The Girl Who Read Too Much

Eat. Sleep. Read. Judge

[kateisreading]

Kate is still reading...

Astute readers of this blog may have noticed a lengthy break in entries. Sorry about that. I’ve had some thinking to do. 

It has become evident that I will not be able to continue on my quest to write about one hundred books this year. And it’s not because I’m sick of reading, or sick of telling people what I think of what I’m reading. Life without those two things would be like life without sunshine or crepes. The real reason is that I am now working for one of the highest profile literary festivals in the country, and the books I am reading are inevitably connected to the program. Which is confidential. Until April 2015. So, it is with a heavy heart that I must take a short hiatus from my beloved ‘one year one hundred books’ project. Trust me that I will be doing my best to get to one hundred books or very close anyway (I’m up to 73). But the reviews will be postponed somewhat. However sad you are about this blog-cation, I’m sadder. But such is life. And having a job which involves helping to program an incredible writers’ festival ain’t so bad. 

I may post from time to time, should a topic take my fancy, but in the meantime, here’s a few ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ reads if you need something to get you through the summer months (or the cold dark winter, northern hemisphere readers):

Novels

Billy Lynn’s Long Half-time Walk by Ben Fountain - unexpectedly was blown away by this 2012 American novel, which is a blackly comic realist satire about Bush’s war in Iraq. If you’re thinking, I don’t like war novels, this isn’t one. But it is clever and incredibly touching. 

The Group by Mary McCarthy - classic from 1963. The perfect one to devour in a bubble bath or at the beach - filled with sadness and sass and unputdownable - the story of what happens to a group of women after college. An iconic book, essential reading.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - possibly my favourite novel. Wharton is a genius and funny to boot. Lily Bart is an unforgettable and flawed heroine, and this is a tragic cautionary tale told with elegance and effortless understanding of human nature. 

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach - for fans of Franzen, but set in high school. One of the stand-out American debuts of recent years.

May We Be Forgiven by AM Holmes - fun, funny, funnier, sad, funny, sad, funny, though-provoking. A roller coaster of a novel, this woman is a force on the page. Winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for fiction.

What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt - a crazy suspenseful literary thriller about art and the horrors of parenthood. Worth reading for Siri’s incredible descriptions of galleries and art pieces.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - I want to cry just thinking about this one. An oldie but a goodie.

Bliss by Peter Carey - a great first line, and the rest is excellent too. One of Carey’s earlier novels, and in my opinion, one of his best.

Memoir

Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks - a witty, visceral and weirdly page-turning exploration of one man’s quest to cure his chronic pain through meditation.

An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame - oh god I love Janet Frame. She was an extraordinary author from New Zealand who was born to write. Her autobiography comes in three volumes, but sometimes they are published altogether. An Angel at My Table is the title of the second book, and is the name of the film adaptation, directed by Jane Campion (which I also recommend).

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami - one of the most special books I have read. A slim guide to life. Essential reading for writers, runners and human beings. 

Non Fiction

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo - winner of the National Book Award - a fascinating investigation into the slums of Mumbai, told by a writer who was actually there recording the stories as they happened. The confluence of great writing, meaningful subject and a smart, risk-taking author doesn’t come along very often.

Joe Cinque’s Consolation by Helen Garner - true crime and Australian non fiction at its absolute best. 

The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester - the narrative behind the Oxford English Dictionary - so good it’s like fiction.

Happy reading!

[kateisreading]

68. Acute Misfortune by Erik Jensen

What: Erik Jensen's minimalist portrait of the late Archibald Prize-winning artist and chaotic human being Adam Cullen When: October 25 Where: on the deck of a cottage in the beautiful Blue Mountains, in the outdoor bath  How: book borrowed from cottage-going friend Why: I heard Erik in conversation with Leigh Sales a few weeks ago speaking unbearably articulately about his time with Adam Cullen. I knew from how he spoke that he would be a brilliant prose stylist - and he is. 

Erik Jensen's study of Adam Cullen is an exercise in restraint. This is a life story whittled down to its barest, most revealing fragments, and all the more dramatic for its silences and gaps. Jensen's prose reads like a stylised film treatment - each chapter a set of elegant directions for the tragic art-house biopic of Cullen's life. In Jensen's hands each scene is perfectly shot, the angles precise. The script is poignant, intriguing and often absurdly humorous, but ever overlaid with the spectre of Cullen's premature death, revealed in the book's first pages. 

Cullen was a highly strung addict with a traumatic and confused sense of self, sexuality and society. He was talented and charismatic, but also misogynistic, cowardly, brutal and manipulative. Cullen invited Jensen to live in his spare room at the age of 19, under the pretense of a book deal. Jensen was to be his commissioned biographer. Soon it became clear that there was no publishing contract, and that Cullen was no simple subject. Jensen spends the book delicately lifting the layers of machismo, narcotics and raw artistic talent, to try and find the man underneath the performance of the outcast genius.  

Jensen's role in the story is unusual, and so is his approach to the representation of his role. Like his literary forbear Helen Garner, he seems to court personal involvement in the story he is investigating, and seems at home in that precarious position. He lives with Cullen. He is Cullen's friend, his artistic subject, and the object of almost desperate affection. Unlike Garner, he is almost wilfully unreflexive. He doesn't hide his intimacy with his subject, but nor does he over-analyse it or offer it up for judgment. For example, when Cullen is facing criminal charges he asks Jensen (among dozens of others) to write him a character reference. We hear the attempts to persuade him to do so, but not the end result. Jensen also recalls Cullen's forceful pleas for him to have a shower while at the artist's house for the visit. Jensen refuses and protests, but the record of the argument ends with Cullen's lingering entreaty. Again, we do not know the outcome. 

Jensen's cleverness is his coyness - the way he doesn't fully reveal his own complicity and sympathy for his subject, but instead lets the literary portrait speak for itself. The writing is transparent and opaque at the same time, which is problematic from a journalistic perspective, but beautiful from an aesthetic one.

[kateisreading]

67. Amnesia by Peter Carey

What: Peter Carey's new novel, Amnesia, which tells the story of a man writing the story of a young woman who has hacked her way into history by releasing thousands of prisoners fromtheir cells in Australia and the US When: October 16 - 18 Where: in my garden, at the beach How: proof copy from work Why: I went to see Carey in conversation with Jen Byrne at the Opera House and wanted to read up.

If the modern Australian literary scene was a city skyline, Peter Carey would be a very tall skyscraper - towering, solid and stable. Some people are continually stimulated by this skyscraper’s evolving design, and others are just reassured by its presence. Some only like the building from certain angles and at certain times of day. Others resent its dominance. But there it is - there Carey is - each book casting an ever longer shadow of influence over the cultural milieu. 

Amnesia is a complex and riveting ride through history, technology, family, love and contemporary media. Much of the novel is told through the voice of a tragicomic, alcohol-fuelled journalist called Felix Moore. Felix, known as Felix 'Moore-or-less' by his colleagues, becomes embroiled in a truly dodgy situation, where he is compelled (by money, physical force and a general lack of ethics) to write the biography of a young woman called Gaby Ballieux who has been accused of hacking into the Australian and US prison systems and freeing thousands of inmates. How could a girl from Melbourne do such a thing? It falls on Felix to explain why she couldn’t have. But things are very, very complicated.

As the narrative charges from the Battle of Britain to the advent of the internet, the narrative texture comes alive with voices, stories, more stories and alternative histories, many of which lie close to the author’s own view of our country’s past. It would all fall apart into chaos if Carey were not so utterly confident and assured in his tone. He employs a combination of past and present tense, first and third person, whipping in and out of memories and consciousnesses like an exhilarated literary spirit on a runaway train. With such a potentially complicated meta-fictional set up, it is incredible how much trust Carey places in his reader to travel with him through layers of truth and lies. More accurately, he trusts himself to be a good enough guide, and he is right to do so. 

Amnesia obsesses about the theme of identity. Each character assumes his or her own name as well as a myriad other identifying nouns. Carey cleverly observes that we are ourselves, but also at times a patient, a father, a future grandmother, a writer, a transgressor or a lover. The characters are many things to many people, never static in their own skin. Like identity, information and truth can be slippery, and so the novel is slippery too. It’s hard to grasp onto an authentic version of any event - we are just provided with multitudinous strands and expected to feel our way. This spectacular line stayed with me from the novel:

Misinformation rose into the sky above Canberra like rockets that flared and died and left their lies on our retinas so we continued to see what was not true.

The man can turn a phrase, and there are some terrific and terrifying scenes in this book, worth reading just for Carey’s unique ability to engender a visceral reaction while engaging in sophisticated linguistic play.

Carey is the only Australian to have twice won the Man Booker Prize, which puts him in an absurdly impressive clique with J M Coetzee and Hilary Mantel. Now onto his thirteenth novel, this man is a giant in our country’s culture, continually reinventing his writing self and setting off on unexpected journeys. Whether he is a gentle giant, a looming spectre or an inflated expat, is for the reading public to decide, and there are certainly people in all camps. Amnesia is both a challenging and addictive book - a pertinent look at Australia, through a lens crystallised by distance.

[kateisreading]

66. The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb

What: a new book about men, women and how the hell anyone gets anything done by Kitchen Cabinet host and journalistic goddess Annabel Crabb When: October 9 - 11 Where: on my new deck chair in my backyard, while walking to work (yes while walking - that's what I do when I really like something). How: gratis copy from the publisher Why: I'm a big fan of Annabel Crabb's work and I'm endlessly fascinated and provoked by the topic of feminism and how to ensure women have a voice in spheres of influence in Australia

Annabel Crabb is so intensely sensible that her writing always feels familiar, sometimes verging on self-evident. One has the sense the argument being put forward must already be well known and agreed upon. But making this assumption is to lose sight of Crabb’s preternatural ability to articulate the unsaid in a way that makes the reader immediately internalise its portent. She is a crusader for common logic.

In The Wife Drought Crabb is on a mission to start a practical conversation about the ubiquity of the traditional male-breadwinner model in Australia, and how this arrangement often governs the extent to which women are perceived to be able to pursue professional opportunities, and stymies attempts by men to enjoy work-life balance. This book is not a lament about ineffective policy or latent misogyny in the workplace; it’s about the raw data of family/work arrangements in Australia and the deeply ingrained cultural assumptions which make life difficult for the men and women who choose to take a road less travelled. On page 7, Crabb gets straight to it and reveals the facts:

Of Australian couple families with kids under the age of fifteen, 60 per cent have a dad who works full-time, and a mum who works part-time or not at all. How many families have a mum who works full-time, and a dad who is at home or works part-time? Three per cent. 

More startling to me, was the survey of 1192 senior corporate executives (half male, half female), where three quarters of the male executives had a spouse who worked part-time or not at all, and three-quarters of the women had a spouse who worked full-time. Fifty-seven per cent of the business women were the primary person responsible for childcare arrangements, compared to one per cent of the men. This was shocking to me, because I assumed that once a woman becomes the obvious breadwinner, the dominant tendency would be for the other partner to take up the slack domestically, as seems logical. BUT IT IS NOT SO. I appreciate that every family ‘makes it work’* in their own way, but if the argument for women staying at home with children is so often because the man’s earning capacity is higher, there is something really strange going on, and I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with that pesky influence, ‘culture’. As Crabb observes in her introduction:

Why, after all these decades of campaign, reform, research and thought about how we can best get women into the workplace, are we so slow to pick up that the most important next step is how to get men out of it?

The Wife Drought focuses not only on the often unexamined prejudices held against women with family (or possible forthcoming families) in professional spheres, but also the extreme social, psychological and professional barriers men face if they want to take on the primary care-taker role at home. This book is as much about and for men, as it is for women.

I’ve spoken about this book to a lot of my friends over the past week. Some were genuinely interested in the discussion, and some had the discussion foisted upon them. When highlighting subtle prejudices such as the fact that workplaces often assume that women with children will be less committed to their job, or that no-one ever asks a man how much parental leave he planning to take, I’ve been met with a mixture of zealous head nodding, and guilty apologetic shrugs as my female friends admitted that they plan to take a significant break from work when/if they begin to have children. Their timid confessions made me feel queasy. Do my friends see me as the type of feminist who only supports the woman’s right to choose if her choice is to work? Am I that feminist? 

The truth of the matter is that I am a little bit that feminist. I have seen so many smart and talented women assume that they will take the caretaker role (and almost no men) that I have an automatic femi-knee jerk reaction to remind them that there is always a choice, and that it should be a conscious one, based on a level playing field where women have just as much right to ambition as men, and men have just as much right to care for their home and children as women. I realise this is completely unhelpful, and that each person will make the decision that is right for him or her. I also realise that I may look back on 2014-blog-Kate and laugh hysterically about the value I was placing on career trajectory when it was only ephemeral compared to lasting happiness. What I do know is this: whatever I choose, whatever you choose, and whatever anyone else has ever chosen - Annabel Crabb is a voice you want in your head - she’ll make you laugh at any rate.

Read this book, if only to be more informed in arguments with me and other loved ones. 

* ‘It’ being the pursuit of a life of absolute personal and professional contentment, where you have children, if you so choose, and raise them in such a way that they don’t hate you.

[kateisreading]

65. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom

What: a new novel by critically-acclaimed American author Amy Bloom When: October 4 - 6 Where: on a park bench in Woollahra, sitting (a little creepily) in the sunshine on some children's playground equipment How: book borrowed from work Why: I didn't know much about Bloom or her work, but she writes for some publications that I love and she is published by one of my top five dream future publishers, Granta

It has recently come to my attention that I am reaching a new and very specific market with this blog: my friends' mums and their book clubs. Hi friends' mums! Welcome. I'm genuinely thrilled that parents, other than my own, read this blog. I'm particularly glad you're here because Lucky Us is a compulsively readable and beautifully constructed novel, perfect for juicy book club convos. Bloom's writing is page-turning, her characters are blissfully alive and flawed, and her evocation of 1940s America is vibrant and gritty. 

At the center of the book is the smart, resourceful and loyal Eva. When she is a young girl, Eva is abandoned by her mother and left with her father armed only with a suitcase and a sense of confusion. Her new life orbits around her glamorous half-sister Iris, a hard-working aspiring Hollywood starlet. The two girls run away from their undependable father to chase their version of the American dream - fame, love, money, eternal admiration and for Eva, a stable home.

Lucky Us tells of Eva's coming-of-age from a guileless little girl to a resilient young woman in a mid-twentieth-century America that throws up trauma and indefatigability in equal measures. That in itself is a heartfelt and compelling tale, but it is Bloom’s careful orchestration of a loveable but often-times self-interested cast of characters that makes Lucky Us a refreshing read and far from predictable. The novel is at once full of pathos and tongue in cheek humour - Eva is no clueless naif wondering what all the fuss is about. She is a calm pragmatist with fragile self-belief and a glorious staunchness that readers will fall for (well, this reader did). 

The structure of the novel is a patchwork of episodes and transcribed letters, both delivered and undelivered. Iris and Eva acquire friends and interested parties along their journey, including the heartbreakingly kind make-up artist, Francisco, who is a force of true tenderness in the novel, with a drily camp sense of humour to boot. This is a read full of momentum and an almost unimaginable domino chain of bad luck, but it is a rip-snorting story with a gentle heart. 

Bloom's writing makes you acknowledge humanity's infinite capacity for love, sacrifice, self-destruction and, most of all, hope. And the fact that Bloom achieved this literary melange of emotions without causing me to roll my eyes once says something about her authentic narrative voice. 

[kateisreading]

64. Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

What: The feverishly anticipated book of autobiographical essays by Lena Dunham, star and creator of the hit HBO TV show Girls and notorious professional over-sharer When: sometime in July Where: at my desk at work How: I was honoured and disgustingly excited to be the project editor of the Australian edition of this book and therefore was one of the first and only people in the country to read the manuscript before its heavily embargoed publication. If you were wondering, yes, this job perk involved so much squealing and grinning my cheeks still hurt. Why: I love her I love her I love her. 

What I should write: a witty, decisive and objectively informative review full of highlights and constructive critiques.

What I want to write: OH MY GOD LENA DUNHAM WHAT AN INSPIRATION EVERYTHING YOU DO IS BLESSED WITH GEN Y GENIUS PLEASE BE MINE AND MAY THE CRUMBS OF YOUR ARTISTRY FALL FROM YOUR BRAIN INTO MY PROSE. 

What I will write: a little of column A, a little of column B*

It’s really hard to be a trustworthy arbiter of taste when you have a hole in your critical vision the exact size and shape of Lena Dunham in a green bikini. I want to be more wise than worshipful, and more observant than obsessive, but let me submit this disclaimer: I cannot pretend that I feel anything other than all consuming love and unconditional respect for everything that Lena Dunham touches.

A few months ago, as I sat at my desk, delicately poring over Lena’s manuscript as if I was a Dickens scholar scrutinising the original handwritten manuscript of Great Expectations, I exhaled with relief: I genuinely loved the book and could proudly be its champion. Not That Kind of Girl is no glorified advice column peppered with wisecracks and embarrassing anecdotes (which I would have enjoyed anyway) - it is an incredibly revealing and innovative portrait of a privileged young woman with dubious decision-making skills, dealing with a smorgasbord of issues, at once deep and deeply superficial. When reading this collection of creative, confessional essays, you have to continually remind yourself that the vulnerable, nervous girl in the book went on to become world’s most unlikely superstar. And in that respect it is fascinating as well as a hilarious joy to read.

In Lena’s literary hands, sensitive issues like sexual consent, anxiety and morbidity are not evaded, but handled deftly and bravely muddled through in all their ambiguity. There are also stupendous lists. A favourite of mine was the chapter geniously entitled, ’18 Unlikely Things I’ve Said Flirtatiously’, in which Lena admits to the following comments:

11. “I’m obsessed with the curtains in your van!”

18. “My sister went back inside, so I think we’re safe. Wanna sit on the rock that doesn’t have algae? Or the algae one is fine, too.”

That last one had me snorting for several minutes. Now I can just think of the word ‘algae’ and it makes me smile. Am I obsessing? Yes? Well since I'm already on the crazy train I might as well take a seat. I adored the chapter on Lena’s eating habits, in which she painstakingly transcribes her daily food and calorie intake, revealing a complicated, relatable and incontestably entertaining relationship with her body. Her diary notes include observations such as ‘I had diarrhoea today!’, ‘I FEEL LIKE TOTAL SHIT’ and, finally, ‘I went totally nuts and ate all of the things’. Oh and Joana Avillez's illustrations are too fun: bobby pins, tiny shoes, hot water bottles, cheese, shuttlecocks, sunglasses...sorry, did you hear that? Choo choo - we just left the station. 

Why do I love her? Let me count the ways. She is totally unembarrassed, unapologetic and uncompromising. She puts her weaknesses and flaws on display, asking us to judge her and by extension ourselves but also to laugh, cringe, whinge and ponder. Not That Kind of Girl is a distillation of Lena’s unique barrier-breaking brand of over-sharing. It’s weird, then gets weirder. It makes you laugh, and then makes you laugh harder and less attractively. It makes you smile with recognition, then concern, then pity, then recognition again. It’s voyeuristic, unexpected and honest. And it’s bloody well written.

* Woops, sorry I meant A LOT of column B. But by now you've probably read the full gush - oh well.

[kateisreading]

63. This Picture of You by Sarah Hopkins

What: the third novel by Australian author Sarah Hopkins: a page-turning family drama filled with more secrets and lies than an episode of Survivor When: September 18 - 21 Where: on my reading chair, on a picnic blanket in the Sunday sunshine How: gratis copy borrowed from work (yes, I do return them) Why: an amazing review in the Spectrum last week 

There’s an old saying that the plot of all novels can be described by the same three words: things get worse. I have my own universal adage for fiction: nothing is as it seems. The trick to writing a page-turning novel is to reveal the layers underneath the ‘seeming’ truth in the most impactful order and at the most enthralling pace. It seems like a straightforward task, but anyone who has read a bad novel will know it is an incredibly delicate challenge. Sarah Hopkins does the job beautifully in This Picture of You. As a bonus the writing is lucid and strong.

Maggie and Martin are an older couple living in Sydney. Martin is a judge and Maggie is an artist. At the beginning of the book, their lifestyle seems close to idyllic. Idyllically normal. Maggie swims laps every day and paints, Martin talks shop and they spend as much time as they can with their son, daughter-in-law and beloved grandson. But Martin is acting strangely. He spontaneously borrows his son’s car and ends up having an accident in a an unfamiliar neighbourhood. He claims to have no idea how he got there.

Perhaps as a way to orient himself as his mind regresses into foggy confusion, Martin becomes obsessed with recounting the day that he and Maggie met in New York almost forty years ago. This origin story takes on an almost mythical status as it is told and retold from different angles throughout the book, gradually circling in on long-held points of contention. But the reality behind their great love story is only one thread in a greater web of secrets. The multi-layered tale becomes a blueprint for a life filled with knowns and unknowns in equal measure.

Prompted by an instinct that Martin’s car crash was no coincidence, Maggie goes in search of an untold past and comes upon unexpected revelations. But how do you discuss unearthed secrets with a man whose mental capacity is deteriorating? Martin tells the truth as if he is a courtroom rather than at a kitchen table. He views Maggie as a prosecutor rather than a lover of forty years. As a result she faces an excruciating emotional betrayal without the satisfaction of holding anyone accountable. 

Unlike the two main male characters, Maggie’s moral code is left uncompromised. She is wronged and has no choice but to move forward with her compassionate heart still firmly beating. I understand this strong female character is a conscious authorial decision, but I did wonder whether it was realistic to have the scales of flawed humanity so heavily weighted towards the male characters. While Martin and his son Ethan have so much to answer for, Maggie and her daughter-in-law Laini escape largely unscathed, or at least under-examined. The fictional universe could have been less black and white. 

This Picture of You asks whether pure love can really ever ensure pure commitment. If a past is built on secrets, can a future be salvaged? Can a person's very nature be at odds with their intentions? These are worthy questions to ponder, and Hopkins' novel is an excellent Australian novel worthy of a spare Sunday afternoon. 

[kateisreading]

62. The Life of I by Anne Manne

What: A highly topical book length investigation into the cult of narcissism and its increasing pervasiveness and influence in our society (spoiler alert: Manne DOES NOT think this is a good thing) When: September 8 - 18 (astute observers of my reading schedule will note that there has been a lack of book monogamy for me recently. Admitting it is the first step. Where: overlooking the harbour on my lunch break, overlooking the living room on my couch How: gratis copy borrowed from work (this will be a common theme going forward!) Why: I love a good topical non fiction read, even more so when it is by an Australian writer and touches on so many things that intrigue me

I do like a good overarching diagnosis of society's ills. Something that helps answer the age-old question, 'what the hell is going on with people?' And Anne Manne has generously provided one in her thorough, entertaining and at times zealous critique of narcissism's increasing stranglehold on individuals in today's world.

Starting with a compelling analysis of the psychology behind Anders Breivik's brutal mass murder in Norway 2011, Manne goes on to cover a spectrum of topics, both specific and general. Her chapter on Lance Armstrong reveals the one-time champion and role-model of strength and resilience as what he really is - a man so addicted to glory that he put others in danger, emotionally abused countless friends and colleagues, systematically broke laws and religiously lied about all of it, throwing others under the bus as he went. A classic case of an extreme narcissistic personality - one who is so addicted to winning he has lost the ability to contextualise his own needs within a wider group of people. Manne puts it down to mummy issues, a lack of boundaries and a culture of all children being told they're special. Too special perhaps. 

Manne extrapolates stories such as this into trends that pervade many industries, from sport to economics to parenting. She argues that narcissistic value systems have infiltrated every aspect of our lives and all for the worse. At times in the book, Manne veers into 'rant' territory, which is a little bit of a shame. There is a balance to be found between creating a convincing argument and pulling everything in the world into a neat unifying narrative. Books like these work best when they dive deep into shades of grey rather than throwing everything into good and evil baskets. 

Nevertheless, it was an eye-opening read, and truly pertinent to most hot button issues currently discussed after a few glasses of wine. The main take away was that we need to be more empathetic and considerate of one another. Now more than ever, open mindedness, empathy and the sincere wish to see something from another's perspective are qualities to strive for. (Hint: reading interesting and challenging books is a good place to start.)

[kateisreading]

61. The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

What: The sequel to Graeme Simsion's bestselling quirky romance, The Rosie Project When: September 13 - 14 (technically I finished reading at 1am on the 14th) Where: on the couch, in bed (accompanied by a midnight bagel) How: review copy through my new job (I now have an outrageous choice of new books and I hyperventilate every time I think about it) Why: I enjoyed The Rosie Project and was looking for some sweet and light entertainment to wedge between two more intellectually heavy non-fiction books.

If only there were thirty more books just likeThe Rosie Effect. Then my outrageous target of one hundred books for the year would be a delicious piece of cake. 

I read The Rosie Effect in two painless sittings on a single day. For the first time in months I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning until I had finished the last page. There’s no trick to the novel’s ability to entertain - it’s just a brilliant farce, centred on a protagonist who is as endearing as he is eccentric. This book is the Harry Met Sally of fiction. An outstanding example in a genre full of hackneyed tropes, flat heroes and women who work at fashion magazines. Simsion has resuscitated the romantic comedy. 

In Simsion's first book, The Rosie Project, we were introduced to Don Tillman, an associate professor of genetics - a man to whom routine and logic are not just a way of life, but an unavoidable state of mind. Don might have recognisably autistic symptoms, but the books don’t try to over-diagnose his unique brand of off-beat intelligence and tactlessness. Simsion just leaves Don to do his thang. In the first book, that involved searching for a wife and accidentally falling in love with the eminently unsuitable, spontaneous and messy PhD student, Rosie. In the second book they have married, moved to New York and Rosie is pregnant. Hilarity tinged with emotional truth ensues.

The novel is cleverly structured, well paced and has just the right motley mix of characters to keep the pages turning. Even though Don has an extreme personality, at his core he is basically a relatable clueless male: unable to keep up with Rosie’s mixed messages, yet constant in his love. Many times in the book I had to read out passages to my boyfriend and say, ‘ha - he’s just like you! He misinterpreted what she said by taking it at face value!’ Said boyfriend did not appreciate the comparison as he thinks I am always seeing my own life in books. But there is something to be said for Simsion’s ability to let us see ourselves in his zany plots.

I wish this review was one of my funnier ones so that it accurately reflected the sweet silliness of this novel - but I’m tired from having stayed up past my bedtime reading. This isn’t Proust, but it is really fun. In fact, I think Proust would have enjoyed reading Graeme Simsion as a respite from redefining the very nature of time and memory in literature. 

[kateisreading]

60. Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev by Robert Dessaix

What: a 2004 biblio-travel-memoir by one of Australia’s most articulate and enchanting writers, Robert Dessaix When: September 5 - 13 Where: looking out over Sydney Harbour, on the (now lengthier) bus ride to my new job How: book borrowed from a friend (borrowed = pilfered from bookshelf without permission) Why: I heard Robert Dessaix speak at the Sydney Writers’ Festival earlier this year on the topic of travel, and it was one of the most wonderful things I have ever witnessed. Yet, I had never read his books. I am working to rectify this!

Twilight of Love is the story of Robert Dessaix’s search for a sense of connection and communion with an author whose work he has admired, studied and been moved by since young adulthood. The author is Ivan Turgenev, contemporary of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and one of history’s great novelists (and nihilists). Henry James was a huge fan, which just about sells me on the subject. However, you needn’t have read any of Turgenev’s books to appreciate Dessaix’s quest; it is more about love than literature. Not only Dessaix’s conflicted love of Turgenev’s work and of Russia, but Turgenev’s strange, enduring and most probably chaste devotion to a married opera singer called Pauline Viardot. Dessaix longs to understand this lifelong bond - with the impossibility of commitment or consummation, what was Turgenev's game here?

Dessaix goes about his mission by tracing Turgenev’s steps - the places he slept, ate, wrote and philosophised from Baden-Baden in Germany, to Paris, to Russia. At each stage of the journey he connects with old friends and new guides, who accompany him on the pilgrimage. Dessaix’s pithy and revealing portraits of his friends, new and old, are pure joy to read. He seems to capture, in mere sentences, the very essence of their flawed but beautiful humanity, or if not their entire humanity, then at least the very traits and paradoxes that make each person irresistibly engaging to Dessaix himself. Observing his young French Buddhist friend Daniel, he writes:

We’d met in Kuala Lumpur, of all places…What we actually talked about now escapes me. Sufism, butterflies, Baudrillard, tie-dying - with Daniel it could have been absolutely anything. He had a moderate interest in everything. The only forbidden topic was the Louvre, where he did something mysterious with computers.

These warm and intriguing co-stars add much to the charm of the book, and temper Dessaix’s sophisticated contemplations of what ‘one’ might think and do, so that the passages of historical rumination don’t overwhelm the contemporary story. 

Dessaix writes beautifully about his relationship with Turgenev’s stories and characters, who come alive for him as he crisscrosses over the author’s physical movements. Underneath the more obvious literary observations lies a gorgeous meditation on travel and what we subconsciously yearn for when we leave home in search of adventure.

To have a point, a pilgrimage must surely give you at least the illusion of transcending something: your everyday self, for instance, or some of those things that hem you in, such as time or the awareness of mortality - whatever you need most urgently to transcend when you arrive at the shrine.

Dessaix’s approach to his project taught me that I should always strive to be more curious, passionate, thoughtful, patient and sincere: that is how to get the most out of life and love. To figure out what ‘life and love’ really even means, you will need to read the whole book.

[kateisreading]

59. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

What: Karen Joy Fowler's 10th novel, longlisted for this year's Man Booker prize When: August 29 - 31 Where: With a cat, at Coogee beach, in bed How: Kindle special (man am I a sucker) Why: there's been buzz building about this in literary circles and I just adored the title. I had no idea what the book was about.

Do you know what this book is about? I didn't. I just liked the title. And knew it was on the Man Booker long list. And had heard people talking about it in a general literary buzzy sort of way. I bought it as an ebook so I didn't look at the cover or a blurb before I got stuck right in. I am now feeling morally conflicted about writing a holistic review of a novel whose joy resides in its thrilling twist. I even feel bad telling you it has a twist. I have read a few other reviews that poop the party, but I think your amusement as a potential future reader is more important than my integrity as a writer.

NO SPOILERS AHEAD 

What I can tell you is that this is a funny, weird, sophisticated, provocative, spirited and philosophical book. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is Fowler’s seventh novel. Her tenure in fiction is evident in the clever temporal spacing of the novel’s key revelations, which are timed to intensify and then blissfully satisfy the reader’s curiosity. That’s not to say that the reading experience is one of breathless suspense; in fact the entire narrative is filled with sparks and surprises, all related by the protagonist, Rosemary.

It’s been a while since I’ve loved a narrative voice as much as I loved Rosemary’s. She is dry, sardonic, absurd, pragmatic and refreshingly straight up. All this plus a vocabulary worth a spelling bee enthusiast’s kidney. From my dictionary investigations I now know that ‘hypnopompic’ means ‘relating to the state immediately preceding waking up’  and that ‘oneiric’ means ‘relating to dreams or dreaming’. Importantly, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for Rosemary’s sesquipedalian* tendencies - she’s not just quirky for the sake of quirk, and the polysyllabic drop ins feel natural in her sentences rather than a self-conscious affect. 

Fowler has achieved a true sense of character and history in Rosemary. Plus, she’s hysterical. When I read this line early on I knew I was going to enjoy the book:

I’d no particular ambitions beyond being either widely admired or stealthily influential - I was torn between the two. 

At once self-deprecating and wildly narcissistic, and with no clear indication of which might be more accurate - this is how I like my understated wit served. (And this is how I like to serve it myself).

But Fowler aspires to more than just loveable characters. She tackles complex moral and ethical quandaries, many of which aren’t covered in contemporary literary fiction. This is a novel that throws up important questions, and quietly gives you the tools to find your own point of view. Fortunately I felt no pervading sense of didacticism. The tone is more conversational and nuanced than that.

It will be interesting to see whether this makes the Man Booker shortlist, announced this week on September 9th. It would certainly add some much needed spice to the mix. 

* 'sesquipedalian' = given to using long words. Yes, I do note the irony of having to employ such an unusual word to describe someone who is prone to using unusual words. 

[kateisreading]

58. This House of Grief by Helen Garner

What: only the most hotly anticipated Australian non fiction of the last five years, the story of one of Australia's most devastating murder trials When: August 21 - 23 Where: EVERYWHERE How: Book bought at Kinokuniya Why: I've been looking forward to this so much I started reading it on the down escalator after leaving the bookshop

Although This House of Grief was only released August 20, it has already been reviewed everywhere. Like me, the literary editors of Australia have been waiting for Garner's newest offering like helpless drooling daschunds. Now that the main meal has been served and devoured, we are all stretching our backs in relief and disbelief at Garner's unstoppable intelligence, empathy and insight. 

The remarkable thing about this book in particular, is that Garner has created a full dramatic narrative out of events that happened within the four walls of a court in Melbourne. In other books like The First Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation, Garner formed relationships with the people involved in the ordeals she was covering, but in this somber tale her material was limited to research, observation and the carnival of the trial itself. The trial concerns a tragedy that happened on Fathers' Day 2005. Three young boys were drowned when their father drove off the side of the road into a deep dam. In This House of Grief, the father now stands accused of first degree murder, and much of the emotional friction and reflectiveness of the writing comes down to Garner's self-confessed desire to somehow be persuaded that this could not possibly have occurred on purpose. 

Precision of language, quality of observation and analysis and an undeniable warmth is what distinguishes Garner's utterly compulsive writing style. Every image, even the recounting of the most routine events, is juiced into a perfect visual and auditory puree so that the reader can't help but descend fully into the moment.

Rapke cross-examined with hands in pockets, eyes down on his papers, so that, when he did raise his head, squinting, lifting his top lip off his teeth, his gaze would hit the witness in the face, like a slap.

Sometimes detail in true crime feels sensational - as if we need gratuitous embellishment to generate emotion for an already disturbing or gruesome scenario. Garner uses detail to add nuance and to complicate rather than hyperbolise. It is an incredible skill and to me demonstrates restraint and selectivity rather than an obsession with minutiae. The fact that Rapke's face hits the witness 'like a slap' says so much more about the atmosphere of the courtroom than any direct and detailed transcript.

It’s bittersweet to be so enamoured of Garner’s writing and yet devastated at the subject matter - but because This House of Grief accomplishes such a complex moral texture, the book never feels exploitative, only curious and immensely compassionate to all involved without being sentimentally naive. 

How does she do it? It helps to have one of the finest minds in the country - Garner sees everything, and crucially, writes everything down. She proves that the power of observation can be a gift and a burden, as her mind tirelessly cogitates and re-examines the details of the crime and the trial from every point of view. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be an Australian reader today. 

[kateisreading]

57. My Beautiful Enemy by Cory Taylor

What: Cory Taylor's 2014 Miles Franklin shortlisted novel My Beautiful Enemy When: August 18 - 20 Where: encouched (this means spiritually enveloped by my couch) How: Kindle ($6 special, sold) Why: I'd like to read the entire Miles Franklin shortlist, and, I'm not going to lie, it was blessedly short.

I really wish I had discovered Cory Taylor's book for some reason other than the fact that it made the 2014 Miles Franklin shortlist. The novel is an accomplished work of fiction that explores regret, desire and impossible longings with a great amount of pathos, but sidled up next to the masterful Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan and the devastatingly beautiful All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, My Beautiful Enemy feels like a precocious younger sibling trying to mingle at a cocktail party. 

Oooh I'm mean. This is an Australian novel we can be proud of, it's just bloody hard for any writer to hold their own in such illustrious company. In my mind, grouping titles together in a 'shortlist' makes me think of them as a little gang where analytical infighting is inevitable. I'm possibly forgetting how wonderful it would have been for second-time novelist Cory Taylor to ascend to the public eye in this way - it is a sign of even more sophistication and inventiveness to come, and I will be continuing to read Taylor's work throughout her career. 

My Beautiful Enemy is about Arthur Wheeler's infatuation with Stanley Ueno. Arthur first meets Stanley in an enemy alien internment camp in Victoria around the final stages of WWII. Stanley is a prisoner, and comes from a family of Japanese circus entertainers - he is lithe, charismatic and sexually irresistible to Arthur.

The asymmetry of Arthur's obsession is heartbreaking - a life's worth of emotional and sexual imaginings spring from a handful of mostly unconsummated meetings, and when he finally tracks Stanley down again after the war, he is forced to face the possibility that he has idealised this man to a point of impenetrable and impossible perfection. Arthur has relationships with women, who eventually deem him unbearably cold and distant, and he leaves them all, often heartlessly, including the young mother of his only son. He never comes out to anyone. 

No matter what he does, Arthur's desperate love for Stanley lingers, smothering any ability to fully connect with any other person. In many ways, it is a life un-lived. Yet the ending suggestively questions whether it was a good enough life after all: a glimmer of true romance can sometimes provide a lifetime of joyous fantasy. 

The emotional journey of Arthur is laid against the background of war on the home front in Australia. It is startling how little Arthur comprehends of the true psychological struggle and logistical limitations of his object of affection. One aspect of the novel I enjoyed and found informative, were the discussions between the camp staff about their role in the war. I have often thought of alien enemy camps as a cruel and useless xenophobic consequence of war, but then read this passage relating the point of view of head guard Colonel Hollows:

And then he spoke, a little theatrically I thought, about historians of the future, and how he hoped they would recognise how vital it was to take these people in and keep them safe at a time when they were in peril from the worst elements of our society.

In the Colonel's lesson to Arthur resides a sense of guilt, higher purpose, true responsibility and foresight all tussling to validate the camp. The reader is left to negotiate this moral minefield as Arthur cannot see past his own desire to the true dilemmas and consequences of war. Taylor has cleverly found a way to let the reader see  things for how they really might have been, by providing an apathetic surrogate, whose indifference to politics jerks us to attention.

[kateisreading]

56. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

What: Haruki Murakami's new novel, the only novel I have ever pre-ordered because I was so hungry for some more Murakami in my life When: August 13 - 16 Where: huddled on the couch, on the bus, while folding washing How: Kindle Why: I. Love. Haruki. Murakami. The weirdness, the sparseness, the I-don't-care-what-anyone-else-thinks-ness. Love him.

Many writers are successful or loved because they make us feel a sense of human connection or universality; that we belong in the world, deeply and spiritually. Haruki Murakami has never appeared to court this cosy emotional response. His strange antisocial protagonists always make me feel that it’s okay to be alone and have weird thoughts and to trust unlikely instincts. It’s okay not to feel like I’m part of something bigger. It’s enough to be my own peculiar self. 

Murakami is more than just a popular literary novelist. He’s a demigod. Or at least some sort of involuntary indie prophet. His fans* treat his books more as gospel than as content to be critiqued. Every new novel published is an event so highly anticipated that the pervading emotion when you get to sit down and read it is joyful relief. It’s somehow comforting to climb into Murakami’s surreal maverick brain, and camp there contentedly for as long as it takes to read the book.**

This new novel tells the story of the unassuming Tsukuru Tazaki. One day, Tsukuru's four closest friends from high school suddenly and comprehensively cut off all communication with no explanation. Tsukuru is shocked and heartbroken, but resigns himself to this mysterious abandonment with an oddly definitive stoicism. He has trouble forming attachments for many years, until he starts to fall in love, and then relents to his girlfriend’s advice that he should confront the issues that have cast a shadow over his self worth for so long. 

Like many of Murakami’s novels, the structure of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a complex collage of stories, hearsay, myths and history that connect in unexpected and satisfying ways. Murakami is like Paul Auster in this respect - prone to puncturing the central narrative with countless diversions, tales within tales, each story as compulsively fascinating as the next. And that's the remarkable thing about Murakami - why he is so popular and yet so avant garde. Something about his writing is utterly compulsive. It's impossible not to want to keep reading, no matter how strange and convoluted the circumstances and no matter how far the plot has strayed from the laws of logic. Murakami is simply an invigorating storyteller. 

Since Murakami writes in Japanese, I acknowledge that my appreciation of his work will always be limited, and that’s a shame, because I’m pretty sure he’s the type of novelist whose writing is so clever and nuanced that no translation could ever do it justice. That being said, based on what I have read, in elegant English translation by Phillip Gabriel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is still a worthy offering from the temple of Murakami. I will continue to pay my membership. 

* And by ‘his fans’ I mean me

** Haruki Murakami’s brain is very warm and welcoming, decorated in a minimalist Japanese style. 

[kateisreading]

55. Deeper Water by Jessie Cole

DISCLOSURE: I work for the publisher of this novel. But, it is objectively wonderful, so I couldn't help myself. 

What: Local literary writer Jessie Cole's second lush, sensual and sensitive novel When: August 10 - 12 Where: on the couch, waiting for Media Watch to start How: manuscript downloaded to my Kindle Why: we're having a Jessie Cole book club at work and I am a joiner. Also, having read the very first draft of this book I was intrigued to read the finished novel.

Some novels feel whole because the author fully commits to one emotion or one theme in all its nuances and shades: rage, love, loneliness, fear, suspicion, grief, longing. Other novels are defined by their duality. Emotions arrive in the fictional world like waves crashing on the shore, and as the wave recedes, we are left with the residue of the emotion's opposite and counterpart, lingering like a tide-mark. Deeper Water is a novel in which opposing forces wash up against one another: gentleness and violence, innocence and understanding, interiority and connection, fierce loyalty and fleeting lust. Jessie Cole is an extraordinarily sensitive writer whose spare, lyrical style illumines conflicting emotions with charm and insight. This constant push and pull shapes the novel's overarching theme: a young woman's awakening. 

Mema is a young woman living a remote but contented life with her unconventional family and best friend, Anja. In one of the most cinematic opening scenes I've read in a very long time, Mema discovers a man trapped in his car after crossing a bridge in flood conditions. She helps to save his life, and he ends up helping her birth a very slippery calf. It's dramatic, strange and really wet. The arrival of this unexpected visitor becomes a catalyst for Mema's life expanding in all different directions, but it is her deep relationship with the environment that is the consistent beating heart of this fecund fictional world.

Cole's second novel is perhaps more accessible than her confronting and edgy debut, Darkness on the Edge of Town, but it paints an understated yet sophisticated portrait of its central character and her transition into a world full of more challenges and possibilities than she had ever allowed herself to imagine.

[kateisreading]

54. Bark by Lorrie Moore

What: A new short story collection from Lorrie Moore (America's 'gimlet-eyed' social observer, according to the blurb) When: August 6 - 10 Where: waiting for a doctor's appointment, in bed How: borrowed from a friend at work who knows a lot more about Lorrie Moore than me Why: no longer a Lorrie Mirgin after reading A Gate at the Stairs, I felt ready to dive into Moore's stories. Plus, my concentration is all over the place and I needed something short and sharp.

A zingy, sardonic, consciously contemporary volume of tales, Bark may not be uniformly groundbreaking, but it was a pleasingly funny and provocative read. Lorrie Moore's knack for parody and character is consistently delightful to encounter. The stories in this collection vary in length and subject, but always deal with the theme of human relationships, couples in particular, with each story providing an intriguing and scarily realistic window into the private lives of others. These relationships play out against a background of modern American culture, which Moore characterises as saturated with the volatile politics of anti-terrorism, wacky bourgeois fads and ambitions to both fulfil and flout the 'American Dream'.

I particularly enjoyed the long opening story 'Debarking', about the surreal dating adventures of a witless divorcee who feels so lost and alone he is willing to overlook some pretty creepy characteristics in a potential girlfriend. Moore's sharp wit and quietly scathing critique of American culture comes through in almost every line, and like all good scathing critiques, there is as much 'laughing with' as there is 'laughing at'. The reader is always complicit, as if to say, 'you may laugh, but are you laughing into a mirror?'

Moore is also the master of observant quips. Like a more cynical, smirky version of Alice Munro, she has the ability to make simple comments that miraculously hold small universal truths. 

Like everyone he knew, he could discern the hollowness in people's charm only when it was directed at someone other than himself. When it was directed at him, the person just seemed so totally nice. 

That passage reminded me of a Jonathan Franzen quote from the novel Freedom: 

Walter had come to prefer...the seemingly inescapable sense that, of all the drivers on the road, only he was traveling at exactly the right speed, only he was striking an appropriate balance between too punctiliously obeying traffic rules and too dangerously flouting them.

Maybe parodic American literature is at its best when it takes the double standards of culture to task, unmasking the quotidian hypocrisies rather than tackling the inherent flaws of policy makers. In any case, this is a book that can be enjoyed on many levels - Moore can do lofty and petty in the same sentence, which makes her brilliant in my book. 

[kateisreading]

53. On a Day Like This by Peter Stamm

What: a short 'stylistically ascetic' novel by Swiss writer Peter Stamm, translated from German When: August 3 - 6 Where: sitting as close as possible to the heater How: Kindle Why: My favourite NYRB blogger Tim Parks recommended it (more on that below)

Last Sunday morning I went for a long run and listened to an episode of one of my favourite podcasts: the New Yorker fiction podcast, in which fiction editor Deborah Treisman* asks contemporary writers to read a story from the magazine's archives and then discuss it. It's a simple concept and with the right writer paired with the right story, these forty-five minute episodes can stick with you forever.

On the morning in question I was quietly thrilled to discover that the writer being interviewed was Tim Parks, one of my absolute favourites. Parks is a novelist and also blogs for the New York Review of Books. His memoir, Teach Us to Sit Still is one of my all time favourite books. He is smart, thoughtful, funny, scrupulous and not afraid to say the opposite thing to everyone else. And I felt all these feelings before I had even heard his voice. My god! What a delectable erudite, slightly nasal British voice. To put it mildly, I enjoyed my run.

Tim Parks' chosen story was 'Sweet Dreams' by Swiss writer Peter Stamm. It is about a young couple who have just moved in together, following the young woman's point of view as she experiences strange and escalating anxieties. It was a brilliant story and I loved Parks' reading and discussion. He delved into Stamm's knack for illuminating the ordinary and his ability to find fertile narrative within the confines of routine. During the discussion with Treisman, Parks mentioned that he had first come across Stamm when he was asked to review his novel, On a Day Like This, for the NYRB. I downloaded it onto my Kindle it after my run. 

In On a Day Like This, the protagonist Andreas is confronted with a cancer scare and decides to spontaneously leave behind his beloved routine existence, to go on the road and visit his hometown, where his first and only love lives. He decides it's a good idea to take his new lover along with him. Stamm's style is spare and ascetic - his approach is all about crowding his novels with the unremarkable mundanity of every day life, but if you read carefully, he is existentially provocative, not to mention thoughtful and cheeky. It's not just a book about boredom and complacency, it's a rigorous study of malaise. For example, as he is clearing out his apartment, he comes across a stack of old calendars:

Slipped into one of them was a list of the women he had slept with. He read the names. In some cases he couldn't even put a face to the name, or only after long thought.The list was a couple of years old. He added a few more names, then crumpled up the sheet and threw it away.

In its style and substance, this passage is signature Stamm. The idea that Andreas finds the list, perceives it to be almost meaningless, then adds to the meaninglessness, then throws it away, just about sums up the cycle of nostalgia and destruction explored in this novel. And as always the prose is as straightforward as possible - if Stamm was writing about snakes on a plane he would probably use much the same tone. 

Although I was amused by Stamm's dryness, the unwavering tone does get tiresome after a while (probably purposefully, as an illustration of relentless quotidian cycles). I didn't end up enjoying this sustained piece as much as the short story. Maybe if Parks had recorded it as an audiobook things would have been different. Or maybe I felt that Stamm has more interesting things to say about the female psyche than the male. 

I did really love one image from the book however - one of those moments where a novelist puts into words a sensation you have always felt but never identified.

Andreas felt strangely happy, perhaps it was a memory, that strange feeling of happiness that disappeared the second you tried to focus on it.  

Mmmmm. 'That strange feeling of happiness that disappeared the second you tried to focus on it...' Simple, lovely, life. 

* Whose voice has this simultaneously husky and treacly quality that makes you wish she could talk quietly in your ear all the time, even if just to recite a shopping list. In fact I always imagined her name was spelled 'Treaceman' because her voice is so treacly.