Saturday, June 22, 2013

Carrie Tiffany - Mateship with Birds

The inaugural winner of the Stella award for Australian women's writing, and this year's winner of the NSW Premier's award, I picked up Mateship with Birds because it was a recent bookclub read (for my second bookclub; we have yet to pick a name for ourselves). I hadn't heard anything about this book when it was first suggested, nor had it yet won the prizes (though it was shortlisted for the Stella). I'm glad it was our pick last month, though, because I don't think I would have read it otherwise and I really enjoyed it.

This is a very Australian novel. I would recommend it to my North American and European readers because it will be unlike anything you have read before (unless you have read Tim Winton or Patrick White), and to my true-blue Aussie readers because parts of it will resonate with you, especially if you have family in the country.

I have a very particular way of describing Australian books that are set in the bush - and that is 'dusty'. This is one of those dusty books. One can feel the characteristic red dirt being kicked up around one's face in the dry heat as one reads. And hear the Kookaburras and Magpies. Tiffany's beautiful writing is incredibly evocative, calling to mind the unusual countryside of Australia and the slow pace of life as it unfolds on the land. For me personally, because I did not grow up here, I don't get a familiarity or true emotional resonance from Tiffany's writing - but I do enjoy reading about the dusty red centre of this unique country.

This is, on the surface, a relatively quiet book centred around the relationship between Harry, a milk farmer and Betty, a nurse, in conservative 1950s rural Victoria. Betty works for an aged care facility in town when she is not busy looking after her two children, Michael and Hazel. As a single mother, Betty has been scorned by the townspeople since she arrived many years earlier, and she leads a calm, lonely life. Harry, who lives on the neighbouring farm, is her only true friend. He too seems lonely, turning to Betty for home-cooked meals, companionship and the unexpected joys of standing in as pseudo-father to Betty's children.

Yet in spite of years of apparent courtship, the friendship between Harry and Betty has never developed beyond the platonic. The 'mates' (friends) have never become mates in the sexual sense - this is one of the quintessentially Australian puns hidden in the title to the book. The other is the play on the use of the Australian vernacular 'bird', which is slang for woman, and also refers to the animal, which features heavily in this portrait of life on the land. Harry's hobby is bird-watching, and he follows with sweet affection the lives of the Kookaburras living on his farm. He keeps an unassuming diary of their goings-on, which he writes in blank verse, and excerpts of which are interspersed throughout the novel. At one point Harry speaks of being able to assess the size of a farm or estate by the size of the Kookaburra family living there, an indication of how closely entwined are the lives of animals with the lives of people in this area of the world.

With the focus on Harry and Betty, one could see this is in some ways as a love story, albeit a very pragmatic one. But it is also, essentially, a story about life in the country, and not just the lives of people, but also the lives of animals. And when I said above that this is only ostensibly a quiet book, that is because beneath the surface, this is a book seething with fertile activity. Although it is absent (for most of the book) between Harry and Betty, sex in all its forms permeates the novel - from the fertilisation of Harry's cows, to the lives of birds and sheep and other animals on the land, to the bizarre tendencies of fellow farmer Mues and the budding sexuality of Betty's children - everything in and around the farm and the earth is seen to be teeming with sexuality in a base, quotidian way that is both reassuring and troubling. One of the girls in my bookclub found that she was unable to enjoy the story as it unfolded because she felt it was overshadowed by a sense of ominousness created by the overt sexuality. I think, though, that the in-your-face fecundity of the landscape can be explained by Tiffany's desire to illustrate how ubiquitous sex is in the country, and how people are really no different to animals. In urban settings one can perhaps mask, or hide, from the sex that is inherent in most of life's activities - one can infuse it, instead, with the human construct of romance, thus disguising our animalistic tendencies. But in the country, Tiffany asserts, our base qualities are almost impossible to avoid. Milk is not produced by non-lactating cows, and lactation is caused by fertilisation. Families of birds don't grow and survive without mateship rituals. Even death is sexualised. Survival, life, sex, death - all of these are part of the same cycle.

In the midst of all this, then, there is not much room for romance. Harry and Betty are clearly close, and they are likeable - both burrow their way insidiously into the reader's heart. I found myself warming to Betty when Tiffany described the way she used her lunch hour to change out of her nurse's uniform and into stockings and a hat in order to visit her elderly dementia patients disguised as their wives, bringing a little joy to their otherwise drab existences. I warmed to Harry when his dedication to Betty's children became clear, through repeated acts of paternal protection and kindness. However, both are such quiet, socially withdrawn personalities, that without a severe interruption of some kind the line between friend and mate might never have been crossed.

I won't give away the ending, even though this is hardly a plot-driven novel. I will say that I found the book moving and rather sweet, in spite of Tiffany's effort to keep the central relationship so pedestrian.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. I enjoyed this and read it quickly.

Pros / favourite parts: The writing is beautiful. Many of the passages are absolutely lovely, and these stand out starkly against the brutal reality of the descriptions of life on the land, a contrast that I'm sure was intentional.

Betty's son Michael, on why it is he will one day choose to be a farmer - "He heads out across Foot Foot's paddock towards Harry's and has the sensation that he's walking back into himself. That the day at school - lining up on the asphalt quadrangle, scuffing his shoes on the wooden floors, leaning against the concrete toilet block to smoke at lunchtime - has been a kind of skimming across surfaces; that he's moved through the day without ever putting his weight down. Here, walking across the paddock, he feels his ankles soften to take account of the uneven ground. He picks his way through the clumps of cape weed and over the mounds of dirt left by the plough. There's a rhythm to it. A way of placing your feet so they are receptive to the ground beneath. In two years' time he'll have a bitter argument with his mother about a clerical traineeship in Swan Hill and he won't be able to explain to her why it is he wants to farm."

There is a section, too, describing Harry as a little boy, entranced by the cuckoo clock on his parent's wall. One day, when they are away, curiosity gets the better of him, he finds he can't wait any longer for the little bird to appear, and he stands on a chair and removes the clock from the wall and dismantles it to discover the cogs and springs within: "At the very bottom of the clock case, in each corner, is a leather bellows. Harry pushes one of them with his finger and it makes the second half of the cuckoo sound, but with a puffed sigh at the end. The lungs of the cuckoo bird are not inside the bird itself. They are just a mechanism within the clock. The cuckoo clock is an act of ventriloquism; a callous device - the mute bird skewered to the thrusting arm - forced hour after hour to repeat its trick." This discovery upsets young Harry to the point of tears: "He thinks he might as well cry now, the crying will have to come. There will be the disappointment on his mother's face and his shame at that. But there's something more, too. He feels like he has lost something. He tries to slow his breathing now, to slow everything down, to give himself more time, but the tears have made his nose run and he's having to suck great gulps of air in."

I just love that passage. Watching my small son every day I can see his joy at experiencing things for the first time, his belief in the wondrous nature of the world. And as his mother, I so desperately want to protect him from the disappointment that inevitably comes from realising that the world is not as magical as one thinks. Tiffany's writing here so perfectly and poignantly conveys this moment of recognition for small children - it shows quite remarkable insight and sensitivity.

Cons: I do think Tiffany sometimes goes too far in her effort to portray the baseness of the sexuality in the countryside. I don't think all of the grotesque or ominous scenes were necessary - and as a city dweller myself, I found myself a bit squeamish at times, though I suppose that's the point.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The Art of Linguistic Expression



I was watching a video online the other day, of Jeanette Winterson interviewing A M Homes, in which both authors agreed that people no longer cared about the quality of writing in a book. One of them, I don't remember which, suggested that use of language was never mentioned anymore when a new book was reviewed, and the other nodded vigorously in agreement. Both authors felt that the new generation of readers didn't seek out high-level linguistic expression in books, and they attributed this modern lack of interest in the quality of writing to the internet era - to text-speak and emoticons, to acronyms and abbreviations.

I found the whole thing peculiar, because whilst I acknowledge that there is a generation currently developing into adulthood who communicate largely through informal means, where the rules of grammar are less important than the speed of getting a point across, I haven't seen evidence yet that this has been translated into the world of literature. I read a lot of reviews, and the focus of these seems much the same these days as it always has been. Similarly it seems to me that the use of language is as important as ever in deciding who should win a literary prize.

Of course the existence of new technologies has changed modern literature in some interesting ways - for example, the chapter in Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad which is written entirely in Powerpoint could not have existed fifteen years ago, and there have been a number of other books (like 'e' by Matt Beaumont, an epistolary novel written entirely as a string of emails between workers in an advertising agency, and Hold the Fries by Nina Schindler, which is told exclusively through letters and text messages) that make a strong feature of new technologies. But in my view a really good book (including the ones mentioned above) is still one which combines beautiful writing with remarkable story. And I truly don't believe that the text-generation will do away with lyricism, or clever use of vocabulary, or spare but stunning prose.

Maybe I am being optimistic. But I think it is far more likely that Homes and Winterson are being unduly pessimistic. Every generation feels the next spells the end of what matters. And inevitably, that next generation simply introduces change to the existing order - not on a grand scale, but
on the same incremental level as the change wrought by the generation before. Change is not a bad thing. Organic beings are defined by constant change. That's what it is to be organic. Change is growth.

And language, like human beings, is in a state of constant flux; it's like a living organism. Those of us living in the English-speaking world are perhaps less aware of this fact than people in some other cultures, because English is the official language in several countries. In some non-English speaking nations formal linguistic change is more obvious. For example, Germany has formalised the process of updating the national language in a way that has a very real influence on spoken German. An official committee meets regularly to discuss whether a new word should be adopted into German from slang, or from another language, due to regular usage, or whether an existing word should be dropped, or even whether a spelling or a grammatical rule or a Germanic oddity has reached its use-by date. When I grew up in Munich the 'Eszett' or 'scharfes S' still existed - a letter that looked like a capital B on a stick, which denoted a sharp 's' sound. Several years ago it was decided that this should be dropped, and now two S's in a row are used instead to create the same sound. The change was announced, and almost immediately it took effect across the nation.

The English language, too, has official committees devoted to guiding the way our language evolves. In the UK, for example, the Queen's English Society fills that position. But generally those of us who reside in the 'colonies' are unaware of the decisions reached by that Society. Certainly I can't remember ever being aware of an 'official' change occurring in the English language from one day to the next. For conversational English, evolution is largely informal - although the introduction into Urban Dictionary and even the eventual adoption by the Oxford English Dictionary of new English words does indicate that such change is eventually accommodated and embedded in a more formal way. As loathe as I am to acknowledge it, even grammatical errors that become common usage due to ignorance can, through persistent use, eventually become accepted parts of the English language. My personal reluctance to accept the use of 'but' at the end of a sentence rather than as it was intended, a conjunction between two parts of a sentence, does not mean that this abomination will not be regarded as a permitted use of the word in due course. And our objection to abbreviated text-speak does not mean that some of it won't ultimately find its way into the English lexicon.

Nevertheless, I truly believe that in literature, beauty and wit are still widely regarded as virtues. The concept or definition of beauty might change from generation to generation, but I think it is unlikely that the next generation will do away with it altogether. Even in hip-hop and rap music, pithy expression and a clever turn of phrase are admired. The fact that language, and the way language is used, has changed with the advent of the internet and the smartphone, with email and Facebook and Twitter, does not mean that readers have suddenly let go of what has always been one of the joys of reading - experiencing the exceptional use of language by one who wields it with unusual skill.

What do you reckon? Does language matter to you when you read? Do you prefer books where the writer has a particularly aesthetic approach to language? Or do you not care how an author expresses herself as long as the plot keeps you reading?




Thursday, June 13, 2013


A cool sculpture I spied in Auckland, New Zealand.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk

I feel complicated about writing this review. I have had such unadulterated admiration for St Aubyn since I started reading his Patrick Melrose series that I feel guilty for having turned to this fourth volume at a time when I was probably not in the right frame of mind to embrace it. The result, of course, is that I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did the first three parts of the series. So I am willing to give St Aubyn the benefit of the doubt to some extent, by placing some of the blame for my critical reading on my mindset - but not all of it.

In this episode of Patrick's life, he is married, in his 40s, with two young sons. Unlike the first three books in the series, this novel covers more than a 24 hour period, and I believe some of the intensity that has characterised the books to this point is lost as a result. And whilst the series thus far has dealt primarily with Patrick's relationship with his father and the consequences of that relationship on the rest of Patrick's life, the central story of this book revolves around Patrick's relationship with his mother, Eleanor, her physical deterioration and descent into dementia, and the dissolution of Patrick's inheritance (which makes him very angry). St Aubyn illustrates the effect on Patrick of his mother's gradual demise by using a mix of narrative voices, all focused on Patrick and his actions, including Patrick's own first person voice. What is perhaps most jarring - but also most original - is that the book opens with first person narration by Patrick's first-born son, Robert, when he was a baby. And when I say baby, I do truly mean baby - in the first pages, Robert describes, for example, the feeling of being born:

"Why had they pretended to kill him when he was born? Keeping him awake for days, banging his head again and again against a closed cervix; twisting the cord around his throat and throttling him; chomping through his mother's abdomen with cold shears; clamping his head and wrenching his neck from side to side; dragging him out of his hone and hitting him; shining lights in his eyes and doing experiments; taking him away from his mother while she lay on the table, half-dead."

You can see why this highly original opening was difficult for me to read in the last weeks of pregnancy! Obviously this defies any kind of reality, and that's fine - by starting with such a bold example of false narration, St Aubyn signals to his readers that they should not necessarily expect the narrative voices in this book to be true to life. And I accept that. When Robert later makes astute observations that are easily beyond the wit of most well educated adults, a reader is capable of accepting this because the framework has been set up from the beginning - but as with all books that require such a suspension of disbelief, it must be executed with consistency. That consistency is missing here, and this is where I believe St Aubyn fails - or at least it is where he lost me. I couldn't accept that a child narrator who, on the one hand, is able to assert during the family's trip to America that French Fries should now be called Freedom Fries (and understands the political reason for this), who is aware when his father ruminates in front of him that "[Robert] wasn't being communicated with, but allowed to listen to his father practising speeches", and who has remarkable insight into human relationships - would also, on the other hand, behave like a young child and ask exactly the kinds of questions that one would expect of children in a new country ("why do the pavements glitter?"). As far as I was able to tell (given that my reading of this book, like my writing of this review, was punctuated by a toddler climbing all over me and a baby crying to be fed), Robert was aged between six and nine for most of the book.

A few other inconsistencies also crept into the text of Mother's Milk. The book is written with little regard for the existence of the previous volumes in the series. Patrick drinks heavily but makes no reference to his previous addiction. Indeed, his years of severe addiction are not referred to at all, which beggars belief in a novel that deals so personally with Patrick as a protagonist. I am no expert, but I would have thought it would be fairly problematic for a former drug addict to develop an addiction to another substance later in life - I would have thought the latter would raise all kinds of alarm bells in light of the former. I would particularly have thought that the visit of Patrick's friend Johnny, who was his partner in crime during much of his earlier substance abuse, would have raised a comment or two about their wilder days and their lucky escape from an early end. But no such comments were made, even while the two shared intimate conversation and a bottle or two of wine.

And in the penultimate sequence of the novel, Patrick's family takes a trip to America - yet his earlier time in New York City, where most of the second novel of the series, Bad News, is set, is not referenced once. In fact, the holiday is written in such a way that it could well be Patrick's first ever visit to the United States. Facts and oddities about the United States are shared as though the whole family was observing these as newcomers to the country.

A raft of inconsistencies indeed. So obvious did I find these that I wondered whether they were deliberate. Perhaps St Aubyn wanted this book to stand on its own? Certainly it does so successfully - this book alone, out of the Patrick Melrose novels, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. And I suppose I was more attuned to notice such things than most readers, having read the first four books of the pentalogy in quick succession rather than as they were published, with a year or more in between. Maybe for other readers these things don't matter so much.

More troublesome for me than the inconsistencies, however, was Patrick's character. In book one, Never Mind, Patrick as a five year old child is endearing and pitiful, drawing heavily on the sympathy of the readers. For that reason, we forgive him for his behaviour in book two, Bad News - particularly as Patrick's horrid conduct in that book is fuelled in equal measure by his hatred for his father and a vitriolic self-hatred. By the end of book three, Some Hope, what we are left feeling is that there is indeed hope for Patrick - he has started to redeem himself, and for the first time I found myself liking him. So it was a huge disappointment in Mother's Milk, when one might assume that Patrick's redemption has well and truly arrived - marriage, fatherhood - to find him as an embittered, nasty middle-aged man engaged in casual adultery.

As I stated at the outset of this review, I did read this book at an unfortunate time. Late pregnancy and the first few sleep-deprived weeks with a newborn are not the ideal time to read a book dense with rich language and heavy on the darker side of cynicism. I read this very slowly. Once things had calmed down at home, I re-dedicated myself to the task of finishing Mother's Milk, and I must say that my enjoyment of it increased thereafter. It became clear to me, for example, that Patrick's adultery is a product of his wife's total absorption with motherhood - something that is claimed by Patrick throughout the book, but which at first I took to be merely an excuse. Early on, Patrick says that in picking a wife he was so concerned about choosing someone who would be a good mother to his children that he had neglected to find someone who would be able to juggle that task with continuing to be a good partner to him. And certainly one of his redeeming features here is his determination to be a good father, or at least to ensure that his children lead reasonably good lives - although St Aubyn doesn't portray him with any warmth, and we don't see him engaged in fatherly activities like tossing a ball around with his sons. His fatherhood mission is illustrated more cerebrally. Towards the end, for example, he says that he was obsessed with "stopping the flow of poison from one generation to the next, but he already felt that he had failed." Patrick is far from perfect, but his motivations are not without some merit.

Overall assessment: 3 out of 5.

Pros: As always, St Aubyn's language is impeccable. In spite of my reservations regarding inconsistency and character, I have found myself recalling parts of the novel after putting it down, and calling up quotes in my mind. The interminably sad portrait of Eleanor, Patrick's mother, will stay with me, I think (though I'm not sure that's a good thing!). And this book probably suffers from its necessary comparison with those that came before. I'm surprised that this is the one which was shortlisted for such a prestigious prize, but I am not surprised that, on its own, it was regarded so highly.

Cons: See above re inconsistency and cynicism.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Future of Books: What of book sightings and signings?

Just over a week ago I posted a quote from a book called Judging a Book By Its Lover, by Lauren Leto. I now feel compelled to share another excerpt from that book, which is really a collection of witticisms and anecdotes about books and reading - from one book lover to others. It's a fun read, and my only true criticism of it is that Leto tends to be rather American-centric in her literary references.

I have written before about paper books ('real' books) versus e-books. Leto gives a compelling argument in favour of paper books that I had not previously thought of:

"There's a reason book lovers are the last ones to hold out in this digital revolution. Music and movie lovers have never had the same pleasure that book lovers have in being able to identify on sight a fellow fan of Tolstoy or Didion. What does the e-reader revolution mean for all of us who get a thrill from noting the book in a stranger's hands?

Music devotees meet other fans at concerts or by recognising concert T-shirts. Movie lovers will wait in line together at midnight for the first peek at the new Tarantino film. Readers, however, have it better; they carry around the objects of their worship and roots of their collective bond everywhere they go."

She goes on to point out that: "...in ten years, print books themselves may be a thing of the past. I fear as digital books become ubiquitous, the tradition of reading may remain as strong but the ability to sight fellow minds will be disintegrated. As book covers slip from hands and are replaced by plastic tablets, readers lose the wonderful, clandestine opportunity to quickly create a mutual understanding with strangers. Then what will we be left with? And what about other print traditions? If bookstores vanish, where will an author's book readings occur? And book signings? What will authors sign?"

Oh, this made me sad.

Most of us books lovers will have a story about seeing someone reading a book we love - on a bus, in an airport, on a plane - and connecting with that person, either entirely in our minds or in reality. I love that sweet moment when one is reading a book in public only to look up and find a complete stranger nearby reading the very same book. Often a smile passes between the two of you, a knowing smile, and to me that connection between strangers is a confirmation of humanity. It makes me warm inside, a feeling I might carry with me for the rest of my day. Other times that coincidence and symbol of similar interests is enough to spawn a conversation. Sometimes, through the haze of severe jetlag, I have enjoyed such a moment, perhaps after seeing someone reading a book by a favourite author, or reading a book I want to read, but have yet to pick up. Frequently, I will ask how my fellow reader is enjoying the book, and a conversation ensues which combats the boredom of a lengthy transit or a long haul flight.

The thought of these chance meetings disappearing fills me with preemptive nostalgia. But worse still: book signings. Author readings.

I have been going to these since my undergraduate days, when writers would come to the English department of the University I attended, and have sought them out ever since. With my mother, I saw Margaret Atwood speak at a theatre in Kingston, Ontario, when she was at her feisty best, and experienced for myself that quick wit and sharp sense of humour. I heard Michael Ondaatje speak in Toronto, alongside Anthony Minguella, soon after the film version of The English Patient was released. They spoke of the process of converting the book into the movie, how Minghella fell in love with the book and tracked down Ondaatje, how they collaborated to make the movie that would win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Picture. I heard another of Canada's great novelists, Timothy Findley, speak before his death in 2002. I attended an intimate bookstore reading by the beautiful Arundhati Roy after which I spoke to her and watched her face fall as I gave what I thought was a compliment:

"I like your style of writing," I said to her.
"I don't have a style," she responded, deadpan. I still remember the sound of her voice as she read from that incredible book, The God of Small Things.

In Sydney I heard the great Jonathan Franzen speak about Freedom, and met his handsome gaze afterwards as he signed my well-worn copy.

In fact I still have the signed copies of all of those books on my shelves. They are my treasured possessions. Someone once told me that they were wary of meeting the writers they loved in case they differed from expectations, in some discomforting way. But I have never worried about that. Writing and reading, when interconnected, become two sides of a rather intimate activity - these people, the writers, have already invited me into the depths of their mind. These are people I already know, in some way. I want to meet these people, more so than actors, who are playing a part when we see them on screen. And I have yet to be disappointed.

The thought of book tours and book signings disappearing along with paper books is just too much to bear. But Leto is right: where would Paul Auster sign his newest e-book for me? How would Salman Rushdie sign an electronic version of Joseph Anton? (even the thought of Joseph Anton in e-book form seems somehow sacrilegious)

So join me, please, and let us rage, rage agains the dying of the light.