Theresa Smith's Blog, page 91
October 30, 2019
Challenge Check In – October
Another month over, time for another challenge check in.
I thought this month might be more of a quiet one, and it is, I’m down a bit on my overall reading total, but still pleasantly surprised by how many books I did actually get around to reading.
Challenge stats:
#aww2019: 4 books
Book Bingo with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse: 0 books – but I have only one category left to fill for this challenge so I’m all on track!
The Classics Eight: 0 – but I’m halfway through reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass so there will be numbers here next month.
Total books read in October: 9 books
Until next month! 
October 29, 2019
Book Review: The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley
About the Book:
It’s 1699, and the salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle for equality, Baroness Marie Catherine D’Aulnoy invents a powerful weapon: ‘fairy tales’.
When Marie Catherine’s daughter, Angelina, arrives in Paris for the first time, she is swept up in the glamour and sensuality of the city, where a woman may live outside the confines of the church or marriage. But this is a fragile freedom, as she discovers when Marie Catherine’s close friend Nicola Tiquet is arrested, accused of conspiring to murder her abusive husband. In the race to rescue Nicola, illusions will be shattered and dark secrets revealed as all three women learn how far they will go to preserve their liberty in a society determined to control them.
This keenly-awaited second book from Melissa Ashley, author of The Birdman’s Wife, restores another remarkable, little-known woman to her rightful place in history, revealing the dissent hidden beneath the whimsical surfaces of Marie Catherine’s fairy tales. The Bee and the Orange Tree is a beautifully lyrical and deeply absorbing portrait of a time, a place, and the subversive power of the imagination.
My Thoughts:
It was such a pleasure to read The Bee and the Orange Tree, the second novel by acclaimed author, Melissa Ashley. Set in 1699, under the gaze of three women, Melissa Ashley takes us back to Paris, where a woman could write and perform stories within literary saloons, but have no agency whatsoever over their own life.
‘She felt it her duty to lay bare the dark and piquant potential of women unafraid of their own minds.’
While this novel in part tells the story of the invention of fairy tales – long before the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen – it is also an illuminating sociological examination of the layers of patriarchy set firmly in place within 17th century France.
‘…a marriage, however poisonous, is to be protected at all costs. There are no grounds for separation. Not adultery, not cruelty, not even fraud. Women are minors in the eyes of the law. Either they’re owned by their parents or their husbands.’
Never more is this demonstrated than in the fate of Nicola Tiquet. Yet, there are other examples of these restrictions in action throughout the story. Marie Catherine’s own experiences with her elderly wastrel husband; Angelina’s experiences as a daughter who was given over to be raised in a convent, despite not being an orphan. These women are oppressed, they have been cheated out of experiencing their lives as fully as their male counterparts’ experience, but they have not been beaten. Their strength prevails and Melissa Ashley articulates this with vivacity.
‘A convent or a marriage – the twin prisons of women’s lives.’
The writing throughout is lyrical, giving the reader the illusion of being caught within a fairy tale whilst reading about fairy tales. Yet there is also a brutality in evidence, reminding the reader that within every fairy tale, there is darkness before light, and not every character is destined to achieve their happy ending. There is a strong presence of history throughout the novel and coupled with Melissa’s elegant prose, the story is dripping with atmosphere. I felt like I was walking alongside the characters on the streets of Paris, experiencing, as they were, the literary saloons, the cafes, and most horrifying of all, the prisons. I fell in love with this story and found myself lingering over it far longer than what I normally do with a novel. In addition, it is just so beautifully presented. Affirm have published this as a hardback with the most gorgeous endpapers and fairy tale illustrations throughout, turning this novel into a sensory experience that goes beyond just reading a story. It rather makes me long for the days when all new releases were hardbacks. I highly recommend The Bee and the Orange Tree, particularly to those who enjoy reading about writers and the origins of stories from the past.
Thanks is extended to Affirm Press for providing me with a copy of The Bee and the Orange Tree for review.
About the Author:
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Melissa Ashley is a writer, poet, birder and academic who tutors in poetry and creative writing at the University of Queensland. She has published a collection of poems, The Hospital for Dolls, short stories, essays and articles. What started out as research for a PhD dissertation on Elizabeth Gould became a labour of love and her first novel, The Birdman’s Wife, which has been printed in three formats and sold more than 30,000 copies since release. Melissa’s second novel, The Bee and the Orange Tree, will be published in November 2019 with Affirm Press.
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The Bee and the Orange Tree
Published by Affirm Press
Released November 2019
October 28, 2019
Book Review: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
About the Book:
Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish mansion. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. Life is coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners in the frames of their oil paintings.
Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives. The siblings are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own exile is that of their mother’s: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.
Told with Ann Patchett’s inimitable blend of humour, rage and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale and story of a paradise lost; of the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetize and repel us for our whole lives.
My Thoughts:
‘There is no story of the prodigal mother. The rich man didn’t call for a banquet to celebrate the return of his erstwhile wife. The sons, having stuck it out for all those years at home, did not hang garlands on the doorways, kill the sheep, bring forth the wine. When she left them she killed them all, each in his own way, and now, decades later, they didn’t want her back. They hurried down the road to lock the gate, the father and his sons together, the wind whipping at their coats. A friend had tipped them off. They knew she was coming and the gate must be locked.’
This novel is divine. You know how you can sometimes stumble across a novel and it seems as though it has been written to perfectly match your tastes and moods; a six out of five star read. That is what this one is for me. Perfection.
‘But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.’
The narrative is character driven, and while there is a plot, it is not something that I could easily sum up if asked what this novel is about. Instead, my answer would be that it is about a brother, a sister, and a lost house and it is utterly fantastic and you should read it. As soon as possible. However, you probably want a little bit more than that. Nevertheless, can I just point out, it is Ann Patchett, and for me, that alone speaks volumes. She writes so well. What she does with words is remarkable and that is why there are so many quotes in this review. Her own words should tell you all you need to know about this novel.
‘The idiocy of what we took and what we left cannot be overstated. We packed up clothes and shoes I would outgrow in six months, and left behind the blanket at the foot of my bed my mother had pieced together out of her dresses. We took the books from my desk and left the pressed-glass butter dish in the kitchen that was, as far as we knew, the only thing that had made its way from that apartment in Brooklyn with our mother. I didn’t pick up a single thing of my father’s, though later I could think of a hundred things I wished I had: the watch that he always wore had been in the envelope with his wallet and ring. It had been in my hands the whole way home from the hospital and I had given it to Andrea.’
Danny narrates the Dutch House in a hindsight fashion, walking us through his life from infancy to the present day when he is a man in his forties. Yet, this is not just Danny’s story, and such is the skill of Ann Patchett that she is able to convey just as much about Maeve, Danny’s older sister, as she is about Danny himself via his gaze. I really liked both of these siblings, as well as their relationship, and over the course of the novel, I became so invested in their combined fate. What happens to them after their father dies is very shabby, and I have to say, I never accepted or forgave Andrea’s treatment of them. When Maeve and the family solicitor came up with their ultimate plan for revenge, I really got a lot of enjoyment out of it. That Danny went along with it was such a testimony to his love for Maeve. It is a certain type of person who can put his or her own dreams and ambitions aside to fulfil another’s destiny.
‘There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.’
No commentary on this novel would be complete without touching on the topic of their mother, whose absence was a looming presence throughout, a thorn that could not be dislodged. When she reappears, decades after leaving, Maeve and Danny have very different reactions. I was able to fully appreciate each one’s view, but I was firmly in Danny’s court on the issue. I could not forgive her and her reasons for having left in the first place just gave me further reason to not forgive her. I know what it is like to be living a life removed from what you thought you would be, but when you have children, you press on. You live it anyway, and then you go and do what you want after. The disappearing mother is a bit of trigger for me. Maybe that is part of why I loved this novel so much; I could relate to it so well.
‘Making a mistake is not giving the floorboards enough time to settle before you seal them. Abandoning your children to go help the poor of India means you’re a narcissist who wants the adoration of strangers.’
Although, I will say, being in a position where your husband just buys a mansion, still filled with the previous occupants’ belongings, even down to the clothes and kitchen utensils, and then presents it to you as a fait accompli; well, that is something else. There is a lot within this novel about the loss of agency over one’s own life. Their father took away their mother’s agency, and he repeated that with Maeve, who in turn took away Danny’s. An interesting cycle that Patchett played out with precision. I love this quote from Maeve:
‘God’s truth,’ Maeve said. ‘Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.’
So I loved this novel. And obviously, I recommend The Dutch House whole-heartedly. It is one of the rare few that I may read again.
Thanks is extended to Bloomsbury Australia for providing me with a copy of The Dutch House for review.
About the Author:
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Ann Patchett is the author of six novels and three books of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl, and their dog Sparky.
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The Dutch House
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Released 24th September 2019
October 27, 2019
Book Club Buddy Read Event: The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
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The next Buddy Read Event for the Page by Page Book Club with Theresa Smith Writes has been set. By majority vote, The Weekend by Charlotte Wood was selected as our title.
We’ll be reading The Weekend from November 10th to the 30th with discussions extending from December 1st to the 8th.
If you’d like to join in, click here to register for the event.
You will need to be a member of the book club to participate. Click here to join.
If you’ve already read it but would love to chat about it, still register for the event. You just have a head start on the reading aspect but the more who contribute to the chat, the merrier it will be.
Looking forward to our second buddy read!
#TheWeekendBuddyRead
October 26, 2019
Mozart in the Jungle: Hitting all of the right notes…
A couple of weeks ago I discovered Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime. I was instantly hooked and four seasons with ten episodes a piece later, I’ve officially joined the ranks of fans who still mourn the loss of a season five. The story goes that Prime’s new boss cancelled the show in a move to channel money into attention grabbing blockbusters. That Mozart in the Jungle was a consistent rater, and a multiple Golden Globe winner, didn’t save it in the end. It’s such a shame too, because it could have really done with one more season to tie up loose ends and round things off. You could tell, by the way it finished, that there was meant to be more. But enough about lamenting what could have been. Let’s instead focus on what was!
1. The music. Oh, the music! Yes, it’s classical, but with edgy reinterpretation along with traditional rendering. If you appreciate music at all, you will enjoy this show because essentially, it’s ALL about the music. I’ve since bought the two soundtracks that are available.
2. The places. This show really makes use of its screen time. You might be listening to a symphony but you’re seeing scenes of the streets of New York, Tokyo, Venice, and the cities of South America. Plus, the characters are always out and about, experiencing life and what these places have to offer. It’s a brilliant journey in armchair travel.
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3. Life in all its brilliant and disappointing glory. Being a classical musician is a mixed bag. Mozart in the Jungle digs deep into this and doesn’t hold back.
4. Guest appearances of actual musicians. Placido Domingo singing on a barge in Venice, Joshua Bell subbing into a minor ensemble as a favour to a character – next level TV.
5. Rodrigo and Hailey. Not just a love story but a deep connection of friendship, passion, and music.
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6. Mozart as Rodrigo’s muse who appears to him as different ages with all sorts of scathing advice and on point career recommendations. THIS!
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7. Rodrigo. Passionate and a little unhinged, but a musical genius who is also incredibly funny – especially when he doesn’t mean to be. ‘Play with the blood!’ One of my favourite TV characters ever.
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8. The story arc. When you look at where it began and where it ended, the characters evolve so much. It covers a lot of ground and we see people change and grow, so much for the better, over the course of the four seasons. It was never boring, but neither was it overdone. It simply hit the right note, in each and every episode.
9. It’s a rare treat to watch a show that places art front and centre, actively demonstrating, over and over, the importance of art in life.
10. The yerbe mate. I have no idea what it tastes like, but if I’m ever in South America, it’s on my drinks list. In one of those cups, with one of those straws.
October 25, 2019
#BookBingo – Round 22
Another horizontal line filled on my card. Bingo!
Themes of Science Fiction:
I know that dystopian fiction seems to have morphed into a genre of its own but it has its genesis in science fiction, so with keeping this in mind, I was able to easily slot Rogue, book 2 of The Vault series, into this category.
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The world Hayley discovers is an altered Australia, 100 years in the future. Global warming has indeed changed the surface of the earth, and as you might expect, there are more islands. Betts provides an eerie vision that is typical on some levels but innovative on others. As Hayley grapples with surviving up above, she spends some time contemplating life that is still going on down below.
‘Even if it was a mistake that had kept three hundred people in an underwater vault, at least it had been a fortunate one. They’d lived happily and safely, unaffected by the famines and storms and wars that had plagued this world above.
A greater mistake now would be to tell them the truth. It would be too cruel to show them the atlas and point out their smallness. It would trivialise everything they’ve done and believed in.’
For 2019, I’m teaming up with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse for an even bigger, and more challenging book bingo. We’d love to have you join us. Every second Saturday throughout 2019, we’ll post our latest round. We invite you to join in at any stage, just pop the link to your bingo posts into the comments section of our bingo posts each fortnight so we can visit you. If you’re not a blogger, feel free to just write your book titles and thoughts on the books into the comments section each fortnight, and tag us on social media if you are playing along that way.
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October 24, 2019
The Week That Was…
…which is actually the fortnight that was, as I never got around to checking in last week.
It’s been a quiet week for blogging, but that’s the only aspect of my life that has been quiet. The review books have been arriving double speed of late and the titles! So good. I’m very excited about quite a few of them. In response to my excitement, I’ve completely stopped reading and thrown myself into binge watching this:
Because there’s nothing like tackling your mounting #tbr by ignoring it.
However, this show! I watched the last two episodes of season one on Sunday night and between then and now, I’ve covered season two and three and the first few episodes of season four – which sadly, is the final season. If you like music, particularly classical music, and humour with a bit of industry politics thrown in alongside a more human element of friendship, romance, and love, then watch this. It’s become one of my favourite shows ever.
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Joke of the week:
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Book of the week:
Given it’s been a fortnight of reading, I have two of these this time around…
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You couldn’t get two more different books, but I thoroughly enjoyed them both.
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This has popped up in my backyard, winding its way up my pool fence. At last count, there are five sunflowers blooming on the one plant. A side effect of all that birdseed we toss around for the wild birds. They’re such a happy flower.
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What I’m reading right now:
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But of course, what I really mean is that I am watching eight more episodes of this:
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And then I’ll really get stuck into this:
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And this, which I also started this week:
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Until next week…
#TBT: What I wanted to read two years ago…
So, a twist on my usual #TBT. Instead of looking back on what I have read, I thought I’d take a look at what books I added to my ‘want to read’ Goodreads shelf around this time two years ago:
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I have read none of them between then and now, but I can safely say I still want to read each one. Which is lucky, because I have all four on my actual shelves.
October 21, 2019
#BRPreview Book Review: Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley
About the Book:
Maggie’s Going Nowhere is a fierce and funny debut introducing a thoroughly relatable and offbeat heroine. If you enjoy Fleabag, you’ll adore Maggie!
‘A compulsive and hilarious read. In Maggie, Hartley has created one of those indelible characters of whom we must thoroughly disapprove and yet cannot help but love.’ Karen Joy Fowler
Maggie Cotton’s life is a hot mess.
In one day, she’s dumped by her boyfriend, disinherited by her mum, and kicked off the three-year degree course she’d stretched to a decade. And that was before she received the letter saying she owed the government $70,000.
But that’s no reason to grow up, is it?
With a decrepit 1960s caravan to call home, Maggie has to prove to her mother she can survive without a safety net, stop her loyal best friend Jen from marrying a scumbag, and convince her sexy workmate Rueben that she’s not a walking disaster. For someone who’s spent her life avoiding hard work, she sure can move mountains when she’s got a little motivation – just don’t ask her to move the caravan.
My Thoughts:
I’m not usually one to like a character who typifies the very definition of a no-hoper, much less one who is an over-entitled bludger with zero tact and no ambition whatsoever to improve their lot in life, preferring instead to blame others for her problems whilst holding out a hand for a spare fifty. Nevertheless, every now and again, I am utterly surprised and delighted by a book and enjoy every single sentence of it, as was the case with Maggie’s Going Nowhere.
In essence, this novel is about Maggie’s coming of age – very late coming of age – but it also touches on some Australian contemporary themes of importance: homelessness, the struggle to find work if you have no skills or a prison record, and the utter ridiculousness of dealing with Centrelink – Maggie’s experiences sure brought back some memories from my own student days of dealing with that organisation. Maggie’s Going Nowhere is addictive and entertaining, I read it in a day, laughing and shaking my head all the way through. Who would have thought that this would end up a five star read for me? Highly recommended and I sincerely hope this one gets adapted for film or TV.
Thanks is extended to Penguin Random House Australia via Better Reading for providing me with a copy of Maggie’s Going Nowhere for #BRPreview.
About the Author:
Rose Hartley is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Adelaide with her cat, Doris, and her 1962 caravan, Cecil. Maggie’s Going Nowhere is her first novel.
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Maggie’s Going Nowhere
Published by Penguin Random House Australia – Michael Joseph
Released on 7th January 2020
October 18, 2019
Book Review: Just One Wish by Rachael Johns
About the Book:
Three women, three secrets, one life-changing journey.
Alice has always been a trailblazer as a scientist, activist and mother. She knew her choices would involve sacrifices, but now, on the eve of her eightieth birthday, she’s beginning to wonder if she’s sacrificed too much.
Alice’s daughter, Sappho, rebelled against her unconventional upbringing, choosing to marry young and embrace life as a homemaker, but her status as a domestic goddess has recently taken a surprising turn.
Ged has always been the peacemaker between her grandmother and mother. A tenacious journalist, she knows what she wants in life and love, yet when everything in her world starts falling apart, she begins to question whether she really knows anyone at all.
At a crossroads in each of their lives, Alice, Sappho and Ged embark on a celebratory trip together, but instead of bringing them closer, the holiday sparks life-changing consequences and lifts the lid on a fifty-year-old secret.
Can Ged rescue her family if their story is built on a betrayal?
From bestselling, ABIA award-winning author Rachael Johns comes an engrossing and wise novel about ambition, choices and what it means to be a woman.
My Thoughts:
Rachael Johns is pretty much a guaranteed good read for me now. It seems that with each book released, she gets better and better, and yet they’re all fantastic. In her latest though, Just One Wish, I feel that Rachael has nudged next level. I’m not sure if it was down to the story being narrated in first person, but there seemed to be an element of humour injected into this one that was both refreshing and highly entertaining. I picked this up as a lunch time read to see me through the week at work and was unable to leave it at that. I was reading it everywhere and all the time, entirely engrossed in this family drama. Rachael unpacks several contemporary issues within this novel and she does so with impartiality and intelligence. I really enjoyed the vibrant conversations between characters and the way she demonstrated a myriad of ideas and alternative lifestyles via her characterisation. This is a novel that hit the right note for me and maintained it throughout.
Just One Wish is a highly engaging and entertaining read with wide appeal to a contemporary audience. Expect the unexpected with this one and clear your schedule – this one is not to be missed!
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a copy (via NetGalley) of Just One Wish for review.
About the Author:
Rachael Johns, an English teacher by trade and a mum 24/7, is the bestselling ABIA-winning author of The Patterson Girls and a number of other romance and women’s fiction books including The Art of Keeping Secrets, The Greatest Gift and Lost Without You. She is currently Australia’s leading writer of contemporary relationship stories around women’s issues, a genre she has coined ‘life-lit’. Rachael lives in the Perth hills with her hyperactive husband, three mostly gorgeous heroes-in-training and a very badly behaved dog. She rarely sleeps and never irons.
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Just One Wish
Published by HQ Fiction – AU
Released on 21st October 2019
