Theresa Smith's Blog, page 81
March 12, 2020
The Week That Was…
Next week is a birthday week in our family. My youngest son turns 14 on Monday and my oldest son turns 16 on Thursday. Cake all round! And this also means…back to the L plates!
Speaking of youngest son, he and several other lads shaved their heads in front of the school yesterday for Shave for a Cure. They raised close to $4000 for the charity. Some people might think that it’s easy for boys to shave their heads but this was not an easy decision for my son. As a parent of boys and a girl, I have noted that my sons are just as interested in looking their best as their sister is, so shearing off his hair, in front of a crowd, shows a strength and confidence within my youngest that makes me quite proud of him.
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Joke of the week:
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Book of the week:
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Blogging highlight of the week:
Interviewing Catherine Noske, author of The Salt Madonna.
And…
Being interviewed myself on a piece about the Australian Women Writers Challenge for Underground Writers.
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Beautiful photo of the week:
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What I’m reading right now:
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Until next week… 
March 11, 2020
Behind the Pen with Catherine Noske
Last week I reviewed a stunning debut literary novel, The Salt Madonna, and today, I am thrilled to welcome its author Catherine Noske here to Behind the Pen.
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Describe The Salt Madonna in five words:
Broken voices, an isolated island.
What was the initial genesis for The Salt Madonna?
There are two answers to this question! The first, more straight-forward answer is that the first version of the novel was written as part of my PhD in creative writing, at Monash University. That work, and the research happening around it, had a huge influence on the novel and its thinking, particularly in terms of the themes around place and belonging.
But the idea for the story itself first came into my head sitting in a field in France. I was travelling, it was summer, and sitting there I watched a girl running through the paddock opposite me. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or scared. It intrigued me, and I started imagining a world around her, and why she might be running. The story came out of that – sitting there, I wrote a little paragraph in my diary, some of which still remains in the final version of the novel. In that same trip I saw Lourdes, and explored the story of Bernadette, which was a big influence over the work as a whole.
Let’s talk about the setting. How did you arrive at the time and place that ended up in the novel?
The landscape of Chesil is influenced heavily by my home in south west Victoria, so the space of the island is partly a nostalgic one for me. I think that probably contributed to the temporal setting as well, in the sense that I wanted to write in and about the contemporary world, but with the remembered scenes removed enough from the current moment that Hannah’s present-tense reflection felt like it opened a passage into the past. It was important to me that the work responded to the things happening in our current society, the growing discourse around domestic violence, sexual trauma, and institutional responses as the Royal Commission explored. The statistics and facts Hannah cites have all been drawn from real sources.
But as I started writing, it was too difficult to imagine the story as actually happening in the place I grew up – I was too intimately connected to it, and that felt like a conflict. I didn’t want people to think this was in any way based on real life. So Chesil was detached from reality, and reimagined as an island. That change allowed me some more liberty in writing it, and also helped increase the sense of tension and claustrophobia in the characters of the community there. I love islands – they can be very strange places as well as uniquely wonderful and beautiful.
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Were there any interesting facts/thoughts you uncovered during the course of your research/initial drafting that didn’t end up in the novel?
There are several threads which were pulled out in drafting – little points and ideas in the research which didn’t end up finding the right space in the story itself. These included ideas about Australian history, including hidden histories in archival journals and letters; details about farm life; ideas about myths and fables and spiritual beliefs; even little points of influence from church services and psalms. (There was also a lot of self- indulgence that needed to be cut back – I had a lot more writing in the original that was about my horses!) But it’s hard to contextualise how these ideas would work now, having untangled them from the writing. For instance, at one point I had a long passage in there about ring-barking, and the manual labour of clearing land on an island, which connected for me with a thread of thinking about the trauma of world wars, and connected again to another thread about class and social structures in rural communities… Some of this is still there, but not all of it. There was another scene which was about home butchery, which I loved, but it just didn’t work. And I learned a lot about the management of grapes in viticulture which helped me write the scenes in the vines, but didn’t actually feel to me like it needed to be made explicit in the moment of the story.
With your debut novel now released, what’s next for Catherine Noske?
I’m working on a couple of projects now, though I’m not sure what they will each become. I am not the quickest of writers – I like to let my thinking develop slowly. But I’m hoping this year will see me put my next novel together in draft form at least…
The Salt Madonna
About the Book:
This is the story of a crime.
This is the story of a miracle.
There are two stories here.
Hannah Mulvey left her island home as a teenager. But her stubborn, defiant mother is dying, and now Hannah has returned to Chesil, taking up a teaching post at the tiny schoolhouse, doing what she can in the long days of this final year.
But though Hannah cannot pinpoint exactly when it begins, something threatens her small community. A girl disappears entirely from class. Odd reports and rumours reach her through her young charges. People mutter on street corners, the church bell tolls through the night and the island’s women gather at strange hours…And then the miracles begin.
A page-turning, thought-provoking portrayal of a remote community caught up in a collective moment of madness, of good intentions turned terribly awry. A blistering examination of truth and power, and how we might tell one from the other.
About the Author:
Catherine Noske is a writer and academic currently teaching at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on contemporary Australian place-making and creative practice. She has been awarded the A.D. Hope Prize, twice received the Elyne Mitchell Prize for Rural Women Writers, and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award (2015). She is editor of Westerly Magazine.
Published by Picador Australia
Released 25th February 2020
March 10, 2020
Book Review: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
About the Book:
This is a love story but not the love story you are expecting…
Perfect for fans of ME BEFORE YOU and ONE DAY, this heart-breaking story of love, loss and life will have you questioning everything you thought you knew about destiny…
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan has been in possession of her meticulously crafted answer since she understood the question. On the day that she nails the most important job interview of her career and gets engaged to the perfect man, she’s well on her way to fulfilling her life goals.
That night Dannie falls asleep only to wake up in a different apartment with a different ring on her finger, and in the company of a very different man. The TV is on in the background, and she can just make out the date. It’s the same night – December 15th – but 2025, five years in the future.
It was just a dream, she tells herself when she wakes, but it felt so real… Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.
That is, until four and a half years later, when Dannie turns down a street and there, standing on the corner, is the man from her dream…
My Thoughts:
The blurb for this book opens with: ‘This is a love story but not the love story you are expecting…’
They mean that. Take their word for it. I didn’t, and I was reading along, expecting Sliding Doors, but ended up in Beaches. Two vastly different universes. This is a very good story, it really is, but the distance between my expectations of what it was going to be and what it actually turned out to be was just so vast, it prevented me from approaching the story in the right way. I was also, at the time of picking this one up, craving something, well, more like Sliding Doors.
‘I saw what was coming, but I did not see what it would mean.’
Amazon Prime released a television series late last year called Modern Love and I feel like this story is very much in tune with the themes of that series – it could almost be adapted as an episode if they were to make a second season, it even had the New York setting right. Every so often I’ll come across a novel that I feel would play out much better on the screen than it does on the page, and this is definitely one of those times.
Despite the emotional intensity of the story, I did, unfortunately, find it rather dull in places. There were whole sections where people were just going through the motions of daily life and having conversations with each other that really went nowhere and contributed nothing to the story. Out of the entire novel, I enjoyed the last 15% the most. This is where everything seemed to fall into place and the cleverness of the plot became apparent. The last scene of the novel was one I particularly liked; it really dazzled and I could see it playing out so perfectly on a screen.
Overall though, this is probably one of those times where the reader/book fit is just not there. I’m fairly confident though that there will be plenty of readers who will gush about this one and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see it picked up and turned into a movie or television series at some stage, hopefully by Netflix or Prime so I can watch it without delay and see just how right I was about its adaptability.
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy via NetGalley of In Five Years for review.
About the Author:
Rebecca Serle is an author and television writer who lives between NYC and LA. Serle most recently co-developed the television adaptation of her YA series FAMOUS IN LOVE for Freeform and Warner Brothers Television. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Her bestselling US debut adult novel DINNER LIST was a Book of the Month club pick, Costco book club pick, and Bustle Bookclub selection.
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In Five Years
Published by Hachette Australia – Quercus
Released 10th March 2020
March 9, 2020
Book Review: The Lost Love Song by Minnie Darke
About the Book:
The Lost Love Song is a bewitching novel about love, second chances and the power of music, from the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling Star-crossed . . .
This is the story of a love song . . . And like any good love song, it has two parts.
In Australia, Arie Johnson waits impatiently for classical pianist Diana Clare to return from a world tour, hopeful that after seven years together she’ll finally agree to marry him.
On her travels, Diana composes a song for Arie. It’s the perfect way to express her love, knowing they’ll spend their lives together . . . Won’t they?
Then late one night, her love song is overheard, and begins its own journey across the world.
In Scotland, Evie Greenlees is drifting. It’s been years since she left Australia with a backpack, a one-way ticket and a dream of becoming a poet. Now she spends her days making coffee and her nights serving beer. And she’s not even sure whether the guy she lives with is really her boyfriend or just a flatmate.
Then one day she hears an exquisite love song. One that will connect her to a man with a broken heart.
My Thoughts:
I read Star-crossed by Minnie Darke last year and instantly loved it. This year she has returned with a new novel, The Lost Love Song, and while it’s completely different to Star-crossed, it’s resulted in another case of insta-love with me. I love music: the way in which people can be brought together and connect over it, the way it can soundtrack your life, the way in which it can make you feel, and the way in which you can lose yourself in it. I would listen to music all day and night long if I could and I’ve always been that way. So this novel appealed to me right from the outset, given that it completely revolves around music and all of those things I just mentioned loving about it.
‘Music is the last thing we forget…
Apparently, we have this special place in our brains for remembering music, and it’s completely separate from the parts where we store every other thing. And when we hear music that we know, our brains light up in completely different ways than when we hear music we don’t. We’re wired to feel something special when we hear music that reminds us of something.’
The Lost Love Song is so named after a love song that gets lost…and then found. And found again, and again. A song that is written but left incomplete, then finished by the person who finds it, then passed on as a love gesture to the next person, and so on and so on, until the song eventually makes its way back to the person for whom it was intended, just in a completely different format to the original. We follow this song’s journey through a series of ‘interludes’ that bracket the chapters throughout. But the interludes do not exist separate from the main story, that of Arie and Evie, but rather have a connectivity that builds with a serendipitous quality that was just gorgeous to discover.
This novel is written with the intent to make you feel, and with this reader, it achieved its purpose. It’s a moving tribute to living and loving, in all its glory and pain. And it’s above all a testimony to the power of music as a means of communicating and bringing people together. I adored The Lost Love Song and feel entirely certain now that anything written by Minnie Darke will be a crowd pleaser. Is this a love story? Yes, but not like what you’re thinking. It has that marvellous Love Actually/Valentine’s Day/New Year’s Eve quality about it. It’s a very special book indeed.
Thanks is extended to Penguin Random House Australia for providing me with a copy of The Lost Love Song for review.
About the Author:
Minnie Darke is the author of the bestselling novel Star-crossed, winner of the Margaret Scott People’s Choice Award, and which has now been published in over 30 countries. Her fantastic new novel, The Lost Love Song, will be released in March 2020. She lives in Tasmania with her husband and family.
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The Lost Love Song
Published by Penguin Random House Australia – Michael Joseph
Released 3rd March 2020
March 8, 2020
Book Review: I Choose Elena by Lucia Osborne-Crowley
About the Book:
Aged fifteen and on track to be an Olympic gymnast, Lucia Osborne-Crowley was violently raped in Sydney on a night out, sparking a series of events that left her devastatingly ill for more than ten years of her life. Her path to healing began a decade later, when she told someone about her rape for the very first time. Lucia eventually found solace in writers like Elena Ferrante, and her work is about rediscovering vulnerability and resilience in the face of formerly unbearable trauma.
The author explores what has been proved, but is not yet widely known, about how trauma affects the body, bringing to our attention its cyclical, intergenerational nature; how trauma intersects with deeply held beliefs about the credibility of women; and how trauma is played out again and again in the fabric of our cultures, governments, judicial systems and relationships.
My Thoughts:
‘By far the most dangerous element of my assault was the fact that I lived in a world where it was unspeakable. I knew, as soon as it happened, without ever being told, that I must say nothing. Indignity is painful but silence is a prison.’
I Choose Elena is one of the most honest and heartbreaking books I have ever read. The bravery that Lucia Osborne-Crowley has demonstrated in writing it just astounds me. But I want to clarify at the outset that this book is not a memoir. It’s more of a long-form medical essay with contextual personal reflections. Lucia writes about her own experiences of trauma and the effects this has had on her body, following this up with her battle for a diagnosis and subsequent surgeries and treatments. Rather than being driven by emotion, the content is presented in a logical manner and underscored by research. I honestly found the entire topic of trauma being stored in your body and manifesting itself physically in the form of illness utterly fascinating and compelling. So much of this book just made perfect sense.
‘What Levine figured out was that if you allowed yourself to be scared, to process the memory in its immediate aftermath, to let the body hurt until it doesn’t hurt any more, the memory no longer stays alive inside you.’
I felt split while reading this book. Part of me approached the book in a clinical manner, seeking information on the link between trauma and the body’s response to it. I have read recently a fair bit about the link between mental health and gut health, so this seemed to me an extension on this area of interest – hence my initial reasons for picking up this book. But the mother part of me, the one with a seventeen year old daughter, just wouldn’t go away. Because the thought of what Lucia endured when she was fifteen, and that she told no one, just splintered me into a thousand tiny pieces. It was harrowing to imagine a teenage girl bearing the weight of such a violent attack. Not just the injustice, but the trauma, and the burden of carrying it buried deep, and then all of the physical horrors she endured after as her body simply refused to live with such trauma imprinted within its cells.
‘But slowly I realised that getting better meant being brave enough to occupy my body again. To be brave enough to feel the pain of it, the weakness of it, to bear witness to how broken it had become. It was only once I started to do that that my body and I started to understand each other again.’
The reference to Elena Ferrante’s novels is related more to symbolism than content, an aspect of Lucia’s recovery that I appreciated and could relate to. This is a slim book, but its words are weighty. Anyone with an interest in trauma will find this book useful, and while Lucia’s trauma is related to sexual violence, sufferers of trauma stemming from other sources will still find this book illuminating. There is also commentary throughout that cannot be overlooked about the way in which women are treated differently to men when presenting at hospital with pain. As a sufferer of pain, the source of which is only just now being pieced together, there was a ring of truth to this for me. Recently I spent approximately five hours at the emergency department of my local hospital in extreme pain with physical evidence of swelling and lack of movement in both of my hands, only to be told that I should take Panadol and an antihistamine and come back again if it doesn’t improve. It did not improve. That a man might have received different treatment with the same symptoms is not something I’m equipped to comment on, but the research Lucia cites is eye opening and quite frankly, disturbing.
‘I thought of all the women writers who kept me company during the darkest moments of my recovery. The women whose strength pushed me ever on, convincing me that there was a world out there that was beautiful and kind and safe, and that it would be waiting for me when I was ready for it.’
I think it’s important to stress that this is not a depressing read. I think it might have been so if it had been structured as a memoir, but in its existing form, it’s far from being so. It is, above all, an extremely interesting read about trauma, and on its way to this, it’s also an incredible account of survival.
Thanks is extended to Allen & Unwin for providing me with a copy of I Choose Elena for review.
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Read for #2020ReadNonFic hosted by Book’d Out
Category: Medical Issue
About the Author:
Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a journalist, essayist, writer, and legal researcher. Her news reporting has appeared in ABC News, Guardian, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Women’s Agenda. Her long-form writing has appeared in The Lifted Brow and Meanjin.
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I Choose Elena
Published by Allen & Unwin
Released 18th February 2020
March 7, 2020
Book Review: The Blessed Rita by Tommy Wieringa (translated by Sam Garrett)
About the Book:
‘He had seen more and more people from the East in recent years. Mostly gypsies, people said. Bulgarians, Romanians — you could tell by the plates on the vans and the trailers. The Poles had been around for some time already. Burglaries, thefts. The blessings of the new Europe.’
Paul Krüzen lives with his father in an old farmhouse, not far from the German border. Where once his father took care of him, now he takes care of his father. It has been a long time since his beautiful, worldly-wise mother left them for the arms of a Russian pilot, never once looking back.
Paul’s world is changing: his small Dutch village is now home to Chinese restaurateurs, Polish plumbers, and Russian thugs. Saint Rita, the patron saint of lost causes, watches over Paul and his best friend Hedwiges, two misfits at odds with the modern world, while Paul takes comfort in his own Blessed Rita, a prostitute from Quezon. But even she cannot protect them from the tragedy that is about to unfold.
In this sharply observed, darkly funny novel, Wieringa shines a light on people struggling at the margins of a changing world. The Blessed Rita is an affecting tribute to those left behind and an ode to those wanting to transcend themselves and their heritage.
My Thoughts:
One of the things I enjoy most about reading novels that have been translated is that window into another culture that you are able to peer through for the duration. It’s a step further than reading novels set in another place; with a translation, your novel is set in another place as well as being written by an author whose culture is different to your own. Subsequently, allowances for cultural differences need to be considered whilst reading.
The Blessed Rita is a Dutch novel, set in a small Dutch village that lies close to the German border. Post WWII novels set in Europe are always of interest to me, particularly those that are focused on what life was like under the shadow of such widespread devastation throughout the continent. In this, The Blessed Rita doesn’t disappoint. The village is a place where ‘foreigners’ are so few that they can still be counted. The world is changing, technology is advancing and borders are no longer walls; but this village seems to be caught in a Twin Peaks sort of zone, where change is only reaching out with a few tentacles rather than a stranglehold. The casual racism and suspicion of anyone foreign went hand in hand; sadly, this felt all too genuine.
Paul, our main character, is man on the cusp of fifty, still living at home. He is his father’s unofficial carer, a role reversal that he ponders on frequently. There is a lovely relationship between father and son that has its roots in abandonment: Paul’s mother left the family when he was eight. We learn a lot throughout the novel about this pivotal time in Paul’s life: he attributes this time to his first solid memories of his father as something other than a formless being. It’s the time when a Russian escaping the USSR crashed an airplane in their yard and ended up living with them. It’s when his mother left with said Russian, leaving Paul behind and never seeing him again. It’s also the time when Paul’s interest in collecting militaria began, a hobby that he would turn into a profitable career.
The story moves back and forth without warning, and in this it kind of wanders a bit, occasionally in a confusing and rambling sort of way. It’s character driven and there really isn’t a whole lot going on, but it does sustain interest. I do feel that this is very much a ‘man to man’ story though. It looks closely at what it’s like for a man to age alone, with few friends and little or no family. The only relationships Paul has is with his father, his friend Hedwiges whom he has known from school days, and a prostitute named Rita. With Paul and Hedwiges, the author examines in some detail the nature of male friendship between men who have little else within their lives to occupy themselves. Their friendship is awkward, at times Paul questions if they’re even friends – are they simply two men who know each other and go places together out of habit? It was something that I couldn’t really relate to from a woman’s perspective, and yet it was insightful all the same.
When opportunity presents itself for a new relationship, in the form of a woman Paul went to school with who is now widowed with grown children, you would think that he would jump at it. This is an example of the ‘man to man’ aspect I mentioned above. Paul is unable to have sex with this woman, who is the same age as him, because upon the sight of her greying pubic hair and body that has borne several children and aged accordingly, he loses his erection. For a man who had paid for every sexual encounter up until this point, he has a few too many tickets on himself in my opinion. I doubt he was all that much of a catch himself, in perfect ten out of ten condition. So, I had thought the story was going to head in one direction here, but the author veered off in another, far less appealing one. We then see Paul contemplating whether or not he could marry this woman without needing to have sex with her, because at fifty, she’s ‘old’ and therefore totally undesirable. I’m clearly not the intended reading market for this novel. There would be few women over forty who wouldn’t be repelled by this part of the story. Keep enjoying your prostitutes Paul, because that’s clearly your past, present, and future.
I did enjoy the observational style of writing and the atmosphere this conjured. The ‘Dutchness’ of it was reminiscent of my childhood within the household of my Flemish grandparents. This, on potatoes, I can entirely relate to:
‘It was amazing, all the things you could do with potatoes. Boiled, mashed, pureed, fried, deep-fried. As sticks, cubes, wedges, and slices, and probably a whole lot more if you gave it some thought.’
We had potatoes with meals you’d never dream of having potatoes with!
The ending was very abrupt. I was left with that feeling where you think the last chapter has been somehow left out of your book. There were too many threads left blowing in the wind for my liking. The Blessed Rita was a mixed bag for me, but there was definitely more to like than dislike.
Thanks is extended to Scribe for providing me with a copy of The Blessed Rita for review.
About the Author:
Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in the Netherlands, and partly in the tropics. He began his writing career with travel stories and journalism, and is the author of several internationally bestselling novels. His fiction has been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Oxford/Weidenfeld Prize, and has won Holland’s Libris Literature Prize.
About the Translator:
Sam Garrett has translated some fifty novels and works of nonfiction. He has won prizes and appeared on shortlists for some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, and is the only translator to have twice won the British Society of Authors’ Vondel Prize for Dutch–English translation.
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The Blessed Rita
Published by Scribe
Released 3rd March 2020
March 6, 2020
#6degrees of separation: in honour of International Women’s Day
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It’s the first Saturday of the month so that means it’s #6degrees of separation time! This month’s starting book is Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar.
You can find the details and rules of the #6degrees meme at booksaremyfavouriteandbest, but in a nutshell, on the first Saturday of every month, everyone has the same starting book and from there, you connect in a variety of ways to other books. Some of the connections made are so impressive, it’s a lot of fun to follow.
I thought I was going to be all over this month’s six degrees, making a chain of eco-lit, but my brain just wouldn’t budge past the first link so I’ve switched to a different theme. In honour of International Women’s Day tomorrow, I’m going with a chain made up of books featuring fearless women, written by women, since Wolfe Island is an exemplar of both of these criteria.
Since I’m using an overall theme this time around, I’ll go with a list format for this post with links to my reviews behind each title:
1. Walking by Kim Kelly
2. Heresy by Melissa Lenhardt
3. The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict
4. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan
5. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood
6. The Darkest Shore by Karen Brooks
All of these books feature women who exhibit the characteristics of being fearless: courageous, dauntless, perhaps a little bit daring, a woman who is brave facing dangerous or difficult situations with courage.
Enjoy!
Next month we’ll begin with Stasiland by Anna Funder, which is a book I’ve been keen to read for some time now.
The Week That Was…
The Stella Prize shortlist!
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I’ve read three:
Diving into Glass (not a fan)
The Weekend (really enjoyed)
There Was Still Love (loved it)
The Yield is on my tbr
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Joke of the week:
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A *funny* story:
Doctors visit to refresh my asthma medication prescriptions…
Nurse: how much alcohol would you drink per week?
Me: one to two glasses for the week
Nurse: ever six glasses in one sitting?
Me: no. Two is my limit.
Nurse: let’s weigh you…
Post weighing…
Nurse: steady with your weight, that’s good. So, you don’t want to talk to someone about your drinking?
Me: no. I think I’m right.
WHAT?!!! Where did that even come from? Incidentally, number of questions about my asthma: 0
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What I’ve read this week:
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Until next week…
March 4, 2020
Book Review: The Salt Madonna by Catherine Noske
About the Book:
This is the story of a crime.
This is the story of a miracle.
There are two stories here.
Hannah Mulvey left her island home as a teenager. But her stubborn, defiant mother is dying, and now Hannah has returned to Chesil, taking up a teaching post at the tiny schoolhouse, doing what she can in the long days of this final year.
But though Hannah cannot pinpoint exactly when it begins, something threatens her small community. A girl disappears entirely from class. Odd reports and rumours reach her through her young charges. People mutter on street corners, the church bell tolls through the night and the island’s women gather at strange hours…And then the miracles begin.
A page-turning, thought-provoking portrayal of a remote community caught up in a collective moment of madness, of good intentions turned terribly awry. A blistering examination of truth and power, and how we might tell one from the other.
My Thoughts:
The Salt Madonna is an incredible novel in every sense of the word incredible. As the story progressed, I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in the early 1990s, not the 1690s. In this, it’s a story that drives home the very strange and dangerous ways in which religious fervour can grip people, spreading like a contagion. The setting for this story is an imaginary isolated island called Chesil, off the coast of Southern Australia. The exact location is not disclosed but the weather patterns suggested to me that this was where it likely was (I’m envisaging Victoria but only because I grew up down there near that wild coastline and there was chord of the familiar within the descriptions). Being set on an isolated island was what made the events within the story possible, I think. There is already that mentality of separation from the mainland, of being ‘on your own’; the isolation allowed for things to progress further and go on for far longer than might have been the case if that isolation was not a factor.
‘Blame is contagious. No one body can hold it. And no one ever looks to see where it is shared.’
This entire novel has a sense of foreboding that is utterly gripping and this is largely due to the narration, which I want to spend some time talking about. The author has skilfully utilised the technique of third person omniscient narration along with elements of metafiction. It’s strikingly clever and not an easy way to write, which is why I want to make a bit of a fuss over it. When it is done well, as it was in this novel, it can produce a work of fiction that is completely set apart and to me, The Salt Madonna is a brilliantly constructed novel. Here is an example:
‘But a story like this can’t be told from one set of eyes. There are too many things you have to see. This is how it will happen – I will show you all of us. They will forgive me. Of everything, they will forgive me this.
Do you recognise me yet? Let me start again.’
This narration works so well, reminding us that stories are subjective, always at the whim of the storyteller. Is any story the absolute truth? We are continually reminded to be aware that we are reading a fictional work. When taken in hand alongside Hannah’s omniscient narration, we are privy to the thoughts, actions, and feelings of every character, while still being repeatedly reminded that this is all imagined.
‘I am imagining, of course. I warned you. I don’t know any of this, except what I saw for myself.’
This is Catherine Noske’s debut novel but she is no novice writer, not by a long shot. There was a complexity to the characters that really drew me in and the plot itself was just so intricately constructed, incredible and truly beggaring belief, and yet, with a plausibility that was entirely discomfiting. So much of this story made me feel deeply sad: the under valuing of education, small towns dying, people left without an anchor in a changing economy. And then there’s the hope this story instilled: that even when madness is running rampant, there are still people who are willing to stand firm and question, such as Thomas and his mother – I admired them both so much, their sustained sensibility – imagined as it was – in the face of such absurdity. Hannah and her mother intrigued me as well. There was a politeness between the two that strained with tension. I kept expecting there to be a big reveal there, and strangely, when none came, I was accepting of it. It made me dwell on the relationships I have with members of my own family that are characterised by that very same strained politeness. And then there was black horse. I really loved that horse and his mourning touched me in a way that was deeper than if it had been replicated within a person.
I truly loved this novel and read the majority of it in day – I just couldn’t put it down. The way in which it was written, the tone and intent, the characters and the story: all of it was, to me, absolute perfection. This is a must read for fans of literary fiction and a masterclass for writers.
Thanks is extended to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of The Salt Madonna for review.
Amanda Curtin has an excellent guest piece on her blog in which Catherine Noske talks about The Salt Madonna. You can visit it here for a bit of story behind the story.
About the Author:
Catherine Noske is a writer and academic currently teaching at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on contemporary Australian place-making and creative practice. She has been awarded the A.D. Hope Prize, twice received the Elyne Mitchell Prize for Rural Women Writers, and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award (2015). She is editor of Westerly Magazine.
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The Salt Madonna
Published by Picador Australia
Released 25th February 2020
March 3, 2020
Book Review: The Darkest Shore by Karen Brooks
About the Book:
The independent women of Scotland stand up to a witch hunt, male fury and the power of the Church in a battle for survival in this compelling historical novel based on true events in early eighteenth-century Scotland.
1703: The wild east coast of Scotland.
Returning to her home town of Pittenweem, fishwife and widow Sorcha McIntyre knows she faces both censure and mistrust. After all, this is a country where myth and legend are woven into the fabric of the everyday, a time when those who defy custom like Sorcha has are called to account.
It is dangerous to be a clever woman who ‘doesn’t know her place’ in Pittenweem – a town rife with superstition. So, when a young local falls victim to witchcraft, the Reverend Cowper and the townsfolk know who to blame. What follows for Sorcha and her friends is a terrifying battle, not only for their souls, but for their lives, as they are pitted against the villagers’ fear, a malevolent man and the might of the church.
Based on the shocking true story of the witch hunt of Pittenweem, this multi-layered novel is a beautifully written historical tale of the strength of women united against a common foe, by one of Australia’s finest writers.
My Thoughts:
History is rife with examples of humans doing their worst. When you read as much historical fiction as I do, you have occasion to come across this fairly regularly. Even so, I’m still pulled up at times by history that has been buried deep in the hopes that it may not ever be discovered and pulled out into the light. And so it is with the 1704 witch hunt of Pittenweem, the history that this incredible novel, The Darkest Shore, is based upon. This is a dark read, with human nature exposed at its most despicable, where torture and murder is vindicated as ‘the will of God’. It was at times a harrowing read, but such is the talent of Karen Brooks that this darkness did not equate to a depressing read. There are moments of such strength and love between friends and neighbours that you can’t help but feel as though this story is as uplifting as it is harrowing. As is the way with history, from the author’s notes at the end we learn that the very worst parts of this story were the ones that were entirely true.
‘Yet to Reverend Patrick Cowper, the fishwives represented everything he disapproved of: loud, godless women, women without men to control them, teach them how to behave and keep them tamed and quiet. That they were able to earn their keep and had means and property besides, only added to their sins.’
The Darkest Shore is a long novel, a touch over 500 pages, and it’s also a very involving novel. The story is epic in scope and immersive in its attention to detail. I absolutely loved the Scottish-ness of it, the language, the customs, and the way in which people interacted with each other; the ebb and flow of daily community life. This is where the more uplifting parts of the story were evident, particularly in the connections between the fishwives. There was a loyalty and affection between them that was empowering to witness. For all that these women endured, they drew strength from each other and I believe this was a big part of the reason why they survived all they were subjected to. Karen Brooks has brought the history of who these women were to life with honour and affection; this novel really is a beautiful tribute to who the fishwives were and the important role they played within Scottish fishing communities in the early 18th century.
‘In the telling, she owned the story. She took it from the men who inflicted the pain and suffering, the officials who allowed it to happen and kept records, and made it hers.’
Reverend Cowper was a villain and a half, let me tell you. There was no end to his evil, he just kept on stalking the women, hammering away at his congregation about ‘the witches’, whipping up hysteria and fear. He was a man obsessed, but what was more alarming was how the majority of Pittenweem locals fell for his fervour. Honestly, the man was transparent in his agenda and purely evil, yet he ruled that community like a puppet master. It’s a telling reminder of just how easy it is to manipulate the masses if the chips are all falling down in your favour. That he fashioned himself in the model of Pontius Pilate was beyond arrogant and entirely reprehensible. He deserved a reckoning that far surpassed what he had orchestrated and allowed to be done within his community. Karen Brooks gives us a more satisfying outcome with regards to Reverend Cowper than what history reports of his true fate.
‘Listening to the reverend, Sorcha marvelled that this man of God, who should be alleviating people’s fears, was exacerbating them. When he should be encouraging unity, he was fostering discord and suspicion.’
I really loved The Darkest Shore. The history of witches and witch hunting is of particular interest to me and I feel that Karen Brooks has handled such a dark history with care and empathy. I read The Chocolate Maker’s Wife last year and adored that and when considered alongside The Darkest Shore, I’d have to say that Karen Brooks is now one of my favourite authors. I’ll be reading everything she releases from now on and will be making a point of reading her historical fiction back list as well. I can’t recommend this one highly enough, it’s a brilliant read.
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a copy of The Darkest Shore for review.
About the Author:
Karen Brooks is the author of thirteen books, an academic of more than twenty years’ experience, a newspaper columnist and social commentator, and has appeared regularly on national TV and radio. Before turning to academia, she was an army officer for five years, and prior to that dabbled in acting. She lives in Hobart, Tasmania, in a beautiful stone house with its own marvellous history. When she’s not writing, she’s helping her husband Stephen in his brewery, Captain Bligh’s Ale and Cider, or cooking for family and friends, travelling, cuddling and walking her dogs, stroking her cats, or curled up with a great book and dreaming of more stories.
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The Darkest Shore
Published by HQ Fiction – AU
Released 24th February 2020
