Haiku From Sue Canders

My friend, poet and photographer Sue Canders, sometimes makes my day with a new haiku and photo from the beautiful Bass Coast.
This is to-day's gift to me, and now to you!

Neon striped sunrise

A warm wrap for cool morning

Fashionable dawn

A Festive Greeting to All

...... and may everyone give you book vouchers for Christmas.

What to Read When You Have Nothing to Read

When you read fairly quickly it's not always practical to pay $30 each for three books that you might finish in a week. So to supplement the joy of succumbing to such a bundle of new books from Readings or Dymocks I also swap books with friends and browse secondhand bookshops or book exchanges. (No, I don't use libraries. I just can't relax, knowing I have to take it back.)
But for a while recently I was in that panic-inducing state of having nothing to read. But a good browse in the wonderful Ramalama Book Exchange in Wonthaggi got me by.

There I found one of the most beautiful stories I've read for a long time: The Light Between Oceans, by M.L Stedman.

It made me ache with pity for not just one, but several, of the main characters. Goodreads said:
'...we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss'. 
The fabulous setting on a remote island with the lighthouse keeper certainly helped. Read it and be changed.

Then I bought The Fisherman, the much anticipated debut novel by Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma. I'd so loved his beautiful essay 'The Audacity of Prose' that I couldn't wait to read his book. It did not disappoint, a gripping story and so 'novel' with its setting of an unfamiliar Nigeria in which characters swayed between that culture and the infringments of the western world. Mysticism, superstition, danger, the powerful ties of family and a sense of foreboding right from the beginning—all combined to chart the destiny of the so easy-to-love brothers and the terrible fate ahead for them.

Sebastian Faulks' Engleby was on the shelves at home and unread so that was next—published in 2007 but recommended some time ago by Andrea Goldsmith for the tricks that the clever use of voice and point of view can play on us.  The blurb concludes - '...unlike anything he has written before: contemporary, demonic, heart-wrenching and funny, in the deepest shades of black.'

I tried Gary Crew's The Diviner's Son and was so depressed by the premise which involved a boy chained up by the ankles in a sideshow caravan that I put it away after the first few chapters, figuring that my life would not be enhanced by carrying that image in my head for one moment longer than I had to. I know, what a sook.

And then I got a cold. One of those head colds that makes you a thorough misery-guts to live with and keeps you coughing, night and day, for weeks on end. So I hit the easy reads. Having heard Liz Bryski speak at the Writers Festival I noticed several of her books on the shelves of another favourite book exchange, so I bought four. (I had read one of hers previously but I forgot, and bought it again.) I'm sure there's a huge market for these books with their subject matter of vaguely disenfranchised women busting out and 'finding themselves' but—suffice to say they were ideal for someone functioning on just the two cylinders, with a head cold and a perpetually runny nose. I look at them now and for the life of me can't remember the plots of any of them.

But now that I'm better I plan to embark on something a little different (for me). I rarely read non-fiction but have been tempted by Richard Glover's highly acclaimed memoir, Flesh Wounds. And, although I rarely read about magic, Jennifer Byrne's Bookclub on the ABC at the weekend has me thinking seriously of buying Lev Grossman's Trilogy, The Magicians, which Goodreads calls 'an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced (sic) in the real world - where good and evil aren't black and white, and power comes at a terrible price.'

It has been called 'the grown-ups' Harry Potter'. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.


Anyway, that should keep me going until my study term ends, by which time I might decide to read Wuthering Heights again, in the hope that this time Cathy comes to her senses and marries Heathcliff instead.

~*~

Literary Support

Every aspiring writer needs someone on hand to discuss things with when necessary.
Stella can be very thoughtful about the big issues of Life.
Here she is preparing a case for the use of the present tense.

Some are more help than others...

~ * ~

The Audacity of Prose

Chigozie Obioma - The Audacity of Prose

Before I'd heard of Chigozie Obioma's debut novel The Fishermen - currently long listed for the Man Booker Prize - I'd read the essay he wrote for The Millions entitled "The Audacity of Prose". The essay came my way via Krissy Kneen, a Brisbane writer who said Obioma's essay made her want to stand up and shout 'Hurrah!'

"I've been so bored with the trend towards clean, crisp unadorned prose sweeping the literary world of late. Gone is the poetry and playfulness that marks some of my favourite writing."
This struck such a chord with me that I followed the trail along through her article, to Obioma's essay and then to the first enticing chapter of his novel, now available from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mq8wt .

The main contention of Obioma's essay is an objection to the prevailing trend in fiction writing towards sparse, minimalist prose. "The enthroned style," he says "is dished out in schools under the strict dictum: Less is more ... resulting in the crowning of minimalism as the cherished form of writing."
While he accepts that a minimalist style is often the right style for the task at hand, it is also the case, he claims, that "more can also be more, and less is often inevitably less..... excess is excess but inadequate is also inadequate."
Writers today, he says, should be aware that the novels that are remembered will be those that err on the side of audacious prose. Among the proponents of this he includes Nabokov, Updike, Conrad, as well as William Faulkner, Shirley Hazzard, Ian McEwan and Cormac McCarthy to name a few.

Obioma's own fiction prose is anything but ornate. There is no 'flowery' language, no pretension, but neither is there a dominance of those flat, clipped sentences to which present day aspiring writers are so often told they must aspire. On the basis of the one chapter of The Fisherman though, Obiamo is already a master of the exquisite metaphor, the simile so apt we want to stop and write it down.
I for one can't wait to read the lot, and as I sit here on this dreary, grey Melbourne afternoon I can't help but wish to be transported to the Byron Bay Writers' Festival where the man himself will speak any time now. And the sun will most likely be shining, tourists trekking up to the lighthouse, not to mention the Pacific Ocean crashing away across the sandhills....

Oh well, you can at least read his essay here:

http://www.themillions.com/2015/06/the-audacity-of-prose.html?utm_source=Newsletter+Master+Database&utm_campaign=1d138caeae-Great_reads_31_July_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_00600a80f3-1d138caeae-72131637

Hamlet - Just for the Words

Went to see director Damien Ryan's production of Hamlet for Bell Shakespeare at Melbourne Arts Centre on Saturday, with Josh McConville as the prince himself. You wouldn't want to be daunted by those who've come before to play this most celebrated role: John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson, Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes, David Tennant and recently the fascinating Benedict Cumberbatch, to name but a few. My favourite still, despite his sometime bizarre behaviours since, has to be Mel Gibson in Franco Zeffirelli's sublime film. Gibson was just the right age, fabulous to watch and with those mad eyes, just right for Hamlet's wild wrestlings with love, grief, suspicion, revenge, rage and despair.
But Josh McConville did a fine job and I found his performance riveting as the questionably reliable narrator. There were a few weak characters in my ever-so-humble opinion - Claudius in particular was unsatisfactory and Ophelia didn't come near to what Ophelia should be - far too flouncy and pert to be a figure of such tragedy and though she handled her descent into madness very well, no-one but Hamlet seemed to care very much when she died (Gertrude especially recovered with amazing speed). And I too was unmoved. (This was also the verdict of those around me in our little post-play exchange in the foyer afterwards). She had one of those universal accents acquired from television and I expected her at any moment to say "OMG! That's awesome!"
Costuming was odd, a mixture of small suburban office types and the Brunswick Street breakfast crowd.
But the costuming is largely irrelevant. It's the words we go for, isn't it? Those oh-so-famous speeches that half the audience knows by heart - what pressure to deliver those and hope to satisfy! For me the rhyming couplets at the end of many of the scenes are the milestones that make me catch my breath, waiting -

Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. 

The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!

The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!

But the pinnacle of words in Hamlet brought tears to my eyes, as ever, and made the lady beside me suck in her breath and clutch both hands to her mouth and yes, I saw tears glistening there too.

Poor Horatio, to have to deliver these exquisite, heartbreaking lines -

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Read them aloud, and weep.

~ * ~

Review: Sofie Laguna, The Eye of the Sheep

I feel a very presumptuous, setting out to write a review of Sofie Laguna's Miles Franklin winner, The Eye of the Sheep, but The Resident Songwriter* in this household once told me that I represent 'the average ear' so my opinion must be of some value after all.
But there I was, having selected A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, to read next, and wading slowly through the first 50 mostly incomprehensible pages, when the Miles Franklin was announced and lo - I already had the book! So with this excellent excuse to abandon A.S. Byatt for the time being I straight away set to reading the one everyone was talking about. As you do.
What to say? It's brilliant, important, original, heart wrenching, harrowing, un-put-downable. Is it fun to read? No. Was I glad when it was over? Too right. Am I glad I read it? Without a doubt.
The narrator is Jimmy Flick, a quirky, desperately needy, 'special needs' boy whose voice and language we soon adapt to even though his words are usually not those of a boy his age. Jimmy is well-intentioned and kind but his world requires different coping strategies which don't always work out well in the eye of others around him.
But this whole family has special needs and each of them is drawn with such accuracy and such compassion that we ache for each of them along the way. Jimmy's mother Paula is a chronic asthmatic with a compulsive eating disorder that makes her obese and physically compromised. She is full of love for Jimmy, for his brother Robby and even for Gavin, her alcoholic husband who beats her up from time to time to vent his frustration at his own powerlessness. And despite his despicable actions, Gavin too elicits some sympathy with his dirty, dead-end job at the Altona refinery and the absence of any better prospects for the future. Gavin doesn't have the kind of patience that living with Jimmy demands so he takes his refuge in whiskey and the mournful songs of Merle Haggard. His wife Paula pays the price. Despite all the burdens they face, there is still a mutual tenderness between these two which surfaces from time to time and we lean into it with them in the vain hope that it might last.
We've all known families like this, especially those who've worked in health, education or welfare, and Sophie Laguna has drawn each of her characters with astonishing insight and empathy. Which didn't make the journey any less harrowing. Thank heavens for the dog, the comparatively stable uncle, and for the return of Robby who is absent for far too long.
And there are some joyous highlights - Jimmy's first fishing trip out to sea, the fabulous go-cart episode with his father.
So I read it very quickly. It's not the kind of story to loll around with on the couch and savour but as a portrait of all the families out there who struggle with disadvantage and personal issues too great to manage, this is a record to read and keep. It waves a red flag against quick judgements about the obese woman, the drunken man and the irritating kid, all of whom cross our paths, and all of whom run as deep and as complex as anyone - as Sophie Laguna has so cleverly shown.
(Sophie Laguna, by the way, is another on the dauntingly impressive list of graduates of the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT.)
For now though, it's back to A. S. Byatt for me in the hope that it might soon become even marginally as gripping as The Eye of the Sheep.
Watch this space.

~ * ~

eg.
*  http://www.macjams.com/song/72985