Gondal-girl

The Wonderful World of Carson Ellis

2012-01-17T12:25:00.002+11:00

Recently I had the pleasure of reading Wildwood by Colin Meloy from The Decemberists and illustrated by his other half, Carson Ellis.

The story was sweet and magical, but for me the illustrations were lovely little worlds, soft tones of grey in amidst the black and white, curious expressions on the faces, I found myself racing ahead, desperate for another picture. Here are some of the illustrations of Ellis, surely ready to enchant the next lot of younger readers that stumble across Wildwood, but beware, like the awakening ivy, may just suck you in.

Or check out her wonderful blog.

Portrait of a Lady - Emily Bronte

2012-01-14T19:36:00.000+11:00

According to The Guardian, two unheard of, undiscovered portraits of the Divine Miss B, have surfaced. The bottom one has sold, but the other is for sale - wouldn't it be wonderful if it was her? Better than the flattened and amateur work by Branwell, as held at the National Portrait Gallery. Curiously, in the same month a re-discovered Jane Austen portrait has also surfaced.

I wonder if these portraits are true or just our wanting them to be, makes them so?

The Artist on the Wing - A Card from Angela Carter

2012-01-05T12:15:00.000+11:00

Just heard about this, another pick for 2012 - a biography in postcards about Angela Carter, written by her friend Susannah Clap, promised by Bloomsbury to "catch the artist on the wing". It is hard to believe it is 20 years since she has passed, and yet no biography. I remember discovering her books in 1991 and having that feeling of discovering a treasure and started reading her voraciously, only to discover a few months later that she had died. Sometimes I don't think we have got our head around what a brilliant artist she was and the influence that she has had, it as if a literary Goddess walked amongst us and we didn't know. Hopefully this book will bring back in a new form, so we can enjoy her writing, full of spit and spirit.

A Generous New year

2011-12-27T19:28:00.000+11:00

O blog, I neglect you so - whatever words I have mustered I tend to hoard them and save them for the glide of pen across page. Here is hoping I can be more generous with them in the New Year.
Happy Holidays and a Generous New year.

The Chemistry of Tears - Peter Carey

2011-12-04T11:12:00.001+11:00

Can I get excited now? Officially excited?

I think so, due for release in 2012 is the new Peter Carey. He is one of my favourite cups of tea and this story looks brewed just right. One thing I love about this time of year is the hints of the books of 2012.

A bit more about the book here from Penguin Books Australia.

When Catherine's lover dies suddenly, she has no-one to turn to - their affair had been disguised from their colleagues and his family - except her work. A middle-aged curator in a London museum, Catherine is given a very particular project by the perceptive head of her department: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a nineteenth century automaton - a beautifully made mechanical bird.

When she discovers that the box also contains the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, she is partially rescued from one obsession by another - who were Henry Brandling and the mysterious, visionary clockmaker he hired to make a gift for his absent son? And what was the end result that now sits in pieces in her studio?

The Chemistry of Tears is both wildly entertaining and deeply moving, a portrait of love and loss that is simultaneously delicate and anarchic. At its heart is an image only the masterful Peter Carey could breath such life into - an object made of equal parts magic, art and science, a delight that contains the seeds of our age's downfall.

Have been slogging away editing and absorbing feedback and family dramas, so I shall dangle this, my carrot, a reward for when all is done.

Dancing and Flirting with The Night Circus

2011-10-12T12:30:00.000+11:00

As soon as I heard about this book I was excited and terrified all at once. Could it be? A book about magicians and the circus? The title so similar to one of my favourites, Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus? Even when I went into my local bookshop the other day, they had festooned the ceiling with the dazzling tent of the cover. Am almost too excited to read! Does anyone else do that - dance around a book because it sounds too good to be true. It is serious flirtation.

Here is the review from the Guardian.

Do you like champagne or The Rules of Civility - Amor Towles

2011-09-26T20:59:00.000+10:00

Do you like Champagne? That beautiful, crisp promise of something wonderful about to happen as it circles your mouth? Well The Rules of Civility is it's literary equal. Refreshing yet intoxicating, delicious but goes straight to your head. It tells of Katey Kontent's unequalled year in New York in 1938. Part Gatsby, part Catcher in the Rye, part a new dazzling voice - it is a cocktail worth enjoying, read it now before it gets diluted into a film, but don't blame me if you, Tardis like, want to spin back in time to the 30's in New York.

More here from Amor Towles Website.

Wuthering Heights Preview

2011-09-20T20:18:00.000+10:00

What a preview - stillness, darkness, shadowy figures, the landscape and hardly a jot of text at all.

Can't wait to see Wuthering Heights.

Black Heathcliff?

2011-09-07T12:15:00.000+10:00

There is a new Wuthering Heights coming out that has debuted at the Venice Film Festival. Sounds intriguing - a black Heathcliff, fruity language - can't wait to see what they have done. Guardian Review here:

A Writer's Prayer - amen

2011-09-05T13:09:00.000+10:00

A Writer’s Prayer

Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too much;

who spreads himself too thinly with his words,

diluting all the things he has to say,

like butter spread too thinly over toast,

or watered milk in some worn-out hotel;

but let me write the things I have to say,

and then be silent, ’til I need to speak.

Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too little;

a decade-man between each tale, or more,

where every word accrues significance and dread replaces joy upon the page.

Perfectionists like chasing the horizon;

You kept perfection, gave the rest to us,

so let me earn the wisdom to move on.

But over and above those two mad spectres of parsimony and profligacy,

Lord, let me be brave, and let me, while I craft my tales,

be wise: let me say true things in a voice that is true, and, with the truth in mind, let me write lies.

Neil Gaiman

Half the Human Race - Anthony Quinn

2011-09-01T20:51:00.000+10:00

Suffragettes and Cricketers? In one book? Is it possible? Yes it is, in Half the Human Race, which I am currently reading. The prose is beautifully drawn. Quinn gets right in side the head and heart of Constance our suffragette in an almost uncanny way. Am almost finished and have been avoiding any reveals of plot. But I must confess, I have felt my eyes pricking with the emotion of it at times. A book that has cricket in it by crikey and I can't even stand the game! Any one else cry while reading?

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

2011-08-15T12:50:00.001+10:00

Yesterday I finished this novel, this year's Orange Prize Winner, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. Doing a google of Tiger's Wife to find a cover image, mostly the images were of a heartbroken wife of a disgraced golfer. I was pleasantly surprised by Obreht's writing- there are startling images and beautiful writing - the opening up of the magic in the every day. That the press go on about her blondeness and age is ridiculous, for her writing stands on its own. The novel reminded me a lot of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber, a personal favourite. There is the Deathless Man and superstitious villagers, a crazed tiger and the woman that loves him, guslar players and bear killers - bringing a new eye on the folk traditions of Europe into the present day. My only gripe, was that I didn't think the present plot could withstand such flights of fancy, so that by the end, I wasn't really able to pull all the threads together, but still, this book is worth reading. What next Tea Obreht?

Eglantyne Jebb and the East African Food Crisis

2011-07-21T22:05:00.000+10:00

This is Eglanyne Jebb. A woman moved by the plight of orphaned children in WW1. Her story is remarkable. As is the charity she started. She deserves a novel, a film, her tale needs to be told.

She founded Save the Children.

At the moment, East Africa is suffering a humanitarian crisis. We cannot look away. We can not be immune to the pain of others. Donate what you can, if you can.

Save The Children

The Charm of Edmund de Waal - The Hare with Amber Eyes

2011-07-09T18:52:00.002+10:00

I read this book a few months back and have been thinking about it ever since. The prose is beautiful and allows for space and breath as de Waal unravels his family history using the inheritance of netsuke, miniature ivory sculptures. The book is a vessel for family memory and it feels as if the story chose Edmund de Waal to tell it.

I loved the Paris Edmund De Waal invokes -the golden streets of the Belle Epoque through the eyes of Charles his ancestor who he claims is the model for Proust's Swann - wishing to be a fly on the wall or at least have a good look around the fabulous apartment that Charles furnishes to his heart's desires.

It is also very powerful how de Waal unfolded the beginning of WW2 in Vienna, horrific really how quickly a world can turn upside down. My stomach lurched through these pages, and I felt that de Waal's grandmother Elizabeth was the true 'hero' of the story in many ways, though somehow down played in the writing, the facts speak for themselves of her bravery.

I only wished for it to be illustrated with all the wonderful photographs and portraits and netsuke that de Waal paints in his pages - so I was glad at least the US cover has them on the cover.

A beautiful book.

Under shining in The Crimson Petal and the White?

2011-06-29T20:20:00.000+10:00

The Crimson Petal and the White is bravura - yes it is. I read it years ago and it has lingered for years

affectionately in my mind as Michel Faber ( the Australian/ Dutch/ Scottish author, yes all three) played with the reader by following his wonderful creation of Sugar a street walker with her eyes on a different kind of prize and a skin condition to match. She reminded me a lot of Fevvers in Angela Carter's Night's at the Circus - brash, wonderful and perfect reading company.

So I was daunted to hear the BBC has adapted this novel, one of my all time favourites. To add insult to injury, the casting of Romola Garai as Sugar. She sure looks the part, however every adaption of a book she has appeared in, she has somehow under-shone in the the wonderful roles ( Daniel Deronda, I Capture the Castle), though this may be the director or writer's fault, I never catch a glimpse of those characters that breathed on my face as I read.

Here is hoping this adaption proves me wrong.

The Clayton's Proust

2011-06-12T13:15:00.003+10:00

I recently looked at the copy of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, sitting un-read on my bookshelf and wondered if I should release it from my TBR pile. Afterall, I have more chance of scoffing down a madeleine than getting through the first few pages. However, I keep bumping into Proust all the time, reading Colette, reading Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, and it makes me wonder, does one really need to read Proust, or are there so many books about him that one can experience a Clayton's Proust?

(Note: Clayton's is a non-alcoholic drink. The jingle had something about, 'the drink you have when not having a drink') so in Australia having a Clayton's is a term used to say you are having a substitute for the real thing).

Recently I read about Proust in Proust's Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini. Though it was about Proust, it was really about a Proust collector.

And then there is of course this:

Maybe he can, but I haven't really worked out how... Proust a philosopher?

And this, brilliant cover, but Proust a Neuroscientist?

And Proust as Vanity Fair journalist?

Not to mention the book about Proust and the Squid?

All this Proust fan fiction really kindles my encouragement to read Proust, but every time I start, my eyes have to start again at that first page and get tangled in those sticky long sentences, my mind wanders and I start thinking of the past and wanting a madeleine.

So is reading Clayton's Proust better than the real thing?

Style Icon in Xanadu

2011-05-29T19:16:00.000+10:00

Kate Moss has bought Coleridge's London house in Hampstead - one of my most favourite places. I have stayed in a few writer's famous places of writing in the Ireland and found them, alas, to be the most haunted places I have ever been - ghost stories and all. However, an air of conduciveness filled the air as pens almost ripped themselves across the pages, a little like Yeats' wife George and her automatic writing

Apparently according to this Guardian article:

Coleridge's room is on the second floor, but cannot be seen from the street. His single dormer window commands the glorious upper woods of Hampstead Heath and Kenwood House, a view he once compared to his own sacred kingdom of Kubla Khan. Coleridge grew plants on his windowsill, including the symbolic herb myrtle, emblem of lost love. He also wrote his last prose work here, a collection of grave spiritual reflections, Aids to Reflection.

Perhaps Kate will feel the spirit of Coleridge's inspiration post self medication and pick up the pen?

R.I.P typewriters...

2011-05-14T13:21:00.000+10:00

I was saddened this week when I heard of the demise of the typewriter - the last factory is closing and there will be no more made. Though I have never been skilled at the typewriter, it has always held a type of magic, as I imagine the liberating effect it had on writers and women upon its arrival. Above is Angela Carter and her beloved typewriter.

Goodbye typewriter, we hope that like the polaroid a new generation will resurrect you.

More here from the Guardian.

30 Essentials for Prose

2011-04-12T12:12:00.000+10:00

Recently, the Pixie and I took our first road trip together and I got to thinking of the literature of the road and my mind took a little detour past the vehicles and the spray of mist from the bitumen to Jack Kerouac and how I have never read any of his books. Though maybe I should? As below are his 30 essentials from Belief and Technique for Modern Prose which I found particularly delightful.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You’re a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

(above Kerouac's typewriter)

Seamus Heaney - pen love or why I miss fountain pens

2011-03-29T21:46:00.000+11:00

The Conway Stewart

"Medium," 14-carat nib,
Three gold bands in the clip-on screw-top,
In the mottled barrel a spatulate, thin

Pump-action lever
The shopkeeper
Demonstrated,

The nib uncapped,
Treating it to its first deep snorkel
In a newly opened ink-bottle,

Guttery, snottery,
Letting it rest then at an angle
To ingest,

Giving us time
To look together and away
From our parting, due that evening,

To my longhand
"Dear"
To them, next day.

Modest Divinities

2011-03-10T18:59:00.002+11:00

Sometimes I look at images like this and imagine that if I had a place like this to live then everything would be peachy. It is the fairy-tale I carry in my head when sleep is minimal or things are menial. It is a little brain oasis when things are cloudy. One thing I have noticed with the Pixie, is the loss of time to muse, to ponder, and invite images into ones head without any attempt at coherence. Everything is in multitasking overdrive, so when there is a quiet moment, I buzz with all the things done, all the things to do.Yesterday, running late for play group, and then running late again for a babysitter to come over and give me some writing time, running to try and get a little more than my nightly four hours sleep, I just decided to stop and slow down. The local pharmacy became a playground of packages and rides in plastic tubs, the clock shop was a festival of cuckoo chimes, the bookseller gave me her shameful confession of her love of all things Twilight. And I breathed and remembered Borges and his poem on Shinto and how things are always the richer for 'modest divinities'.

SHINTO

When misfortune confounds us
in an instant we are saved
by the humblest actions
of memory or attention:
the taste of fruit, the taste of water,
that face returned to us in dream,
the first jasmine flowers of November,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we thought forever lost,
the pulsing of a hexameter,
the little key that opens a house,
the smell of sandalwood or library,
the ancient name of a street,
the colourations of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date that we were searching for,
counting the twelve dark bell-strokes,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million the deities of Shinto
who travel the earth, secretly.
Those modest divinities touch us,
touch us, and pass on by.

– Jorge Luis Borges

Desk recognition

2011-03-02T15:37:00.001+11:00

As you know I dream of desks, work spaces, stationary and rooms of ones own. So, when I saw this image of writer/performer Tina Fey in her actual office with her real life baby, I felt a shudder of recognition. This could be me and my desk, except that my desk is in the living room/ slash lounge room/slash dining room/ play room - thanks to open plan living. It also made me realise something. Even a desk like this shows proof of life, thriving thoughts and writing regardless of what life is demanding of us. The state of ones desk doesn't prove one is a writer, writing does.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich, from Original Fire.

Desk lust #2

2011-02-19T19:40:00.003+11:00

I am suffering desk envy. My little 1.2metres of my own, forget the room, has been invaded by the Pixie who has worked out his arms get longer if he stands on tippy toes. The width of my desk now makes a ruler look luxurious.

So when I was sent this desk, I thought, why this is what my writing environment should be like. It has the monastic air with that picture of a beehive and the rustic wooden furniture gives it a Shaker feel. Notice the lack of computer and lovely book holders. Behold the lovely samplers on the walls as if Emily Dickinson and Louisa May Alcott got together to swap stitches instead of notes. And don't forget the light, the light, the light.

Any guesses who creates at this desk? Not in a million years? A poet perhaps or some fabulous maker of calm? Alas no,
The

desk

belongs

to...

WOODY ALLEN!

In Praise of - Louise Erdrich

2011-02-15T20:31:00.001+11:00

I love Louise Erdrich. Aside from the fact that I love birds perching on heads, she is a profoundly beautiful writer that I have been blessed with reading.

I first discovered her novel Tracks in a University Course on 20th Century American Fiction and that bit me and since then, I have followed her output, each like a beautiful crumb that beckons one out of the woods.

It is a rare Louise Erdrich book I haven't read. She is a master story-teller - her command of place and voice often have reduced me to tears. What do I love - so much? The interweaving of characters that appear in different books, though stand alone on their own ( Fleur and Nanapush); the light upon a culture that has been changed and its struggles to remain and being of Native American and German descent, she is also a feast for the eyeballs.

Viva La Louise Erdrich!

In Praise of - The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

2011-01-26T12:25:00.000+11:00

For a while now I have been thinking on The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver - the story is hard to describe in a nutshell - but it tells the story of Harrison Shepherd from a boy to a man and his time in Mexico and his struggles through finding his own voice as a writer against the politics of the 20th Century. Along the way, his supporting cast are the indomitable Frida Kahlo and Lev Trostky - and unlike the usual appearance of historical figures in fiction that feel like vomited up research, Kingsolver makes them seem wonderfully fresh and useful in the novel, more fictional and therefore, somehow, more alive.

The Lacuna is a long book - but such a lovely, breathing, takes its time in a good way book. Mexico came through the writing like a spicy perfume.

Read more about it here from the Independent, or read the book instead.

The Language of Mothers and Babies

2011-01-22T18:55:00.000+11:00

Since the Pixie arrived, I am often filled with wonder at the words people use to craft a poem to express the sensation of motherhood. Language seemed shaped anew as words form unformed as it were in the babies mouth. I am often startled too, by the language of some mothers toward each other - Nicole Kidman calling the birth mother of her child a 'gestational carrier' made me rage - it sounded like a new term like 'an unlawful combatant' to erase a role. Don't get me started on surrogacy, I don't want to share my opinions, but surely Nicole who is a mother herself, can accept that her baby has another mother too.

You used to lean

on that cot rail

and wait

with the vigour of a flame

to leap into my arms

two feet tall and two years old

a sagging nappy

archless feet soft as cats’ tongues

and trodden underneath

a thick and clammy waterproof

warm from sleep

the sheet ruched at the end

toys heaped and confused

neglected as the dead

a duck stuck in the corner

I could see the basket of your ribs

your hands were opened

and all your bones and life

leapt up to mine.

Kate Llewellyn

Crime against Literature. Exhibit A Below

2011-01-17T11:46:00.000+11:00

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

2011-01-15T19:39:00.002+11:00

I read this book a few years back and recently delivered into the hands of someone who would adore it. For months it had been sitting on my shelf when it started saying it wanted to move house and would I be so kind to address and envelope and send it on its way.

However, it may have moved on, but I still think fondly of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Brian Selznick is a master image making story-teller. He uses his pencil and the divine cross hatching to make the heart and mind leap forward and into the story. He doesn't do away with words however, he uses both with economy and flair that leave one thinking there hasn't been a book quite like it.

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come together...in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

This 526-page book is told in both words and pictures.The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things. Each picture (there are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!) takes up an entire double page spread, and the story moves forward because you turn the pages to see the next moment unfold in front of you.

from The Invention of Hugo Cabret website

Martin Scorsese is directing the film version which is intriguing. The book deals with pioneer film maker George Melies, so I thought Jean-Pierre Jeunet was probably more the type of director needed. I hope Scorsese doesn't loose the wonderful imagery that Selznick has created. The film is supposedly in 3-D. Perhaps he will leave the images to become animation and the words to become the live action of the film. Whatever he does, I hope it only adds to the readership of Hugo Cabret.

The Flood

2011-01-12T15:25:00.003+11:00

Thinking of Queensland. Let's hope the rain ends soon and hope returns like an olive sprig.

The Flood

by John Clare

On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I've seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o'er its wall to watch the dashing spray
As their old stations would be washed away
Crash came the ice against the jambs and then
A shudder jarred the arches - yet once more
It breasted raving waves and stood agen
To wait the shock as stubborn as before
- White foam brown crested with the russet soil
As washed from new plough lands would dart beneath
Then round and round a thousand eddies boil
On tother side - then pause as if for breath
One minute - and engulphed - like life in death
Whose wrecky stains dart on the floods away
More swift than shadows in a stormy day
Straws trail and turn and steady - all in vain
The engulfing arches shoot them quickly through
The feather dances flutters and again
Darts through the deepest dangers still afloat
Seeming as faireys whisked it from the view
And danced it o'er the waves as pleasures boat
Light hearted as a thought in May -
Trays - uptorn bushes - fence demolished rails
Loaded with weeds in sluggish motions stray
Like water monsters lost each winds and trails
Till near the arches - then as in affright
It plunges - reels - and shudders out of sight
Waves trough - rebound - and fury boil again
Like plunging monsters rising underneath
Who at the top curl up a shaggy main
A moment catching at a surer breath
Then plunging headlong down and down - and on
Each following boil the shadow of the last
And other monsters rise when those are gone
Crest their fringed waves - plunge onward and are past
- The chill air comes around me ocean blea
From bank to bank the waterstrife is spread
Strange birds like snow spots o'er the huzzing sea
Hang where the wild duck hurried past and fled
On roars the flood - all restless to be free
Like trouble wandering to eternity

Snow and Carol Ann Duffy

2011-01-10T19:36:00.002+11:00

Howth Head, Dublin (photo by Cameron Lee)

Sydney is like pea soup, the humidity thick enough to cut with a spoon. At this time of year I always think of snow and the fabulous stillness of it, the way it softens the landscape and ugly statues, it literally paints the world new, in white, then grey as it melts. Perhaps I am just feeling my homing instincts to the other side of the planet, after tasting Christmas pudding that is like the glow of love in the belly.

Carol Ann Duffy says it better than me.

Snow by Carol Ann Duffy

Then all the dead opened their cold palms
and released the snow; slow, slant, silent,
a huge unsaying, it fell, torn language; settled,
the world to be locked, local; unseen,
fervent earthbound bees around a queen.
The river grimaced and was ice.

Go nowhere-
thought the dead, using the snow-
but where you are, offering the flower of your breath
to the white garden, or seeds to birds
from your living hand. You cannot leave.
Tighter and tighter, the beautiful snow
holds the land in its fierce embrace.
It is like death, but it is not death; lovelier.
Cold, inconvenienced, late, what will you do now
with the gift of your left life?

In Praise of - Studio Beerhorst

2011-01-06T22:06:00.000+11:00

Being in love with books often means being in love with bookish things - pens, paper, creativity and the like and having praise-crushes on those that share the love of making, the grain of paper, the making of something of nothing. There is power in gratitude.

When I discovered Studio Beerhorst, I was smitten. What are they I hear you ask? Studio Beerhorst is the family of Brenda and Rick Beerhorst, but perhaps it is better in their own words:

"We are an artist family of eight living in downtown Grand Rapids MI with backyard chickens and no car...We support our selves making art and that means every purchase helps our family continue on its mysterious adventure and have the money to replace the bicycle tires when they wear out.

We use salvaged materials for not only shipping but also for art material when ever possible.

Much of the imagery springs out of our life together. A love for color and texture as well as a strong interest in the past guides my selection of images. I have always felt that a piece of art work can become a portal into the spiritual world like the idea of thin places in Celtic theology. All artistic creation can become a flight towards God. Then lets surround ours selves with truth and beauty and live lives accordingly."

What do I find wonderful about them?

For starters there Wonder Wagon.

Their beautiful artwork that speaks of visions and the senses, feeling and the otherworldy - like Baltus and Piero della Francesca.

There sharing of their making, the daily bread of making. The living breathing wonder work of making.

And, to remember the below.

Praise be to Studio Beerhorst.

(all images courtesy of Studio Beerhorst)

Kate Bush, Literary Hero?

2011-01-02T19:38:00.000+11:00

I love Kate Bush - for her whimsy, her strange ethereal voice and her poetic lyrics, her themes and longevity, her literary references and panache. She started with Wuthering Heights, speaking Cathy's voice into song, to her most recent offering of Aerial, where she has songs about Pi and her little boy Bertie and Joan of Arc, as well as duets with Rolf Harris and blackbirds. It is a sublime cd that is great to write to, setting emotional tenor. Her songs are like chapters.

So you could imagine my surprise in the Guardian today. David Mitchell author of Cloud Atlas and most recently The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, names Kate Bush as his literary hero. A lovely little homage with a lot of crush. But then we all love Kate Bush, don't we?

Novelist David Mitchell declares Kate Bush his Literary Hero

Must not miss books

2010-12-28T20:04:00.002+11:00

Seriously now, if you are wondering what to add to your TBR pile for 2011, read these two. They both have the ability to leave one aching with the beauty of the writing and a little breathless...

Books of the Year

2010-12-13T20:33:00.000+11:00

I have read a surprising number of books this year - reading being the only quiet time in that moment when the head hits the pillow and the eyes shut. Here are some of the ones that lingered, making the thoughts turn and ponder before sleep took me.

COCO CHANEL by Justine Picardie - this biography was engrossing because of Picardie taking the subject and unpeeling like an onion all Chanels's fictions - painting Chanel as the ambiguous and tenacious individual she was in a tantalizing read.

THE GHOST WHO BELONGED TO ME by Richard Peck. Yes this is a YA title from the 1970's, filmed by the Disney corp and made into a film that has haunted me ever since I was a child. It tells the story of medium's child Blossom Culp and her neighbour and the mysterious death of Inez, a ghost. This is one of those great books that have the story appealing to both child and adult. I am sure a Blossom Culp television series wouldn't be amiss in this Twilight driven world.

PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver. This was loaned to me and it would have never been something I would have picked up by myself, as the blurb on the back reduces the story, when it is actually a sweeping meditation on nature, family and aging written in a style that is completely mesmeric and satisfying.

STAR OF THE SEA by Joseph O'Connor is the tale of the Irish Famine of 1847 and the immigrants who leave behind their homeland. It is a vast and sprawling work dealing with a topic that is not often portrayed in fiction. In between chapters facts and cartoons from the time are laid out and it is frightening. An ambitious work that doesn't always work, however what does is beautifully drawn and thought provoking.

THE QUICKENING MAZE by Adam Foulds tells the story of the mad poet John Clare. This is a book written by a poet, sentences are lean and capture images in perfect frames as we are drawn into all the lives that surround Clare, each conflicted with a madness of their own. It is dazzling how he can portray so much in such a slim book.

So, these are some of my books of the year. What are yours?

A Bride of Amazement

2010-12-10T16:02:00.000+11:00

It is almost the end of the year, the summer making the footpaths steam and my hair frizz. The letterbox fills with Christmas book catalogues that are always wonderful to ogle and circle.

Writing time alas, has been squeezed as it were into a very small window in an otherwise busy week, so instead of wonderful strides of writing, I have achieved only little postcard sizes of my thoughts. I miss the daily ritual of coffee in one hand, pen poised in the other, a conduit to whatever thoughts were buzzing around my head. However, I also know that the Pixie will only be Pixie sized for a short time and I don't want to have the feeling of missing things. I want to be mindful. I want my time to count. I don't want to simply, as this eloquent and gorgeous poem paints, 'simply visit the world'.

So for now, writing postcards, being mindful and keeping my vow to be a 'bride of amazement'.

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

The Biggest chop

2010-10-30T18:49:00.000+11:00

Hello Friends in Blogland,

I don't know if you read this tawdry blog of mine much anymore. I seem to read everyone elses than to pay mine any attention. This is just a quick post to say, I haven't forgotten you - and please keep posting away on all things fabulous - books and creativity - I am reading. It brightens my day between the umpteenth load of washing or train commutes.

I have not only been busy with the Pixie who has now turned one, but I have been (with encouragement and support) been making the biggest chop of all to my once 189k novel. Slowly but surely a leaner version is appearing. At 110k, she is looking very svelte indeed, if a little malnourished to my eye, but hopefully like a dancer, able to swoon to great heights because of it.

Because of my editing, my brain had started turning into an editing machine, no novel safe, or newspaper article. Biographies have seemed immune, so I have read Speak, Memory by Nabokov - a liquid memoir, fully of vanished Russia and pithy observations of the writing life and exile. The whole premise that it was written for his wife was lovely and concludes with the birth of their son. I loved the descriptions of Vladimir pushing his son around the streets of Berlin, descriptions of moustached pansies echoing the chants of Hitler. The one thing I found strange was, he didn't mention anything of meeting or courting or wedding Vera, his wife. Though perhaps this absence is a more truer love letter than if he included it.

Perhaps, their relationship was edited out to preserve it?

I don't know.

What I do know. Is that I am feeling lax about my blog, happier that my novel is closer to print than this time last year, my Pixie is thriving and that I can return to reading novels again...The Quickening Maze already captivating - about John Clare the mad poet, written by a poet, and can I say, edited perfectly, every sentence a perfect morsel.

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie

2010-10-07T18:43:00.000+11:00

I have just finished this biography of Chanel by Justine Picardie. It is an intriguing portrait, focusing on Chanel and her own power of making a fiction of her own past and experience. Chanel was a fabulous inventor not only of fashion, but herself.

What I enjoyed was the keen choices of Picardie's chapters - focusing on key elements to distill Chanel's life. I was particularly impressed with the tales of Chanel's shadow - her relationship with Spatz ( Sparrow) and Nazi during WW2 and the thorough research of Picardie to give this all the light and shade it deserved. The other story I found intriguing was the tale of the beginnings of Chanel's perfume industry and the Werteimer family that still make it today. These elements show Chanel at her conflicted best and therefore all the more vivid and complex - making her more than just the lady behind the clothes.

Whatever you think of the fashion industry or your relationship with fashion mags, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life is worth reading to discover the story of a modern Sybil.

Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor

2010-10-03T19:37:00.000+11:00

Listen closely. Come closer. I know this blog barely creeps along and you barely have time to read. But you must read this book. If you have to borrow it, do so. Borrow it from the library or steal it from a friend. I have been trying to think of words to describe this book, but it has left me speechless. I have it sitting on my desk as a talisman to brilliant writing. I am even hoping to read it again when I have the time.

Forget the insipid cover and that any journalists who talk with O'Connor cannot resist mentioning his sister Sinead.

Ghost Light tells the story of Molly Allgood and her relationship with Irish Playwright J. M Synge. It is partially based on fact. But it doesn't matter whether you know anything about them at all for the language makes you savour the words and read slowly, lingering in images and turns of phrase.It reminds me a little of The Hours in that way, striking one silent and still. Quiet with awe. To me that Synge is someone I admire and Dublin a city I love, only arrested me more.

O' Conner writes:

"To write fiction based on real people and those they loved is a morally ambiguous enterprise, to say the least. Ghost Light is a work of the imagination, frequently taking immense liberties with fact. The experiences and personalities of the real Molly and Synge differed from those of my characters in numerous ways. Yeats and Lady Gregory and Sean O’Casey appear in the book too, no doubt in forms some biographers won’t like. Then again, these giants often said they had fanned their fictions from the sparks of real life, renaming the people who had inspired their stories. The practice was sometimes a camouflage, sometimes a claim of authenticity. It was an option I considered carefully but decided against in the end, and so I dare to ask the forgiveness of these noble ghosts of world literature for not changing the names of the innocent".

Do read.

Aroma du Jour - or what do Picardie, Balzac, Colette, Proust and Capote have in common??

2010-09-17T18:55:00.000+10:00

While the Pixie is in the Bath smelling delicious with Weleda's Calendula and my new copy of Justine Picardie's Chanel book warming my desk, I imagining a fragrance I dropped a hint about for my upcoming birthday. Something summery and rosy and feminine.

No doubt writers always use their senses to start the spiral of a story. I am sure Justine wore a Chanel perfume as a link back to her subject. Smell is a powerful stimulant able to transport us to times and places we had thought we had forgotten, a magic carpet of the nose.

So imagine my fancy when I discovered that Honore Balzac upon writing Cesar Birotteau he commissioned the original Guerlain in 1837 to make him a perfume that he sniffed frequently upon his desk.

I always thought that Colette's favourite perfume may also be Guerlain, L' Heure Blu, since she has a book of the same name, but alas it was not according to Truman Capote in his essay "Unspoiled Monsters", though Guerlain none the less:

The room smelled of her perfume…at some point I asked what it was, and Colette said: “Jicky. The Empress Eugénie always wore it. I like it because it’s an old-fashioned scent with an elegant history, and because it’s witty without being coarse—like the better conversationalists. Proust wore it. Or so Cocteau tells me.”

Alas, I have not smelled Jicky, I have heard it is animalistic and civety. Though I am intrigued, if I open a bottle and let it tickle my nostrils, will the muse alight with imagery and my pen take flight?

AS Byatt vs the Editors

2010-09-04T19:41:00.001+10:00

'Byatt, who won the Booker for her novel Possession, recalled how her publishers had tried to remove the chunks of ''Victorian'' prose and poetry. ''I wept and wept,'' she said. ''No one could have been more surprised than me that it did so well. I thought it was a niche book for academics. Which shows that you should always write a romance.'''

from the Guardian

When I read this my heart swelled. I am glad AS Byatt ( which even her grandchildren call her, affectionately of course) stuck to her guns. Could you imagine this novel without its brilliant Victorian ventriliquism? Therein lies its spell I believe.

Giving thanks

2010-08-20T19:36:00.000+10:00

When I saw this in a doorway the other day ( thank you artists - alas I didn't think to get a snap with your names on it with the Pixie having a moment) - I thought, this feels like me right now. There is a lot of paper swamping my space, ideas in my head, tasks I have to fulfill, but there is still a light on.

I give thanks for the artists of this installation for reminding me that.

I give thanks for dazzling writing - reading Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces.

I give thanks for some help with my editing - thank you editing fairy god mother for coming to my aid, better than a pair of glass slippers and a pumpkin.

I give thanks for the Literary review - which makes my brain think and swell with images and ideas when I am unable to put pen to paper.

I give thanks to the wonderful interviews with Margaret Throsby in the mornings and thankfully are online. With spoon in hand and Pixie in the highchair I am enthralled by the stories. Tom Kennelly most recently sparkled in my ears with his wit and canny knack for hearing wonderfully true stories that are begging to be made into fiction.

I give thanks for my hour of writing a week - not much, but it keeps me ticking over and my brain is doing the writing in between hours, my mind plotting and envisioning, particularly between the hours of 4am - 9am if I happen to be awake.

I give thanks for my blog friends - you know who you are - little life lines of ideas and creativity that make the world bigger.

Cramming

2010-08-06T16:01:00.001+10:00

The Pixie is 9 months old - I can't believe he has been out of utero as long as he was in utero.

One of the things that has been warming my cockles is his love of books. He loves any thing he can get his hands on, the black and white print of the labels on his clothing to the spines of my own books packed too tight in the shelves. Though Hello, Bugs is his current favourite, shiny splashes of colour illicit joyous whacking of the pages, gurgles and the occasional sample with his teeth - making this one of my favourite books of the moment too. The other day I popped out of the room and when I came back he had swiped it somehow from the sofa and was babbling with a funny expression on his face, an imitation of reading. I look forward to sharing with him my childhood favourites, The Secret Garden, Blinky Bill and The Wishing Chair.

I too have been cramming my reading in - while getting some good writing done in patches. I read David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet and was a little disappointed leaving the main character behind a third of the way into the book. Am currently reading A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin - which I am liking very much, not enough to actually bite the pages and bash the cover, but almost.

The Last of Zola for now

2010-07-15T16:53:00.005+10:00

Have finished Zola: Photographer - I am awed that he had so much technical knowledge and skill with his cameras. Today we snap and go and forget. All our memories one computer crash away from oblivion. At the turn of the century one had to make a big commitment to the latest technology and equipment and risk experimentation. I wonder where he found the time after his work as a shipping clerk and at the publishers Hachette, writing his Les Rougon Macquart series ( surely as large as Proust's doorstopper), political commentary, ( J'accuse) the exile to England and time for two families?

These two images really struck me - the busy writer still had time for his beloved children - here running as if Zola was trying to catch them in flight, in their element.

The other, a self portrait of Zola himself with his dog, lying in the grass like one of Chagall's dreaming shepherds.

How did Zola make time?

We can all make time for the things we love.

Zola's desk

2010-07-09T19:21:00.005+10:00

In my previous post, I admired Zola's desk in the portrait by Manet, small and cluttered.

However, that was before his major successes as a writer. After his publisher decided to pass along some of the profits, Zola really found himself in the money. Then he really let loose, at his country house in Medan, which also housed Japanese curiosities and sets of armor suspended from the ceiling (pictured above).

In his Parisian apartment, he favoured the more austere, reflective, clean and minimal in his surrounds, one could even call it a monastic and spartan writing space....

Complete with persian rug across the top of his desk!

Zola: Photographer

2010-07-06T17:07:00.004+10:00

Am being enchanted by Zola: Photographer - the writer's eye is like a camera, looking for the fine detail and the dance of light. Above is him and his defacto family - I adore the way they are all holding each other, tenderly and relaxed, composed by Zola before the camera went click. I am in awe of his daughter's lace collar, intricate as a spider's web.

The second image is a photograph of Zola of his novels and a daguerrotype of himself and his own father, the gentle arm of affection draped across the boy- Zola's shoulders. Love can be hereditary.

Ps: For a lovely other blog that touches on Zola among other things: See The Blue Lantern

Books finding new homes

2010-06-27T18:49:00.002+10:00

It has been that time of the year where the book cull takes place, this year it has been more vicious as usual, the towers of babel effect of book storage on the floor doesn't bode well for the Pixie who has started the inclination to crawl, so cull I have.

This time with the book cull, I found it hard to let some beauties go to the mercy of the second hand book shop and Saint Vincent de Pauls, so I played matchmaker.

My film maker friend with a love of silent cinema gave refuge to my lovely copy of the Mystery of Hugo Cabret - pictured above - a novel that uses text as well as images. Now, he thinks he will edit that film of his that has been waiting for his snipping eye.

My autographed famous Australian Magician book had to be released into the care of a practicing magician, his fingers tingling with the tricks secrets revealed for his repertoire.

And my book of Famous Artists and Writers Juvenilia, filled with founding creative talents and curious specimens of handwriting went to a philosopher with a passion for his children and fountain pens.

Secretly though, I notice there must be a cosmic ledger re: books, for as soon as I release them, some new ones uninvited come flying through the window as if my shelves suddenly had a vacancy.

Desk lust and Emile Zola

2010-06-25T13:48:00.004+10:00

Occasionally I get writing room lust - especially now with the Pixie and his rattle - fantastic accoutrements spilling around the living room floor - and the rain making the dining room an indoor clothesline. So when I saw these pictures of Jamie Anthony's office nook I got a serious case of wanting to transport myself to this room.

The cosy light, the sunny yellow chairs, the crammed shelves and photographs remind me of Manet's painting of the prodigious Zola, who I recently discovered aside from his massive output, and career at publishers Hachette, a great photographer.

If you look closely at the painting you can see his wonderfully cluttered desk, his reproductions ( mostly Manet's) pinned above. I would love to have that Chinoise screen to make me forget my laundry and baby equipment.

I thought I visited Zola's tomb in Paris, but alas though the tomb is there, his remains were moved to the Panetheon. I rarely see people read him on the train, but when I do, I always stop to bother the reader and ask them what they think. The train a great moving book club.

Zola is a beautiful and unflinching writer - his contemporaries may get more limelight, but I think he is the better writer - modern, sharp and realistic, he makes time irrelevant, his characters vital and alive, at the mercy of our weak and human foibles.

Showing up magic happens

2010-06-21T18:44:00.003+10:00

Today I showed up for my much longed for hour. My fingers flew. My tongue hummed. Magic happened. Showing up, I know more than ever, transcends inspiration.

A Curiosity of Fish

2010-06-09T18:58:00.003+10:00

I have just finished this strange book Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan- a genre of convict fiction- ( chain gang fiction). Unreliable narrator, beautiful pages with different coloured inks and shimmery fish, truth and lies and native holocaust and imprisonment. Strange and lyric all at once. However, there was something that didn't work for me, too aware of itself ( worrying when it was an agent I know that mentioned my novel was like it...) - or was it trying to use the Tristam Shandy's to hold a mirror up to Australia that made it too self-conscious? At times it lured me in and then spat me out, like Jonah and the whale...

I think for me, a curiosity - a specimen of intrigue - but lacking the vitality of being filled with something living?

Gone teething

2010-05-14T12:48:00.002+10:00

I wish I could say fishing, at this point it seems a glamourous counterpoint to real life, which sadly consists of even less time to write than my meagre thefted 2 hours a week at my local coffee place. Back to some brief paid work too, adds to the melange of wearing too many hats and feeling like a perverse cat in the hat, ready to topple from too many roles. I am surprised by the challenges to my own resilience, an accidental train journey costing me an extra 40 minutes in getting home left me sobbing.

I find I am hoarding wonderful images in my mind, like the fab interview with Carol Ann Duffy I read the other day, like a ghost haunting memory and images, squirrelling them away for later. Sustaining myself on reading until I can get that one hour again -Mary McCallum's poem on sparrows, David Mitchell and his childhood adventures with a Xerox machine in The Guardian, Caroline Ann Duffy and her rich complications in the Telegraph - all giving me stepping stones to that time when my pen is hot and sharp in my drooling hand. These writers words and experiences giving me a type of writing bonjela, to soothe the teething I am going through, the teething of being a parent who is a writer.

Perhaps, I am teething too.

Tender Morsels 2

2010-04-21T16:34:00.002+10:00

I can understand why now there are some calls for YA fiction to come with a classification. This novel with its otherworldy language and imagery, is dazzling - so haunting and beautiful - the descriptions of birth, babies and motherhood particularly stinging and accurate and full of heart, the menace and violence horrific. Nothing is every made explicit, the drama is before and after the event, but in some ways, this makes the writing that more powerful- however, I wouldn't want to explain it to anyone under 18.

If you are after some dazzling writing do read, however don't say I didn't warn you.

At the Mercy of Tender Morsels

2010-04-12T18:51:00.002+10:00

After hearing three times that this was a beautiful book, I have started to read TENDER MORSELS by Australian author Margo Lanagan. The covers above intrigue me, mine is the middle, illustration by Shaun Tan. However, the bottom British should be the cover, as it gives a certain ominousness to the book, mysterious and bloody. I am up to page 48 and have already read of sexual abuse my the main character's father and then by a group of youths, and the desperate situation of a lone girl giving birth to her father's child. However, I am bid to read on, the writing is beautiful, a strange Angela Cartersque world, powerful and exultant and the wierd catharsis of the fairy tale. I will keep turning those pages, because I must.

I have a crush on Eric

2010-04-08T12:25:00.003+10:00

This is Eric - and I have a massive crush on him. Shaun Tan brought his remarkable tale to our ears through Tales of Suburbia, and now Eric has had his own tale published in his own volume.

I don't know what it is about Eric - his adorable burnt match head or his expressive pin hole eyes, or his lithesome toothpick body - all I know is that his curiosity is enchanting and that my crush is turning into love.

I do hope one day, Eric the exchange student comes to stay at my house. Meanwhile I keep his book on my desk and am filled with anticipation for the day I can read Eric to the Pixie and we can fall in love together.

Doctorow - Homer and Langely

2010-04-02T14:38:00.005+11:00

I am having a small Doctorow reading festival after enjoying Ragtime so much. I have pounced on Homer and Langely his latest and am under the spell already at 30 pages in. It tells a true story of a pair of compulsive collector brothers.

Here Doctorow talks about his inspiration and the genesis for his ideas:

I was a teenager when the Collyer brothers were found dead in their Fifth Avenue brownstone. Instantly, they were folklore. And so there is the real historical existence of them and the mythological existence--two existences, as with Abe Lincoln, though of a less exalted standing. I didn’t know at the time that I would someday write about them, but even then I felt there was some secret to the Collyers--there was something about them still to be discovered under the piles of things in their house--the bales of newspapers and the accumulated detritus of their lives. Was it only that they were junk-collecting eccentrics? You see that every day in the streets of New York. They had opted out--that was the primary fact. Coming from a well-to-do family, with every advantage, they had locked the door and closed the shutters and absented themselves from the life around them. A major move, as life-transforming as emigration. In fact it was a form of emigration, of leave-taking. But where to? What country was within that house? What would have caused them to become the notorious recluses of Fifth Avenue? As myths, the brothers demanded not research but interpretation, and when a few years ago I was finally moved to do this book, I felt as if writing it was an act of breaking and entering just to see what may have been going on in that house, which really meant getting inside two very interesting minds. And with the first sentence, “I’m Homer, the blind brother,” I was in.

In one sense I think of Homer & Langley as a road novel--as if they are two people traveling together down a road and having adventures, though in fact they are housebound. It turns out that the world will not let them alone--others intrude on their privacy as if it is the road running through them. As for their collecting, I think of them as curators of their life and times, and their house as a museum of all our lives. That is my idea of them, that is my reading of the Collyer myth. I make them to be two brothers who opted out of civilization and pulled the world in after them.--E.L. Doctorow ( from Amazon.com)

I am captivated by internal emigration/ road movie metaphor - so intriguing...

Above - a photo of the real Homer and Langely house interior....I will never moan about my clutter again!

Emily Dickinson's desk

2010-03-24T12:24:00.002+11:00

Here it is 18 inches square, 1100 poems composed by the time she was 35. When I first saw it, I was amazed - a small desk, modest and concise, a little teacup of a desk to contain the storm of her writing. But then I got to thinking. Hey, she retreated. Up the stairs and into her own room.

This is not insanity as some think, though she did write letters from upstairs to deliver to those who wished to visit below. She carved her own nook - with space and time - to write.

Now I think I am a little jealous. I wouldn't trade what I have, the Pixie and all - but am envious for that iron rod intention to have her space and time and eat it too, that clearly lovely tidy room of her own and her desire to live life on her own terms.

Note: Here is here room in 3-d - note the images of her inspirations - Elizabeth Barratt Browning and George Elliot - inspiring.

Little Windows of Inspiration

2010-03-11T12:02:00.004+11:00

Lately I have been loving finding little windows of inspiration. I don't always have the time to write as much as I feel I could, but these little windows of inspiration keep my creative home fires burning.

Precious Things is Ruth Quibell's lovely blog - she always has insightful posts, including 'THING PEOPLE' where creative people tell the stories behind some of their favourite objects.

If you need to warm your cold writing fingers, do have a look.

The Blue - Mary McCallum

2010-03-04T21:47:00.002+11:00

I have been tardy. Making very slow writing progress now that the Pixie is four months old. However, I am thinking about what I am working on every day, as if like a new shoot, it keeps the ground moist. I am getting some reading done, most recently, The Blue by Mary McCallum.

The Blue is a dreamy sort of book, full of the rhythms of the ocean and deep emotions. I loved the twist when it came, as I was wondering when the two strands of narrative would c0llide. Some of the metaphors have stuck with me, a beauty about sea birds hanging on the horizon like 'celestial washing'. I wish I had more brain oomph to say more, but it is a lovely tender read.

Ragtime

2010-02-23T16:13:00.002+11:00

I have been reading Ragtime by E.L Doctrow - what a deceptively simple book. It is like embroidery, it looks simple on one side, but is interwoven with such skill on the other. He uses short sentences, and leaves little motifs scattered throughout, that are delightful when found again throughout the narrative, like a refrain from a half remembered piece of music. It weaves fact and fiction, above one of the players, the real Evelyn Nesbitt - hasn't she a gorgeously insouciant face?

Ragtime is making me dream of America - strange dreams. Figures stopped with veiled faces, thick in the streets, mourning an assassination of a leader - I hope it is just a bad dream. The number 27 10 appeared in the corner of my sleep and made me shudder. Tonight I hope I dream of the Zigfield Follies instead.

"A Bomb in her bosom" - More Emily Dickinson

2010-02-13T16:57:00.001+11:00

Fabulous article on Emily Dickinson in the Guardian

Marchesa Casati - fantastic nut job

2010-02-07T12:02:00.003+11:00

In the last few months some seriously beautiful books have washed up on my shore - there is one on Matisse at Villa Reve I can't wait to dip into and another on Joseph Cornell's beautiful boxes, but right now I am finally getting around to looking into this gorgeous book, Marchesa Casati - Portrait of Muse, which was a Christmas gift.

A few years ago, the same authors published Her Infinite Variety, a bio of Marchesa Casati. Portraits of a Muse, follows up in spectacular fashion with all the images the biography couldn't fit.

I love a fantastic nut job, I have quite a collection of books on them - from the Belle Epoque to the start of WW2 are my favourites. Luisa Casati is no different - getting Bakst to make her clothes, or having a Nubian servant dressed in livery on her white ( when they are strictly meant to be black) gondola, escorting her two cheetas through the moonlit streets of Venice - she is a wonderful character. It is as if unable to make art, she turned all that creative expression onto herself.

I just know there will be a movie made one day of the impossibly fantastic Marchesa Casati - I wonder if Ms. Bonham Carter below would fit the bill?

The Magician's Elephant

2010-02-02T16:45:00.002+11:00

Kate diCamillo has done it again - like Edward Tulane - a lovely tale cool and crisp and as wonderous as snowflake on the tongue. The Magician's Elephant is a beautiful tale. I love how diCamillo draws her characters so deftly with their dialogue and with the things that aren't said. I wonder if the children that read her work pick up on all the tenderness?

Or is for the adult, like the bee the pollen in the flower?

Beautiful.

Illustration by Yoko Tanaka

Writing equation

2010-01-31T18:53:00.002+11:00

With Baby now 3 months old I have tried to up my writing. Albeit small and often crap-tacular. Have attempted writing at cafe with pram being pushed with one hand, pen with the other, coffee singing its happy chant through my veins.

The equation is:

1 + baby + 2 x coffees + lamy studio white pen + moleskin + 15 minutes = a mediocre paragraph and a half.

At least, something.

The Only Kangaroo among the Beauty - more Emily Dickinson

2010-01-23T10:54:00.003+11:00

Just googled my favourite Emily Dickinson lines in recent years and discovered that I am not alone, that I am not the only Kangaroo among the Beauty. Apparently, Dickinson saw this image in a magazine, hence her writing of herself in that way. This image seems to say it all. A smug looking be-stripped Gent having a tame moment with a kind but wild creature, a bit like the relationship between England and Australia perhaps, a lot like Emily and her view of the world.

www.ccs.mq.edu.au:dickinson:extracts_kangaroo.html.webloc

Lives Like Loaded Guns - Emily Dickinson

2010-01-22T18:40:00.002+11:00

Just heard about this one, very excited. I do love an Emily, a Bronte or a Dickinson is alright with me. I wish I could recall my favourite poem of hers, each enigmatic and crystalline. She captures images with words like photographs. I have her letters, very different from the poems. A passionate mermaid in the basement.

from the Little Brown Website:

Though in her lifetime only ten of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published, her death revealed 1,800 poems, many of them in hand-sewn booklets, secreted in a locked chest. She is now regarded as one of the greatest poets of all time, but she has come down to us as a woman disappointed in love, an odd and pathetic woman who dressed in white and shut herself away. Lyndall Gordon sees instead her volcanic character - 'a soul at White Heat' - a mystic and lover whose family harboured a hothouse drama of sex, scandal and devastating betrayal.

Emily Dickinson was a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual quickening and immortality all on her own terms: she wrote 'My Life had Stood - a Loaded Gun'. Here is an explosive genius.

Real enchantment - Edward Tulane

2010-01-04T23:14:00.002+11:00

Having found myself compressed for time, and reading sometimes the only true escape, I have stuffed my to be read pile with shorter fiction. Recently Mary McCallum mentioned this lovely book on her blog and it got me thinking about it. A few years ago, a child I know would not put it down, reading out pieces of it sonorously. Now after having read it myself, I can understand why.

Kate DiCamillo is one of those magical writers who seem to be able to write enchantments on the side of a rose petal, weaving the sort of worlds that both adults and children can access and depart all the richer. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is the story of a china rabbit who is lost, but it is so much more.

I have always loved stories about toys. Once only has to pick up an old toy and they seem imbibed with a life of their own, the memories of their owners, the essence of those who made them. Hand made things always have a little spirit that is lacking in the machine made things. When I was seven I saw an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney about a little girl and her Victorian china doll that wove in the story of a ghost girl called Inez who had fallen in a well.

I read in the credits that it was from a book, but I could never remember the title of it, but the uncanny nature of the doll has always lingered, just as the Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane lingers too.

Magpie Hall by Rachael King

2009-12-26T18:58:00.003+11:00

Last night I had the pleasure to finish Magpie Hall by Rachael King, she of the great blog of writing.

Magpie Hall tells a story - part mystery - part gothic romance of taxidermy, tattoos and birds native to New Zealand. The novel intertwines the modern story of Rosemary with her imaginings of her ancestor Henry and his wife Dora. I loved the sense of place, the sparse evocative language, like a stone skipping across water. I loved the tale of Henry and his pursuit of the Huia bird. Magpies, Australian ones and some of my favourite avian friends, play a sinister albeit Hitchcockian role in the lives of the characters, a literate fancy rather than the real thing. All these things build to a surprising climax.

The novel is yet to be released in Australia, but surely it will soon. My only quibble was that I felt the story was rushed in a few places, I would have loved more - more of the characters, more details more, more, more. Please Rachael I want some more. Perhaps I will have to wait for the next novel.

Highly recommended.

Lips Touch: Three Times

2009-12-16T19:34:00.002+11:00

Have been reading the latest book by fabulous blogger, Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times. Firstly, the book is beautifully made, the cover, the print, the illustrations, I real treasure to hold in the hands. I am sure the YA audience snapping up this book will keep it on their shelves for a long time. Secondly, the writing is crisp and gallops along, the plots take surprising turns.

Lips Touch reminds me of those fabulous Misty annuals that came out from England in the 1980's, gothic tales for girls (in fact the cover illustration looks like the enigmatic Misty herself, a Kate Bushesque queen) meets Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber. My favourite story so far is the reworking of Christina Rossetti's Goblin market. Congratulations Laini. I am sure the film right have already been snaffled!

Just thinking of which 15 year old romantic girl I can pass my copy along to?

Parrot and Olivier Completed

2009-12-10T12:06:00.002+11:00

Dear me, what a book - the imagery, the command, the voice, the virtuosi of imagery and metaphor, the delicious web of Story, sustenance for the intellect and the soul, a master writing at the top of his game. In one word - sublime.

Are there any minor quibbles - was Queensland named so when mentioned in the book, was Vermeer well known then too, would a French aristocrat know about using a bower bird for a metaphor, would American settler students read Austen in schools???

....Oh minor, so minor compared to the true joy of this book.

Seamus, the Blackbird and me

2009-12-08T15:21:00.002+11:00

Sleep deprivation can have one thinking like a saint of old. When I was in Ireland many years ago I spent some time in Glendalough, stepping around the ancient church ruin of Saint Kevin. Those Irish Saints have been in my mind lately. Whether it was the Saints who lived in their beehive huts in the middle of nowhere with only the wind for company and the odd puffin or the monks who swirled the Book of Kells into being with their stylus and ink, pagan creatures coming out of the Holy.

Most of all, I find myself thinking of Seamus Heaney, the peaty-ness of his writing, spare and striking always takes me back to those strange and remote places. I have a tape somewhere of him reading his work, so much earth in his calm voice. This poem for me evokes the feeling of sleep deprivation, for offering oneself up - whether it be for a work of words or a baby. In the middle of the night, I find myself thinking I am Saint Kevin, the eggs fragile as life in my hands.

St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Charlie Cook's Favourite Book - a life of true luxury

2009-12-04T14:05:00.004+11:00

I picked this little gem while racing in my half hour reprieve. I couldn't go past a children's book honouring the delights and joys of curling up in one's favourite chair and reading. I would like my little pixie to develop a delicious taste in reading, it is one of life's true luxuries. It was read to me with baby in one arm, bottle in the other, and even though it is meant for children, like all brilliant children's books, delights both adult and child.

In this little treasure, Charlie Cook reads about all the characters in his book. The characters also read and in a time bending swirl, a russian doll effect - a pirate, the three bears, a knight and a dragon, a frog, a rook, a thief, a crocodile, a Queen, a ghost find out they have all been reading about Charlie!

writing between the cracks

2009-11-28T10:04:00.002+11:00

Yesterday, I discovered I have completed a short story, a month after the birth. How did this happen I ask myself, amidst the chaos of bottles, nappies, mess and snatches of sleep? It happened because like food and water, words are my sustenance.

Of course I would love to have the headspace to luxuriate in my thoughts and have them flow with the happy and relaxed vigour of a bubbling brook chortling through the world. I wouldn't mind my old happy routine either, an hour and a coffee and the world was mine.

Yet, aside from these things, the words come anyway, rich and intoxicating, as if surfacing in stolen moments, they have more potency. At the moment, less time means less mental constipation. It is either write it now or forget it. And if it is forgotten, a better moment is gathered the next time the pen hits the paper. My short story may not be structurally sound or have the greatest nuggets of meaning, but it means that I am writing between the cracks of time, when the hours re-order themselves and I continue.

Foreskin's Lament

2009-11-22T17:15:00.002+11:00

Recently, since having a child, I have been confronted in so many ways. The most confronting was a healthcare professional suggesting that my child have his foreskin removed as to possibly prevent a problem later on. Boy, did I rail. Why did God put that piece of skin there in the first place if to only have it removed? If it is a religious choice that is one thing, but if one isn't religious, why bother?

Today in the newspaper glossies there was a double paged article on the issue, the type that can induce anxiety. The pros for foreskin removal, the cons. I have to agree with the cons. Especially when the Dr against quoted it is a violation of human rights, a choice a man can make later on if it is an issue, that the small percentage risk of disfigurement or death, for cosmetic reasons only is abominable.

It made me think of this book, Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander. It isn't a great book, but some of it sparkles, particularly around his own childhood. Suddenly, my memories of this book come into sharper focus. Auslander writes of his own struggle whether to initiate his son into a tradition he doesn't believe in or to let his son be what God made him ( one and the same for an Orthodox Jewish person, not if agnostic).

Auslander's book of short stories Beware God however is excellent, witty and hilariously black.However, my mind keeps leaning back through time to Foreskin's Lament. Who would think a little piece of skin could cause so much upheaval...

Nimrod Bracelet

2009-11-19T13:33:00.002+11:00

I love this bracelet from Mark Sanfilippo Jewellery It reminds me of all the fabulous art deco buildings in Sydney, the chevrons and letters so very 1929. It has been ages since I have been into the CBD, firstly the swine flu kept me away from crowds, and then my belly did. I live so close, but it may as well be a country away.

If a character wore this bracelet would she turn into Daisy from the Great Gatsby? Or is it more a seductive handcuff, the type Mrs.Houdini would wear for her husband's delight? Or is something that Virginia Woolf would peer at through a rain covered window and think too flashy and more Nancy Cunard than for herself? Or maybe the metal encrusted bauble that one of Colette's society ladies wear while popping mauve macaroons in rose coloured chocolate ala Cheri....

I wonder, I shall just have to go and try it on.

Back

2009-11-18T23:36:00.003+11:00

I have taken up my pen and have written for the first time in months. Lovely wicked rotten handwriting, unpalatable content, but words a - streaming, baby in one arm, pen in the other. Sometimes it is a veritable gush...

Have also christened my fingers with some Herbin ink, am yet to try it, but have sent it to my inkophile Jedi Master to try first. Above Blue Myotis and Lierre Sauvage, that is Forget me not blue and Wild ivy...

can't wait to see what writing they deliver

Parrot and Olivier

2009-11-13T22:34:00.002+11:00

Squawk!

Have been nibbling on the pages of Peter Carey's new novel, it is delicious.

Entrancing language

Two seductive first person narratives - a French aristocrat and a Dartmoor scamp

Descriptions divine, flashes of brilliance, breath taking and only up to page 50!

Kazuno Kohara

2009-11-12T15:43:00.003+11:00

Yesterday, this lovely little book found its way to my house. The European idea of a season of festive cold has always been delightful to me, it is almost as if it is not possible to have a Christmas or festive season without the cold. Christmas always seems elsewhere. A few years ago I had Christmas in Prague and realised that I missed the hot pudding and swelter, so for me Christmas is always somewhere in between, like a mythical place, like Avalon.

However, I do love things that celebrate the change of seasons.

The paper cuts in this book are so full of sparkling joy, the ink of blue going from grey to dark across the page, as a little boy and his dog have adventures with a lithesome sprite, Jack Frost himself. The pictures often zoom in like a close up of the action, which has commedia dell'arte touches.

Raymond Briggs' The Snowman also came home with me, so the other hemisphere is lingering large. It is delightful too, albeit sad, when the little boy finds his Snowman melted, like the Russian folk talk of the Snow child. At least with Jack Frost there is reassurance that the planet turns, that time passes, that the little boy will see Jack Frost next year. At 4 am in the morning, baby in one arm, bottle in the other, it too reminds me that the snow bleary glare of my eyes will pass too.

The House at Via Manno

2009-11-11T18:27:00.003+11:00

One thing about spending so much time in the hospital, is having the reset button clicked for life. Just the sky seems bluer and the old Victorian houses lining our street even more full of character. The gardenias in our garden have sprouted. When I was heading to the hospital, there was only one. The perfume is intense. A sandwich I ate today had tomatoes that sung with a zing. Milk tastes like cream. The kindness of neighbours is startling and raw. Reading words on the written page tend to pump with their own blood. Even from trashy magazines, the images dazzling and strange.

When I got home from hospital to settle myself I started reading this book. A page before shut eye at all the strange hours. Something normalising. Reading before bed a long habit.

My son has a Nonno. He makes us tomato salsa which I haven't been able to eat for nine months. Now it is like manna. My son's Nonno's family has a lot of crazies in it, some leak out from time to time. This book was a little comfort. Making me think of my own grandmothers, hopefully watching out over us, from their starry canopy.

'But what do we really know about other people?’

In this magical, jewel-like novel, a young Sardinian woman explores the life of her Nonna — her romantic, beautiful, and somewhat crazy grandmother. Nonna is an unforgettable character whose life spans much of the twentieth century. A dreamer with fierce loyalties and unbridled passions, we follow her search for perfect love to an ending both surprising and profound. Along the way, against the stunning Sardinian landscape of cities, marinas and mountains, we meet the members of her large family, and the mysterious Veteran, the man of her dreams — each one drawn with warmth, humour and deep insight.

Milena Agus writes of family loves and secrets, of sexuality, of music, and of the harsh realities of war and migration in twentieth-century Europe in a powerful, compelling, and yet whimsical voice.

A bestseller in Europe, The House in Via Manno introduces Milena Agus to English-speaking readers in this sparkling translation by Brigid Maher.

Stork delivery

2009-11-04T11:41:00.006+11:00

My blog is about writing and the creative life, however, I shall pause and have a personal moment.

The stork finally arrived, here he is having his first bath, a blissed out pixie remembering his underwater world.

It has taken a week to get him home, after a 36 hour labour and a time in the neonatal clinic. He came out with forceps and looked like an angry little beetroot for a time with a sore head, but is now pink like a marsh mellow. The sad thing was they wouldn't let me touch him for a few days, which was a little heartbreaking ( if I say a lot I think my heart will turn to glass and shatter). However, he is home now, snuffling as if for truffles, my beautiful little treasure.

Gone Hunting for the Stork

2009-10-27T11:34:00.002+11:00

Don't worry, I won't shoot the Stork down, will just be collecting my overdue parcel. Back sometime - sooner or later. Thank you for all your well wishing.

Andrew Motion, Keats, Jane Campion and Negative Capability

2009-10-25T17:49:00.005+11:00

Andrew Motion former poet Laureate, writes in The Guardian about his experience of being involved with Jane Campion's Film, Bright Star. I think it is great she wanted to talk 'negative capability', which is Keat's theory - which I think best of, as sitting with incongruities, holding two thoughts at once without resolving them. Here is Keats' in his own words, though perhaps some of you out there could be more coherent about it than I.

"I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason".

"Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury - let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey-bee like, buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at: but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive . . . I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. . ."

I love this idea, especially when writing fiction, to allow characters their own complexities without completely resolving them.

"Even people who know nothing about film know about Jane Campion. Or rather, they know about The Piano which, when it was first released in 1993, very quickly became a modern classic. It tells a story that is full of particular and surprising detail (in this case, the physical difficulties of transporting a heavy musical instrument to the other side of the world), but does so in a way that makes symbolic life easily visible within real life. The same goes for its emotional and mental states: they are at once individuated and archetypal, recognisable and strange. The effect – which is also the effect of myth – is to make an audience question its own responses at every turn..." The rest of the article is here.

Gluttonous reading

2009-10-24T10:05:00.007+11:00

Still waiting for the stork's delivery. To bide my time I have enjoyed a rarefew days of gluttonous reading, the sort that greedily turns pages and deliciously ignores the hands on the clock.I read a cute book called Firmin by Sam Savage, an intriguing tale of a rat born in the torn pages of Finnegan's Wake in a Boston Bookshop and his growing consciousness as he goes from eating literature to reading it and developing his human sensitivities with it.

I stayed up to 3am gorging myself on the new Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry. It is much darker than The Time Traveller's Wife, which I enjoyed too. All the places she mentions in the book, so it was also a virtual revisit of my favourite places in London (Highgate, Postman's Park, Liberty's), as well as the gothic twist at the end. Niffenegger's use of English idiom was pretty funny, however, I do love a good, fast flowing and otherworldly ghost story.

Currently I am reading Eileen Favourite's Heroines - a girl's mother runs a boarding house, which for some mysterious reason which I am yet to fathom, has Heroine's from literature showing up in the hour of need. It is written convincingly in the first person of the rather sassy daughter, and for me, has that feeling of trust, when one just trusts the writer even though they don't know where they are going. I do love it when I cannot guess what is going to happen next ( which unfortunately I did with Her Fearful Symmetry).

So, I am slowly ploughing through my 'TBR" pile, lord knows everyone with the advice overload has said I will never have time for reading again, but surely I will. Especially as Parrot and Olivier has now flown in and made a happy roost on a dedicated bookshelf for the TBR pile, which was getting the Leaning Tower of Pisa's about it. I love the red wing in the inside flap, I look forward to diving in and devouring.

Bright Star - Frock n' roll #2

2009-10-22T10:38:00.005+11:00

Now to my imagination, Keats was always a handsome chap, but now with Ben Whishaw playing him, he gets facial hair and super kissy lips. (Those who read my post, must forgive me if this is hysterical drivel, I am actively seeking distractions).

Ben Whishaw played the lead in another literary adaption, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, a great novel, that for me was slightly tinged with discomfort.

I had just moved to a metropolis, and being of the red haired variety of person, did take a dim view of the character in question, picking us out as his opportunity for smell-o-vision and murder. Here was me, green behind the ears, walking through dark suburban streets on my lonesome to get to my ever so revolting share house, complete with cute couple, drug addicts and drag queens. No wonder I was un-hinged. So when I saw the film I was unable to shake my disquiet.

However, I am sure Bright Star will give me a dose of the old Romantics and have me reaching for the Old Norton Anthology on Nineteenth Century literature to have a sup upon. Had some interesting theories on literature did the old Kissy lips Keats.

Bright Star - Frock n' Roll #1

2009-10-21T22:40:00.003+11:00

Do you ever get that excited feeling when seeing a film still? I know I do. This one is for Jane Campion's new film, Bright Star based on the three year relationship between poet Keats and Fanny Brawne. I took one look at this image and got the tingly excitement as I did with The Piano ( I think I may have a bonnet fetish!).

I met Jane Campion several years ago, I am sure she does not remember me. I was a little goofy and quick to move on. What I love about her films is the visual motifs being full of emotion. No special effects here.

Jude Morgan's book Passion covers the story from Fanny's point of view ( among all the other 'Romantic Women' of the period.

I can't wait to see it. I love those clothes. And I cannot resist a heaving period drama, if I do, it is only in that sensationally intense and coquettish way. I am sure this will be a beautiful film.

Dude, where's my baby? or How a writer bides time when they are unable to write?

2009-10-20T13:02:00.003+11:00

Above is the last productive corner of my desk, resplendent with my two new Lamy pens - a Lamy Safari and a Lamy Studio white. I am still waiting for this baby of mine to show up, being a punctual person myself, I thought it would take after me, but alas, it is taking its own time.

Usually if I had this much time without the distractions of work and life, I would have carried on dutifully with my beloved routine, however this has been almost impossible as hormones have ruled my brain for the last 9 months, making whatever I write seem to come as occasional bursts of sunshine through the clouds. So as I stocked the baby's cupboard, I stocked the stationary cupboard, all the notepads and books are delightfully waiting, more patient than I am.

To occupy in the last few weeks I have indulged in the storytelling of television, watching Love my Way, an Australian drama and True Blood, a southern US style twist on the gothic and vampires, prejudice and addiction. I have been reading the wonderful Selvedge magazine, storing up inspiration.

Surely the stork will make its delivery soon?

Getting Inky

2009-10-15T13:51:00.008+11:00

Not long until the pod of my body is shucked of its pea, the waiting is ludicrous. Celebrities magazines are filled with amazing stories of how women get their pre-baby bodies back. For me it will be getting back to my writing routine, which I have missed.

Now my office has moved to the lounge room, I find it full of distractions. I can see the passerby's on the street out of the corner of my eye, I don't have the green leafy view I had before and I have grown tired of tea. I wish I could blame these things soley for my lack of routine, but alas I can't. For me the best writing happens in life, outside, amidst the noise and populace, with my notebook and my pen and a handsome cup of coffee. And not on a computer, where I can distract myself to oblivion. I am not saying the computer doesn't have its place, but it is the not my favourite creative tool.

In order to achieve this , I have had set sure lures for myself, little investments or more like devil's bargains, that I will show up again. My most recent acquisition, a Lamy Safari white fountain pen. I don't know what sort of writing will come out of it, but it is a nice tool and I want to play with it. Thanks to Damon for the tips and encouragement. He is a burgeoning fountain pen users' sugar daddy, especially with his regular postings about writers tools.

I am also thinking on more inky matters. A week ago I didn't know such sensual ink existed and now, in my time of waiting, I am nearing obsession. Below are the Japanese Pilot Iroshizuku inks, just a few anyway, how deliriously pretty are they? The bottles are shaped like Shalimar, a little cord around the top that looks like a gorgeous string of pearls.

And these are the J.Herbin inks from France made since 1700, that look like the perfect dancing partner for a Clairefontaine notebook. The names are seductive as perfumes - tears of the raspberry/blackberry, like a bottle of Chambord.

If anyone has any knowledge of stockists in Australia, do let me know?

The ink looks so lovely I could drink it from a chalice.

images from Fountain Pen Network, pure catnip.

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie

2009-10-13T13:35:00.004+11:00

This book is coming out in November according to Amazon, and as a regular reader of Picardie's fabulous blog, I am hanging out for it. With all the Chanel mania in the film and book world in the last few years, it promises to be a wonderful and inspiring read. Justine Picardie loves to get behind her subjects and look out through their eyes.

I have read only one book about Chanel, The World of Coco Chanel: Friends, Fashion Fame by Edmondo Charles -Roux which basically details the milieu of Chanel's trek through the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. It is an intriguing book, full of fabulous pictures and expands the seeds of her inspiration and is not a biography per say. I loved this book because it gave a compass of why Chanel is so interesting that transcends her labels ongoing existence, the Chanel of the Hilary Clinton suit and the quilted gold chained bag.

Justine's book however, is a biography which is exciting.I am a sucker for the lives of early twentieth century French women, the ones that are typically rags to riches back to rags and then riches. The sort of lives where adversity is spun into gold. For any of you that have read Justine's book, My Mother's Wedding Dress: The Life and Afterlife of Clothes, her book on Coco Chanel promises to have us thinking about more than fashion, but the symbols and myths and meaning of the life of the ever transformational Chanel herself.

Justine Picardie has spent the last decade puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel, attempting to peel away the accretions of romance and lies. In this full-scale biography we finally discover the history of the incredible woman who created the way we look now. Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor - she conjured up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, best-selling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time - but she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture. While Chanel was supreme innovator and vendor of all things elegant and beautiful, what lies beneath her own glossy myth is darker. In this book, Justine Picardie brings the mysterious Gabrielle Chanel out of hiding, to celebrate her great achievements, at the same time as casting a clear eye over her transgressions. She examines Chanel's enduring afterlife, as well as her remarkable life, uncovering the consequences of what she covered up, unpicking the seams between truth and legend, yet keeping intact the real fabric of her past. from Amazon.com.

Judging books by covers

2009-10-10T16:21:00.004+11:00

I don't know about you, but I do judge a book by its cover. A beautiful cover promises a beautiful tale. Usually Australia gets the same book covers as the UK. While the US covers are different. However, in the case of Parrot and Olivier by Peter Carey, which I am just itching to read has a different cover the UK above, the US below and the Australian one at the bottom.

I don't know why, but usually for my money, the US covers are the most beautiful and eye catching, probably because of the size of the book buying public being larger than the UK or Australia?

All these covers are beautiful, though in this instance the UK cover that looks like a Rowlandson cartoon, would be my must pick up and devour cover, more than the rest.

However, some covers are disappointing and miss the mark entirely. I was really looking forward to seeing the new Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry, as I enjoyed The Time Traveller's wife regardless of the boring cover. However, both the US cover directly below, and the Australian/UK cover beneath lack lustre, I am afraid. The Australian/UK looks like a horrid collage made from a fashion magazine. The US one to my mind is more attractive, but still not fabulous. When I think of Niffenegger's abilities as a visual artist, one would think they would go the extra distance to create a visually appealing cover, to match what I hope to be a wonderful story.

Do you judge books by their covers?

Granta Interview with Peter Carey

2009-10-09T08:55:00.004+11:00

Interview with Peter Carey from Granta magazine on Vimeo.

I just watched this wonderful interview with Peter Carey talking about his new novel Parrot and Olivier, due to be released this month in Australia. I love the talk of his process, of how Story should rule Character (not research) , about Australia and the world and risk. All from the cosy comfort of his lovely zen NY loft. Inspiring stuff even with pregnancy indigestion!

Hope you find it inspiring too.

Good Golly

2009-10-08T09:36:00.003+11:00

This morning's newspaper headlines are splashed with the news of a black and white minstrel act on national television after offending an international celebrity. I am offended too, it was tasteless and dated and kind of embarrassing. It reminded me of the comments assorted Aunts and Uncles would make when I was a child - I would spout that they were racist when they used colourful words to describe people of different cultures, before they would roll their eyes at me and question the left leaning education I was receiving.

Which brings me to my anxiety - are Golly's formerly 'Golliwogs' bad?

Bringing a child into this world, one is reminded with a nostalgic glow of all the cosy things of their own childhoods. I remember munching on the Arnott's Golly biscuits, reading stories by Enid Blyton. Marvelling at the dolls in Raggedy Ann and Andy ( where I am sure in my copy had a Golliwog in there?) I didn't think of race or colour then, if it was blatant like in Enid Blyton's books, it went over my head.

On our fridge we have the above postcard, bought on holiday, as it reminded us of all things cosy and cosseted, a teddy bear's picnic of cosy - ness. Jam and tea. Ever so British. When I look at Golliwogs, all I see is their attractive smiles and dapper clothes and wild hair. I had one when I was growing up, made by a neighbour, but he is more purple and wears floral flares.

Apparently Golly's first appeared in a children's book a hundred years ago. Some justify their existence as being older, associating them with Black Peter, the Dutch Father Christmas' sidekick.

Yes, I have a soft spot for them, but not at another's expense.

Can any one help, are Golly's bad?

Buzz

2009-10-07T12:09:00.004+11:00

I love bees and have for ages. My Uncle who passed away sadly earlier in the year was a bee keeper, and his honey nothing short of ambrosia. I have two small jars of it still, sitting in my cupboard, the china cupboard to be exact, so no unsuspecting better half accidently makes light of it on his morning toast. Honey last for ages, it is its own preservative. My Uncle swore that the bees could read his mood and would talk to them like one would a beloved dog. I am sure this is why the honey is so special.

When I first saw a Bumble Bee in the U.K I was enchanted, not the speedy swift beatings of Australian native bees, or the striped effectiveness of the honey bee, the Bumble Bee is as fuzzy as a teddy bear and slow as a hot air blimp.

I also have been intrigued by a spate of honey and bee books that have started to sprout about the place, I hear there are bees in The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, whose father also kept bees. Most recently I read a beautiful poem by wonderful poet Carol Ann Duffy about Virgil's bees, published in The Guardian in response to the 10:10 Campaign to reduce Carbon emissions, which is below.

I have a special place in my heart for bees. When they come and enjoy the spoils of my fruit tree blossoms I feel a certain satisfaction, that even in the middle of the biggest city in Australia, that bees can thrive.

Bless air's gift of sweetness, honey

from the bees, inspired by clover,
marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
the hundred perfumes of the wind.
Bless the beekeeper

who chooses for her hives
a site near water, violet beds, no yew,
no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
or gold, pigment for queens,
and joy be inexplicable but there
in harmony of willowherb and stream,
of summer heat and breeze,
each bee's body
at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
strumming on fragrance, smitten.

For this,
let gardens grow, where beelines end,
sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

(Above image - Bee Goddesses from Rhodes)

Dara Horn

2009-10-04T22:14:00.003+11:00

One of my favourite books that I have read in recent years, is Dara Horn's In the Image, her first novel, it is a hard book to describe, but it is triumphantly gorgeous.

Her next novel, The World to Come was reviewed by the Observer as :"What Dara Horn has to say about what truly matters in life is nothing short of inspirational'

In 2007 she was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. Most recently her third novel is All Other Nights, which I have started reading, set in the American Civil War. She has a beautiful way with words.

Below is an interesting article about her process and getting published. If you haven't found her yet, and are looking for some lovely work, do check her out.

Being a writer isn’t so much a career as it is a disease, like finding out you have asthma at the age of six. After you’ve diagnosed it, you just have to find a way to work your life around it. I was always looking for ways to support myself that would accommodate this habit. When I was a college senior, I won a scholarship to spend the year after graduation at Cambridge University in England. It was the kind of set-up no one could turn down—tuition to study “anything at all,” a “scholarship suite” in an 18th century house, and a stipend big enough to pay for all the takeout Indian food one could possibly need. It should have been a dream come true, except that I got engaged a few months before graduation, and my fiancé had a job in America and couldn’t join me. I was therefore doomed to spend the year alone, crying into pints of Guinness in smoke-filled pubs packed with crazed soccer hooligans. I soon realized that I don’t like Guinness, smoke-filled pubs, or crazed soccer hooligans. When you spend a year in England avoiding these things, you have a lot of time on your hands. So even though I had begun my graduate work, I found that I still had plenty of time to write. I had never planned to write a novel, since I had never written any fiction at all before I started writing that book. I had always thought I would be a journalist, and to that end I kept a notebook where I would write down ideas for articles and essays. At some point I read straight through these ideas and realized that many of them were strangely related to each other, because of certain preoccupations I had at the time when I had written them. And I saw how they would make more sense as part of a novel. I was quite bored that year, and I really wrote it to entertain myself. The idea of publishing it was more of a dream than anything else.

The story of how I got the book published also involves something inane that happened in England. In college, I wrote a lot of magazine articles, and at one point a publisher contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in expanding an article I had written into a nonfiction book. I was then able to find an agent without much agony, since I already had a publisher lined up. The problem was that I ultimately decided not to write that book. Two years later, I was writing the novel in England, and my masters program in Hebrew literature hosted the Israeli author Meir Shalev for a lecture and dinner. During the dinner, Shalev sat at the center of the long table, and I sat on the end. I didn’t get to speak to Shalev at all, but instead I spoke to the person seated across from me: Shalev’s British publicist. At some point I mentioned that I had been writing a novel and that I had had a contact with an agent years before, but that he would never remember me now, so it seemed quite unrealistic to me to try to get it published that way. The publicist told me, “Of course he’ll remember you. It’s his job to remember people like you.” The next day I mailed the novel to this agent. He called me when he received it, agreed to represent me, and sold it to W.W. Norton.

I did write my second novel while getting a doctorate at Harvard, where graduate students generally drink a lot less beer. But the nice thing about a doctorate is that no one ever expects you to finish it. In academia, procrastination is a way of life, and I used this to my advantage. Whenever the dissertation became too frustrating, I’d procrastinate by writing the novel, and whenever the novel became too frustrating, I’d procrastinate by writing the dissertation. As a result I completed both without ever feeling like I was doing real work...

from www.babygotbooks.com

Trying to write

2009-09-24T11:34:00.001+10:00

Being pregnant and trying to write has been one of my biggest hurdles. Even yesterday's incredible dust storm turning the city the colour of a desert, did nothing to tether me to my desk, even though I was house bound. Or if I was at my desk, it was looking about where my whimsy took me, after a profound dream where my favourite barista made me my favourite coffee in my mid morning nap, only to wake and find, dear readers, it was only a dream ( a recurring one in fact).

Somethings I have learned about being a writer and being pregnant are:

- aversions can last 9 months and can be more than just about food. Any writing that contains violence I can barely tolerate. Also when tired, the weight of a book can be even too heavy to read.

- the brain is pregnant too, words are not my servants or even helpmeets, but lethargic visitors in my brain that have the speed and grace of slugs.

-I am an addict - to coffee that it. My best writing comes from the confluence of coffee, pen and paper. Unfortunately my coffee at the moment is dream quality and my handwriting getting more and more atrocious as the words pupate instead of dance. Tea is no replacement for coffee.

- The internet. To have the appearance of productiveness I have been all over the internet looking at strange things, anything to divert me from the writing task at hand, that despite all the above diversions and delusions has trickled onwards. For example this pear - my favourite pregnant fruit of choice at the moment, now comes in fancy paper - available from Third Draw Down. A fruit and a notepad and a delicious green colour. My mind is captivated.

Also have been thinking alot about some of my favourite children's literature, English and woodlandy, when I saw these online. Aren't they cute? ( Now there is a word I promised never to blog). They are from Honeybee Toys, made in Germany and are based on Rudolf Steiner's ideas of play - though I don't agree with him 100% of the time - I know I want to play with them. I love a handmade object. I have purchased and now await their delivery, along with the baby, whenever they may come...

Birthday Booty 2009

2009-09-22T20:34:00.004+10:00

For some of my favourite bloggers, today is a sad day, but for me it is a happy one, it is my birthday. Look what the better half got me, I am so excited. Last October I did a post about the poetry of Stephen Jones' Hats and now I have got the beautiful book that accompanied his exhibition at the V and A earlier this year.

As a writer, I often find inspiration in the unlikeliest of places. For me, Stephen Jones uses shapes and forms and feathers and flowers, each are like a beautiful phrase.

I love Pearly Kings, perhaps I can hope for an original Stephen Jones for my birthday next year! Until then I can play dress ups in my mind flipping through the pages of his beautiful book.

More Book Lust - Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

2009-09-15T12:09:00.002+10:00

How exciting, Peter Carey has a new novel coming out in Australia in November, how I wish I could get my puffy swollen fingers on it before the baby comes...

Here is the blurb:

Olivier is an aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer and twice Olivier's age, always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Starting on different sides of history, their lives will be permanently joined by an enigmatic, one-armed Marquis.

When Olivier sets sail for the New World — ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution — Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil.

As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together — in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands — a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the adventure of A

merican democracy — in theory, in practice, and in ongoing argument.

Parrot and Olivier in America is a dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, brilliantly evoking the Old World colliding with the New. Above all, it is a wildly funny and deeply tender portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship, and a completely improbable work of art.

I love Peter Carey's delicious chancers and rogues, mavericks and delusional dreamers. Just wonderful and to my mind, something very Australian.

On his website there are some wonderful things. Below is a little snippet of his review in the Paris review on his writing process.

interviewer
Now that you've published nine novels, do you have a routine? How do you start writing every day?

carey
It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on. Normally I know what I want to achieve in a chapter, and I have an idea about where events should take place and I'll have some rough idea of the characters involved. But I might not have fully invented the place. And I certainly won't fully know the characters. So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things. Within those successive drafts, my characters keep on doing the same things over and over; it's like some hellish repetition of events. But the reasons they do them gradually become more complex and layered and deeply rooted in the characters. Every day's a miracle: Wow, I did that, I didn't know any of that yesterday.

interviewer
So you're discovering your characters as you go?

carey
Always. The big question for me is, What sort of person would do that thing—not just because it suits a story or suits something symbolically, but who would really, really do that? When I continue to ask myself that question and I don't take the easy answer, complicated characters are born. There's a scene near the beginning of The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith where I wanted one of the characters, Wally, to jump off a very high platform onto the stage, right in the middle of a performance. I couldn't even rationally explain to myself why I wanted him to do it, but I did. So I wrote it and wrote it and wrote it until it worked. There's some stubbornness and some belief in the action, and that's what the characters are born from.

interviewer
Do you revise as you go?

carey
I can't leave a chapter alone until I think it's as good as I can make it at that time. Often I will reach a stage, say, a third of the way into the book, where I realize there's something very wrong. Everything starts to feel shallow and false and unsatisfactory. At that stage I'll go back to the beginning. I might have written only fifty pages, but it's like a cantilever and the whole thing is getting very shaky because I haven't thought things through properly. So I'll start again and I'll write all the way through and then just keep going until it starts to get shaky again, and then I'll go back because I'll know that there's something really considerable, something deeply necessary waiting to be discovered or made. Often these are unbelievably big things. Sometimes they are things that readers will ultimately think the book is about.

For example, in Illywhacker I wanted to tell the story of a family over three generations, its descent from naïve nationalism—Australian nationalism, which is so much more fragile than, say, German nationalism—to a sort of mercantile opportunism. The first generation was this character Herbert Badgery, and in the original plan he was going to die off or recede from the story. But I loved him so much that after I had written the first section I didn't want to let go of him. I remember I had bronchitis at the time, I was sitting in a doctor's office in Sydney with a notebook, and I said, Oh I know what I'm going to do, he's going to be there all the time and he's going to be a liar. And I wrote in the doctor's office, "My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity" . . . dah dah dah dah dah. I realized, This is my book. But I had been working for a year before I got to that point.

A lying first-person narrator allowed me to use the immediacy of first person, but also the third person, because he's a liar—he will tell you everything. He didn't have to be there. There's a great thing to be had from the energy of first person. There's also something precious about third person, that godlike view and the wisdom that comes from it. With Badgery, I could have them both.

I hope everyone feels as inspired as I do.

The Girl with the Glass Feet

2009-09-10T14:07:00.003+10:00

I officially have some time to do some reading now. Still thinking of thrashing out some writing too. That is if my brain can stop being full of clouds. I am not the fastest of readers, however I have noticed that my eyes lower even over the most beautiful words when I go to read for any length of time, must be a last trimester thing.

However, that doesn't stop me from ogling some lovely titles out there that are tickling my reading fancies. There are quite a few, and like a little kid in a lolly shop, my eyes are bigger than my belly ( though nothing can compete with the belly at the moment). I read about this one, recently nominated for the Guardian First Book Prize. I love the sound of it - ice, glass, islands, love. The cover is beautiful too. Yes, I judge books by their covers, am only human after all. Sounds Angela Carter-esque does it not?

Even if I may not get much reading done in the next few months, I can take solace in the possibility of my growing to be read pile, spines shining like gems in a mountain.

Book lust is a beautiful thing...

Strange things are happening on the remote and snowbound archipelago of St. Hauda’s Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around the icy bogland, albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods, and Ida Maclaird is slowly turning into glass. Ida is an outsider in these parts, a mainlander who has visited the islands only once before. Yet during that one fateful visit the glass transformation began to take hold, and now she has returned in search of a cure.

Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived on the islands his entire life. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defenses. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart. Love must be paid in precious hours and, as the glass encroaches, time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to stave off the spread of the glass?

The Girl with Glass Feet is a dazzlingly imaginative and magical first novel, a love story to treasure.

Blog watching admiration - Laini Taylor Grow Wings

2009-09-08T18:55:00.003+10:00

I have for some while now been admiring Laini Taylor's Blog, Grow Wings.

However, I got a lovely surprise when I discovered she of the amazing pink hair also makes the lovely Laini's Ladies. A few years ago I bought one for my fairy obsessed niece and felt the words printed on it to be everything a little girl should aspire too. In this Disney swamp of marketing at children, it was heart warming and spirit nourishing ( bare with me) to find something beautifully designed and given thought. My niece has it hanging on her wall, and though she is just learning to read, I know that one day, those words will ring through to her.

An example of one of Laini's Ladies below:

One of the other lovely things about Laini's blog is that she shares her ideas and view of the creative life - whether it be the blocks and breakthrough of her own writing, or more recently the birth of her beautiful little Clementine. The picture of Laini on her laptop with one hand and the baby with the other, gave me with only a few weeks ago before my own little pudding arrives, gives me hope that I won't be swamped.

I also loved the whole makeover of Laini's house, a lady with technicolour hair of course has a house full of colour as if it had swallowed a rainbow.

Soon, Laini's book Lips Touch will be released with the below gorgeous illustrations. I was very excited to see a reworking of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market in the form of Goblin Fruit. I can't wait to see it.

So if you haven't peeked at Laini's Blog, I recommend it, it is a lovely place to stop by, soak up some inspiration and colour, and give your creative life wings.

The Glories of Ink

2009-09-03T11:51:00.004+10:00

As a writer I have an obsession with ink, where ever I may find it.

Sometimes it will be the odd piece of graffiti or street stencil that catches my eye, I often have used these images on the blog.

My novel centres around ink and how it can change a life.

Yesterday I had a lovely chat with the man at the newsagent, below his shirt sleeve I could see the shimmering scales on a fish tail. When I asked him about it, he gingerly lifted his sleeve to reveal the outline of the whole creature, waiting for the inking of the scales. He poured out his story of how he has his girlfriend's name removed first and then had his heart set on a big cat, but the design wouldn't have covered the name. So he had chosen the sinuous and waving form of the fish, which looked like a koi rippling with colour from the shadowy depths. I love tattoos, but as you may have gathered in previous posts, I don't think with my indecisive nature I would ever be able to settle on one, let alone handle the stylus, which is really a needle. So I like the ideas they gather behind them, the imagery and the stories and designs.

Recently I got word that Dutch Tattoo/Artist Angelique Houtcamp is releasing a new book called Tattoo Mystique. I am yet to see it, though look forward to getting my hands on a hot copy. What I like about her work, is that it comes with her own spin on classic tattoos with a feminine twist. This book apparently explores the world behind her work, Amsterdam, Victoriana, Flappers and mythology, which makes me look forward to its publication even more. It is being published by Outre Gallery Melbourne in October, who also publish prints by wonderful artists like Vali Myers. If only I could have a look see now...

The Brontes Went to Woolworths

2009-08-29T10:15:00.002+10:00

I just finished reading this lovely quirky gem of a novel. Written in the breezy wit of the late 1920's early 1930's, it tells the story of the wild imaginative lives of three sisters and their down trodden governess.

It is a pure case of 'Gondal - ing'. Daphne DuMaurier coined the term, to mean heading to the imaginative space in one's head until it almost seems real, after Emily and Anne Bronte's imaginative world of Gondal. In Rachel Ferguson's book she conjours the fictional characters in to the real world and the real world characters into the fiction. It is clever and a lot of fun.

I can't wait to see if someone snaps up the film rights - it just twinkles with gaiety. I can just see the fantastic clothes and cupid bow lips, flighty repartee and charm.

Is there really trouble with 'faction'?

2009-08-21T15:57:00.003+10:00

I have lately been going over an old manuscript that has a few real life characters from the past. These are the parts that have survived a massive overhaul and I am nuturing a fanciful thought that if I keep my sleeves rolled up, I could have a new draft by the time the baby arrives, most of the work having been done before the early pregnancy fog set in.

However, I am feeling a little irritation in the attack on 'faction' that has been playing out in the Guardian with AS Byatt among others.

In the article, Byatt attacks novelists who use ‘real-life’ characters:

AS Byatt has launched a vigorous attack on writers who combine biography and fiction, calling it an "appropriation of others' lives and privacy"...Her broadside against authors of "faction", which she describes as "mixtures of biography and fiction, journalism and invention", is particularly startling given that it could be applied to her rival for this year's Man Booker prize, Hilary Mantel, who is longlisted for her historical novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall. "I really don't like the idea of 'basing' a character on someone, and these days I don't like the idea of going into the mind of the real unknown dead," said Byatt in an interview with the organisers of the Booker prize. "It feels like the appropriation of others' lives and privacy. Making other people up, which is a kind of attack on them." Oscar Wilde appears in her own Booker-nominated novel, The Children's Book, she added, but "the novelist doesn't say what he thinks".

In The Children's Book, characters cross paths with many historical figures, and though we never hear their thoughts, our perception of the Historic but real character, colours the other characters and narrative. Somehow here I think Byatt is thinking more of when a writer bases a character on a living person, who may take umbrage at being used by a writer for their own means. But aren't all writers magpies? Weaving whatever crosses their path into their work, surely a fact by a writer's hand becomes a fiction by the very act of writing?

Guardian Blogger Guy Gavriel Kay says in his post: Are Novelists entitled to use real – life characters? When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will...For me, that is a wonderfully liberating thing for any writer, an honest response to the ethical dilemma which has seeped – like a toxic substance, unnoticed – into fiction, even at the highest levels. Fantasy is more than an escape from the truths of the world and the past, it is an open acknowledgment that those truths are complex and morally difficult. It offers a different route to creating something which will resonate with readers, in a way which resists the erasure of privacy and autonomy which pervades our modern world.

However, what if the real life people the characters are based on have passed? Does it impede upon their real lives if a writer finds solace and inspiration in the living of those lives? Surely a reader can tell fact from fiction? My father on reading Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang asked me in a dazed moment of reading, if it was possible that Carey used more than Kelly's Jerrilderee letter to make the novel, thinking that the voice of Kelly was so real that it had to come from fact. Surely that is an ultimate compliment to a writer? Surely there is no crime in writing 'faction?'

Note: The caption to the George Du Maurier Punch cartoon reads " NATURE VERSUS ART - Just as Stodge is about to explain the recondite ethical qualities of his picture to a select circle of deeply interested and delightfully sympathetic women, his wife must come in with the baby, confound it!"

The Children's Book

2009-08-12T12:09:00.002+10:00

This is AS Byatt's writing room. Messy but happy. She writes everything by hand and has her assistant type it up. She suffers from SAD and has a light box. And she has a house in the French countryside she often disappears to in aid of work...

I finished reading The Children's Book this morning all 600 + pages of it and it is staggeringly good. She really creates a world, right from the Arts and Craft's movement of the late nineteenth century to the muck of WW1. Unlike some other of AS Byatt's novels, this one really drew the reader in, like Possession in some ways. Unlike The Biographer's Tale which I found impossible to fall under its spell. The only thing I would have preferred would have been the detailing of some of the inner lives of the characters. There were so many different characters in protagonist roles it sometimes made me yearn to know more of some of them, rather than a little of all of them. However, surely this is a sign of the books success as well, the mind toying with the characters after the last page has been shut.