Hello!
It’s been SO COLD in Brisbane, which feels bizarre when it’s apparently 16 degrees — when I lived in Edinburgh people were sunbathing in the parks in 16 degrees. My sister sent me a pic of herself sitting in the garden in the UK, with a book and a glass of wine, and it was “SO HOT.” Eighteen degrees. I would have agreed with her a year ago, but now I’m here wearing socks and jumper, so.
I hosted a little writing circle in Brisbane this month (they’ll hopefully be a monthly, very informal, thing), and in the first week of July I’ll be hosting the in-person meetup for what’s potentially becoming the Brisbane arm of #nottheohcobookclub. Give me a wave if you’d like to come along to either!
Books
Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively
I kicked off the month with such a highlight. I loved this.
Famous journalist and writer Claudia Hampton is in a hospital room, dying. But before she goes she’s writing a history of the world, and of her life and loves. Her daughter, Lisa; Lisa’s half-Russian aristocrat father, Jasper; her brother Gordon, unequalled; and Tom Southern, the love of her life, gone too soon. The novel hops around in time as memories come to her, pulling ghosts back from Claudia’s childhood, her time in Egypt as a war correspondent, and the decadence of post-war high society, juxtaposed with her reality, infantilised by both the nurses and her family when they come to visit her. Claudia’s history of the world is a biased one, and she acknowledges the failings and colours of her own memories, but Lively adds in the memories of others around her, so we see many of the events from the outside, or from the perspectives of her daughter (viewing her mother both as a child and as an adult, giving their strained relationship another angle), or her sister-in-law (always feeling set apart from Claudia and Gordon, and knowing but not knowing why). Some scenes are replayed immediately after Claudia’s recounting, and there are inclusions which completely change her character and how she’s been understood. Masterfully done, MOON TIGER is a brilliant story about place, time, and whose voices are remembered, and somehow only 200-ish pages.
The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden
This won the Women’s Prize while I was reading it for July’s #nottheohcobookclub, and I loooooved it. It’s been a good month for reading. I don’t want to give too much away, but I was halfway through part two and from there, I read the rest in one go.
Set in the Netherlands in the early 1960s, Isabel lives alone, in the rural house she and her family were evacuated to during the second world war. Her two brothers have left and gone on to live their own lives, and Isabel is content in her isolation — she has a maid every other day to help her manage the house, and her neighbour Johan is trying (and failing) to win her affection. When her older brother Louis wants to introduce his latest girlfriend to his family, Isabel takes an instant disliking to her. Eva is loud and brassy, and Isabel is put out at having to meet her at all, given Louis’ track record with girlfriends. A few weeks later, though, Louis drops Eva off on Isabel’s doorstep on his way to an important work trip and promises to collect her in a month. The suspicions and obsessions of the two women twist around one another, as Isabel tries to work out Eva’s motivations, and Eva tries to chip away at Isabel’s stony surface.
This was so cleverly done, and I feel like there’s lots to talk about!
The Anthropologists, by Ayşegül Savaş
Following an expat couple as they settle into life in a new country, where they have to make new friends (difficult) and navigate new distance with their families (more difficult) felt like timely reading for me, 18 months into life in a new country, and I don’t have any language barriers to tangle with. It was sad and funny, and Manu and Asya’s new life was one that felt very familiar. Making friends is hard!
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, by Mohammed El-Kurd
This little book shifts through poetry and prose, journalism and personal essays, using anecdotes from his own family and experiences growing up in Palestine to move away from dehumanisation (El-Kurd makes special note very early on of the media focus on “women and children,”) and to demand dignity for Palestinians. Looking at why the burden of appeal is often put on the victim — why, the world over, is it for them to prove their humanity over a colonial power — El-Kurd writes with clarity and generosity, assuming his reader to be “not a judge, but a curious stranger.”
Other things: LOVE IN EXILE by Shon Faye, RADICAL INTIMACY by Sophie K Rosa, ODDBODY by Rose Keating, GOOD AND EVIL AND OTHER STORIES by Samanta Schweblin, EVERY ONE STILL HERE by Liadan Ní Chuinn
Online reads
I was reading a PDF proof of
’s new novel, THE MOBIUS BOOK, but after I got about 20% in, I heard rumours that you can (and maybe are supposed) to read it back to front, which you cannot do with a badly formatted PDF, so now I’m waiting to get a real-life copy of it. Anyway, in the meantime, I read Memoir is not Autofiction on her Substack, and you should too. (If not least for the life-mantra “Shame is for the religious and people in their twenties. I’m neither.”)- is reading more poetry and it’s changing her reading habits.
Jia Tolentino’s My Brain Finally Broke made me feel both better and worse.
Terri-Jane x
I read 500 pages of a little life and then read the wikipedia to find out the rest cause i didn't want to finish it then I read two warhammer novels which might have been better overall
Yay, Moon Tiger! I read most of it on a (properly) hot weekend last summer and the heat has become integral to the novel to me – great for the Egypt scenes.