Hello!
I changed up my work hours this month, and Cyclone Alfred kept everyone at home waiting for days longer than anyone thought he would, so I had both braincells and time this month, so I got a lot of reading (and some writing! and some ACNH!) done. Sylvia was right!
Books
The Original, by Nell Stevens1
I absolutely adored THE ORIGINAL. Set at the turn is the 20th century, it’s twisty, with layers of doubles and doppelgängers, from Grace’s ability to recreate master works of art to her cousin Charles’ reappearance.
Grace Inderwick, rescued from a worse fate by her aunt and uncle when her parents are separated and institutionalised, grows up not really understanding the vast wealth her father’s family have come from, but her life becomes dictated by it nonetheless. She discovers a talent for painting and sees it as a path toward her escape from the stifling confusions of the upper class, but Grace can work only as a (gifted) copyist, and cannot imagine her own artworks, incapable of visualising faces, even of recognising those she knows well. When Charles, presumed dead after more than a decade away at sea, returns to claim his family seat and the riches that come with it, he and his mother have to prove that he is who he says he is, but no one can quite remember what the young Charles looked like and whether this new Charles could be him, least of all Grace, the cousin he was closest with. Amidst all this, both Grace and Charles are hiding other secrets, afraid of being found out in more ways than one.
Nell Stevens’ latest novel is another gorgeously written world to get immersed in, with fewer ghosts than BRIEFLY, A DELICIOUS LIFE, but more skeletons in the closet. It’s out in July (sorry)! (But BRIEFLY is 99p on Kindle this month.)
Nova Scotia House, by Charlie Porter2
Charlie Porter’s first foray into fiction, NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE, is a beautiful exploration of love, and grief. It centres around Johnny, as he remembers his partner Jerry and their relationship before Jerry’s death at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Twenty-four years after Jerry’s death (and approaching the age Jerry was when they met), Johnny still lives in the flat they shared at Nova Scotia House, watching the world change around him.
Written as an inner monologue, Johnny’s focus moves between his current moments and his memories of thirty years before, when he was 19 and learning how to be a person in a world full of judgement. I loved the tenderness of many of Johnny’s memories of Jerry; especially of things like being taught to make bread, keeping Jerry’s original mother alive and trusting his neighbour to feed the dough if he is away. These moments in the present time add up, as Porter cleverly uses Johnny’s attention to move through time and manages to create an ultimately hopeful narrative out of Johnny’s (and of the wider LGBTQ+ community’s) pain.
A unique love story, about life and legacies. Gorgeous.
On The Calculation of Volume, I, by Solvej Balle
’s review of this (here) absolutely sold me. Parts I and II aren’t available in Australia or the UK yet, but Blackwell’s came through where Netgalley failed (lol), and honestly I like the US covers better.
I read the first one in one sitting, and I loved it. I love time-travel stories, and the whole premise was just my perfect novel. Literally, nothing happens. It’s great.
Tara has woken up on November the 18th, which would be unremarkable, except that she woke up on November the 18th the day before, and the day before that, and for over a hundred days before that. As part one progresses, Tara is trying to work out how to get out of November the 18th, testing possibilities for magical or eventful things having happened which might’ve caused her to be stuck in a rift in time. She variously tests different theories, brings her husband Thomas in (until the repetition of having to start from the beginning every day becomes an impossible task), tries different places and routines, but with no luck. As the anniversary of the first November the 18th approaches, Tara focuses on the year which has run underneath, and plans to grab it as it passes.
The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.
I have started the second one, but I’m trying to eke it out. It’s not going well. Part three is coming out at the end of 2025 (I think?) so hopefully they won’t all be *tooooo* far apart!
Theory and Practice, by Michelle de Kretser
I’d seen so much about this, so I picked it up with (maybe too) high expectations, and there are parts of it that really shine, but I didn’t gel with the ending at all. Set in the late eighties, it’s kind of a coming of age novel, with the narrator embarking on a Masters thesis about Virginia Woolf, and navigating her own culture shock. Against this backdrop, she meets a new group of beautiful, creative, smart friends, and gets herself embroiled in particular with one of them, and his girlfriend. There are vignettes of her thesis meetings and calls with her mother in Sydney, worrying about her daughter’s new bohemian life in Melbourne. I would love to discuss this one.
Online reads
TEN PROTAGONISTS, Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story collection for Prada SS25 is available to read online (or, to print out as a booklet and make your own book of…)
Anne Carson’s essay on handwriting is honestly worth the LRB subscription alone.
I’ve been doing a course this month with The Poetry School, on the etymology of “apocalypse”, and mid-way through it, I read
’s recent post How To Survive Anything, where they write:I learned that the world “apocalypse” comes from apokálypsis, meaning revelation, or hidden knowledge. To me, that etymology suggests a divinely ordered retribution, a punitive conclusion, a future Judgment Day when all will be revealed.
Synchronicity!!
The White Lotus Book Club. Love.
My sister is visiting in April, so I’ll be playing tour guide and I’m so excited. She’s never been to Australia. I’m hoping to read Magda Szabó’s The Door, which I picked up in Melbourne last month based on its excellent cover and not much else, but I’ve high hopes!
Terri-Jane x
Thanks to Netgalley for this one.
And this one, but it’s out now!
Sounds like I need to read On The Calculation of Volume....
I’m glad you enjoyed On The Calculation of Volume 1!!!