Her latest novel, Clock Dance (Penguin Random House 2018) is immediately obvious as an Anne Tyler book, and readers can open the pages in anticipation of the humour and poignancy they have come to expect.
Clock Dance has rather an unusual structure, however. The first half of the book comprises snapshots of moments of great import in the life of the protagonist, Willa Drake. The first section is set in 1967, when Willa is 11 years old, and her mother disappears. The second is in 1977, when at age 21, Willa is proposed to, and the third is in 1997 when she becomes a widow at only 41 years of age. Through each of these defining moments, Willa takes the path set out for her by others. The second half of the book is set in 2017. Willa is 61 years old and gets a call from a friend of her son’s ex-girlfriend, to say that Denise (the ex) has been shot, and could Willa please come and care for Denise’s nine-year-old daughter and their dog? Willa doesn’t know these people – she can’t even think why they would have her number – but something compels her to get on a plane and travel halfway across the country to help. Because she is needed. What she finds is a woman who needs her in ways she hasn’t been needed for years, a little girl yearning for a grandmother, and a community of eccentric characters who open their arms and welcome her. As she sets about doing what she can, despite the improbability of the whole situation, Willa finally begins to understand the meaning of her own life and realises that it is never too late to choose your own path.
Anne Tyler’s characters are always so complex and relatable, and her dialogue is spot-on – you can hear the people talking. And the humour and wit in this story is both funny and cringe-worthy. We know people like these people, we have had conversations with them, we are related to them, they are our neighbours and friends. And despite everything – her lost husband, her distant sons, her strange mother and her dear father – Willa at last, in her sixties, finds herself. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it

My Year of Rest and Relaxation
by Ottessa Moshfegh

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Jonathan Cape Penguin Random House 2018) is by Ottessa Moshfegh, the author of the dark novel Eileen, which I absolutely loved. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is similarly dark – blackly funny, keenly observed and intr ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it

The True Story of Maddie Bright
by Mary-Rose MacColl (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Brisbane Writer Mary-Rose MacColl’s latest novel The True Story of Maddie Bright (Allen & Unwin Books 2019) is an historical mystery that revolves around the royal family and explores the complicated dynamics of power within relationships. With t Brisbane Writer Mary-Rose MacColl’s latest novel The True Story of Maddie Bright (Allen & Unwin Books 2019) is an historical mystery that revolves around the royal family and explores the complicated dynamics of power within relationships. With themes of loyalty and service, ambition, sacrifice and betrayal, the book examines love and friendship, and the complex ties of family across the generations.
The novel is comprised of three interconnecting stories, which weave in and out throughout the book, jumping back and forth in time. The first concerns 17-year-old Maddie Bright who takes a position as a serving girl on the Royal Tour of Australia by Edward, Prince of Wales. During the journey, by train and by ship, she forges friendships with the dashing young prince and his closest confidantes – Helen Burns, his outgoing press secretary, and Rupert Waters, his aide and most loyal servant. The 1920’s are depicted in lavish colour and energy – the spectacle of the tour, the responsibilities and expectations of the prince who would be king (but who would ultimately abdicate to marry Wallis Simpson), the devotion and adoration of the thousands of Australians who waited each day for a glimpse of their prince. But this section is also dampened by the aftermath of war and the many families destroyed or deprived of their loved ones by the Great War which had ended only a few years earlier.
The second part of the book, set in Brisbane in 1981, is the story of Maddie Bright in her late 70’s, the famous writer of the book Autumn Leaves, published decades earlier and never followed by another, and now living almost in isolation in a run-down house after having lost everyone over the years since her youth on the Royal Tour – her friends, her family, all gone. This part is set during the time that Diana married Prince Charles and became a princess.
And the third story features Victoria Byrd, a journalist in 1997 covering Diana’s death and the terrible outpouring of grief from a nation and the world. On a personal level, Victoria is struggling to accept being the focus of attention from the other side of the camera as she avoids the celebrity paparazzi hounding her since her engagement to famous Hollywood actor Ben Winter. And when her editor sends her to Australia to meet the elusive writer M.A. Bright, who it appears may have written a sequel to her bestselling novel, Victoria is intrigued and eager to escape.
These three stories are interwoven with other snippets of the fictional novel Autumn Leaves by M.A. Bright, and the book begins with the first chapter of the new book, Winter Skies – a rather traumatic opening scene where a young woman leaves her newborn at a foundling wheel at a church, only to discover that the baby froze to death and never made it to the orphanage.
So there is certainly a lot going on in this novel and it does require some concentration at first to keep the three separate story lines straight and to wrangle the large cast of characters. But the persistence is worth the effort. MacColl has successfully braided together these disparate stories, punctuated with thwarted romance, starry-eyed idealism, unrequited love, parental failure, domestic violence, power and privilege, and followed each path until they eventually – inevitably – coalesce into the one story. Told with warmth and humour, with poignancy and care, with attention to historical detail and in an easy-to-read style, The True Story of Maddie Bright is a fictional tale based on two of the most controversial royal figures – Edward and Diana. MacColl specialises in writing authentically about the domesticity of mothering and the global duty and horror of war, and in this book she has combined the two to provide a heart-warming story of connection and memory. Readers of Toni Jordan’s most recent work The Fragments will find similarities in the themes of a forgotten literary heroine, the intersecting of memory and history, and characters at the end of long lives finally coming to grips with their own personal stories. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

The Aunts' House
by Elizabeth Stead

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Aunts’ House (UQP 2019) by Elizabeth Stead is a curious, quirky, strange and wonderful story set in Sydney in 1942 and featuring the feisty and clever eleven-year-old Angel Martin, recently orphaned and sent to live in a boarding house full of ec The Aunts’ House (UQP 2019) by Elizabeth Stead is a curious, quirky, strange and wonderful story set in Sydney in 1942 and featuring the feisty and clever eleven-year-old Angel Martin, recently orphaned and sent to live in a boarding house full of eccentric characters and headed by the mean (in both senses of the word) landlady Missus Potts. Angel has a pair of aunts that live in a house by the sea, but the two elderly women disown her and refuse to allow her inside the gates of their aging home, and so the young girl embarks on a quest to persuade her aunts to love her, beguiling the boarding house guests and others she meets along the way. She often skips school (especially after the incident of the wandering hands of the headmaster) and prefers to ride the trams, wander the art gallery, or play where she most feels at home – in the green space of the bush gully or beside the ocean she has named Mariana. She feels she learns more from her experiences and her adventures than she could possibly learn from school – she reads books, she listens to music, she sits cross-legged for hours to appreciate a single painting. She befriends the numerically gifted Barnaby Grange, who spends his days calculating maths equations and rarely speaks in words, and the flamboyant Winifred Varnham, who dresses in exotic fashions and opens Angel’s eyes to a whole new world view.
Angel is one of those characters in literature that will stay with you. She is wild and untamed – her hair a tangled mess, her feet bare, tough and dirty, her one dress threadbare and worn, her arms and legs scratched and pricked by brambles. Although this story is not told in the first person, we nevertheless see it very much from Angel’s perspective; we are inside her head which is crowded with music and colours, we are privy to her private thoughts about those she loves and those she despises, and about the people whose love she is determined to win. We experience her many sorrows (the death of her mother, the disregard and humiliation at the hands of others) and her small triumphs (the friendships she cultivates, the kindnesses of others, the joy of riding the Sunday trams, the satisfaction of besting a foe). And we delight in her sharp and cutting wit and her cheeky sense of humour. The place and time of wartime Sydney is evocative of the deprivation and restrictions of the era. Stead produces phrases and sentences that are wistful, playful, poignant, telling and sometimes abstract or strange, frequently offering a truthful or honest take on the world that is deceptively simple but flinty and wounding. There is much talk of madness in this book – Angel’s mother died in the sanitarium – and people are always telling Angel she is ‘not right in the head’. But it is this wonderful otherness, this almost magical way of thinking, that is so seductive and engaging. Angel is a girl with a troubled past and a difficult present, but she is so alive, so compelling, so fascinated by life and all it potentially has to offer, that she is eager to rush headlong into her future, resolutely indomitable in her passion to fight for what she wants rather than merely accept her lot in life. And along the way, this book explores what it means to be part of a family, and how we might build a family from those we choose rather than merely from those to whom we are related. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

The Place on Dalhousie
by Melina Marchetta (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Australian author Melina Marchetta may be best known for her seminal young adult novel Looking for Alibrandi, published in 1992, but she has published nine novels since then. Her most recent, The Place on Dalhousie (Penguin Random House Viking 2019), Australian author Melina Marchetta may be best known for her seminal young adult novel Looking for Alibrandi, published in 1992, but she has published nine novels since then. Her most recent, The Place on Dalhousie (Penguin Random House Viking 2019), once again highlights her interest in exploring relationships, families and friendships but does so with a more mature cast of characters, and with the nuanced development that comes with a little age and experience. Marchetta’s common themes of being an outsider and also the slightly magical realism of extraordinary coincidences are also a feature of this novel, which is a moving story about what it takes to make a family, and what is needed to bind a family together.
The story opens when spirited Rosie Gennaro meets Jimmy Hailler in the middle of a small, flood-drenched town in Queensland. Rosie has fled her life in Sydney, and her home (on Dalhousie Street) that her father built piece by painstaking piece over twenty years, but never saw completed. She is caring for the cantankerous elderly woman Ms Joy Fricker who refuses to evacuate her home and be put – even temporarily – into the local nursing home. Rosie meets Jimmy – or SES Jesus as she initially calls him – when he comes to their rescue. Jimmy is volunteering with the evacuation team. He is prohibited from returning to his home in Sydney for two years and has had his prized possession, his Monaro, stolen, a deeply disturbing omen for him, especially because the man who had sold him the car in Sydney had told him cryptically that it would help him ‘find his family’, and Jimmy has come north to do just that. Both Rosie and Jimmy are lost souls, unmoored and very much living isolated lives where they depend on only themselves. But within the first few pages, Rosie and Jimmy fall into a casual sexual liaison that is comforting, brief and without strings. Within two weeks, Rosie is gone and Jimmy is forgotten.
The book then expands to introduce the third main character, Martha, married to Rosie’s father Seb (after Rosie’s mother died), but now herself a widow. Martha is rattling around in the home that Seb spent all those years building. Estranged from Rosie, and reaching a crossroads in her professional life, Martha is a strong and determined character who finds herself in an impossible position. And when feisty Rosie turns up at her door again, this time with a lot of baggage, the two women are locked into a battle – a fight for the house on Dalhousie Street and a clash of personalities between two women who are both searching for family but are each, for different reasons, frightened of how to find it. Each refuses to move out of the home and it becomes divided into Rosie’s domain upstairs and Martha’s space downstairs. And when Jimmy returns to Sydney and reunites with his group of close friends (all in their early twenties), and decides to find Rosie, things become rather more complicated.
I read this as a stand-alone book, however fans of Marchetta will no doubt be delighted to discover that Jimmy and his friends are characters first introduced in her books Saving Francesca and The Piper’s Son. And the characterisation does have an easy and natural feel to it – these are friendships forged on childhood foundations, relationships that have grown and matured over time as the characters struggle to make their way into the adult world whilst maintaining the bonds of their youth. While it may be your introduction to these characters, the effortless and casual vibe between them feels cemented and secure, as if the author is writing about old friends (which of course, she is), old friends who have a history together. This examination of friendship is replicated in the ties between Martha and her girlfriends. Although they are twenty years older, and so in a different phase of their lives, that spark of connection is still there, perhaps made even stronger by experience, shared circumstances and crises overcome.
The other similarity with Marchetta’s earlier works is the continued theme of outsiders versus insiders. The positions of migrants – even those that are now second or third generation – are written about with sensitivity and wit, but always with a clear-eyed view towards prejudice, the difficulties of leaving home and the complications of creating a new life in a different country.
And the third similarity or theme that readers of Marchetta’s work will recognise is the inclusion of coincidence. In an almost (but not quite) use of magic realism, the characters in this story are united in ways they do not understand and which do not become clear to the reader until the conclusion of the story. These threads of connection are subtle and believable, beautifully-rendered and satisfying. Of course, we think, of course that happens – how could it have been otherwise? And why did we not see it earlier? These lovely coincidences scaffold the heart of the story and strengthen its themes of belonging and yearning. Rosie, Jimmy and Martha are each longing to find – or to create – their own family, or a sense of family, or to recapture the family they have lost, and they discover that family is not only who you are connected to by genetics, but those friends that you choose to be your family because of love. The lives of these characters are all wonderfully messy and flawed and yet Marchetta knits them together with compassion, optimism and hope.
The Place on Dalhousie delves deeply into the angst of grief – how we cope (or how we don’t), the strange things grief compels us to do, the barrier grief erects against forming close relationships with others because of our fear of again getting hurt, our protection against further loss. But it also explores the possibility of second chances – of becoming stronger through adversity, of again opening ourselves up to love even though we know the risks.
This is an easy-to-read story that emphasises the interconnectedness of lives and the many ways in which people can belong. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

Accidental Feminists
by Jane Caro (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

You know that any book by social commentator Jane Caro will be chock full of fascinating facts and statistics that she somehow manages to condense into a highly readable, engaging, poignant or frequently funny book. In her latest work Accidental Femi You know that any book by social commentator Jane Caro will be chock full of fascinating facts and statistics that she somehow manages to condense into a highly readable, engaging, poignant or frequently funny book. In her latest work Accidental Feminists (Melbourne University Publishing 2019), Caro focuses on the generation of women aged 55 years and over who unintentionally heralded the third wave of feminism (after the push for the vote – the first wave, and the second wave of progress during the 70’s), aided by technological advances and societal changes that revolutionised their personal lives and their expectations both of what they were expected to give as well as what they could hope to achieve. This group of women – building on the foundations already constructed by their women forebears – in some ways inhabit lives much richer than ever before in history, but paradoxically also simultaneously succumb to frightening social problems such as poverty and homelessness in ever greater numbers.
In chapters titled ‘Hags, Crones, Witches and Mothers-in-Law’, ‘Gold-diggers, Beggars and Thieves’, ‘Slags, Sluts, Gossips and Staceys’ and ‘Invalids, Liars, Hysterics and Madwomen’, Caro explores how women are viewed and treated by men, by society and by other women. She dismantles structures such as superannuation, child-care and tax policy to determine how and why they are so often going wrong for women, and she celebrates the determination and empowerment of women who are struggling to achieve equality (in work, in pay, in domestic duties, in child care, in sex and in perceptions).
Over 50 percent of us are women, and 100 percent of us are aging. But it is how we agitate for change, how we demand equality and what we seek as our fair share that will determine how future generations are treated and cared for. Those women aged 55 and over were raised to care for others, to stay at home and run the house, to mind the children and keep the home fires burning, with the hope – or really, the expectation – that in turn, they would be cared for as they aged. But their years of patchy employment records (interrupted by child-rearing, the necessity for part-time work, the lack of equal opportunities for promotion) have contributed to a rather dire predicament for many, who now find themselves struggling to make ends meet, homeless, invisible to society, unwanted by the workforce or unneeded by family.
Caro argues that it is innovations such as the contraceptive pill and the tampon that have impacted more on women of this age than even the labour-saving devices such as washing machines and dishwashers. She says that ‘many sectors of society have done their damnedest to hold back women every step of the way’ and through meticulous research, carefully documented case histories, and collected anecdotal evidence and stories, she interprets how and why this has happened, and what might be done to rectify the difficulties. ‘Women’, she says, ‘are not a job lot…[but]…what we share is the burden of assumptions that are made about what a woman should be like, what she should do, say, wear, think and express.’ In quoting social researcher Hugh Mackay, Caro repeats his finding that out of the top ten desires that need to be met to live a satisfying life, number one is ‘the desire to be taken seriously’. This was a light bulb moment for Caro, who ‘saw clearly that feminism is the struggle by half the human race to be taken seriously by the other half’.
Depicting women’s struggle to maintain a professional career and raise well-adjusted children – in addition to completing most of the unpaid work around the home – Caro states that while ‘intellectually, we knew we had a right to lives just as rich and varied as those of our brothers…emotionally, we still struggled against our own and others’ unconscious assumptions…guilt [and] disapproval’.
Amidst practical suggestions (make child care tax deductible! - legitimise it the same way we treat sick pay and superannuation; offer fathers monetary incentives to spend at least some time as the primary carer during their child’s infancy; recognise the billions of dollars saved by (mostly) women undertaking the care of the young, the disabled, the elderly and the vulnerable) and lots of personal anecdotes from her own life (she brilliantly describes the unpaid role of ‘producer’ that most women play in family life – managing the shopping and social engagements, the tradespeople and doctor visits – the ‘emotional labour’), Caro discusses the traditional, unpaid female roles that should be counted towards GDP despite not being a market commodity that can be bought and sold, such as volunteer work in a hospice, or the powerful example of breastfeeding (‘GDP unapologetically favours infant formula because it is a commercial product, so the more babies who are not breastfed (against all the recommendations by health experts) the better it is for GDP.’)
Caro also explores the generalised fear around women who are ‘out of control’, angry or that terrible but much used term ‘hysterical’, and examines the tendency to blame and shame women for acts perpetrated by men (which #MeToo is finally addressing), when all feminism really claims to do is to ‘give women the same rights as men to decide the shape of their own lives’. And she concludes by surmising that ‘… perhaps that was always patriarchy’s fatal flaw. No matter how much they held us back, no matter how many obstacles they put in our way, no matter how low our self-esteem or bitter our disappointments, they could not drain our brains out of our ears, or (totally) smash our spirit and our desire to participate in and contribute to the world. Many of us, throughout history, found a way.’ ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book really liked it

The Shining Wall
by Melissa Ferguson (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The blurb of The Shining Wall (Transit Lounge Publishing 2019) tells us that author Melissa Ferguson is ‘a cancer-fighting scientist who loves to explore scientific possibilities through fiction’, and in her debut novel about the dystopian society of The blurb of The Shining Wall (Transit Lounge Publishing 2019) tells us that author Melissa Ferguson is ‘a cancer-fighting scientist who loves to explore scientific possibilities through fiction’, and in her debut novel about the dystopian society of a ruined world, she certainly combines her scientific knowledge with her creative imagination to create a world both frightening and apocalyptic.
This is a story about power – the powerful and the powerless, the haves and the have nots. In a future age, advanced technology has allowed wealthy humans to build lives of privilege behind a shining wall, lives extended by many years and augmented with artificial intelligence and scientific discoveries. Implanted chips do everything from manage your funds via a credit system to diagnose and treat illness. Robot technology provides security. OmniScreens provide information, or IntelliEnhance systems are implanted directly into your brain. The organisation LeaderCorp keeps tight control of City 1. But outside the city walls, life in the Demi-Settlements is very different as poverty and disease force people to live in slums, scavenge for food and essential supplies, and avoid the ever-present Security Forces. The cloned Neoandertal officers are literally a different breed, there to service the Sapiens. And the Rewilders roam like mercenary hippies, hoping to prevent the technology taking over.
In the midst of this dramatic and terrifying new world order, we meet our main characters. Alida (17) and her sister Graycie (5) are orphaned on the first page, left to fend for themselves in a society that has no place for weakness. Alida is desperate not to resort to selling her body like so many others, or worse, being used as an incubator to birth children for those in City 1. But there are even worse fates, such as being harvested for your organs or designated for the medical research facility. Alida is a kick-arse character who travels these pages with wit and humour, with love and devotion for her sister, loyalty to her friends and an innate sense of survival.
Shuqba is a cloned Neo with a heightened moral compass. When she is sent to a remote outposting in the Demi-Settlements, she finds herself unable to align her strict orders with the feelings she develops for those she has been sent to protect.
Women are the silent strength in this novel: fatal viruses and wounds that won’t heal, end-of-days survivalist strategies, a complete upheaval of what is valued, power struggles between various factions – through everything, the women and girls protect each other, make sacrifices, make terrible choices in order to survive, and use their ingenuity and their emotions to outwit their enemies. The structure of the world-building and the attention to the details of the minutiae of everyday life keep this book interesting, but it is the relationships between the characters that evoke care and uncertainty as to their fates.
This book is a mixture of The Road to Winter by Mark Smith versus Watershed by Jane Abbott versus The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: a frightening vision of a possible future; a frantic game of survival; an emotional tale of connection. ...more

Cass Moriarty rated a book it was amazing

Terra Nullius
by Claire G. Coleman (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Rather ashamed to admit that I had not yet read Claire G. Coleman’s award-winning Terra Nullius (Hachette Australia Books 2017), but after meeting Claire at a Griffith Review launch, this book was immediately moved up the TBR pile. And what a clever Rather ashamed to admit that I had not yet read Claire G. Coleman’s award-winning Terra Nullius (Hachette Australia Books 2017), but after meeting Claire at a Griffith Review launch, this book was immediately moved up the TBR pile. And what a clever and thought-provoking novel it is.
Terra Nullius begins as an account of Australia’s grim past in relation to the invasion by English settlers and the imprisonment, enslavement and massacre of the Indigenous population. Children are stolen, families are broken, communities are shattered, language is outlawed and ‘re-education’ is the order of the day as the newcomers assert their ‘moral and intellectual superiority’ and attempt to ‘tame the savage natives’. So far, so familiar. A bleak retelling of our appalling history, peppered with graphic and visceral accounts of violence and inhumane treatment that is uncomfortable to read and difficult to confront.
But halfway through this novel, the narrative shifts in a way that is both ingenious and original. To say too much would be to spoil the dawning recognition of those yet to read this book, but enough to say that the line between the past and the future becomes blurred, and everything we thought we had read until that point suddenly comes into focus as something else altogether. The effect of this is that the story that we thought was about something that happened to ‘them’, becomes something that is happening to ‘us’, and this dramatic kaleidoscopic shift is, quite frankly, mind-blowing. This book shows us how much we don’t know about what we don’t know, and changes the lens through which we view the invasion (‘colonisation’, ‘settlement’) of this country.
But apart from the unique structure, the story itself is engaging and compelling. The main characters – Jacky, Sister Bagra, Esperance, Devil, Rohan and Johnny Star – are highly relatable and fascinating. The writing itself is often phrased in an almost naïve and straightforward beauty. Every chapter opens with an extract from an ‘historical document’, placing what comes afterwards in context.
This may be a work of fiction but the truths it explores are very real. The issues of Australia’s sordid past, and our country’s current position on refugees or Indigenous people or anyone who is ‘other’, are laid bare in this sharp and cutting social commentary. ...more

topics	posts	views	last activity
Aussie Readers: Autumn Challenge - 1st March-31st May 2018	334	266	Jun 01, 2018 09:27PM
Australian Women ...: Completed! (77 reviews for 2018)	91	29	Dec 21, 2018 07:39PM

Cass Moriarty’s Followers (69)

Cass’s Bookshelves

Cass’s Friends (18)

2019 Reading Challenge

Cass Moriarty

Goodreads Author

Learn more
Ask the Author

Popular Answered Questions

Combine Editions
Cass Moriarty’s books

0 posts
Cass Moriarty's Blog

Upcoming Events

rss
Cass’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

See a Problem?

Preview — My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

See a Problem?

Preview — Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman

Topics Mentioning This Author

recent posts
Cass’s Groups

Cass’s Friend Comments

Flag Abuse

	The Promise Seed 4.25 avg rating — 394 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Parting Words 3.64 avg rating — 178 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Cass Moriarty

Goodreads Author

Popular Answered Questions

Upcoming Events

rssCass’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

See a Problem?

Preview — My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

See a Problem?

Preview — Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman

Topics Mentioning This Author

Flag Abuse

rss
Cass’s Recent Updates