Theresa Smith's Blog, page 126
August 25, 2018
Sunday Spotlight with Melissa Fagan — Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog
Ahead of the release of her forthcoming book, What Will BeWorn, I had the pleasure of chatting with Melissa Fagan over at the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog. Isn’t this just the most gorgeous and atmospheric cover?
Welcome to Sunday Spotlight. Today our guest is Melissa Fagan, author of What Will Be Worn, releasing on the 1st September through Transit Lounge. What provided the inspirational starting point for What Will Be Worn? The realisation on the night of my grandmother’s funeral that she had lived a much more complex and interesting life…
via Sunday Spotlight with Melissa Fagan — Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog
Book Review: The Pearl Sister by Lucinda Riley
About the Book:
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CeCe D’Aplièse has never felt she fitted in anywhere. Following the death of her father, the elusive billionaire Pa Salt – so-called by the six daughters he adopted from around the globe and named after the Seven Sisters star cluster – she finds herself at breaking point. Dropping out of art college, CeCe watches as Star, her beloved sister, distances herself to follow her new love, leaving her completely alone.
In desperation, she decides to flee England and discover her past; the only clues she as are a black-and-white photograph and the name of a woman pioneer who lived in Australia over one hundred years ago. En-route to Sydney, CeCe heads to the one place she has ever felt close to being herself: the stunning beaches of Krabi, Thailand. There amongst the backpackers, she meets the mysterious Ace, a man as lonely as she is and whom she subsequently realizes, has a secret to hide…
A hundred years earlier, Kitty McBride, daughter of an Edinburgh clergyman, is given the opportunity to travel to Australia as the companion of the wealthy Mrs McCrombie. In Adelaide, her fate becomes entwined with Mrs McCrombie’s family, including the identical, yet very different, twin brothers: impetuous Drummond, and ambitious Andrew, the heir to a pearling fortune.
When CeCe finally reaches the searing heat and dusty plains of the Red Centre of Australia, she begins the search for her past. As something deep within her responds to the energy of the area and the ancient culture of the Aboriginal people, her creativity reawakens once more. With help from those she meets on her journey, CeCe begins to believe that this wild, vast continent could offer her something she never thought possible: a sense of belonging, and a home…
My Thoughts:
From the very first book in this epic series, I have absolutely loved the stories that Lucinda Riley is weaving about these sisters who are journeying deep into their pasts in order to uncover their true identities. A sweeping blend of historical and contemporary fiction, they have been set so far in some truly amazing locations, all brought vividly to life by Lucinda’s atmospheric prose. But then I got to book four, and two things stopped me from cracking the spine on the next instalment the minute it hit my hands: it was about CeCe, a sister I had grown to loathe throughout the course of the third book, and it was set in Australia, where I live, which made me slightly uncomfortable for reasons I will go into below.
I finally decided to read this, mainly because book five is out soon and I knew I’d be kicking myself if I had to delay reading it because I hadn’t yet read book four. By the time I had finished the first chapter of The Pearl Sister, I fully acknowledged that I am a fool and I should have just placed my faith in Lucinda months ago and read the darned book as soon at it came out!
I loved The Pearl Sister, quite possibly more than the previous three instalments in this series, although really, they are all so wonderfully unique and each of them has kept me completely enthralled for their 700 pages. But with The Pearl Sister, it caught me by surprise, maybe because my expectations had been off about it on account of my misplaced preconceived notions. In The Shadow Sister, CeCe was so annoying, bordering on strange with her unhealthy obsession with her sister Star and her petty clingy jealousies. Yet, CeCe from her own perspective was an entirely different being to CeCe from Star’s perspective. Whether this was intentional or CeCe simply evolved more once she had her own book, I’m not sure, but while there was the occasional episode of self-flagellation from her, generally, she didn’t bother me at all like she had in The Shadow Sister. In fact, I became rather protective in my feelings about her. So, my first hurdle was overcome.
My second hesitation revolved around the setting, being right here in my home of Australia, and in the outback too, which is where I live. I think my problem here stemmed from the fact that Lucinda is not Australian herself, so what was she doing writing a story about our history, and more to the point, why was she writing about our first people. There is much debate going on about cultural appropriation at present, and here was a white, non-Australian Irish author writing a story about an aboriginal woman who had been adopted by a rich white man from Switzerland, removed from her homeland and her culture, finally making the journey to Australia to search out her family story. I was nervous. I really was. And in the beginning, I was also uncomfortable, because Lucinda was very clearly telling this story with an authentic voice, and there’s something unsettling about a non-Australian author delivering historical truths about your country’s shameful history. I have a habit though of reading the author notes at the end first, before I even begin a book. It’s a part of my ‘getting to know the book I’m about to read’ routine. The respect Lucinda shows aboriginal culture and the level of primary research she undertook while writing this book was quite extensive. It didn’t take me long to get over my bug-bear. There is a beautiful sense of spirituality infused throughout this story; it was deeply moving and I appreciated Lucinda’s caretaking of the stories that had been shared with her along her research journey. I also feel she excelled in her showcasing of our magnificent Australian outback in all its unforgiving glory. It might seem strange to those who don’t live out here, but there is a beauty to the outback that is wholly unique. And with that, my second hurdle was well and truly dispensed with.
Lucinda crafts truly amazing characters within this series. Utterly unique, authentic voices that come to life on the page and breathe magic into her story. Camira was a particular favourite of mine. She was utterly gorgeous, so funny and brave, so beautifully devoted to her family, and to Kitty, who had shown faith in her when she was at her lowest point. Kitty herself was divine, a true pioneering woman, and I could see a wonderful symmetry between her and CeCe in terms of their capacity to care about others. I do enjoy stories set in Broome during the pearling hey-days, so there was much to recommend these historical sections to me. The hardship, the love and loss; Lucinda’s characters work hard for their happy endings, but it’s worth every bend in the road she steers us around. The very best parts of this story though come from CeCe connecting with her family, that coming home and knowing that she was exactly where she needed to be for everything in her life to fall into place. And Chrissy, who was an absolute darling right from her first ‘g’day’. You don’t pass up a friend like Chrissy if she comes your way. While the ending to The Pearl Sister was quite perfect, I could have happily kept reading on, it was that good. Anyone who has an interest in Australian historical fiction will love this book. It covers a lot of years, a lot of history spanning from Broome to Alice Springs via Adelaide, and has a deeply spiritual undercurrent that inspires respect and often reverence. Difficult to capture on the page, but remarkably so, Lucinda has achieved it.
As is her way, Lucinda ends one sister’s story by introducing the next, but this time she’s thrown us a real cliff-hanger. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea that I sat on this book for a few months after all! Less time to wait until November. If you haven’t thrown your cap into the ring with this series yet, I urge you to do so. It’s magnificent. And this latest instalment, The Pearl Sister, shines with luminous perfection.
August 24, 2018
Book Review: Corpselight – Verity Fassbinder Book 2 by Angela Slatter
About the Book:
Life in Brisbane is never simple for those who walk between the worlds.
Verity’s all about protecting her city, but right now that’s mostly running surveillance and handling the less exciting cases for the Weyrd Council – after all, it’s hard to chase the bad guys through the streets of Brisbane when you’re really, really pregnant.
An insurance investigation sounds pretty harmless, even if it is for ‘Unusual Happenstance’. That’s not usually a clause Normals use – it covers all-purpose hauntings, angry genii loci, ectoplasmic home invasion, demonic possession, that sort of thing – but Susan Beckett’s claimed three times in three months. Her house keeps getting inundated with mud, but she’s still insisting she doesn’t need or want help . . . until the dry-land drownings begin.
V’s first lead in takes her to Chinatown, where she is confronted by kitsune assassins. But when she suddenly goes into labour, it’s clear the fox spirits are not going to be helpful.
CORPSELIGHT, the sequel to VIGIL, is the second book in the Verity Fassbinder series by award-winning author Angela Slatter.
My Thoughts:
“Now, do you know what happened to me today? I was almost drowned on dry land. Do you know what happened to me last week? I was attacked by assassins while I was not quite nine months’ pregnant. And last year? I got beaten up by an angel, sucker-punched by an old witch who tried to roast me and almost eaten by a golem made of garbage. The year before that, I got nearly eaten by a berserker. So maybe you might want to do your research before you start accusing me of – well, whatever it is you think I’m guilty of – and you might like to consider if you really do want this job!”
Verity Fassbinder is back and Weryd crime waits for nothing – not even pregnancy and childbirth! The hormones are raging, the threats are advancing, there’s a new council and archivist to work in with, family members are popping up out of nowhere, bodies are piling up, there’s corpselights dancing in the yard, and the Boatman wants his special knife back. It’s all happening, usually all at once, and just like the first time around, I absolutely love it! Oh, and then there’s David, who is the very definition of perfection. I’m so glad he turned out to be a good guy. Verity is as cutting as ever and with her new family to protect, she’s fiercer than before too. Some interesting dynamics appear between Verity and her cohorts, trust is fractured in some quarters and strengthened in others. I enjoyed how Angela tugged on the threads of Verity’s relationships, stretching her a bit more than in Vigil, testing the boundaries of what she was inclined to tolerate from those around her.
Verity herself is much changed. She’s in a committed relationship with David and is a new mother. There were some fantastic internal reflections on her new role within the context of her crazy, and terrifically dangerous, life:
“And I felt like the worst mother in the world, not just because I wasn’t there now, but because there was a really good chance that this wasn’t going to be just a blip on the radar of my daughter’s life. David would always be there for her, he could be counted on, but I would always be trying to deal with the latest crisis, or cleaning up a mess not of my own making, or trailing along in the wake of something terrible and trying to work out why it’d happened, who’d done it, who needed to be punished and how it could possibly be kept secret. That was going to be our life forever…or until I fucked up, until I died – or I wasn’t there for David or Maisie and they died.”
I loved how Angela worked this angle of motherhood, the guilt and worry that is so common place, into Verity’s story. Verity might fight the supernatural as her day job, but in all else, her experiences are entirely human.
Corpselight ends on a bit more uncertain ground than Vigil did, which kind of makes me glad I didn’t read this a year ago! Angela has set the scene for something big just over the horizon, and I for one, can’t wait to find out what it is in Restoration.
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of Corpselight for review.
About the Author:
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Angela Slatter is the award-winning author of eight short story collections, including A Feast of Sorrows: Stories, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and five Aurealis Awards. Her short stories have appeared widely, including in annual British, Australian and North American Best Of anthologies, and her work has been translated into Spanish, Russian, Polish, Romanian, and Japanese. Vigil was her first solo novel, and the sequel Corpselight was released in July 2017. Angela lives in Brisbane, Australia.
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Corpselight
Published by Hachette Australia
Released July 2017
Available in Paperback and eBook
August 23, 2018
New Release Book Review: The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale
About the Book:
‘Some love affairs change you forever. Someone comes into your orbit and swivels you on your axis, like the wind working on a rooftop weather vane. And when they leave, as the wind always does, you are different; you have a new direction. And it’s not always north.’
Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge.
Taylor Bishop is hurt, angry and wants to destroy Angus Hollingsworth in the way he destroyed her: ‘Insidiously. Irreparably. Like a puzzle he’d slowly dissembled … stolen a couple of pieces from, and then discarded, knowing that nobody would ever be able to put it back together ever again.’
So Taylor consults The Art of War and makes a plan. Then she takes the next irrevocable step – one that will change her life forever.
Things start to spiral out of her control – and The Sunday Girl becomes impossible to put down.
My Thoughts:
The Sunday Girl really took me by surprise. What begins as a payback for some revenge porn posted online quickly morphs into a situation that is so much more perilous than I could have envisaged. I was gripped by this novel, its open and easy to read narrative saw me devouring it within one, albeit late, night.
Told in the first person, in a sort of hindsight storytelling style, I really found The Sunday Girl incredibly absorbing. We know that something has happened to Taylor, but the what of it we are yet to uncover, and we’re also not sure on where this story is coming from. Is it a confession to the police? A cautionary tale of hindsight? Is she dead and are we reading a journal? I loved this unknown aspect of the story. The pacing is rapid, there are no blank spots in this novel, nor is it too busy. The suspense builds as the novel progresses and the fear that Taylor experiences, along with the dread of not knowing what Angus was going to come up with next, was on point from beginning to end.
Taylor Bishop was a character I had a lot of empathy for, and unlike many thrillers I’ve read in the past, she was not at all unlikeable. She was a regular young woman who had friends and was good at her job; she wasn’t sketchy or unreliable, nor was she cold blooded in her intentions towards Angus. Her plan for revenge was more about taking a stand, and later, her actions were all about survival. She’d just had the misfortune of being targeted by a master manipulator. And Angus Hollingsworth really was a piece of work. A very scary fellow who knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way as he laid down the path to Taylor’s destruction, likely right from their very first meeting. He chose Taylor, for a specific purpose, but fortunately, he did underestimate her pliability and considered her a shade more naïve than what she really was. The cat and mouse game that unfolded between these two was deadly in its intent and gripping in its execution.
I highly recommend The Sunday Girl far and wide if you are after a suspenseful read with a plausible storyline that will keep you guessing right up until the end.
August 22, 2018
Behind the Pen with Angela Slatter – Restoration Blog Tour
Welcome to Behind the Pen, combined today with a series feature. For my part in the blog tour for Restoration, published by Hachette Australia, I am thrilled to be chatting with Brisbane author extraordinaire of the Verity Fassbinder series, Angela Slatter.
Restoration
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Walking between the worlds has always been dangerous – but this time V’s facing the loss of all she holds dear.
Verity Fassbinder thought no boss could be worse than her perfectionist ex-boyfriend – until she grudgingly agreed to work for a psychotic fallen angel. And dealing with a career change not entirely of her own choosing is doing nothing to improve V’s already fractious temper. The angel is a jealous – and violent – employer, so she’s quit working for the Weyrd Council and sent her family away, for their own safety. Instead of indulging in domestic bliss, she’s got to play BFFs with the angel’s little spy, Joyce the kitsune assassin . . . and Joyce comes with her own murderous problems.
The angel has tasked V with finding two lost treasures, which would be hard enough even without a vengeful Dusana Nadasy on her heels. And Inspector McIntyre won’t stop calling: the bodies of Normal women who disappeared decades before are turning up, apparently subjected to Weyrd magics. Angelic demands or not, this isn’t something she can walk away from.
And the angel is getting impatient for results . . .
How would you describe Restoration to readers if you could only use 5 words?
Oh, dear gods! No, not those words. These: fast-paced, bold, fun, challenging, satisfying. I hope!
When you first began writing Vigil, were you planning for it to be a series or did this evolve throughout the writing process or even after, by way of reader response?
I hoped it would be a series, but I must admit that the pitch for Corpselight was basically three paragraphs and the pitch for Restoration was three lines! Both evolved (thankfully!) from there. And that was largely to do with how Vigil came out at the end of the process … the book I started with wasn’t the book I ended up with, but I think that’s quite natural if you keep a degree of flexibility in the story development.
In terms of Verity Fassbinder, was she already a firm picture in your mind before you started writing or did she develop a personality of her own as the series progressed?
She was always a very well-developed personality in my head, but she’s definitely developed and changed (mellowing on some things, hardening on others) as the books have progressed. I think that’s really important for characters and reader experience: I kept giving her more to lose and having to fight harder to keep the people who were important to her safe … and making the decisions she had to make more and more complex, with greater risks and consequences.
How far has your writing career evolved from when you first began to write to what it is today? Is this in line with your initial expectations?
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Hmmmm. I started writing seriously about thirteen years ago … so that’s three novels, ten short story collections, about 200 short stories and articles … translations into Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Bulgarian … I guess I’m in a pretty good place, but have yet to be able to afford a castle in Scotland or even a minivan in the middle of Australia … I’m happy with what I’ve achieved, and very proud of it. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess and down to the will of the gods, readers and publishers …
Where do you normally write? Is it in the same place every day or are you an all over the place writer?
It depends: I’ve got an office at home and spend a fair bit of time at the desktop there. When it’s write club, I use the laptop in the dining room so I can talk to my writing partner. Some days I take a notebook and pen out onto the back deck and write there. Sometimes I go to the State Library or a cafe and work there. If I’m travelling, I’ll write in the hotel room or find a cafe or a museum and write there. Jeff VanderMeer told me years ago that one of the things you need to do as a writer is get rid of writing fetishes − which is not as exciting as it sounds. It just means that you need to be able to write wherever you are, with whatever materials are to hand, and at any time. When I teach, it’s one of the best pieces of advice I pass on, because writing is such a difficult profession that we don’t need to put extra obstacles in our own paths: “Oh, I can’t write without my lucky pen/facing the east/with a cat in my lap and a dog on my feet/hanging upside down in the Batcave”.
Do you have an all-time favourite book? Why is this book so significant to you?
Oh, I have so many! But I guess the one I’d pick out (this instance, at least) is Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master, from her Flat Earth series. It’s a beautiful mosaic sort of story and probably influenced the shape of the Sourdough and Bitterwood books more than I realised when I was writing them. But I learned a lot about interweaving stories, which threads to follow, which to leave loose, and how to create flawed but engaging characters. Tanith was such an astonishing writer, working across so many genres, so masterful in her use of language. She didn’t always stick the landing, but you can always see what she was reaching for − and I’d say she got it right more often than she didn’t.
But if you ask me tomorrow, I might give you a different book …
What attributes do you think you need to remain sane as a writer? Are there any particular things you routinely do for yourself to maintain your own headspace?
Well, maybe we get to stay as close to sanity as possible? Or at least put up a good and convincing front for the rest of the world? I know that I need a task list each and every day. I also know that the one thing I must do if I’m going to achieve anything is to make my bed every morning; it might seem weird, but as long as I start the day with that one act of discipline, nothing else is too big to do. Being able to prioritise is a big thing, being able to take yourself seriously and regard what you do as a business rather than a hobby is hugely important; being able to visualise where you want to be in a year, two years, five, etc, is also important BUT the most critical thing is making sure that you DO the things you need to do to get yourself to that place. It’s all very well writing “be a writer” on your vision board but if you’re not actually doing the writing, learning your craft (always keep learning no matter how famous you become), going to the conventions, etc, then all the wishful thinking in the world isn’t going to make you into a writer!
Also, I drink a lot of coffee.
Because you are a fantasy writer, I can’t resist asking, if you could walk through a door into another realm, describe the universe you’d choose to visit.
Ah, I’d go into my Sourdough universe. Because it’s a fairy tale kind of place but I’ve made sure there’s indoor plumbing. So that’s kind of a strange mixed world of fairy tale, Renaissance, Middle Ages, Victorian era London … with architecture from the UK and Europe across many periods, and many, many fashions. I talked about it in more detail over at Tor.com
What is the speculative fiction scene like here in Australia? Do you feel it has a strong presence? Has being Australian impacted on your writing and/or writing career in an overly positive or negative way?
There’s a very strong spec-fic scene in Australia. The problem for us is the lack of local markets − which is not to say there aren’t any, because there are BUT there are so few. My advice to new writers is don’t think you’ll conquer the Australian scene first then try overseas; try overseas at the same time. Your work might find an audience elsewhere. And your strategy should be “top down”, which is not an instruction for driving a convertible, but rather send your story to the highest paying, fastest replying market first, then proceed down the list. Sure, if you start lower down the list, the story might get accepted BUT there’s the chance you could have sold it for a better fee to a market with higher visibility … you lose nothing by trying the top first (but make sure you’re sending your best work!).
I don’t think being Australian has impacted on my career in any way. It’s about the quality of the writing, not my nationality … and the fact that I have been strategic about submissions, etc. It pays to be a smart writer rather than an “artiste”.
Vigil
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Verity Fassbinder has her feet in two worlds.
The daughter of one human and one Weyrd parent, she has very little power herself, but does claim unusual strength – and the ability to walk between us and the other – as a couple of her talents. As such a rarity, she is charged with keeping the peace between both races, and ensuring the Weyrd remain hidden from us.
But now Sirens are dying, illegal wine made from the tears of human children is for sale – and in the hands of those Weyrd who hold with the old ways – and someone has released an unknown and terrifyingly destructive force on the streets of Brisbane.
And Verity must investigate – or risk ancient forces carving our world apart.
VIGIL is the first book in award-winning author Angela Slatter’s Verity Fassbinder series.
Published by Hachette Australia
Corpselight
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Life in Brisbane is never simple for those who walk between the worlds.
Verity’s all about protecting her city, but right now that’s mostly running surveillance and handling the less exciting cases for the Weyrd Council – after all, it’s hard to chase the bad guys through the streets of Brisbane when you’re really, really pregnant.
An insurance investigation sounds pretty harmless, even if it is for ‘Unusual Happenstance’. That’s not usually a clause Normals use – it covers all-purpose hauntings, angry genii loci, ectoplasmic home invasion, demonic possession, that sort of thing – but Susan Beckett’s claimed three times in three months. Her house keeps getting inundated with mud, but she’s still insisting she doesn’t need or want help . . . until the dry-land drownings begin. V’s first lead in takes her to Chinatown, where she is confronted by kitsune assassins. But when she suddenly goes into labour, it’s clear the fox spirits are not going to be helpful.
CORPSELIGHT, the sequel to VIGIL, is the second book in the Verity Fassbinder series by award-winning author Angela Slatter.
Published by Hachette Australia
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of each of the titles in the Verity Fassbinder series for the Restoration blog tour. Restoration was released on the 14th August, 2018. All tiles in the series are available in paperback and e-book.
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August 21, 2018
New Release Book Review: This Child of Ours by Sadie Pearse
About the Book:
You know what’s best for your child. Don’t you?
Riley Pieterson is an adventurous girl with lots of questions. There’s plenty she doesn’t know yet; what a human brain looks like. All the constellations in the night sky. Why others can’t see her the way she sees herself.
When Riley confides in her parents – Sally and Theo – that she feels uncomfortable in her own skin, a chain of events begins that changes their lives forever. Sally wants to support her daughter by helping her be who she dreams of being. Theo resists; he thinks Riley is a seven-year-old child pushing boundaries. Both believe theirs is the only way to protect Riley and keep her safe.
With the wellbeing of their child at stake, Sally and Theo’s relationship is pushed to breaking point. To save their family, each of them must look deeply at who they really are.
A story of a marriage in crisis and a child caught in the middle, this is a beautiful novel of parents and their children, and how far we’re prepared to go in the name of love.
My Thoughts:
In terms of thought provoking fiction, it doesn’t get more thought provoking than the content covered in This Child of Ours. If I’m completely honest, gender dysphoria (the condition of feeling one’s emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite to one’s biological sex) within children is not something I’ve dwelled on to any degree. With each of my children, my girl has right from the start been a girly girl while my boys have both been boyish boys. Being a household with both boys and girls ensured that each had a choice over what toys they wanted to play with, and there were plenty of times my daughter pushed trucks around while my sons carried dolls wedged under their armpits. But when it came to clothes, and picking things out for themselves, each of them gravitated to gender specific items. I’ve never once thought to myself, ‘what would I do if my child wanted to be the opposite of what they are?’ I’ve never even encountered it with friends, although my daughter did go to primary school in her early years with a girl who kept her hair short and wore the boy’s uniform. But this girl still identified as a girl and still had a girl’s name; maybe she was wanting to be a boy or maybe she was a tomboy, I don’t know. To us, she just was who she was and we liked her that way. Her friends were all girls and she never missed a birthday party or playdate.
I felt an instant affinity to both Sally and Theo, the parents at the centre of this novel. While they viewed their daughter as a tomboy, she was still their daughter, and they didn’t sit around musing on the idea that she might actually want to be a boy. Who does? But Riley, at the age of seven, tells her mother she is a boy. Not that she wants to be one, but that she is one. That her body is wrong. It’s a heartbreaking scenario and I felt quite able, under the guiding hand of Sadie’s sensitive handling of this terrain, to see both sides of the story. In a nutshell, while both parents are shocked and distressed by this situation they now find themselves in, their reactions and subsequent actions differ. Sally feels a strong need to support Riley. She’s with her more than Theo and witnesses Riley’s daily distress over not being able to be the person she really feels she should be. Theo wants to ignore it, Riley is only seven after all, and what if it’s just a faze, which given her age, is a plausible likelihood. My own view fell somewhere in the middle, but it was only through Sadie’s meticulous presentation of both Sally’s and Theo’s viewpoints that I was able to arrive at this point.
Sally seemed to me to really jump the gun. After only consulting a GP and getting a very loose impression on what might be occurring with Riley, she seemed to just go from A to Z without pause and reflection for every step of the way. It was interesting to note how Sadie dealt with perception throughout this novel and the visit to the GP is an excellent example of this. Sally heard one thing while Theo heard another. And this really typified their handling of Riley’s situation from the outset. I could really appreciate where Theo was coming from though. He seemed to have a better grasp on the bigger picture than Sally. For Sally, it was more about the immediate, making Riley happy, yet for Theo, it was about the future and how vastly this would change for Riley if she became a boy. It was about more than wearing boy’s clothes and using the boy’s toilets. And herein lies my problem with how Sally chose to handle it. I really feel that given Riley’s young age, and her being pre-pubescent, that she should have been digging deeper, working with a child psychologist to ensure that Riley fully understood that what was being set in motion was far greater than wearing transformers underwear and using the boy’s toilets at school. It rattled me to consider that a parent wouldn’t do more to be sure, given the enormity of changing gender. I was somewhat disappointed that the GP didn’t refer them on, given her initial impressions of Riley. It’s a worry that medical professionals may inadvertently downplay a situation like this. My view is that this process would require intense support and consultation at every step of such an unknown journey.
It was so sad to see Sally’s and Theo’s marriage fracture under the pressure of this situation. We meet them at the start as a loving and close unit. Everything that unfolded between them seemed entirely plausible to me. This would be such a difficult situation to navigate through, dealing with your own shattered preconceived notions, trying to work out what’s the best thing for your child, and trying to be on the same page as your partner as well as offering them support. Both of these characters had many opportunities for introspection and Riley’s journey was as much about Sally and Theo reordering their own perceptions and beliefs along the way, an aspect of the story I appreciated enormously. I also felt rather sad for Theo’s parents. They are of a different era, and I could totally understand their distress over Riley’s decision. I didn’t agree with Theo’s father’s actions, but I certainly understood where they were coming from. Theo’s parent’s reaction was offered as a contrast to that of Sally’s father and step-mother, and this really mirrored the couple themselves. I appreciated how Sadie brought these perspectives in, stretching out beyond the immediate household and into the reactions of extended family, friends, and even the community. She highlighted just how far reaching these life changing decisions can be.
All in all, This Child of Ours was extremely well balanced, affording the reader all sides with the breathing space to make up your own mind, if you were so inclined. It is an ideal novel for book club discussion, you’d be hard pressed to find a more polarising choice to go back and forth over. Given the nature of the subject matter that forms the backbone of this story, there was a real risk of this novel having an agenda, but Sadie has skilfully avoided this trap and instead delivered a thought provoking and emotionally charged read that offers an opportunity for further contemplation.
August 20, 2018
New Release Book Review: The Right Place by Carla Caruso
About the Book:
Can the past show you the way home? Charming and memorable, The Right Place is an Australian novel, combining warm romance with family drama and the longing to fit in.
With her dreams of dominating Melbourne’s fashion scene in tatters, Nella Martini has returned to the last place she wants to be – Torrente Blu, the market garden inherited from her late nonna. She just needs to clean up the property, sell it quickly, and avoid run–ins with her neighbour: surly Adrian Tomaso.
But when Nella comes across her nonna’s cookbook things start to change. The place, with its endless tomato plants and gallons of olive oil in storage, gets under her skin, as does Adrian with his passion for this life. But her dreams have always meant being anywhere but here – haven’t they? Or has the right place been here all this time?
For Esta Feliciano in the 1950s, the right place was her Italian village. But in search of a better life than war–torn Italy has to offer, her husband has moved Esta and their daughter to this alien country, settling on a small, flat piece of land that he calls Torrente Blu. Can Esta come to grips with the harsh Australian sun and strange culture?
Woven with traditional Italian recipes, The Right Place is the heartfelt story of two women’s journeys, as they discover how the right place to call home can be where you make it.
My Thoughts:
I will confess that it was the cover that initially drew me to The Right Place. It just has a gorgeous rustic appeal that had my fingers hovering. Then my eyes landed on the author name: Carla Caruso. Now, this is not Carla’s first novel, but it is the first one of hers that I’ve read. She’s no stranger to me though as I’m quite familiar with Carla’s words from her frequent articles in the RWA member’s publication, Hearts Talk. The point of this waffle is that while the cover and the author may have drawn me to The Right Place, it was the warmly welcoming story and the wonderfully authentic characters that pinned me to the novel for the better part of a weekend. In a nutshell, this novel was sublime perfection.
Carla writes in a manner that just scoops you up and plonks you down into her fictional world. I felt so immersed into this story, so entertained by the characters, particularly the larger than life ones like Fabiana, Nella’s good friend. She was wonderful, I just loved her to bits! Nella herself was a genuine lead who I liked a lot. She had such a good heart and was always motivated to do the right thing in any situation. She didn’t always get it right, but her intent was always genuine. I so enjoyed seeing her blossom in this life that she viewed as temporary, taking steps to take charge of her life in a way she hadn’t previously. And I felt so bad for her every time Adrian, her grumpy yet glamorous neighbour, was mean or dismissive of her. She was like little miss sunshine, rolling with it and persevering. I do really enjoy a later in life coming of age story.
Nella’s story was skillfully punctuated by that of her nonna’s, in the years after Esta had immigrated to Australia. Nella finds her nonna’s cookbook and this, along with other items that Nella unearths while cleaning up the house, form a link between the two women that connects their shared experiences across time. I loved the authenticity of Esta and her feelings about her new country. I shed a few tears here and there over Esta, her story was overall entirely moving. I particularly liked the friendship Esta developed with her neighbour Mabel, which wonderfully, despite their initial cultural barrier, stood the test of time.
“And in that moment, she realised that beneath their cultural differences, the countries of origin on their passports, they were the same too. Women. Wives. Nurturers.”
What really worked for me though with these sections was the seamless link between Esta and Nella. This was never at any point two stories running alongside separated by a generation. There was a symmetry to what Carla offered us, and a true purpose to her story. It was very well done.
Now, onto the grumpy neighbour, who really was just a wounded little boy hiding inside a tough man’s body. I thought Adrian’s story was rather sad, the origins of his rift with his brother and his estrangement from his mother. Even his complicated relationship with his father. But his love for his home and his work, his passion about market gardening, all weighed in his favour. There were some highly entertaining moments between him and Nella as she wheedled her way into his business and generally got under his skin. Despite his gruff and growl, I liked him a lot and was championing his triumph.
Set on a market garden, there is a strong food lit vibe to this story that had me salivating. Along with all of the vegetable pickling, pasta rolling, and passata making going on, Carla has also treated us with the inclusion of some authentic Italian family recipes. There’s something about the combination of starting over, scrumptious food, good friends, and unexpected romance that works its magic over me.
“Even if things hadn’t panned out exactly as she’d envisaged, even if they’d experienced good times and bad, her heart had never felt fuller. Sometimes you didn’t know what you wanted in life until you had a chance to taste it, to allow the medley of flavours to fully sink in.”
The Right Place really hit all of the right notes for me. It’s warm hearted, poignantly touching, delicious and romantic, with a bit of funny thrown in. A gorgeous addition to the growing category of food lit novels we are being treated to here in Australia. With the exception of those tears I shed over Esta, I pretty much had a huge smile on my face for the whole time I was reading this novel, and you really can’t ask for more than that.
August 19, 2018
New Release Book Review: The Lost Pearl by Emily Madden
About the Book:
From Pearl Harbor to the shores of Sydney, a secret that spans generations could unite a family – or destroy it.
Honolulu, Hawaii 1941
On the evening of her sixteenth birthday party, Catherine McGarrie wants nothing more than for the night to be over, even though the opulence of the ballroom befits the daughter of a US Navy Rear Admiral. Then she meets Charlie, a navy officer from the other side of the tracks, a man her parents would never approve of.
As rumours of war threaten their tropical paradise, Catherine and Charlie fall in love. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941 changes their lives forever.
Seventy–five years later, addled by age and painkillers, Catherine tells her granddaughter Kit her story and reveals the tale of a long–lost treasure. Can Kit uncover the secret and reunite her family? Or will the truth tear them apart?
My Thoughts:
The Lost Pearl takes us back to a time in history where the world was just on the cusp of war invading the Pacific region. We begin in Hawaii, in the months preceding the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and then travel to Australia, another island with its northern coast under attack. More than a war story, The Lost Pearl is an examination of the far reaching personal effects of war and the lingering consequences of regretful decisions made in a bygone era.
While by no means a unique story, with its dual timeline that has a granddaughter uncovering her grandmother’s past via investigating the curious dying words she was privy to, the way it all unfolded was very fresh and engaging. This is a story that clips along at a great pace, keeping you up late at night and eager to devour as much as you can in one sitting. Both timelines, with Kit in the present and Catherine in the past, equally held their own, tricky, as we all know, with dual timelines. Emily infused a great deal of symmetry between grandmother and granddaughter which went a long way towards ensuring her novel was a complete story rather than two loosely linked separate ones. I really loved the serendipitous link that Emily gives to Catherine and Kit. It was such a beautiful full circle to end up on, I appreciated it immensely but won’t elaborate further to avoid spoilers.
The history infused throughout The Lost Pearl was thoroughly authentic and stirred my emotions. From Hawaii to Australia, no stone was left unturned by Emily, she has achieved an historical fiction novel of a high calibre indeed. I appreciated the offering of multiple perspectives, particularly as we neared the end. It offered a more complete story and gave me an opportunity to quell my judgement on some of the characters. Although, even by the end, Catherine’s mother still didn’t sit well with me and I found William to be a disappointment that I wasn’t anticipating. This of course adds to the authenticity of the story overall – you can’t like everyone and every family probably has its more questionable members.
The Lost Pearl has much to offer lovers of historical fiction. The bombing of Pearl Harbour is not something I’ve read about in fiction all that much, although I learnt about it when studying WWII history and have of course watched the Hollywood rendition. Still, it’s not a piece of history that has been overwritten and I particularly appreciated Emily’s detailing of how the bombing is commemorated each year in a fashion similar to our ANZAC day. I was quite affected by the scenes where Kit was attending the 75th commemorations. I highly recommend The Lost Pearl, it’s a terrific read, well researched and impeccably written. There’s a natural flow to it that will make it hard for any reader to put down once they’ve picked it up.
August 18, 2018
New Release Book Review: When The Lights Go Out by Mary Kubica
About the Book:
A woman is plunged into a bizarre case of stolen identity in this ambitious and riveting thriller by the blockbuster bestselling author of The Good Girl, Mary Kubica.
Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life after years of caring for her ailing mother. She rents a new apartment and applies for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that forces her to question everything she’s ever known.
Finding herself suddenly at the centre of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by a relentless lack of sleep. As days pass and the insomnia worsens, it plays with Jessie’s mind. Her judgment is blurred, her thoughts hampered by fatigue. Jessie begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined.
Meanwhile, twenty years earlier and two hundred and fifty miles away, another woman’s split–second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Is Jessie really who she thinks she is? Has her whole life been a lie? The truth will shock her to her core…if she lives long enough to discover it.
My Thoughts:
What a complicated review this one is going to be. The novel started as a gripping and deeply moving domestic drama, all the hallmarks of an ‘un-put-downable’ read firmly in place. Then, in the last thirty odd pages, it all ended up going pear shaped as the author inserted a twist that entirely deflated the power of the story preceding it. If I was to rate this novel on the story prior to the ending, it would be a solid 4 stars. Taking the ending into consideration, it plummets to 1 star. Given this conundrum, I’m going to review the story in two parts: the majority of the novel and why it appealed to me so much, followed by the twist and why I feel this was a major plot mistake. Be assured, when I get to discussing the ending, I’ll insert a warning to save spoilers.
Let’s begin with Jessie. When we meet her at the beginning of this novel, she’s in the hospital with her mother, Eden, who is in the last stages of her battle with cancer. Jessie is burning the candle at both ends, keeping herself awake in order to not miss any of her mother’s last moments. This pattern of self abuse spills over into her grief, and after Jessie’s mum dies, she remains awake, her physical and mental health deteriorating rapidly as we witness her spiral into the effects of having no sleep. In a bid to get on with her life, which has been on pause for years since her mother’s initial cancer diagnosis, Jessie applies to college, but there is an issue with her application. Her social security number in is invalid, it belongs to a dead child, and with no family or friends to call on, no paperwork in existence in the house to verify her identity, Jessie begins to investigate what’s going on and ends up having to face the notion that she is not who she thought she was, and nor was her mother. She begins to question everything about herself, examines her memories for nuances and clues as to who she might be and where she might have come from.
I found this storyline to be so absorbing, completely plausible, and desperately sad. As Jessie continues to not sleep, her reliability as a narrator becomes flimsy, as fatigue induced hallucinations begin to take effect and the physical symptoms start to take their toll. We are led to believe that Jessie has been kidnapped by her mother, something that angered me, as I thought of Eden stealing Jessie as a child and then knowingly withholding the truth of Jessie’s identity from her even as she was dying. Despite Jessie’s unreliability, I had so much empathy for her. Jessie’s sections were also very atmospheric, pulling you right down into her mindset:
“As I climb the lopsided steps, I feel the weight of fatigue bearing down on me. Fatigue from physical exertion and fatigue from lack of sleep. I lie down on the mattress, staring at my shaky hands before my eyes. There’s an anaemic quality to them. Blanched and mealy, the skin at their edges disappearing somehow, evanescing, like a loose thread being tugged from the hem of a shirt, the whole thing unravelling, coming apart at the seams. That’s me. Coming apart at the seams. Little by little, I’m disappearing.
I look again at my hands, and this time they are fine. Intact.
But still shaking.”
I felt a real connection to Jessie’s story, the drama of it unfolding with authenticity that was gripping and intensely discomforting. Less of a psychological thriller and more of a domestic drama, I was really hard pressed to put this novel down.
Moving onto Eden, whose backstory punctuates Jessie’s current one. This is a very sad story, all too familiar in one sense, of a couple with no success at falling pregnant and then later, even less success at maintaining a pregnancy. We witness Eden’s growing desperation, her increasingly alarming obsession with motherhood, the many ways in which she begins to isolate herself, the resentment she harbours towards her friend who has several children but is not as enthralled with motherhood as what Eden believes she should be. And then there’s the destruction upon her marriage, which was awful to witness. Eden’s mental stability begins to waver, and her actions increasingly steer towards a path that we have already set her upon, based on Jessie’s story.
“Some women were not meant to be mothers.
And some who were, some who would make the very best mothers, were refused the right.
It didn’t seem fair.
Oh, what a good mother I would be, if only the universe would let me.”
I didn’t always like Eden, but again, my well of empathy was spilling over for her. She needed help, so desperately, but instead isolated herself further. Her self awareness of just how unhinged she had become was insightful and I think it really helped me stay connected to Eden for the duration of her story, which was at its base, desperately sad. Breathtakingly so.
The novel, with both of these stories weaving in and out, is quite fast paced. I had a sense of knowing where everything was heading, with just a few of the essential details yet to be revealed. And I was quite happy with this, I felt it had been cleverly done and there were so many elements that had been put into place to ensure the plausibility of the plot and the emotional authenticity of the characters. This was very much a novel I could see translating to the big screen as a gripping movie with strong emotional pull. And then we get to the twist. I’m drawing a line now, in this review, and if you choose to read on, it’s with the full knowledge that I am next discussing the ending, and the reason why I feel it let the preceding story down in such an epic way.
To this point, When The Lights Go Out gets
August 17, 2018
Bingo! A Month of Sundays by Liz Byrski
It’s bingo Saturday once again – that rolled around fast! The square I’ve filled for this entry is:
A book written by someone over 60
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A Month of Sundays is Australian author Liz Byrski’s tenth novel.
This is very much a novel about the joy of reading, what we draw from books, why we read, and the many ways in which it connects us to others and the world around us. I loved how each woman not only realised things about themselves while discussing their own books, but also through reading the ones put forward by the others. I loved the connectivity and parallels they made between their chosen books and their own lives. I also appreciated the dissemination of the individual responses to the books read, particularly when there was contention between these responses. It made me think of my own reading and reviewing, and the reviewers that I follow, and all the different reactions we usually have to the same books.
This year I’m playing book bingo with Mrs B’s Book Reviews. On the first and third Saturday of each month, we’ll post our latest entry. We’re not telling each other in advance what we’re currently reading or what square we’ll be filling next; any coincidences are exactly that – and just add to the fun!
Follow our card below if you’d like to join in, and please let us know if you do so we can check out what you’re reading.
Now I’m off to check out what square Mrs B has marked off for this round. See you over there!
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