The Amanda Knox story remains one of the most curious events in recent legal history, appearing to come straight from the pages of the most ambitious thriller. Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach reviews Amanda Knox’s memoir Waiting To Be Heard.
Here was Amanda Knox. A young, attractive American studying in Italy who had been found guilty of murdering her flatmate, Meredith Kercher. Her boyfriend and her employer, a local bar owner, her accomplices. Quite a story.
Needless to say, the press lapped it up. The prosecution got in on the mayhem too, argued many reasons for the violent crime ranging from a falling out over a cleaning roster to a sex game gone wrong.
Unlike many average-person-turned-infamous memoirs, Waiting to be Heard is incredibly interesting for two reasons. One, she is a talented writer. Those in the know say she insisted on writing it herself, and probably save for a few standard edits the words are hers, and the book is all the better for it. It’s clear she knows the speed with which to tell a story, even if the cliffhanger passages that wrap up chapters seem a little dramatic. She’s currently studying creative writing and no doubt has a novel in the works.
The other reason Waiting to be Heard is so interesting is, for even those who proclaimed her innocence, there have always been moments of “What were are you thinking?“
Like…..
When first found at the crime scene she was filmed passionately kissing her boyfriend. What were you thinking?
When she was innocently questioned by police about her use of marijuana (which she later admitted was daily) and she said she’d done drugs before. What were you thinking?
When, knowing the police were following her hours after the attack, she and her boyfriend went lingerie shopping. What were you thinking?
When she started performing cartwheels and splits to various members of the police during questioning. What were you thinking?
When she was wearing protective clothing to inspect the crime scene and started doing funny poses, laughing for the cameras. What were you thinking?
When she accused her boss of murdering her friend, despite then writing a note hours later saying she lied.
Seriously, Amanda. What were you thinking?!
And thankfully these questions get answered, albeit with the excuse of a naïveté I doubt she possesses. I found myself constantly wondering throughout the book whether these strange actions were brain snaps, or if Knox was simply a playfully eccentric young woman who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I have no doubt in my mind of her innocence, but there are still many that doubt her story. Either by chance or design, and while answering the questions we ask, Knox never really convinces you of the key points in her story. After reading the book, I found it created as many questions as it answered.
The arrest, trial, and retrial of Amanda Knox remains a moment that enthralled the world. And in Waiting To Be Heard, we have a book that matches the drama and tension of the event itself, which is no small feat.
Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog and was shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize. He enjoys complaining about the weather and wants more novels to involve crime-fighting chimpanzees.
You can read his other posts here, and follow his ramblings on twitter at @andrew__cat.
Bestselling author Khaled Hosseini returns to our shelves with his hugely anticipated third novel. On the eve of its release, Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach casts an eye over it.
Maya Angelou once said “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise”. Whether Khaled Hosseini has heard that sage advice is unlikely. That he shares the same view, however, is all but certain. His new novel And The Mountains Echoed shares the same heartbeat as his previous works, but instead of reaching for the stars he appears to have developed through regression, at least from an emotional standpoint. His latest offering, while boasting a globe hopping narrative and an array of multi-generational characters, is a measured, tender, and still powerful exploration of what makes us tick.
Hosseini is one of the world’s most celebrated writers, with a body of work that includes the worldwide best seller The Kite Runner and the acclaimed 2007 book A Thousand Splendid Suns. Both books examined the inner workings of the human condition. Powerful themes of loss, love, power, redemption, all set against the turbulent backdrop of Afghan history. Spanning generations, both books came with heart-wrenching emotional conflict, epic in every sense of the word.
While And The Mountains Echoed is a weave of incredibly powerful tales, Hosseini skilfully pulls back the reigns on an all out emotional roller coaster, allowing the story to unravel bit by bit. We begin in 1952, as Kaboor, is telling his 10-year-old son, Abdullah, and little girl, Pari, a fantastical tale about a child taken from its family under wrenching circumstances. The father makes a brutal pilgrimage to mountains to rescue his son, only to find the boy is being raised in paradise. He leaves him there.
It sets the scene, as much of the book chronicles the agonizing choices we all make in extraordinary circumstances around the people we love.
Young Pari is swiftly cut away from her poor family to join an upwardly mobile one, triggering the novel’s slingshot trajectory between Afghanistan, France, Greece and California and back and forth across the decades up to the present.
Pari may be the book’s protagonist but she is not its obvious star. Between an alcoholic poet married to a closeted gay man, a surly but heroic nurse, a sentimental man-servant, a selfless plastic surgeon, and others variously introduced via posthumous letters, media interviews and sweeping recollections, Pari barely makes a peep once the novel gets a move on.
I won’t go any further, but it’s not as chaotic as it sounds. The ball keeps rolling and each character enters and leaves at the perfect time, never halting the pace and progress of the novel.
Many have questioned if Khaled Hosseini could continue his impossibly high standards after his previous two works. And incredibly he has, with a beautiful, confident novel told by a true master. The Kite Runner might have been a fluke, A Thousand Splendid Suns a coincidence, but And The Mountains Echoed will surely solidify Hosseini as one of the greatest novelists in the world today.
Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog and was shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping though finds it difficult to do them all at once.
You can read his other posts here, and follow his ramblings on twitter at @andrew__cat.
Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach has thrown himself into Dan Brown’s latest blockbuster. Read what he thought of all the hype .
(Scroll to the bottom to see the three lucky people receiving copies signed by Dan Brown).
How peculiar a world that seems content to throw billions of dollars at Adam Sandler dressing up as a woman to play his twin sister, yet derides an author because they offer more substance than style.
As an author Dan Brown has made no secret of being an excellent maths teacher. Where other writers of similar ilk go on speaking tours and blog about their genius, Dan Brown has chosen a life away from his millions of fans. To the outsider he appears nearly embarrassed at the juggernaut he’s created, one of the few authors without the names “E.L” and “James” to constantly be a hot topic of mainstream media everywhere.
While criticism of some of his peccadillos are warranted, Brown’s prose is one of necessity rather than sheer beauty. He trades in twists and turns, not poetry. But therein lies his greatest strength. He knows his limitations and builds a story with the discipline that few writers possess. Certainly not me, as I so often find what I once thought was a moving, transcendental passage I’ve written one day, to be pretentious gibberish the next. This passage is starting to become a prime example.
With Dan Brown, the story is everything. He prefers to be heard, but not seen.
Which brings me to Dan Brown’s latest book, the much-anticipated Inferno. Released this week to a typically split audience. While pages are still being turned hurriedly in homes around the world, those who have read it appear to either love it or hate it. Ironically Dan Brown has always buttered his bread on the uncertainty of his characters ultimate intentions save for his constant hero Robert Langdon, and Inferno is no exception.
Langdon wakes groggily from a nightmare in a hospital, with no memory of how he got there. Told by doctors at his bedside he was attacked, they are interrupted by another attempt on his life. He escapes with a blonde (but is she?) doctor (but is she?) who is completely puzzled by all the commotion (but is she?). He finds a small cylindrical object in a hidden compartment in his jacket, and they begin to put the pieces of a doomsday plot together.
From there a sort of Indiana-Jones-meets-Antiques-Roadshow Treasure Hunt commences, the likes of which have captivated audiences for over a decade.
This runs parallel to a subplot involving the shadowy organisation “The Consortium”, which Brown says is a real organisation but has changed their name for secret societal anonymity. The Consortium’s sinister leader Zobrist shows his hand as a classically evil mastermind, intent on destroying the world to help it. Unfortunately, he’s a bit of an overreach as a believable villain, forever one stroke of a white cat away from being sued by the estate of Ian Fleming.
The upside of the character is his reason for world annihilation is actually a clever and original concept. It is much more in line with the themes of Dante’s Inferno than most of the book is (the main allusion seems to be that much of it is set in Florence). Langdon’s recurring nightmares also serve as a hint to what he must save the world from. But will he? You’ll need to follow shootouts, poisonings, shifty looks, secret passages and occasionally turn your book sideways and upside down to find out.
If you were wondering what camp of readers I fall into with Dan Brown, I like him. Yes, I’ve sat in lecture halls and studied the classics, and yes, his writing is far from great. But that’s not his job. Not all reading is about existential discovery. Sometimes people just read for pleasure, guilty or otherwise. And Dan Brown is a big bowl of ice cream in bed with the curtains drawn. Nothing wrong with that.
Why read Inferno? Let me put it this way. My favourite film is Citizen Kane. But sometimes I like to watch Caddyshack II, because I can’t watch Citizen Kane every night. I know Citizen Kane is a better film, but sometimes I just like to see Chevy Chase play golf with hilarious consequences. Because it’s fun. Not better, just fun.
The sooner we stop reading for fun, the sooner we stop reading at all. And we can’t have that now can we?
—– UPDATE: Thanks to all the people who pre-ordered a copy of Inferno and went into the draw to win one of three signed copies by Dan Brown. The winners are:
M. Rodriguez, Artarmon, NSW. P. Duncan, Clermont, QLD. N. Nolan, Bundoora, VIC.
Keep checking ourTwitter and Facebook pages, along with our Blog, for more great competitions and giveaways.
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Andrew Cattanach is a contributor to The Booktopia Blog and was shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping though finds it difficult to do them all at once.
You can read his other posts here, and see him talk about things like the weather and cheese on twitter at @andrew__cat.
Posted on January 3, 2013 by booktopiaguestblogger
To say that I’m a fan of the works of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien is an understatement. I’ll admit I was a little late to the party tree in embracing the world of Middle-Earth but after seeing the first trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring I was hooked.
I became a little obsessed. And when I say a little, I mean a lot. I purchased every book I could get my hands on and spent hours upon hours absorbing Tolkien’s works and history. The thought of becoming a Tolkien scholar crossed my mind a few times but I’m just not willing to learn Elvish. There are lines this nerd just won’t cross.
By the time The Return of the King had come into cinemas I had already grown a beard and my long hair was coming along nicely. I call these my Aragorn years. I also met the love of my life that year who, luckily for me, shared my interest in all things Tolkien. Our first date was watching The Return of the King. Our first overseas trip was to New Zealand so we could visit all the film locations. I was in nerd heaven.
That was almost nine years ago. I don’t have a beard or long hair anymore, I don’t smoke my pipe and my Tolkien library is a bit dusty. But I still love Tolkien’s books and have watched the films more times than I’ll admit to. Naturally I was eagerly anticipating the release of The Hobbit and my expectations were high. After almost nine long years of waiting we finally got to sit down and watch it in glorious 3D.
For me it was like coming home. Returning to Bag End accompanied by Howard Shore’s amazing score was a joyful experience and I loved every minute of it. Martin Freeman is perfect as the younger Bilbo Baggins; in fact all the casting is perfect. The Dwarves steal the show in parts and the return of some familiar faces is a welcome sight.
But for me the films biggest achievement is that it was fun to watch. It was the sense of joy that pulled me back into Middle-Earth and my very loud; walrus like laugh rang throughout the cinema. If I knew the words to the Dwarven songs I would have been singing along with a mug of ale in my hand.
The Hobbit is visually astounding and the 3D is the best I have seen yet.
There’s been some criticism of the films use of a higher frame rate, even people saying that it made them nauseous watching it. But seriously, were those people smoking pipe weed? I couldn’t fault it.
The other major controversy is that The Hobbit, hardly a long book, will be spilt into three films and there will be material added from Tolkien’s other books to flesh out the story. And while Peter Jackson and his merry band have once again taken some serious liberties with Tolkien’s work I feel it works well.
The films only fault is that it has no real ending and we have to wait another year before we get to see the continuation of Bilbo and the Dwarves’ journey. Thankfully Tolkien’s novel has been in print for seventy-five years so the impatient among us won’t have to wait.
The first thing I did when we got back home was dust off my illustrated edition of The Hobbit. I was back in Middle-Earth and the urge to grow my hair was high.
Posted on September 7, 2012 by booktopiaguestblogger
I first became acquainted with Benjamin Law’s writing in the pages of frankie magazine several years ago and he has since become one of my favourite Australian writers. So when a copy of Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer Eastturned up at the Booktopia office I acted like a deranged fangirl and declared that I must – MUST! – review this book. And, unsurprisingly, my instincts were proven right. This book is an illuminating exploration of an issue that does not normally get a mention in discussions of Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Law provides some valuable insights into the nations he visits.
In Gaysia Law becomes our enthusiastic guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) experience in seven countries: Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar and India. In each chapter Law generally focuses on one or two specific examples from the country at hand (for example, gay conversion therapies in Malaysia or a beauty pageant for transsexual women in Thailand), and uses this to explore the wider issues of gay acceptance in that country. This approach works well as Law is able to gain great insights from the people he interviews, and this makes for a very warm and engaging work. To his credit, Law does recognise that his approach does not encompass the totality of LGBT experience and he cannot provide a sweeping analysis of homosexuality in Asia. The work does not suffer because of this; the greatest strength of the book is its focus on personal stories as this provides an opportunity to engage with people who, for the most part, would have otherwise remained invisible to us.
Each nation Law takes us to throws up a different set of issues, and he makes clear the ways in which the social, cultural and political norms of a particular country influence the ways in which queer sexualities are perceived and experienced. For example, Law discovers that gay personalities are everywhere on Japanese television, but are expected to behave in a way which essentially renders them as figures of entertainment; they are drag queens with wicked senses of humour, or super-camp gay men with biting social critiques (basically think of the campest gay stereotype that you can, add a vat of glitter, and you’ve got what Law is describing here). While the visibility of certain types of queer identities is positive in that it at least shows a superficial acceptance of homosexuality, the absence of others, particularly lesbians, hints at a deeper lack of acceptance or understanding of LGBT issues in Japanese society.
In stark contrast to Japan is Myanmar, a country struggling with an exorbitantly high HIV infection rate for gay men (where they are 42 times more likely to contact HIV than their counterparts in any other country) and woefully inadequate resources to cope with the crisis. Further, the grinding poverty, lack of education and geographic isolation prevalent among Myanmar’s citizens means that many may never gain access to the life-saving drugs they need. The contrast between Japan and Myanmar not only demonstrates the varying challenges that people of different backgrounds in Asia face; it also gives the reader a valuable insight into the society and culture of each nation.
For me, Gaysia did not only provide a fascinating insight into the experiences of LGBT people in Asia, but into the broader social and cultural structures of each country. In the chapter on Malaysia, for example, Law provides a sense of the multiplicity of religions, their regional concentrations and the roles they play in Malaysian society. This ability to ground each chapter in a broader context really strengthens the work and provides yet another reason why this book is so valuable. Law recognises that in each country deeply ingrained historical, cultural and political factors influence the ways in which queer sexualities are regarded, as exemplified by gays and lesbians marrying each other to stave off parental pressure in China or the existence of a ‘third sex’ in Thailand. Law demonstrates the unique circumstances, and difficulties, that each nation’s gay population faces in their struggle to find a place in their societies.
Gaysia is an absolutely fascinating book, and I have gained so much from reading it. There are many heartbreaking stories of familial rejection, of hiding identity and, overwhelmingly, of feeling invisible. Yet there are also stories of resilience, happiness and love. Gaysia is a book with human experience at its core, and these stories are wonderfully brought to life through Law’s vivid documentation of his quest through the queer heart of Asia.
Posted on August 20, 2012 by booktopiaguestblogger
It may seem bizarre to imagine that Florence Nightingale provided the inspiration for Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, yet in The Twelve Rooms of the Nile we are invited to do just that.
Set in 1850, Enid Shomer’s debut novel imagines a blossoming relationship between Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert as they tour the ruins of Egypt. I should make clear that this is a work of fiction; although both Nightingale and Flaubert were in Egypt at the same time, there is no evidence that they ever even met, let alone formed the close bond they do in Shomer’s work. However, in this remarkable piece of alternate history, they find the impetus for their future successes in each other.
Shomer’s Nightingale is achingly unfulfilled and despairs that she will never fulfil what she sees as God’s calling for her. Although she loves her family dearly, she resents their expectation that she make a good marriage, that she be chaperoned at all times and that she always behave with docility. Indeed, there are many instances throughout the novel where she is (sometimes severely) chastised for her exuberance and determination. Nightingale finds an outlet for her unconventional ideas in Flaubert, and the relationship strengthens her resolve to defy the wishes of her family and forge a career in nursing.
Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert, meanwhile, is disillusioned by his early literary failures and devastated by the recent death of his sister. He tends to swing between periods of great despair and great desire, and subsequently many of Flaubert’s chapters are devoted to either depressive ruminations or lurid descriptions of sexual yearnings. Nightingale provides an interesting inspiration for Flaubert’s future literary endeavours as he finds her to be so remarkable that he resolves to focus his next work on a female protagonist. When considered in light of Flaubert’s own sensual proclivities it is possible to see how Nightingale could have provided the inspiration for Emma Bovary, and it is to Shomer’s credit that she develops this so cleverly.
Overall the characters are fascinating and well developed, however it is Shomer’s descriptions of the Egyptian landscape that are the strength of the novel. The dusty, arid landscape makes its wrath known upon the tourists and many times while reading I felt almost as if my own skin were caked in desert sand.
Florence Nightingale
Other scenes, such as one in a foul, mummy-strewn temple elicited a similarly visceral response. The point of this is not to turn anyone off reading the book, but rather to accentuate the immensely descriptive power that Shomer demonstrates in her writing.
Shomer’s Egypt is a land of crushing poverty and rampant disease, of cruel punishments and government corruption. It certainly holds immense beauty for its European visitors, however their awe is largely aimed at the dead civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians and rarely at nineteenth-Century Egyptian society (two major exceptions being the exotic food and, for Flaubert and his companion, particularly exquisite prostitutes). Shomer’s critical approach to the imperialist mentality of her European protagonists makes for a far stronger novel than if this was just left as a quaint aspect of the period setting. As such I found myself drawn into the burgeoning relationship between Nightingale and Flaubert while also considering the broader issues brought out in the novel, and this resulted in an immensely captivating and intellectually satisfying read.
Before she became the nineteenth-century’s heroine, before he had written a word of Madame Bovary, Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert traveled up the Nile at the same time.
In reality, they never met. But in The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, they ignite a friendship marked by intelligence, humour, and a ravishing tenderness that will alter both their destinies.
On the surface, Nightingale and Flaubert have little in common. She is a woman with radical ideas about society and God, naive in the ways of men. He is a notorious womanizer, involved with innumerable prostitutes. But both are at painful crossroads in their lives and burn with unfulfilled ambition.
In Shomer’s deft hands, the two unlikely soulmates come together to share their darkest torments and fervent hopes. Brimming with adventure and the sparkling sensibilities of the two travelers, this mesmerizing debut novel offers a luminous combination of gorgeous prose and wild imagination, all of it coloured by the opulent tapestry of mid-nineteenth century Egypt.
The thing about Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is that a) you have to read it and b) you have to avoid spoilers at all costs. There’s a lot of buzz surrounding this book at the moment. People are talking. Whatever you do, you MUST NOT discuss this book with anyone who has read it. If a friend recommends Gone Girl to you and starts trying to tell you what it’s about, you need to block your ears and back away slowly because your “friend” is about to ruin a really great reading experience for you and you need to get away from them right now!
Part crime novel, part suspense-thriller, part family drama, Gone Girl is a difficult book to define. On the one hand, it’s a finely crafted mystery full of red herrings and shock twists. On the other hand it’s a totally original, weirdly addictive and darkly twisted “Un-Romance”. If this book had a theme song it would be Love is a Battlefield. If it was a cocktail, it would be a vodka martini with a twist (served with a sprinkling of anti-freeze). If it were a person, this book would be a really good looking, super charming and amazingly witty knife-wielding-psychopath.
Gone Girl is the kind of book that you should read knowing as little as possible about the plot. Which actually makes it a really difficult book to review. I’m hesitant to say too much for fear that, in my enthusiasm, I might accidentally give too much away.
So. All you really need to know about the plot of Gone Girl is that it is about a man and a woman.
Too vague?
Ok, fine. Gone Girl is about a man called Nick and a woman called Amy. Nick and Amy meet, fall in love and get married. Oh, and then Amy goes missing on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary and all signs point to foul play.
What happened to Amy? Is she dead? Did Nick kill his lovely wife? Was Amy really as lovely as she seemed? Is Nick a hero or a villain? Don’t look at me for answers. Seriously, don’t. I have no poker-face and I’m trying really hard keep things spoiler-free!
In one sense, the plot of Gone Girl is an incredibly simple one. But it’s not so much what happens in the book that makes it so incredible (even though what happens is pretty gosh-darn incredible), but rather how the story is told. The book is written in split narrative format – switching viewpoints between Nick and Amy, with Amy’s side of the story shown in diary entries.
Now you would think this kind of “he said, she said” narrative style would allow readers to get a clear, unbiased view from both sides of Nick and Amy’s marriage. Yeah. You would think that. Instead, almost from the first switch in viewpoint, it rapidly becomes clear that neither Nick, nor Amy, can be depended on to tell the truth. These are two very unreliable narrators, constantly trying to deceive and manipulate. And yet, even though you know you can’t trust them, they are both so convincing that trying to sift truth from lies becomes a mind boggling game of second guessing everything you are told. And what unfolds as Nick and Amy tell their story is a gloriously twisted, deliciously disturbing tale of love-gone-wrong.
When thinking how best to describe Gone Girl, my mind fumbles around trying to find a word that means both wonderful and disturbing. Amazing and yet also… slightly icky. Amazick?
For instance, take this sentence from the beginning of the book in which Nick describes how he was always fascinated by the way Amy’s mind worked. This is the point at which Gillian Flynn hooked me (i.e. the very first page of the book) -
“Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain, sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy?”
Now that right there is what you call an “amazicky” mental picture. And that’s only the beginning.
This is a sly, underhanded book, the kind that plays all sorts of sneaky mindgames in an attempt to distract you, misdirect you and then (just when you think you’re starting to figure it all out) pull the rug out from under your feet. Constantly surprising and consistently unsettling and often downright chilling, Gone Girl tracks the disintegration of what I can only describe as one of the most bizarrely dysfunctional, oddly co-dependant and severely messed up relationships ever, in the history of fiction. And yes. I have read Twilight.
The main theme here is Husband v Wife. If love is a battlefield then marriage is shown to be a weapon of mass destruction in Gone Girl. This is a book that asks the deceptively simple question – how well can you really know the person you love? What if you don’t really know them at all? What if they know you better than anyone else in the world, better even than you know yourself?
There is a very good reason Gone Girl is being touted as one of the 2012’s surprise hits. This book is virtually impossible to put down and is slowly creeping up the New York Times Bestseller List. If you check out the list you will find three books ahead of Gone Girl, all with the word “Fifty” in the title. I’m not going to talk about those books because doing so only ever ends with me shaking my fist at the sky and shouting, “WHY?!!?”. Instead, I will focus on #4 and comfort myself with the knowledge that one of the most compelling books I’ve read in ages – a sharply written, genre-defying gem of a book like Gone Girl – is causing such a splash and captivating so many readers.
In short, my advice is that you read Gone Girl and read it fast. Get on it quick, before someone spoils the ending for you! Or before the inevitable movie hits the big screens (the film rights have already been sold with Reese Witherspoon reportedly cast as Amy). And if you enjoy it half as much as I did, Gillian Flynn’s previous two novels Sharp Objects and Dark Places will leapfrog straight to the top of your To-Be-Read pile.
In reviewing the latest and one of the greatest novels in Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Richard Ford’s literary career Canada, one is reminded of the simple turn of the tap, the water slowly seeping out before a sudden rush of brilliance, albeit the brilliance is also there in the wonderful beginning, only in more hushed tones.
It’s been six years since Ford has released a novel and while it’s been a tense wait for many devotees rest assured it hasn’t been in vain. Canada is an stunning study of family, loss, and human nature at its purest. One of the greatest American authors of the era, Ford’s skill lies in his incredible descriptions of the North American landscape as well as his mesmerising asides on the human condition when thrust into atypical circumstances.
The year is 1960, and the Parsons family – father Bev, mother Neeva, and 15-year-old Dell and his twin sister, Berner – are settled, just about, in the city of Great Falls, Montana, having moved there four years previously. Bev, a good ol’ boy from Alabama, had been an air force bombardier who saw action in the Philippines and Osaka, “where they rained down destruction on the earth”. Having left the service, he works as a car salesman and then gets involved in a beef-smuggling racket with a local band of Indians. Neeva, short for Geneva, “a tiny, intense, bespectacled woman with unruly brown hair, vestiges of which ran down her jawline”, is Jewish, and has literary pretensions, or longings, at least. She and Bev are an archetypical American married couple of the time, who just happen to become bank robbers.
In Canada Dell, the narrator tells the story from the dual perspective of both 15-year-old boy and reflective adult, deftly beginning the book with the curtain still closed, the skill of a truly great writer. With this brave beginning, Ford begins to entice your knuckles to tighten as the story unfolds, the tension building as the curtain slowly cascades stage left.
As justice is seemingly being served Dell is parted from Berner as she walks off in hope of the American Dream, even at such a tender age. Dell is driven by a friend of his mother’s across the border to Canada, where he will be left in the care, in the loosest form of the word, of her brother Arthur who owns a run-down hotel outside Saskatchewan. Here Dell meets Arthur’s dangerously untamed henchman Charley Quarters, a character on whom an entire book could be devoted. Through the book, Ford brings us back to the same chorus, questioning the American Dream although remaining neutral on the merits of the pursuit of it.
“Through all these memorable events, normal life was what I was seeking to preserve for myself.”
But what, by now, would constitute normal life?
The final encounter at the close of the book between Dell and Berner is one of the most tenderly drawn scenes in modern literature, and could only have been written by a writer of Richard Ford’s empathy, insight and technical mastery.
Canada is another masterpiece by a true master. It’s far too early to call it a true classic, but the parallels Ford draws between today’s economic and social climate and the individual’s quest for financial sovereignty of the 1960’s is incredibly crafted. As always, his characters are richly constructed and his writing strikes chords you never knew you had, drifting between heart-achingly venerable to brutally direct in a single thought. Ford never loses control throughout his prose, as rich at times as it is demur at others. Soon to be talked about amongst literary scholars for years to come, why not talk about it today.
Guest Reviewer: Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach
Canada
by Richard Ford
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford’s masterpiece.
First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later.
In 1956, Del Parsons’ family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Del and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother Neeva – from an educated, immigrant, Jewish family – was shy, artistic and alienated from their father’s small-town world of money scrapes and living on-the-fly. It was more bad instincts and bad luck that Del’s parents decided to rob the bank. They weren’t reckless people.
In the days following the arrest, Del and Berner lock themselves inside the house and wait for the friend their mother said would come. When no-one does, Berner runs away. Del, a solitary child obsessed with bee-keeping and chess, does not have friends to call on.
Del is saved before the authorities think to arrive. Driving across the Montana border into Saskatchewan his life hurtles towards the unknown, towards a hotel in a deserted town, towards the violent and enigmatic American Arthur Remlinger, and towards Canada itself – a landscape of rescue and abandonment. But as Del discovers, in this new world of secrets and upheaval, he is not the only one whose own past lies on the other side of a border.
In Canada, Richard Ford has created a masterpiece. A haunting and visionary novel of vast landscapes, complex identities and fragile humanity. It questions the fine line between the normal and the extraordinary, and the moments in our lives that take us into new worlds.
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Author: Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944. He has published six novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, A Multitude of Sins and, most recently,The Lay of the Land. Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes. He lives in Maine with his wife, Kristina Ford.
Novelist and regular Booktopia Blog contributor, Kylie Ladd, recently reviewed Canada on the Wheeler Centre website:
In Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, Kate Summerscale casts a spotlight on a little known chapter in history. This is a very thoroughly researched case study detailing the true story of an unhappily married woman in Victorian Society. In this, the age of Cougar Town, Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, when women are applauded for chasing younger men and practically expected to experience dissatisfaction in their marriage, the idea of a woman keeping a diary of her extra martial affairs is not really very shocking. In fact, it sounds like the plot to the next Katherine Heigl movie.
In 1850s England, however, such an idea was enough to stop the press. Although a woman sat on the throne, this was an age in which woman did not yet have the right to vote. As Kate Summerscale’s research shows us, this was also an age in which any woman who was known to desire a man she was not married to was deemed to be suffering from sexual mania, in which PMS was actually considered to be a mental disorder that might land a woman in an asylum. Most of all, it was an age in which a lady’s husband was her lord and master.
Marriage, in the words of Queen Victoria herself, can be “a very doubtful happiness”. Still, in Victorian England, divorce was very rare. Not only did the social stigma of a failed marriage make divorce virtually unthinkable, most people simply couldn’t afford to get divorced. Divorce was such a lengthy and expensive process that it simply wasn’t an option outside of the aristocracy, who were ironically less inclined to go through the scandal of a divorce than unhappily married people of the lower classes. In the 1850s new laws were passed in order to make divorce cheaper and therefore more accessible to the middle class.
The first half of Summerscale’s book outlines the true story of Isabella Robinson, a women in her early thirties who had just entered into her second marriage. Like most marriages of the time, it was a marriage of convenience. Isabella’s husband could provide her with financial security, but very little else. Being an intelligent and passionate woman at her sexual peak, Isabella (trail blazing for generations of “cougars” to follow) soon finds herself lusting after a young man ten years her junior. Her obsession with him begins to rule her life and she pours all her repressed passion and frustrated sexual energy into her diary. When her husband finds her diary, he announces his intention to divorce her.
The second half of the book follows the explosive divorce trial. The case rests on proving whether or not Isabella’s diary is true. If it was true then she cheated on her husband and he can therefore divorce her on the grounds of adultery. If it’s not true then (according to Victorian society) she is obviously a madwoman suffering from a sexual mania such as erotomania or nyphomania and therefore cannot be held legally responsible for her actions.
Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady might be non-fiction but it reads very much like a novel. For those who see the words “historical non-fiction” and immediately start snoring – don’t be too hasty to judge! This is an exciting story of scandal and intrigue, as well as a riveting courtroom drama. And on top of that, it is truly a revealing snapshot of Victorian times with cameo appearances from notable historical figures such as Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens.
Summerscale’s research is impressive. She has gone to extraordinary lengths compiling letters, newspaper clippings, public records and census information in order to build a really solid social and historical framework through which to view Mrs. Robinson’s story.
Still, throughout everything, Isabella Robinson remains something of a mystery. With her original diary lost, sadly all that remains of her words are the sections that were printed in the newspapers during the divorce trial. From Summerscale’s account, Isabella emerges as a woman full of contradictions. Impulsive and creative, selfish and hysterical, in ways born ahead of her times and in others wholly a product of her times – all that can be said for certain about Isabella Robinson is that she was very unhappy in what she called “the bonds of a dreaded wedlock”.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady is that it gives readers a rare glimpse into the sheer wealth of feeling that went unspoken during this time period. Here is proof that people in Victorian times were not really all that different from people nowadays. Isabella Robinson was an emotionally intense woman who either led a very rich fantasy life, or conducted multiple extra martial affairs (it is unclear how much of her diary was true and how much was simply “make-believe”). Either way, she clearly had just as many issues going on as the average modern woman. She was simply better at hiding her issues because she lived in a society in which any kind of strong emotional display was considered “bad manners”. This was a time when one avoided airing ones dirty laundry at all costs, let alone plastering it all over Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The idea of a Victorian woman obsessing over a younger man and feverishly detailing her sexual fantasies about him in her diary is just… well it’s like imagining Queen Victoria shopping for naughty lingerie, or Charles Darwin reading dirty magazines. It’s shocking, and fascinating and strangely comforting. It’s nice to think that perhaps our ancestors weren’t quite as stuffy and dull as they appear to be in all those old back and white pictures.
Summerscale’s previous book, The Suspicions of Mr Wicher, is said to be a study of the real life detective who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes. In this same vein, Isabella Robinson could easily be said to have inspired characters like Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley. But the best thing about Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady is the realisation that Isabella Robinson probably wasn’t all that different from the average Victorian woman. In fact, the only real difference was that the average Victorian woman was a little more clever about hiding her diary.
From the bestselling, multi-award-winning author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher comes a brand new true story of a Victorian scandal.
On a mild winter’s evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone house lit by gas lamps. This was the home of the rich widow Lady Drysdale, a vivacious hostess whose soirees were the centre of an energetic intellectual scene.
Lady Drysdale’s guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first floor, the ladies in dresses of glinting silk and satin, bodices pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats, neckties and pleated shirt fronts, dark narrow trousers and shining shoes. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was introduced to Lady Drysdale’s daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Edward Lane. She was at once enchanted by the handsome Mr Lane, a medical student ten years her junior. He was ‘fascinating’, she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man’s charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, which she was to find hard to shake…
A compelling story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy, and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality, Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace brings vividly to life a complex, frustrated Victorian wife, longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.
About the Author
Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in London.
According to popular wisdom, there are only seven original plot lines for stories and every thing else is but a variation. This is not a theory generally put about by publishers, nor by authors. No wonder then that every now and then I am presented with books that are almost mirror images of each other, despite being penned by different people. It breaks my heart to think that two authors might have laboured away, sometimes for years, only to find themselves shadow boxing their alter ego on release day.
If that were not hazardous enough for authors, there is the situation of a novel that has captured the zeitgeist of the moment, that becomes the standard by which all other ones in the genre are judged. In 2003 for example, Mark Haddon blew everyone away with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. That, and John Boyne’s The Boy in Striped Pyjamas a few years later, became the benchmarks for the authentic depiction of the child’s voice in adult fiction. Darren Groth’s Kindling was a great addition, with the advantage of having a wonderfully Australian setting. Last year, Emma Donaghue’s Room, longlisted for the Man Booker, added gravitas to this sub-genre of contemporary writing. There have been a swag of wannabes and notgoodenoughs but these four have stood out as beacons. Until now.
Recently, I was presented with three debut novels for early 2012, each one being sold to me as the natural successor in that lineage. I have dipped into all three but only one quickly became mandatory reading.
I don’t know which of the seven plot lines Memoirs of an Imaginary Frienddraws on, but I can tell you that Matthew Green’s debut novel is fresh and original enough to almost live up to its publisher’s claim of being “unforgettable”. Certainly it was that other over-used word – “unputdownable”.
Not only is Green clever enough to get into the headspace of a youngster, he is clever enough to do it with the clarion call of authenticity – no mean feat given that the child in question is Budo, who is in fact an imaginary creation of a boy called Max. Max is no ordinary boy. If he were described by an adult, he might be labelled autistic, or Aspergers, or something else (not that his peculiar behavioural traits are labelled by Budo – it is simply my interpretation of Budo’s observations). And Budo is no ordinary imaginary friend. For a start, at about 10, he is comparatively old and he is staring down the barrel of his own mortality. (Imaginary friends have a short life span because they die when the person who created them stops believing in them). Budo is also the only one who can save Max from a situation that is very real, very scary and that no one could possibly have imagined or anticipated.
In Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Green has done something quite remarkable. He has written a book which requires an adult intellect, and adult emotions, to navigate despite presenting it entirely from the perspective of the child within us all. It is a tense psychological thriller, and in parts, it is an absolute page-turner. And he has penned a warm and moving story about life, death, love, loyalty and destiny. This is no block-buster, but if you are anything like me, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend will leave you sadder, happier and itching to talk to someone about the ingenious, the incredible, the invisible Budo.
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is available to be ordered from Booktopia now, for delivery from the end of February 2012.
The Amanda Knox story remains one of the most curious events in recent legal history, appearing to come straight from the pages of the most ambitious thriller. Booktopia’s Andrew Cattanach reviews Amanda Knox’s memoir Waiting To Be Heard.
The other reason Waiting to be Heard is so interesting is, for even those who proclaimed her innocence, there have always been moments of “What were are you thinking?“
To say that I’m a fan of the works of 
Review: Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East by Benjamin Law (Review by Catherine Horne)
In Gaysia Law becomes our enthusiastic guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) experience in seven countries: Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar and India. In each chapter Law generally focuses on one or two specific examples from the country at hand (for example, gay conversion therapies in Malaysia or a beauty pageant for transsexual women in Thailand), and uses this to explore the wider issues of gay acceptance in that country. This approach works well as Law is able to gain great insights from the people he interviews, and this makes for a very warm and engaging work. To his credit, Law does recognise that his approach does not encompass the totality of LGBT experience and he cannot provide a sweeping analysis of homosexuality in Asia. The work does not suffer because of this; the greatest strength of the book is its focus on personal stories as this provides an opportunity to engage with people who, for the most part, would have otherwise remained invisible to us.
Each nation Law takes us to throws up a different set of issues, and he makes clear the ways in which the social, cultural and political norms of a particular country influence the ways in which queer sexualities are perceived and experienced. For example, Law discovers that gay personalities are everywhere on Japanese television, but are expected to behave in a way which essentially renders them as figures of entertainment; they are drag queens with wicked senses of humour, or super-camp gay men with biting social critiques (basically think of the campest gay stereotype that you can, add a vat of glitter, and you’ve got what Law is describing here). While the visibility of certain types of queer identities is positive in that it at least shows a superficial acceptance of homosexuality, the absence of others, particularly lesbians, hints at a deeper lack of acceptance or understanding of LGBT issues in Japanese society.
In stark contrast to Japan is Myanmar, a country struggling with an exorbitantly high HIV infection rate for gay men (where they are 42 times more likely to contact HIV than their counterparts in any other country) and woefully inadequate resources to cope with the crisis. Further, the grinding poverty, lack of education and geographic isolation prevalent among Myanmar’s citizens means that many may never gain access to the life-saving drugs they need. The contrast between Japan and Myanmar not only demonstrates the varying challenges that people of different backgrounds in Asia face; it also gives the reader a valuable insight into the society and culture of each nation.
For me, Gaysia did not only provide a fascinating insight into the experiences of LGBT people in Asia, but into the broader social and cultural structures of each country. In the chapter on Malaysia, for example, Law provides a sense of the multiplicity of religions, their regional concentrations and the roles they play in Malaysian society. This ability to ground each chapter in a broader context really strengthens the work and provides yet another reason why this book is so valuable. Law recognises that in each country deeply ingrained historical, cultural and political factors influence the ways in which queer sexualities are regarded, as exemplified by gays and lesbians marrying each other to stave off parental pressure in China or the existence of a ‘third sex’ in Thailand. Law demonstrates the unique circumstances, and difficulties, that each nation’s gay population faces in their struggle to find a place in their societies.
Gaysia is an absolutely fascinating book, and I have gained so much from reading it. There are many heartbreaking stories of familial rejection, of hiding identity and, overwhelmingly, of feeling invisible. Yet there are also stories of resilience, happiness and love. Gaysia is a book with human experience at its core, and these stories are wonderfully brought to life through Law’s vivid documentation of his quest through the queer heart of Asia.
Review by Catherine Horne
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Filed under: Australian Author, Biography/Memoir, Book Recommendations, Book Talk, Cutural Studies, Sex, Social Commentary | Tagged: Benjamin Law, Catherine Horne, Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East, Review | Leave a Comment »