Category Archives: Australian Literature

Foxybaby and The Sugar Mother by Elizabeth Jolley

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With reading time at a premium due to an active 3-year-old and a high needs 4-month-old, I’m not able to dive into all the worthy books that are sent my way for review. So this will be a bit out of form for the Superfast Reader, more of an endorsement than a review, since I was only able to give these books a perusal instead of a read. But they are absolutely worth recommending, for their literary merit and sheer originality.

Foxybaby follows a writer with punk rock sensibilities through her residency at a weight loss camp for adults. The tone is blackly comic, but with a beating heart of real passion and humanity. For as grotesque as some of Jolley’s characters are, she never condescends to them. I was reminded so much of Jane Campion’s movie Sweetie–and that’s a high compliment.

The Sugar Mother is about a middle aged academic who falls in love with a much-younger woman, and then wants her to be a surrogate for him and his wife. I was less taken with this one, finding the scenario a bit distasteful, but the writing was psychologically astute and enjoyable as hell.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

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Synopsis:
A bereft Australian woman travels to Cornwall to uncover the mystery behind her grandmother’s mysterious appearance on a dock in Maryborough at the age of 4, her identity completely unknown.

Review:
While I had some minor quibbles with some of the stock characterizations in The Forgotten Garden, on the whole I was absolutely riveted by the storytelling. Morton expertly weaves together the stories of three women: Cassandra, a contemporary Australian woman who has received an unusual bequest from her grandmother Nell; that of Nell, who learns at age 21 that in 1913 she was discovered a pier, having arrived on a ship from England with no identity to speak of; and Eliza Makepeace, a writer who crafted a book of fairy tales while living in a cottage in Cornwall at the beginning of the 20th century. She also includes three of Eliza’s stories, which are hypnotic and absolutely convincing. And in Eliza’s story, we also get the points of view of several other characters.

It’s quite a masterpiece of jigsaw puzzle storytelling, because while the reader is privy to information that Nell and Cassandra are not, the conclusions that Cassandra and Nell draw from the information on hand are plausible and convincing. The mystery is truly engaging–even though figured it out about halfway through, I was sufficiently enthralled to want to carry on.

And, oh–how badly do I want to live in a windswept cottage on the Cornish coast–complete with maze and hidden garden! All I would need is a big storm and I’d be as happy as I can be.

My Father’s Moon by Elizabeth Jolley

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Synopsis:
An unwed mother tries working in an impoverished boarding school and finds herself yearning for the nurse she fell in love with back when both were working in a military hospital in England during WWII.

Review:
My Father’s Moon is the first of three books in The Vera Wright Trilogy, an autobiographical series that has long been out-of-print. Highly praised in its time, Elizabeth Jolley‘s work wasn’t widely known outside of her native Australia until now.

Based on My Father’s Moon, I daresay Ms. Jolley’s reputation at home deserves to be expanded abroad. Her writing combines an elliptically modernist structure with classically rigorous character work, and I suppose she bears comparison to Virginia Woolf in that regard.

Vera is an oddly slippery character, in that it’s hard to understand her motivations and choices. I’m not saying this as a criticism; rather, it’s a result of the way that Jolley has chosen to tell the story, using flashbacks that are sometimes indistinguishable from the main action. She links the different times together using Vera’s invocation of the name Ramsden, the last name of the woman she loved. It’s a powerful technique, evoking longing and regret in equal measure.

I was quite impressed by Jolley and glad for the opportunity to be exposed to her work.

Many thanks to Persea for the review copy.

Homework by Margot Livesey

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Synopsis:
Celia’s relationship would be perfect, if it weren’t for her boyfriend’s troublesome young daughter, and when she moves in with them, Celia finds herself caught in the middle.

Review:
Sort of a chick lit version of The Bad Seed, Homework combines splendid prose with a lackluster plot. I could see where it was headed a million miles out, and it didn’t surprise me at all. I was hoping for more, with such strong characterizations and enjoyable writing.

The Crow by Alison Croggon (The Third Book of Pellinor)

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Synopsis:
Young Bard-in-training Hem finds himself in the midst of a war, recruited into a vicious army of children enslaved by evil magic.

Review:
The Crow got off to a very slow start, but once it got going I was enthralled by the uniqueness of the world and the beauty of the writing. I fell in love with Hem, a deep thinker whose life has been marred by tragedy, and his friend Zelika, an impetuous girl who is the last of her family. The war scenes rival any found in Tolkien, and Alison Croggon doesn’t shy away from darkness and tragedy, even while filling her story with light and hope.

The Riddle by Alison Croggon (The Second Book of Pellinor)

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Synopsis:
Maerad of Pellinor heads north in pursuit of the Treesong as the Winter King threatens her at every turn.

Review:
I was so glad to see Alison Croggon leave her Tolkien influences behind in The Riddle, the second book in her well-told story of Pellinor, which started out as just your typical fantasy country beseiged by the coming of the dark.

Fortunately, Croggon brings in some non-medieval elements in her construction of the mythology of her world. I really liked some of the harsher elements she brought into her development of the more northern societies–and because winter is my favorite season I enjoyed spending time in the snow and ice. I also liked that Maerad’s status as a hero is brought into question, hence the “riddle” of the title. There’s more to her than just the prophecy calling her the One. Her destiny isn’t singular, and I love that element of uncertainty.

Croggon’s writing is beautiful, and I was especially impressed by the haunting poetry she included. I can’t wait to read The Crow and The Singing.

The Naming by Alison Croggon (The First Book of Pellinor)

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Synopsis:
A slave discovers that she is The One prophesied by the mystical race of Bards.

Review:
It really is all about execution when it comes to epic fantasy. I mean, that one sentence synopsis of The Gift could pretty much describe about a zillion other books, many of them truly dreadful. In fact, I was listening the audiobook of Mistborn at the same time, which has basically the same premise!

So far, Alison Croggon is delivering a fine, fine tale. She admits to being heavily influenced by JRR Tolkien, and it shows, but her writing is strong enough to that the book doesn’t feel like a copy or a pastiche. (Plus, there are no elves.) Maerad is strong without being plucky–that awful fantasy cliché for women–and her mentor Cadvan has a lot going on under the surface.

Cadvan is training Maerad in the Gift to which she was born, that of the noble race of Bards, who are teachers and healers and benevolent rulers. However, a strain of dark Bards called Hulls has arisen, under the leadership of the darkness, and Maerad might be the One prophesied to bring them down. This first book concerns itself with Maerad’s discovery of her gift and her increasing awareness of the threat, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next.

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

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Synopsis:
At night, the demons rise, terrorizing humanity for centuries until three grown orphans dare to fight back.

Review:
Warning: freak-out coming…

THE WARDED MAN ROCKED ROCKED ROCKED.

I mean, seriously. I am losing my mind over how good this book was. Why oh why oh why am I going to have to wait all the way until the end of the year to read the next book? I haven’t been this insane about a book since I read Assassin’s Apprentice. I was so sucked in I forgot how eager I am to read Dance With Dragons. It’s books like these that make me hate my superpower, because my time with Arlen, Leesha, and Rojer passed way too shortly. I wish the book had been twice as long, honestly!

The basic premise is that humanity is under attack from demons that rise up from the Earth’s core every night at sunset. Only painted or carved wardings can repel them, and like any human-made thing, the wards are prone to fading, chipping, or being covered by dirt. People have grown accustomed to living in fear, with only courageous messengers and their portable warding circles daring to travel between cities and hamlets. Folklore is replete with foretellings of a Deliverer, who will lead humanity in the next war against the demons, presumably to defeat them once and for all. But most believe the Deliverer is just a fairy tale.

One young man, Arlen, despises fear and dreams of a way to fight back. When he’s left orphaned and fostered by a Messenger, he discovers a talent for warding and a desire to seek out the lost cities of the first Demon Wars. The Warded Man is told through Arlen’s point-of-view, as well as that of Leesha, a privileged young woman with a talent for healing, and Rojer, another orphan whose fiddling is so sweet it makes the demons dance.

Brett makes these people real, constantly taking risks in their interactions with those around them. He excels at hinting at the stories taking place off-stage, as it were, and that gives his characterizations depth and breadth. I was drawn in as much by the emotional journeys of the characters as by the action scenes–not to take anything away from those, of course. The fighting and battle scenes are as visual as any I have ever read. Brett skillfully leads the reader through the action using emotional stakes that are just as high as the physical ones.

In many ways, The Warded Man is an origin story for a superhero, but there’s no “Chosen One” nonsense here. Brett realizes that the best heroes don’t know their own heroicism–like Neo in The Matrix–nor are they protected by those whose lives are deemed less important by the author. Brett lets every human life count and doesn’t make things easy for anyone, least of Arlen, Rojer, and Leesha. By respecting his characters enough to let them suffer, he crafts a story that is worthy of however many sleepless nights you’ll need to tear through it.

Incidentally, Brett wrote this on a smartphone, largely during his subway commute to work. How cool is that? I wasn’t surprised to learn that he is a fan of Stephen King, because the book that it resembles most is King’s Wolves of the Calla, my personal favorite from the Dark Tower series.

I need people to read this book so we can talk about it. It comes out on March 10th, but you can pre-order it on Amazon. Many thanks to Librarything‘s Early Reviewer’s program–I’m always amazed when I get a book because so many people request them. Some of the ones I’ve received have been real stinkers, but all is forgiven because I’ve now got a new epic fantasy obsession.

UPDATE–The Warded Man is out today!

The Ghost Writer by John Harwood

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Synopsis:
Having grown up with a controlling, secret-keeping mother, a young man yearns to know his family’s history and meet his letter-writing lover in person, but his journey takes him face to face with madness and murder.

Review:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Eva for recommending this book!

The Ghost Writer is a straight up Gothic tale, no revisionism here, thank you very much. It’s a tangled labyrinth of memories, letters, and unfinished stories that builds to a creepy, frightening climax that draws upon the best tropes of the genre without losing sight of the story being told. Continue reading →

Extras by Scott Westerfeld

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Synopsis:
Aya’s city runs on fame, and she’s desperate to find a story to send out over her personal feed in order to crack the top 1,000 and get all her heart desires.

Review:
Extras is a follow up to Scott Westerfeld’s acclaimed trilogy: Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, which follow Tally Youngblood through a series of escalating body and mind modifications that basically turn her into a superhero. Continue reading →