Theresa Smith's Blog, page 106
April 25, 2019
Book Review: Under The Midnight Sky by Anna Romer
About the Book:
Chilling secrets buried deep in wild bushland drive this thrilling new novel from bestseller Anna Romer
When an injured teenager goes missing at a remote bushland campground, local journalist Abby Bardot is determined to expose the area’s dark history. The girl bears a striking resemblance to the victims of three brutal murders that occurred twenty years ago and Abby fears the killer is still on the loose.
But the newspaper Abby works for wants to suppress the story for fear it will scare off tourists to the struggling township. Haunted by her own turbulent memories, Abby is desperate to learn the truth and enlists the help of Tom Gabriel, a reclusive crime writer. At first resentful of Abby’s intrusion, Tom’s reluctance vanishes when they discover a hidden attic room in his house that shows evidence of imprisonment from half a century before.
As Abby and Tom sift through the attic room and discover its tragic history, they become convinced it holds the key to solving the bushland murders and finding the missing girl alive.
But their quest has drawn out a killer, someone with a shocking secret who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.
My Thoughts:
‘Memories came so vividly. Why was that? They should fade with age, grow ever more distant. Instead, there were times –like now –when they assaulted her with a jumble of sights and sounds and smells. Crushed eucalypt leaves. The eerie whispers and crackles of the forest at night. The sigh of water racing in the gorge. And her sister’s weight in her arms. The sticky heat of blood on her hands.’
It’s as though every new novel from Anna Romer sets a whole new standard for Australian fiction. I don’t know how she does it, topping perfection over and over. Under the Midnight Sky is a novel that I was enthralled by, from start to finish. Fortunately, I was trapped in a car on a 10 hour journey, so there was little reason for me to put the novel down. This is truly gripping crime fiction, with gothic echoes, a slow burning connection between two of the main characters, and a mystery that ripples through generations, staining a town’s reputation. The plotting is masterful, the character development strong and steady. There’s a twist in this novel that I never anticipated, but it made such perfect sense once all was revealed. A chillingly atmospheric read that led to a pit of dread lodging itself within me for the duration. Highly recommended, and will no doubt make my top reads list at the end of the year.
‘Leaning back in his chair, he looked at the ceiling. Saw, in his mind’s eye, the hidden room with its barred window and bloodstained sheets. The two young sisters caged together there for five years. Faded little songbirds forgotten by the world.’
~~~
‘Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to summon the words to describe what I was feeling. The way my throat closed up from the stale mustiness, the way my pulse began to fly at the sight of the shadow-infested corners. The way my spirit shrank inside me like a walnut withering in its shell.’
Thanks is extended to Simon & Schuster Australia via NetGalley for providing me with a copy of Under The Midnight Sky for review.
About the Author:
Anna Romer was born in Australia to a family of booklovers. She led a nomadic life for many years, travelling around Europe and Britain in an ancient Kombi van where she discovered a passion for history.
These days she lives in a little old cottage surrounded by bushland, writing stories about dark family secrets, rambling houses, characters haunted by the past, and settings that feature the uniquely beautiful Australian landscape. Anna’s debut bestselling novel was Thornwood House, followed by Lyrebird Hill and Beyond the Orchard. See AnnaRomer.com.au
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Under The Midnight Sky
Published by Simon & Schuster Australia
Released 23 April 2019
April 23, 2019
Book Review: I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott
About the Book:
Spot-on observations about domestic, professional, and creative life, taking on the conflicting pressures of modern womanhood with humour and thoughtful contemplation, from an author who is connected to highly influential writers like Elizabeth Gilbert and Ann Patchett.
In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern womanhood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that?
My Thoughts:
‘I miss you when I blink. I have felt it so many times in my life, at points where I didn’t really know who I was anymore, where I felt that when I closed my eyes, I could feel myself gone.’
I did not anticipate enjoying and being able to relate to this book quite as much as I did. A collection of memoir-in-essays, I Miss You When I Blink broke through my ‘I don’t like memoirs barrier’, but this is predominately on account of the essay style in which the book is written, and the subject matter that it’s focused on – so don’t go getting all excited, thinking I’m now a memoir fan. Just of this one! I loved Laura’s style, her wit and honesty, the way she tells a story with such inflection you can almost hear her voice and laughter, bubbling up off the page. I felt like she was a person I had so much in common with, and she made me think of things, about my own life, that are long overdue. I highly recommend this book to all women, particularly to those who may feel like they are running all over the place, chasing themselves into a corner they feel they can’t get out of. I’ll let this book speak for itself in terms of how excellent it is, by leaving you with some passages that really resonated with me.
‘I don’t want people to feel I’m judging them. I don’t want to be perceived as hostile, although I know that I sometimes am. But I’m not hostile like a crazy person punching strangers on a subway platform. I’m just hostile like a crazy person who wants to gouge her eyes out when she sees grammatical errors on billboards. LOWEST PRICE’S – I can hardly stand it.’
~~~
‘I often thought, shit, what right do I have to feel this way? It’s so stupid. I told myself to get over it, because people were depending on me. So I decided to keep going and doing the things I signed up to do, because it’s wasteful and self-indulgent to feel bad when so much is really quite good. It’s ungrateful, and I was not going to be ungrateful.’
~~~
‘I was distracted by more than the frenetic schedules of our household. All the other people I’d been and not been in my life were beginning to fight for their share of my brain space and their chance at a breath of real-life air, too. There were far more than three people crowded into my head. I felt like a human traffic jam.’
~~~
‘I used to think that if only I could make everything perfect, then I could relax and have fun. If I could just eliminate all mistakes, my life would settle into place – click! – and my mind would rest. If I’m being truthful, I have to acknowledge that on some unchangeable, deep-down level, there’s still a part of me that thinks that.’
~~~
‘But if you’re going to take just one thing from this story, let it be something much more important:
You can always start over.’
Thanks is extended to Murdoch Books for providing me with a copy of I Miss You When I Blink for review.
About the Author:
Mary Laura Philpott’s writing has been featured in print or online by New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, Paris Review and other publications. She’s the founding editor of Musing, the online magazine of Parnassus Books, as well as an Emmy-winning co-host of the literary show A Word on Words on Nashville Public Television. She lives in Nashville with her family.
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I Miss You When I Blink
Published by Murdoch Books
Released on 15th April 2019
April 21, 2019
Book Review: Fled by Meg Keneally
About the Book:
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.
My Thoughts:
Inspired by the life of Mary Bryant, the woman behind one of history’s most daring escapes, Fled takes the reader on an incredible historic adventure, from Cornwall to Australia, and then beyond. It’s an exceptional tale of endurance and survival, the events and characters interwoven throughout the story firmly embedded in history.
‘This woman, thought Jenny, has never had to eat limpets. Has never had to experience the kind of cold that kills a baby. Has never had to worry that an absent school of pilchards will destroy her. Perhaps her father had paid for the necklace, the bonnet, the shawl. Perhaps he yet lived, and had no need to choose between starving and placing himself in the hands of the midnight sea.’
I’ve read many novels about convicts and early settlement of Australia, but Fled is the first I have read that is about the first fleet. What an astonishing account this was, beyond hardship and the realms of reasonable justice for crimes committed. Survival was such a tenuous concept. I have to wonder what sort of short straws the admiralty drew in order to get sent to the newest colony of the British Empire. It certainly wasn’t a reward posting! Their conditions were only fractionally better than that of the convicts. And the treatment of convicts was so bad, an unending abuse of human rights that seemed perfectly acceptable within the context of the era. What a depraved legacy for the British Empire.
‘Some of the female convicts had been in there for months, some longer. Some had nearly served out their sentence. True to the word of the overseer on the deck, there were no canvas slops for any of them, so that those who had sat in their own ordure for any length of time wore ragged shadows of the clothes they had stood in to hear the sentence of the court.’
This is also my first taste of the writing of Meg Keneally. I find her style so richly atmospheric, she really pulls you in to the story, puts you right into Jenny’s shoes. I felt entirely wrapped up in this adventure, enraged at the terrible injustices heaped upon Jenny, sorrowful about the inevitability of the tragedies that unfolded. The details of what the first fleet experienced were so meticulously wrought, from establishing some measure of order out of the chaos of having so many people condensed into a society without structure or the means to flourish, to first contact with the native Aboriginal people and the endless misunderstandings that ensued. I whipped through this novel, barely wanting to put it down, it was so enthralling.
‘There was enough light, just, for Jenny to make out the glowering shape of South Head. Even had there not been, she would have known they were leaving the harbour. The seas became rougher; the nose of the boat rose and then fell, sending spray onto those in the front. But she would never know if that night lookout was asleep, or daydreaming, or unable to see far enough in the darkness. She would never know if the sound of their passage, which seemed to cry out like a horn, was loud enough to echo up the cliff into his ears. No musket was fired, no signal fire was lit, and no shouted warnings floated across the bay.’
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What I loved about Jenny was that despite her criminality, which was something she literally fell into, she was ultimately a protector. Once she became a mother, every single thing she did, every decision she made, was for the protection of her children. When faced with starvation at Sydney Cove, she plots and convinces her husband that escape from the colony is their only means of survival. What follows is one of the most extraordinary journeys of escape. When I examined the map included with the story – pictured here – I was rather stunned that they survived. The distance they traversed, how close they came to death, on more than one occasion. That this novel is based on a real woman from history – wow!
‘She knew the newspapers usually thundered against people like her, calling for their excision from the civic body. But not now. Now, they had found someone of exactly the right shape around which to build a scaffold of martyrdom and heroism. Someone to be pitied and admired all at once. Someone who could bring people close to danger, without them actually having to smell it. Several of the papers had taken to calling for mercy for this woman who had risked so much, gained so much and lost so much.’
But this journey of escape is not where Jenny’s journey ends. Unfortunately, life was ready to continually remind her of her insignificance as a convict, over and over. There is a lot of sorrow throughout this story and it’s grim for the most part, but I never felt weighted down by this. The history and Meg’s deft hand with shaping her story more than compensated for all of the misery, along with the hope sprinkled into the ending. This is very much the type of historical fiction I enjoy the most. I highly recommend Fled, it’s an excellent novel that deserves a wide readership and the highest of accolades.
‘He was the kind of person whose death stood politely behind the door like a servant with a tray. Present out of necessity, but easy to ignore. When it eventually did step into the drawing room, its arrival would be marked by a genteel funeral with restrained mourners. Jenny’s death sat with her in prison, whispering promises of public putrefaction. It had walked in shrunken skin beside her at Sydney Cove. It sat with her on the boat, eyeless and bloated. And it had crouched just behind the horizon in Coepang.’
Thanks is extended to Allen and Unwin for providing me with a copy of Fled for review.
About the Author:
Meg Keneally worked as a public affairs officer, sub-editor, freelance feature writer, reporter, and talkback radio producer, before co-founding a financial service public
relations company, which she then sold after having her first child. For more than ten years, Meg has worked in corporate affairs for listed financial services companies, and doubles as a part-time Scuba diving instructor. She is co-author with Tom Keneally of The Soldier’s Curse and The Unmourned, the first two books in The Monsarrat Series. Fled is her first solo novel. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.
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Fled
Published by Bonnier Echo
Released on 15th April 2019
April 16, 2019
Happy Easter!
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I’m getting in early with the Easter wishes because things are very hustle and bustle with me right now. It’s been very quiet on the reading front because last week I had house guests and this week I’m travelling. Even though I’m only away for four days, two of those days involve being in a car for 12 hours and the other two in between are jam packed busy. One of the things about living so remote is that when you go anywhere by car, it’s a long drive. And when you get to your destination, you cram as much in as possible. So, that makes for not much reading and reviews being put on the backburner. I’m hoping for a return to normal programming next week!
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So, if Easter is something you celebrate, best wishes to you. If not, well, just enjoy the public holidays. See you on the other side!
April 13, 2019
Bookish TV in Review: Sharp Objects
American psychological thriller television miniseries
Premiered on July 8, 2018, on HBO
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Based on the debut novel of the same name by writer Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”), the eight-episode series “Sharp Objects” stars Amy Adams, in her first major role on the small screen, as reporter Camille Preaker, who returns to her small hometown to investigate mysterious, unsolved crimes. Two girls are missing, one of whom was found dead and presumed murdered. As she searches for clues, Camille reunites with her estranged family – overbearing mother Adora, stepfather Alan Crellin, and half sister Amma – which rekindles traumatic childhood memories, including the death of her younger sister. Piecing together a psychological puzzle from her past, Camille begins to identify with the young victims a bit too closely.
My Thoughts:
Long before the Gone Girl phenomenon – you know the one, it spawned a whole new genre called ‘domestic noir’ and is still inspiring a steady stream of new releases with the dreaded word ‘girl’ in the title – Gillian Flynn released two other novels: Dark Places and her debut, Sharp Objects. Now, I like all three of these novels, but Sharp Objects remains my favourite. It’s dark and more than a little bit icky, pushing the boundaries of reader comfort over and over because in amongst the heavy themes of self-harm, mental illness, addiction, sexual assault, and murder, it rolls out two other biggies: mummies who systematically harm their children and nasty teens who revel in the power trip of their own nastiness. It’s a brutal piece of work, but I think it’s utterly brilliant. Within Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn uses small town America as her stage, weaving a tale that exaggerates the darker aspects of humanity through the depiction of two cycles: the cycle of toxic parenting, and what I like to call the cycle of bitchery, whereby bitchy teenagers grow up to be bitchy women who breed a whole new generation of bitchy teenagers, and round and round we go. She also encapsulates that insular small town feel, where ranks can close when the seams of order begin to fray.
Both of these cycles, and the small town feel, translated well to the small screen. Now, I’ve been sitting on this series for quite some time because when a book I really like is adapted for film or television, it makes me nervous. There’s been some hack jobs. But this was well done. It’s been many years since I read Sharp Objects, but I feel this adaptation not only stayed true to the novel, but it captured its essence brilliantly. Gillian Flynn was one of the writers of the series, so maybe that’s a big contributing factor, but kudos needs to be passed on to the rest of the production crew because this is slick television, creative and innovative in its storytelling. And the cast were excellent, particularly Amy Adams who played Camille and Sophia Lillis who played young Camille. Both of these women captured the essence of Camille, a complex character that needed to be handled with care, lest she come off unsympathetic and unlikable. Over and over, my heart broke for Camille. She was so much more than a ‘drunken slut’ (to coin a phrase thrown at her within the show). Patricia Clarkson played Adora Crellin, Camille’s mother, and wow! She played her complex character with conviction: the toxic mother, the southern lady, the community matriarch, the manipulative wife. I believe she picked up some awards for this role and I can see why. Another notable performance was by Eliza Scanlen who played Amma Crellin, Camille’s younger half sister. Butter wouldn’t melt in that one’s mouth! On a whole, casting was pretty spot on. And Henry Czerny as Alan Crellin, my goodness, he captured Alan’s vagueness and willingness to turn a blind eye to a tee! Elizabeth Perkins is always good value, she played Jackie O’Neill, the town gossip and long-time family friend of the Crellins.
So I was in no way disappointed by the series. I loved the novel and now I love the TV adaptation. My sister watched this last year and mentioned that she found some things confusing. I wonder if having read the novel, even though it was a long time ago, took that element away for me. It is a complex story and is not told in a linear fashion. It would lose its potency if it was. But I can see how it may be confusing at times, particularly early on when everything is still being laid out and then again at the end when it’s all come to a head. Given the nature of the content, I was actually surprised to discover that HBO weren’t overly gratuitous. They’re a network I approach with caution, but this is one of their better series, for sure. I highly recommend this one, both for fans of the novel and for those who might be new to Sharp Objects.
Rating: 9 out of 10
April 12, 2019
#BookBingo – Round 8
For the purposes of bingo, themes of fantasy also encompasses paranormal and gothic elements. I know many will scream nooo!!!! It’s not the same!!!! It really isn’t, but since I was at risk of blowing bingo out to an epic size, I had to stop adding categories. And paranormal didn’t make the cut as a square in its own right. With this context established, you’ll be able see how this week’s book fits in with the square I’ve allocated it to.
Themes of Fantasy:
‘“Fleetwood have you knowledge of familiar spirits?” I shook my head. “Then I will direct you to the book of Leviticus. In short, it’s the Devil in disguise. An instrument, if you will, to enlarge his kingdom…they can appear as anything: an animal, a child. It appears to her when she needs it to do her bidding. A familiar is the surest sign of a witch.”’
This novel had me in its thrall from the first page until the last. It is steeped in atmosphere, with vivid gothic overtones, and the writing is just sublime. Fleetwood was such a strong and worthy character, she had her flaws, and at times she drove me crazy with the risks she took, but her heart was in the right place and she acted from a deep sense of morality that was distinctly lacking in other characters. For someone so young, she really was an old soul. As much as this novel was about the witch trials, it was also about Fleetwood, transitioning from a child bride into a woman of worth. I highly recommend this novel, it’s quite outstanding.
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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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April 11, 2019
Book Review: The Land Girls by Victoria Purman
About the Book:
A moving story of love, loss and survival against the odds by bestselling author of The Last of the Bonegilla Girls, Victoria Purman.
It was never just a man’s war…
Melbourne, 1942
War has engulfed Europe and now the Pacific, and Australia is fighting for its future. For spinster Flora Atkins, however, nothing much has changed. Tending her dull office job and beloved brother and father, as well as knitting socks for the troops, leaves her relatively content. Then one day a stranger gives her brother a white feather and Flora’s anger propels her out of her safe life and into the vineyards of the idyllic Mildura countryside, a member of the Australian Women’s Land Army.
There she meets Betty, a 17-year-old former shopgirl keen to do her bit for the war effort and support her beloved, and the unlikely Lilian, a well-to-do Adelaide girl fleeing her overbearing family and the world’s expectations for her. As the Land Girls embrace their new world of close-knit community and backbreaking work, they begin to find pride in their roles. More than that, they start to find a kind of liberation. For Flora, new friendships and the singular joy derived from working the land offer new meaning to her life, and even the possibility of love.
But as the clouds of war darken the horizon, and their fears for loved ones – brothers, husbands, lovers – fighting at the front grow, the Land Girls’ hold on their world and their new-found freedoms is fragile. Even if they make it through unscathed, they will not come through unchanged…
My Thoughts:
I have read a few novels now about the Women’s Land Army, but each of these have been set in England, never Australia, so it was a real pleasure to pick up this latest release by Victoria Purman and read all about the marvellous efforts our women made in order to keep our country ticking over while WWII was raging throughout Europe and the Pacific. Australia had quite a substantial Women’s Land Army:
‘Around 6,000 women served in the Australian Women’s Land Army between 1942 and the end of the war. These women left the cities and moved into the country, to farms and orchards, to do the work once done by men. Many stayed on for the duration of the war. It was disbanded on the 31st December, 1945, and women returned to their old lives. After the war, their work and sacrifices were largely ignored and forgotten but they continued to campaign long and hard to have their work recognised. They marched on Anzac Day for the first time in 1991, and in 1994 became eligible for the Civilian Service Medal 1939–1945. On the 20th August, 2012, at a reception at Parliament House, Canberra, the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard presented each surviving member with a certificate and a commemorative brooch to wear. Her comments on the day outlined just how much they had contributed to the war effort.’ – Author notes.
The Land Girls is just the type of historical fiction I enjoy the most. It’s a quiet read in the sense that it’s driven more by the events of history than by a fast paced action filled plot. It’s very much a character study on the three women that steer the narrative, and through walking in their shoes, we are treated to a snapshot of Australian society during the WWII years, in both the city and the country. There is a wealth of detail woven into this novel, it really is a treasure trove, and in less skilled writerly hands, it may have been too much like a history lesson, but with Victoria Purman shaping the story, it was perfectly balanced. There is such a sense of atmosphere to this novel, the reader is really able to get a handle on what life in Australia was like back then. The politeness and reserve that was still in place was captured vividly through the relationships depicted, both working and private. I felt like I was reading about an Australia that was on the cusp of change. So much tragedy had come to pass, with both world wars within a generation of each other, and there was a sense that the idyllic lifestyle that had up until then been enjoyed was rapidly coming to a close. I loved the detail of everything the women did while in the land army. They did all sorts of work, from tending crops to working with livestock and all kinds of factory work – everything. And they travelled great distances to do so, many moving around to follow the crop seasons. It was a remarkable effort, and many women did it for years. I daresay it would have been quite difficult for some to go back to the domestic sphere once the war was over.
‘That August in Batlow, it was colder than July. The apple-tree pruning continued. The Land Army girls’ routine of Friday night dances and Saturday nights at the pictures continued through those winter months, small windows of respite from the hard, physical work and the incessant cold. They’d sung along to Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and been scared out of their wits by Apache Trail starring Donna Reed. When the newsreel relayed the latest news from the war, of further Allied gains in France and American bombing in the Philippines, everyone in the theatre stood and sang ‘God Save The King’ and cheered. The girls had marched out of the cinema exhilarated, singing the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ until they forgot the lyrics and botched the harmonies but they didn’t care as they walked the two-and-a-half miles home in the cold.’
There is love and laughter within this novel, pain and grief as well; all coloured with so much realism. Victoria Purman just seems to be going from strength to strength with her historical fiction. Highly recommended for readers who are interested in history with a focus on Australian women.
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia via NetGalley for providing me with a copy of The Land Girls for review.
About the Author:
Victoria Purman is a multi-published, award-nominated, Amazon Kindle–bestselling author. She has worked in and around the Adelaide media for nearly thirty years as an ABC television and radio journalist, a speechwriter to a premier, political adviser, editor, media adviser and private-sector communications consultant. She is a regular guest at writers’ festivals, has been nominated for a number of readers choice awards and was a judge in the fiction category for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Her most recent novels are The Three Miss Allens, published in 2016, The Last of the Bonegilla Girls (2018) and The Land Girls (2019).
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The Land Girls
Published by HQ Fiction – AU
Released on 15th April 2019
April 10, 2019
#ABIA2019 Shortlist Announced!
There’s a few favourites of mine in this shortlist, so I’m quite excited to share this book news with you.
Here is the complete #ABIA2019 shortlist:
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April 8, 2019
Book Review: Graffiti Lane – A Poetry Collection by Kelly Van Nelson
About the Book:
Graffiti Lane looks at life through an unfiltered lens, bringing a personal perspective on the grittiness of urban living in an eclectic mix of traditional, shadow and freeform poetry. The collection tackles issues of intimidation and discrimination, including playground and corporate bullying, domestic violence, marginalisation, gender inequity, mental health and suicide.
Yet while the writing is raw and the darker side of human nature is being exposed, there is an underlying sense of hope. The underdog is beaten down but not defeated and has the resilience to bounce back and rise again.
Graffiti Lane will stir the spirit and speak to the heart.
My Thoughts:
Kelly Van Nelson’s website is titled with the description: EDGY STORIES FROM INSIDE THE MIND. I find this an apt description of her poetry. It’s very edgy, an unfiltered musing on the darker elements present within society. The hidden, the insidious, the things people want to hide from. Her prose is powerful, and rather impressive. This collection is about 170 pages long, and it’s filled with poems of varying lengths and styles. As a poetry novice, I am so impressed by the scope of this collection. I consider it an achievement if a writer can produce a couple of poems, but the sheer amount contained within Graffiti Lane has stunned me. Kelly Van Nelson is a talent to watch, and for those interested in the Australian poetry scene, I imagine this collection to be an exciting release.
Here’s a couple of lines of prose that left their imprint upon me:
‘brave hearts know strength grows from revelling in being unique – being you’
This one here is the entire poem, short and to the point:
‘Shattered: what once broke me into a million pieces is what now makes me razor sharp’
Thanks is extended to the author for providing me with a copy of Graffiti Lane for review.
About the Author:
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Kelly Van Nelson was born in the North East of England and lived in London, Edinburgh, and Cape Town before immigrating to Western Australia with her family. She’s a mother of two children, wife to her soul mate of over two decades, Operations Executive for the world’s largest provider of HR, Staffing and Technology Solutions, and contemporary fiction writer represented by Clive Newman at The Newman Agency. She has had multiple poetry and short stories featured in publications in the UK, USA and Australia. Graffiti Lane is her debut poetry collection.
Connect with Kelly:
http://www.kellyvannelson.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kellyvannelsonauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellyvannelson
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/in/kellyvn
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Graffiti Lane
Published by Kelly Van Nelson/Making Magic Happen Press
Released March 2019
April 7, 2019
Behind the Pen with Leah Kaminsky
Last month I read a truly amazing novel, one that has really left a lasting impression upon me. That novel was The Hollow Bones, and today it gives me quite a thrill to welcome the author, Leah Kaminsky, to Behind the Pen.
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What provided the initial inspiration for The Hollow Bones?
I was reading about the role of doctors in the Nazi war machine, as part of the research for my first novel, THE WAITING ROOM. Doctors and scientists were enthusiastic followers of ‘racial hygiene’ theories, which held that some races were far superior to others, and participated in some of the largest atrocities. They were committed to curing the ‘bacillus’ of the Jew, homosexuals, Romani and those with physical and mental ailments, from the Volkskorper, or body of the ‘pure’ German people. Much of this was hushed up after the war and the majority of perpetrators not only escaped punishment but went on to pursue thriving careers. I came across the crazy notion of World Ice Theory, a pseudoscientific notion that the world was made of ice, which became the ‘scientific’ platform of the Third Reich. Every time I searched, Ernst Schäfer’s name came up, a young German zoologist who specialised in Tibetan birds and had led a team of German scientists on a hare-brained expedition to find the origins of the Aryan race in the foothills of the Himalayas. I became fascinated with this Faustian character, who had been a hero in his day, but had almost disappeared from history. The story spoke to me of the incongruous way we try to control nature by capturing and destroying it, a mirror of what was happening to human beings during WWII.
How would you describe The Hollow Bones if you could only use 5 words?
Indiana Jones meets David Attenborough!
I found Panda to be an exceptionally powerful voice within this story. Was Panda always intended to offer a perspective or did he come on board during the writing process?
Thank you, Theresa! I’m thrilled you love Panda. I first met him on a visit to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, when I was on book tour for THE WAITING ROOM. I knew my protagonist, Ernst Schäfer, had worked there after two joint German-American expeditions to Tibet. In 1932, the forests of Kham, he shot a baby panda – the second Westerner to do so after Teddy Roosevelt – and brought it back to the museum, where it was mounted in a diorama. I saw the infant panda when I was there doing research for THE HOLLOW BONES and was mesmerised. With time, his little voice emerged on the page and became the beating heart of the book for me, a plaintive call from the wild to pay attention to the way we treat animals.
Herta was another significant character in The Hollow Bones. I felt she was an excellent example of a reluctant ‘Pure Aryan’, but I noted from your extra details within the back of the book that there was not much historical information about her. What shaped and influenced her character creation?
Herta, whose name means ‘from the earth’, was the only character I could find no trace of in the archives. It was as if she had been wiped out of history. All I knew was that she was married to Ernst before he went on the German Tibet expedition, sponsored by Himmler, and then she simply disappeared from his story. As the manuscript went to typesetting, my husband, who is an amateur genealogist, found her death certificate. This gave me the leeway as a novelist to create a character that would challenge Ernst Schäfer’s slip into the murky world of Nazism and the corruption of science under the Third Reich.
The Hollow Bones brings attention to an aspect of the Nazi regime that is not so commonly known. Do you think this history has been deliberately repressed or are there just so many far-reaching horrors to catalogue that we are still nowhere near knowing everything about that era?
Rachel Seiffert, the British novelist, who explores her family’s Nazi background in her wonderful novels, once said to me ’WWII is the war that keeps on giving’. It sounded odd at the time, but I think there are still so many things we can learn from those dark times and so much left to uncover. Sadly, so much of what went on is still relevant today. My particular interest as a physician coming from a science background, is the morality of scientists and what can happen when they get into bed with politics. I think the most horrific part of the research for me personally was finding out that so many scientists and doctors, who had been the lynch pins of the Nazi machine, got off scot free. Many went into hiding and adopted false names, but a huge number climbed the ranks of academia and went on to have wonderful careers. Meanwhile, the millions of victims murdered in the name of such ghastly research such as eugenics, vanished, remaining forever nameless in the archives of history.
If you had to pinpoint only one take home message from The Hollow Bones, what would it be?
Rob O’Hearn encapsulates the essence of my book it in his review at the Booktopia Blog, better than I ever could: ‘The Hollow Bones speaks to us of Faustian bargains and the corruption of innocence, but it is also a timely reminder of how society and science can be too easily co-opted to dark pursuits, not all at once but bit by bit. Humans are cautioned to be vigilant and mindful of our place in the natural order.’
If you could sit down for an afternoon with an iconic person from history, who would you choose to spend that time with and what would you ask them?
I’d like to meet Rosalin Franklin (1920-1958), the scientist who made the original X-rays of DNA and was on the brink of discovering the molecule’s structure. A colleague in her lab at King’s College, showed her images to James Watson, and he and Francis Crick got all the credit for the discovery of the helical structure of DNA. Their research relied heavily on Franklin’s work, but she was never acknowledged and died of ovarian cancer in 1958, four years before Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize. I’d ask her how it felt to be a woman scientist back in the day, whose work and glory were stealthily stolen away from her, from right under her nose.
Is there any one particular season of the year that you find more creatively inspirational than the others?
I think I’m probably more productive during winter, when I can sit rugged up, surrounded by books and not feel like I’m missing out on anything. I find it hard to settle down to write when it’s a glorious sunny day outside and the birds are singing. Come to think of it, each book I’ve written has a signature cardigan that I wore during the entire first draft (I did wash them!). And my cat, Kotzy, is certainly my muse during the winter months.
Can you tell us something about yourself that not many people would know?
I love ducks and cockatoos. I’ve even been known to flap my wings and squawk or quack when I spot one, much to my children’s horror.
What authors and types of books do you love the most? Which ones have stood the test of time for you? Are you more of a print, e-book, or audio book fan?
Poetry has always been my first love. I’m fairly eclectic, but I read more fiction than anything else. I definitely prefer print books, and every shelf in the house groans with them. So many favourite authors, how to choose – Anne Michaels, John Banville, David Grossman, Anne Enright, Geraldine Brooks, Anthony Doerr, Isabelle Allende, Kazuo Ishiguro. And Australia has some wonderfully unique writers – Bruce Pascoe, Mireille Juchau, Lee Kofman, Melanie Cheng and Ashley Hay, to name but a few. Above all though, I adore Kafka. He wrote: ‘Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.’
The Hollow Bones
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The Hollow Bones implores us to pay careful attention to the crucial lessons we might learn from our not-too-distant history.
‘I remember you once told me about mockingbirds and their special talents for mimicry. They steal the songs from others, you said. I want to ask you this: how were our own songs stolen from us, the notes dispersed, while our faces were turned away?’
Berlin, 1936. Ernst Schäfer, a young, ambitious zoologist and keen hunter and collector, has come to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who invites him to lead a group of SS scientists to the frozen mountains of Tibet. Their secret mission: to search for the origins of the Aryan race. Ernst has doubts initially, but soon seizes the opportunity to rise through the ranks of the Third Reich.
While Ernst prepares for the trip, he marries Herta, his childhood sweetheart. But Herta, a flautist who refuses to play from the songbook of womanhood and marriage under the Reich, grows increasingly suspicious of Ernst and his expedition.
When Ernst and his colleagues finally leave Germany in 1938, they realise the world has its eyes fixed on the horror they have left behind in their homeland.
A lyrical and poignant cautionary tale, The Hollow Bones brings to life one of the Nazi regime’s little-known villains through the eyes of the animals he destroyed and the wife he undermined in the name of science and cold ambition.
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
Released 5th March 2019
