Theresa Smith's Blog, page 13
July 31, 2024
July: Read, Listen, Watch, Repeat…
This month has been an excellent one for reading, my best in a long time. Only one book that I didn’t like all that much, A Study for Obedience, but otherwise, the rest were all four and five star reads. I’m finding the Booker Prize listed books so hit and miss. More miss than hit. And yet, I still can’t resist them and found myself saving the photo of today’s long list that was announced for future reference, just in case I want to flog that dead horse a little bit more. Frankie, Bear, and The Echoes were all review books sent to me by publishers, and I enjoyed each of them immensely. Graham Norton is a favourite author of mine, he never disappoints. I was thrilled to receive a copy of The Echoes. It was unexpected and it arrived just in time to be devoured over a weekend. Evie Wyld’s stories appeal to me immensely. The remainder were ones I purchased myself and I enjoyed each of them. I’d like to keep the momentum going with this reading streak if possible. I always feel more like myself when I am reading every day.
Listen:
Two out of three this month with the audio books. I loved How to Be Champion by Sarah Millican. She’s pretty much the only stand-up comic I like so I was thrilled to discover this one. Memphis was very good but unfortunately, I didn’t like I Give My Marriage a Year all that much.
Watch:
I enjoyed three very different movies this month. Leave the World Behind was terrifying, I loved it far more than I expected to. A Family Affair was a fun romcom starring Nicole Kidman. I don’t think anything with Nicole in it could ever truly be bad. It won’t win any awards, but it was a fun watch. Palm Springs had quite a unique storyline, kind of a ground hog day but with every day being a wedding. M and I both enjoyed this one, it had some very funny scenes in it.
TV wise, I’ve been dipping in and out of a few things, but I did watch all of season two of The Responder. I really loved how this second season was so heavily linked with the first and by the end, you could see so many parts of the story coming full circle. I think this series is incredibly well written and I see both seasons as more of a part one and part two than two separate pieces. I found this short series, Out of Her Mind, quite by accident and after reading Sara Pascoe’s novel and enjoying it, I thought I’d take a look at her creativity in a different setting. This was indeed different. It’s meta-TV, Sara is playing ‘herself’ and also narrating the show, and all through it, we, along with the other characters, are regularly reminded that nothing is real. She breaks the fourth wall over and over; it’s at times ridiculous, funny, sad, and clever. Not everyone’s cup of tea but I didn’t mind it.
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Until next month, good reading – and stay warm!
July 29, 2024
Book Review: Bear by Julia Phillips
They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.
Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.
Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.
A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us — and within us — Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.
Published by Scribe Publications Australia
Released July 2024
My Thoughts:Bear was such a thrilling and unique story. I had no idea where this story was headed and still find myself shocked with how it all wrapped up.
Sam and Elena have a plan. After years of nursing their mother through terminal illness, once she’s passed, they’ll sell the house and leave their insulated island life behind, onto bigger and better things.
Then a bear shows up. A huge grizzly bear, not only unheard of on the San Juan Islands, but rarer than rare in Washington state. For Sam, this bear becomes the symbol of all that is wrong with their lives, yet for Elena, it becomes a symbol of something else, something magical, and she defies all warnings from the authorities, her sister, possibly even her own common sense, and begins to tread a very dangerous path.
The continued presence of the bear, Elena’s attachment to it, and their mother’s inevitable death, cause the sister’s relationship to fracture. The ending of this novel was so sad and tragic, so inevitable, yet still utterly shocking.
I loved this one, it was fantastic. A little bit fairytale-ish in its final pages, which sort of came out of nowhere, but didn’t impact on my overall enjoyment of the story. Highly recommend this one.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: I Give My Marriage a Year by Holly Wainwright
Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to?
Every month for a year, Lou sets a different test for their relationship – from daily sex to brutal honesty – to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds.
I Give My Marriage a Year paints a sharply accurate, often hilarious picture of a modern Australian marriage. Lou and Josh are a couple on the edge, and their efforts to bring their relationship back from the brink will resonate with anyone who has ever asked themselves: is this enough?
Whose side will you take? Who deserves a second chance? And will Josh and Lou stay together or split for good?
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Published August 2020
My Thoughts:Well, wasn’t this just a book filled with unlikeable characters?! It opens with Lou making a personal pact to give her marriage a year while lying beside another man in the bed she shares with her husband. And she just got more detestable from that passage on.
While this story does deep dive into a long term relationship that has broken down, I feel it missed the mark for impact with Lou being so unlikeable. I couldn’t muster any empathy for her and even when I might have been able to relate to her on something, her infidelity and unreasonable expectations she was placing onto her husband to read her mind and just be a better person while she continued to judge, resent and generally act like a selfish brat made this hardgoing in terms of relatability. Lou’s mother was also hardgoing, and while the prickly mother in law is not unheard of, this one was just rude and out of line.
As to Josh, well, he annoyed me the least but I feel he deserved better. I wasn’t convinced by, nor pleased with the ending. If this were a real life couple and Josh were my brother, friend, or son, I’d be advising him to quit flogging a dead horse. A relationship with as much resentment built up within it as their’s had is doomed to fail. In real life anyway.
The audio narration was great with this one though and if I’d been reading instead of listening, I certainly would have given up on it. I think the story, as in the bones of it, had potential but it missed the mark for me on account of not being able to warm to the characters and consequently, I was unable to fully invest myself into their story.
Book Review: The Echoes by Evie Wyld
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.
In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.
Both a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.
Published by Books Penguin Australia
Released 30 July 2024
My Thoughts:The Echoes by Evie Wyld is a stunning reflection on grief and love. When Max dies suddenly, his ghost remains trapped in the flat he shared with his girlfriend Hannah. He has no memory of his own death and has no idea why he’s still hanging around. From his hallowed state, he observes Hannah’s grief for him, through all the stages, waiting, wondering, what is his purpose now? Is it merely to antagonise a cat, or is there something more?
Often funny in a wry way, deeply moving and occasionally shocking, The Echoes is magnificent fiction. Clever and unique with all the feels. The story slips back and forth between the present day, before Max’s death, and then further back again to Hannah’s life in Australia, from long before she met Max.
This story illustrates just how little we really know each other, how often, it’s a case of what we want to show others and what we want to keep hidden, redefining ourselves over and over, changing the narrative and rewriting history.
“I think sometimes silence is better than the wrong person speaking.”
There’s so much in this story to turn over and reflect upon. It’s a beautiful, unique, heartfelt story. I absolutely adored it.
Thanks to Penguin Books Australia for the review copy.
Book Review: Frankie by Graham Norton
Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage – after all, life had already judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before.
Then Damian, a young Irish carer, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.
Travelling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York – a city full of art, larger than life characters and turmoil – Frankie shares a world in which friendship and chance encounters collide. A place where, for a while, life blazes with an intensity that can’t last but will perhaps live on in other ways and in other people.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released September 2024
My Thoughts:Favourite author feels over this one! Frankie by Graham Norton is everything we’ve come to expect from one of his novels, brimming with emotion and connection. He writes about life with exceptional clarity. Spanning decades, from post war Ireland to 1960s London, then onto NewYork and back to London again in the late 1980s through to present day, this story unfolds in pieces, from girlhood to old age, we bear witness to Frankie’s life, the lows, the highs, the heartaches and the victories. So many heartaches though.
When Frankie requires an in home nurse after a fall, it’s a young Irish carer living and working in London who arrives on the scene. Prickly at first, Frankie warms to him rapidly, and they pass the time with Frankie telling a willing Damian her life story. Frankie’s life is long and there are many eras she has lived through, but the one that made the most impact in the telling, at least for me, was the Aids epidemic in New York in the 1980s. Norton writes of this period with such finesse, the impact of it upon his characters, and his readers, immeasurable.
This story flows like silk, it’s beautifully written with such wonderful characters and such attention to historical detail. Above all, it is a novel of friendship and love. Another five star read by Graham Norton. Just divine.
Thanks to Hachette Australia for the copy.
July 15, 2024
Book Review: Weirdo by Sara Pascoe
Deep in Essex and her own thoughts, Sophie had a feeling something was going to happen and then it did. Chris has entered the pub and re-entered her life after Sophie had finally stopped thinking about him and regretting what she’d done.
Sophie has a chance at creating a new ending and paying off her emotional debts (if not her financial ones). All she has to do is act exactly like a normal, well-adjusted person and not say any of her inner monologue out loud. If she can suppress her light paranoia, pornographic visualisations and pathological lying maybe she’ll even end up getting the guy she wants? Then she could dump her boyfriend Ian and try to enjoy Christmas.
Released September 2023
My Thoughts:After loving @sara.pascoe as host of seasons eight and nine of @britishsewingbee I was delighted to discover she’d written a novel, even more so when I realised, I’d already bought it not long ago in a @kobobooks sale.
Weirdo is seriously funny in a deadpan way and unexpectedly serious in what it explores. I devoured it, laughed, had a little cry, and fell in love with Sara Pascoe a little bit more. This may be a debut novel, but Sara is no novice when it comes to writing, having already written a couple of other books and years and years of stand up and TV material. She knows how to tell a story.
At first, our main character of Weirdo, Sophie, comes across as a stalker whose life is a literal bin fire. And a bit of that is true, but her situation is more complex than that, her chaotic life a mess on account of many factors, three of which are in her immediate family. She also habitually is drawn to men who treat her badly. I swiftly looked past the chaos and developed a great deal of empathy for her. By half way through, I adored her.
Weirdo is one of those coming-of-age novels where the protagonist should have had her life in order by now but doesn’t because life is not always smooth sailing, and we aren’t all as resilient as the next person. She gets there in the end, but what a beautiful, messy, funny, tragic journey it is along the way.
Book Review: Piglet by Lottie Hazell
For Piglet – an unshakable childhood nickname – getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss – effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding…
But if a life looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the façade Piglet has created. It has the power to strip her of the life she has so carefully built, so smugly shared.
To do something about it would be to self-destruct.
But what will it cost her to do nothing?
As the hours count down to their wedding, Piglet is torn between a growing appetite and the desire to follow the recipe, follow the rules. Surely, with her husband, she could be herself again. Wouldn’t it be a waste for everything to curdle now?
Piglet is a searing, unforgettable and original debut which is taking readers by storm in 2024.
Published by Penguin Australia
Released January 2024
My Thoughts:Piglet by Lottie Hazell is the newest member of the “my favourite books” club. This novel explores the complicated relationship so many of us have with food, in particular, eating our feelings.
When Piglet’s fiance drops a bombshell days before their wedding, expecting them to break up, Piglet forges ahead with the wedding, eating her way right up the aisle. Her relationship with food is complicated, she edits recipe books for a living, cooks superb meals, and is nicknamed Piglet for a reason – but even the origin of that turns out to be not so straightforward.
Piglet, whose real name you eventually find out but #nospoilers, is a genuinely lovely woman who deserves better than what those around her are giving. Her gluttony in the lead up to her wedding day was almost like a protest against how she had been treated by her fiance, against every joke made by her father about her eating, and against herself, and what she was willing to settle for.
I loved this one and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it far and wide. There are some absolutely classic scenes in it, particularly during the wedding.
Book Review: Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
WINNER OF THE 2023 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
Included in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023
A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him.
Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs – collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies ‘just beyond the garden gate.’ And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.
With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.
Published by Penguin Random House
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:My complicated relationship with @thebookerprizes continues with this one, Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. A slog from the start, this one doesn’t really develop into anything, despite an interesting premise.
The unnamed main character, who is narrating the story, has abandoned her own life to work remotely and live in a small town in a foreign country, of which she can’t speak the language, so she can be her eldest brother’s unpaid help after his wife and children have left him. This sibling relationship is concerning and quite frankly, weird. Not only is there an obvious power imbalance, there also seemed to be something else going on. She washes his back, dresses him in the morning, massages his head after work. It’s distasteful, all the more so because it is presented as normal by the narrator.
The main character is quite pathetic, no personality of her own, she accepts everything without question, is wilfully ignorant of the affects of her own actions. She is shunned by the townsfolk because she is an outsider who doesn’t speak the language, and she compounds their suspicions by making poppets and placing them on people’s doorsteps and in other places around town, shocked afterwards that the townsfolk now suspect her of witchcraft.
It reads and feels like a story that should be set in the 19th century or earlier, but it’s very much a modern setting, so this was jarring. It is implied that the main character is Jewish and that she has experienced anti-Semitism all through her life, this situation with the townsfolk just one more example of it. If this was the intent of the novel, I think it failed.
Towards the end of the story, the brother becomes inexplicably ill and the balance of power shifts in the sister’s favour and he is all but made hostage within his own home. Was this the motivation all along for her moving in with him? Punishment for a life of sins against her? Was all of her obedience and ignorance simply an act from the start? I was left with more questions than answers at the conclusion of this one. Not recommended.
July 12, 2024
Book Review: Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighbourhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbour Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.
Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.
Published by Penguin Random House
Released April 2022
My Thoughts:This one is a bold and busy story, following the lives of the North women, a Memphis family, from the 1940s through to the 2000s. Through KKK lynchings, the death of Martin Luther King, the Gulf War, 9/11, and neighbourhood gang wars, this novel crams a lot in, all set against a background of entrenched and systemic racism.
My only issue with it has been the structure, with so much going on spanning so long, I feel it would have worked better if it was told chronologically, but instead it’s all over the place, back and forward through so many timelines and so many characters.
Otherwise, a cracking good read and brilliantly narrated. The North women are a force and I loved reading about their lives and connections with each other, their ancestors, and their beloved Memphis.
July 5, 2024
Book Review: Earth by John Boyne
From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected.
It’s the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt.
As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He’s a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career.
The jury will deliver a verdict but, before they do, Evan must judge for himself whether the man he has become is the man he wanted to be.
My Thoughts:Rating: 4 stars
Why I chose it: It follows on from Water.
Themes: Sexual assault, misogyny, homophobia.
For fans of: Moralistic stories, novellas, Irish fiction, and John Boyne.
The good: John Boyne writes majestically, he knows how to spin a captivating story, whatever the subject.
The not so good: This novella is not an easy read. It contains explicit descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Reading a story like this makes me fearful for young people and the situations they can end up in.
In brief: Earth follows on from Water and is another moralistic story. Earth tells the story of Evan, on trial as an accessory to rape, a gay footballer with very little respect for himself and his own well-being. I was deeply saddened by what Evan allowed to happen to himself, and yet, this was tempered with the knowledge of what he had allowed to happen to someone else. Evan aroused my sympathies on the one hand, but my contempt on the other. I found this one a more divisive read than its predecessor Water. John Boyne though is a splendid author and it’s only in the hands of someone such as him that this story could triumph.
