Good on you Tim!

Had to post the breaking news ABC just reported: Tim Winton has won the 2009 Miles Franklin Award for Breath.

I think that makes Winton the only person to have won it four times- a well deserved distinction for a wonderful writer.

Congratulations Alice!

I am delighted to see that Alice Munro has won this year’s Man Booker International Prize. (Press release here).

Having recently read most of her work, Munro has become a great favourite of mine (to the point where I’m rationing out the few collections I haven’t read) . If you’re not acquainted with her masterful miniatures of writing, now would be a good time to fix that.

(My review of Alice Munro’s first book, Dance of the happy shades, is here for anyone who needs further persuasion.)

Catching up

As the days shorten and temperature drops here in Sydney, I’ve taken a week’s leave from work to hibernate (and alas, get cracking on some uni assignments). Those commitments aside, I’m sure to enjoy long bouts of uninterrupted reading in the next few days.

My recent reading has been a good mix of old favourites (Andrea Camilleri, Alice Munro, Ian Rankin and Deanna Raybourn) and new (Julian Barnes, Sloane Crosley and Sonya Hartnett). The two stand-outs:

1. The pedant in the kitchen by Julian Barnes, a collection of food columns originally published in The Guardian. At one point, Barnes writes that “the best books persuade readers who do not even know the author that they are friends of hers as well”. In his entertaining exploration of the dilemmas of the home cook, Barnes successfully persuaded me he was, if not a friend, a kindred spirit when it comes to cooking. A taster:

“the relationship between professional and domestic cook has similarities to a sexual encounter. One party is normally more experienced than the other; and either party should have the right, at any moment, to say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’

The professional might- like Elizabeth David, for instance- refuse to hand-hold or sweet-talk the punter. While from the punter’s point of view, the refusal is more likely to come from (where else?) the gut. For instance, you buy a chicken, take it home, run your hand along the kitchen bookshelf, and decide today is the day for River Cafe Blue. First recipe: Pollo Alla Griglia. Sounds about right: Marinated Grilled Chicken, You read the recipe carefully and discover that the first three-quarters of it are devoted to boning the fowl. And you think: No, I’m not going to do that. Perhaps if they’d called it ‘cutting the flesh off the chicken’ I might have been up for it. But first, I don’t trust my skill. Second, I doubt there’s anything in the kitchen drawer which qualifies as a boning knife. And third and conclusively, I’ve only got one sodding chicken and I don’t want to find myself an hour from now faced with something that looks as if a fox has got at it. So that’s decided. Turn the page and look at the other River Cafe Blue Recipes for chicken. There are two of them. Both start by telling you to bone the damn thing. Well, Hello Delia again.

Lesson Two, Part Two. It’s not just difficulty, it’s also time. River Cafe Green has a terrific recipe for Penne with Tomato and Nutmeg (and basil, garlic, and pecorino), which I make regularly; the nutmeg is the key surprise element. But I did first have to overcome the recipe’s opening sentence: ‘2.5 kg ripe cherry vine tomatoes, halved and seeded.’ So that’s well over five pounds of tomatoes. And how many of the little buggers do you think you get to the pound? I’ll tell you: I’ve just weighed fifteen and they came to four ounces. That’s sixty to the pound. So we’re talking 300, cut in half, 600 halves, juice all over the pace, flicking out the seeds 600 times with a knife, worrying about not extracting every single one. All together now: NO, WE’RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT. Leave the seeds in and call it extra roughage. “

2. Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett. Hartnett’s latest novel is a painfully close-to-the-bone tale focusing on almost fourteen-year-old Plum Coyle and neighbouring housewife Maureen Wilks who befriends her. Different to Of a Boy but equally affecting, Hartnett writes with compassion and humour but above all clarity of “commonplace horrors.” (As Hartnett described her work in conversation with Sandra Yates at the SWF last Thursday). An author worth seeking out if you haven’t heard of or read her work.

The Sunday salon: A book review, belated thanks and the best choc-chip cookie recipe EVER!

I’m afraid I’ve lost my blogging mojo of late, which isn’t entirely bad given I’ve had more time to read as a result. Undoubtedly, the best thing I’ve read since I last posted is the novel Of a boy (aka What the birds see) by Sonya Hartnett, an acclaimed Australian author who I’m now glad to say won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2008.

Of a boy is set in 1977 in a suburban Australia where “three children bought no ice-cream, did not return home” (in the novel the Metfords, based of course on the Beaumonts). It relates the quiet life of Adrian, a nine-year-old boy living with his gran and uncle Rory, a boy who:

“isn’t particularly gifted at anything except art: the other kids gather admiringly round his desk during the once-weekly afternoon sessions when they’re allowed to paint and draw. Aside from this, he goes more or less ignored. He doesn’t mind that- he prefers to be overlooked. He is bashful, and rarely puts up his hand: if he knows an answer. he generally keeps it to himself. He isn’t boisterous, he can’t run fast, he is hopelessly uncoordinated. He sometimes joins the boys playing football at lunchtime on the broken asphalt, but he isn’t a skilful player. When the captains pick their team from the mob, first one boy choosing and then the other, Adrian is unfailingly one of the last to be selected, left waiting with the fat boy and the immigrant. Adrian is the runt. But he takes the humiliation in good stead, and always feels a squeeze of pleasure when his name is finally called.”

You slowly get to know Adrian as his life unfolds one day at a time, with Hartnett creating a strikingly convincing child narrator who wants a slinkee, has many worries (including sea monsters) and is aching lonely. That is, until he meets and befriends his new neighbours, Nicole, Joely and Giles.

Hartnett herself was nine in 1977, which obviously helped her get the the context right. What is more impressive is her creation of authentic childhood moments which gave me a jolt of recognition when I read them, caused a half-stifled exclaimation of But how did she know? For example, those days when as a child you couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble: (It’s a L-O-N-G passage, but it makes the point, so indulge me.)

“As soon as he lifts her (a Royal Doulton figurine) off the mantle, she slithers like an eel from his hands. There’s something sly and traitorous in the way she shatters to pieces on the bricks of the hearth. There is a shriek behind him- a bloodcurdling scream, really. He hears cutlery dropped and the glass door flung back and as he feels his grandmother bearing down like a train he crosses himself superstitiously, awaiting the sting of the slap.

She’s still furious the next morning, and Adrian can’t find his school shoe. He has hobbled about all morning, searching frantically. When Gran’s reversing the tank down the drive Adrian is underneath his bed, scouting the dustiest shadows. The first time she blares the horn, a squeak of dismay escapes him. The second time, frustrated tears fill his eyes. He runs lopsidedly to the den, although he’s already looked there. His grandmother leans on the horn as he crouches on the carpet, cheeks scorching, unable to think. He faces the prospect of wearing his sneakers- perhaps his slippers- to school, when anything but black lace-ups is strictly forbidden. A salty tear slinks past his nose and he wretchedly smears it away. Suddenly, salvation: he remembers reading National Geographic in bed and, growing sleepy, dropping the magazine to the floor. He charges to his room, kicks Geographic aside, and there it is, the prodigal shoe.

In the car, driving to school, his grandmother doesn’t say anything, except to curse the traffic. Adrian cowers like a dog that’s been thoroughly thrashed. When he finally dares to glance at her, he sees she’s grown fins and horns, fangs and claws.

Things surely cannot get any worse, but that evening they do. His homework demands the use of black ink, so he goes to Rory’s bedroom to dig out a pen. He doesn’t like Rory’s bleak, odoriferous room and nor is he particularly welcome within it, so he hurries, eager to be out. Rory’s easel stands empty so there’s no reason for Adrian to think the spats of wayward paint on it should be wet- but some of them must be, for as he ducks by the easel a dab of British racing green touches the elbow of his jumper. His grandma nags him to change out of his uniform when he gets home from school, but Adrian is lazy and always reluctant to swap warm clothes for cold, so he disregards this decree when he can. Now there’s green paint on his school jumper and the jumper is new, not even one year old: his grandmother, already angry about Royal Doulton and the shoe, will certainly murder him.

He rummages through Rory’s painting stuff for a rag, dousing it with turpentine. He rubs the rag determinedly on the stain, and the wool of the jumper darkens and frays. The small green splat spreads to become a noticeably large teal smudge. Adrian gulps down air, mortified. He scuttles to the bathroom, hooking the latch through the eye. He wriggles from the jumper, which reeks of turpentine. He holds the sleeve under the hot tap, gouging soup through the wool. The soap foams and water spits, and the jumper’s sleeve is soaked: still the stain remains. The hot water burns him, the soap’s smell of flowers rises in the air. Adrian flops on a chair, weak with defeat and melancholy. ‘You dumb kid,’ Rory will chortle later; the boy’s grandmother will be less amused. To her, who grew up poor, the ruining of good clothes is tenfold more disgraceful than the manslaughter of a china girl: even though he doesn’t try, Gran says, ‘Don’t talk to me , Adrian, don’t say a word!’

That night he sleeps with his hands clasped between his knees, waking abruptly several times. He wonders what will become of him, a useless, hopeless boy.”

As the above extract suggests, there is a lot of sadness in this book, not always in the foreground but ever present, a part of everyone’s life including Adrian’s. With the context of the missing children, there is a growing sense of suspense (by the final pages, my stomach was knotted with dread) but when danger finally appears, it takes a shockingly unexpected form . I found what happened horribly convincing and admit I cried buckets. I will remember Adrian and Of a boy long after finishing it, and encourage anyone reading this to seek him and it out.

I’m now really looking forward to Hartnett’s latest novel Butterfly, which is awaiting me on the TBR shelf once I’ve regained some emotional equilibrium. I was also delighted to see in the program released yesterday that Hartnett will be part of the Sydney Writer’s Festival in May- definitely a must see for me.

On another note, I want to say a belated thank you to seachanges for giving me a I heart your blog award a while back. Much appreciated, although I can’t pick just seven blogs to pass it on to. There’s a reason the posts in my bloglines account are longer than War and Peace after all.

Finally, one of my small pleasures is baking something sweet each weekend. This weekend I made these choc-chip cookies, which are so good I have to pass on the recipe. They apparently last a week, not something that will be tested in my household. It’s as if the cookie-monster in his pre “Cookies are a sometimes food” days has been to visit!

Soldier’s heart: reading literature through peace and war at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet, 2007

Elizabeth D. Samet has taught English at West Point since 1997. Soldier’s Heart is her engaging and erudite account of this time, a book about books and so much more: history, education, religion, politics and of course Afghanistan and Iraq. She writes in the prologue:

“My ongoing conversations with students, some of which began when men and women who are now lieutenants and captains were plebes, reveal the ways in which literature helps them to understand their own increasingly complicated lives. Having chosen a profession that cannot afford to indulge their desire for reflection, they make courageous attempts to bridge active and contemplative selves. This is a story about my intellectual and emotional connections to military culture and to certain people in it, but the real drama lies in the way the cadets I teach and the officers with whom I work negotiate the multiple contradictions of their private and professional worlds. Because they serve at the bottom of a hierarchy not especially interested in their opinions, cadets, especially plebes, at once crave and fear the freedom to wonder. Few people really know this part of their story: the courage with which they challenge accepted truths; the nuanced way they read literature and culture; and the ingenious methods they have for resisting conformity in lives largely given over to rules and regulations. Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers- the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes- eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve.”

In Soldier’s heart, Samet resurrects this individuality, writing with affection and clarity of the culture of West Point and her various English classes and students. Along the way, she discusses general issues like the appropriate education of officers, differing concepts of courage, duty and honor and the role of women in the armed services. A fascinating book with much food for thought, Soldier’s heart has left me with a richly nuanced view of the US armed forces and an increased desire to read Montaigne, War and peace and If I die in a combat zone. Highly recommended.

The Sunday Salon: A farewell

I was saddened to read that John Mortimer died on Friday. His Rumpole short stories and novels have provided me with many hours of entertainment and much food for thought, and I am very sorry that there will be no more. In wake of the news, I went back and read an 2003 interview with John Mortimer in Tasting life twice: Conversations with remarkable writers by Ramona Koval. Of Rumpole, Mortimer said:

“Geoffrey Robertson said Rumpole had changed the law. I’m not quite sure whether he wasn’t claiming a bit too much for him. I thought of Rumpole basically because I wanted a character to keep me alive in my old age, like Maigret or Sherlock Holmes or something. But I also wanted to write about all those great principles, which I do believe in- and which are being so terribly attacked by this government, among other disgraceful governments- of being tried by your peers, the presumption of innocence, that the police shouldn’t invent more of the evidence than is absolutely essential. These principles aren’t respected by politicians, who really want to take over everything into their own hands, and they’re not really at the top of the list of the general public, but they’re kind of kept alive by criminal barristers. They go around some rather unsympathetic courts upholding these great principles, and so I did also want to say that lawyers aren’t all rich, fat cat liars. They do serve a useful purpose.”

As a law student who hopes to follow Horace Rumpole’s example, I applaud that and urge anyone who hasn’t yet read John Mortimer to give him a go.

The Sunday Salon: cooking at Le Cordon Bleu and re-visiting some old friends

Having succumbed to gluttony Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, I was appropriately enough reading The sharper your knife, the less you cry: love, laughter and tears at the world’s most famous cooking school by Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six year old American with a passion for cooking. When Flinn lost her corporate job in London, she made the impulsive decision to enrol at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and try to earn her diploma. Her book charts the ups and downs of living in Paris and learning French cuisine. It’s full of wonderful recipes I look forward to trying, and was a perfect holiday read. If you enjoyed Julie and Julia, I’d recommend it.

Reading wise, I’m planning to ease into the New Year by re-reading the six novels of Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire series, starting with The Warden. It’s always comforting to immerse myself in Trollope’s extensive and ordered world. As Clifton Fadiman put it in his wonderful essay Pillow Books (re the search for appropriate bedtime reading):

“As for novels, give me no profound Russians, no overlucid Frenchmen, no opaque Germans. Give me solid Englishmen of the nineteenth century or early twentieth…Above all give me Trollope, from whom I have received so much pleasure that I would willingly call him another St. Anthony; Trollope, who breaks instantly through the time barrier and teleports the horizontal reader instantly to a divinely settled, comfortable, income-taxless vanished world. His half a hundred novels are good for five years of bedside reading. Of those who minister to the tired, night-welcoming mind, Trollope is king. He never fails to interest, but not too much; to soothe, but not too much. Trollope is the perfect novelist for the bedside.”

I’d only add, for the holidays!

Book Blogger’s Christmas Swap – Thanks Tanabata!

After a tough day at work yesterday, I was delighted to come home and find my Book Blogger’s Chrissie swap pressie in my letterbox. When I opened the envelope, I saw this:

Of course, I couldn’t resist opening it, and was rapt to discover:

1. A 2009 Library calendar, open to my favourite picture, the Francisco de Burgoa Library in Oaxaca, Mexico.
2. Love and Friendship by Jane Austen- a beautifully published Hesperus press edition of Austen’s juvenalia. I haven’t read this and look forward to doing so soon.
3. An unusual card/bookmark.

All courtesy of Tanabata, who blogs at In Spring it is the dawn. Thanks Tanabata for a lovely and thoughtful gift, I hope you and your family have a Merry Christmas.

My first Sunday Salon

I was relieved to see Jane Eyre win over Wuthering Heights in Simon’s most recent weekly poll. Having just re-read Jane Eyre, my choice was clear.

Rochester is far from my ideal man (I often want to shake him and yell GET A JOB instead of marrying for money, how DARE you lie to Jane etc!). A fondness for Byronic leading men then doesn’t explain why I love the book so much.

What does is the character of Jane, who from the days of Mrs Reed through to those of St John Rivers, thinks her own thoughts if not expresses them and is her own woman. First as a bookish twelve-year old (and many times since) I was thrilled to read Jane declare to Rochester:

” ‘I tell you I must go!’ I retorted, roused to something like passion. ‘Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? -a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; – it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal, – as we are!’ “

And when tempted to become Rochester’s mistress, to think:

” “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad- as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth- so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane- quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot.’ “

Wuthering Heights is a strange and beautiful book but Jane Eyre is for this devoted reader at least, the one with more to say.

Whilst I’m on the subject of women sticking up for themselves, I’ve just finished Shannon Hale’s wonderful re-telling of a Grimm bothers fairy tale, The Goose Girl. Young adult fiction especially young adult fantasy is not my usual cup-of-tea, so I’m surprised to say I enjoyed this. It tells the story of Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isile, Crown Princess of Kildenree who finds herself betrayed and usurped in the foreign kingdom of Bayern and resorts to working as a goose-girl whilst trying to avoid her murderous pursuers and see justice done. It was sad, thrilling, funny and romantic and I look forward to reading the rest of Hale’s work.

In the meantime, I’ve started Things without a name by Joanne Fedler, which tells the story of 34 year old Faith Roberts, a legal counsellor in a woman’s crisis centre. Published this year, it has an awful women’s domestic fiction cover which as a literary snob I wouldn’t have picked up. However I read an interesting interview with Fedler where she described her own experiences as a legal counsellor at a woman’s centre in South Africa prior to migrating to Australia. As I hope to work in the public legal sector once I graduate, I decided to try this and see what I’m in for.  So far, it’s a good if not uplifting read which I’m now off to continue.

The history boys by Alan Bennett, 2004

For anyone who doesn’t know, Alan Bennett’s wildly successful play follows eight sixth form boys in a grammar school in the North of England in the 1980’s as they are prepared for the Oxbridge entrance exams. It examines the questions of what is history?, how should it be taught? and more broadly, what is education and what is its point?

Idealistic English teacher Hector is unconvinced of the wisdom of the attempt, believing the boys only want to go:

“because other boys want to go there. It’s the hot ticket, standing room only. So I’ll thank you (hitting him) if nobody mentions Oxford (hit) or Cambridge (hit) in my lessons. There is a world elsewhere.”

Hector’s approach to education is a long term one along the lines of Miss Brodie’s leading out. That is, of a large and varied amount of information for its own sake, passionate and committed and certainly not curriculum orientated!

Their often astringent history teacher Mrs Linott has seen to it that the boys:

“know their stuff. Plainly stated and properly organised facts” or as Hector puts it:

“You give them an education. I give them the werewithal to resist it.”

She is another unconvinced that it is best for each boy to try for Oxbridge. However, the school’s headmaster has his eye on league tables and open scholarships, and hires the pragamtic Irwin to give the boys a little polish and see to it that they ace their exams. Irwin derides them as:

“Dull.

Dull. Abysmally dull.

A triumph… the dullest of the lot…

I didn’t say it was wrong. I said it was dull.

Its sheer competence was staggering.

Interest nil.

Oddity nil.

Singularity nowhere.”

and explains that what with bored examiners:

“The wrong end of the stick is the right one. A question has a front door and a back door. Go in the back, or better still, the side.

Flee the crowd. Follow Orwell. Be perverse…

History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It’s a performance. It’s entartainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.”

He sets about helping the boys to find an ‘angle’, believing from his own Oxbridge experience that “truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine-tasting or fashion at a strip-tease.”

This ideological conflict is the heart of the play. But it is not all so cerebral – these being young men there is plenty of sexual discussion, especially by the good-looking and cocksure Daikin. Rather disturbingly, both teachers make their attraction to a pupil or pupils clear, a weakness that is important to the play’s unexpected and moving conclusion.

In The history boys, Bennett convincingly creates eight individual boys full of promise at a turning point in their lives. With a liberal amount of cultural allusions high and low and humour, Bennett shows us what is “the only education worth having”. At one point, Hector explains that:

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things- which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”

For this devoted reader, The history boys is full of such moments. I thoroughly enjoyed it (and will be seeking out the film version as a substitute for seeing it performed). Bravo Mr Bennett!