Theresa Smith's Blog, page 16
April 30, 2024
Book Review: The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins
Henry dreams of silence.
A world without the clattering of carriages through cobbled streets, the distant cries of drunken brawls, the relentless ticking of the clock.
Then he meets a fascinating, mysterious gentleman who sells just that. Precious silk that can drown out the clamour of the world – and everything Henry is so desperate to escape.
Summoned to Sir Edward’s secluded factory to try to cure his young daughter’s deafness, Henry is soon drawn deeper and deeper into the origins of this otherworldly gift: a gift that has travelled from ancient Mediterranean glades to English libraries.
Ignoring repeated warnings from the girl’s secretive governess, he allows himself to fall under the spell of Sir Edward and his silk… but when he learns its true cost, will it be too late to turn back?
From the #1 bestselling author of THE BINDING, this is an enthralling story about complicity, desire and corruption – a novel to lose yourself in.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Released May 2024
My Thoughts:Every so often you read a novel that is so blinding in its brilliance: uniquely plotted and beautifully written.
The above quote is from my own review of The Binding by Bridget Collins. In The Silence Factory, she has done it again. The end. Only joking! But seriously, this novel is brilliant. I could not put it down and read it in a day, no mean feat for me as it was 380 pages long and that is getting dangerously close to being a ‘big book’, which I’m reading less and less of lately. But in truth, when it comes to Bridget Collins, I would read any length of novel. She is an absolute master of the Victorian era gothic historical fiction niche.
First of all, if you’re afraid of spiders, this novel will terrify you. This is not a warning to take lightly. Many aspects of this story tread the boards of horror, but when it comes to the spiders, I can only imagine that if they terrify you, you will find this an extremely discomforting read.
Bridget Collins captures the Victorian era of industrial progress and social disharmony with perfection. The poverty, the lack of workplace regulations, the dismissal of the poor as having rights, the abuse of children within the workplace. It’s all here, in technicolour sobriety. I absolutely love how she brings this era to life, highlighting the corruption and greed that drove so many on their quest for wealth and status.
Our main character, Henry, is a sad man, He has lost his wife and infant, he works in a job that he doesn’t particularly like for a father-in-law he has nothing in common with and feels like a disappointment to. He is ripe for plucking by a manipulative industrialist driven by greed and corruption. While Henry is dazzled at first, by flattery and desire, he slowly begins to comprehend the horror of what he has been drawn into.
Alongside this storyline is another, the diary of the wife of Sir Edward’s uncle, Sophie. It details a sordid tale of botanical theft and greed, of betrayal and desperation. Sophie’s story just about broke my heart. It’s an example of so many historical instances of colonial theft and entitlement.
Needless to say, I highly recommend this one. A stunning, brilliant novel.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book Review: Butterfly on a Pin by Alannah Hill
A memoir of love, despair and reinvention.
Unflinching, funny, shocking, inspiring and tender: this is a story like no other.
Alannah Hill, one of Australia’s most successful fashion designers, created an international fashion brand that defied trends with ornamental, sophisticated elegance, beads, bows and vintage florals. But growing up in a milk bar in Tasmania, Alannah’s childhood was one of hardship, fear and abuse. At an early age she ran away from home with eight suitcases of costumes and a fierce determination to succeed, haunted by her mother’s refrain of ‘You’ll never amount to anything, you can’t sew, nobody likes you and you’re going to end up in a shallow grave, dear!’
At the height of her success, Alannah walked the razor’s edge between two identities – the ‘good’ Alannah and the ‘mongrel bastard’ Alannah. Who was the real Alannah Hill? Reprieve came in the form of a baby boy and the realisation that becoming a mother not only changes your life, but completely refurbishes it, forever.
Yet ‘having it all’ turned out to be another illusion. In 2013 Alannah walked away from her eponymous brand, a departure that left her coming apart at the seams. She slowly came to understand the only way she could move forward was to go back. At the heart of it all was her mother, whose loveless marriage and disappointment in life had a powerful and long-lasting effect on her daughter. It was finally time to call a truce with the past.
This extraordinary book is the fierce and intelligent account of how a freckle-faced teenage runaway metamorphosed into a trailblazer and true original.
Published by Hardie Grant Publishing
Released May 2018
My Thoughts:I’m going to start with three points:
I can’t stand misery memoirs that read like trauma porn/blame your parents for your garbage life diatribes – this is nothing like that.This is the best memoir I have ever read, and I’m extremely choosy with memoirs (for why see above point).This is a memoir that comes to life as an audio, read by Alannah Hill herself, in all her enthusiastic glory. It’s so entertaining, like nothing I’ve ever listened to before. You won’t get the full Aileen Hill (Alannah’s mother) effect by reading it. For that, and believe me, you need that, you’ll have to listen to Alannah reading as her mother. It’s both hilarious and tragic, the things Aileen would say and the way she would say them.From a childhood trauma that combined neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, to the eccentric Queen of the Australian fashion industry, this is a story of so much about a woman who is quite literally a self-made wonder. Cancelled from her own label before cancel culture was even a thing, a rapid and successful come-back, only to step away from it all in favour of taking stock, battling cancer, and being the best mother she could be. Alannah Hill, I salute you. Self-depreciating, unflinchingly honest, sad and funny, Butterfly on a Pin is not just a memoir, it’s a love letter to a mother that couldn’t mother, a thank you to those who loved Alannah Hill fashion and still do, a beacon of hope for survivors of child abuse, and a testimony to hard work, long hours, and soldiering on. Brilliant. Absolutely marvellous.
April 29, 2024
Book Review: Cool Water by Myfanwy Jones
Frank Herbert’s family has gathered at Tinaroo Dam for his daughter Lily’s wedding – the first time he’s been back since the death of his father, Joe, a year earlier. Like Frank, the dam is at an all-time low and as the water recedes, objects begin to emerge – abstract and disquieting.
Joe’s father Victor – Frank’s grandfather – was the butcher of Tinaroo during the dam’s construction, but Joe refused to speak of him. Joe was not a talker, but he could roar. And he could smash things. What sorrow was his fury, and this place, concealing? And can Frank find a way into a future of his own making?
Moving between the weekend of the wedding and the explosive year in the 1950s that would shape the Herbert men’s destiny, Cool Water is an unforgettable novel about fathers and sons, what it means to be a good man, and the damage that can ripple through generations.
A breathtaking story brimming with insight and emotional power by Miles Franklin-shortlisted author Myfanwy Jones.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released February 2024
My Thoughts:This was a beautifully written story, gently unfolding, and deeply introspective. There are some serious themes explored throughout – intergenerational trauma, toxic masculinity, domestic violence – and yet, it reads so smoothly, unflinchingly honest yet never once giving me cause to look away. What a skilled writer Myfanwy Jones is.
Alternating between the present day and the 1950s, we bear witness to the shaping of the Herbert men. It was particularly an emotionally charged experience to read about Joe as a young lad, being repeatedly crushed by his cruel father, and to then discover how much like his own despised father he ended up becoming. Repeated patterns, the ripples of which continued to have effect even after the deaths of each generation.
We all carry our families with us, whether we want to or not. Some of us bear it lightly, others are weighed down by it. Cool Water was a story that demonstrated this in exactitude. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
April 28, 2024
April: Read, Listen, Watch, Repeat…
I’ve read a great selection of novels this month, all four and five star reads. Six of the above were review titles sent to me by publishers, with Appreciation being the only title I read in April that was from my own tbr. It was read for book club. My reading highlight of the month was Long Island, the long-awaited sequel to Brooklyn, which is a long-time favourite novel of mine. This follow up was just as glorious and emotionally charged as its predecessor. My love for Irish fiction has no expiry. The quickest book I read in April was All the Beautiful Things You Love, powering through it in just an afternoon. I don’t get to do that very often, but when I do, I take full advantage of the spare time, particularly if I have such a good book in my hands. I’ve been looking closely at my reading this year and feel as though I haven’t been giving review titles as much of my reading attention as I used to so that has become my reading goal for the foreseeable future, to read more of what is being generously sent to me by publishers. My April reading has made for a good start with that goal.
Listen:
Paige Toon’s latest was a joy to listen to and I’ve followed that up with Alannah Hill’s 2018 memoir, Butterfly on a Pin, which is wildly entertaining. No duds this month on the listening front.
Watch:
I’ve watched some quality TV this month along with two great movies. Ripley is of course adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr Ripley. It is very different to the previous film adaptation, and this seems to be dividing viewers. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot. Shot entirely in black and white, it was incredibly atmospheric and chilling. Another book to film adaptation was Blueback, based on the Tim Winton novel of the same name. This was a gorgeous film, both beautiful visually and deeply emotional. My watch of the month was definitely Happy Valley, the British crime series which has its latest and final season on ABC iView. I watched all three seasons within a week, which is very unusual for me, but I just couldn’t stop watching. I’ve turned to something lighter now by immersing myself into The Great British Sewing Bee. It’s like hot chocolate and a warm blanket for the soul.
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That’s a wrap for April, a few days shy of the end of the month, I know, but tomorrow begins another working week, so I’m pretty certain there will be no more completed reads to squeeze in. Seven read and two listened to, I’m feeling like that’s a good tally to finish on. Until next month, good reading!
April 20, 2024
Book Review: Appreciation by Liam Pieper
A wild romp through Australian celebrity culture that’s as bold and scathing as it is hilarious.
Oli Darling is a queer artist from the country – it says so right at the top of every press release. His art has brought him fame, money, fashionable substance abuse issues and only a little imposter syndrome. But then he goes on live TV and says the one thing that can get a rich white guy cancelled.
With his reputation in tatters, nobody is buying Oli’s schtick or his art. That’s a problem for all the people who’ve invested millions in him. Powerful, dangerous people. To save his own skin, Oli will need to restore his public image. Together with a ghostwriter, he must do the most undignified thing imaginable: he will have to write a memoir.
So begins a journey through the underbelly of modern celebrity that sees Oli confront the consequences of his own ruthless mythmaking – lies he’s told others, lies he’s told himself. Perhaps he was right to feel like an imposter. And maybe the only way out is to take a good hard look at himself.
Outrageous satire of the highest order, Appreciation sets its sights on the question of authenticity in a time where image trumps talent, narcissism rules, and no canvas is so tarnished it can’t be painted over.
Released March 2024
My Thoughts:I’ve really dithered over writing this review, unable to find the words to coherently review Appreciation instead of just gush about it. I absolutely loved this novel; it was sharply funny and smartly satirical. It was our book club pick for March – my selection – and overall, everyone enjoyed it.
It’s one of those novels that would translate very well to the screen. Liam Pieper is a force that knows no comparison. His writing just doesn’t miss a beat and is so clever in terms of the way he unfolds his story in both the immediate and the long game. There is just so much in this novel to enjoy, to grimace over, to nod about, to make you discomfited, and to give you cause to just laugh out loud and shake your head about.
‘Pushing forty now, Oli feels about young people the same way he does about modern cinema: wonderfully entertaining, but everything takes an hour and a half longer than it needs to.’
So good. One of my top reads of the year so far.
April 19, 2024
Book Review: Seven Summers by Paige Toon
Two epic love stories. One impossible choice. The stunning new novel from Paige Toon.
Six summers ago…
Liv and Finn meet working in a bar on the rugged Cornish coastline, their futures full of promise. When a night of passion ends in devastating tragedy they are bound together inextricably. But Finn’s life is in LA with his band, and Liv’s is in Cornwall with her family – so they make a promise. Finn will return every year, and if they are single they will spend the summer together.
This summer…
Liv crosses paths with Tom – a mysterious new arrival in her hometown. As the wildflowers and heather come into bloom, they find themselves falling for one another. For the first time Liv can imagine a world where her heart isn’t broken every year.
Now Liv must make an impossible choice. And when she discovers the shocking reason that Tom has left home, she’ll need to trust her heart even more.
Released March 2024
My Thoughts:I’ve never yet met a Paige Toon novel I haven’t gotten on with and her latest, Seven Summers, is no exception to this. All. The. Feels. It’s her superpower, and the reason I return to each new release of hers.
Liv, our protagonist in this story, doesn’t get off easily when it comes to tragedy. And even when you think she’s getting her happily ever after, she’s still not let off the hook. This was a genuinely heartfelt story of family love and obligation, sacrifice, and living life safely within the confines of your comfort zone.
I listened to this one and the narration was very good, so well suited to the tone and vibe of the story and sounded exactly like what I’d expect Liv to sound like. This was important given the first-person narration of the novel.
Fans of Paige Toon, as I am, will devour this latest release, alternating between laughter and tears, probably more tears than laughter, but it’s so worth it in the end. I really enjoyed the alternative epilogue that Paige has written at the end of this novel. It’s quite long, and it moves forward through future summers, so if you think you’re nearing the end of this story once you hit the epilogue, you couldn’t be more wrong. There is so much more to come from that point on.
Heart breaking and life affirming. This would make a great book club pick as well.
April 17, 2024
Book Review: The Beauties by Lauren Chater
An incomparable beauty. A promise to a king. A portrait that can never be completed.
When Emilia Lennox loses everything after her husband’s lands and title are confiscated, her beauty is her best bargaining chip with the only man who can restore their fortunes: King Charles II himself.
But the king’s favour comes at a price. He will pardon Emilia’s husband only if she agrees to be his mistress. Torn, Emilia comes up with a condition of her own: she will consent, but not until her portrait hangs among the famed Windsor Beauties, a series commissioned by the Duchess of York to showcase the fairest women in the royal retinue.
For Henry Greenhill, ambitious assistant to the court painter, the opportunity to paint Emilia’s portrait is a chance to step out of his master’s shadow. But his sitter proves as evasive as she is beautiful, and with barely a sketch to show for his efforts, Henry’s career is on the line.
As the king’s patience wears thin, it’s clear that more than creative talent will be needed to capture this incomparable beauty on canvas.
Published by Simon & Schuster Australia
Released April 2024
My Thoughts:A new release by Lauren Chater is always a much-anticipated literary treat. The Beauties is a novel about art and beauty – the way it is valued and the way it is represented. Told from multiple perspectives, The Beauties is at once an absorbing and enjoyable read. Set in the mid 1660s, within the reign of King Charles II, just as he is taking back his throne, and then several years later, as he is well and truly ascended to it.
I enjoyed all of the perspectives but had a particular liking and interest in Anne’s sections, prior to her becoming the Duchess of York, sister-in-law to the king. I enjoyed her character development and felt myself particularly invested in her destiny and admired her emphatic values and honour.
While this story is predominantly about art in the 17th century, it is also about beauty, its value, and the immortalisation of it on canvas. I found it interesting to read about the copies that were made of paintings as small cards, traded and sold in the same way of media today, reinforcing that a woman and her beauty has always been a commodity traded by men for gain, be it financial profit or for pleasure.
The Beauties is also a love story between two artists, but I enjoyed how this simmered in the background, not overtaking the larger story. This is very much a novel of female emancipation, using one’s beauty as a weapon, just as much as an asset. Highly recommended for lovers of historical fiction with a feminist gaze.
April 1, 2024
Book Review: My Brilliant Sister by Amy Brown #AYearofNZLit
While Stella Miles Franklin took on the world, her beloved sister Linda led a short, domestic life as a wife, mother and sister. In a remarkable, genre-bending debut novel Amy Brown thrillingly reimagines those two lives – and her own – to explore and explode the contradictions embedded in brilliant careers and a woman’s place in the world. Sliding Doors meets Wifedom.
Stella Miles Franklin’s autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career launched one of the most famous names in Australian letters. Funny, bold, often biting about its characters, the novel and its young author had a lot in common. Miles went on to live a large, fiercely independent and bohemian life of travel, art and freedom.
Not so her beloved sister Linda. Quiet, contained, conventional, Linda was an inversion of Stella. A family peacemaker who married the man Stella would not, bore a son and died of pneumonia at 25.
In this reflective, witty and revealing novel, Amy Brown rescues Linda, setting her in counterpoint with Stella, and with the lives of two contemporary women: Ida, a writer whose writing life is on hold as she teaches and raises her young daughter; and Stella, a singer-songwriter who has sacrificed everything for a career, now forcibly put on hold. Binding the two is the novella that Linda might have written to her sister Stella – a brilliant alternative vision of My Brilliant Career.
Innovative and involving, My Brilliant Sister is an utterly convincing (and hilarious) portrait of Miles Franklin and a moving, nuanced exploration of the balance women still have to strike between careers and family lives. It gives a fresh take on one of Australia’s most celebrated writers and an insight into life now.
Published by Scribner Australia (Simon & Schuster Australia)
Released January 2024
My Thoughts:This was an interesting novel in terms of structure. It’s pretty much three novellas more than one novel, to my mind, connected by theme rather than character or plot. In the first one, we meet Ida, a young mother who has moved to Melbourne for her partner’s career. Her career is on the backburner while she mothers and manages the bulk of the domestic duties while juggling a teaching job throughout the Covid pandemic. She feels stranded within her own life, so far from her own mother who is back home in New Zealand, her friends which are also back home, devoting time and energy to a job that is not her passion, but which pays the bills, while her husband devotes endless spare time to his passion, shirking domestic duties and reaping all of the benefits of the unpaid domestic and emotional labour of his partner. This was all too familiar.
In the final one – and I know I’m jumping ahead here – we meet Stella, stage name Miles, a singer from New Zealand who is hunkering down back home through the Covid pandemic, suffering a broken heart, and a career crisis. She’s taking time to find herself but appears to be just getting more lost in herself in the process. Contemplating her life against that of her best friend, childless by choice for her career while her best friend has a daughter, a partner, a home, all the trappings. This put me in mind of the whole notion that women always have to choose, that unlike men, society is not structured for us to have it all. We always have to choose. This or that. There is always a sacrifice.
Which brings me to the middle one. The bridge between the two, even though none of the characters in each of the sections intersect. This bridge is a letter, or a diary perhaps, written by Linda Franklin, to her sister Stella Miles Franklin. In it, she shakes out her childhood, her adolescence, her early adulthood, and contrasts it to that of her sister. The compliant second daughter, the homemaker, the delicate one, the one who trod the expected path in comparison to the older, brasher, independent sister. In this piece of writing, Linda seems to know instinctively that she is at the end of her life, despite only being in her mid-twenties and a new mother. It’s like the diary/letter is a bold goodbye, a statement of what could have been, a desperate last-minute plea to been seen. I really liked it and found it quite moving.
The middle section has nothing to do with New Zealand but the first and third ones do. In the first, the protagonist is missing her home, Australia just that bit too different from home. In the third, the protagonist is reluctant to leave New Zealand again now that she has been back again and forced to remain on account of the pandemic. She feels that much has become unfamiliar about her home and she seeks a reconnection with the place. The author is New Zealand born but lives in Melbourne now. I felt an infusion of the personal into these two characters.
‘Rain, I am learning, is revered in this country. We don’t have the same relationship with water in New Zealand. Nor with fire. He was pleased to be leaving the earthquake-prone capital, and feels safer in Melbourne, away from fault lines. But there are other dangers.’
I really enjoyed this novel. There was so much within it to contemplate. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
Book three of #AYearofNZLit.
March 31, 2024
Book Review: The Death of John Lacey by Ben Hobson
An Australian western set in the goldfields of Ballarat, The Death of John Lacey is a viscerally powerful story of greed, power and violence from the author of Snake Island.
John Lacey’s lust for power and gold brings him riches and influence beyond his wildest dreams. Only he knows the terrible crime he committed to attain that wealth. Years later, as Lacey ruthlessly presides over the town he has built and named after himself, no one has the courage to question his power or how he wields it.
Brothers Ernst and Joe Montague are on the run from the law. They land in Lacey’s town and commit desperate crimes to avoid capture. Lacey vows retribution and galvanises those in the town to hunt them down. But not everyone is blind to Lacey’s evil, and a reckoning is approaching.
A visceral, powerful dissection of dispossession, colonisation and the crimes committed in their name, The Death of John Lacey is also a moving and tender account of the love between brothers and a meditation on the true meaning of mercy and justice.
Released January 2023
My Thoughts:This was a gripping and often confronting read. I’m not characteristically a reader of Westerns, but I have read all of Ben Hobson’s books to date, I am a real fan of the honesty he writes with and how well researched his books are. Each have been vastly different too; he never writes the same thing twice.
Like Snake Island before it, The Death of John Lacey is gritty, violent, and confronting. Set in Colonial Australia at the time of early settlement, the beginnings of Ballarat and the Gold Rush, it’s a story of greed, racism, theft, and dispossession. John Lacey is about as despicable as you can imagine, and then some. As the novel rockets along to its inevitable end, I was bracing myself.
This is also a story of two brothers from different mothers, different cultures. Joe was stolen from his family by his father when his mother died and has been brought up without his Aboriginal family. The brothers are fiercely devoted to each other; they are the only family each of them has. Their bond is one that only death could break, and even then, you had the impression they would still be connected.
This story is a blaze of glory type of Western. A no holds barred, do or die, kind of story. It highlights how dangerous Australia was in the early colonial years, the lawlessness, the brutality. The Death of John Lacey is a confronting yet honest glimpse back into our history, the very worst of it, when the seeds of so many wrongs were just beginning to be sowed. Another excellent release from Ben Hobson. His literary talent is a gift that just keeps on giving.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
March 30, 2024
Book Review: The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill
Theo has one dream—to become a bestselling author. Determined to make her mark in the literary world, she heads to the US on a whim to stay with her brother Gus and focus on her writing. But her plans take an unexpected turn when she befriends a famous author, Dan Murdoch, at a local bar—and then he turns up dead. Suddenly, Theo finds herself as the prime suspect.
As Theo grapples with the shocking turn of events, she realizes that Dan may not have been the person he seemed to be, and there is something sinister going on in the world of publishing. Desperate to clear her name and uncover the truth, Theo sets out on a quest to find out who killed Dan and why.
As she digs deeper, Theo uncovers a web of deceit, conspiracy, and hidden motives, with clues leading her to a shadowy organization with far-reaching power. With her own life in danger, Theo must unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.
Released March 2024
My Thoughts:Sulari Gentill has solidly carved out her niche when it comes to meta-fiction. Generally speaking, I’m not a huge reader of mystery fiction, but I can’t get enough of these standalone mysteries by Sulari Gentill. They are fantastic. The absolute definition of a page-turner.
I never really see where she’s going with these stories, but with this one, I really didn’t see very much at all in terms of what was served up. The plot was more twisted than a maze and the story spanned a lot longer than what I expected too. But it all moved along briskly and was absolutely engrossing, from start to finish.
Conspiracy theorists, doomsday preppers, fanatic fans – this novel had a lot going on, but it all worked so well. I can’t wait until the next one!
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
