Theresa Smith's Blog, page 48

Book Review: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

About the Book:

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Published by Faber

Released 7th September 2021

My Thoughts:

Beautiful World, Where Are You is the much-anticipated new release by Sally Rooney, whose previous novel, Normal People, has literally taken the world by storm, both the novel and the TV series that was adapted from it. I will freely own up to being a Normal People fan, I loved it and I introduced my 19-year-old daughter to it when she was recently home on a uni study break and she devoured it within a day, looking up only briefly to say, “there’s more from her on your shelf, yeah?” How do you follow a novel like Normal People? Well, if you’re Sally Rooney, you do it with the blisteringly brilliant Beautiful World, Where Are You.

“Tenderly, it seemed almost painfully, they smiled at one another, saying nothing, and their questions were the same, am I the one you think about, when we made love were you happy, have I hurt you, do you love me, will you always.”

This is not Normal People 2.0, it’s a whole other beautifully meaningful novel that will surely have its own cult following by the end of September, if not before. Within a day of the novel being released, a wealth of articles could already be read online about it, and I spent some time reading through them, interested in the general thoughts about the new release. Ironically though, most of these articles focused more on Sally Rooney rather than the novel itself, her style, what she was trying to achieve with Beautiful World, Where Are You, and where she did or didn’t fall short with it. In other words, kind of wading into territory that Rooney herself writes of with regard to her character Alice, who is a twenty-something novelist struggling with what has been (two novels that have catapulted her into literary stardom) and what is to come (does she really want this life and if not, what is it that she does want).

“But then I thought: no, what we really have here is an example of a presumably normal and sane person whose thinking has been deranged by the concept of celebrity. An example of someone who genuinely believes that because she has seen my photograph and read my novels, she knows me personally – and in fact knows better than I do what is best for my life. And it’s normal! It’s normal for her not only to think these bizarre thoughts privately, but to express them in public, and receive positive feedback and attention as a result. She has no idea that she is, in this small limited respect, quite literally insane, because everyone around her is also insane in exactly the same way. They really cannot tell the difference between someone they have heard of, and someone they personally know. And they believe that the feelings they have about this person they imagine me to be – intimacy, resentment, hatred, pity – are as real as the feelings they have about their own friends. It makes me wonder whether celebrity culture has sort of metastasised to fill the emptiness left by religion. Like a malignant growth where the sacred used to be.”

I honestly loved this novel. It’s intensely deep, a portrait of friendship and love set against a backdrop of a world gone mad. Because it has, hasn’t it? We have a younger generation coming of age now in a dying world, one that is besieged by climate change and radicalism, riddled with a pandemic that just doesn’t want to budge, but rather, keeps evolving into more and more dangerous strains. This novel had a classic feel to it, firmly literary in its style and wholly character driven, largely preoccupied by said characters waxing lyrical about the state of the world and where they see themselves within it. It runs the risk of being self-absorbing but instead glows like a neo-contemporary literary masterpiece.

“When I look back on what we were like when we first met, I don’t think we were really wrong about anything, except about ourselves. The ideas were right, but the mistake was that we thought we mattered.”

Rooney’s signature style is immediately recognised but the structure of this novel differs from her previous work. We have alternating chapters of a sort, between Alice and Eileen, but the narration is not from their point of view. There is an omniscient third person narrator that allows us to know what is going on with each of the characters at the same time, almost like watching a television drama that utilises a split screen. It is amazing writing, the immense brilliance of which I cannot even hope to fully convey, but there are scenes where we see what is unfolding between each couple, line by line, switching between them. Probably sounds confusing here, but it’s not. It’s incredible and gives the reader this absolute sense of being within the orbit of all the characters, as though we are looking down over them, taking it all in, minute by minute. We are there, but also removed, at the same time.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say you work hard, because your job’s a laugh compared to mine. But you have a lot of people wanting things off you. And I just think, for all the fuss they make over you, none of them actually care about you one bit. I don’t know if anyone does.

As Felix watched her, his initial self-assurance, even sadistic triumph, changed gradually into something else, as if recognising too late his own misapprehension.”

This novel is brutally honest and filled to the brim with raw emotion. The characters love each other but are still sometimes cruel to each other – much like real life. Each of them is in pain to some degree, struggling through their days and nights, looking for something whilst not really knowing what it even is that they need or are missing. Rooney is a master of characterisation, the way she can convey so much through her dialogue, not just through what is said, but also what is left unsaid, communicated instead by a silence or a look. I feel like I always know what’s going on with Rooney’s characters, even if they aren’t aware of it themselves.

“I suppose I mean that children are coming anyway, and in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter much whether any of them are mine or his. We have to try either way to build a world they can live in.”

Returning to the structure of the novel, in between the alternating chapters are emails between Alice and Eileen. Long and luxurious emails that give a different sort of insight into who they are, both individually and to each other. I adored these emails, with their rambling philosophies and the type of honesty that can only be conveyed between very close friends and also, perhaps, in writing rather than face to face conversation. While Beautiful World, Where Are You has two love stories unfolding within it, it is the friendship between Alice and Eileen that is the true love story, the third love story and perhaps the most important one of the novel. This is where it wades back into classic literature feels, as a grand friendship novel, between two people who sometimes can’t live within each other’s orbit, but who can most definitely never live without the other.

“They looked at one another for a long moment without moving, without speaking, and in the soil of that look many years were buried.”

So, does Beautiful World, Where Are You live up to the anticipation? For me, most definitely. I loved it and will be waxing lyrical about it until the next Sally Rooney arrives to take its place.

The Week That Was…

My African Violet is fully blooming now with more buds opening each day. Amazing the change over the last three weeks since the buds first appeared.

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What I’ve been watching:

I am really enjoying this adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers. Just as out there as the book was! Nicole Kidman’s performance is excellent (as is her wardrobe for the role!!). Asher Keddie’s American accent is pretty bad but other than that she’s brilliant. Overall, the cast is very good and giving some really terrific performances. Michael Shannon is outstanding as Napoleon. The finale airs this week!

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Joke of the week:

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What I’ve been reading:

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Oh alright! I didn’t forget him…this week Zeus went to the beach for the first time. He stripped a coconut, chased waves, walked and walked and walked, and then slept for hours after. A bit like a toddler at the beach! He rates it 5 stars and intends on returning.

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Until next week…

Book Review: The Others by Mark Brandi

About the Book:

On his eleventh birthday, Jacob’s father gives him a diary. To write about things that happen. About what he and his father do on their farm. About the sheep, the crop, the fox and the dam. But Jacob knows some things should not be written down. Some things should not be remembered.

The only things he knows for sure are what his father has taught him. Sheltered, protected, isolated. But who is his father protecting him from? And how far will his father go to keep the world at bay?

All too soon, Jacob will learn that, sometimes, people do the most terrible things.

From the bestselling author of WIMMERA and THE RIP comes an unforgettable novel that explores the darkness in our world with the light only a child can find.

Published by Hachette Australia
Released 2021

My Thoughts:

“I went left, and the trail soon disappeared. I could’ve turned around, headed back down the hill, but I went on. I should’ve gone back, gone back while I had the chance. Gone back before I saw, because some things are better not to see.”

This was such an impressive and impactful novel with an overwhelming sense of dread sustained throughout, the atmosphere just seeping right off the page. The story is entirely told from the perspective of Jacob, eleven years old, and through the medium of a journal that he has been given by his father to practice his writing. I am often hesitant about child narrators. I have read some excellent novels narrated with a child’s voice and others that have left me a little hesitant about the narrative choice. But here, in The Others, Jacob’s voice is convincingly both a child of eleven years as well as that of a child who has mastered the very fine art of managing his behaviour to best coexist with a parent who has a mental illness.

This story got under my skin, and I found it hard to put down. I was desperately worried for Jacob, there was so much that was just not right with his father and the way he behaved, the things he told Jacob about the outside world, and the restrictions he put into place that kept Jacob from exploring and seeing beyond the immediate perimeter of their farm. And the way they were living! No electricity, no plumbing, no clean water at all. I had been reading this novel in the late afternoon and then I put it down to make dinner. It was as I was rummaging around in the freezer to see what frozen vegetables I had that I stopped and looked, really looked, at the meal I was preparing for my two teenage sons and myself. We had seasoned lamb chops, a cheese potato bake and roasted brussels sprouts with lemon pepper already laid out and I was looking to see what else I could add for colour and variety. In that moment, all I could think was that Jacob had just eaten a small hunk of rancid stringy wild goat and likely not a vegetable for who knows how long and what sort of effect that was having on his health. This boy just became entirely real to me for the duration of the novel and there aren’t very many authors that can master that, pierce my consciousness and haunt me with their characters and their lives.

I think this novel really shows just how lost a person can become when they fall into the traps of their own mind. Jacob’s father committed some terrible crimes, against others as well as his own son. He was seriously unwell, dangerously so, and it still makes my heart beat more rapidly thinking about Jacob, so isolated and completely at the mercy of his father. And yet, there was love there too. He had taught Jacob to read, to count, to think and question. He had also begun to train Jacob for survival; it was as though on some level he knew he could not keep up the life they were living. The Others would come, eventually, they just weren’t The Others that he had led Jacob to believe them to be. The element of dread that was sustained throughout the novel gave way to real fear at times and in some ways this novel dipped in and out of being a thriller of sorts blended with a more edgy contemporary literary style that I find uniquely Australian.

What I really liked most about this novel is the way in which Brandi examined the effects of Jacob’s father’s mental illness upon Jacob himself, not only as a child, but right through into adulthood. When you have a parent who is mentally unwell, particularly one who is unable to or unwilling to be treated, there is a burden placed upon their children that honestly marks them for life. This burden is further extended when crimes are committed, atrocities that become the stuff of urban legends. Add into this the complication of memories merging with facts and creating a chaotic blend of love and hate, protectiveness and shame. Brandi captured this perfectly. He really is one of Australia’s foremost literary talents. The Others is a hauntingly brilliant novel, unlike anything I’ve read before or am likely to read again. Highly recommended.

“You’ve been with me, inside me, all this time.”

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Book Review: The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

About the Book:

A woman struggling with burnout learns to embrace the unexpected – and the man she enlists to help her – in this heartfelt new romance by the bestselling author of The Kiss Quotient, Helen Hoang.

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her long-time boyfriend announces that he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.

That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex-he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just begun to understand.

However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family, she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that they also have to fight for themselves.

Published by Allen & Unwin
Released 31st August 2021

My Thoughts:

Five heartfelt stars to The Heart Principle by the amazingly talented Helen Hoang. I have read and loved Helen’s previous novels, The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test, but this one, just wow. So much raw emotion and depth to the characters and their struggles. Quan Diep is a character who has appeared in a supporting role in Helen’s previous two novels and it was wonderful to see him get his own story out there into the world this time around. He’s always been a bit of a favourite of mine. I’ll just chip in now though and point out that while these novels are linked through mutual characters, they are not a series in the sense that you need to read each one to appreciate the next. They are standalone stories, but I guarantee that once you have read one you will be rushing to read them all.

Anna and Quan were just an amazing couple from the get-go, even before they became a couple. While this novel is billed as romance, it’s definitely not your standard romance and doesn’t follow the traditional romance story arc either. Both characters had things they were struggling with, things they needed to work through, things they needed to take care of each other about. What I really enjoyed was the honesty between this couple, right from the outset, and it was apparent just how well suited they were when you saw them interacting with others compared to how they interacted with each other – particularly in Anna’s case.

Anna’s story is such an important one. It deals with the diagnosis of Autism in adult females and how this being missed for so long can have such profound effects upon a woman’s life, particularly in terms of how women form coping techniques, such as masking, that can eventually take a heavy toll upon both their mental and physical health. There’s a lot of raw and very deep emotion within this novel that to me, really took it to the next level within the genre of romance fiction. This novel also takes a very close look at being a carer, specifically within your own family for a close family member, the toll this takes on yourself, the relationships between the family members doing the caring, and the impact upon the person being cared for, particularly if they are unable to clearly make their wishes known. There were many heartbreaking scenes within this novel that just rang so true. Even more impactful is the author note where we learn just how autobiographical many parts of this novel were.

The Heart Principle is a standout novel that I highly recommend, even if, like me, you are not usually inclined towards reading romance novels. I am genuinely excited to see what Helen Hoang writes next, she really has firmly inserted herself onto my auto buy list of favourite authors. Bravo Helen Hoang, this novel was worth waiting for.

‘I need her to love me enough to acknowledge when she’s hurt me and try not to do it again. I need her to attempt to understand me. I need her to accept my differences. Hiding and masking, trying to please other people, trying to please her, has been destroying me, and I can’t live that way anymore.’

Thanks to the publisher for the copy.

Blog Tour Book Review: The Wattle Island Book Club by Sandie Docker

About the Book:

A moving and heart-warming story about taking risks and finding a new lease on life, by the bestselling author of The Banksia Bay Beach Shack.

Is it ever too late to rewrite your own story?

COURAGE

In 1950, teenager Anne flees Wattle Island for the big city, where she learns that establishing the life she’s always dreamed of isn’t as easy as she thought. When a secret she’s been keeping is discovered, she has no choice but to retreat home and live a quiet life. But when tragedy strikes, establishing the Wattle Island book club is the only thing that offers her solace.

PASSION

In 2018, spirited librarian Grace has been writing bucket lists since she was a child, and is ticking off as many challenges as she can now that life has handed her a hefty dose of perspective. Heading to Wattle Island on one of her adventures, she is determined to uncover a long-held mystery surrounding the town’s historic book club, unlocking a buried truth that has been trapped between the dusty pages of secrecy for years.

HOPE

All too aware of how fragile life is, Anne and Grace must come together to help the residents of Wattle Island find the bravery to move beyond the trauma that tore the book club apart. Budding relationships offer new hope, along with a library project for the town’s future – but it will take more than a few lively literary debates to break the silence and heal the past.

Welcome to the Wattle Island Book Club, where some chapters may end, but others are just beginning…

Published by Penguin Random House Australia

Released 31st August 2021

My Thoughts:

A new release from Sandie Docker is always welcome. Her stories are perfect for book clubs, the range of issues she explores and the way she weaves secrets into communities provides the perfect fodder for long discussions over tea and cake. It makes perfect sense to me that her latest release is a book about a book club! This novel is very much a tribute to the love of books, sharing them and discussing them, passing them on to one another, and drawing comfort from them. It pays homage to libraries and the vital role they play in keeping people connected. I adored the book discussions within this novel and loved the care and attention to detail that went into the selections for the book club. Book lovers will love this – and it really shone through just how much of a book lover the author, Sandie Docker, must be as well.

I have read and enjoyed all of Sandie Docker’s novels to date, she is a guaranteed good read for me. Her novels offer a lot of depth in terms of issues explored and character development. The narrative in this one swings between 2018 and the late 1940s, post-war Australia, an historical period that is of particular interest to me. Issues of xenophobia and misogyny merged to produce a compelling historical narrative. I particularly liked the friendships that were born out of this era. Where the novel fell down for me was in the contemporary narrative, specifically the ending. To give details would simply spoil the book and I’m not a fan of doing that for anyone. Suffice to say, the entire ending relating to Sam and Grace rang hollow for me. I liked them both as characters and had a lot of empathy for each of them, but I think that friendship is underrated in contemporary fiction, and I honestly feel like it would have been a better way to go in this instance. There were too many factors at play for both characters and I just felt that the direction the author went in was far too implausible for so many reasons.

The Wattle Island Book Club is recommended for fans of contemporary fiction and romance, along with those who enjoy reading books about books.

+1/2

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

You can read other reviews on this book by visiting the blogs below.

The Week That Was…

My little buds have opened throughout the week and there are quite a lot of them too. Blooming flowers are just around the corner.

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Zeus has requested that I stop spreading rumours about him. He’s a good boy who only ever sleeps on his bed. Here is a short demonstration that was photographed as proof.

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Joke of the week:

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What I’ve been watching:

I thoroughly enjoyed season 2 of Modern Love, an anthology series made up of short episodes that are based on essays published in the NYTimes. Such a joy to watch something so real and so human.

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What I’ve been reading:

Both five star reads.

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Until next week…

Book Review: The Echo Chamber by John Boyne

About the Book:

From the author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies and powered with Boyne’s characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion.

What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a ‘national treasure’ (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.

Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

Published by Penguin Random House Australia – Doubleday

Released 3rd August 2021

My Thoughts:

This novel was brilliant. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much whilst reading a book. This is clever humour, heavy on the pop culture and political references, and so in tune with the pulse of society as it is today. The Cleverley family were absurdly magnetic, the loop of six degrees of separation bouncing between them and the extra cast of characters was hilarious and really reinforced just what a small world it can be in certain circumstances, particularly when are you are up to no good or just simply making a spectacle of yourself.

There are layers of funny to this novel that make it incredibly erudite. If you’re at all oversensitive about your phone usage and/or your social media interactions, this is not the novel for you. Nor is it suitable for keyboard warriors or those who indulge in outrage for the mere sake of simply being permanently and vocally outraged. For everyone else, it’s an excellent novel and you should absolutely read it and weep – with tears of laughter. Honestly, it’s just the best. To say anything more might lead me down the same path as the Cleverley’s. And if you want to know how that worked out, you’ll just have to read the book.

Spanning five days, the novel is broken up into five parts, each prefaced with a familial memory of the Cleverley’s from bygone days timed in sync with key developments of social media platforms. I liked this, a lot, the representation of their unravelling as a family unit as more social media platforms became available. Definitely thought provoking! And that very last scene, where Beverley Cleverley (I know, that name!) notes the subject of George’s 800 page biography – gold! What a perfect way to end a brilliant novel.

Thanks to the publisher for the copy.

Book Review: The Magician by Colm Tóibín

About the Book:

When the Great War breaks out in 1914 Thomas Mann, like so many of his fellow countrymen, is fired up with patriotism. He imagines the Germany of great literature and music, which had drawn him away from the stifling, conservative town of his childhood, might be a source of pride once again. But his flawed vision will form the beginning of a dark and complex relationship with his homeland, and see the start of great conflict within his own brilliant and troubled family.

Colm Tóibín’s epic novel is the story of a man of intense contradictions. Although Thomas Mann becomes famous and admired, his inner life is hesitant, fearful and secretive. His blindness to impending disaster in the Great War will force him to rethink his relationship with Germany as Hitler comes to power. He has six children with his clever and fascinating wife, Katia, while his own secret desires appear threaded through his writing. He and Katia deal with exile bravely, doing everything possible to keep the family safe, yet they also suffer the terrible ravages of suicide among Thomas’s siblings, and their own children.

In The Magician, Colm Tóibín captures the profound personal conflict of a very public life, and through this life creates an intimate portrait of the twentieth century.

Published by Picador Australia

Released 31st August 2021

My Thoughts:

Prior to reading The Magician, my knowledge of Thomas Mann could be summed up as ‘German, wrote Death in Venice’. What I didn’t know about Thomas Mann – apart from everything – was this:

‘After Einstein, you are the most important German alive.’

The Magician, so named after the nickname given to Thomas by his eldest daughter in childhood, is the sort of novel I love best. A sweeping and grand tale about a family within the context of a changing world. The politics, the art, the literature and music, the morality; this is more than a novel about the life of Thomas Mann, it is a history of the rise and fall of early 20th century Germany and the imprint this left upon its people, and the wider world.

Tóibín writes like no other author, and I was completely swept away by this novel. We are with Thomas Mann from teenager to the age of eighty, getting to know not just him, but his parents and siblings, and then his wife and children, and beyond that, grandchildren, as well as all the other people who moved in and out of his long life. Through all these interactions and relationships, we see history unfold in an intricate way. The novel is so well informed, as you would expect from Tóibín, and not knowing anything about Thomas Mann prior to reading, I am not in any position to reflect upon the accuracy of this novel, nor would I even want to, as to do so would tarnish the reading experience. There is humour alongside great tragedy, a mix of devotion and destruction when it comes to the interactions between members of the Mann family. The two eldest children grow into their own fame and notoriety; each of the six have unique challenges that arise from being a child of Thomas Mann. It’s within this microcosm of human experience that we see what it must have been like to be so at odds with and ashamed of the nation you were born into, while also mourning the loss of it, or at least, what it once was and promised to be. I haven’t read any other novels about Germany, or being German, from this perspective and I really appreciated the way in which Tóibín pulled at the threads and explored nationalism in such an intimate way.

In a novel so intricate and in depth, with so much precise characterisation, I feel I got to know each of the characters extremely well. Katia, Thomas’s wife, was my favourite. I felt she was so enduring, so supportive of him, and so fiercely intelligent and intuitive. Thomas, I have mixed feelings about. There is no doubting his literary genius and I admired the way he contemplated the workings of the inner artist, but there were aspects of his character that didn’t sit well with me, chief among them his attraction to young boys (including his eldest son) and the way in which he would write about the people he knew, with no consideration for the way in which he portrayed them. Katia managed him quite well, she knew him perhaps even better than he knew himself and she was able to read his desires and act swiftly and with discretion when the need arose, but even so, the effect this had upon their children was more toxic than either of them anticipated. There was a consensus among the children that their mother was devoted to their father at their expense. There were many benefits to being a Mann, wealth and protection chief among them, but there were great burdens too, all of which were portrayed with care by Tóibín.

The Magician is not a light novel, nor is it short, so don’t approach it with the view of a quick read. It’s a sweeping and involving novel that lends itself to contemplation about the world as it was in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s an unforgettable novel that has the whisper of a masterpiece about it. This one is solidly recommended to those who enjoy fictional biographies, historical fiction of the twentieth century, and novels about literary figures.

‘If music could evoke feelings that allowed for chaos as much as order or resolution, Thomas thought, and since this quartet left space for the romantic soul to swoon or bow its head in sorrow, then what would the music that led to the German catastrophe sound like? It would not be war music, or marching music. It would not need drums. It could be sweeter than that, more sly and silky. What happened in Germany would need a music not only sombre but slippery and ambiguous, with a parody of seriousness, alert to the idea that it was not only desire for territory or riches that gave rise to this mockery of culture that was Germany now. It was the very culture itself, he thought, the actual culture that had formed him and people like him, that contained the seeds of its own destruction. The culture had proved defenceless and useless against pressure. And the music, the romantic music, in all the heightened emotion it unleashed, had helped to nourish a raw mindlessness that had now become brutality.’

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

The Week That Was…

Following on from last week, Zeus is not even attempting camouflage anymore. He has discovered that the man couch in eldest son’s room (which is actually the rumpus room repurposed as a flat/bedroom/teenage mancave and adjoins the garage by a door most conveniently located right beside Zeus’s dog bed) is an ideal height for a dog with dodgy hips to still be able to get up onto. Particularly when he’s encouraged to do so by said teenage son when mum is at work and can’t say no. His face is his weapon and we are all powerless.

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Joke of the week:

I find the idea that this book even exists hilarious. I’m also strangely rather curious about it as well…

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Spring is here! And right on cue, so are my little buds.

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What I’ve been watching:

This show! I couldn’t stop watching it! I can’t even begin to describe how good it was. Streaming on Binge (in Australia).

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What I’ve been reading:

A slow reading week. I am filling in as a store manager for a few weeks so my home hours have reduced in line with my work hours increasing. I’m sure I’ll adjust and strike an ideal balance soon. I am not quite as intensely tired anymore as I was on the first couple of days.

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Until next week…

Book Review: The Riviera House by Natasha Lester

About the Book:

Paris, 1939: While working at the Louvre, Eliane Dufort falls for talented painter Xavier. But when the Nazis occupy the city, Xavier leaves for England and Eliane must send her sisters to the country. Broken-hearted, she finds herself working with the mysterious Rose Valland on a dangerous secret mission for the French Resistance: to record all the priceless national treasures the Germans are stealing.

Present Day: Desperate to escape her grief, Remy Lang arrives at a stunning private estate on the French Riviera. While working on her vintage fashion business, she discovers a catalogue of artworks stolen during World War II and is shocked to see a painting that hung on her childhood bedroom wall in Sydney. Who is her family, really? And does the Riviera house hold more secrets than Remy is ready to face?

Lush, engrossing and deeply moving, this is the story of the brave women who worked against the Nazis, told by the international bestselling author of The Paris Secret and The French Photographer.

Published by Hachette Australia
Released 1st September 2021

My Thoughts:

Natasha Lester has well and truly made her mark when it comes to writing novels about the bravery and determination of women’s efforts at resistance and survival throughout WWII. In her latest release, The Riviera House, she turns her gaze to art, namely, the efforts of a brave few who endeavoured to hide, record, and save from destruction, priceless art that was being stolen and destroyed by the Nazis. And what of the importance of art, when human lives are being lost?

‘Art is all we have when words fail us, when mankind fails us and when we each fail each other. If we don’t save these works, we can’t save ourselves.’

Not only was this a novel about art, but it was also written with such artistry. There were many times where I just lingered over passages, appreciating the way in which I could envisage the entire scene so vividly on account of Natasha’s beautifully descriptive prose. Take this as an example, the way in which her words, quite literally, paint a picture.

‘…his face a stark and sludgy grey, the same wretched shade produced when all the colours – brilliant blues and passionate reds and hopeful yellows and adoring pinks and the golden colour of dreams – were mixed and, rather than a hue more spectacular than each individual shade, what appeared was something ignoble.’

I really appreciate art, although I know nothing about it, technically. I love how this character speaks about the Mona Lisa after seeing it for the first time, and how it makes her realise why it should be saved; this is what I’m talking about when I mention brilliant and Natasha Lester in the same sentence.

‘I asked Monsieur Jaujard to show me the Mona Lisa. You’d always said she was a queen among paintings and I wanted to see; to know why you and Luc were taking so many risks for a painted woman. It was almost evening and when Monsieur lifted the lid off her crate, I saw it: the sfumato, those edgeless shadows you’d often talked about. They were . . .’ She paused, groping for words. ‘Depthless,’ she settled on. ‘As if they went on and on through time and into forever. Then I looked up at Monsieur Jaujard and even though he’s seen the Mona Lisa a thousand times –but maybe never before in the darkness of France’s broken heart –he was crying too. So, I had to do something –and I won’t stop until the Nazis are gone forever.’

The Riviera House is a deeply moving story of love, sacrifice, patriotism and bravery. Heartbreaking and hopeful, and above all, inspiring. I absolutely loved this novel – all the stars!

‘At neither of these next moments do the heavens weep. They pass by unremarked amid the shadow of so much cruelty. Was it all, then, for nothing?’

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.