Louis Nowra's Into that forest

Courtesy: Allen & Unwin

Prepared by Jenny C.

A cosy group talked through their views on Louis Nowra's Into that Forest. It tells the story of two young girls, Hannah and Becky, who are taken in by a Tasmanian Tiger couple when they find themselves lost in the bush after their boat capsizes and the adults with them, Hannah's parents, die.

We had different views on 'getting into the book': some found it compelling storytelling and were absorbed and others found it hard to return to the book. Some found the language a distraction. Another key detractor was credibility. For example, some thought the story itself unbelievable, or that the girls' responses seemed far fetched, or even that there were inexplicable inconsistencies (such as the sophistication of Hannah's thinking and memory, yet her language seemed so affected by her experience).

In terms of literary style, we noted the similarities between earlier work we have reviewed (Keri Hulme's The bone people) and it was suggested that this book could fit into the category of Young Adult fiction. It was also suggested that this is a highly visual novel, and that it could easily be crafted as a play.

We also discussed some of the behaviours exhibited by the characters and why they responded to the events. Becky's behavior seemed inconsistent, for example, and this was put down to the fact that her father was alive, and that she therefore had a reason to want to adjust to her human world. Hannah on the other hand knew her parents were dead, and we considered the possibility that her sense of being and emotional security was found through her connections with her thylacine family. It was also noted that there would not have been any counseling for PTSD at the  time of the story, and the difficulty Hannah and Becky must have experienced in overcoming trauma and finding a sense of self back in human society.

One of the themes we discussed was the animalistic behaviour portrayed by the girls, such as the adrenalin rush that came from the pack hunt, the kill and the fresh blood. Parallels were drawn between this great sense of fulfillment and the thrill that must come from well planned crime or other adrenalin filled adventures. The lure of the hunt (or crime) appears compelling in contrast to our mundane and unadventurous lives. We also wondered whether the author was commenting on the bravery and fearlessness of children, and their capacity to adapt in life threatening circumstances.

We complimented the author on his description of the bush. Some commented that they could smell and feel the bush, the descriptions were so vivid. The author really immersed the reader in the thylacine's world - we got to know them to some extent, and several of us felt a good deal of empathy for the animals (especially Corinna towards the end).

We were puzzled about the rationale for the book. Why did the author write this story? Why did he focus on thylacines and that era? Was it because modern children are so spoilt, privileged and unchallenged? We thought it would be good to research these issues and bring back some 'answers' at a future meeting.

Overall, most attending thought it was an absorbing tale and a compelling piece of story telling. We all agreed that the story line and concepts were thought provoking.

Schedule ideas for second half of 2013

Ideas to continue the Canberra-and-environs author-or-subject theme (alphabetical by author):

• Nigel Featherstone's recent novellas Fall on me or I'm ready now: Nigel would come to a meeting if we asked him and he were free; and Blemish Books, his publisher, currently has a "pay-what-you-like" deal for an e-version of Fall on me
• Irma Gold's Two steps forward (collection of short stories): shortlisted for the inaugural Most Underrated Book Award
  
• Alan Gould's The seaglass spiral
• Marion Halligan's Shooting the fox (collection of short stories)
• Roger McDonald's When colts ran (or another?): in 2011/2012 shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a long story incorporated in it won the O Henry Prize (short stories) in 2008
  
• Alex Miller's Autumn Laing (or another?): in 2012 shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, won the Melbourne Prize for Literature
• Meanjin's special Canberra edition
  
• Canberra poets evening: there's a good selection in The invisible thread and Meanjin Canberra edition, for a start

Other ideas (higgledy piggledy order):

• Carrie Tiffany's Mateship with birds: won the inaugural Stella Prize and the NSW Premier's Prize for Fiction, and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
• Michele DeKretser's Questions of Travel: shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award
  
• Drusilla Modjeska's The Mountain: shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
• Romy Ash's Floundering: shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award
• Melissa Lucashenko's Mullumbimby : indigenous writer who has won and/or been shortlisted for several awards with previous novels
• Amanda Curtin's Elemental: Western Australian writer
• Classic novel: by Trollope or?
• Non-English author: Hans Fallada or Diego Marani (The last of the Vosyachs and New Finnish Grammar) or ?

If you send me other ideas, I'll add them to the list ... we have five spots to fill.

Jean-Étienne Liotard [Public domain], Ritratto di Maria Adelaide di Francia vestita alla turca, via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Croome's Midnight Empire

It was a lively meeting when we met to discuss our April book, Midnight Empire, with its author Andrew Croome. There's nothing like having an author present to get discussion going. Midnight Empire, essentially a spy thriller in the Le Carre tradition, is rather outside our usual literary fiction fare, but it fit our decision to focus on Canberra in our reading this Centenary year. Croome currently lives in Canberra, and the main character in the novel, Daniel, comes from Canberra, though the book is set in Las Vegas and Europe.

Courtesy: Allen & Unwin

Croome told us that the inspiration for the book was drones. Daniel Carter is a 26-year-old computer programmer whose company's encryption program has been bought by the US government for its drone program. Daniel is sent by his company to Creech Airforce Base, out of Las Vegas, to install the software and make sure it runs properly. Suddenly he finds himself at war, albeit sitting at a computer terminal in the American desert, a long way from Afghanistan where the actual war is being waged. This though is the point Croome wanted to explore: the idea that in modern drone-driven warfare, you can be at war during the day, in your office, killing people, and come home at night to bathe your kids! Unlike the airforce pilots and CIA agents Daniel is working with, he has not been trained for war. He is, in fact, a rather naive young man who, through most of the novel, still feels like "a boy". He's not though, and gradually he becomes mired in some dirty business.

Running parallel to the political/professional story of Daniel's work is his personal story. He comes to Las Vegas for work against the wishes of his long-term girlfriend Hannah. Their relationship has been floundering and this, to her mind, poor decision of his is the catalyst for her to break up. Daniel is disappointed, but it leaves him free to meet someone new - and he does, of course. He meets Ania at the poker table. This is Vegas after all and Daniel decides to take up poker to fill in some after work hours. Besides his interest in the recent world-wide poker-playing phenomenon, Croome told us that he saw poker as a way for Daniel to define and develop his masculinity.

In terms of the plot, things start, as you would expect for the genre, to go awry. An agent double-crosses them, and the drones are sent in to Peshawar to take out their targets. At the same time, pilots start dying mysteriously in Vegas. Daniel becomes perturbed about the morality of what he sees and takes some actions that, let us say, the CIA would not like. Meanwhile, his life with Ania becomes complicated when she tells him her brutal husband has come to Vegas looking for her. Daniel is torn between his work and his personal responsibilities, and starts crossing even more lines from which he may not be able to return. As we read on, we are not sure who to trust or believe. Is or isn't Ania the traditional spy-tale Femme Fatale? And are the CIA starting to suspect him? Suffice it to say that Daniel ends up on the run playing poker - off the grid, as Croome described it - throughout Europe. And that's about all I'll say about the plot.

Our discussion, with Croome, led us down all sorts of paths. We discussed the construction of the book with one Minervan feeling that it was more about plot than character. She wanted to know more about Daniel, wanted his character to be developed further. Another Minervan felt that having Daniel's relationship break up at the beginning was a clever device. It showed that Daniel had been given the chance to change, but hadn't taken it, and it also set him free for new relationships. Most of us felt the set up was plausible, and one member said she felt sorry for Daniel who was too naive to realise that he couldn't "fix" things as easily and simply as he thought. A couple of members talked of how "visual" the book is, and liked the strong transitions between Daniel's loft in Vegas and the airforce base. Croome, we discovered, did spend some time in Vegas researching the book. Several of us found the Poker sections too technical and wondered whether this was more of a "man-thing". Croome responded that he tried to make human points about the play rather than get too carried away with the recording the technical play itself. We could see that, but probably still felt there was a little more play than we needed! And the ending was to most of us more ambiguous than Croome intended - but we gathered that we weren't the only readers to feel this. Hopefully, Croome enjoyed our perspectives and took them in the right spirit. I think he did.

The discussion then turned back to drones and their military and civilian uses - leading to a discussion about privacy. We of course had no answers, but Croome believes that we need to be aware of the increasing incursions into our right to privacy if we are going to have any chance of controlling/protecting it. Some of us, I suspect, feel it might be a lost cause!

Croome mentioned a few authors/books that he likes, including Ian McEwan, Don DeLillo (that was intriguing) and Kevin Powers' novel, Yellow birds, about the impact of war on soldiers and those at home.

It was a good night's discussion. There's nothing better than a book that stimulates discussion about it, itself, and then leads us onto talk about the wider issues it draws from. Midnight empire proved to be such a book and we felt privileged to have the author with us to contribute to both discussions. Thanks Andrew for giving up your time to talk with us.

The Invisible Thread, editor Irma Gold

"The Invisible thread : one hundred years of words" is an anthology of writing from Canberra authors (I counted 75 of them) celebrating local fiction, non-fiction and poetic writing in the year of the centenary of the national capital. Our group was pleased and proud that Irma Gold was able to attend last week's meeting and add her perspective as editor to our discussion of the book. We had lots of questions for her.

We were interested but not surprised to hear of considerable debate among the Advisory Committee members as to the criteria for inclusion. It was decided that the writing did not need to be about Canberra, though much of it is, but that the author needed to have lived a significant amount of time in the region. This explained the omission of Frank Moorhouse whose "Cold Light" (that we studied recently) was set in Canberra but who has not actually lived here. Another debate was whether there should be more than one piece from some authors. To keep the book a manageable size it was decided to limit authors to one piece each. Thus while some prose authors get five or more pages, someone as eminent as David Campbell is represented by just the eight short (but memorable, we thought) lines of his poem "Mothers and daughters". Some of us felt that the extracts from prose works had created a taste to dip further into works of an author while others felt that the works which were complete in themselves had more impact in the book.

Irma explained that each member of the committee had studied the works of particular authors and made a shortlist from which she herself had selected the one piece for inclusion. She explained that one objective in the inclusions had been to create a flow from one piece to the next - so that there could be "a conversation" between adjacent pieces and they could inform each other. In our group some had enjoyed this feature while others had preferred to skip to writers they knew or to pieces which caught their attention.

We all noticed the wide range of genres covered, appreciating, for example: Dorothy Green's scathing review of "Porn birds"; an extract from CEW Bean's war history "Anzac to Amiens"; startling extracts from the science fiction short story "The Glass woman" by Kaaron Warren and from the young adult fantasy novel "Mister Monday : the keys to the kingdom" by Garth Nix". We appreciated the wide range of backgrounds our authors come from, including two indigenous authors. We each had 5 or 6 favourite works from the book too numerous in total to list here, but some appeared on more than one of our lists including the works from Alan Gould, Geoff Page and Marion Halligan. We enjoyed, as one member put it "the breadth of vision of Canberra authors - outward looking and bringing a wealth of experience of other places". 

Irma said that each member of the committee had enjoyed finding surprising pieces they had never read before. All of us certainly did. One of us said "I thought I knew Canberra writers, but I didn't".

We were able to thank Irma for her attendance and insights and plan which Canberra writers we were inspired to read more of over tea or coffee and delicious cake with quinces.

The invisible thread - Meeting preparation for those who have time

Irma Gold, the editor of The invisible thread anthology, has conducted 20 interviews over the last few months with some of the authors included in the anthology. They are well worth listening to - I haven't listened to them all yet, but those I have I've enjoyed.

Here they are with their links:

• Bill Gammage (14:58)
• Jackie French, Part 1 (16:30) and Part 2 (16:22)
• Omar Musa (23:39)
• Roger McDonald (16:32)
• Jennifer Martiniello (10:18)
• Adrian Caesar (16:25)
• Jack Heath (13:19)
• Nigel Featherstone (10:00)
• Peter Stanley (12:25)
• Melinda Smith (9:19)
• Marion Halligan (31:30)
• Kaaron Warren (7:17)
• Craig Cormick (6:15)
• Kim Mahood (9:05)
• Lesley Lebkowicz (8:36)
• Barbara Blackman (13:36)
• Alan Gould (18:58)
• S.K. Helen (11:29)
• Dorothy Johnston (13:12)

There is also the ACT Writers' Showcase which was launched at the same time as the book. It provides more background on the authors in the book, as well as other ACT-related authors.

Paris dreaming by Anita Heiss

This is 'chick, chook or choc lit' for a female readership in the 20-30 age range so it was a little hard for some Minervans to fully appreciate this novel.

It was considered rather lame and lacking substance however that isn't the purpose of this style of literature.  Rather it entertains, discusses fashion, young men and all to do with male/female relationships with a happy conclusion.

Anita Heiss is a young and 'proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of New South Wales as well as being Adjunct Professor with Jumbunna Indigenous House of learning at UTS, Sydney'. (Quote from her website).  Heiss is a prolific writer and researcher, writing children's books, novels (eg Manhattan Dreaming) and non-fiction such as Am I black enough.  She seems highly focussed and thereappears to be a touch of Anita in Lauren in Paris dreaming.

Her choc lit style is incorporated into a novel about a young Indigenous professional woman Lauren who works at the National Aboriginal Gallery in Canberra who has the temerity to push the boundaries. She questions her identity, her single status and her politics. She also extols the wonderful Indigenous artists, writers and poets with possibly an effect upon her reader's knowledge.

We also spoke about the use of Aboriginal words in the novel. These are a good introduction for readers.  We really appreciated the warmth of her relationships with her 'tiddas' -- both in Canberra and in Europe. These are strong bonds and there is a real feeling of responsibility between these good friends. We also liked the mother/daughter relationship, where Lauren is allowed to grow up strong and independent in contrast to her brothers.

Some members felt that Heiss degraded Canberra in contrast to Paris however that is often a feeling when one is bored. Another feature we liked was the introduction of an underlying plot about a Gypsy girl. This highlights Lauren's status as well as her compassion.

Overall an interesting and different novel !      

(February 2013 meeting)
 

Cold Light: Edith comes to Canberra

To start off this Centenary of the Naming of Canberra, we read Frank Moorhouse’s Cold Light, the third in his Edith trilogy.

We had some years before read and discussed Grand Days, the first book, covering his radical heroine Edith’s adventures in Europe and involvement in the League of Nations. He is a witty writer, and Edith a feisty and energetic character. Cold Light was not so warmly received by the group. Many in the group felt it was too long and indulgent, needing some tighter editing, and less labouring of some of the political and personal intrigues. It was obvious Moorhouse had done a lot of research, and wanted to use it in the book!

It was enjoyable to read the references to Canberra in the fifties: to the Canberra Hotel, Parliament House, the city before the Lake, discussion on planning, their home in Forrest etc. The emphasis on having her own office, and being able to furnish it stylishly, as well as her developing relationships with those whom she could trust, was a little insight into the bureaucracy of the time. Some things don’t change!

We agreed Moorhouse tells a good story, and creates some appealing and very human characters. Ambrose, the lavender husband  comes across as witty and warm. Janice was a witty and pragmatic foil to Edith’s earnest brother Frederick, an organiser for the Communist Party. And Edith is passionate, a little vain, ambitious, and adventurous. She seems to be playing at various roles: that of wife and stepmother, her drinking and smoking, a potential gay relationship with Janice. She has an encounter with suburban domesticity with her relationship with Richard, which ends rather sadly.

Sexuality is a continuing thread through the book, as the characters flirt, undertake their own sexual piccadellos, even describing the sensuousness of clothing as Ambrose cross dresses, and Edith herself is open in her sensuality.

Some described the book as a Comedy of Manners, with its arch, flirtatious tone, the dinner parties, and the ‘crass’ social mores of Australia contrasted with European sensibilities.

Other themes we teased out: the resignation of aging; we spent some time trying to discern Edith’s age and felt she would have been in her 50’s or 60’s; and we have a sense of her resignation in the face of her possible death at the end. The failure of idealism, or the shortcoming of ideologies, as the demise of the Communist Party, the failure to stop nuclear armament, and even the compromises in the planning of Canberra are portrayed through his mixture of actual and fictitious characters.

And secrecy: what is known and what is kept secret; we find Ambrose is a spy; Edith is asked to keep secret documents for her brother, Edith and Ambrose are covering up aspects of their relationship … and so on.

We discussed the significance of the title: Cold Light, partly a reference to Canberra and the cold climate, perhaps the cold light shone on Communism (and the Cold War), perhaps the Cold Light of aging and experience, and beyond the heady and idealistic days of our main characters’ youth.

Overall, while there was much to enjoy, and to comment on and discuss in this book, many in the group were somewhat disappointed in the volume, and probably pleased that this is the third and final in this series. We will however continue our journey looking at books with relevance to Canberra in the coming months, and are looking forward to that!