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Sunday Spotlight with Janet Lee — Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog

More of an indepth chat today over at the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog with UQP author Janet Lee about her recent release, The Killing of Louisa.

Welcome to Sunday Spotlight. Our guest today is Janet Lee, whose novel The Killing of Louisa was recently released by UQP. What was it about Louisa Collins that inspired you to write a novel about her? When I read newspaper articles about the terrible botched hanging. When Louisa Collins stood on the scaffold and the…

via Sunday Spotlight with Janet Lee — Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog

Movie Recommendation: The Zookeeper’s Wife

Beginning in 1939, set in Warsaw, Poland, The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the true story of Antonina Zabinski and her husband, Dr. Jan Zabinski, and how they rescued and saved the lives of more than 300 Jewish people from the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the years of Nazi occupation within Poland.

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At the beginning of the movie, we see the Warsaw Zoo flourishing under Jan’s stewardship and Antonina’s care. As an animal lover, I could appreciate what a special woman Antonina was, and there were some beautiful scenes between her and various animals within the zoo. We are also introduced to Lutz Heck, a zoologist from the Berlin Zoo. He becomes somewhat enamoured with Antonina after witnessing her interactions with the animals. Just as we’re all feeling warm-hearted, the Nazis invade Poland, bomb the zoo, and establish the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Zookeeper’s Wife is an exceptional movie, but it’s harrowing. We have the zoo bombing for instance, which was distressing to watch, all of those animals in their enclosures with no way at all of escaping. Then later, when the Nazis move into the zoo to establish it as a base, they shoot what animals are left, with the exception of the prized ones, because who’s in charge now? Yes, Lutz Heck, who has been appointed chief zoologist for the Reich, and he relocates the prized breeds to his zoo in Berlin. Scenes from the ghetto are just as harrowing, one of which I found quite traumatic. I stopped the movie several times, I was just too overcome. Was all this too much? Not necessarily. My reactions were fairly standard for me. I am a highly empathetic person. It’s a challenge sometimes. It’s why I rarely watch movies like this when they’re in the cinema. Better for me to just watch from home at my own pace. WWII movies are particularly difficult as I have direct family connections to the war in Europe and my grandfather disclosed some of these experiences to me before his death. While much of the movie pained me, it was extraordinarily good. An authentic depiction of a horrendous history.

As I mentioned above, the Zabinskis rescued and smuggled more than 300 people out of the Warsaw Ghetto with only two casualties. They hid them in the zoo and sent them on to safety through resistance networks. It’s an incredible story, another example of outrage in motion, where ordinary people do extraordinary things in the name of humanity. The Zookeeper’s Wife is based on the non-fiction book of the same title, written by the poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman, who drew heavily on the unpublished diary of Antonina Żabińska. I have a copy but haven’t read it yet. After now seeing the movie, I’ll be making sure I set aside some time to read it in the near future.

I highly recommend this movie and thank Claire Holderness for recommending it to me.

My Reading Life: Spring Reading Challenge Check-in

Reaching the halfway point of my Spring reading challenge, I can report that I am on track!

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To re-cap the challenge conditions:

1. Exclusively read review books

2. TV Ban

I’ve stuck to the TV ban and haven’t even missed it. As to the reading, I’ve read four books and they were all review titles:

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Frieda

The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village

The Book of Ordinary People

The Boneless Mercies

So far so good! I’m pretty sure I’ve got this.

New Release Book Review: The Book of Ordinary People by Claire Varley

The Book of Ordinary People…
About the Book:

A grieving daughter navigates the morning commute, her mind bursting with memories pleading to be shared.

A man made entirely of well-cut suits and strictly enforced rules swims his regular morning laps and fantasises about his self-assured promotion.

A young lawyer sits in a fluorescent-lit office, typing indecipherable jargon and dreaming of everything she didn’t become.

A failed news hack hides under the covers from another looming deadline, and from a past that will not relent its pursuit.

And a young woman seeking asylum sits tensely on an unmoving train, praying that good news waits at the other end of the line…

In this charming, moving and affectionate novel, Claire Varley paints a magical portrait of five ordinary people, and the sometimes heartbreaking power of the stories we make of ourselves.

My Thoughts:

‘Because I might just be one person, but I’m me, and that matters. My voice matters. My story matters. And every single other person out there — they’re “me” too. And we all matter. All of us.’

Every now and again I’ll come across a novel that is so profoundly insightful, so affecting in the most subtle of ways, with a message of such importance that I want to jump up and down with the book in my hands shouting, “Read this book!” Consider this review the equivalent of me doing this. Because I really, REALLY, want every one of you to read this novel.

‘It’s not what history makes of you that matters, but what you make of your history.’

The Book of Ordinary People is exactly that, it’s a book about ordinary people. Five of them, to be exact. And in this book, they do ordinary things, every day things, like you and I. Carting around their worries, big and small, shouldering their baggage and trying to just get on with things while all of the ordinary road blocks of everyday life keep getting in the way. Some days are good, some less so, but these ordinary people keep on pressing on. Much like you and I. Why is this not boring? Well, for a start, Claire Varley is an exceptional writer with a style that gobbles you up. She’s funny, profoundly insightful, compassionate, and intimately aware of her characters, resulting in a wholly unique voice for each and subsequently, an incredibly moving story.

‘You know, the problem with victims, Nell, is it’s a status that takes away people’s agency. Their complexity. The nuances that make us human. They exist in shades of grey, which isn’t the easiest colour to capture. None of us are sympathetic in real life because that’s what it is to be human. But none of that negates our right to live safely, to command respect, to access the full extent of the law. There’s a reason Lady Justice has that blindfold.’

In a six degrees of separation kind of fashion, we see as each chapter unfolds just how these five people are connected. It’s clever storytelling and I love the web Claire weaves as the novel progresses. In some ways this is five stories, but in others it’s one. Whatever way you choose to look at it, The Book of Ordinary People is impressive, the kind of novel you lose yourself in and never want to finish. Each of the characters have something to say, or something to realise, which is the overall point of the novel. Some stories may seem more important than others, and some characters may be more relatable, but I enjoyed walking in the shoes of each of them and have had my eyes opened wide and my mind stretched to contemplate things I have not previously given a lot of thought to. I particularly appreciated Aida’s journal. Her words of reflection provided so much insight into what life is like in Iran and punctuated her present experiences as a refugee in Australia. Evangelia pushed her way into my heart with her grief and I had so much affinity for her quest to make meaning of her mother’s life. DB was hilarious, but in that “I’m laughing at you not with you” fashion. He typified the very definition of a try-hard. Nell was earnest and I admired her a lot as she navigated her way through working out just what type of lawyer she could live with being. And Rik was a bit tragic, a very sad story there, which once again draws much needed attention to the way in which PTS still falls through the cracks.

There’s an important message at the forefront of this novel, about looking past the window dressing of people, past the outer layer, the status and the labels, past the stereotypes and pre-conceived notions, right into the very heart of your fellow ordinary people. Because they, like you, are all doing extraordinary things in their own ordinary way and their stories matter. They deserve to be heard.

‘History tells us to seek out the extraordinary people; to find exceptional people who altered the world in monumental ways. But in doing this alone we forget the ordinary ones who were extraordinary in their tiny circles and created miniscule ripples that made the world better in uncountable ways.’

I can’t even begin to recommend this novel highly enough. So here I am, jumping up and down with my copy in my hands, shouting as loud as I can: “Read this book!”

Behind the Pen with Janet Lee

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Welcome to Behind the Pen. Today my guest is Queensland author Janet Lee, whose novel The Killing of Louisa was recently released by UQP. Over to you Janet, what is your favourite…and why…

Character from one of your books?

The Missus from The Killing of Louisa. The Missus has a very complex back story yet you only glimpse a small part of her in The Killing of Louisa.

Scene from one of your books?

Hmm. Perhaps a scene I am writing in a new work – where a child sees something they shouldn’t, and this becomes important in the story.

Movie of all time?

Gosh, so hard to choose just one, but maybe To Kill a Mockingbird. I think Scout and Jim are exactly as I imagined them.

Book that you always keep a copy of and recommend to others?

Again, so hard to choose just one. Our Sunshine by Robert Drewe. I love the voice.

Fashion accessory that despite having plenty of, you still keep collecting?

Hats. I have…eerhm, well let’s just say I have a few big hats! But I do live in Queensland, so I consider them a fashion necessity.

Drink that you enjoy everyday?

Tea. Because everything is always wonderful after a cup of tea.

Treat you indulge in?

Sitting on my deck with a cup of tea and a book.

Place to be?

Home. Because my family is there.

Person you admire?

My husband. Because he is kind and thoughtful.

Season of the year?

Winter. Because I love rugging up in jumpers, boots and scarves…and then there is the hot chocolate.

The Killing of Louisa

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To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like murder.

In New South Wales in1888, Louisa Collins was sentenced to hang after being tried multiple times for the alleged murders of her two husbands. The testimony of her young daughter helped to decide her fate.

This clever and compelling novel recreates Louisa’s time in her Darlinghurst prison cell as she reflects on her life and on the grief and loss that delivered her to this place. Despite difficult marriages, financial hardship and the deaths of several children, she remains resilient and determined to have her own identity.

But as she faces her final days, will Louisa confess to her crimes? Or is an innocent woman about to be hanged?

Published by UQP

Released 3rd September 2018

Album Recommendation: Clare Bowen

Best known for her role as Scarlett in the American television series Nashville, Australian singer Clare Bowen has just released her debut album, a collection of songs entirely unrelated to her music from Nashville, simply titled ‘Clare Bowen’.

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Best classified as indie music, it’s a sublime blend of folk with soaring symphonic sounds and a gypsy fantasy vibe. All of the songs have been written by Bowen and they each tell a story with the overall arrangement giving the impression of a journey. Bowen is a survivor of childhood cancer and in a recent interview talked about how this, along with other obstacles she’s overcome throughout her young life, certainly influenced her writing with this album. In particular, the ending song, ‘Warrior’, is inspired by all of the children she has known throughout her cancer journey. It’s a song that gave me goosebumps, it’s just so beautiful. Far from being sad though, this entire album is uplifting, a celebration of life.

This debut album is an extraordinary achievement and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Fans of Clare’s work as the character of Scarlett won’t be disappointed, although the music is certainly a departure from that style. Less country, more indie.

Stories sung to the tune of exquisite music.

New Release Book Review: The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village by Joanna Nell

The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village…
About the Book:

Joanna Nell’s life-affirming debut is a moving, funny, heart-warming tale of love and community in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Grace and Frankie.

The life of 79-year-old pensioner PEGGY SMART is as beige as the decor in her retirement village. Her week revolves around aqua aerobics and appointments with her doctor. Following a very minor traffic accident, things have turned frosty with her grown-up children and she is afraid they are trying to take away her independence.

The highlight of Peggy’s day is watching her neighbour Brian head out for his morning swim. She dreams of inviting the handsome widower – treasurer of the Residents’ Committee and one of the few eligible men in the village – to an intimate dinner. But why would an educated man like Brian, a chartered accountant no less, look twice at Peggy? As a woman of a certain age, she fears she has become invisible, even to men in their eighties.

But a chance encounter with an old school friend she hasn’t seen in five decades – the glamorous fashionista ANGIE VALENTINE – sets Peggy on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.

My Thoughts:

‘With one wrist in plaster, it was difficult for Peggy to hold the Women’s Weekly. It was an old issue but if she had read any of the articles before, she couldn’t remember them and consumed the glossy pages with fresh eyes. She consoled herself with the thought that if she were going senile, she’d save herself a fortune in magazines.’

What a fabulous novel The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village is! In many ways it reminded me of the themes and humour of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a movie that I enjoyed immensely. Joanna Nell has created a truly memorable character in Peggy Smart. Full of wit and fiercely independent, age has made her vulnerable, along with her failing health. She lives in fear of being moved by her children out of the retirement village and into a nursing home. An accident that ends in a broken wrist becomes a catalyst for change in Peggy’s life, and it’s this new direction, and the connections that it brings to Peggy, that provide the focus for this novel.

Joanna Nell really knows how to write in character. While the novel is entirely told from Peggy’s perspective, there are so many opportunities for us to see the individualism Joanna has bestowed onto all of her other characters. She’s also got a real knack at forging connections and I found the dialogue between characters, interspersed with Peggy’s reflections and introspection, absolutely priceless. It’s not all non-stop humour though. These characters are in their 70s and 80s, and they’ve all lived and loved and lost throughout the years. Each are facing health issues and contemplating death – unavoidable really, when you live in a retirement village and a new neighbour only comes because the old one has either died or been moved to a nursing home, which according to Peggy, is the last stop before death and to be avoided at all cost (my grandmother shared this view). The friendships nurtured between the characters was delightful, and always entertaining, particularly when they got up to mischief.

‘Friends are precious things. We collect them over our lifetime, different friends for different stages of our lives. Childhood, family friends, work colleagues, friends with similar interests or hobbies. Some are chance encounters, others seem destined to cross our paths. Over the years, it is inevitable that many will fall by the way. Others will come in and out of lives, and though we may not see each other for years, when we meet again it is as though we have never been apart. In that respect, friends are rather like a dose of herpes.’

Seeing life through Peggy’s gaze has given me pause to reflect on the many ways in which we might inadvertently patronise older people. I was quite frustrated, and even on occasion outraged, by Peggy’s adult children. And they weren’t even that bad, motivated by love for their mother and a need to keep her safe. I could see myself doing similar things to what they did, but once you have the opportunity to see it from Peggy’s perspective, it’s enough to make you aware of how incredibly frustrating it must be to have younger people assume you are an imbecilic invalid just because you’re older. Likewise, the difficulty in adjusting to the role reversal between parent and child. To be the cared for, instead of the care giver, would be a constant pebble in your shoe. I felt Joanna wove these frustrations and concerns into Peggy’s story well, demonstrating the clash these feelings had with her independence, while also being tempered by the reality of her health and capabilities.

The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village is a novel I highly recommend and Joanna Nell is an author to look out for. She hits the right balance with her words, leaving no room for anything but pure enjoyment. I can see this novel as a gift under many Christmas trees this festive season.

New Release Book Review: Frieda by Annabel Abbs

Frieda: A Novel of the Real Lady Chatterley…
About the Book:

The moving story of Frieda von Richthofen, wife of D.H. Lawrence – and the real-life inspiration for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel banned for more than 30 years

Germany, 1907. Frieda, daughter of aristocrat Baron von Richthofen, has rashly married English professor Ernest Weekley. Visiting her family in Munich, a city alive with new ideas of revolution and free love, and goaded by a toxic sibling rivalry with her sisters, Frieda embarks on a passionate affair that is her sensual and intellectual awakening.

England, 1912. Trapped in her marriage to Ernest, Frieda meets the penniless but ambitious young writer D.H. Lawrence, a man whose creative energy answers her own needs. Their scandalous affair and tempestuous relationship unleashes a creative outpouring that will change the course of literature – and society – forever. But for Frieda, this fulfilment comes at a terrible personal cost.

A stunning novel of emotional intensity, Frieda tells the story of an extraordinary woman – and a notorious love affair that became synonymous with ideas of sexual freedom.

My Thoughts:

‘Her entire past, she reflected, had been a long arduous struggle to become herself.’

While I was reading Frieda, I found myself treading a very winding path in terms of the thoughts this novel was provoking. It wasn’t until the very end, after I’d closed the book and just sat for a few minutes inside my own head space, that I realised I needed to approach my review of Frieda a little differently than usual. See, when I read a novel that is a fictional biography, I find it impossible to think of the character separate to their real self. It’s like the fiction bit just drops off, and on account of this very realness, there’s an instinctive urge to review the character, and essentially the real person they were, along with my feelings about them rather than the actual novel itself. Problematic if you didn’t like the character whose life informs the subject of the novel.

I did in the beginning have a great deal of empathy for Frieda. I could intimately understand her frustration at the restraint she was expected to live with, both inside and outside of the home. And Frieda’s situation of being married to an older man with no capacity to understand, much less connect, was all too common, I’d wager.

‘She felt as if the piano and the music she was thumping out were the only things holding her in place. And if she were to stop playing, she would shrink so far inside erself she might disappear.’

She was also a foreigner among her contemporaries, which of course would not have helped things. It was an extra barrier securing her isolation and compounding her frustrations, which I feel fashioned her into being more open to the manipulations of other, more flamboyant and impressionable people. She was intelligent, yet had no forum for expression.

‘She’d been to one of Mrs Dowson’s suffragette meetings, of course she had. But when she spoke out, saying change wouldn’t come from voting, they had turned on her. She had tried to explain – in her broken English – that a new society needed creating in the image of woman, that simply voting for laws made and controlled by men was insufficient, that behaving like angry men was the wrong way to get change.’

Sometimes with historical fiction, there is an urge to be outraged by the situations contextualised. Yet we, as readers, are approaching the text with a modern gaze and all of the benefit of hindsight that comes with our modernity. In her author note, Annabel Abbs writes:

‘She [Frieda] was not, therefore, a woman ‘leaving her children’. She was a woman who believed in her right to choose her own life and, as a result, was denied access to her children.’

This is valid on both points: Frieda did believe in her right to choose her own life and as a woman, I believe in this as well. All women should be able to choose their own life. Absolutely. And yes, Frieda was denied access to her children based on the choices she made. However, poke a finger in this and it gets a little mucky and grey, and I do believe viewing the situation with a modern gaze compounds this further. I liked how this was brought up in a frank fashion by Katherine Mansfield in conversation with Frieda as they stalked the gates of her son Monty’s school in an effort to catch a glimpse of him:

‘“But weren’t you aware of the law when you ran away with Mr Lawrence? You must have known you would lose the children.” Katherine prodded impatiently at the ground with the tip of her silk parasol.

“I didn’t run away with him. I was just going to my father’s party and he was going to his relatives and we thought we’d have a few days in Germany together. But then he wrote to Ernest and everything blew up. Anyway, I’m their mother!”

“You’re also an adulterous, deserting wife. Didn’t you know there’s a special punishment reserved for mothers? Anyway, the laws here are archaic.”’

I wasn’t overly sympathetic towards Frieda over not having access to her children. Frieda struck me as a woman who wanted it all: the security of marriage but the freedom of a single woman. She wanted her lovers and she wanted her children. She wanted material comforts but didn’t want the obligations that came with possessing them. She seemed intent on martyring herself as a woman with no choices: I want to be with my children but D.H. Lawrence needs me, he can’t write without me, he won’t be a great author unless I am his muse. I want to use my brain more so I’ll use it vicariously through a man who has no respect for me instead of using it in my own stead. I don’t want to be married anymore so I’ll run off with a man who wants me to marry him. She was inconsistent, inconsiderate, and often times naive. Given Lawrence’s toxicity within their relationship, and his apparent loathing for her children alongside his jealousy of her love for them, the fact that she refused to choose them over him is paramount to the entire issue. The impression I formed of Frieda was of a woman in a permanent state of confusion. Take these extracts as an example, and they are presented chronologically:

‘She shook her head so frenziedly a hairpin clattered to the floor. “I want so much to be loved. To be a full part of someone’s life. To have passion. Children cannot give that. And I must use my brain! Men keep all the brainy work for themselves.”’

Then:

‘She didn’t want to be married any more. She didn’t want to swap one married life for another. She needed more time…

Yes, that was how she wanted to live, not for show or convenience but for pure wild passion.’

And veering back to:

‘She wished she could find the words to explain the rightness of Lorenzo, of their future together, of how she felt this rightness with a brilliant intensity, as if she held a finely cut diamond in her hand.’

She was all over the place. The true tragedy in this story is that the alternative for her children was pretty grim, with their fanatical grandparents, timid aunt, and deeply depressed father. They lost so much. I found her inability to set aside her own desires ultimately selfish and her inconsistency set her on a path of unreliability and emotional destruction, not just for herself, but for all of those who loved her.

Ernest, Frieda’s husband and father of her children, was an interesting man. Being of a older generation and a different culture to Frieda, he was completely unable to relate to her. He was repressed, old fashioned, emotionally crippled. For a professor of words, he was entirely useless at communicating with his wife. Yet, he loved her deeply, obsessively even. And she had no idea. Her leaving him, the shame of her conduct; it broke him:

‘He slumped against the wall and examined his hand. It was grazed all along the side and blood was beginning to leak from the broken skin. And then he started crying again and his chest heaved so that horrible, garrotting sounds came from his throat, slicing open the morning air and scaring all the birds from the sky.’

As if the act of leaving him in such a scandalous way was not enough, Frieda insisted on rubbing his face in the shame by sending him her old lover’s letters and a copy of Anna Karenina:

‘To help you understand me, I send you these letters from my old lover, Doctor Otto Gross. Please try to understand who I am.’

‘I beg you to read this. See what terrible things happened to Anna after Count Karenin refused to divorce her. I beg you to let me see my children.’

The author note indicates that Frieda actually did this, fact not fiction. It was in times like this, where I doubted her grasp on reality, and questioned her maturity. She certainly had no compassion for Ernest and what he may have been suffering. And to be fair to her, he was driven quite mad with grief and kept up a steady stream of hateful correspondence that would have rattled even the most solid of women. But, despite his failings within the marriage and his reactions to Frieda’s leaving, he was not a bad man.

‘It seemed to him that every minute in the last forty years had been pushing him towards this moment. His wife, his children, his house, his professorship were like markers, arrows, pointing him onwards. He was nearly there. His book and a Cambridge Chair were his final destination. And then he could pause and draw breath. Spend time with his family. Perhaps travel with Frieda. At times he felt close to his destination, it was as though he could smell it in the air.’

His greatest sin was being frigid and dismissive, old fashioned and uptight. Frieda swapped Ernest for Lawrence, a man who was emotionally unstable and prolific in his abuse because life with an artist was ‘never boring’. I believe she trapped herself more fully with Lawrence than she ever was with Ernest. I’m on the fence as to whether this is tragic or poetic justice.

Frieda really is an outstanding novel. Annabel Abbs writes in a manner that instils empathy and presents a full understanding for all of her cast. I detested Frieda, despised Lawrence, despaired over Ernest, but wholly appreciated the novel itself. Annabel has taken a woman whose scandalous behaviour shadowed her entire life, and has told her story with clear impartiality. By offering the perspectives of Ernest and her three children alongside that of Frieda herself, she makes no attempt to persuade us to one side or the other. She gives us everything, good and bad, and then within the context of the era, and the social movements that were in focus at that time, we are able to see, with a certain clarity, that life is complicated. In any era, life has been complicated and punctuated by shades of grey. This is a novel that will invoke strong feelings within some readers and would make for an invigorating book club session. No matter what you end up feeling about Frieda von Richthofen, whether you love her or hate her or fall somewhere in between, this novel will leave an impression upon you. The prose is glorious, vivid and immersive, with a captivating flow. For those who love literature and digging into the stories behind the stories, Frieda is an ideal read.

‘She ran through the trees, her bare feet sinking in and out of the leaves that spread, damp and pulpy, across the forest floor. For the first time since leaving England she felt the freedom she’d been yearning for. It swept her up in a blast of exhilaration, so that for a few minutes she forgot Lorenzo and felt herself to be absolutely alone. She felt the air gusting in and out of her, with its pungent black odour of fungi and earth. She felt the breeze whipping through her hair, drawing her up and up, as if she was being tossed high into the elements.’

My Reading Life: Spring Reading Challenge

Today is the first day of the two week spring school holidays break. It’s such a nice time of the year, weather wise, even out here in the desert. It’s not too hot yet and the mornings are lovely and fresh. I am really looking forward to two weeks off work just potting around the house, not having to get up to an alarm, reading, drinking tea all day long, and reading some more.

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I’ve been thinking this week though about what I want to read and what I want to achieve over this two week break in terms of catching up on some books I’ve not yet found time for as well as reading in advance as I have quite a few really good arcs sitting there that are coming out towards the end of the year.

Usually on these two week school holiday breaks, I also like to binge watch a few television series. I don’t watch TV during term time generally, as the afternoons and weekends are too busy and I like to reserve the evenings for reading, so I save my TV viewing for the holidays. However, like all binge watchers, stopping at just one episode is a battle I often lose and before I know it, several hours have passed and I’m still watching the series, unable to drag myself away yet desperately hoping for an ending to the current episode that doesn’t have me pressing ‘next’. Hours of my life, gone watching TV. Hours of my life, not spent reading a book.

For this spring holiday break, I am banning TV for myself. No binge watching. No TV shows. At all. I’m quite excited about it. I’m not extending this to movies though, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I have kids and sometimes they want me to watch a movie with them. Second reason, I almost never watch movies, despite having a long list of ones I want to see, because I AM USING ALL THE HOLIDAY TIME BINGE WATCHING TV!! So movies are staying and hopefully I’ll get to catch up on a couple. But where TV sucks up my time, movies won’t because I would never watch more than one movie in a day, which is a whole lot less screen time that TV.

The second part of my reading challenge relates directly to what I’m going to read. For these two weeks, I’m going to exclusively read review titles. BUT, I am going to dig into the pile and read a few that I didn’t get to on time, particularly those ones that authors themselves have sent to me at their own expense.

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So there’s the plan. I’ll check in next Saturday with an update on how I’m going. My son thinks the TV ban is a mistake, but then he also said he expects I’ll be able to stick with it because I am a person who is happiest when doing boring things. Ah, teens, they know just how to wield that double edged sword!

Pre-Release Book Review: Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan

Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis…
About the Book:

The love story of C. S. Lewis and his wife, Helen Joy Davidman Gresham, was improbable – and seemingly impossible. Their Eros-story led to some of Lewis’s greatest works, yet Joy is most commonly known for how she died. Becoming Mrs. Lewis allows us to see how this brilliant and passionate woman lived – and why she stole Jack’s heart.

From New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan comes an exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, the woman C. S. Lewis called “my whole world.” When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters.

Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy travelled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy.

In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.

At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all.

My Thoughts:

‘The pair of Barbary lions ambled forward, placing their great paws on the earth, muscles dangerous and rippling beneath their fur as they approached the bars. A great grace surrounded them, as if they had come to understand their fate and accept it with roaring dignity. Their manes were deep and tangled as a forest. I fell into the endless universe of their large amber eyes as they allowed, even invited, me to reach through the iron and wind my fingers into their fur. They’d been tamed beyond their wild nature, and I felt a kinship with them that caused a trembling in my chest.

They indulged me with a return gaze, their warm weight pressed into my palm, and I knew that capture had damaged their souls.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered every time. “We were meant to be free.”’

This beautiful scene appears at the end of the prologue of this novel. When I read it, I just felt a shiver, this welling of something inside me that made me feel like I was about to read something very special. This anticipation was not left dangling in the wind. Becoming Mrs. Lewis is an absolutely glorious novel. I truly loved it so much. It made me smile so often, it made me weep until my eyes couldn’t see the page any longer. It has an old world feel to it, the type of novel that is not rushed, it allows you to rest in the moments and truly feel them. The writing is exquisite and the character development extensive. It’s a completely immersive experience.

‘Desperation fuels one to believe idiocy is insight.’

This is Joy’s story. As we travel through the years with her, from that first letter she sends to C.S. Lewis seeking his advice, right through to the end of her life when she is his wife, we see the many faces of Joy: wife, mother, friend, daughter, cousin, sister in law, writer, and woman. She was loved by many, loathed by some, and through it all she was incredibly authentic and brilliantly talented. I had not even heard of her before reading this novel and now I want to keep reading about her, learn everything there is to know, experience her writing and ponder on the woman she was; incredibly brave and smart, loving and honourable, and always true to herself.

‘When I finished, my heart stretched as if waking from a long and lazy slumber, and a secret hope fell over me.’

Layered in with Joy’s story is something that will strike a chord with any woman who is juggling the various roles we take on in life. The author examines the trickiness of balancing a creative career with domestic duties, being a mother as well as a wife, the poverty women can face when getting divorced, and the struggles to be heard and taken seriously when your health is suffering; all universal themes that transcend the years and are so easily recognisable as issues women continue to grapple with today. I could relate to so much of Joy’s life, her introspection mirrored some of my own and I enjoyed how the author really dug into these themes in an exploratory fashion, not only with regards to Joy, but with the other women that featured as well.

‘There must be another way to live a woman’s life – make it our own. I want to find out who I am beyond all these expectations that fold us into a neat box. I want to unfold.’

Becoming Mrs. Lewis is a novel that quietly unfolds. It’s a real character study, not only of Joy, but also of those who are in her life. We really get to know the people in this story. It’s filled with literary conversations between writers, intellectual meeting of the minds between colleagues, inspirational brainstorming sessions between Joy, Jack (C.S. Lewis) and Warnie (Jack’s brother). There is a lot of reflection on writing as a craft as well falling deep into individual pieces of writing and what inspired them and how they were then honed to be their very best. And of course, there is a lot about Narnia. It’s so wonderful, later in the novel, to read those scenes where Joy is reading unpublished manuscripts of The Chronicles of Narnia to her sons at bedtime. One of the Narnia novels was dedicated to the boys by Jack, and it was lovely to find out in the epilogue that Joy’s son, Douglas, ended up producing the Narnia films in adulthood. This really is a novel for people who love literature, who want to know more about writers and of course for anyone who loves the works of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. I adored the arrangement of the novel. It’s broken into parts, and each part is prefaced by a line from The Chronicles of Narnia. Then each chapter is prefaced by Joy’s own words, taken from her sonnets that she wrote for years. These sonnets form a picture of her feelings about so many things, but most especially about Jack. The epilogue at the end is then prefaced by a line from The Chronicles of Narnia, a fitting end when you get there and know what it is telling you. It was just so beautifully arranged.

The love story between Joy and Jack was exquisitely rendered. It was a true intellectual meeting of the minds, two people who clicked, creatively and spiritually. Their love was hard fought for and took a long time to be realised. There was unfolding to it, not just a moving through stages but also a building of awareness, an acceptance of fate while still holding back as a means of preserving what currently existed between them. Very much a risk versus reward scenario. It was very proper, restrained, but also all consuming. You could feel the emotion shimmering in certain scenes, and it’s this depiction of love, rather than a romantic set of interludes that truly appealed to me, that gave their relationship a well of depth that I would be hard-pressed to find a match for in any other novel. Becoming Mrs. Lewis is truly a great love story, one of the greatest and most meaningful, that I have ever read.

‘I laughed in return so fully that we both bent forward to clasp our knees, leaning toward each other face to face. It was there we paused, close, only inches. It would only take one of us to close the gap, and finally our lips would touch. But for now, it was only our smiles that met across the inches of space between us.’

Becoming Mrs. Lewis is a long novel, and not one you will want to read fast. It’s filled with beautiful prose to linger over, long conversations, atmospheric writing related tours of Oxford, Cambridge and London. There are plenty of cups of tea and glasses of brandy, long bracing walks and philosophical discussions on everything from the existence of God to debates over what are the most credible magical realms. This novel filled me with joy, on so many occasions, and while it also broke my heart at times, I feel enriched for having read it. Patti Callahan is a magnificent writer and I will be making a point of reading everything she writes from here on in. I highly recommend Becoming Mrs. Lewis to lovers of literature, history and fictionalised biographies.

‘For each season I’d hiked it since, the flowers and trees had shown new faces. In fall, the leaves dropping one by one until the trees bared their skeletons, the acorns plopping to the ground like footsteps. In winter I’d crunched over frosted grass, seen the white landscape of barren trees crystallised with ice. A season later I’d swatted at nettles and memorised the woodland flowers, multihued, their faces lifted to the spring sun. Now summer, the heat and breeze mixing in an intoxicating scent of new grass and damp earth.’