Theresa Smith's Blog, page 127

Behind the Pen with Claire Varley

The Book of Ordinary People is fast delighting readers since its release two weeks ago. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Claire Varley to Behind the Pen, giving us some insight into the inspiration and creative process that went into bringing this meaningful novel out into the world.

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How would you describe The Book of Ordinary People if you could only use 5 words?

A celebration of ordinary people.

The Book of Ordinary People has a unique premise. What provided the inspiration point for it?

I wanted to explore how we each have our own unique stories to tell, but how the telling of these stories can shift depending on who is doing the telling. I’ve long been fascinated by how we all exist in shared spaces, but the way we interact with them – and what they mean to us – can look completely different for each person. I lived and worked in Melbourne’s northern suburbs for a decade and the book is a quiet ode to that little cluster of suburbs that is home to so many diverse and different stories.

With five main characters at the helm of this novel, did you find yourself invested in any particular one over another?

There are elements of each character’s story arc that draws from fragments of my own experience, so I was invested in the story telling of each of them. However, Aida was the starting point for the manuscript and her journey was certainly the most intensive research-wise. An Iranian woman awaiting the outcome of her protection visa application, she was drawn from my experience working with communities seeking asylum in Melbourne’s outer suburbs and I felt an incredible responsibility to tell her story in a way that didn’t sensationalise, trivialise or diminish her. It was a hard story to tell because we currently have a backlog of nearly 30,000 people in our community who have been waiting years to have their protection visas processed, meaning they are in limbo with no real security or stability. This was the case when I started writing the book in 2014 and four years on approximately half of that group are still waiting to be processed, so it is a story without much resolve for many many people across Australia.

Were each of the characters already a firm picture in your mind before you started writing or did they develop a personality of their own as the story progressed?

This was the first book I wrote where I didn’t know where anyone would end up. This was a completely different process from my first novel (The Bit In Between) because the ending of that book was the very first thing I wrote, then I had to go back Memento-style and work out how my characters ended up in that position. But with this book, I knew who the characters were, more or less, but didn’t know who they would become. Working this out was very much informed by what was happening in the world around me because so many of the characters’ lives were shaped by external factors, such as government policy, international events and the judicial system.

How much planning was involved with this novel? Did you plan/plot each of the five character’s stories from beginning to end, or did you just let it evolve naturally as the writing progressed?

The first draft of the novel centred around only two of the characters but my wonderful editor at Pan Macmillan Mathilda Imlah was quick to identify that there were other characters in the manuscript who were crying out for attention. Then it became a case of deciding which characters to draw out and working out how they could be woven into the existing story. In that regard there was a fair bit of planning but not to the point of knowing exactly what they would end up doing. It was very much a process of keeping all the plates spinning while writing – I would be in the middle of writing one character’s story while jotting down notes to add to another’s that would weave or intersect them together – riding on the same tram, seeing the same busker, experiencing the same weather event in different ways – all these events that brought the disparate characters together. Or something would happen in one story that needed to be cross-referenced or consistent with another, so I lived amidst a sea of post-its for some time! And once all those ends were tied together it became a nightmare to edit or unravel, and I spent a lot of time muttering to myself about myself…

Do you have any particular qualifications that relate to the subject matter covered in this novel?

I’ve worked in the community sector for the last decade or so, with a focus on family violence and the prevention of violence against women. I’ve worked in Australia and overseas on community development and capacity-building projects and the novel draws on this, particularly in its exploration of the experiences of people seeking asylum and women experiencing family violence.

Are you balancing a different career with your writing? How do you go about making time for your writing within limited hours?

I have a day job which makes balancing writing a bit of an art. During the time I was writing this book I worked four days and used the fifth plus the weekend to write, but this isn’t a particularly sustainable long term plan! It is a bit of a luxury to have no other responsibilities on the weekend or after work, plus it is fairly exhausting staring at a computer screen seven days a week. I now work as a freelancer in the community sector which gives me more flexibility to fit writing into each day, but it is still a challenge because the imperative to pay the mortgage usually edges to the front. One of the things I’ve learnt to do is to keep writing time sacred and not to let myself fritter it away which I’m very good at doing. But by the same token, I’ve also stopped giving myself a hard time if I’m not productive or if I need a day off or if I just don’t have the motivation to write something. I used to subscribe to the idea of making yourself write every day but I’ve moved away from that now because I’ve come to peace with the fact that often my daily ‘writing’ actually needs to be me wandering up and down the streets mulling on whatever I’m working on, or reading something written by someone because both these things are a bit like jump starting the engine for me.

Where do you normally write? Is it in the same place every day or are you an all over the place writer?

I usually write at my desk but sometimes – and particularly since I started freelancing from home – I walk in to the home office and can’t stand the thought of ground hog day-ing it, so I go write on the couch or in a café or in the park. I’m lucky in that I can tune out any noise around me so can work pretty much anywhere.

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?

Am I the right person to ask this question of? My stress pimples suggest not… One of the things I was never really aware of is the reality of what ‘success’ looks like for authors in Australia. There is this idea that there are certain points that will suddenly calm all your anxieties or reduce your self-doubt or release the work-life-write balance burden somewhat, and for most writers this isn’t the case. Publication doesn’t stop you doubting yourself and for most of us it doesn’t equate to being able to throw in the towel and write full time. Not that publication isn’t wonderful – of course it is! – but it isn’t the panacea many writers, including Past Me, think it is. And because we don’t talk about these things, it means that there is this conveyer belt of writers who finally achieve these milestones after working so hard to reach them, and because the self-doubt or the financial pressure or time demands don’t dissipate they are left feeling like they’ve failed. And writing can be an incredibly lonely pursuit with limited opportunities to speak with other writers so we don’t often have opportunities to share these common experiences. An important practice for me has been to seek out opportunities to hear from other authors, whether online, via email or at public events, and be reassured by the commonality of my anxieties. The author Annabel Smith has a great blog where she considers these questions, and I recently read the book Motherhood and Creativity which is a collection of pieces by Australian creatives on the challenges of balancing motherhood and creative practice. I’m not a mother – so lordy help Future Me because I’m already terrible at balancing things – but it was an incredibly honest, insightful and motivating book for all creatives.

Can you tell us something about yourself that not many people would know?

I am scared of birds. Unreasonably and undeniably so. My eyes fill involuntarily with tears if they come near me and I have yet to unearth the Rosetta stone memory of what horrible avian trauma in my childhood caused this. It is a terrible inconvenience because I would quite like backyard chickens but would be too scared to touch/feed/chase them and would end up having to forfeit control of the backyard forever. My Room 101 is just a garden variety pigeon making eye contact with me from afar.

The Book of Ordinary People

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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.

Published by Pan Macmillan Australia

Released on 31st July 2018

Behind the Pen with Carla Caruso

I’m so pleased to welcome Carla Caruso to Behind the Pen, chatting about family, food, and her gorgeous new novel, The Right Place.

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What provided the main inspiration point for The Right Place?

Family! Even though the characters are fictional, the plot and setting draw a lot of inspiration from my family background and Italian ancestry.

The novel’s set on a market garden on Adelaide’s busy Marion Road, like where my ad grew up as one of 10 kids! The real-life property was actually sold decades ago, making way for a self-storage facility, but this is me imagining that it still exists.

The nonna character, though, is inspired by my grandma on my mum’s side, and the sandstone villa on the market garden is actually inspired by her place in the east. It’s a place I visited a lot in the school holidays or whenever there was a family occasion to celebrate or Nonna wanted me to take her food shopping!

Like the heroine’s mother, my mum is also a former fashion designer, but she’s a lot nicer in personality.

Book Review: Vigil – Verity Fassbinder Book 1 by Angela Slatter

Vigil…
About the Book:

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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.

My Thoughts:

I used be a huge reader of urban fantasy and paranormal fiction, but I’m a tad fussy on what I do and don’t like when it comes to the genre, so it’s dropped back a bit for me in recent years. I don’t like it if it’s YA focussed, and let’s face it, more of this type of fiction is geared to the YA market, more’s the pity. When it comes to urban fantasy for adults, it often seems to cross over into the romance/erotic zone, and I’m not into that either. But this! The Verity Fassbinder series! I haven’t had as much fun with an urban fantasy series since reading JR Ward’s Fallen Angels.

Verity Fassbinder is the bomb! She’s quickly become one of my favourite urban fantasy characters of all time. With her sarcastic wit, her deadpan humour and her sharp as a tack intuition, not to mention her resilience in the face of injury, near death and disgusting encounters, well, she really is a heroine worthy of some serious book stalking. The interactions between her and the other characters she deals with in the Weyrd world were all so on point and effortlessly entertaining. I liked the little bit of romance that wove its way in for Verity, nothing too steamy, just meaningful and nice. Her relationship with Ziggi, her driver/bodyguard/cake eating and thinking out loud companion, along with the whole my ex-boyfriend is now my boss angle, provided many chuckle worthy moments.

There is a lot going on in this novel, events occurring that are all seemingly unconnected until all at once they’re not. My attention never wavered, this is one novel that held me captive from beginning to end and I am so keen to get cracking on the second instalment. The setting of Brisbane really grounded this novel for me, with the familiar landmarks and local lingo. I just felt like I was able to connect so much more to the characters and the story than what I ever have before in an urban fantasy novel. If Vigil is anything to go by, this is a series I am going to willingly lose myself in. Fingers crossed Angela has plans to keep it going beyond book three.

Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of Vigil 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, with the third instalment, Restoration, released in August 2018. Angela lives in Brisbane, Australia.

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Vigil

Published by Hachette Australia

Released July 2016

Available in Paperback and eBook

Behind the Pen with Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

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I’m delighted to bring you an adventure filled edition of Behind the Pen today, as I welcome Meaghan Wilson Anastasios with her new release, The Honourable Thief.

How would you describe The Honourable Thief if you could only use 5 words?

Dan Brown meets Indiana Jones.

What provided the inspiration point for The Honourable Thief?

When I was working as an archaeologist, I heard about the downfall of a superstar of the archaeological world who Turkish authorities suspected of involvement in an antiquities smuggling ring. The truth of what really happened in the very peculiar chain of events that led to his expulsion from the country has never been determined, and as far as I was concerned, the truth didn’t really matter. What intrigued me about this tale was that it presented a case study of how hubris and ambition can undermine an otherwise remarkable human being, and this was the seed from which the story of The Honourable Thief sprouted.

Benedict Hitchens is an intriguing character. Was he already a firm picture in your mind before you started writing or did he develop a personality of his own as the story progressed?

Benedict has been occupying a penthouse apartment in my imagination for years, so I know him well. His personality grew from my interest in delving into the minds of characters like James Bond, Jason Bourne and Indiana Jones when they’re in their downtime. We’re all so accustomed to seeing larger-than-life male heroes who are put through the wringer, only to come out the other side, brush themselves off, and start all over again. But what do they do when something goes terribly wrong? So when we meet Benedict at the start of the book, he’s at his lowest ebb. His life’s a mess, and he’s simply not coping with it. As the story progresses, we learn more about his past and why he has been caught up in a self-destructive downward spiral and, ultimately, how he manages to find a path to redemption. But along the way, he does some things that are anything but admirable. So the trick was showing those moments while also making him a sympathetic character.

How much planning and research was involved with the Honourable Thief? Were you rigorous in your planning or did you just let the story and character traits evolve naturally as the writing progressed?

The historical research was extensive, exhaustive and loads of fun! It was informed by my plot which began as a very detailed, blow-by-blow, outline of the story I had in mind which had evolved during quiet moments; in the shower; driving; walking the dog. But once I started writing, I found characters and moments led me in different, and often quite unexpected directions, which involved a rethink of where I was headed. There were key plot moments and characters that never changed, but many did. So it was actually a very exciting and dynamic process, almost as if the story itself had a life of its own and was carrying me along with it.

With a character as an archaeologist and a background in archaeology yourself, are there any blurry lines between fact and fiction contained within The Honourable Thief? Any secret adventures that you might have had yourself that you’ve slotted in for us?

And don’t forget my background in the art auction world! Of course many moments in the book are inspired by my own experiences in those worlds, and characters based on the extremely colourful people who occupy them. Although I generally try to avoid direct involvement in antiquities theft, art forgery and grave robbing, I’ve certainly seen a thing or two in my time! I’ll leave it up to you to guess which passages might have some foundation in fact.

Are you balancing a different career with your writing? How do you go about making time for your writing within limited hours?

I’m fortunate in that my other career is freelance screenwriting, which means I can manage my time according to the demands of whatever project I’m working on at a given time. My day job is writing and researching for film and TV; most recently I co-wrote a series for Sam Neill for Foxtel, ‘The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook’, and also wrote the book of the same name that accompanies the series. The biggest challenge is jumping between the various projects, because each requires a different voice. So to give my brain a chance to switch gear, I always schedule the ‘jump’ to be bookended by a clear (and usually mundane!) physical break from my desk – lunch, hang out the washing, walk to the shops. That kind of thing. Each week, I allocate specific blocks of time to work on my novel between my TV work, and set a word count to reach each day. If I don’t reach the target, then it’s back to the computer after dinner and no Netflix for me that night! But then I’d also grab any other windows available to me – I probably wrote about a third of The Honourable Thief on my laptop in the car while waiting for my son to finish football training and in a café while my daughter did her taekwondo classes.

Where do you normally write? Is it in the same place every day or are you an all over the place writer?

Although most of my work is done at my desk, I can – and do – write anywhere. Seize the moment, I say. At a table in a café in a cavernous warehouse full of hysterical children bouncing on trampolines? Yes. Seated on a folding chair, trackside, during a Little Athletics championship? You betcha. Laptops are the greatest gift to the modern-day writer. Yes, yes, I know. There have always been pens and notebooks. But I’m now a fully committed electronic scribe. And I use my laptop everywhere.

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?

Writing is a joy. I still find it hard to believe I get paid to do it – it doesn’t feel like work. So I’ve never been at risk of being driven insane by the process itself. The biggest challenge for my mental stability has been juggling the demands of my paid writing work and family commitments with finding time to write The Honourable Thief. That has required equal measures of discipline, good humour and adaptability. The other characteristic that I’m fortunate enough to have acquired that comes in handy is skin as thick as a rhino’s hide. I attribute it to my work as a scriptwriter, where feedback tends to be worded with the sensitivity and nuance of one of Donald J. Trump’s tweets. Positive criticism I take on board as exactly that – positive. When it comes from the right place, feedback is there to help, so I’m always open to it. But I think the most important thing for me personally is that I write for myself. I’m not writing with a particular audience or a specific outcome in mind; I want to tell stories that I’d like to read myself.

As for routines to maintain my headspace, I do a bit of meditation and quite pathetic yoga each morning to clear the cobwebs away, and love nothing more than a good, long walk to let the stories tick over in my mind.

Is there any other genre would you like to try your hand at writing and why?

I’d really love to have a go at suspense, largely because I have a cracker of an idea and the whole story plotted out in my mind already. Once I’ve told Benedict Hitchens’ story in his three books, The Honourable Thief being the first, followed by The Emerald Tablet, which is in Pan Macmillan’s hands now, and the as-yet unnamed but now underway third book, I may well embark on my thriller! Then again, I’ve a mental filing cabinet crammed full of brilliant stories in the historical fiction genre, so you never know. So many stories, so little time!

If you could sit down for an afternoon with an iconic person from history, who would you choose to spend that time with?

Now, this question is equal parts impossible and brilliant. You ask a historian to name just one notable person to spend an afternoon with? Colour my brain exploding right about now! OK – as a sworn agnostic, but one who believes the man known as Jesus Christ was a real person of flesh and blood, it would have to be him, if only to ask him what he thinks about the whole ‘Christianity’ thing. And provided I had time to learn Aramaic between now and then, because otherwise it would be a singularly frustrating encounter.

The Honourable Thief

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Istanbul, Turkey 1955

Benedict Hitchens, once a world-renowned archaeologist, is now a discredited – but still rather charming – shell of his former self.

Once full of optimism and adventure, his determination to prove that Achilles was a real historical figure led him to his greatest love, Karina, on the island of Crete and to his greatest downfall, following the disappearance of an enigmatic stranger, Eris.

He has one last chance to restore his reputation, solve the mystery of Eris and prove his Achilles theory. But it is full of risk, and possibly fatal consequences…

In her breakout novel, Meaghan Wilson Anastasios weaves an action-packed tale of honour, passion, heroes and thieves across an epic backdrop of history.

Published by Pan Macmillan Australia

Released on 31st July 2018

New Release Book Review: Whitsunday Dawn by Annie Seaton

Whitsunday Dawn…
About the Book:

With the pristine beauty of the Whitsundays under threat, can they expose the truth in time? Australian author Annie Seaton brings to life a new area of romance – Eco-Adventure. Perfect for fans of Di Morrissey.

When Olivia Sheridan arrives in the Whitsundays as spokesperson for big mining company Sheridan Corp, it should be a straightforward presentation to the town about their proposed project. But when a handsome local fisherman shows her what ecological impact the proposal will have, Olivia is forced to question her father’s motives for the project.

Struggling with newly divided loyalties, Olivia is thrown further into turmoil when she is mistaken for a woman who disappeared more than sixty years before. When it becomes clear that Captain Jay is also keeping secrets, Olivia realises that there is more to these sunshine–soaked islands than she ever expected.

Seeking to uncover the truth, Olivia is drawn into a dangerous game where powerful businessmen will stop at nothing to ensure their plan goes ahead, even if that means eliminating her…

Against the epic Far North Queensland landscape, this is the story of two women, separated by history, drawn to Whitsunday Island where their futures will be changed forever.

My Thoughts:

What a wonderful story Annie Seaton weaves within the pages of her latest novel, Whitsunday Dawn. With its dual timeline narrative, Annie explores environmental threats to our barrier reef and corporate corruption in an eco-adventure-romance in the present day; while back in the 1940s, she explores the Japanese threats to Australia’s coastline during WWII and the efforts that were put into place for protection, along with island life, old fashioned war time romance, and the horror of imprisonment in the Japanese work camps. There is so much going on in this novel and so many reasons to love it; a true un-put-downable story for lovers of contemporary and historical fiction alike.

Annie Seaton fleshed out all of her characters fully, she maintained an edge of suspicion and threat throughout both timelines to perfection, and she knew just the right moments to apply a romantic touch without undermining the more serious aspects of the story. There is a lot of sadness throughout this novel, not just within the events but also within the character’s lives. I was appalled at Olivia’s father and his treatment of her, but I was also deeply saddened at the way corporations nullify the importance of environmental protection. There is no room for seeing, truly seeing with absolute clarity, the bigger picture of setting aside environmental protection for monetary gain if you are only ever focused on the dollars. Annie really tapped into this with intricate detail and precise analogy.

There were also plenty of wrenching moments within the WWII sections of this story. So many WWII novels orbit around the war in Europe. It was refreshingly real to read about the war that was on our back door and the effects this had on our everyday lives as well as those who were fighting in the air and out at sea to keep our country free. I particularly enjoyed Annie’s depictions of island life back in the 1940s, the beauty and the harshness of it.

There was a bit of uncertainty within me as to how these two storylines were going to fully mesh, but rest assured, Annie steers you home with the skill of a true storyteller. I highly recommend Whitsunday Dawn. It would make an ideal book club selection and a perfect gift for a wide range of readers.

Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia via NetGalley for providing me with a copy of Whitsunday Dawn for review.

Page by Page Bookclub Titles for August/September

The Page by Page Bookclub with Theresa Smith Writes is an online bookclub with an emphasis on books written by Australian Women, chatting in a setting that is above all else, friendly and inclusive. Flexible reading timelines and multiple titles to pick from each reading period. And lots of chatter…

Every two months, books will be posted here on the blog, and if you’re not on Facebook but would still like to read along, please feel free to let me know in the comments on this book post. The chatter will be in the group but I’d still love to hear your thoughts on the titles read.

For August and September, we have five terrific titles. Please note that three of these titles will be released the week after next and are currently available as pre-orders. Read one, two or all! Head over to Page by Page Bookclub with Theresa Smith Writes on Facebook to join in with the discussion.

The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale

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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.

Released 23rd August

The Botanist’s Daughter by Kayte Nunn

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In Victorian England, headstrong adventuress Elizabeth takes up her late father’s quest for a rare, miraculous plant. She faces a perilous sea voyage, unforeseen dangers and treachery that threatens her entire family.

In present-day Australia, Anna finds a mysterious metal box containing a sketchbook of dazzling watercolours, a photograph inscribed ‘Spring 1886’ and a small bag of seeds. It sets her on a path far from her safe, carefully ordered life, and on a journey that will force her to face her own demons.

In this spellbinding botanical odyssey of discovery, desire and deception, Kayte Nunn has so exquisitely researched nineteenth-century Cornwall and Chile you can almost smell the fragrance of the flowers, the touch of the flora on your fingertips.

The Lost Pearl by Emily Madden

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A sweeping family saga of long lost love, for readers of Fiona McIntosh and Mary-Anne O’Connor.

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?

Released 20th August

The Right Place by Carla Caruso

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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. Perfect for readers who love The Missing Pieces of Us by Fleur McDonald and Josephine Moon.

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…

Released 20th August

Whitsunday Dawn by Annie Seaton

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With the pristine beauty of the Whitsundays under threat, can they expose the truth in time? Australian author Annie Seaton brings to life a new area of romance – Eco-Adventure. Perfect for fans of Di Morrissey.

When Olivia Sheridan arrives in the Whitsundays as spokesperson for big mining company Sheridan Corp, it should be a straightforward presentation to the town about their proposed project. But when a handsome local fisherman shows her what ecological impact the proposal will have, Olivia is forced to question her father’s motives for the project.

Struggling with newly divided loyalties, Olivia is thrown further into turmoil when she is mistaken for a woman who disappeared more than sixty years before. When it becomes clear that Captain Jay is also keeping secrets, Olivia realises that there is more to these sunshine–soaked islands than she ever expected.

Seeking to uncover the truth, Olivia is drawn into a dangerous game where powerful businessmen will stop at nothing to ensure their plan goes ahead, even if that means eliminating her…

Against the epic Far North Queensland landscape, this is the story of two women, separated by history, drawn to Whitsunday Island where their futures will be changed forever.

To join the Page by Page Bookclub with Theresa Smith Writes, head over to the Facebook group and request to join. Look forward to seeing you over there!

New Release Book Review: Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman

Inappropriation…
About the Book:

Starting at a prestigious private Australian girls’ school, fifteen-year-old Ziggy Klein is confronted with an alienating social hierarchy that hurls her into the arms of her grade’s most radical feminists. Plagued by fantasies of offensive sexual stereotypes and a psychotherapist mother who thinks bum-pinching is fine if it comes from the heart chakra, Ziggy sets off on a journey of self-discovery that moves from the Sydney drag scene to the extremist underbelly of the internet to the coastal bohemia of a long-dissolved matriarchal cult.

As PC culture collides with her friends’ morphing ideology and her parents’ kinky sex life, Ziggy’s understanding of gender, race, and class begins to warp. Ostracised at school, she seeks refuge in Donna Haraway’s seminal feminist text, A Cyborg Manifesto, and discovers an indisputable alternative identity. Or so she thinks. A controversial Indian guru, a mean clique of blondes all called Cate, and her own Holocaust-surviving grandmother propel Ziggy through a series of misidentifications, culminating in a date-rape revenge plot so confused, it just might work.

My Thoughts:

Inappropriation is quite an unusual novel, the style of which is best described as literary satire. I’ve definitely never read anything like it before. It felt to me like an amalgamation of Southpark, J’aime Private School Girl, and Black Comedy. I was torn between laughing at the acerbic wit and cringing at the inappropriateness of it all. Which was kind of the point of the novel.

Ziggy swings from one identity crisis to another, constantly weirding people out while misinterpreting everything. She was overly consumed with her own sexual identity, her gender identity, her political identity, her feminist identity, her Jewish identity, her human identity, and her lack of friends – the latter of which could be explained in large part by the fact that she wore a go pro permanently strapped to her head, recording everyone and uploading the videos to the internet without permission. There was a lot going on with Ziggy, a kind of strange exaggeration of what teenagers might be going through as they come of age in a society that is overwhelmingly focussed on ‘isms’, self-labelling, and the avoidance of offending people by means of going out of your way to offend people.

Inappropriation is sharp and clever, perhaps a shade too much so at times because it’s a very busy book and I often lost track of what was actually going on in amongst the sea of acidic observation. To my mind, there was too much of a focus on sexuality throughout the entire novel, and one scene in particular involving Ziggy and her younger brother’s friends, who were all thirteen, was way too icky for me. Ziggy pushes the envelope a bit too far on many occasions, sometimes with remorse, at other times with startling self-gratification. This is a discomforting read, on so many levels, but also decidedly on point at times.

Inappropriation is really a novel you will need to judge for yourself. I neither liked nor disliked it, but I do acknowledge that Lexi Freiman makes some valid points via her sharp observations and snappy scenes of introspection and dialogue. It’s a bold novel, certainly not for everyone, but I have no doubt it will at some stage be labelled a cult classic. I do think it would make a brilliant film.

New Release Book Review: Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig

Notes on a Nervous Planet…
About the Book:

The world is messing with our minds.

Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.

– How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad?

– How do we stay human in a technological world?

– How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious?

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, these questions became urgent matters of life and death for Matt Haig. And he began to look for the link between what he felt and the world around him.

Notes on a Nervous Planet is a personal and vital look at how to feel happy, human and whole in the 21st century.

My Thoughts:

I’d love to make reading Notes on a Nervous Planet a compulsory human activity. Wake in the morning, eat breakfast, read Notes on a Nervous Planet for ten minutes and then begin your day. This little book, written by the immeasurably talented Matt Haig, is most accurately summed up as excellent. I have already been recommending this book to family, friends, and work colleagues.

“It might sound dramatic to say the planet could be heading for a breakdown. But we do know beyond doubt that in all kinds of ways – technologically, environmentally, politically – the world is changing. And fast. So we need, more than ever, to know how to edit the world, so it can never break us down.”

There is so much to be drawn out of this book. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all that needs to be done, if you or someone you know has ever felt anxious or panicked or just strung out by the busyness of daily life, then you’ll gain by reading this book. If you’re as solid as a rock, you’ll still gain from reading this book as a means of gaining some insight into what it’s like for those who aren’t as solid as a rock.

“We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn’t help anything. The problem, clearly, isn’t that we have a shortage of time. It’s more that we have an overload of everything else.”

The format of this book makes it easy to digest, because as the title implies, it really is a compilation of notes on many topics that are relevant to our lives as they are today, living on a nervous planet. Drawing on historical comparisons, scientific observations, social issues, psychology, technology, and marketing trends, Matt Haig offers so much food for thought on so many things.

“To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale.”

What I loved most about Notes on a Nervous Planet was how Matt Haig not only brings issues to light, he poses a range of ways that we, as individuals, can take control over our own solutions to what may or may not be troubling us. I saw things in this book that I can do for myself, and then other things that I could do for my children, and different things again that I could utilise at work with the students I interact with on a daily basis.

“Because often identifying a problem, being mindful of it, becomes the solution itself.”

There are some very important observations on mental health that would prove to be of value to EVERYONE whether you have ever experienced a mental illness or not. It’s time to get real about mental health and it’s very unlikely that any of us will cruise through life feeling tip top 100% of the time. Equally unlikely is the chance that we will never encounter another person who isn’t feeling 100% tip top all of the time. None of us live in bubbles – I think! We all have family and friends and colleagues that we interact with on a regular basis. I don’t have enough fingers on one hand to count the amount of people I have known who have ended their own lives. Same goes for those I know who have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness. I highly doubt I am unique in this.

So this:

“I feel we need to stop seeing mental and physical health as either/or and more as a both/and situation . There is no difference. We are mental. We are physical. We are not split up into unrelated sections. We are not an existential department store. We are everything at once.”

And this:

“We need to build a kind of immune system of the mind, where we can absorb but not get infected by the world around us.”

Are just examples of the excellent observations and solutions Matt Haig offers us within his Notes on a Nervous Planet. Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t end this review with a snapshot of Matt’s observations on the importance of reading:

“It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action.”

Thank you Matt Haig, for an authentic, honest, and intelligent look at what life is doing to our living.

My Reading Life: #aww2018 Challenge Checkpoint 4

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Since my last #aww2018 challenge checkpoint about six weeks ago, I can add another 13 titles to my list, taking my total for the year so far up to 65 books. I’m inching towards my goal of 80 books and I’m feeling fairly confident that I’ll reach it before the year ends.

Each of the books listed below are linked to my original review here on this blog.

The Last of the Bonegilla Girls by Victoria Purman

The Kookaburra Creek Café by Sandie Docker

A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer

Duet by Kimberley Freeman

Return to Roseglen by Helene Young

The Lost Pearl by Emily Madden (review to come)

The Peacock Summer by Hannah Richell

The Concubine’s Child by Carol Jones

Forsaking All Other by Catherine Meyrick

A Month of Sunday’s by Liz Byrski

Book of Colours by Robyn Cadwallader

The Botanist’s Daughter by Kayte Nunn

Isobel’s Promise by Maggie Christensen

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Bingo! Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

It’s bingo Saturday once again – that rolled around fast! The square I’ve filled for this entry is:

A book that scares you

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Baby Teeth definitely makes my list of scariest reads. It’s the plausibility of this novel that makes it so frightening.

Told in alternating perspectives, this story is downright creepy and utterly captivating. Hanna is seven years old, she doesn’t speak but extensive medical tests have proven there is nothing physiologically wrong with her. She is home schooled and cared for full time by her mother Suzette, an intelligent and creative woman who is sadly a prisoner to a debilitating illness, severe Chrohn’s disease. Hanna idolises her father and hates her mother. She hates her mother so much, that she deliberately hurts her when her father is not home. But her manipulations, mind games and physical attacks go beyond a naughty child, even beyond a child with special needs. Hanna is deeply disturbed, as bat shit crazy as they come, and my face was in a permanent shocked expression for the entirety of this novel.

Read my full review here

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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