Theresa Smith's Blog, page 59
February 1, 2021
Book Review: The Truth & Addy Loest by Kim Kelly
Truth is not a destination – it’s a magical ride.
Addy Loest is harbouring a secret – several, in fact. Dedicated overthinker, frockaholic and hard-partyer, she’s been doing all she can to avoid the truth for quite some time.
A working-class girl raised between the Port Kembla Steelworks and the surf of the Illawarra coast, Addy is a fish out of water at the prestigious University of Sydney. She’s also the child of German immigrants, and her broken-hearted widower dad won’t tell her anything about her family’s tragic past.
But it’s 1985, a time of all kinds of excess, from big hair to big misogyny, and distractions are easy. Distractions, indeed, are Addy’s best skill – until one hangover too many leads her to meet a particular frock and a particular man, each of whom will bring all her truths hurtling home.
Told with Kim Kelly’s incomparable warmth and wit, The Truth & Addy Loest is a magical trip through shabby-chic inner-city Sydney, a tale of music and moonlight, literature and love – and of discovering the only story that really matters is the one you write for yourself.
My Thoughts:This is Kim Kelly’s second contemporary release – I refuse to consider the mid 1980s as historical fiction, no, definitely not yet! – and I have to say, she’s hit a homerun yet again. Not all authors can easily walk from genre to genre, era to era, but it seems for Kim that nothing is out of reach. I think this comes down to the story, the essence of Kim’s work. She’s not writing about an event, with the character’s lives playing out in front of an epic backdrop. Rather, she’s telling a yarn, a story that’s playing out in familiar neighbourhoods with familiar people; a slice of Australia, served up with both the bitter and the sweet accompaniments. Nevermore has this been true than with The Truth & Addy Loest. Before we get deep and meaningful, I just want to point out that Kim’s natural wit is in top form throughout this novel.
‘The Jay Club was Sydney Uni’s marijuana club, where the coolest of the cool hung out collectively growing their hair in lieu of doing anything socially useful.’
The beating heart of this story is Addy Loest herself, young and on the cusp of the rest of her life, yet hopelessly lost and searching desperately for those elusive answers to the questions asked by all intergenerational migrant children at some point in their lives: ‘Who am I and where did I come from? Where is my home? Where do I belong?’ Addy will be familiar to many Australians who are now in their 40s and above, whose parents and grandparents migrated post WWII, leaving the pain and scars behind for a new life in a new sunshiny land. Many began again so completely that it’s as though their former selves ceased to exist once they stepped off that boat, but their reinvention in some cases reverberated down through the generations, so that their children and even grandchildren found themselves caught in an identity crisis, similar to that of Addy, where you’re neither here nor there, you’re a little bit other, but not entirely sure what that even means.
‘She was nothing – really. She was not a real Australian; she was not a real German. She was not a real Illawarra surfie chick; she was not a real Sydney University student. She fell between the cracks of everything, and it was desperately lonely there – everywhere.’
I’m not one for romance novels, but I do like a good love story – there is a difference, believe me! – and here in The Truth & Addy Loest is a tale of a beautiful love, of the grandest kind, just waiting to unfurl. It’s a little unconventional, with Addy fighting her inner critic all the way to the point where she comes to the realisation that not only does someone else love her, but that she’s also completely worthy of it. The close-knit family unit of Addy, her brother, and her father, was lovely; I enjoyed their interactions, from their father worrying about them to Addy and her brother bonding over their father worrying about them! There are plenty of social and political issues tightly woven into this novel, but with the precision of a master storyteller, Kim packages it all up and delivers it with aplomb.
‘She saw him swipe off a tear with the heel of his hand, smiling again – and it was there, right there, she finally let herself fall completely and irretrievably. She fell right to the garden floor, she landed softly on the tender grass, inside that loving, laughing tear.’
Thanks is extended to the author, Kim Kelly, for providing me with a copy of The Truth & Addy Loest for review.
About the Author:Kim Kelly is the much-loved author of eleven novels, including the acclaimed Wild Chicory and The Blue Mile. With distinctive warmth and lyrical charm, her work explores Australia, its history and people, its quirks and contradictions, from colonial invasion times to the present, and from the red-dirt roads of the outback to its glittering shores. She is also a well-known book editor and reviewer. Originally from Sydney, today Kim lives on a small but endlessly inspiring patch of paradise in the central west of New South Wales.
First Chapter Preview of The Truth & Addy Loest: here
Released in paperback, ebook and Bolinda audiobook 1st February 2021
January 31, 2021
A Month of Reading: January
Books read in January: 7
Until next month… 
January 30, 2021
Book Review: The City of Tears by Kate Mosse
Following on from the Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Burning Chambers, Kate Mosse’s The City of Tears is the second thrilling historical epic in The Burning Chambers series, for fans of Ken Follett and Dan Brown.
June 1572: for ten, violent years the Wars of Religion have raged across France. Neighbours have become enemies, countless lives have been lost, the country has been torn apart over matters of religion, citizenship and sovereignty. But now a precarious peace is in the balance: a royal wedding has been negotiated by Catherine de’ Medici and Jeanne d’Albret, an alliance between the Catholic Crown and Henri, the Huguenot king of Navarre. It is a marriage that could see France reunited at last.
Meanwhile in Puivert, an invitation has arrived for Minou Joubert and her family to attend this historic wedding in Paris in August. But what Minou does not know is that the Joubert family’s oldest enemy, Vidal, will also be there. Nor that, within days of the marriage, on the eve of the Feast Day of St Bartholomew’s, Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds and one of her beloved children will have disappeared without trace . . .
A breath-taking novel of revenge, persecution and loss, sweeping from Paris and Chartres to the City of Tears itself – the great refugee city of Amsterdam – this is a story of one family’s fight to stay together, to survive and to find each other, against the devastating tides of history . . .
My Thoughts:Spanning twenty years across the Wars of Religion, from 1572 through to 1594, The City of Tears is the second novel of The Burning Chambers series. It picks up the story of Minou and Piet ten years on from the close of The Burning Chambers. While there is some referencing back to the first book, it by no means recaps everything so I would not recommend this one as a standalone; it’s firmly a second in a series by way of following the whole story.
Once again, the history is sublime and the action plentiful. For a novel covering such a turbulent and religious/political period of history, it does so with ease. As was the case with The Burning Chambers, the story is accessible and entertaining as well as emotionally gripping. I love these characters and the way Mosse has crafted their family history against the back drop of an extensive greater European history. I’m not entirely sure how many books are planned for this series but I hope there’s a few more yet to come. The period in which this series is set is a little further back through time than the historical fiction I usually read, but I am really loving the world that Mosse has brought to life, with its blend of fictional characters and real people from history. The City of Tears is a stunning follow up to The Burning Chambers; the two together a must read for fans of historical fiction with substance.
‘In the space between one beat of her heart and the next, Minou allowed herself to stand momentarily in the company of the ghosts of the past, with those she had loved and lost, the missing and the dead.’
Kate Mosse is a number one international bestselling novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer. The author of several novels and short-story collections – including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel) and Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is adapting for the stage – her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries. She is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a regular interviewer for theatre and fiction events. Kate divides her time between Chichester in West Sussex and Carcassonne in south-west France.
The City of Tears
Published by Mantle
Released 12th January 2021
January 27, 2021
Book Review: Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Firefly Lane is an unforgettable coming of age story, by the New York Times number one bestseller Kristin Hannah.
It is 1974 and the summer of love is drawing to a close. Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the secondary school social food chain. Then, to her amazement, Tully Hart – the girl all the boys want to know – moves in across the street and wants to be her best friend. Tully and Kate became inseparable and by summer’s end they vow that their friendship will last forever.
For thirty years Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship, jealousy, anger, hurt and resentment. Tully follows her ambition to find fame and success. Kate knows that all she wants is to fall in love and have a family. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and a mother will change her.
They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart. But when tragedy strikes, can the bonds of friendship survive? Or is it the one hurdle that even a lifelong friendship cannot overcome?
My Thoughts:I’ve had this book on my shelf for a long time as I bought quite a lot of Kristin Hannah’s backlist a few years ago after reading three of her books and knowing that her writing was a good fit for my reading. As is my way, I bought a lot of them, but didn’t read all of them (yet), but there’s nothing like a pending TV series about to drop to get you moving on a book. Firefly Lane will be released by Netfilx next week and I knew that if I didn’t read the book before the watching the series, I likely never would.
I’ve read many Kristin Hannah novels now and loved them all. While I enjoyed Firefly Lane, and it definitely brought a tear to my eye “Beaches” style towards the end, it’s not my favourite Kristin Hannah. It’s a bit of a hard one to pin down, actually, in terms of the type of novel that it is. It’s a character driven narrative and all of the plot points are directly related to the characters lives rather than driving the narrative itself. It was often a slow read, spending decades with these two girls as they grow into women and progress through their lives. Sometimes there was a lot happening, at other times not as much. I do like the whole coming of age character narrative but I did feel at times as though there was no point, no destination, so to speak, other than simply following these two women as they progressed through the years of their lives and their friendship.
My biggest issue with this book is that I hated Tully. I adored Kate, but Tully was a difficult character for me to endure. She is an absolute narcissist, of the kind that whenever she would do something to hurt someone that resulted in them expressing their hurt or anger to her, she would then have an expectation for them to apologise to her for the way they had treated her – as though she were the wronged one! I just couldn’t stand this and she never changed, never improved, never grew up. She just became this famous and wealthy pain in the backside that everyone had to endure. It will be interesting to see what they do with her in the TV series. I sincerely hope she is not as insufferable on the screen as she was on the page. And I know, she had all of these ‘mother’ issues. So do I and I don’t act like that. She was also, for the most part, a really rubbish friend to Kate, and while she was there for her in the end, I honestly wasn’t sold on why Kate wanted her to be!
Kate was the saving grace of this novel and a big reason as to why I enjoyed it overall. She was just a beautiful character and highly relatable. I enjoyed the supporting cast of her family as well, particularly her mother and husband, although her daughter was almost as insufferable as Tully. Perhaps I’m just not in the right headspace for relating to narcissistic drama queens as present?! The story that emerges for Kate was tragic and really made me sad for her, for all that she had worked so hard for and a tried to accomplish for her family. It really made me think about how precious life is and how we just can’t take good health for granted. The last quarter of this novel is a real tear jerker and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a box of tissues handy for watching it all unfold in the TV series.
A bright and shining aspect of this novel was the way in which Kristin Hannah wove moments from history into the narrative. The novel spanned decades, beginning in the seventies, and she gives the reader such a sense of time throughout. The death of John Lennon and Princess Diana, the Gulf War, the attack on the twin towers; all of these moments of history – and more – interwoven alongside the changing music and fashions of each decade, the roles of women in the workforce versus the home. This injection of history was a real winner for me and kept me almost more enthralled than the actual story and characters.
I know a lot of people who have said that this is their favourite Kristin Hannah novel. While it didn’t quite reach those heights for me, I still enjoyed it and look forward to watching the Netflix series. If this is the only Kristin Hannah you have read and you were left underwhelmed, I urge you to read one of her other novels, she really is a great talent.
Kristin Hannah is the New York Times bestselling author of eighteen novels. She is a former lawyer turned writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle, and Hawaii. Her most recent novel, Night Road, was one of eight books selected for the UK’s 2011 TV Book Club Summer Read.
Firefly Lane (TV Tie-in Edition)
Published by Pan
Released 17th December 2020
January 24, 2021
Behind the Pen – A Few of my Favourites with Laura Bloom
After enjoying The Women and The Girls so much, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the author, Laura Bloom, to Behind the Pen to share with us a few of her favourites. Over to you Laura, what is your favourite…and why…
Character from one of your books?
Carol, from The Women and The Girls because even though she’s in such a difficult situation, and is feeling so unconfident and scared when this story opens, she always finds a way to be adventurous and creative and glam, and it’s those qualities which lead her to find her right path in the end.
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Scene from one of your books?
It would have to be The Women and The Girls again, when the three main characters have an argument, and it goes completely differently to how one might expect. It moved me when I wrote it, and it still does.
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Movie of all time?
Aliens, starring Sigourney Weaver. Aside from the fact that it took me three goes to actually see the whole thing (as opposed to sitting with my eyes squeezed shut and/or my fingers in my ears because certain scenes are so scary) – it’s actually a profound and brilliantly told story about motherhood and mother-love. A mother’s drive to make sure her progeny survives is the source of all life in the universe, the film suggests – not sexual love, which comes far down the list in this story.
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Book that you always keep a copy of and recommend to others?
These days in Covid times it’s Bridget Jones, by Helen Fielding. As well as being deliciously escapist and always laugh-out-loud funny, each time I re-read it I find something new and fresh and thought provoking to chew over. This time I felt a surprising level of poignant sympathy with Bridget’s mother who, along with Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice on whom Bridget’s mother is based, I’ve always found ridiculous, obviously. But these days as I get older, I find I’ve become a lot more fond of her. Bridget Jones herself also made me feel much better about all the bad habits I picked up during Covid #stay at home, because she struggles with them – hilariously – all the time.
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Fashion accessory that despite having plenty of, you still keep collecting?
I’m not sure if it’s fashion, but a good quality well cut white t-shirt is rare enough that whenever I do find one, I buy ten. No matter what happens in the future, as long as I have a freshly laundered and ironed white T-shirt I know at least on some level I’ll look and feel OK.
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Drink that you enjoy every day?
In one of her many brilliant short stories, Alice Munro wrote that having only one drink is the sign of a serious drinker, so it’s with trepidation that I admit that for me it’s always got to be a Capri. That’s a glass of Prosecco with a dash of limoncello which I have every evening around 6.30pm. I’m certainly very serious about that!
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Treat you indulge in?
See above.
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Place to be?
Byron Bay Lighthouse at 5am. Brush turkeys, views of the Caldera, the sun’s first kiss of our continent at my feet: It’s the everything.
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Person you admire?
The Australian celebrity cook, Maggie Beer. She’s strong and vulnerable, wise and fresh. In a way she’s like Libby from The Women and The Girls, now that I come to think of it, a few decades on, if all of her dreams come true. What Maggie creates is useful and beautiful and she shares it so generously and teaches others to do the same. I can’t think of a greater way to be.
~~~
Season of the year?
Winter in the Northern Rivers region where I live. The sun shines softly down on us – neither flooding nor burning, just perfect – and I never get too sweaty and hot.
The Women and The Girls by Laura Bloom
A kind of Monkey Grip meets ‘Nine to Five’, The Women and The Girls explores the price – and the rewards – of family and friendship in the Age of Aquarius – and at the dawning of the Age of Divorce.
Three friends. Three marriages left behind. Life begins in earnest.
It’s 1977, and warm, bohemian Libby – stay-at-home mother, genius entertainer and gifted cook – is lonely. When she meets Carol, who has recently emigrated from London with her controlling husband and is feeling adrift, and Anna, who loves her career but not her marriage, the women form an unexpected bond.
Their husbands aren’t happy about it, and neither are their daughters.
Set against a backdrop of inner-city grunge and 70s glamour, far-out parties and ABBA songs, The Women and The Girls is a funny, questioning and moving novel about love, friendship, work, family, and freedom.
Published by Allen & Unwin
Released 19th January 2021
RRP $29.99
Read my review here
January 23, 2021
The Week That Was…
I had a lovely birthday celebration that stretched from Sunday through to Tuesday, culminating in ‘that delicious cake’ which my daughter virtually joined us for. Technology really does have many benefits!
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Joke of the week:
My joke of the week is directly related to something that happened last Sunday, in the dead of the night. I’ve told this story on Facebook but it was too good not to share here.
Which leads into my joke, which I feel is definitely on me since I clearly can’t recognise Zeus without accessories and completely mistook him as a girl. I mean, come on, he IS pretty…
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What I’ve been watching:
It’s been a very long wait between seasons. This was good, but a bit anticlimactic with everything happening in the last 7 minutes to end on a cliffhanger…again!
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What I’ve been reading:
I read this ahead of the Netflix series dropping first week of February. I read it on Kindle so I’m not sure how thick it is but it seemed to take me ages to finish. It was good though, more to come on that later.
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Until next week…
January 19, 2021
Book Review: The Women and the Girls by Laura Bloom
A kind of Monkey Grip meets ‘Nine to Five’, The Women and The Girls explores the price – and the rewards – of family and friendship in the Age of Aquarius – and at the dawning of the Age of Divorce.
Three friends. Three marriages left behind. Life begins in earnest.
It’s 1977, and warm, bohemian Libby – stay-at-home mother, genius entertainer and gifted cook – is lonely. When she meets Carol, who has recently emigrated from London with her controlling husband and is feeling adrift, and Anna, who loves her career but not her marriage, the women form an unexpected bond.
Their husbands aren’t happy about it, and neither are their daughters.
Set against a backdrop of inner-city grunge and 70s glamour, far-out parties and ABBA songs, The Women and The Girls is a funny, questioning and moving novel about love, friendship, work, family, and freedom.
My Thoughts:Well this was a treat! I haven’t read a whole lot of Australian fiction set in the 1970s, which is a real shame because it was a period of such rapid social and political change for our nation, something Laura Bloom has tapped right into and captured with perfection in The Women and The Girls.
‘She had no idea that when she became a mother, he would also expect her to mother him, and that his feelings would become a source of concern and interest in their household, in a way that hers never were. And that he would have moods, and be up and down, and feeling like doing this and not feel like doing that, just like the children. But unlike the children she couldn’t order him to do it anyway. Or even know what it was that he should do. She didn’t have the authority, or the knowledge, and it dismayed her, and put her off him in a deep, deep way.’
Despite the passage of time between then and now, there was plenty (for me) to relate to within this story. Above all, this is a novel about the uplifting power of female friendship and it was portrayed with such a realistic slant, yet devoid of cliché tropes that usually pop up in books about friendship, predominantly: what I like to call ‘mother-competitiveness’, a unique sort of one-upmanship that is born out of female jealousy. Instead, Laura thoughtfully explored how powerful the bonds of female friendship can be, the way in which they can flex under pressure yet withstand the force when the relationship is strong, honest, and based on respect. The three women within this novel had their issues, things got strained at times, but they ultimately relied on each other and were intent on ensuring that each was living their best life, and if one of them wasn’t, then steps would be taken to help that one out. It really was divine. Another thing I particularly like about this friendship which was strikingly real, was how it showed that just because you might be great friends with each other, this doesn’t always mean your children will be. I found this particularly noteworthy as over the years, with three children, I have formed many friendships out of the friendships of my children. Some of these have not lasted, as though as soon as our children are no longer best friends we were no longer entitled to be either. I have found this more with the mothers of girls rather than boys, which interestingly, was how it was portrayed within this novel. It was heartening to see the three women accept this about their own daughters and not allow it to break their own bonds.
My favourite type of historical fiction is that which gives the reader that walk down a street from the past, so to speak. The devil is in the details for me and the details I want are all the little things that make up the fabric of society within that time frame. Laura Bloom recreated Sydney in the late 1970s with a realism that was enchanting. The fashion, the hair (!), the attitudes, that pull between the old ideas and the new; while this novel is not about the women’s liberation movement, it still explored it via the paths the three women were walking and all they were encountering along the way. So much has changed for women in Australia since the 1970s, and it’s not until you read a novel like this that you come to appreciate the simple things we take for granted now, such as being able to walk into a bank and open your own bank account without your husband’s permission. The irony, of being in a job that has a higher qualification than your husband, earning more money, yet you can’t open your own bank account without his permission. This is the sort of fiction the society junkie within me loves. There are many issues explored throughout this novel, from simple through to serious, it does have three main female characters after all so the scope was there for a lot of ground to be covered, but it does so with balance, and subsequently, the story never once felt overdone or cluttered with issues.
I can really envisage this book as a cracking Australian television drama (hello Stan, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). It has that element of love, laughter and life that would translate well to the screen and Australia in the 1970s, all its cringeworthy glory, always makes for good entertainment in my view. While the ending of this one was a tad too gift wrapped for my tastes, I can’t fault anything else about it and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to all, it has universal appeal and would make an ideal gift.
Thanks is extended to Allen & Unwin for providing me with a copy of The Women and the Girls for review.
About the Author:Laura Bloom is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels for adults and children, including The Cleanskin, which was described in The Australian as ‘a masterpiece of drama and characterisation.’ Her novels have been shortlisted for many awards, including the NSW Premier’s Awards. Laura is also an award-winning screenwriter, and many of her novels have been optioned for film and TV.
Laura grew up in Sydney, in the 1970s, where her latest novel, The Women and The Girls, is set. It explores a turning point of the last half century, with a uniquely female gaze – casting new light on old stories and bringing fresh insight to the struggles and conversations we are having today.
‘I’m from the Jane Austen/Liane Moriarty school of fiction,’ Laura says. ‘I want my stories to be entertaining, and an escape. The truth must be there, though – otherwise it’s not a good story. Money must be there, and other practical considerations. Love must be there, of course, and suffering. But offered in a narrative that’s told with humour and intimacy, so that my reader feels as if they’re in the company of a keenly observant friend.’
Now based in the Northern Rivers Region of NSW, Laura also teaches writing workshops, and presents at libraries, festivals and events.
The Women and the Girls
Published by Allen & Unwin
Released 19th January 2021
January 17, 2021
Behind the Pen with Sue Williams
It gives me great pleasure to welcome Sue Williams back to the blog to talk about her latest release and debut novel, Elizabeth & Elizabeth.
Sue Williams, Author, Journalist, WriterHow many novels have you written and published?
One. Elizabeth & Elizabeth, an historical fiction novel, is my first. I’ve written around 25 other books in total, but mostly non-fiction. I love writing non-fiction but I wanted to try challenge myself and push the boundaries. And it proved a huge challenge. It was so much harder than I’d imagined.
What is your favourite character from one of your novels and why?
I have a real soft spot for Elizabeth Macquarie. She seemed destined for a quiet life of spinsterhood, looking after her sister’s children and keeping house for her brother when she met Lachlan Macquarie, a man 12 years her senior and with huge experience of the world. Casting caution to the wind, she threw her lot in with him, and set off to find a new life on the other side of the globe.
What is your favourite scene from one of your novels and why?
Elizabeth Macquarie is despairing of ever giving Lachlan children after suffering five miscarriages, and having a daughter who died at two and a half months. She feels it is all her fault until Elizabeth Macarthur reveals it’s probably not. Her husband has syphilis, which could account for her babies not going to full term. Her relief still brings a tear to my eye.
Are you balancing a different career with your writing? How do you go about making time for your writing within limited hours?
I also work as a journalist, a travel writer and a university lecturer, teaching travel writing. Sometimes, juggling different careers can be very confusing and frustrating. You get so involved in a scene in a book and then you have to tear yourself away to finish a piece for the next day’s newspaper. Or you might be writing a book set in Australia, but be travelling in Botswana. On the whole, however, they do balance each other out, and there’s some relief when a book’s not going too well, for instance, to knock off a quick piece about property prices. And deadlines are imperative. Without them, nothing would ever get done!
What is your favourite childhood book? Did reading as a child have any bearing on your decision to become a writer?
I loved nothing better than reading books, even though I was told it could lead to blindness (!) My favourite book was A Dream of Sadler’s Wells by Lorna Hill, the story of newly orphaned, Veronica who longs to study ballet but instead must live with unsympathetic relatives in the North of England. It had the most beautiful drawing of a ballerina on the cover, and it began a life-long love of ballet and a dream to be a ballerina. That never happened. My parents said I was too tall and clumsy even to have a single ballet lesson … but it did make me discover that nothing is as powerful as the imagination, and made me want to dwell in that realm and read and write to stay there as long as I could.
Can you tell us something about yourself that not many people would know?
At one point, I despaired about completing Elizabeth & Elizabeth. I tied myself in knots with the research and timelines and my plot. In complete desperation, I went to a tattoo parlour and had a tattoo on my left arm of a lotus flower – a universal symbol of perseverance and dogged determination in that they push themselves up through the mud. It worked. I realised, when I was thinking one day of abandoning the book, that it would be forever a symbol of failure, unless I pushed through.
How has being Australian impacted on your writing and/or writing career?
I’m originally English but came here in 1989 and fell in love with the country. I think it’s so open and friendly and accepting, it gave me the confidence to try things I’d never before attempted. It somehow didn’t matter so much if I failed. Australians are so ready to give you a go.
If you could go back in time for a year, which historical era would you choose to live in and why?
I’d live in the mid-19th Century, the time of the great European explorers launching forth on expeditions around Africa. They were men like Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley … I would love to have been a part of some of those explorations. Sadly, as a woman, maybe I wouldn’t have been allowed to take part, but I could have disguised myself as a man and then set out on what would have been then the adventure of a lifetime.
If you were in a fight to the death, what would be your weapon of choice?
My fists. One of my favourite hobbies is boxing. I started when, for a book, I decided to go into Fred Brophy’s outback boxing tent for a bout, so trained for 2 weeks before on how to survive the fight. Although I lost my fixture, I discovered I loved the skills, the fitness and – I hate to admit this – but the outlet for pent-up aggression. As a writer, you sit at books or computers all day, so it’s wonderful to get out and whack a pad or a boxing bag. It’s such a great antidote for stress!
You can wear one pair of shoes for the rest of your life. What type are they and what colour?
Sneakers – comfort and speed is the key – and I have a pair in a beautiful sparkly silver. They’d carry me from work to the gym to an evening party. Heaven.
Elizabeth & Elizabeth
The story of how two women, who should have been bitter foes, combined their courage and wisdom to wield extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony.
‘I’ve waited for this moment so long, dreamed of it, prepared for it, I can barely believe it’s finally here. But it is. And it is nothing like I expected.’
There was a short time in Australia’s European history when two women wielded extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony.
One was Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of the new governor Lachlan Macquarie, nudging him towards social reform and magnificent buildings and town planning. The other was Elizabeth Macarthur, credited with creating Australia’s wool industry and married to John Macarthur, a dangerous enemy of the establishment.
These women came from strikingly different backgrounds with husbands who held sharply conflicting views. They should have been bitter foes. Elizabeth & Elizabeth is about two courageous women thrown together in impossible times.
Borne out of an overriding admiration for the women of early colonial Australian history, Sue Williams has written a novel of enduring fascination.
‘An extraordinary story of female leadership at a time when such a quality was frowned on, and female friendship forged against the odds. Sue Williams’ Elizabeth & Elizabeth brings us a nuanced and vivid portrait of the early days of colonisation. More importantly, it delivers a fascinating look into the relationship between two remarkable women.’ – Meg Keneally, bestselling author of The Wreck
‘A fascinating and evocative story of an enduring friendship between two women who played such an important role in colonial Australia’s history.’ – Caroline Beecham, author of Finding Eadie
Published by Allen & Unwin
Released January 2021
About Sue WilliamsSue Williams is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist, working in newspapers, magazines and TV in Australia, the UK and New Zealand. Born in England, but settling in Australia in 1989, she’s also a travel writer and university lecturer. She lives in Sydney’s Kings Cross with her partner, writer Jimmy Thomson.
Her books include Getting There: Journeys of an accidental adventurer; the story of her travels around isolated Australia, Welcome to the Outback; and a series of other books about the outback, Women in the Outback, Outback Spirit and Outback Heroines. She’s also written biographies of Father Chris Riley, Mean Streets, Kind Hearts; Father Bob Maguire, Father Bob: The larrikin priest; navy diver Paul de Gelder, No Time For Fear; Fred Brophy, The Last Showman; and Australia’s youngest Everest climber Alyssa Azar, The Girl Who Climbed Everest.
Sue’s true-crime book And Then The Darkness: The disappearance of Peter Falconio and the trials of Joanne Lees was shortlisted for the international 2006 Gold Dagger Award for the world’s best crime non-fiction. Her first children’s book was Everest Dreaming.
Elizabeth & Elizabeth is her first novel, borne out of a love of early colonial Australian history – pivotal in the development of the country – and an overriding admiration for women of that era making their own way in life. With both Elizabeth Macquarie and Elizabeth Macarthur having a huge impact on the fledgling nation, despite all the odds, Elizabeth & Elizabeth is the result of an enduring fascination with what might have been.
January 16, 2021
The Week That Was…
My week was spent back at work after three weeks holidays. With the majority of other staff still on holidays it was a quiet week, dragged a bit, to be honest, and had me questioning my own sanity as to why I didn’t take the extra week also, but eventually it ended. Onwards and upwards.
Oh, and tomorrow is my birthday! I have ordered this from The Cheesecake Shop since I’m not making my own cake and my sons are away until the evening. Every birthday gets a cake!
This gorgeous surprise arrived at my door Saturday morning, sent by my sister and her husband:
I do love birthdays!
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Joke of the week:
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What I’ve been watching:
This was fantastic. Just really good, solid TV. Loved it.
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What I’ve been reading:
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Until next week…
January 14, 2021
Book Review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
No one does family like Anne Tyler – and the Battistas might be her most appealing yet. The new novel from the bestselling author of A Spool of Blue Thread.
Kate Battista is stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and infuriating younger sister Bunny?
Dr Battista has other problems. His brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, his new scientific breakthrough will fall through…
When Dr Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Will Kate be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to win her round?
Anne Tyler’s brilliant retelling of The Taming of the Shrew asks whether a thoroughly modern woman like Kate would ever sacrifice herself for a man. The answer is as surprising as Kate herself.
My Thoughts:I am in search of comfort reading at present as a means of getting my reading mojo right back into full swing and no one offers comfort more comforting than Anne Tyler.
I’ve been keen to read Vinegar Girl for some time now, as it is a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (which I love), and while many other readers had said that it was not Tyler’s best work, I was still drawn to it.
I’m so glad I unpacked the box earlier this week that contained my unread Anne Tyler books. The timing was perfect! I thought this one was delightful; a truly funny, engaging, clever, yet light family drama that just hit all the right notes. It was also a quick read, coming in at only 260 pages, so if you’re after a weekend reading escape that doesn’t require too much investment of time or concentration, but promises to deliver plenty of laughs and entertainment, Vinegar Girl is the perfect book.
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grownups, A Patchwork Planet, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Vinegar Girl and Clock Dance. In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as ‘the greatest novelist writing in English’; in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence; and in 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize.
Vinegar Girl
Published by Vintage
Released 20th March 2017
