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Book review — Political Lives, by Chris Wallace

May 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: Political Lives

Author: Chris Wallace

Publisher: UNSW Press, February 2023; RRP $39.99

When in Castlemaine (Vic) who can resist a visit to Stonemans Bookroom, a truly independent bookseller, in the main shopping precinct. With pleasant memories of previous visits lingering in the back of my mind, I browsed the shelves and tables, enjoying the unsullied newness of the various offerings.

I would not normally look twice at books on politics and politicians, but my interest was piqued by the author’s name, Chris Wallace, and, of course, the casually intimate cover photo of Bob and Blanche. The latter with cup and saucer in hand, so Australian, a good cuppa in moments of intrigue.

Chris Wallace is a name familiar to me, mostly by reputation. Not because of her appearances on the ABC’s Drum program or her a repute as a savvy political commentator, and certainly not because of her role as a professor at the Faculty of Business Government and Law, University of Canberra. She frequented a mutually favourite cafe in Manuka. It was a popular Friday afternoon haunt, not just for political journos but also with us lesser mortals; Grande’s served good pasta and was BYO.

Political Lives has all the trappings of a serious work, well referenced, cross referenced, indexed and clearly the product of careful research and extensive subject matter knowledge. Perhaps appealing to a niche audience, being a book about books, it is above all a good read.

The main academic thread of Political Lives is the evolution and role of the political biography in Australia — federal Australia, not the states and their upstart premiers.  Indeed, I don’t recall even a remote consideration that premiers might even warrant a biography. 

Listen to Chris Wallace in conversation about Political Lives

@ experience ANU

Wallace begins Political Lives with an explanation of her own aborted biography of Julia Gillard. She did not want to fuel the inappropriate behaviour rampant at the time. Then, she chronologically works her way through the biographies of prime ministers.

Political Lives is very much a story behind the story, providing insights into how the various biographies came about, who wrote them, why they wrote them, lifting the lid on a specialised segment of the literary world. A world mostly inhabited by journalists and academics. Wallace laces the story with serious discussion on the role of the contemporary biography in the political process, arguing their value for party colleagues and the public to be able to examine leaders and potential leaders through the eyes of professional writers/academics/journalists.

The attitude to political biographies by the various former prime ministers is interesting, and like so much of politics shows consistency with the views of the occupants of the political landscape.  Wallace does a respectable job of being even handed in her approach, limited, I would assume, by the availability of material and circumstances surrounding the various published biographies. Regardless of a biographer’s political alignment, Wallace is very much in favour of biographers taking an honest, warts-and-all approach.

I found this book interesting, engaging, and easy to read.  In these days of hyped social media, fake news and highly packaged political messaging by manipulative politicians, this was a refreshing and sensible read.

Reviewed by: Frank Thompson

Ballarat Writers Inc Book Review Group

Book review — The Bellbird River Country Choir, by Sophie Green

May 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Bellbird River Country Choir

Author: Sophie Green

Publisher: Hachette Australia, 2022; RRP $32.99

Australian author Sophie Green’s The Bellbird River Country Choir follows a successful track record.  Her 2018 debut novel The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club was long listed for the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year and the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction. It, along with The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle and Thursdays at Orange Blossom House, were Top 10 bestsellers.  

This is a book about relationships between men and women, about women alone and in their friendships with other women, and between family members held loosely together within their shared experiences as members of a small-town community choir, and the town community itself.

As can be seen in the titles of her other bestsellers, there is a formulaic base to her works, but I say this without judgement.  I, like countless others, value the security of a familiar narrative formula that we already know is going to work for us. Her presence in Top 10 bestseller lists also signifies more than just commercial success. I chose to read this book because I like small-town stories and anything with a choir in it but also because I was in the mood for an easy-reading escape.

From the beginning that is exactly what The Bellbird River Country Choir offers, but as the story unfolded this changed — what it lacked in depth was made up by the range of relationship and personal issues it covered. It does not pretend to be an in-depth exploration, but the events and the feelings, thoughts and reactions of the characters concerned are familiar or easy to identify with. Most importantly, they become characters easy to care about, a vital ingredient in any reading experience.

The choir is the focal place where the main characters mingle and bounce off each other. The other setting is the town itself and the dry, brown country surrounding it. The town itself and surroundings are experienced and explored through the different characters who inhabit it, both longtime and new.

Sophie Green on her books and writing practice

tell me what to read @ youtube

The story begins through the eyes of single mother Alex who has moved out of the city, motivated by a need to live more cheaply and be able to spend more time with her daughter.

Some of the issues the choir members experience include the battle between Alex and her daughter, who desperately wants to return to Sydney to live instead with the beloved grandmother Alex is in continual conflict with; a mother riddled with guilt, released from a jail sentence she knows she deserved, fighting to reconnect with the children she knows she betrayed, and fearful of the townspeople finding out; a close brother-and-sister relationship fragmented by the brother’s schizophrenia after a seemingly normal childhood, his parents unable to cope and the daughter who tries to protect him; a closet artist; a compassionate stepmother unable to bear her own children responsible for those of another; a strong and dignified older woman forced to deal with her husband’s desertion for someone younger; a famous soprano unable to accept her diminished vocal range after a throat operation; a child bullied endlessly at school and her mother’s struggles to help her.  

This tapestry of personal and relationship issues is not unfamiliar. Many can be found behind the closed doors of ordinary homes and streets around us. A success of the work is that they are woven together seamlessly, creating an image of a community of individuals that covers a lot of ground without collapsing under the weight of its own complexity.

In each case the situations the choir members are dealing with are also set within the context of the society in which they play out, and include the thinking and self-exploration by the individuals suffering each trauma, from the irritating or temporary to the toxic. The bullied child exists in the story within the context of the school and the town and the psychology of the school playground — bullying that many parents will identify with. The female victim of a bullying lover looks deep within herself, extricating her own fear, loneliness and a desperate need for affection from the ugliness of the man who abuses her. The soprano is suffering what many older retired Australians experience when their working lives retreat.

It is not a poetic work using clever literary devices, nor does it offer anything new to the genre, but nevertheless I was totally engaged as the story slowly unfolded deeper into the lives of the different choir members and the life of the town. It strength is the skill with which the narrative is constructed: how it all hangs together and its humanity. There are also places where the author captured sensitive and delicate states of being, pinpointing subtle emotional responses.

When the distraught soprano rings an old friend complaining about the choir, we read,

‘Dear me,’ purrs Ivan comfortingly. Which is the reason she rang him: he’s good at being reassuring.

Or another leaving her lover,

Checking twice over her shoulder to see if he’s followed her, because for some reason she feels like prey.

It is still what would be described as light reading but sometimes the simplest of narratives travel a long way. There are one or two undeniably corny bits, but they fit in the end because life is sometimes corny too.

Very satisfying for when you are in the mood for an easy, reliably feel-good read that does not demand much thinking but which carries you away, believably, from your external world with its demands and into another place. With its distinctly Australian setting – located in a tiny fictional town a short distance from Tamworth — it will also appeal especially to small-town Australian readers.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review — The Gold Leaf Executions, by Helen Marshall

April 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Author: Helen Marshall

Title: The Gold Leaf Executions

Publisher: Unsung Stories, March 2023; RRP: 35 GBP

Helen Marshall comes to be an Australian resident from her native Canada via Oxford, academia laying the trail that has most recently landed her at the University of Queensland where she is a senior lecturer in creative writing. That strong research background, with a particular interest in the medieval, has found its way into her work, as inspiration as well as moments of verisimilitude. And, of course, the doctor can write. Oh, yes.

The Gold Leaf Executions is her third short story collection, adding to two poetry chapbooks and her novel, The Migration (2019). Marshall is an accomplished practitioner of speculative fiction – her bibliography teems with science fiction and fantasy publishers, and her second collection, 2014’s Gifts for the One Who Comes After, won a World Fantasy Award (adding to her Best Newcomer award of 2013) and the Shirley Jackson Award – and her prose has the elegance and voice to entice the big-L literary fan who enjoys the spice of fabulism or magical realism.

Regardless of one’s genre preferences, Marshall’s ability to paint a picture is unarguable:

‘Lydia’s feet had all the grace of birds with broken wings’, she writes in ‘All Things Fall and Are Built Again’.

Or how about this, in ‘Caldera’, where a young woman is finding herself in a folklore-infused Reykjavik:

‘She spent her days by the old harbour watching terns circle and dive, bodies perfectly engineered for flight. She admired their effortless movements, their murderous instincts. The sky was grey. The sea was grey. The world reflected itself, and the birds stitched the two gleaming surfaces together, rising, falling, rising, falling.’

The Gold Leaf Executions compiles a selection of works published between 2014 and 2019, predominantly in spec fic genre publications and anthologies, with ‘Katalog’ unique to the collection. It is an exemplar of the collection’s trend to overtly relate a story, or a part of a story, in this case through the words of the son of an artist testifying to a committee in a harsh, embattled Communist Bulgaria about his father’s – and mother’s – powers.  

Death, as the publisher’s blurb illuminates and the title suggests, is a strong theme in the collection, presented in settings from the everyday to the fractured real to the fantastical. These are also stories of transition or transformation, not just of loss but self-discovery, the fabulous elements serving as the crack in the world that allows Marshall to shine her light on the characters, and not always in the way we might expect.

In ‘The Embalmer’, for example, she purposefully, explicitly, breaks into the narrative to tell us this story is not going where we think it might, especially those used to wading in the dark side of fiction. No, this is how it plays out in the real world of this story, of course it does. While Stephen King is a clear template for her writer Barron St John in ‘Survival Strategies’, ‘The Embalmer’ is not a King story. It’s clearly a Marshall, overtly subverting genre expectation; something she does notably again when she breaks the fictive wall in ‘Survival Strategies’ by namechecking this collection.

This subversion, though, and the clear omniscient narration mentioned above that frames many of the stories, may mean that, for all the beauty and sheer clever writing presented here, mileage will likely vary. The omniscience, perhaps combined with a feeling that some of the protagonists are lacking agency (not necessarily without reason), breeds a certain remove between story and reader. Consequently, narrative drive can be lacking. The voice is strong – the difference in narration between the Cthulhu nods of ‘Caro in Carno’ and ‘Exposure’ to the second person of ‘One-quarter Dreaming, Three-quarters Want’ and the contemporary third-person of US twins dealing with death in ‘Heaven’s Night-blooming Gardens’ is clear – but that distance between reader and protagonist may limit investment.

Regardless, there is plenty to reward here, and it is gratifying to have these stories mustered conveniently in the one volume. I look forward to seeing if her sojourn down under will influence her new works, for surely we can claim this talent as ‘ours’, just as we have embraced her equally masterful and fellow expat Lisa L Hannett.

The sad part for readers outside the UK will be the postage, as The Gold Leaf Executions is available at the moment solely as a limited edition hardback through the publisher’s website (http://www.unsungstories.co.uk/the-gold-leaf-executions-by-helen-marshall). Watch that space.

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review — Shirley Hazzard: a Writing Life, by Brigitta Olubas

April 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: Shirley Hazzard: a Writing Life

Author: Brigitta Olubas

Publisher: Hachette/Virago Press, 2022; RRP $34.99

Shirley Hazzard was an important Australian author, born in 1931 and dying in 2016. Though born in Australia, she left in 1947, travelling through Europe with her family. She finished up in New York where she worked with the United Nations through the 1950s and where she spent the rest of her life. 

Her 2003 novel, The Great Fire, won the US National Book Award, the Miles Franklin award and the William Dean Howells medal, and was named Book of the Year by The Economist. Her 1970 novel, The Bay of Noon, was shortlisted for the 2010 Lost Man Booker Prize; her 1980 novel The Transit of Venus, an international bestseller, won the National Book Critics Circle Award; her novel A Long Story Short won the 1977 O Henry award. and she was shortlisted for numerous other awards. She also wrote non-fiction.

Whenever people speak of her writing. constant reference is made to the particular beauty of her writing, in words like ‘luminous’ and ‘brilliant’, but also wisdom and insight.  From The Transit of Venus we read,

            “When you realise someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less.

            “Unless you love them.”

or my favourite,

            “Dora sat on a corner of the spread rug, longing to be assigned some task so she could resent it.”

This is an authorised biography written by Brigitta Olubras, a University of New South Wales  English professor whose areas of research includes Australian literature and transnational writing, literary and visual culture, gender studies and narrative ethics. The academic qualifications of the author are reflected in this densely researched work and its layout.

Read an obituary of Shirley Hazzard by James Campbell

@ the guardian

It is difficult to do justice to this very extensive biography of Shirley Hazzard without reference to its sheer volume. It is so comprehensive that it could be described as being at the intersection where biography meets reference work, almost a mini encyclopedia.

Because of this, the work is not just a little daunting, but a huge plus is that its layout is well set out, detailed, thorough, and easy to navigate. It is laid out such that particular areas of interest can be easily located without having to plough through the whole book.

Under Sources we are given a guide to using both Sources and Notes. Both provide guidance for future researchers or those just interested in looking deeper into her subject’s life find more material. Of particular value is a reference to the existence of as yet unorganised material, which is almost all Hazzard’s diaries and notebooks, suggesting the story of her life is not finished. Instead of a bibliography by title as is usual, there is a list of abbreviations for each source used in the copious Notes following. 

This takes the reader to the source, and this, if followed up, is a chance to check the context of quotes and also the location of the item quoted from. The Index is a richly detailed gateway to very specific areas. I found the bits referring to Hazzard’s relationship with her sister interesting. for example, but being scattered throughout made it difficult to get the full picture as they were mainly snippets of information, many pages apart. However, by working my way through the pages listed in the Index under her sisters name, I was able to get a clearer picture. In contrast, the Contents page is a simple chronological list, meaning interest in a particular time frame is very easy to find. My only criticism of this area would be that the text is smaller than the rest of the book and some may find this difficult.

Watch a talk by the author about A Writing Life

the center for fiction @ youtube

The author has used as her source a wide range of published and unpublished material, so unlike a reference tool it is rich with personal detail and pages of photographs, and crosses the boundary between her subject’s personal and family life, and her writing aims and output rather than just being a collection of facts.

Anyone interested in Australian literature generally and Shirley Hazzard particularly would find this very useful to absorb slowly in its entirety or dip in and out of. Those who enjoy biographies would enjoy it as the mix of Hazzard’s personal and professional life makes her come alive on the pages.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher

Book review — If I Were You, by Peter Quarry

March 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: If I Were You: A psychologist puts himself on the couch

Author: Peter Quarry

Publisher: Hardie Grant Books, February 2022; RRP: $35.00

As a fundamentally nosy person, I enjoy a good memoir. I like hearing about a person’s life, I like being included in secrets previously unsaid and I like the reflection that recounting the past often prompts. Peter Quarry’s If I Were You: A psychologist puts himself on the couch well and truly delivers this voyeuristic pleasure, but it takes it further. Quarry isn’t just interested in what his life means to himself, he’s interested in what it means for you.

If I Were You has an unusual format: throughout the book, Quarry writes letters about his life as “Pete” to his psychologist persona, “PQ”, and then responds to them. Going in, I wasn’t sure how well this would work as a mechanism. Would it feel contrived? Would PQ’s letters feel like they were tailored to prompt exactly the responses that Quarry wanted to write about as Pete? Would the psychoanalysis PQ offered on those responses really achieve anything other than to say “I agree”?

It turns out that Quarry is a complex person, full of contradictions. He is wild and hedonistic, while also being industrious and showing a deep need for security. Once I finished reading the book, I could no longer be surprised by how well the format worked.

Because it does work well. It works superbly. Pete is almost always willing to follow the path that PQ guides him on, but not always. I found myself taking notes—“Laura, this is how you tell a therapist that you’d rather explore something else”—because it was genuinely easy to get lost in the narrative that said these were two distinct characters. When Pete says that something PQ said resonates with him, I don’t hear a person patting himself on the back for crafting an insightful sentence, I hear a man genuinely struck by a perspective he hadn’t considered. By putting himself on the couch, Quarry gains a distance from his life that allows new ideas to surface.

Quarry isn’t just here for the catharsis, though. His main motivation with this book is to inspire reflection in others. Through the mechanism of PQ, he is able to outline exactly how anyone could go about examining their own life as he has done, and I have to say it was very effective for me. Though on the surface Quarry and I have very little in common, I noted several times how much I related to what he was saying and daydreamed about what my session with a PQ would uncover.

Quarry writes very early on that he’s not interested in the recounting of a life that doesn’t delve deeper. He doesn’t want “mere description”, he wants “examination”. This is both addressed to himself, as a way to cement a purpose that would remain in sight for the entire book, and also to anyone who would like to follow his example. It’s like he’s saying, “Here. Take these questions and do it yourself. But think when you do!”

When reviewing a book, I think the most important question is not “was this good?” (and it was), but “did this do what it set out to do?”. Quarry makes this easy to figure out by stating his objectives clearly in his introduction. He wants to explore his life, inspire similar explorations in his readers and trigger empathy, admiration and shock at his exploits.

I greatly enjoyed reading If I Were You. It felt honest and I did indeed empathise with and admire Pete (and PQ for that matter). More than that, I closed the book raring to put my own life under the microscope.

Ballarat Writers Incorporated is delighted to announce that Peter Quarry, author of If I Were You: A psychologist puts himself on the couch, will be coming to Ballarat in April 2023 to deliver a workshop, based on his book, on how to write a memoir that goes deeper than a recounting of events.

Reviewed by: Laura Wilson

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – Whatever Next?, by Anne Glenconner

February 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: Whatever Next? Lessons from an Unexpected Life

Author: Anne Glenconner

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette UK), November 2022; RRP: $32.99

Whatever Next? Lessons from an unexpected Life is an entertaining read written by a woman born into aristocracy and title in England. Anne Glenconner wrote another memoir called Lady in Waiting, which was extraordinarily successful, especially among Royal enthusiasts in the UK. She has also written two works of fiction. Born Lady Anne Coke, the daughter of the fifth Earl of Leicester, she later married Lord Glenconner, and it is mostly her erratic married life with him that is featured in this memoir.

The author recalls in 1953 her role as a maid of honour to the Late Queen Elizabeth II at the Coronation as ‘one of the most exciting days’ of her life. She went on to be a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret for over twenty years, a role and friendship that provided Glenconner the support she needed during her difficult marriage. During her years of service to Princess Margaret, she lived the life of elegance and diplomacy Anne had been raised to be part of. 

Her husband, Lord Glenconner, bought and developed the island of Mustique. The author reveals terrible abuse and violence from her husband. He was flamboyant and self-centred, often leaving Anne to mop up and manage after his crazy behaviour. Despite this, Anne remained oddly infatuated by ‘Colin’ Lord Glenconnor who she stated could be charming and wonderful company.

Leaving her marriage, it seemed, was not an option. Her life was made bearable by finding ways to remain his wife but to have distance between them often. They were wealthy and, in addition to Mustique, owned many properties. It became easy for Lady Glenconner to stay at times in another of their houses in England, which functioned as a calming influence in their lives.

The author hid the violence for many years and is proud of her ability to have found ways to stay calm and divert the disgraceful behaviour of her husband. In doing so she allowed Lord Glenconner to take little responsibility for his actions.     

Despite the glamour of being a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret and the luxurious lifestyle, the family was to endure the loss of two adult sons and a third severely injured in a car accident. These periods in her life were turbulent and devastating.

The author is now ninety, her husband is dead, and she enjoys her life as a writer. It’s hard not to admire the author, as she is a woman of substance who has experienced life’s difficulties in many ways over many years. She remains, in the latter stages of her life, gracious and engaging.  

In Whatever Next? Lessons from an Unexpected Life, Anne Glennconner provides a snapshot into a life that will appeal and interest some people and frustrate others.

Reviewed by: Heather Whitford Roche

Ballarat Writers Inc. Review Group, Jan 2023

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – Forever Home, by Graham Norton

January 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: Forever Home

Author: Graham Norton

Publisher: Coronet/Hachette, 2022; RRP: $32.90

The Author

Graham Norton is a UK comedian and television presenter, popularly known for his BBC self-titled chat show which is aired in Australia on the 10 Network.  Forever Home is Graham’s third novel.

The Book

I would suggest comedians are perceptive observers of human behaviour. Success as a comedian comes from the unique perspectives they afford their audiences when recounting their observations. Forever Home is no exception, but dark.

Lurking within this story is a murder mystery thriller.  However, there is no eagle-eyed detective disguised as a priest, nor sharp witted elderly lady, and not a Belgian moustache in sight. The villain, or the mostly likely villain, is in a nursing home dementia ward. 

The main character, Carol Crottie, could best be described as unfortunate.  She is the daughter of a self-made mid-century kitsch couple, founders of Crottie’s Cafes.  Is that a deliberate tempting for a slip of the tongue?

Carol’s first marriage ended dismally in divorce. Emotionally alone, she continued with the hum drum of life, raising her only son and working as a teacher.  Carol gets another chance at love when she meets Declan and for several years love blinds her to the oddities surrounding her.

The story opens as Carol’s life is again taking a turn for the worse. Declan has Alzheimer’s, and his now adult children have put him in a nursing home and are selling the family home, evicting Carol in the process.

Graham Norton. Image: Hachette

Graham begins this story with a description of an ordinary terrace of houses in an ordinary Irish village.  I liked this opening; it had an identifiable sense of realism. Often when writers write about real life, their stories are filled with prostitutes, drug addicts and/or the desperately down and out.  Not so with Forever Home.  The characters appear suburban and ordinary in a 21st century way, until Graham peels back the hidden layers of smouldering drama and angst that often exist under the guise of ordinariness.

The story line, with its underlying mystery, and the interplay between the various characters make it good holiday reading. Graham has paced the story well and his comedian’s sense of timing comes to the fore. Most readers should find this an entertaining read, never mind the deeper issues on display.

Some social issues/constructs to get a run in this story include same-sex marriage, which I initially felt was a little cliched, surrogacy, exploitation of the elderly by their children, the complexity of second relationships and the accompanying mixed families, and the tension between stepparents and children.  These issues are aired more than explored.

Watch an interview with Graham Norton about Forever Home

@ an post

One of Carol’s sisters has moved to Scotland and is clearly in a same-sex relationship, but the relationship is not acknowledged openly by Carol’s parents.  However, I suspect this was added more to deepen the reader’s view of the relationship between Carol and her mother than to comment on inter-generational acceptance of same-sex relationships.

Graham subtly uses social standing and public image – how we feel we are perceived by the community around us – as a potential threat to Carol and her parents. It also plays a part in her relationship with Declan, an often-underrated source for dramatic tension.

I enjoyed this story, its twists and turns, its use of modern language , social values and constructs.  At one stage the plot seemed obvious but like many obvious plots the only thing obvious is that the ending will be different to what you expect.

Reviewed by: Frank Thompson

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – The Queens of Sarmiento Park, by Camila Sosa Villada

January 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Queens of Sarmiento Park

Author: Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude

Publisher: Hachette UK/Virago Press; RRP $29.99

There are three distinct themes and voices in The Queens of Sarmiento Park, all set within a narrative construct interweaving pure fiction with biographical details of the author’s life, and the realities of being transgender in a world that has always denied them validity.

 Sarmiento Park is as an actual park in Argentina. In this work the author often refers to her characters by the Latin American term travesti, referring to the word ‘transgender’ as a construct of Northern academia. Travesti, she states in the author notes at the beginning, is an ancient word that speaks more honestly of how transgender people are viewed by society generally and one, though an insult, Latin American travesti claim as their own.

In real life, Camila Sosa Villada started to dress as a girl at the age of fifteen. At eighteen she left home to study but, without income and unable to find employment to pay for food and a roof over her head because her ID identified her as male, turned to prostitution. She also continued to write while attending the National University studying theatre. Las Malas (‘Bad Girls‘, published by Virago as The Queens of Sarmiento Park), her first novel, was published in Spanish in 2019 and was a major success. It has been translated into a number of languages and won international awards. These include the Premio Sor Juana de la Cruz (Mexico), the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne-Madame Figaro (France) and the Premio València de Narrativa en Castellano (Spain). It also won the Guadalajara International Book Fair Award for Spanish literature written for women.

Initially struggling to find where it fits in literary nomenclature, I found a number of references to it as a work of auto-fiction. Auto-fiction is defined as a work of fiction where the narrator  or main character is understood to be the author, and which explores the author’s real-life story using technical and fictional devices. It especially serves as providing a space about sensitive personal experiences which might otherwise expose them to abuse, making it a literary device of particular value to those who are marginalised.

Read a sample of The Queens of Sarmiento Park

@ hachette

Events, circumstances, characters and experiences described in two of the three distinct and separate themes are held together by the third: the biographical contentment which acts like string, binding all three separate components into an internally consistent whole.   

The biographical component includes early years as a confused and guilty boy concealing his growing awareness of his true self, violently disapproving parents and their own highly dysfunctional relationship.  It continues to when he finally leaves his home to continue his studying, which involves leading a double life with the group of girls he studies with up till where prostitution became necessary for survival.  

The second theme is the world of the travesti when his older travesti self has accepted this is who he is and what it is to live the full travesti life, and including the realities of what that life is, from how to hide the inevitable four o’clock shadow to sex transplants, the loneliness of being disowned by family and the daily dangers encountered simply walking down the street. It also includes the growing realisation that the only real source of income for all travesti is by prostitution. This is shown mixing both fictional and non-fictional elements.

The third theme is the subject of prostitution itself. This includes what it is to live fully as both prostitute and specifically as transgender.  Woven into these sections are details about the double standards transgender prostitutes encounter in their work through the type of clients they meet, and the violence they regularly encounter from the public and the police.

The plot, which ties fictional and non-fictional elements with a dash of the fantastical, is centred around a newborn baby boy found dumped in a Sarmiento Park ditch and taken home by Encarna, a 178-year-old travesti, to a fabulous pink house she rents which provides shelter to a cast of fictional characters through which the reality of being transgender in a world that rejects them is enacted.

This reality is conveyed in the grim humour in the following line:

 ‘Oh, to truly know fear you need to be a travesti carrying a blood-soaked baby newborn in a purse.’ (p6)

This follows on immediately from a reference to the ‘cloak of invisibility’ the travesti must don every time they walk out their front door. The difference in the likely responses by others to this is immediately apparent.

Read an interview with Camila Sosa Villada

@ we all grow

I found the mix of fiction aimed to entertain and inform on transexuality and prostitution particularly, and the non-fictional elements of the author’s inner life and outer experiences as lived totally absorbing. Nothing is glorified but nor is it tailored to suit an audience that might otherwise judge. Though heavily based in a fictional framework, it also manages to do what any good autobiography does, which is to enable the reader, as much as is possible with written text, to get a sense of getting under the skin of another who is very different to themselves.

The language is blunt, sometimes quite crude, but there are also elements of magic realism, like Maria the Mute (a ‘flea-ridden waif’ rescued by Encarna) who slowly mutates into a bird, and Natalia, who as the seventh male daughter of her family, turned into a she-wolf when the moon was full. And then there is the unbreakable bond that develops between the dumped baby – Twinkle In Her Eye – and the 178-year-old Encarna,  culminating in a devastating conclusion to their relationship years later which is both deeply moving and, in this world, inevitable.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – A Woman Made of Snow, by Elisabeth Giffor

November 25, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Title: A Woman Made of Snow

Author: Elisabeth Gifford

Publisher: Corvus, 2021; RRP: $29.99

After growing up in a vicarage in the English midlands, Elisabeth Gifford achieved academic qualifications in French literature, world religions and creative writing. She has written a series of historical fiction books on subjects as varied as a doctor in a World War II ghetto, and missionaries in China. A Woman Made of Snow is her fifth book.

Marriage towards the end of WWII, quickly followed by the birth of a baby, prevents Caro from following her plans to begin a career in academia like her husband, Alasdair. Having moved from London to Alasdair’s family home in Fife, Scotland, Caro feels stifled by her mother-in-law, Martha. A combination of the discovery of a body on the grounds of Kelly Castle, the family home, and a need to restore and maintain the castle, provides the background to this story. Alasdair’s family history involves a missing relative – there are no records, no photographs and no mention made of Alasdair’s great-grandmother. Could hers be the body that is revealed during a flood? Caro is given the task of reviewing family documents to help support a claim for funds from the National Trust and simultaneously search for information about the missing woman.

The author deftly weaves a narrative between the early years after WWII and the1880s. Research into contact between Scottish whaling ships and the customs and living conditions of the Inuit people they encountered provides an extremely interesting thread and some significant plot twists. These are supported by an exploration of the developments in relationships between different generations in families, both the more recent as well those from the 19th century.

It is interesting to see the character development throughout this novel. Relationships change, some for the better and others not so much, as the story unfolds. Other characters are not what they seem.

This is a really enjoyable book for both its depiction of relationships and its exploration of otherwise little-known information about the contact between Scottish whalers and the Arctic First Nations people.

Reviewed by: Elisabeth Bridson, October 2022

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

Book review – The Bone Spindle, by Leslie Vedder

November 11, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Title: The Bone Spindle

Author: Leslie Vedder

Publisher: Hachette 2022; RRP $17.99

As an American author of YA novels, Leslie Vedder is known for creating female heroes in her fantasy books. Her stories also include settings where LGBTIQ characters appear as a matter of course, without prejudice.

The Bone Spindle is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, with a twist – the character cast into a deep sleep by a wicked witch is Prince Briar Rose, and his rescuer is a girl, Filore Nenroa, known as Fi.

At the beginning of the book Fi seeks a partner to assist in gathering information and relics of the past relating to magic. This role is filled by Shane, another girl. However, Shane’s main quest differs from Fi’s – she’s more interested in retrieving ancient treasures to sell for profit. The pairing is not always harmonious, but after several early adventures – including some exciting near misses – they unite to complete the quest to rescue Briar. This quest is made necessary by Fi being pricked by the same spindle that cast the spell over the prince a hundred years earlier.

Both the main protagonists, and some of the other characters, have interesting back stories – Fi is already dealing with a curse she’s had cast on her, and Shane has her own family issues to deal with because of being the elder of twins. The author neatly weaves in their histories in a series of flashbacks, providing the reader with relevant information throughout the main story.

Fairy tale retellings in 15 categories

@ once upon a bookcase

There are clever twists and turns throughout the book, with not everything being as it originally seems. The author has created an interesting mix of witches – both good and evil – villains and helpers, curses, spells, and nightmarish landscapes, which the two girls are compelled to navigate in their various quests. Relationships, both platonic and romantic, between the major characters and others are explored and developed in interesting, sometimes unexpected, ways.

While the worldbuilding in this book is done with a deft touch, it is sometimes difficult to suspend disbelief when reading about all the skills and experiences Fi and Shane have gained at their ages, 17 and 18 respectively. The book could also have done with a little more judicious editing – I’m not sure ‘chambered’ means what the author thinks it does, and it’s disconcerting to read that a poster torn from the wall and screwed into a ball in someone’s hand is somehow in shreds on the floor just a couple of lines later.

However, these are minor quibbles in a book that is a rollicking tale, with a good mix of humour and adventure, as well as the already mentioned relationship developments. As the first of a trilogy, it will be interesting to see what happens next, for, as one character says three pages from the end, ‘This is not the end … It is only the very beginning’.

Reviewed by: Elisabeth Bridson

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher

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