Athena K's Review - Dirt Music

Tim Winton fills Dirt Music with severely damaged characters - and I'm not sure I was able enough to like them enough for the novel to work for me. Georgie Jutland is a natural caregiver who isn't caring for anyone, including herself, and is on a downard slope to alcoholism and self destruction. The man in her life is Jim Buckridge, a blokey Western Australian who may never get over the death of his wife. And, after a one night stand, the other man in her life is the much younger Luther Fox, who should be a soleful musician but who makes a living as an illegal fisherman because he is haunted by violence and loss. Its not clear how any of these characters can be redeemed, and they certainly try to find redemption and healing through each other. But plot twists take us into implausible waters and Winton ultimately did not hold my attention.

What did captivate me about this book was Winton's beautiful sense of place - the coasts and interiors of Western Australia. Perhaps because I spent some time living and traveling in Western Australia, I felt his images were incredibly evocative. I could really picture the light - the harsh mid-day glare, or the golden dusty sunsets permeated nearly all of his scenes. He captured perfectly the essence of small town Western Australian life without relying on stereotypes or characatures, which I really appreciate. Still, I didn't enjoy it enough to recommend it to anyone I know.

I completed this book on December 19, 2012, and have been very late in posting my review.

Tony Messenger - 2002 Shortlist - Unless - Carol Shields

Carol Shields has made the Booker Prize shortlist before this novel, back in 1993 for “The Stone Diaries” (the year Roddy Doyle’s “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha” took home the prize), this same novel winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.  Her novel “Larry’s Party” won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1997 and “Unless” was also nominated for the Orange Prize in 2003. Given her prominence in the award stakes it is a pity her Wikipedia page is quite short – but what sort of kudos do you expect for prominent female writers?

“Unless” is a shameless defence of female writing, a novel where our protagonist, Reta Winters, is a female author as well as translator of feminist writer Danielle Westerman’s works. Reta’s own daughter, Norah, has suffered a meltdown of sorts and is silently begging on a street corner with a sign simply stating “goodness”. What has driven Norah to the brink? Simply being confused about her place in a male dominated society? But how do you expose the inequality whilst you are concurrently writing about domestic bliss, snuggling up to your husband Tom whilst locking yourself away each day to complete the follow up to your debut novel a ‘romantic comedy’?

She believes that Norah has simply succumbed to the traditional refuge of women without power: she has accepted in its stead complete powerlessness, total passivity, a kind of impotent piety. In doing nothing she has claimed everything.

A wonderful balance of hard feminist messages vs. the veneer wrapping of weekly gatherings for tea, home cooking and other domestic chores, curtain signals, lack of assertiveness when dealing with her inept male editor and other self-deprecating behaviour.

This is a fine balancing act of home life, the angst of losing her eldest daughter, her career and her cry for help. Here we have a writer writing about a writer who is writing about a writer and the literature lessons come thick and fast, from how to construct a best seller through to singularly male influences.

Novels help us turn down the volume of our own interior “discourse,” but unless they can provide us with an alternative, hopeful course, they’re just so much narrative crumble. Unless, unless.

Unless is the worry word of the English language. It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. Unless – that’s the little subjunctive mineral you carry along in your pocket crease. It’s always there, or else not there. (If you add a capital s to unless, you get Sunless, or San Soleil, a very odd Chris Marker film.)

‘Unless’ was Carol Shield’s last novel, she died in 2003, and I can only feel that she was operating at the peak of her powers when constructing this multi layered piece. The narrative structure having little to do with the messages contained within.

Because Tom is a man, because I love him dearly, I haven’t told him what I believe: that the world is split in two, between those who are handed power at birth, at gestation, encoded with a seemingly random chromosome determinate that says yes for ever and ever, and those like Norah, like Danielle Westerman, like my mother, like my mother-in-law, like me, like all of us who fall into the uncoded otherness in which the power to assert ourselves and claim our lives has been displaced by a compulsion to shut down our bodies and seal our mouths and be as nothing against the fireworks and streaking stars and blinding light of the Big Bang. That’s the problem.

Very much a worthy inclusion on the Man Booker shortlist, a novel that unashamedly says the works of female writers are not celebrated or studied enough. Hopefully one that will be remembered as a shining light by a wonderful female writer. Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2002 Shortlist - The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor

“But nervous of doing more harm than good, she said nothing” (p138)

As our novel opens, in 1921, Lucy Gault is a young girl, an only child, living in an elaborate Irish Estate with her parents and hired help. The house is under siege as Lucy’s father served in the Army and the locals want to teach him a lesson by raising his mansion to the ground. Captain Edward Gault (Lucy’s father) wounds a boy by shooting him in the shoulder and although reconciliation is sought, none is forthcoming and the Gault’s are forced to leave their home in search of peace abroad.

Of course Lucy is not consulted in this decision and she decides to run away, fleeing to the house of their recently redundant housekeeper, but on her journey she badly damages her ankle and can’t continue. Lucy’s parents believe she has drowned and leave Ireland in grief. Lucy is of course found alive by Henry, the hired help who stays on at the estate, and despite various attempts at finding her parents, there is no success. Lucy waits for their return:

For her part, Lucy did not wonder much about the nature of exile, accepting, with time, what had come about, as she did her lameness and the features that were reflected in her looking-glass. Had Canon Crosbie raised with her the question of going out into the world, she would have replied that the nature and tenets of her life had already been laid down for her. She waited, she would have said, and in doing so kept faith. Each room was dusted clean; each chair, each table, each ornament was as they were remembered. Her full summer vases, her bees, her footsteps on the stairs and on the landings, and crossing rooms and in the cobbled yard and on the gravel, were what she offered. She was not lonely; sometimes she could hardly remember loneliness. ‘Oh, but I’m happy,’ she would have reassured the clergyman had he asked her. ‘Happy enough, you know.’

This is a novel with a lot of contemplative passages, one where the futility of existence is explored through menial tasks, where unrequited love is blamed on fate, where it is easier to say nothing than to express one’s true feelings. Lucy’s mother and father maintain their marriage, each knowing the grief and pain the other is experiencing but never uttering a word, never offering support. The theme of not expressing one’s feelings is deeply interwoven in Lucy’s very fabric and her lack of verbalising her concerns about moving away at the start of the novel haunt her through every action thereafter – she can’t express love, her emotions are stifled, she merely exists.

A finely constructed work, that seems as though there is not a single word out of place, but personally one that was an easy read but where I couldn’t engage with any character, where Lucy’s fate did not really move me and the story, style or structure did not challenge me in any way. Completely inoffensive so it is hard to be critical of this work, but it will be one I will surely forget I’ve ever read. Have I moved on from the Booker Prize? Good grief……

Laura's Review - Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry

They continued to cope, poorly, with the excretions and secretions of their stepfather's body, moving from revulsion to pity to anger, and back to revulsion. They were bewildered, and indignant, that a human creature of blood and bone, so efficient in good health, could suddenly become so messy. Neither Nariman's age nor his previous illnesses had served to warn them. Sometimes they took it personally, as though their stepfather had reduced himself to this state to harass them. And by nightfall, the air was again fraught with tension, thick with reproaches spoken and silent. (p 68)

Nariman Vakeel is an elderly, retired English professor suffering from Parkinson's Disease. He lives in the family home -- ironically named Chateau Felicity -- with his middle-aged step-children, Jal and Coomy. Nariman married their mother Yasmin when Jal and Coomy were children, after his family forbid him to marry his true love, Lucy. He raised them along with a younger half-sister, Roxana. Coomy is filled with resentment; everyone else walks on eggshells to avoid her bitterness. Jal feigns obliviousness, tinkering with his hearing aid when tempers flare.

When Nariman falls while out on a walk, Jal and Coomy are quickly overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for him. Coomy wastes no time tricking Roxana into taking him in. Roxana and her family live in a smaller flat and struggle to make ends meet, but they are blessed with a more positive outlook on life. Even Roxana's young sons take things in stride:

The balcony door framed the scene: nine-year-old happily feeding seventy-nine. And then it struck her like a revelation -- of what, she could not say. Hidden by the screen of damp clothes, she watched, clutching Yezad's shirt in her hands. She felt she was witnessing something almost sacred, and her eyes refused to relinquish the previous moment, for she knew instinctively that it would become a memory to cherish, to recall in difficult times when she needed strength. (p. 98)

But as weeks pass, the strain takes its toll on everyone. Coomy takes dramatic steps to keep up the illusion she is unable to care for Nariman. Jal is silently complicit. Roxana tries, in vain, to stretch Yezad's salary to cover the cost of Nariman's medication. And Yezad responds to the financial strain through a series of progressively destructive acts aimed at improving their financial situation. Eventually they hit rock bottom in ways both inevitable and shocking, and are then faced with the challenge of rebuilding what they hold most dear.

I put off reading this book for some time, thinking it might strike too close to home. My father has Parkinson's, and last year a medical incident set in motion a series of events culminating in my parents' long-overdue move to a continuous care retirement community. Family Matters was indeed painful to read, although I could distance myself from it because the Vakeel family's situation was very different from mine. And yet there are valuable messages in this book about the importance of family, and living for today, that are still with me days after finishing the book.

Laura's Review - Dirt Music, by Tim Winton

Fishing is central to the western Australian village of White Point, driving the economy and shaping social order. Jim Buckridge is the best fisherman around, which affords him "big man on campus" status. His partner, Georgie Jutland, ended up in White Point after chucking a nursing career and a failed relationship. Their relationship is fragile: Jim mourns his first wife Debbie, who died of cancer, but he refuses to talk about it. His young sons see Georgie as the evil stepmother. Georgie stays up into the wee hours, drowning her sorrows in vodka. It's not surprising, then, when she discovers Luther Fox poaching fish in the dark of night and ends up in bed with him.

Well, OK, that was kind of surprising. The chemistry between Georgie and Lu wasn't well-developed, and her relationship with Jim still had life in it (that is, until she slept with Lu). But Luther was an interesting character, a man forever scarred by the sudden tragic loss of his entire family. I felt sorry for him, and wanted him to find love and happiness with Georgie. Thus Tim Winton sets up the central conflict, "what will Georgie do?" and takes the reader along on her quest. Along the way, he reveals tiny details that flesh out each man's past. What exactly happened to Luther's family? Why is Jim such a badass? Why won't he talk about Debbie, and what does he really want from Georgie? Winton also brings the Western Australian landscape to life. As someone completely unfamiliar with the geography and the flora and fauna, I kept a map close at hand and found images of animals, trees, and birds to visualize the scenery.

While Winton was successful in drawing me into the story and it held my interest, it fell short of its potential. Georgie's character could have been developed more fully. She was somewhat of a paradox: hard-edged and abrasive, but known for her caring and nursing skills. Not the least bit concerned about fashion or makeup, and yet considered sexy. It just didn't add up. Then, as the central conflict reached its climax, Winton placed his characters in a situation that struck me as far-fetched, and the resolution was just too neat to be believable. Ah, well.
 

Cross-posted from my blog

Athena K's Review - The Story of Lucy Gault

Yet another Booker book with a fantastic set up that fails to deliver. Lucy is mistakenly, through a series of unfortunately events, abandoned by her parents at the tender age of seven. Under the impression that she has been downed, her parents abandon their home, flee Ireland, and in their grief do not look back for over 30 years. But Lucy has not died - she remains in the home waiting hopefully for her parents' surely imminent return. And the reader waits with Lucy.

 

But as time progresses, it becomes apparent to the reader well before it is understood by Lucy or the small community supporting her that the return of her parents can only be a disappointment. Lucy is no longer a litter girl but a grown woman, whose choices have left her isolated and outside of the sphere of the living for entirely too long. No reunion can achieve what either Lucy or her parents secretly wish for - for everything to be made whole. 

 

But because it is primarily a book about waiting, about life slipping by unlived, it is ultimately not a very engaging story. Perhaps this was William Trevor being too good at achieving what he set out to do. Sure, Trevor's prose is clear and descriptive, but it was not enough to keep me wanting more. I was consumed by the isolation and hopelessness, and the sense of wasted life that were the themes of this novel, and no ending could have reinvigorated me enough to induce me to recommend this book very highly to others.

Laura's Review - Fingersmith

Fingersmith
Sarah Waters
582 pages

Set in the 1860s, Fingersmith is the story of two young women: Sue, raised among thieves in London, and Maud, a privileged lady raised by her uncle in the country. Sue is enlisted as part of a con scheme by Richard Rivers, aka Gentleman, who plans to secure Maud's fortune via marriage, and then have her committed to an asylum. The first part of the book describes Rivers' courtship with Maud, their marriage, and the trip to the asylum -- and suddenly things are not what they seem, and the plot goes topsy-turvy. Then Maud takes over as narrator, recounting the same events from her perspective and filling in blanks as to who knew what, and when they knew it. Not much more can be said about the plot without spoilers, so suffice to say that there are enough surprises to keep the reader on their toes, guessing at identities and truth.

Sarah Waters has written a brilliant tale of two very strong female protagonists, embellished with a number of colorful characters: Maud's uncle, whose life work is a scholarly study of pornographic literature; Mrs. Sucksby, who raised Sue and assists in running a petty thievery operation; and Rivers (Gentleman), who is as convincing as he is smarmy. I enjoyed every minute of this book; it was "un-putdownable". ( )

My original review can be found here.