Islands by Peggy Frew

Islands is the second book I’ve read by Australian author Peggy Frew, after reading Wildflowers this time last year.

I found the characters in Wildflowers to be cold and hard to like, possibly because they were difficult people who were going through very difficult times. The characters in Islands had different problems and were probably no happier than the characters from Wildflowers, however I liked them and their story better, possibly because of my familiarity with the Melbourne setting – even though all of the action in Islands took place ‘out the other side’ of Melbourne.***

The ‘island’ of the book’s title is Philip Island, south-east of Melbourne, where the main characters holidayed but it also alluded, perhaps slightly too obviously, to how separate they were from each other. The rest of the action took place in Belgrave, a suburb at the bottom of the Dandenong Ranges.

The story is about a family, Helen and John Worth and their daughters, Junie and Anna. Helen and John were mismatched from the start, as she was a free-spirit and he was conservative. When Helen fell in love with someone else and left John for her new bloke, the family disintegrated.

Junie was a teenager and had been living with her father in the 1980s when Anna, who had been living with their mother and her latest new bloke (there were many), went missing at the age of fifteen. The remainder of the story showed June, Helen and John coping with Anna’s disappearance, and their fractured relationships over the next few decades. The effects on all of them were terrible, however June’s relationship with her mother was the most difficult since she blamed Helen for putting herself, her sexuality and her relationships above what she and Anna needed from her, Anna having been particularly troubled.

The story went back and forwards in time, used different tenses from chapter to chapter, on occasion used catalogue descriptions of June’s paintings, poetry, psychologist’s transcripts, and even Christmas Day menus to tell the story, using different points of view, although Junie seemed to be the main character.

I like Peggy Frew’s writing style, but probably won’t go back for more anytime soon, as I prefer more joy in my reading.

***People from my side of town are more likely to take a beach holiday along the Great Ocean Road while people from ‘the other side’ of Melbourne to mine would be more likely to take a beach holiday at Philip Island.

My purchase of Islands continues my New Year’s resolution for 2024 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (April). I purchased Islands at Ironbird Bookshop in Port Fairy (past the far end of the Great Ocean Road).

On a personal note, I’m taking a break from blogging and will be back in May.

The Visitors by Jane Harrison

The Visitors by Australian author Jane Harrison tells a story of the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Harbour from the point of view of the First Nations people, who watched the eleven sailing ships arrive on Gadigal land on January 26, 1788.

On the day, seven Aboriginal Elders from seven different clans gathered on a high cliff overlooking the harbour where the ships had anchored, which were larger than any bark canoe the watching Elders could ever have imagined. The seven men then spent their day trying to come to a unanimous decision about whether the unwanted visitors should be welcomed to country or made to leave.

Based on their experiences from an earlier visit by people in sailing ships, initially most of the Elders wanted to repel the unwanted arrivals but as the day went on, even though the visitors were demonstratably cruel, ignorant and rude, the Elders continued to talk and argue their points, as they changed their minds about what to do.

The first thing that threw me was when one of the characters, Lawrence, rolled up his loose cotton pants before wading into the sea to collect mussels. The reference was only in passing, but I rolled my eyes, thinking that the author had made a silly mistake. When the Elders wore their best suits to attend the meeting and followed formal, long-established protocols I realised that the European clothing along with the Elders’ English names Walter, Gary, Gordon, Albert, Joseph and Nathanial had been deliberately chosen to demonstrate that the First Nations people had culture, history, laws, ceremonies and traditions, one of which was welcoming visitors to their country.

The author’s descriptions of the Gadigal area (Sydney), which included the sea, beaches and land were truly beautiful and the character’s knowledge of the birds, fish and animals as both food sources, weather and season forecasters and as cultural totems was interesting. The characters seemed very real and I liked that although the Elders who gathered on this day were all men, that was only because the women were already engaged in their own important business that same day.

The before and after of the Aboriginal people following the First Fleet’s arrival was particularly jarring.

This story was originally written as a play, which showed in the character’s dialogue. I would love to see the stage play of The Visitors in future.

My purchase of The Visitors continues my New Year’s resolution for 2024 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (February). I purchased The Visitors at The Bookshop in Queenscliff.

Canvas by Sarah Hope

Canvas, Australian author Sarah Hope’s debut novel, is an absolute door-stopper, big and heavy enough as a paperback to hold open the big, old timber door of a bluestone mansion on a vast station up in the Western District of Victoria.

The story is equally as huge and is told using three timelines during the 1870s, 1950s and 2005.

The 1870s section of Canvas tells the story of the Southam family coming to live at Dunedin station, near the Grampians. William Southam became rich from his shop in Ballarat, a gold-mining town in central Victoria, before moving his family to Dunedin where he intended to run sheep. There, William commissioned an up-and-coming artist to paint a huge picture depicting the Eureka Rebellion – gold miners rebelling against the large taxes levied on them by the British who at that time ran the colony of Victoria, an event that he saw as the birth of the country.

Florence Southam, William’s twenty year-old daughter and the artist, Edward Barry fell in love, which would have been lovely if Edward hadn’t already been married. Florence died mysteriously in a flooded river soon after her parents learned she was pregnant.

The 2005 story followed Alice, William’s great, great, grand-daughter, who inherited Dunedin after the death of her beloved grandmother Cecily. Unfortunately, by then Dunedin was millions of dollars in debt, leaving Alice needing a miracle to keep the property in the family. Cecily had left Alice a letter suggesting she try to solve the mystery of Florence’s death soon after Edward Barry’s painting was finished, and to look for the painting, which had been lost over the years.

As Alice had a degree in Australian Fine Arts she was well-placed to search for the lost master-piece which if found, would be worth a small fortune. The idea of selling the painting to put the money back into the farm amused me, as my father had been a farmer who liked to joke that if he ever won the lottery, he would just continue farming until all of the prize-winnings were gone.

Back in Dunedin, Alice rekindled her romance with her high-school boyfriend, and upset various locals who resented her privileged upbringing.

The third time line of the story belonged to Alice’s grandmother Cecily and was told during the 1950s and 60s, when she was a young woman.

The story could have been pruned by a third or more as there was a lot of waffle, particularly in Cecily’s sections. I found the waffle interesting but it was not necessary to the story.

The story is set around the Hamilton area of the Western District although the name of the town was changed to Mitchell. I’m not sure why, as the names of the surrounding areas were not changed and there were no identifiable characters or slurs on the town, apart from a surly waitress in a local coffee shop and a handful of small-minded, insular townspeople, who could have been from any other small town in the world. I’m familiar with the area and enjoyed seeing the local place names and area descriptions, along with those along the road between Melbourne and Mitchell/Hamilton.

I grew up on a farm along the Great Ocean Road, on the edge of a village where several big station owners had holiday houses. These people were fascinating to me. They were polite to locals and other holiday-makers (people from the caravan park or those who had holiday houses outside of the ‘old township’) but they only socialised with their own set. Looking back, I think what I saw as a child but didn’t recognise at the time was that they had an air of privilege which would be similar to Alice’s in this story. The people I saw as a child were probably completely unaware of this and couldn’t have helped it anyway.

I also enjoyed seeing the names of other artists from the era when the lost painting had been made, such as Arthur Streeton and Eugene von Gerard whose Land of the Golden Fleece, pictured below, looks towards the Grampians.

I enjoyed Canvas and would recommend it to readers from the Western District, and those who are interested in sweeping Australian sagas.

You Called An Ambulance For What? by Tim Booth

Honey-Bunny recently read You Called An Ambulance For What? Strange, Serious and Silly Stories of Life As A Paramedic by Tim Booth and was so insistent that I read it for myself that she sent me a copy of the book, even though I am not at all medically-minded and am squeamish when it comes to bodily fluids, broken limbs and really, anything to do with human bodies. Luckily for me, this book did not have pictures.

Tim Booth was a motoring journalist who become a paramedic in south-west Sydney, and wrote about it. His stories of people who called 000 for emergency ambulance attendance included a surprising amount of people with weird objects stuck where they shouldn’t have gone, many, many people who weren’t actually sick, a large number of people who were sick but not so sick that they required emergency treatment or transporting to hospital and an enormous amount of people who were simply rorting the health system. In between the time-wasters, the author and his colleagues were often desperately needed to help injured or ill people.

While many of the stories were very funny, there was a also a serious side to the story. The messages I took from this book are as follows:

1. Don’t phone for an ambulance unless you actually need one. While the ambulance officers are tied up with you because you called them for a blocked nose (telling the emergency services operator that you couldn’t breathe), they may be required at an actual emergency to save someone’s life.

2. Paramedics burn out very quickly. These hard-working people deal with idiots, work horrible hours and are desperately under-resourced.

The author’s frustration with the health system cut through the humour, loud and clear.

Immaculate by Anna McGahan

Immaculate by Australian author Anna McGahan won The Australian/Vogel’s Award in 2023. This prize is awarded annually for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five and along with prize money, the winner’s book is published by Allen & Unwin the following year.

The main character of Immaculate was Frances, whose small daughter Neve was terminally ill and unlikely to see her next birthday. Frances’ ex-husband, Lucas was a pastor in the Eternal Fire, a Brisbane church that Frances had recently been excommunicated from. Unfortunately Lucas was selfish and vengeful, and made everything harder than it needed to be for Frances as he strove for sole custody of their daughter.

When the Eternal Fire staff were at a loss with what to do with homeless and pregnant 16 year-old, Mary, who claimed to have had an immaculate conception, they ‘asked’ Frances, a former social worker, to assist. Since the church had been threatening to evict Frances from her church-owned home, it wasn’t so much ‘asking’ her but forcing her to help, which she agreed to so she and Neve could remain in their home.

Frances did her best to keep Neve happy and healthy while juggling a part-time job and trying to prevent Lucas from taking things too far with Neve, particularly as he and his church were a radical, faith-healing mob who believed that the laying on of hands and prayer would be more beneficial to Neve than medical treatment. While all of this was going on, Frances was also experimenting with her sexuality,

The story is written in short chapters, with the viewpoint changing each time. Tying in with the religious elements, the chapters are titled The Gospel According to Frances 2:1 or Book of Mary 3:2 and so on. The chapters also included police reports and interviews, medical records, Instagram posts and transcripts of phone text conversations.

There are some areas of the book where I couldn’t decide if the events occurring were magic realism or dreams. In some ways these sections were a struggle for me as I find it hard to believe in them, but in fairness, they were also fascinating and opened up the story. Some events felt overly harsh and made me feel angry – this usually happened whenever Lucas and his vindictive self made an appearance.

The book covered some big, confronting subjects, particularly the impending death of a child, but also relationship breakdowns and misogyny, religion and faith, sexuality, coercion and control.

I liked the Brisbane setting, believed in the characters despite the magic realism and I enjoyed the unusual story-telling style.

My purchase of Immaculate begins my New Year’s resolution for 2024 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (January). I purchased Immaculate at The Book Bird in Geelong.

The Morbids by Ewa Ramsey

The Morbids is Australian author Ewa Ramsey’s first novel.

First up, the Morbids are the nickname of a fictional Sydney support group for people who are convinced they are going to die. To my mind, the group fed off each other’s anxieties about the various ways they might be accidently killed, die from some rare disease or other, or even die in a more common, but still tragic way. I wanted to tell these poor, troubled people that eventually we are all going to die, and that worrying about how it might happen won’t change anything but clearly this approach is overly simplistic, because if telling people to ‘Get over it’ was a solution, then there would be no mental health issues.

The main character of the story was Caitlin, who had been attending the weekly Morbids meetings after surviving a terrible car accident several years previously. Cait was a workaholic who worked in a bar, drank too much and avoided personal relationships with anyone who mattered to her. When her oldest friend Lina sent Cait a postcard saying she was getting married in Bali and wanted Cait to be her maid of honour, Cait’s anxieties ramped up. At the same time, Cait started seeing Tom, a customer from the bar who was fabulous, but as Cait’s mind told her that being ‘careful’ with her love and friendship was the only thing keeping herself and the people she loved safe, the possibility of loving relationships created a seemingly insurmountable conflict for her.

I liked Cait and the other characters. The love and friendship and care the characters showed for each other made them a joy to spend time with in this story, although I do think that some characters were just too good to be true. Everyone suffers from anxiety sometimes, but The Morbids opened my eyes up to how debilitating it must be to live with anxiety that is overwhelming and doesn’t go away.

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down won the 2022 Miles Franklin award for Australian fiction. The award was well-deserved, in my opinion.

The story was told in the first person by Holly, a nurse who had been living in the United States of America for many years. Holly thought she had outran her past until she received a message on Facebook from someone in Australia asking her if she knew an Australian woman called Maggie who had disappeared many years ago.

Holly, aka Maggie, had been born in Melbourne in the early 1970s. Her mother died when she was too little to remember her and father was a drug-addict. She and her father lived in pubs and motel rooms until Maggie was six-years old, when her father went to jail.

Maggie’s childhood was as bad as it could have been. She was sexually, physically and emotionally abused in foster homes and in group houses, and as a teenager, probably not surprisingly, she chose the wrong boyfriends.

As a young woman Maggie found love and stability with a kind man, and was accepted into his family and circle of friends. They married and began a family, but sadly, their baby died. Time passed and they had another baby, who also died. Then their third baby died. By this time, Maggie and her husband’s marriage was over in all but name, as they could not cope with the emotional strain of the tragedies. When the police investigation into the three baby’s deaths focused on Maggie, she staged a disappearance.

It is hard to know how someone who had endured so much could keep going, but somehow, this extraordinary character did. Neither Maggie nor the author wallowed, but they didn’t shy away from telling Maggie’s story in full, either.

I feel as if I’m struggling to do justice in my review to this book. I want everyone to read it, but am aware that because the story includes child sexual abuse, the death of babies, drug abuse and an enormous amount of emotional trauma that it won’t be for everyone. But if you can bear to read about these subjects, the writing is good and Maggie’s voice feels ‘true.’

My purchase of Bodies of Light concludes my New Year’s resolution for 2023 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (November). I purchased Bodies of Light at The Bookshop in Queenscliff.

Fields of Grace by Wendy Waters

Fields of Grace is a stand-alone novel by Australian author Wendy Waters, who also wrote Catch the Moon, Mary.

The star of this story is Grace Fielders, a young woman from Devon who for a brief period during the 1930s become London’s most feted stage actress. Grace lived amongst friends at a ladies-only boarding house, sharing clothes, adventures, hopes and dreams with the other boarders, a lovely group who encouraged Grace in her dream of becoming an actress.

Grace auditioned and won the role of Peggy Ashcroft’s understudy (yes, THAT Dame Peggy Ashcroft) in Hamlet with the Gielgud Company (yes, THAT Sir John Gielgud), and when Peggy became ill, Grace had the chance to take the stage as Ophelia.

Grace was a smash hit from the beginning and was quickly snatched up by England’s most renowned agent, John Hopkins-Reimer, who became her feu sacre, or the love of her life.

Grace accompanied John on a publicity tour of Europe, searching out ancient, open-air theatres to stage modern plays in as they went, however their visit to Berlin during the 1936 Olympics ended in tragedy, which changed Grace’s life completely. Prior to the trip to Berlin, the treatment of Jewish and other people who did not fit into Hitler’s view of the future, political events and the threat of war hung ominously over everything.

Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, David Niven, Noel Coward, Wallace Simpson and Virginia Woolf and other actors, writers and celebrities of the time made appearances in the story. I particularly enjoyed David Niven’s friends opinion of his decision to go to Hollywood to makes films, which they were unanimous in thinking (and saying!) would fail.

Once Grace closed the curtain on acting, she moved to Sydney, Australia where she lived a quiet life away from the stage. At the age of 97, Grace finally shared her life story with her grand-daughter Sam.

Fields of Grace will appeal to readers who loves the stage, with the appearance of fictionalised versions of the biggest stars of the 1930s providing a thrill.

Many thanks to Wendy Waters, the author of Fields of Grace who sent me a copy of the book in return for my honest review.

My Place by Sally Morgan

My Place by Australian author Sally Morgan was a re-read for me. I couldn’t remember many of the details of the author’s story of her childhood and search for information about her family’s background from my original reading, but I did remember how the story had made me feel.

Sally Morgan grew in Perth during the 1950s and 60s. Her father, an alcoholic, died when she was young. These days, he would have been diagnosed with PTSD after having been a POW. When her father was really struggling, he told his wife to hide the axe because of what he might do. After her father’s death Sally soon realised that family life was less complicated without him.

Sally, her brothers and sisters were brought up by her mother and grandmother in a home full of secrets. When children from school asked where the family were from, Sally’s mother and grandmother told her to say they were of Indian descent, which satisfied the questioners. It never occurred to Sally that they were Aboriginal.

Eventually, Sally realised her mother and grandmother had lied to her about their family heritage in order to avoid the stigma of being Aboriginal in a country where most of the inhabitants were racists and in her grandmother’s case, out of fear that the terrible things that had happened to her and other Aboriginal people in the past could happen again.

Sally set out to learn more about her family’s background, travelling to Corunna Station in the Pilbara region of Western Australia where her grandmother had been born. I became teary when she described how the old people who had remained after her grandmother had left were equally overjoyed and amazed by her visit, saying that none of the people who had left (those with fair-skin) had ever returned.

My Place included the stories Sally wrote for her uncle, mother and grandmother after recording interviews with them; Arthur Corunna’s Story, Gladys Corunna’s Story and Daisy Corunna’s Story. Sally wanted more from her grandmother, Daisy, but up until she died Sally’s grandmother insisted on keeping secrets that she either found too hurtful to discuss or felt were too risky to the family’s wellbeing to let go of.

My Place was the first time a direct account of what life had been like for an Aboriginal person between 1890 and 1980 had been put in writing for mainstream readers. Those direct voices also told of slavery, with them and countless others working in some cases for all of their lives without being paid. It told of Aboriginal men going to war for Australia but not having a vote. It told of watching other Aboriginal people being chained up around their necks and hands and marched off to who knows where. It told of knowing that other Aboriginal people were being hunted for sport, like animals.

The story clearly described the impact of the family’s loss of country through multiple generations of the author’s family.

There is joy in the story though, particularly when Sally tells of her ramshackle childhood in a house where there were many pets, jokes and love.

As much as I loved these stories, I felt that the character’s voices as children were too grown up for their ages. I suppose the author had to ensure that what they were thinking and feeling were clear and as a result, the dialogue sometimes grated. But this is a small criticism to make of a book which opens the reader’s eyes to ongoing injustice.

My Place was book three of my second Classics Club challenge to read 50 classics before my challenge end date of September 08, 2028, and my winner of the Classics Club Spin #35.

When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu

When One of Us Hurts by Monica Vuu is a debut novel set in a remote coastal town in Northern Tasmania.

The story of the death of a baby and a teenage boy who were killed at the Port Brighton lighthouse on the same night was alternately told by two narrators, an odd teenage girl called Livvy and by an older woman, Marie, an outsider. Port Brighton locals didn’t like or trust outsiders, but Marie, now an asylum inmate, had once been Livvy’s step-mother.

The story began with Livvy trying to protect her stepbrother, Johnny, whose best friend Sebastian died at the lighthouse. When a reporter arrived in Port Brighton to investigate Sebastian and Baby Frankie’s death, Livvy set out to ensure that the reporter left town without finding out the truth about their deaths.

The plot was complicated, made more so because I didn’t realise until late in the story that Livvy and Marie’s narrations were on different timelines.

There were also elements of the plot that were too far-fetched for me, such as all of the children in the town being home-schooled, supposedly because the townspeople were so close-knit and didn’t like to mix with outsiders.

I also struggled with the characters and their motivations. None of the characters were likeable. The town and the people who lived there were horrible. Their secrets were nasty.

This story wasn’t at all to my liking.

My purchase of When One of Us Hurts continues my New Year’s resolution for 2023 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (November). I purchased When One of Us Hurts at The Book Bird in Geelong.