Theresa Smith's Blog, page 105
May 7, 2019
TV Chat: Victoria – Season 3
I’ve loved the TV series Victoria right from the get go, so season 3 was a highly anticipated treat that I had been saving for a time when I could binge watch the lot. The time was this long weekend just gone, but sadly, it was a major letdown.
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For a start, most of the supporting cast had changed. This happens of course as a show continues on and actors find work elsewhere, but one of my pet hates is when characters just vanish, with no one ever mentioning them again.
Take Wilhelmina, a series regular as one of Victoria’s ladies in waiting, from season two. In the Christmas special, she becomes engaged to Lord Alfred Paget, Queen Victoria’s Chief Equerry. Where is she in season three? There is no mention of her at all. Lord Alfred is still there, but no Wilhelmina. If he mentions her, it’s off camera. Google tells me she is living at the Paget country estate and caring for their infant son. Well thanks Google, but who told you?
Then there’s Ernst, Albert’s brother, a series regular since season one. At the close of the Christmas special, we were all anticipating at long last for Harriet and him to get their happily ever after. Neither of them are in season three and no one mentions them at all. Another vanishing act. Google is a bit quiet on this one, so it seems no one is fessing up. Ernst and Harriet were both strong supporting characters so their absence was felt from a viewer perspective. But this sort of vanishing really ticks me off. I’m a stickler for details and this is just plain shoddy.
These character omissions were not the only thing to let me down this season. Victoria herself is rather bad tempered, right the way through, at times quite juvenile and spoilt. Albert is sulky and contradictory, and in later episodes, starts hinting that Victoria’s volatility is the result of ‘baby brain’. Hhmmm…I still can’t believe the writers went there. Out of the two though, I still favour Albert for his passion for progress and social reform. He’s a man who was ahead of his time and I felt sorry for him, over and over, at the mockery he was subjected to on account of his visionary outlook.
A welcome addition to the cast was Lord Palmerston, who was like a flea in Victoria’s ear. But he was entertaining and had presence. In all honesty, he saved the season from being entirely intolerable. Likewise, Vicky and Bertie, the two eldest children. While I do think we saw a bit too much of them, they were both quite adorable. Bertie, the little future King with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was here that I disliked Albert most, in his insistence that Bertie was simple, even trying to ‘medically’ prove it. He was just a little boy, possibly a tad undisciplined, but creative and inquisitive and most likely suffering from poor eyesight or dyslexia. But definitely not a simpleton.
An unwelcome addition to the cast was Feodora, Victoria’s half sister. What a simpering, creepy, repulsive character she was. And she was always lurking about, appearing in almost every scene. It got on my nerves and I think they overdid her. She seriously sucked my enjoyment for the show right out of me. And at the end, when she’s finally going to leave, Victoria insists she stay. I bet they don’t pull a vanishing act with her come next season, more’s the pity.
After two seasons with very strong Prime Ministers, this season’s PM was a dishrag. I don’t even remember his name and care so little about him that I can’t be bothered Googling it either. He was wishy washy and weak, overshadowed by Palmerston. Maybe this was what he was like in real life, either way, he annoyed me whenever he entered a room and continued to do so until he left.
All in all, it just seems like this was a nothing season. All whine and moan, no guts and glory. I was distraught by what happens to a certain gorgeous couple from below the stairs, but this proved itself to be the only episode that moved me at all. The ending scene in the final episode was absurd. For a show that takes nearly eighteen months between seasons, ending like that was atrocious. I really hope we get a season four, who knows, this one might have been low on ratings and they might not get the go ahead. I’d like to see them back, if not just for a chance to improve things and raise the show back to the level of its first two seasons. Or maybe this is just the beginning of a downward spiral. Time will tell, but please, in the meantime, let’s all vote 1 for Palmerston as PM.
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May 5, 2019
Book Review: The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal
About the Book:
The Doll Factory, the debut novel by Elizabeth Macneal, is an intoxicating story of art, obsession and possession.
London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning.
When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.
But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening.
My Thoughts:
The Doll Factory is exactly my kind of novel. Set in Victorian London, it’s a real mish-mash in terms of genre: Penny Dreadful meets Dickens with a dash of Keats – I was swooning from the first page to the last, such a treat this novel was for me. Victorian London is depicted in all its gruesome grimy glory, and against this backdrop we meet Iris, an apprentice doll maker and aspiring artist, stifled by her lot in life.
‘She will never escape. She will never be free. She is destined to eke out this pitiful life, to suffer the slaps and insults of Mrs Salter, to endure her sister’s jealousy, until, at last, some scrawny boy fattens her with child after child, and she spends her days winching laundry through a mangle, swilling rotten offal into Sunday pies, all while tending to infants mewling with scarlatina and influenza and goodness knows what else, until she contracts it too…’
We also meet her twin sister Rose, bitter and pox scarred, her hopes and dreams in tatters, spitefully jealous, a misunderstanding widening the rift between her and Iris day by day. And Albie, a little street urchin, living in a brothel with his sister, seeing and hearing all, yet often dismissed as insignificant, and always underestimated. Then there’s Louis, an artist with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who offers Iris a position as his model, thus changing her life forever. And lastly, there is Silas, a taxidermist and collector of strange specimens, himself the strangest of all. When he meets Iris in the briefest of encounters, he is immediately drawn to her on account of her twisted collarbone, caused from a breakage during birth. To Silas, she is the most beautiful oddity of all, and he rapidly becomes obsessed with her, his delusions encroaching upon his reality in the most alarming way.
‘She is polite. She is unfailingly polite, and now he knows that she barely remembers him, it occurs to him that she may not want to come at all, that she may just agree to spare his feelings. And what then? A thought passes across his brain, as clear as glass. Well, then, the voice says, you must kill her. He almost laughs at himself – how ludicrous of him.’
When Iris accepts the position as a model, it is under the condition that Louis also tutor her in art. She has some talent, both as a model and an artist, and before too long, Louis and Iris are entwined in both a professional and romantic liaison. Theirs is the type of love story I enjoy the most, devoid of romantic clap trap but infused instead with passion and devotion. They are from different worlds, but their connection through art transcends these barriers.
‘She pulls her shawl about her, readying herself to leave, but he risks a slight glance at her, and she cannot stop herself. She cannot let him go – she cannot. It feels, in that moment, that she must have all of him or nothing at all, and she cannot bear to lose him and all that she associates with him: his hand over hers, guiding her pencil across the page. A slash of bright red on a canvas. A painted strawberry, perfectly ripe, the gleam of its catchpoint.’
As Iris’s fortunes improve, she continues to look out for Albie and doesn’t give up on repairing her relationship with her sister, Rose. Iris is a good person: kind and generous, beautiful, but flawed enough to keep her grounded. I really liked her, which made it all the more dreadful to witness Silas’s growing obsession and increasingly delusional behaviour. His actions were really frightening. He met Iris once, and then a second time when he put himself into her path, but from here, he fabricated an entire relationship between them, plotted out a future. His obsession was more than sinister, it was sickeningly disturbing and as the novel progresses, his mind unravels further, and we become privy to other acts of depravity by Silas against other people he has become obsessed with over the course of his life. He is one of the most creepy characters I have read in a long time.
‘How all her life she has been careful not to encourage men, but not to slight them either, always a little fearful of them. She is seen as an object to be gazed at or touched at leisure: an arm around her waist is nothing more than friendly, a whisper in her ear and a forced kiss on the cheek is flattering, something for which she should be grateful. She should appreciate the attentions of men more, but she should resist them too, subtly, in a way both to encourage and discourage, so as not to lead to doubts of her purity and goodness but not to make men feel snubbed – she is tired, her limbs heavy.’
As far as debuts go, this is top shelf historical fiction, and if I hadn’t read it in the author’s bio, I’d never have picked this as a first novel. The storytelling is sublime, you’re just wrapped up in this world with the most realistic characters, the setting infused with so much atmosphere it sets all of your senses tingling. I was filled with this mounting dread as the novel progressed of the likes I haven’t felt since watching the television series, Penny Dreadful. This novel is so good; I dare you to step into the world of The Doll Factory. You can thank me after.
Thanks is extended to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of The Doll Factory for review.
About the Author:
Elizabeth Macneal was born in Scotland and now lives in East London. She is a writer and potter and works from a small studio at the bottom of her garden. She read English Literature at Oxford University, before working in the City for several years. In 2017, she completed the Creative Writing MA at UEA where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury scholarship. The Doll Factory, Elizabeth’s debut novel, won the Caledonia Novel Award 2018.
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The Doll Factory
Published byPan Macmillan Australia (Picador)
Released on 23rd April 2019
May 4, 2019
Book Review: The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
About the Book:
A captivating and magical story set in 1930s Malaysia about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy who are brought together by a series of unexplained deaths and an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.
They say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk amongst us…
In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master’s severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master’s soul will roam the earth forever.
Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother’s debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail.
As time runs out for Ren’s mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin’s paths will cross in ways they will never forget.
My Thoughts:
‘The dream-eater is a ghost animal. If you have nightmares, you can call it three times to eat the bad dreams. But you have to be careful. If you call it too often it will also gobble up your hopes and ambitions.’
I have always been drawn to tigers. Several years ago, when visiting the Singapore Zoo, my family ended up ditching me because I was lingering too long at the tigers. They were white tigers too, so the rarest of the rare. Even watching them sleep seemed like a privilege; there are so few left on this planet. The Night Tiger was most likely always going to be a winner for me, but honestly, even with my love of tigers taken into consideration, along with a keen interest in colonial Malaysia (Malaya), I still didn’t anticipate that I would adore this novel as much as I did. It’s brilliant. All the words in the world could be tossed into this review but in the end, brilliant sums it up nicely.
‘A tiger. From time to time, the newspapers carried gruesome reports of people strangled by pythons, taken by crocodiles, or trampled by elephants. But tigers were different. Referred to as datuk, an honorary title, there were charms spoken to appease a tiger when venturing into the jungle. A tiger that devoured too many humans was said to be able to take the form of a man and walk among us.’
Yangsze Choo writes with such a candid warmth, conjuring up the atmosphere of 1930s colonial Malaya to the point where you are almost experiencing it for yourself. Her characters are uniquely rendered, so memorable, and the plot of this novel! It’s so unique, a merging of history, culture, and spiritualism, all woven together into this mystery that comes about from a series of seemingly random, yet at once connected, deaths. I’m not even going to begin to summarise the plot, that’s not my way, but suffice to say that it is both clever and unique. And so good. I didn’t want to stop reading this novel once I had begun. This is a story where connections are paramount, both plot and character, as we come to discover as the story unfolds. There are several terrific characters, but Ren stole my heart right from the beginning. What a gorgeous boy he was. I wanted so much for things to work out well for Ren.
‘Ren is benevolence isn’t it? Yi is righteousness, Li is ritual or order. Zhi is wisdom and Xin is faithfulness.’ Rawling counts them off on his fingers as he recites, ‘Without Li, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?’
The Chinese spirituality that is woven into this story was an aspect I really enjoyed, and I loved so much how the destiny of each character seemed interlinked, their actions all seemingly balanced against each other on a spiritual scale. It’s hard to describe but if you read it you’ll see straight away what I mean. But it keeps you guessing, that’s for sure, and sometimes I was certain I knew who was the villian and who was not, only to have my theory tipped on its head in favour of something far more clever.
‘It’s the fickleness of events that frightens him, as though he only has to say, “I wish it weren’t so!” and the pattern reorders to suit him. Like a dark fairy tale, where all wishes, however evil and stupid, are granted.’
There is a wealth of history threaded into this story and anyone who has even a passing interest in Malaysia as a British colony will enjoy what The Night Tiger has to offer. I’m not sure I will ever regard a train station in quite the same way again and my reverence for tigers has peaked far beyond what it was before. And then there’s the dream walking, the connection between the living and the dead in a dreamscape; I loved these parts of the story.
‘Chinese people have an aversion to suddenly waking people from sleep, in case the soul separates from the body.’
Of course, I really want to go to Malaysia now, even though I know it won’t be the same, because it’s 90 years on from when this novel is set, but even so, I loved my time in Singapore and envisage I’d feel the same about Malaysia. In the meantime, I have The Night Tiger to revisit. It’s one of my Page by Page Book Club picks for May and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with the other readers. The Night Tiger was the April pick for Reece Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club and over on her website there’s a terrific essay written by Yangsze Choo on the inspiration behind The Night Tiger. I recommend checking it out if you are at all interested in reading the novel. I didn’t need much convincing, but I still enjoyed peering behind the story. The Night Tiger is a truly unforgettable novel, one I hope will be immortalised for all time, never out of print and always available to readers young and old.
About the Author:
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Yangsze Choo is a fourth-generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Harvard, she worked as a management consultant before writing her first novel, the New York Timesbestseller The Ghost Bride. She lives in California with her family and several chickens and loves to eat and read (often at the same time). The Night Tiger would not have been possible without large quantities of dark chocolate.
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Published by Quercus (Hachette Australia)
Released on 12th February 2019
May 3, 2019
Book Review: Cape May by Chip Cheek
About the Book:
SEPTEMBER 1957
Henry and Effie, young newlyweds from Georgia, arrive in Cape May, New Jersey, for their honeymoon. It’s the end of the season and the town is deserted. As they tentatively discover each other, they begin to realize that everyday married life might be disappointingly different from their happily-ever-after fantasy.
Just as they get ready to cut the trip short, a decadent and glamorous set suddenly sweep them up into their drama – Clara, a beautiful socialite who feels her youth slipping away; Max, a wealthy playboy and Clara’s lover; and Alma, Max’s aloof and mysterious half-sister.
The empty beach town becomes their playground, and as they sneak into abandoned summer homes, go sailing, walk naked under the stars, make love, and drink a great deal of gin, Henry and Effie slip from innocence into betrayal, with irrevocable consequences that reverberate through the rest of their lives…
My Thoughts:
Well this was a massive let down. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it seems you should extend this to the praise by others printed upon said cover as well. This just didn’t work for me. Effie and Henry are on their honeymoon, and they are so young, fresh out of high school and already married. They barely know how to be adults themselves, much less adults together. There was definitely an atmospheric 1950s feel to this novel, for sure, but I think the dead weight of it came from being narrated entirely from Henry’s perspective. Everything we learn about Effie is through the haze of Henry’s gaze, and I’ll be frank here, Henry was boring. And very much a stereotypical 1950s young man. This story would have greatly benefited from the addition of Effie’s perspective along with ditching that final chapter that told the reader every miserable thing that happened to them for the rest of their married lives, post honeymoon.
The content of this novel became a little too much after a while. It’s entirely about sex and people behaving badly. In the beginning, sex between Henry and Effie, and even though they are on their honeymoon, it became repetitive. Particularly as the writing style was very mechanical. We read about everything without distinction: Effie sweeping the floor, Henry’s bowel movements (or lack thereof), what they order at the diner, what sexual position they utilise next – and then it starts all over again in the same dry, mechanical manner. In the middle, Henry is having sex with both his wife and another woman – on his honeymoon! – and the story just goes from bad to worse from here on in. He is such a despicable liar and then he has the audacity to get angry at Effie when the pair of them get caught up in a swinging situation (not sure how else to describe this) as he watches Effie’s reactions while she is having sex with another man and doesn’t like what he sees. I must point out that while he is watching this, he is of course having sex with a third woman.
‘His little Effie, his wife: he didn’t know her anymore. What she’d done, what she’d let him do to her. It was one thing for Henry, but for her, his wife, his girl. A lady. He should have stopped it before it started, he should never have let it go so far. But he didn’t know himself either. A degenerate with no fixed centre. Less than a man.’
Honestly, this is just trash dressed up as literature because someone along the production line decided to compare it to The Great Gatsby (which many may argue is really not that great). The characters are all below par when it comes to morality. They drink all day long, don’t even really like each other, break into other people’s empty beach houses and make messes they don’t clean up, and then they just wake up the next day and do it all over again. In the end, Henry gets away with every single atrocious thing he does whilst on honeymoon, retains his good looks into old age and goes on to have multiple affairs throughout his marriage. Of course he does. While Effie, as described by Henry, gets fat and mean. Yes, you read that right. I’ve rarely had occasion for a novel to make me so angry. This one tops the lot, that’s for sure. Needless to say, I don’t recommend this novel at all.
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of Cape May for review.
About the Author:
CHIP CHEEK’s stories have appeared in the Southern Review, Harvard Review and Washington Square, among others. He’s been awarded scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, and the Vermont Studio Centre. CAPE MAY is his debut novel.
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Cape May
Published by Hachette Australia (W&N)
Released on 23rd April 2019
May 2, 2019
Book Review: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
About the Book:
The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt’s Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome’s got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.
Cussy’s not only a book woman, however, she’s also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy’s family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she’s going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachia and suspicion as deep as the holler.
Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman’s belief that books can carry us anywhere — even back home.
My Thoughts:
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek merges two uniquely fascinating histories plucked right out of the wild Kentucky mountains. Before I go any further, I’ll draw your attention to this extract from the author’s notes:
Inspired by the true and gentle historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse librarians born of Roosevelt’s New Deal Acts, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek showcases a fascinating and important footnote of history. Methemoglobinemia is the extremely rare disease that causes skin to be blue. In the United States, it was first found in the Fugates of Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky. In 1820, Martin Fugate, a French orphan, came to Kentucky to claim a land grant on the banks of Troublesome Creek in Kentucky’s isolated wilderness. Martin married a full-blooded, red-headed, white-skinned Kentuckian named Elizabeth Smith. They had seven children, and out of those, four were blue. It was insurmountable and against all odds that, oceans away, Martin would find a bride who carried the same blue-blood recessive gene.
~~~
The Pack Horse Library Project was established in 1935 and ran until 1943. The service was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and an effort to create jobs for women and bring books and reading material into Appalachia, into the poorest and most isolated areas in eastern Kentucky that had few schools, no libraries, and inaccessible roads. The librarians were known as “Book Women,” though there were a very small number of men among their ranks. These fearsome Kentucky librarians travelled by horse, mule, and sometimes by foot and even rowboat to reach the remotest areas, in creeks and up crags, into coves, disconnected pockets, and black forests and to towns named Hell-fer-Sartin, Troublesome, and Cut Shin, sometimes traveling as much as one hundred or more miles a week in rain, sleet, or snow. Pack Horse librarians were paid twenty-eight dollars a month and had to provide their own mounts. Books and reading materials and places for storing and sorting the material were all donated and not supplied by the WPA’s payroll. With few resources and little financial help, the Pack Horse librarians collected donated books and reading materials from the Boy Scouts, PTAs, women’s clubs, churches, and the state health department. The librarians came up with ingenious ways to provide more reading resources, such as making scrapbooks with collected recipes and housecleaning tips that the mountain people passed on to them in gratitude for their service. Despite the financial obstacles, the harshness of the land, and the sometimes fierce mistrust of the people during the most violent era of eastern Kentucky’s history, the Pack Horse service was accepted and became dearly embraced. These clever librarians turned their traveling library program into a tremendous success. In the years of its service, over one thousand women served in the Pack Horse Project, and it was reported that nearly 600,000 residents in thirty eastern Kentucky counties considered “pauper counties” were served by them.
Both of these incredible histories are merged within The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, deep in the Kentucky mountains. This is hardscrabble life like you wouldn’t believe. The only source of income is from coal mining, but the companies are only after one thing, as much black gold as they can get, with the minimum wage and the minimum standards of employment with no regard for safety. People aren’t even paid with money, but with a credit system that allows them to only shop at the company store. The corruption is entrenched and those seeking to unionise more often than not ‘disappear’.
“Daughter, take a look at the fright out there. They’re murderers, gun thugs, them Company men are. Something must be done. Folks are worse off than before they arrived.” Pa coughed. “We’re working seventeen -hour days down on a rocky floor with bloody kneecaps in a black hole for scratch, and all the while fearing the next cave-in, the next blast that sends us to our fiery grave.”
Violence is rife, mistrust runs deep and inbreeding is par for the course. Law enforcement is loose, dependent upon access, which is not widespread given the way people live dotted all through the mountains. I studied some units of geography at university, one of them on the social geography of North America. I remember this area, the Appalachian mountains, and this was where I first came across my knowledge of the blue mountain people. I’ve never read a novel that has taken the reader so deeply into a hidden history before, and done it with such a depth of understanding for the area being written about.
‘A woman violated would be damned— persecuted— and dismissed from her job like Postmistress Gracie Banks had been after she was raped last year and told. And there’d been more than a few other Gracie Banks who’d blabbered. Rarely was justice served and then only if the woman’s kin took it upon themselves to mete out punishment in a quiet, lawless way. Disgraced, soiled like that, even womenfolk would silence, shun, and cast blame on the tainted female— make good ’n’ sure she’d carry the sin of the man’s stain for the rest of her days. Over the years, I’d seen that burden in a few women’s hooded eyes around town. I remember Mama telling Pa when she thought I weren’t listening that the female’s silence let those vile godless men walk free among their prey, boldly pass their sufferers on the streets of Troublesome with a sly tip to the hat, a smug pat to the crotch.’
~~~
‘I know’d Harriett’s mama had married kin, that her kind had relations with close relatives. It just didn’t show up in her pasty-white flesh, only in the small eyes hugging her sky-saluting nose. Her clan was the same as most kinfolk in these parts. Courting was hard, and a horse and mule could only travel so far, making it difficult to meet and marry outside these hills. Still, my great-grandpa’d done just that, all the way from France . And here Harriett was the one who pined after her cousin.’
Against this backdrop, Cussy Mary – or Bluet as she is more commonly, yet less preferably, called – traverses the mountains delivering and collecting library books to those who wouldn’t otherwise see a book ever, much less learn to read one. She reads to people, teaches others to read, spends time with the lonely, delivers books to a remote school and a community of mountain folk that never leave their holler. This novel is a testament about the importance of reading in changing lives, the joy and connection that can stem from books, and the way ignorance can be pierced through education.
‘Being able to return to the books was a sanctuary for my heart. And a joy bolted free, lessening my own grievances, forgiving spent youth and dying dreams lost to a hard life, the hard land, and to folks ’ hard thoughts and partialities.’
~~~
‘Mr. Moffit didn’t like folks who weren’t his color. He used to demand that I stay put in the yard . But his longing for the printed word soon weakened his demands, and he eventually allowed Angeline to bring me inside to read at the small wooden table, so desperate was he for the books to help him escape his misery, misery at never having enough to fill his belly, not even enough spare coins to buy himself a couple of bullets to maybe shoot a rabbit, and now the misery at the poison inching its way deeper into him from his gunshot.’
~~~
‘I loved that the books were growing their little minds. Pa was wrong. They needed books more than anything else this place had to offer. They were starved for the learning, the know-how on leaving this hard land for a better, softer one.’
Cussy Mary is blue. Genuinely blue. She’s about the loneliest person I’ve ever read about. People fear her more than any other type of person. Going to town is arduous and incredibly painful. Her job is her life, and out on the mountains, delivering books, her colour matters less, but it takes a long time, and many awful things to happen, before she can accept herself just the way she was born. Her pain brought me to tears over and over, not just because of the prejudice she was subjected to, but also because of the lack of self-worth she was filled with on account of being blue. She had so much to offer, yet most people just wanted to keep their distance and ridicule her. I spent a good portion of this novel filled with fear for her. There was this feeling that pervaded where you had a sense that to many, she was less than human. It was so wrong, just so, so wrong.
‘I touched the baby’s hand, my own eyes filling, my mind grappling with losses, the unbearable pain of loneliness. Nary a townsfolk, not one God-fearing soul, had welcomed me or mine into town, their churches, or homes in all my nineteen years on this earth. Instead, every hard Kentucky second they’d filled us with an emptiness from their hate and scorn. It was as if Blues weren’t allowed to breathe the very same air their loving God had given them, not worthy of the tiniest spoonful He’d given to the smallest forest critter. I was nothing in their world. A nothingness to them. And I looked into Angeline’s dying eyes and saw my truths, and the truths that would be her daughter’s.’
~~~
“Well, them cloths are a lot like folks. Ain’t much difference at all. Some of us is more spiffed up than others, some stiffer, and still, some softer. There’s the colorful and dull, ugly and pretty, old, new ’uns. But in the end we’s all fabric, cut from His cloth. Fabric, and just that.”
The poverty depicted within this novel is startlingly disturbing. People literally starving to death. Whole families becoming extinct, pride preventing them from accessing welfare, prejudice preventing them from seeking help. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is unlike any other novel I’ve ever read. Starkly beautiful in its prose, confronting and desperately painful to comprehend. That it’s so deeply grounded in truth just made it all the more profound. Cussy’s story made my heart hurt, yet despite the grim reality punctuating every single scene throughout the novel, hope sparked in the most unlikely of places. It’s an incredible novel. One of the best I’ve read.
‘I curled myself into a tight ball on the blood-soaked Kentucky soil, wailing for Henry and all the Henrys in these dark hollows who’d never be a common grown-up. Stuck forever as Peter Pans.’
~~~
“This old land.” Jackson stared off. “It sure makes a man yearn for it and want to flee it altogether.”
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek will take you to a place you’ve probably heard little of during a time when life was perhaps at its most lacking and desperate. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough, which is why I’ve included so many quotes. It really does speak for itself.
April 30, 2019
Book Review: If You Could Go Anywhere by Paige Toon
About the Book:
How can you know where you’re going . . . if you don’t know where you’re from?
Angie has always wanted to travel, but at twenty-seven she has barely even stepped outside the Australian mining town where she was born. Instead, she discovers the world through stories told to her by passing travellers, dreaming that one day she’ll see it all for herself.
When her grandmother passes away, leaving Angie with no remaining family, she is ready to start her own adventures. Then she finds a letter revealing the address of the father she never knew, and realises instantly where her journey must begin: Italy.
As Angie sets out to find the truth – about her family, her past and who she really is – will mysterious and reckless Italian Alessandro help guide the way?
The heartbreaking, romantic and utterly compelling new novel from international bestselling author Paige Toon.
My Thoughts:
A new novel by Paige Toon is always a welcome treat. If You Could Go Anywhere is a romance/coming of age/travelogue that is based heavily on the author’s feelings of wanderlust, drawing on her own experiences travelling in Australia, Italy and Norway. It’s steeped in atmosphere, the places, the tastes, and the sensations – all coming to life on these pages. It’s a very enjoyable novel and I could really see it playing out as a movie.
‘Oh, Nan…I’m overwhelmed with grief at the thought of her and desperately sad that she kept this part of my family from me.’
What started as a coming of age/discover who you really are type of novel quickly veered into a contemporary romance though. This did bother me at times, particularly as this storyline overshadowed the father/daughter relationship which was, to my mind, the actual point of the novel. The romance plot was also quite predictable in its trajectory, lacking the uniqueness of Paige’s previous novel, Five Years from Now. All this aside though, I still really enjoyed this story, and that is largely due to the character of Angie, who was very well crafted and authentically realised throughout. She’s a fixer, a helper, a pleaser; she’s intrinsically good, but not in an annoying way. She’s the type of person who acts without artifice and genuinely deserves good fortune. Having such an endearing character to champion balanced out the other aspects of the story that niggled at me, so that by the time I had reached the end of this novel, I felt as though it had been a very satisfying read indeed. I tend to be a bit nitpicky about romances though, so my fussiness is often not a reflection of the story but more about my reading mood and general mindset at the time. There are some very heartfelt moments along the way for Angie and Alessandro, which go a long way towards bursting the romance bubbles and carving out a proper foundation for a relationship, which appealed to me far more.
‘It’s crazy. Frighteningly crazy. I have no experience with mental illness and the thought of trying to make Alessandro see sense scares the hell out of me. All I know is that I’ve got to try.’
Fans of contemporary romance and lovers of food fiction will relish within the pages of this novel. It really is a treat for the senses and if you long to travel to Italy but haven’t ever gotten there, then this is also an ideal read for you. A great one to pick up for the coming long weekend!
‘You’re like no one I’ve ever known. So open and honest and true and pure and good and loving and forgiving and so beautiful, inside and out. I thought maybe you really were an angel.’
Thanks is extended to Penguin Random House Australia for providing me with a copy of If You Could Go Anywhere for review.
About the Author:
Paige Toon grew up between England, Australia and America and has been writing books set in sun-drenched locations around the world since 2007. She has released eleven fiction novels and a three-part spin off series for young adults.
In 2014, Paige set up a club, The Hidden Paige, in order to share free short stories and extra content with her readers. Sign up at paigetoon.com or visit her website to find out more about the author and her characters.
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If You Could Go Anywhere
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
Released on 1st May 2019
April 29, 2019
Challenge Check In – April
Efforts for April look like this:
#aww2019: 7 books
#AussieAuthor19: 7 books
Book Bingo with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse: 0 books (I’ve read and scheduled a few months ahead in this challenge so a lack of contributing titles from this month is no biggie)
The Classics Eight: this is beginning to get embarrassing… 
April 28, 2019
Book Review: Bella and Chaim by Sara Rena Vidal
About the Book:
Encompassing the inspirational true story of Bella and Chaim, the author’s parents, with the intergenerational trauma of being a child of survivors, this memoir of love, loss and gratitude, is a testament to the human spirit as well as a call to rise above: ashes, victimhood, and generalizations.
Bella and Chaim met and fell in love in the Warsaw Ghetto where they witnessed the destruction of a way of life; sole survivors of both their families, they endured entombment for eighteen months before rescue, liberation, and immigration to begin anew in Australia.
A flowing collage embracing and mingling survivor-memory, recorded and analysed historical context, and memory-fragments of Melbourne in the 1950s, with real-time musings on the light, dark, and potential of being alive. Honouring the murdered and the righteous, reminding us that our choices matter, ever present are the dilemma’s and challenges facing us today. Augmented with photos, maps, a chapter on sources, bibliography, endnotes and an index, this book can be read as an inspirational story and/or utilized as a well-researched resource for in-depth study.
My Thoughts:
This is probably one of the most unique books that I have ever read and also one of the most important in terms of the gravitas of the subject matter. But in all honesty, I don’t feel as though I am equipped enough to review this book in the manner in which it deserves. So instead of analysing it and digging in to pull out the threads of meaning, I am simply going to praise it and share a few thoughts.
This is not a linear memoir, it’s presented in a very different type of structure, hence the comment above about the uniqueness of this book. It’s an amalgamation of the author’s memory fragments, Basia and Heniek’s story, historical context, sections that ask the reader to ‘Imagine Being in their Shoes’, and affirmations. It’s also accompanied by an extensive resource section at the back, making this the ideal book for an in-depth study and/or a platform for further research. Books such as this, which contain primary accounts of the Holocaust, are so important, not just from an historical study point of view, but also as a means of preserving the horror in a present sense. When we are less horrified by history, I feel this is when we are most at risk of repeating elements of it.
“For a short time, Karol hides them behind some steps, an ingenious space his fits under a higher floor level with sitting space only. Afraid of possible denouncement by neighbours, in his workroom (which is in the backyard away from prying eyes) Karol constructs a bunker; this he digs out under a large heavy machine that is used to saw timber. Food brought to them once a day is invariably potato soup and occasional scraps of meat. A can, which had once contained tinned cucumbers, now serves as their toilet; Lodzia takes this away daily. Once a week she brings a bowl of water for them to wash their face and hands. The bunker is so small: one-metre-wide by one-metre-high by two metres long. Unable to stand, they sit, or lie, in the dark, separated from the dirt floor by a thin matting, with just a threadbare blanket, thus enduring the long days and nights.”
The appeal with this book lies in the way it not only looks at the experiences of the author’s parents, but it also examines the many different shapes that survival can take. While it’s incredible that two people would survive, hidden in such a small space for eighteen months (they are not the only ones who survived in such a way, there are countless WWII stories on Jewish people being hidden), this book looks at the cost of that. Now, it in no way negates the survival, but it does give a realistic picture on what surviving really involved. The trauma of confinement, with that ever present terror of discovery burning within, and then, what comes after, when everyone else is gone and you are left without them; when your home is gone, your neighbourhood, everything that was ever familiar; when you have been persecuted for your faith to the point of extermination; and the displacement, shuffling from one place to another until you settle in an unfamiliar location that is to be your new home. In sharing her experiences as the child of Holocaust survivors, the author is able to shed a light on these many aspects that are often not considered. We celebrate the survival (as we should), but not always do we examine the aftermath, the trauma that is left over and the ripple effect. In this, Bella and Chaim is a brave book, an incredible reckoning, and I expect it was not easy for the author to bring forth.
“Longing for an end to her suffering, she expressed it to me with her own special logic: ‘In my misery and loneliness I longed to die. But how could I take my own life, when I had been spared, and so many had perished?’”
A worthy read and one that I highly recommend.
Thanks is extended to the author for providing me with a copy of Bella and Chaim for review.
About the Author:
Sara Vidal is an Australian writer, graduate of Melbourne University, Architect, ex-Victorian Public Service Manager. Born in a refugee camp in Italy in 1945. In 1992, aware that her parents’ generation were beginning to die, and at a time of holocaust denial, she began writing on several fronts: childhood memories of growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s – The Making of Plans (unpublished), a journal, extensive researching and writing of her parent’s story, these writings mingle in Bella and Chaim and two more works on the way. She has two children and four grandchildren.
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Bella and Chaim: The Story of Beauty and Life
Published by Hybrid Publishers
Released on 1st September 2017
April 27, 2019
Book Club for May
Here are our book club titles for May!
Discussion will commence in the Page by Page Facebook group at the beginning of June. If you’re not on Facebook, please feel free to revisit this post and share your reading thoughts in the comments section below.
Fled by Meg Keneally
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Highway robber. Convict. Runaway. Mother. She will do anything for freedom, but at what cost?
Jenny Trelawney is no ordinary thief. Forced by poverty to live in the forest, she becomes a successful highwaywoman – until her luck runs out.
Transported to Britain’s furthest colony, Jenny must tackle new challenges and growing responsibilities. And when famine hits the new colony, Jenny becomes convinced that those she most cares about will not survive. She becomes the leader in a grand plot of escape, but is survival any more certain in a small open boat on an unknown ocean?
Meg Keneally’s debut solo novel is an epic historical adventure based on the extraordinary life of convict Mary Bryant.
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Published by Quercus (Hachette Australia)
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A captivating and magical story set in 1930s Malaysia about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy who are brought together by a series of unexplained deaths and an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.
They say a tiger that devours too many humans can take the form of a man and walk amongst us…
In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master’s severed finger and reunite it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days, or else his master’s soul will roam the earth forever.
Ji Lin, an apprentice dressmaker, moonlights as a dancehall girl to pay her mother’s debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir that leads her on a crooked, dark trail.
As time runs out for Ren’s mission, a series of unexplained deaths occur amid rumours of tigers who turn into men. In their journey to keep a promise and discover the truth, Ren and Ji Lin’s paths will cross in ways they will never forget.
Four Respectable Ladies Seek the Meaning of Wife by Barbara Toner
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
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Marriage isn’t always a bed of roses. And there are many ways to be a wife,’ the vicar informs the town…
It’s 1930, and as the Depression overtakes rural New South Wales, what it means to be a wife tests the four respectable ladies of Prospect to their very limit.
Louisa Worthington fled to the city ten years ago, pregnant, poor and under a cloud of scandal. Now she’s back – blonde and brazen – with her heart set on the married son of the town’s mayor.
Adelaide Nightingale, newly widowed and starved of romance, yearns for adoration, security and a version of herself defined by beauty not business.
Maggie Albright dreams of empire building, but is hamstrung by her over-cautious husband, who grows less handsome by the day.
Then there’s Pearl Fletcher, happily married to Joe, the district’s most successful sheep farmer, but protecting a secret that could tear their family apart.
And hovering in the town’s shadows is a ghost from their past. A man newly released from jail ruthlessly bent on exploiting the ladies’ hopes and fears to get what he wants. And what he wants is Louisa . . .
The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris
Published by Orion (Hachette Australia)
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The compelling new novel from the author of the bestselling CHOCOLAT.
Vianne Rocher has settled down. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the place that once rejected her, has finally become her home. With Rosette, her ‘special’ child, she runs her chocolate shop in the square, talks to her friends on the river, is part of the community. Even Reynaud, the priest, has become a friend.
But when old Narcisse, the florist, dies, leaving a parcel of land to Rosette and a written confession to Reynaud, the life of the sleepy village is once more thrown into disarray. The arrival of Narcisse’s relatives, the departure of an old friend and the opening of a mysterious new shop in the place of the florist’s across the square – one that mirrors the chocolaterie, and has a strange appeal of its own – all seem to herald some kind of change: a confrontation, a turbulence – even, perhaps, a murder…
April 26, 2019
#Book Bingo – Round 9
The Hollow Bones by Leah Kaminsky
‘World Ice Theory is finally receiving the recognition it deserves, overthrowing that madman Einstein and his Jewish pseudoscience. The Führer has at last accepted it as the scientific platform of the Reich. And rightly so. We know the truth now, that ice crystals are the true building blocks of the universe, not those imaginary atoms. You, young man, will travel to Tibet to head into the bowels of the earth where Fire and Ice went to war, and the ancestors of the German Volk emerged triumphant as Sonnenmenschen. Perfect beings, as radiant as the sun.’
The Hollow Bones tells one of the most unique and sinister tales of WWII that I have ever read. It’s utterly compelling and profoundly thought provoking. It pulled me in so many directions, and even when I thought that something was either black or white, the prism would shift and all of a sudden shades of grey would seep in and collapse my convictions.
The Hollow Bones is one of those novels that will haunt me; that I’ll always keep a copy of on my shelf; one I will recommend and talk about for years to come. I am so grateful to Leah Kaminsky for writing this novel, for enlightening me on this part of history that I had up until now known nothing about. The Hollow Bones is highly accessible literary historical fiction, a study on the intersection between science, politics, and the natural world. I absolutely loved this novel and recommend it widely.
‘He could close his eyes anywhere he went on earth and tell exactly where he was, just from local birdcalls. Their plaintive, wailing cries spoke the language of his heart.’
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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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