Theresa Smith's Blog, page 102
June 16, 2019
Book Review: Love and Other Battles by Tess Woods
About the Book:
Three generations of women. Three heartbreaking choices. One unforgettable story.
1969: Free-spirited hippie Jess James has no intention of falling for a soldier … but perhaps some things are not in our power to stop.
1989: Jess’s daughter, Jamie, dreams of a simple life – marriage, children, stability – then she meets a struggling musician and suddenly the future becomes wilder and complex.
2017: When Jamie’s daughter, CJ, brings home trouble in the form of the coolest boy at school, the worlds of these three women turn upside down … and the past returns to haunt them.
Spanning the trauma of the Vietnam War to the bright lights of Nashville, the epidemic of teenage self-harm to the tragedy of incurable illness, Love and Other Battles is the heart-wrenching story of three generations of Australian women, who learn that true love is not always where you seek it.
My Thoughts:
Tess Woods is an absolute master of human emotion. She convinced me of this with her first novel, confirmed it with her second, but this one, her third, is next level. Love and Other Battles is a novel for our times. It is a deeply affecting novel that explores the many ways in which a family can fracture and then knit itself back together. This is contemporary fiction at its finest and I am so grateful to Tess Woods for her bravery in writing a novel that takes readers right into the crux of current social and medical issues, things that so many of us are dealing with but keep quiet about for fear of judgment and contempt.
‘She still didn’t know how to keep living. How was she going to start again after what happened?’
What I loved most about this novel was the inter-generational aspect of it. We have three women from the same family: Jess, her daughter Jamie, and her grand-daughter CJ. Being within Jamie’s generation, I thought that she might have been the character I would relate to the most, but in fact, I was able to deeply connect to all three characters and what they were faced with. I find myself at this age unable to muster the interest to read YA fiction, despite the fact that these novels tap into relevant issues that as a parent of teens, I want to know about. Likewise, I have struggled recently to connect to stories that are entirely about retirees. I feel too removed from the characters themselves, yet I’m interested in the issues they are dealing with. By crafting her characters from three generations within the one family, Tess Woods was able to give me the perfect read. Teen issues that are relevant to me as a parent of teens; parenting and relationship issues that are relevant to me right now; and aged care issues that will become relevant in the not too distant future as my parents age and my husband and I also age. It’s a rare thing for a novel to encompass so much with such precision. And by effectively having three focal points, my attention was regularly shifted from one to the other, eliminating the risk of me not being able to connect to a character for the duration. Instead, I looked forward to spending time with each of them, equally, their battles becoming very personal to me.
‘She’d learned enough about Parkinson’s disease to know that it wouldn’t kill him. He could keep deteriorating like this for another ten or more years, barely able to move or communicate, but with his organs doing just enough to keep him alive, trapped in the body that had failed him.’
Love and Other Battles is a serious novel. Despite the book description that talks of each character within the context of falling in love, this story is so much more than that. At times, it’s so real it hurts. But far out, it hits its mark square on. What happens to CJ, and consequently her mother and her grandmother, is one of the most common things that teens and their families are dealing with today. There is a lot of shame, judgement, and recrimination involved and it’s so important that we stop this. Novels like Love and Other Battles serve a purpose within society, opening the flood gates of discussion through the safe medium of fiction. We have to start talking about these issues, because more and more people are being affected, daily, and without support, there is little hope at turning things around. I’m not going to tell you specifically here in the review what the issues are, and not because of #nospoilers. I’m not telling you because I want you to read this book. I want everyone to read this book. And then I want you all to start talking about it.
‘But now, standing face to face with him, she didn’t feel any desire to hurt him. She didn’t have the urge to scream at him. When she looked into his eyes, all she felt was nothing.’
It’s not all heavy going and nothing but heartache within this novel. There is hope in the form of new beginnings and there’s delight in discovering the sprinkles of Nashville fan fiction throughout. I am a complete Nashville tragic so I picked them all but if you have no idea what I’m talking about right now, it’s all good, it won’t affect your appreciation for the story! With its multiple timelines and genre breaking elements, Love and Other Battles sits firmly in our literacy fiction category by Australian Women Writers Challenge standards. It’s new terrain for Tess Woods but she’s conquered it like a Jedi master. Hats off to you Tess, your talent and emotional response to your subject matter is unmatched.
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a copy of Love and Other Battles for review.
About the Author:
Tess Woods lives in Perth, Australia, with one husband, two children, one dog and a cat who rules over them all. Her debut novel, Love at First Flight, received acclaim from readers worldwide and won Book of the Year in the AusRom Today Reader’s Choice Award. Her second novel, Beautiful Messy Love, was a 2017 Better Reading Top 100 pick. When she isn’t working or being a personal assistant to her kids, Tess enjoys reading and grannyish pleasures like knitting, baking, drinking tea and tending to the veggie patch. She’s also moderately obsessed with the TV series Nashville and Buzzfeed quizzes. Tess loves connecting with her readers on Facebook: @Tesswoods.harpercollins and Instagram: @tesswoods_author
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Love and Other Battles
Published by HarperCollins (AU)
Released on 17th June 2019
June 13, 2019
The Week That Was…
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Ladies in Black. If you missed my post raving about it, you can read it here. I loved this movie and almost want to watch it again this weekend but I’m determined to read the book before I re-watch.
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This has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen online in ages:
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When you live in a roughish town, this strikes a chord!
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Love and Other Battles by Tess Woods. It’s not out until the 17th of June. I read it this week and loved it. A novel for our times.
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I had to dust off the photo hard drive this week so I could provide three photos to my daughter’s school for graduation: baby, toddler, and primary school. Of course, this has led me to the inevitable project of uploading every digital photo we’ve ever taken to the cloud. So far I’ve done 2002 (the year we went digital) through to 2012, including some scanned images from my uni days. Tripping down memory lane and also paying tribute to all the dogs I’ve loved before.
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I used to scrapbook but moving and losing a whole room set up as a craft space made me set it aside – not give up, just setting aside for a time! But the hard drive contained a folder with a photo of every project I did. There’s 654 photos; so 654 scrapbook pages. That’s a lot and I’m kind of proud of myself and miss it all the more now. So glad I’ve photographed them all too. Memory lane got a little soggy when I saw this one, my beloved grandma with me, way back in 1977:
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The page is almost as frothy as my christening gown! This page was featured in a magazine about ten years ago for use of white on white through different textures and shades. I was lucky enough to be published several times over in an Australian scrapbooking magazine, back in the day.
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Dancing Eisteddfod week! Two performances down, two to go over the weekend. Only solos this year, no groups. It’s the last one, with dancing daughter now 17 and in year 12. She started dancing back in 2005 in the year she turned 3. It’s the end of an era I hadn’t given much thought to until this week. I’ll miss it. Dancing is a terrific sport and we’ve both made a lot of friends through it. She’s keeping a toe in though via a teaching role in her dance school. ‘Miss Claire’ already has a following.
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I’ve signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime. Anyone have it? Thoughts? There’s a few shows and documentaries on there I’ve marked to watch. Wednesday night I watched the first episode of this:
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It’s in Russian with subtitles, but narrated in heavily accented English. I’ve never watched anything Russian before. So far so good. It seems very well cast and the costuming is divine, as is the setting.
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The Handmaid’s Tale. I watched ahead last week to episode 3. Serena Waterford. What character development. She is incredible and episode 3 might just be my favourite of the entire series. No spoilers but the fire and then later in the ocean…really strong stuff.
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Hope your week has been a goodish one…
June 11, 2019
Book Review: A Lifetime of Impossible Days by Tabitha Bird
About the Book:
Tabitha Bird’s stunning debut is a magical, life-affirming novel about heartbreak, healing and learning to forgive yourself.
Meet Willa Waters, aged 8 . . . 33 . . . and 93.
On one impossible day in 1965, eight-year-old Willa receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction: ‘One ocean: plant in the backyard.’ So she does – and somehow creates an extraordinary time slip that allows her to visit her future selves.
On one impossible day in 1990, Willa is 33 and a mother-of-two when her childhood self magically appears in her backyard. But she’s also a woman haunted by memories of her dark past – and is on the brink of a decision that will have tragic repercussions . . .
On one impossible day in 2050, Willa is a silver-haired, gumboot-loving 93-year-old whose memory is fading fast. Yet she knows there’s something she has to remember, a warning she must give her past selves about a terrible event in 1990. If only she could recall what it was.
Can the three Willas come together, to heal their past and save their future, before it’s too late?
My Thoughts:
‘We are all the ages we have ever been. We carry around our trauma. And if we have unfinished business at one of those ages we can’t move on to have a healthy adult life.’
A Lifetime of Impossible Days is a novel that has been popping up in my social media feeds with five stars ever since its release last week. It’s a story about childhood trauma, its lingering effects, and the possibility of healing. However, it tells this story in a very different and somewhat strangely wonderful manner. A Lifetime of Impossible Days is magical realism at its most fantastical. Think Alice in Wonderland (which is referenced within this story), throw in some time travel, and your mind might be ready for this adventure.
‘Your mother was grown and married to your father before I could see how little I knew about letting shame go and loving myself. Instead, I gave all these wounded lessons to your mother as a child and she in turn gave them to you. Oh, what a marvellous job we all do of passing brokenness down through the generations.’
As far as debuts go, this is an ambitious way to begin. The story of Willa Waters is a tough one, the trauma profound, and while Tabitha Bird applies a great deal of sensitivity and a lightness of hand to the descriptions, as adult readers, we can infer much from very little, and it’s fairly brutal. It has the potential to distress some readers, and I think this might have been worth adding into the description. It certainly went to spaces that I wasn’t anticipating. But it gives the reader an important message by the end: that the stain of trauma can’t be ignored. We need to put time and effort into healing, because suppressing it doesn’t allow a person to live the rest of their life in the manner that they deserve.
‘No child should take responsibility for saving their sister or the adults in their lives.’
The characterisation throughout the novel was strong. I liked each version of Willa, distinct within their age yet the sparks of them being three different versions of the same person was always present. Many of the supporting characters really shone too, particularly Eden and older Eli, whose consideration of their ailing mother was really touching and brought me to tears like nothing else within the book. And Sam, Willa’s husband, who was a wonderful man, one of the very best, along with Grammy, who was intuitive and supportive on so many levels. But excellent characterisation doesn’t always only have to apply to the good and likeable characters. Willa’s father, with his violence and menace, the manipulating victim blaming he would employ; his presence was insidious and the tension he brought to every scene he was in or mentioned in was extensive. And then there was Willa’s mother, a woman so engrossed in her own survival she was completely unable to care for her children, much less take measures to protect them. The volatility of her own existence manifested itself in violent and defensive episodes directed at Willa. She was a very complex character and I can say from experience that she was well crafted.
In terms of the magic, it’s quite out there, so you really do need to just let go and get lost in the fiction of it all. The time travel within this story is more fantasy that science fiction, the portal involving an ocean that comes in a jar that transforms a backyard into a beach around an old mango tree. There are also some pretty out there notions of houses transforming and people’s lives relocating to whole other towns which leads one of the versions of Willa to wonder if she’s completely lost her mind – I felt intensely sorry for her at this point within the story, as if she didn’t have enough to worry about! It took me almost half of the novel to wrap my head around this magical side of the story, mostly because I was trying to analyse the science of it, and it also seemed to be breaking a few ‘rules of time travel’. Don’t be like this. From the first page, just let go and try not to think about it all too deeply. In many ways, this is refreshing. We are so used to novels that are almost trying to emulate real life to the nth degree. We need more novels that are creative in form and genre, that tell important stories within alternate contexts. So, ambitious it might be, but Tabitha Bird has really pulled it off. Before signing off on this review, I must make mention of the whimsical illustrations that adorn the cover and appear throughout the book. These are not just for decoration. As you progress through the story, the presence of the illustrations will take on greater meaning. This is a brilliant debut: highly creative and visionary in its execution.
‘I think the ocean has done what it was meant to do. It brought me together with my younger and older selves to bring our shame into the light, to show me how to trust our story and begin to heal.’
Thanks is extended to Penguin Random House Australia for providing me with a copy of A Lifetime of Impossible Days for review.
About the Author:
Tabitha Bird is a writer and poet who lives and works in the rural township of Boonah, Queensland. By day Tabitha may be found painting, working on her next book or with her husband, three beautiful boys and Chihuahua.
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A Lifetime of Impossible Days
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
Released on 4th June 2019
June 10, 2019
Book Review: The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung
About the Book:
A brilliant and gripping novel about a young woman’s gift for mathematics, and the secret of her past bound up in World War II.
The first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent – and I recognized even then that it was a comment levelled at me with as much disapproval as admiration. Still, I never tried to hide or suppress my mind as some girls do, and thank god, because that would have been the beginning of the end.
From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she faces the most human of problems – who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?
On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II. Forced to confront some of the biggest events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics, reclaiming the voices of the women who came before her whose love of the language of numbers connects them across generations.
THE TENTH MUSE is a brilliant, involving novel asking questions about who gets to tell the story of intellectual endeavour, and those who lost everything during World War II.
My Thoughts:
‘All my life I’ve been told to let go as gracefully as possible. What’s worse, after all, than a hungry woman, greedy for all that isn’t meant to be hers? Still, I resist. In the end we relinquish everything: I think I’ll hold on, while I can.’
The Tenth Muse is everything I ever want in a novel: total immersion into the story and highly intellectual without being difficult to read. It’s historical fiction but doesn’t restrict itself to one era or one topic of focus. The author, Catherine Chung, has a degree in mathematics, but she also has a background in writing and editing, the merging of these two disciplines resulting in a novel that is simply put: brilliant. She conveys the beauty of the mathematics in a way that even the least numerically proficient amongst us can appreciate.
‘The problem I’d solved had drawn me in as only a mathematical problem could: bounded, defined, it was a puzzle to break your head over until a solution appeared – everything leading up to it a struggle, but the answer itself effortless as a drawn breath.’
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‘Math had always seemed miraculous to me because of the beauty it revealed underlying nature, because of the deep sense of rightness that came over me when I understood something all the way through, as if for a moment I’d merged with the grace I only ever caught glimpses of.’
The Tenth Muse is a novel about higher mathematics within the context of history and the difficulties women had with being admitted into this exclusive universe. Katherine, the main character, is also half-Japanese, so her barriers are two-fold.
‘The first time I visited Harvard was in 1963. I had just started graduate school nearby at MIT, and when I stood in front of the hallowed buildings of Harvard grown over with ivy, I thought – What beautiful places men have built for each other with the intention of keeping women out. And my joy at being there was diminished by knowing that this was a place that was meant in fact to exclude me.’
Maths, sexism, and racism are not the only themes explored. The author digs even deeper into history and I felt that the way she brought all of her different themes together was quite visionary. When Katherine discovers that her parentage is not at all what she has been led to believe for her entire life, she embarks on a pilgrimage to Germany, combining a post graduate opportunity at the University of Bonn with a quest to discover who she might really be. This is where the novel gets into quite sensitive terrain, because this is Germany in the 1960s, post WWII, post Nazism. The author skilfully brings the atmosphere of Germany within this era to life, in all of its beauty and all of its ugliness.
‘I fell a bit in love: I told myself this was the country that had produced Bach and Beethoven, Gauss and Einstein, Rilke and Arendt. The university counted Nietzsche and Marx as alumni. But of course the same country had also burned books in the street, murdered poets and thinkers and children. And it was a fact that the University of Bonn, which had welcomed me with open arms, had been used as a Nazi institution during World War II. Everywhere I went I was reminded that we were surrounded by the vestiges of war.’
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‘Everyone who remains benefited from the exiles and murders of Jews, don’t you see? We all did, we citizens of this country, whether we wrung our hands and regretted what was happening or openly celebrated when they were cast out of their jobs. We took whatever came our way and pretended it was ours to have by right.’
The Tenth Muse is not an overly thick novel, but it packs a lot into its pages and it does so without ever wandering off plot or appearing too condensed. It’s told in a reflective manner, almost memoir in style. Well timed, well crafted, and well written. This is one novel that I recommend for readers of all tastes. It truly is a brilliant read with so much depth and validity, a sensitively wrought, yet brutal examination of humanity at its worst.
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of The Tenth Muse for review.
About the Author:
Catherine Chung was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. She studied mathematics at the University of Chicago and received her MFA from Cornell. She is one of Granta’s New Voices, and lives in New York City.
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The Tenth Muse
Published by Hachette Australia
Released on 11th June 2019 (eBook 6th June)
June 9, 2019
Book Review: The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover
About the Book:
The new book from the bestselling author of Flesh Wounds. A funny and frank look at the way Australia used to be – and just how far we have come.
‘It was simpler time’. We had more fun back then’. ‘Everyone could afford a house’.
There’s plenty of nostalgia right now for the Australia of the past, but what was it really like?
In The Land Before Avocado, Richard Glover takes a journey to an almost unrecognisable Australia. It’s a vivid portrait of a quite peculiar land: a place that is scary and weird, dangerous and incomprehensible, and, now and then, surprisingly appealing.
It’s the Australia of his childhood. The Australia of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Let’s break the news now: they didn’t have avocado.
It’s a place of funny clothing and food that was appalling, but amusingly so. It is also the land of staggeringly awful attitudes – often enshrined in law – towards anybody who didn’t fit in.
The Land Before Avocado will make you laugh and cry, feel angry and inspired. And leave you wondering how bizarre things were, not so long ago.
Most of all, it will make you realise how far we’ve come – and how much further we can go.
My Thoughts:
‘I wondered: was this history’s first mention of what was to become the ‘smashed avo’ breakfast – that destroyer of dreams, that harbinger of doom, that squanderer of fortunes – now cited as a prime example of the frivolous spending that prevents today’s millennials from joining the housing market?’
This book! I haven’t enjoyed a non-fiction book this much since…hhmmm…maybe ever? It’s an absolute lark. Hilarious, yet at times a shade horrific, but ultimately always stunningly honest. I was born in 1977, but many things contained within this book still lingered well into the 1980s – and a few even beyond that. Anyone over 40 will find much that is familiar within the pages of this book, and anyone under 40 will likely heave a sigh of relief at the cultural bullet they dodged merely by virtue of being born much later.
So what’s it all about? Richard Glover takes a journey back to the decade of 1965 through to 1975, and he actively and thoroughly examines Australian society in a bid to answer that age old question: were the glory days of the past really all that glorious, or are our memories not to be relied upon?
‘This book is largely a brutal attack on the past, challenging us to overcome our nostalgia and instead be optimistic about how the world has changed for the better and how it might continue to improve. All the same, some things about the period were excellent.’
Glover doesn’t just rely on memory though. All of his observations are backed up by research, anecdotal evidence, and valid comparisons. It’s sociology at its best: accessible rather than academic, entertaining, and substantive. Some things made me laugh, many made me cringe, and a few brought on a well of tears. All of them made me thankful for progress! As a talk back radio host, Glover has the gift of the gab and this translates onto the page very well. I laughed out loud all the way through this book and read many passages out to my teenage son, who was in part disbelieving that things could ever have been that way. Ultimately, I found this book uplifting. Glover aims by the end to demonstrate that Australia has come a very long way in a short amount of time. It’s a timely read within the context of the most recent federal election and gives hope to Australians who might be feeling despair at where our country is headed.
‘There’s a widespread resistance to the idea that things have improved – even though it’s so spectacularly clear that life is much better now than it was. Does that matter? Should we care if people convince themselves that life is getting worse, both in their own country and in the wider world, even if that view is difficult to justify? Does it matter if people look at the past through rose-coloured glasses? I think it does.
This is only partly a book about Australia in the ‘60s and ’70; it’s really an argument about the possibility of progress; about how quickly we can change; and how things that now seem laughable or downright objectionable were considered normal just a moment ago. Most of all, it’s an invitation to dream of further change.’
About the Author:
Richard Glover has written a number of bestselling books, including Flesh Wounds and The Mud House. He writes regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Washington Post, as well as presenting the comedy program Thank God It’s Friday on ABC Local Radio. To find out more, visit www.richardglover.com.au
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The Land Before Avocado
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia – Imprint: ABC Books – AU
On Sale: 22/10/2018
June 8, 2019
Bookish Film Review: Ladies in Black
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In the summer of 1959, Lisa, a shy schoolgirl, takes a job in Sydney’s prestigious department store Goode’s. There, her life is changed forever when she meets the “ladies in black.”
Release date: 20 September 2018 (Australia)
Director: Bruce Beresford
Based on: The Women in Black by Madeleine St John
My Thoughts:
This Australian film is an absolute delight! I actually cried tears of joy on more than one occasion while watching. The casting is excellent: Julia Ormond as Magda – the ‘glamorous Continental refugee – was just brilliant; Ryan Corr as Rudi – oh my goodness, Rudi was just so larger than life, so full of enthusiasm for Australia and he was so sweet to Fay, his ‘Australian non-refugee girlfriend’ – I loved him! And I knew that was Kate Miller-Heidke as the nightclub singer in that one scene! It was great to see Noni Hazelhurst again and Shane Jacobsen never lets you down.
Ladies in Black is funny in a way that is wholly unique to Australian films, and it had a little bit of a satirical feel to it but not so much as to take away from all of the delight and whimsy. Beneath the humour you can see parts of Australian society in the 1950s peeking through, everything from attitudes to way of life, providing a deeper aspect to each woman’s personal story. Each of the ladies in black were biding their time in the cocktail department of Goode’s, each of them just waiting for the next stage of their life to begin. I’m pretty sure there was some original footage within this film, street shots and store frontage that looked very authentic yet ever so slightly dated, as though it had been digitally remastered to fit in with the film. It’s very nostalgic in parts and I liked that about it. The department store scenes were so insightful. That New Year’s day sale stampede! And the playing of live music within the store to create ambience – live because stereo sound piping out through speakers was not yet invented! It was all so good.
I’m so glad I bought Ladies in Black on DVD because I can see that this is a film I will be watching more than once. Highly recommended.
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Ladies in Black is based on the novel by Madeleine St John, The Women in Black, and has been published as a part of the Text Classics range. I have already secured a copy and intend on reading it as soon as possible. Maybe my monthly challenge check in will have a classic on it next month – at long last!
June 7, 2019
#BookBingo—Round 12
It’s not always easy to fill those bingo categories that specify an author’s age, but in this case, it was easy because the publisher put the year this author was born into her bio at the back of the book. Thank you! My author is Samantha Shannon, who is 27, and I think the reason it’s so easy to find her age is because her writing achievements to date are really quite remarkable for someone so young.
An author under the age of 35:
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Epic fantasy just got a new masterpiece added to its shelf! The Priory of the Orange Tree is Samantha Shannon’s first foray into fiction outside the world of The Bone Season series, and she has hands down proven that she has everything it takes to build worlds, bring them crashing down, and piece them all back together again. The Priory of the Orange Tree is epic in scope and length, clocking in at just over 800 pages, but once the scene was set, my attention never wavered. This is fantasy with an adrenalin shot of feminism, a world where women take centre stage, lead and fight, rule and usurp, win and lose, but always, without fail, never stand in the shadow of a man.
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For 2019, I’m teaming up with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse for an even bigger, and more challenging book bingo. We’d love to have you join us. Every second Saturday throughout 2019, we’ll post our latest round. We invite you to join in at any stage, just pop the link to your bingo posts into the comments section of our bingo posts each fortnight so we can visit you. If you’re not a blogger, feel free to just write your book titles and thoughts on the books into the comments section each fortnight, and tag us on social media if you are playing along that way.
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June 6, 2019
The Week That Was…
You own coats…wear them!
Speaking of forgetting things, this is what I forgot to put in my son’s bag Wednesday night when packing for him to go away for a four day football representative trip:
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Yes, that is a pile of socks and jocks…only took me 14 hours after seeing him off at the airport to notice. 
June 5, 2019
Book Review: Love Song by Sasha Wasley
About the Book:
The heart-warming new rural romance novel from the acclaimed author of Dear Banjo and True Blue.
There was something about Charlie. Something about the way he questioned and teased her, brought her outside of herself … the way he’d made her crash headlong into love just by singing to her.
At age seventeen, Beth Paterson was determined to study medicine at university, despite the heartache of losing her mother. Tutoring Charlie Campbell worked well with her plan – but falling in love with him sure didn’t, and neither did getting her heart broken when he abruptly left town.
Now Charlie is a big star on the alternative rock scene, while Beth is a respected doctor in her hometown. When Charlie comes back to fight for the tiny community where he was raised, neither one of them can ignore the resurgence of wild attraction they once shared.
Beth swore no man would ever hurt her again – least of all this man. But some love songs can never be forgotten, especially when they were written for you …
My Thoughts:
Love Song is the follow-up to Dear Banjo and True Blue, the rural romance ‘Daughters of the Outback’ series by Sasha Wasley, following the lives of three sisters who live in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Love Song is the eldest sister’s story, Beth, who is a busy GP in the town that lies 90 minutes drive from her family’s vast station, Paterson Downs. For those who have already read the first two books, you’ll find this a fitting conclusion to an overall great series. For those who haven’t read any of these novels, well at least you can binge the series now with all three out and available! While I’m not a fan of rural fiction, nor romance, I still found much to appreciate in this popular series, although I still think, now after reading all three books, that Dear Banjo was my favourite.
Now, onto Love Song. Sasha draws on some big themes within this novel, particularly focusing in on remote Aboriginal communities. She examines the health care options available, the education offered to residents, the cultural significance of remote communities, the land rights, and the voices that struggle to be heard against the noise of international resource companies and government bureaucracy. Through Beth’s experiences as a FIFO GP, we become privy to remote living and the ways in which many Aboriginal communities are preserving their culture with the hopes of carving out a better future for the next generation. We are also privy to the struggles they are faced with, so the novel does provide a balanced approach. While for the most part, Sasha presents all of these issues through a realistic lens, this social and cultural focus is somewhat let down by a rather cliché romantic storyline that overshadows the more deeper themes that the author clearly put so much research and effort into articulating.
I know I’m not a fan of romance, and really, I should steer clear of them, but this was a part of a series and I like to finish the things I’ve begun. Don’t get me wrong, this is a perfectly lovely story, and there are going to be readers swooning all over the pages about Charlie and Beth. I’m just not one of them. I found the whole premise a bit of a stretch, that two people who dated at the age of 17 for only a few months, would still both be holding a candle, a very exclusive and brightly burning candle, for the other when they’re 35. And then, when they meet up after nearly 18 years apart, Beth begins to act quite out of character, which was a shame for me because her level headedness was why I admired her so much. And Charlie was quite honestly a rude jerk in the beginning. It just didn’t work for me and the push and pull between them ended up irritating me more and more. I did like them both much later in the book, once all the immature not talking to each other and holding grudges settled down, but it took a bit of labouring to get to that point.
So where does this leave us? Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over decades of reading different types of books, it’s this: you can like a book without liking everything about it. In terms of Love Song, the romance was my only sticking point. I liked everything else, especially the supporting characters, who really coloured every scene they were in: Mary, Jill, and Pearl. And like I mentioned above, the really topical and important issues that were explored with compassion and intelligence are a credit to the author. Love Song is a novel I recommend, but not as a standalone. You really do want to read each of the books in this series, and in the order the author has intended. Looking forward to seeing how this series plays out on screen. It’s exciting to see an Australian book series picked up for production. I’ll support that any day!
Thanks is extended to Penguin Random House Australia for providing me with a copy of Love Song for review.
About the Author:
Sasha Wasley was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. She lives in the Swan Valley wine region with her two daughters. She writes commercial fiction, crossover new adult/YA mysteries and paranormal. Sasha Wasley’s debut novel, The Seventh, was published in January 2015. Her first new adult paranormal romance series, The Incorruptibles, debuted in 2016.
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Love Song
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
Released on 4th June 2019
June 4, 2019
Book Review: The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen
About the Book:
Augusta Hope has never felt like she fits in.
At six, she’s memorising the dictionary. At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi.
And now that she’s an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia.
When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta’s life, she’s propelled headfirst into the unknown. She’s determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?
My Thoughts:
This is one of those novels where you don’t really know, heading in, what you’re truly in for. The blurb gives the impression that this might be one of those stories where the character is sailing along, trying hard to discover who they really are, tragedy strikes its savage blow, levels them, and then before you can blink, they have emerged stronger and surer, knowing exactly who they are in this new and altered universe. It is to a certain extent, but it’s not quite as straightforward as all that either.
“I knew I was weird, but it was a weird I was starting to like now I had black-framed glasses and a blunt fringe and red lipstick and written-on Converse trainers with a mysterious blotchy green rectangle on the left-hand shoe.”
We meet Augusta right at the beginning of her life, born as a twin, yet just after midnight into the freshly minted month of August, giving her a different birthday to her sister, Julia. And from here on in, Augusta lives every second of her life proving herself different to her family, her neighbours, her friends, and pretty much everyone else she meets. She’s quirky and clearly smart, but she lacks grace and social skills; at times I found her endearing but this was outweighed by the times I found her wearisome. This was largely exacerbated by my one criticism of the novel: it takes a very long time for the story to reach its point. The unspeakable tragedy doesn’t occur until the 70 percent mark. Up until here, we’re really just going along for the ride that is Augusta’s life. This was, for the most part, entertaining, but I won’t lie, it did begin to slump about halfway, giving me pause to wonder where it was all headed. This is a good example of the tediousness of Augusta’s verbal outpouring:
“It was Easter, and Julia was arranging her pale pink roses from Diego in a glass jug.
‘Rose thorns aren’t actually thorns. They should be called prickles. They’re where the epidermis bulges outwards,’ I said. Julia nodded. ‘The Romans used to wear roses on strings around their necks,’ I said. ‘Anything said under the rose had to be kept a secret.’ Julia nodded. ‘A rose fossil was found in Colorado which was thirty-five million years old.’ Julia nodded. ‘Did you know that more than 80 per cent of the land in Zambia is covered in roses?’
‘No more,’ said Julia. ‘That’s enough. No more research, Aug. Let me love roses because I do.’
‘Do you honestly prefer not knowing all this stuff?’ I said.
‘We’re just different,’ said Julia.”
Once we reach the tragedy, the novel certainly picks up, but it also speeds up, so there could have been a bit more balance applied to the narrative. I don’t want to spoil the story for readers, but I also think it’s worth noting that there are some heavy themes explored, many of which may trigger some readers: war crimes, death, suicide, post-natal depression, still-birth, disability, grief, and guilt. So it’s not a light read, despite how entertaining Augusta often was. Yet the author handles these themes well, weaving them in and out of her story with precision, sometimes cutting deeply, other times with more subtlety. While this story may put you through the ringer, there is so much depth to it, so much to take away from it; it’s definitely worth the heartache.
“Yet it is so ordinary to be born, and so ordinary to die. 350,000 births per day, apparently. And 150,000 deaths. Approximately. Around the world. That’s 15,000 births and 6,300 deaths per hour. 250 births each minute and 105 deaths. Count to one. Four babies have arrived. Count to two. Two of us have left the world. Right now. As you click your fingers. If only we left the earth in pairs. Like animals leaving the ark. Two by two hurrah. Hand in hand. Or died together like roses on the same bush. It would be so much less scary.”
There is another point of view within this story, that of Parfait, who lives in Burundi, Augusta’s favourite country. Parfait and Augusta don’t know each other until almost at the end of the story, but we follow Parfait’s life alongside Augusta’s. Parfait’s story is punctuated with tragedy though, whereas Augusta’s culminates in it, yet as the two of them get older, there almost seems to be some cosmic connection between them. When they do finally meet, their friendship seems pre-ordained; it was an interesting exploration on coincidence and destiny.
“That’s when I saw it. She’d unwittingly got wrapped up in my story. This tragedy wasn’t only mine.”
This was definitely a novel that ebbed and flowed for me but it was well and truly worth reading. It’s beautifully written, and despite all of the heartache, it ends on a hopeful note.
“We walked out into the square in the warm evening air, which tickled my shoulders and smelled of honeysuckle and sea. The cobbles were lumpy beneath my espadrilles, and, as we walked along the beach road, the crickets were summer-crazy in the long dry grass, and the egrets were flying to the big old tree where they loved to perch, hundreds of them, lighting up the dark under the moon.”
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a copy of The Other Half of Augusta Hope for review.
About the Author:
Joanna Glen read Spanish at the University of London, with a stint at the Faculty of Arts at Cordoba University in the south of Spain. She went on to teach Spanish and English to all ages, and, latterly, was a School Principal in London. She has edited a variety of non-fiction books, is a visiting lecturer, a communications coach and an adviser and trainer for schools. Joanna’s short fiction has appeared in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology. She lives with her husband and children on the River Thames in Battersea, returning to Andalusia whenever it gets too grey.
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The Other Half of Augusta Hope
Published by HarperCollins (GB)
Released on 17th June 2019
