Iris Lavell's Blog, page 8

Book Review - "Life in Half a Second" by Matthew Michalewicz

A lovely-sounding lady (via email interaction) called Jody recently sent me a review copy of this book, subtitled How to achieve success before it's too late, a timely gift out of the blue for a few different reasons.

The one that is of relevance to this blog revolved around the concerns expressed in the course of the Australian Society of Authors Congress which was held in Sydney last month. Like the music industry, the book industry is in a state of some uncertainty with regard to what the future holds in relation to authors' livelihoods. This is because of apparent diminishing p-book sales, variable e-book sales, and the looming take-up of the industry by large and powerful companies which are making what they see as good business decisions. They probably are good decisions in the shorter term, but what happens if the writers stop writing?

It won't happen, of course. Writers, being the peculiar people that we are, will continue to write, but the practicalities of earning enough to be able to eat, support our families, and pay the bills does tend to steal time away from our primary activity if we are unable to earn enough through writing, which is likely to impact on the quality of what we are able to produce.

The long and short of it is that writers, like anyone else, need to be able to become somewhat entrepreneurial, if they are to survive. While many of us have spent the better part of our lives writing, honing that skill, not so many have invested time and passion into learning the skills of entrepreneurial success. This is where Author, Matthew Michalewicz's excellent entrepreneurial book comes in.

I hesitate to call this a self-help book, because although it is eminently readable and practical, its scope is a little wider than the genre label might suggest. The author's personal philosophy shines through as he reveals his take on the all-important question of creating meaning in life, and the great satisfaction of not merely entertaining dreams, but actually realising them. It seems that we might even exceed our most dearly held goals, given the right attitude of mind, skills and work ethic.

This very readable book tracks through actions for achieving any goal that the reader might have, whatever that might be - whether it is to develop a successful business, write a book, write a very good book, become a body-builder, or start a successful charity to address a benevolent cause that is dear to your heart. While Michalewicz doesn't claim particular originality with regard to the ideas contained between the covers, he writes that he has used the approach in each of his business ventures.

The author has the credentials to write this book with some credibility, having achieved considerable success in a range of different endeavours. I don't suppose he was obliged to write this book to make his fortune, but in sharing his process, others might learn the techniques that have worked so well for him.

Michalewicz uses the metaphor of five doors one passes through, in order to achieve what it is that they wish to achieve, and at the end of each chapter details specific actions that guide the reader towards attainment of the goal. The book includes footnotes relating to the research supporting the writer's particular claims, and although these are interesting, they are possibly not essential to the text given the author's expertise in the area.

According to the information about the author at the end of the book, Matthew Michalewicz 'is an international expert in entrepreneurship, innovation, and success psychology'. He 'has a track record of starting businesses from scratch and selling them for tens of millions of dollars'. He has written a number of other books including Winning Credibility, Puzzle-Based Learning, and Adaptive Business Intelligence. At the time of the book being published he was lecturing at the University of Adelaide as a Visiting Fellow on the subject of technology commercialisation. A link to his website is included here.

Rememberence day, November 11

Book Review - The House of Fiction by Susan Swingler

The House of Fiction wasn't on my list, but I saw it at the Fremantle Arts Centre on the weekend, and after having seen the author interviewed on Australian Story about a week ago, couldn't resist buying it. As I said to the lady in the bookshop, I can't not buy a book when I go into a bookshop, and this one jumped out at me. She said she didn't mind at all.

This has pushed other books on my list further down, especially since I found myself strangely drawn into the story once I'd started reading. The writing style is unobtrusive and leaves the intrigue of the story itself to do the work. It does this in a self-contained way that suggests considerable restraint on the part of the author, quite a feat, given the content.

The House of Fiction is a memoir published last year by Fremantle Press, and concerns that part of Susan Swingler's life which involves the departure of her father when she was four years old, leaving her mother a single parent in England in1950. Her father was Leonard Jolley, head librarian of the University of Western Australia's library for many years, and husband to iconic and well-regarded Australian novelist, Elizabeth Jolley.

The book is an exploration of the mores of the time, as much as anything else. The story ultimately reveals that Elizabeth (previously Monica) and Leonard were lovers while Leonard and Susan's mother Joyce were still together. The then Monica was a friend to both of them, nursed Leonard when he was in hospital with a flare-up of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and the two women (Leonard's wife and his secret lover) subsequently had Leonard's first daughters only five weeks apart. While this was hurtful and unorthodox behaviour, it was probably not a very uncommon story post World War II when the world had been torn apart, lost any innocence that it still might have had, and where the urge to procreate would have been strong.

The other aspect of the story was the secrecy that surrounded this, and continued to do so over many years - Joyce did not know that the woman Leonard had left her for was their friend Monica (Elizabeth Jolley) or that Monica's baby was fathered by Leonard, and Susan did not learn of this until she was 21. This was compounded by a further web of fabrications which left the people involved confused as to what could be believed, and angry at the deception.

This, while interesting, was not the most gripping part of the story for me. What impressed me was the exploration of the psychological aspects - how secrecy, half-truths, fictions disguised as reality, might shape the world of the developing child, causing a potential fracture in their understanding of reality and the ability to trust. In Susan's case there had been enough stability and love from her mother and maternal grandmother during these formative years to protect her from the potential damage of this behaviour. Even so, she alludes to these difficulties, and the hurt remained it seems, up to, and throughout, the writing of the book. This part of the story was courageously and thoroughly explored by the author.

The other thing that impressed me was the author's commitment to appraising the situation with as much honesty as she could - and the positioning of herself within the story, underlining the fact of its subjective nature, only added to this. To my mind, Elizabeth comes out of the story reasonably well in the circumstances - people are only human and sometimes they fall in love with people who already have other commitments, act on those emotions, and people get hurt. Good things come from that too - in this case, two more children. Elizabeth did, at least, try to provide some comfort for the child left behind across the ocean. There seemed to be some generosity in her actions as well as some arguably less generous impulses.

Not for the first time, this book made me reflect on the sacrificial nature of the confessional, or semi-confessional text - that the author exposes self for the sake of the story. I think this applies to the work of Elizabeth Jolley as it does to Susan Swingler. There is, in that, an impulse to explore a truth, the various ways in which humanity is expressed for better or worse.

An advertisement about finding love...

Difficult to segue into this topic from a blog about all things writerly I know, but I'll try.

Some friends have recently started up a local face-to-face dating service (and no, this is not a euphemism for something less lovely). They are hoping to direct people to the relevant website.

The idea is to enable people to meet up either for speed dating, or to facilitate them getting to know one another on a purely friendly basis (just friends). This might even lead to slow-dating (a bit like the slow-cooking movement).

The new service is called IYQ and is currently in the process of organising social events for people to get together in Perth. You can find their website here.

How does this relate to writing? Think Romance Novels perhaps. Or the link between reading a good book, and spending time getting to know one another. These introduction services aim to facilitate relationships in a deep and meaningful way, rather than by way of commodity, a form of alienation all too prevalent in contemporary societies.

Drawing a long bow? Ah well... As my mother is want to say, it's what we do.

National Kindness Day starts 16 days of kindness

November 6 is National Kindness Day in Australia, and starts the 16 days of kindness from 6-21 November.

Why be kind? Well the most obvious answer is that kindness creates a better world for us all to enjoy.

The Australian Kindness Movement makes for a convincing case. The following quote comes from their site. (Follow the link above to learn more and here for suggestions of how to contribute to the celebration of kindness.)
"Being kind is an enjoyable experience. It makes you feel good, and useful, and alive, and it validates you as a human being. When you are kind it triggers a number of beneficial physical and psychological responses. The most obvious response is the 'feel good' sensation,which has been officially titled the "helper's high".

The person who receives a kind act experiences the 'feel good' response, too. It's a nice experience when someone smiles at you, or thanks you, or compliments you, or helps you in some way. It creates a bonding, and in that moment there is a greater sense of worth about yourself and people in general. It is a feeling akin to falling in love, and in that moment you have fallen in love - with the whole of humanity." 

The Broken Book by Susan Johnson

When I tracked Susan Johnson down at the Australian Society of Authors Congress in Sydney a few weeks ago with her book in my hot, acquisitive little hand, and forced her to sign it for me, with a wheedling smile and a dance of the cover of her book in her sight line, she was very gracious about the whole thing, wishing me well in my own work, in the inscription. She said she hoped I liked it and that it was a book that polarised - people seemed to either love it, or hate it.

I am firmly in the love camp, and I have been trying to put my finger on precisely why. I can't quite...

What I can do is note that this is a remarkable novel, and I can't understand why it didn't win some sort of literary prize (did it? Surely it has!?). I love the fragmented nature of a story that still makes perfect sense, and the style (to say it is confessional is to do it an injustice, only because that word has become associated in literature with a kind of cultural cringe about 'women's writing' - it is, at times, deeply intimate but never cloying). Johnson's expertise in carrying off an unorthodox structure is impressive, and through her own example, she infuses the work with an understanding that the best writing is not just something utilitarian, but art. Capital A Art, I think.

The latter is central to the story, inspired, rather than firmly based, on the life of Australian writer Charmian Clift aka (in Johnson's novel) Katherine Anne Elgin 1923 -1969. Clift collaborated on three novels with her husband, the writer George Johnston (who won the Miles Franklin for My Brother Jack) and had two novels entirely of her own making published in 1960 and 1964 - Walk to the Paradise Gardens and Honour's Mimic respectively. She was a well-known (and loved) columnist and a short story writer.

The Broken Book refers to the novel that Elgin (Clift?) is working on when she dies. In some ways the slippage between the real-life Clift (if such a person - any person - could be pinned down) and the fictional character Elgin, creates a space where (what I think ) the central questions of this novel are posed: What is art? How do the actual lived experience of the writer and the work inform one another? Where or what is the line where/when a written work crosses over into the territory of art? Is writing, or any artistic endeavour, a form of neuroticism? Is it worth it? Who gets hurt along the way? It seems that in this case, the answer is often the writer herself.

What I loved about this book was not just the subject matter, which I assume would be of interest to most writers, but the book itself. I mean, not only the insights Johnson displays in this sensitive and compassionately imagined story about the relationships between husband and wife of that era, parents and their children, and the desire for some sort of transcendence through knowledge or art, but the way in which the words Johnson has chosen catches fleeting human experiences and shows them for the beautiful, complex, often painful, but ultimately joyful gifts that they are.

I can't say any more about this book, except to recommend it to my fellow writers. The three last books I have discussed in this blog have encouraged me to keep going, not because I have a hope of equalling their outstanding artistic achievements, but because it is a beautiful thing to do. And sometimes, for one or two people, a good book implants a kernel of understanding that wasn't there before. And that is really something.

It's Elemental my dear...

I've just finished reading Amanda Curtin's epic novel Elemental . When the book was launched by Janet Holmes-a-Court earlier this year, she joked that she had considered giving a box of tissues to the first ten or twelve people that bought a copy. 'Buy it,' she said. 'Read it.' Now I know why. I bought it, but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I wanted to take it away with me so that I would be able to give it the attention it needed.  And deserved.

Even the tears were well-earned. This is Amanda Curtin's second novel, the second that I have read, and I felt with this one, as with the last, that I had just finished a satisfying, beautifully prepared and nutritious meal that has left me wanting for nothing but the hope that it won't be the last.

Elemental is largely told from the point of view of Meggie Tulloch who, as a young girl at the beginning of the twentieth Century, lives as far as you can go north-east of the Scottish mainland, 'closer to Norway than to London'. The story spans several generations of Meggie's family from Scotland to Fremantle, from 1904 to the present day. It is beautifully imagined, and as real as any work of fiction can be. It is about life, the cycle of the generations, patterns of life choices that seem to be almost inherited, and courage and stoicism in the face of adversity. It's a compelling story. It is also filmic in its scale; a work that would easily lend itself to a movie deal. I wonder if anyone will snap it up. Mmn... I hope so. I can already see it in my mind's eye. Great!

Another of Pat's stories... first published in dotdotdash

Patricia Johnson has generously sent me another of her wonderful stories for the blog. It was first published in dotdotdash.
 The Red Pagoda
by Nabu
Stain waits, ready to merge as soon as his colours are ready. Long and lean, dark and dirty, Stain exists on the fringe of space. Many would like to know how he finds the slipstream so easily every time he wants to travel. They are unaware of his skill with colours, learnt during a protracted and intense apprenticeship to his Uncle Whitsun, Master of Tints, Shades and Meaning.  In his appearance to others, Stain is an aberration, a centipede and a person no one wants to know. And that is how he likes it.  Crimson, topaz and emerald are the pures Stain works with; but this time he adds a drop of shale grey for tonight Stain is going to visit the Red Pagoda. Also, carefully hidden, are the other colours he plans to use.
On another plane of the galaxy on the Planet Jhazu the beautiful Yah wi waits by a gilt doorway, her skin like the cool morning mist, her hair like a waterfall, her smile as warm as Jupiter. Her eyes are large and lustrous, full of the syrupy indigo glow of her kind. Her flesh is the  clean white of the Northern Star, her hair a black that is almost blue. She is as irresistible as morning.
Jhazu is a cold planet; it is full of high spacious white houses built very close to each other and to the road. The houses are deserted in winter. The only place above ground in Jhazu that is warm in winter is the Red Pagoda. It’s fires burn larger than a stag, its washa drinks are like fireballs and the people crowd into its rich oriental rooms whenever they can. Looking out of the glass door frosted with fine icicles, Yah wi can see a farmer driving his cattle over the frozen ruts of ground. Their bodies are sheathed in thin layers of ice, but their heads and bony legs constantly break free, as the snow blows around them.
Yah wi watches but she is bored because she is not rational; she is just a collection of skin, bone, blood and feelings. She lives in a perpetual hell state, because she has no regulator, no thermostat. She is a Bonwin. As well as being known for their huge dark fringed eyes, Bonwins are also famous for having no logic and little self-control; they feel, but do not think. Their lack of control makes them easily controlled by others, giving them great value. For a brothel this is very handy, and the harsh and petulant Fajuli who run this frontier town are glad to buy the rare Bonwin whenever one comes on the market. Despite the blue sky-price, the Fajuli make their money back in six months. The Bonwin are the perfect prostitutes, male and female, because they love their work. Work sets their feelings on fire and they are pure feeling. The more they can work, the more content they are. Obviously this is a great advantage for a money-making venture such as the Red Pagoda.
Stain surrenders himself to the journey. As he slides through the night he has no idea what this visit will bring. For although the Fajuli can recognise a profit when they see one, they are small beer who cannot compete with the larger powers. Usually the Fajuli are left alone as too unimportant to be noticed, but one of them has been engaging in extracurricular activities lately. Fellanon, a loose built man with a clenched fist of a face, has been dabbling outside the recognised Fajuli area; his attempts at espionage have been noted by a rival faction. Fellanon knows a secret.
Yah wi still waits bored by the door of the Red Pagoda. Fellanon stands nearby ready to take the cash and keep order in the house. As a glorified bouncer, he thinks his secret identity is unknown. Stain slides along the slipstream, letting himself enjoy the sensation and anticipate his pleasure. It has taken him a while to get the money together for this evening but he is feeling more than just the usual  physical longing. Stain is in love and he plans to get Yah wi out of captivity tonight.
On his private planet, orbiting the fabulous Capo dicha, Lord Calophone sits at his meteorite desk, many times larger than himself; he has to perch on a cushion on a chair with extra long legs. He is the size of a fire hydrant with an ugly blue face. He is so small that he likes everything around him to be big. He likes to win; he has to dominate. Lord Calophone is a hereditary Lord of the Waspen Dynasty. He is not at the top of the Dynasty, far from it, but even the lowliest Lord of the Waspens is a power.
 Lord Calophone is angry. He thumps his desk. He bangs his drawers. He yells and threatens and commands. Lord Calophone has Bonwin blood in him – he is not all feeling, but he is more feeling than rationality. His retainers live in a never-ending state of anxiety as a result of the intensity of his emotions. And Lord Calophone is sick of it, he shouts, sick of it all. This little creep from Planet Jhazu has interfered is his plans for the Great Dynasty War with his pathetic spying game. Fellanon is on Calophone’s hit list. Not only that but the whole moiety of the Fajulis has been filching all the best Bonwins. It’s about time they were taught a lesson. YES! It’s about time they found out who was boss. He commands his NJL Squad to  prepare for a raid tonight on the Red Pagoda.
Fellanon has been spying for a long time. Although his home is on Jhazu, he works as a special agent for the Aphistas, and for the head of Aphista Intelligence, Morgana.  The Aphistas are known far and wide as the chief scientists of the galaxy, ingenious industrial designers, and makers of the best clocks. One of their top researchers has discovered that if you heat up and treat dark matter with a disburser catalyser system, you create a substance (temporarily christened dM2) with many valuable uses. One of these is making unbreakable china; another is curing the space disease known as pagilomorphia, a disease which affects the outer nervous system.
But the most exciting and secret use so far discovered is that dM2 acts as a sort of antidote to the feeling state.  dM2 given in small doses activates dormant coldly rational, logical brain cells, but only temporarily. There is a sea of endless possibilities for the use of dM2 on Bonwins. While this information is confidential at the moment, the fear of it being leaked to a competing planet is huge. dM2 could make all the difference to the Aphistas, making them a real power in their own right, rather than a most valuable partner. 
Fellanon is not really a very good spy. He just always seems to be in the right place at the right time. A brothel seems to be a good place to pick up information; he can always get the Bonwins to talk about their clients with a little extra money and a few threats.  The Aphistas know all about Fellanon’s work at the brothel and his access to plenty of Bonwins. They want Bonwins to test their dM2 on and Fellanon has them. Fellanon must deliver half a dozen Bonwins to Morgana by the night of the Double Full Moon or face losing his extra and very profitable employment with the Aphistas.  He has been reluctant to part with his Bonwin stock, even for a short time, but with the advent of dM2 he has begun to feel in danger and decides that at the waning of the Double Full Moon tonight or tomorrow morning he will make the trip to Aphista with his chosen six, including Yah wi.

Night of the Double Full Moon
Evening customers are drinking, dancing and engaging in other pleasurable activities with beautiful Bonwin girls and boys at the Red Pagoda. Yah wi’s indigo eyes are sparkling bright. Fellanon and his barbarian Fajuli mates are celebrating the Double Full Moon with everyone else while keeping a weather eye open for any trouble. In the club part of the facilities the band Meteor Assault is belting out their trademark sonic reggae beat, but out the back is a windless waste of snow and debris as the NJL Squad materialise in quiet menace amongst the bins. All in snowstorm khaki, equipped with bulletproof uniforms and the latest Waspen Destruction Dimms, they look like Sumo Ninjas with poor muscle control. They can’t help bumping into each other as their vision is obscured by their huge helmets (chosen by Lord Calophone) so heavy that they cause the squad to lurch widely in an off balance salsa.
‘snicker snack, snicker snack’ chant the Sumo Ninjas.
Their Lord is with them, geared up for action in his own specially made child sized uniform and walking on stilts at the head of their formation. NJL Squad spreads out to guard each exit waiting for the word to move. Above them their spaceship circles, transmitting pictures onto Lord Calophone’s Hand Hooley. Everything is ready to go.
Stain has arrived on Jhazu. His colours are well hidden, sewn into the back of his jacket. Fellanon knows him and has already had him up against the wall warning him to behave himself and checking him for weapons. When Fellanon lets him go, Stain heads straight for Yah wi; she hums to herself thinking that now she will be able to switch on her feelings to the full. Yah wi’s love for Stain is half-hearted until he arrives. She has no way to love him or even think of him at all when he is absent; her whole being turns off and her abstract ideas are almost non-existent. But now that he is here she is wholly violently without any question in love, all atremble for his touch. Taking him to her room, Yah wi smiles widely and holds him close so that Stain is transported to the place he longs for, the place where he is loved. He explains his plan; they will wait for the long night of the Double Full Moon to end when everyone will be exhausted and ready to sleep. When the guards check the rooms Stain will hide with the help of his colours until it is quiet and then they will walk to the place of the slipstream and glide away. Not knowing if it is not a particularly clever plan or even likely to work (though of course, she is used to this) Yah wi agrees and they are united as Stain mixes the colours they need.
On Aphista, pressure has come down hard Morgana. Higher powers cannot wait any longer and she understands the position and the urgency. Deciding that rather than trust the idiot Fellanon to deliver her Bonwins, she will go to pick them up herself. Donning her black mantis uniform, Morgana gathers her team.
‘move along,’ yells Fellanon, shaking his whip and making the Bonwins cower. When they are afraid they are very afraid, at the whim of every other being. Three boys and two girls are crowded into the corner of one of the inner chambers. As the most valuable of the girl Bonwins, Yah wi has been sent for, but she has disappeared from her room. The guards do not realise the use of the colours to conceal; they have no idea of Stain’s powers with them. When they report her absence to Fellanon, he leaves the guards in charge and runs up to check Yah wi’s room for clues. He must leave for Aphista immediately to get there on time; Aphistas get ugly when they have been stood up. Their access to chemical knowledge makes them dangerous and he dares not welsh out on their deal. As Fellanon stands in the room looking at the long mirror and narwhal comb, Stain and Yah wi crouch invisibly against the wall hardly breathing; they hear the sound of guns. Looking from the bedroom window, Fellanon sees Morgana and her fellow Aphistas draw their light weaponry and fire toward the brothel. He thinks the Red Pagoda is being attacked, that the Aphistas have decided not to pay, but to steal. They must have decided not to wait for him to bring the Bonwins to them but to come and get them themselves. He leans out the window, keeping in the shadows and catches sight of the Waspens in their ridiculous uniforms. What are the Waspens doing here? Why are they firing their Destruction Dimms? Destruction Dimms against the Aphistas. What fools they are. Aphistas command the most sophisticated weapons in the galaxy. All around the snow glitters with green blood pouring from Waspen bodies. Lord Calophone is screaming ‘snicker-snack! snicker-snack!’ to his bloodless soldiers, his Hand Hooley dangling loose from his jacket with its gold braid and splendid red stars. From the upstairs window Fellanon cannot work out what has happened. He bolts down the stairs into the main salon. Customers are flat on the floor and the Fajuli are with them.
Confusion. Fear. Smoke. Suddenly the noise stops. Silence drips through the air. Lord Calophone has been lifted to his spaceship and already the Waspens are darting through the sky, disappearing, deserting their stricken soldiers. Morgana, in her mantis black and with a monster weapon over her shoulder strides through the door, scattering bullets into the wall.
‘what kind of a double cross is this?’ she yells at Fellanon.
The five Bonwins, terrified by the noise and the fighting come running into the room, straight into the arms of the Aphistas. Fellanon falters.
‘no double cross,’ he says, ‘ I don’t know who they are.’
‘liar’ Morgana snarls. She gives some orders to her men. They disappear with the Bonwins out into the snow; the Aphista have come prepared with dM2 to administer to the Bonwins and it is not long before they have all been dosed. Morgana sits on a stool and orders a double washa, staring at Fellanon from her kohl-rimmed bloodshot eyes.
Upstairs Stain and Yah wi are holding tightly to each other. During the fighting outside they slip out the window and keeping to the shadows, disappear into the snow-laden trees. Yah wi is shining with joy, she has never been so happy. Stain rescues his colours and begins to mix crimson, topaz and emerald and a little shale grey and soon they are on their way, wrapped in each other’s arms. Soon, very soon, he will tell Yah wi what has happened and the significance of his name.
Behind them the Bonwins have had their doses and have begun to change into hard cold logical selfish beings. Their brains have begun to work and their long dormant capacity for communicating telepathically kicks in. Without a word being spoken for their captors to hear, they come to a united decision. Turning on the Aphistas they grab them by the ankles and begin to slowly beat them into the ground. It doesn’t take long for more green blood to colour the snow.
The Bonwins turn and walk slowly toward the Red Pagoda.
 

Just back from the Australian Society of Authors Congress in Sydney

It is the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian Society of Authors, the peak body for Australian authors, and they celebrated by holding a Congress (a kind of participatory conference) in Sydney from October 17 to 19. It was an opportunity to meet fellow writers, to share ideas, and to listen to some sage advice from a wide range of authors across a range of genres.

I am going to be lazy and direct you to Natasha Lester's blog "While the Kids are Sleeping" because Natasha has provided a great overview of the Congress here. I caught up with Natasha at the Congress and am hoping to entice her to come and speak at the Book Length Project Group sometime soon.

Loved Sydney. Good to be back home with my head buzzing with ideas and my notebook half full (like the proverbial glass!)

Audio Book Response - Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

I've just finished listening to the audio version of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites read by Morven Christie . This is the one put out by Bolinda Audio.

I've never listened to an audio book before, so this is a new experience for me. As luck would have it, this was a perfect one to start with. Great book by Hannah Kent, and an excellent rendition of the text by reader, Morven Christie. It felt as if she had fallen in love with the book, and with good reason. The story, based on the life and death of the last woman to be executed in Iceland (in 1829) for her involvement in the murder of two men, was meticulously researched over years, and the depth of the research is felt throughout as something that is as close to an actual experience as a story can provide. It is through this that the deepest questions of human existence are addressed, leaving the indelible trace that tells you that a book has just changed the way you think and feel about the story of your own life.

Hannah Kent spent time in Iceland as she wrote, and developed relationships with the country and the people there. It all comes through, the sense that the author has incorporated the setting and the culture into her body and translated it into a language that strangers to this beautiful country can understand. The audio added to the experience because it enabled me to hear the Icelandic words, which added to the atmosphere. I felt I had travelled there - to that country, time, and season.

With regard to the book, the telling, I can only say that I came to the conclusion that the story had chosen this writer, and that it had chosen well. There are books you can't put down. This one, I couldn't turn off. I listened in my car, in the driveway, overlooking the lake, on the way to the shops (but a close call with another vehicle cured me of that), and finally in front of the computer. I was in awe of Hannah Kent's writing - what a career she has ahead of her if she can even come close to the beauty and skill of this fine work.