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Monthly Archives: November 2016

The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in environmental issues, non-fiction

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This is a fascinating book that brings loads of solid information and science to a deep love and respect for trees. It’s the perfect Christmas present for the tree-hugger in your life. 

peter-wohlleben

If ever you read a book with wise old talking trees, and really wanted to believe it could be true, this is a book for you.

Forester Peter Wohlleben isn’t saying trees actually talk; that would be silly. But you will finish this book with a profound respect for trees and their sense of community, and accept that they are much more sophisticated than ever we gave them credit for.

Wohlleben has spent decades managing an old-growth forest in Germany. As a forester, he was trained to assess trees for lumber yields, but what he has learned since has turned most of what he was taught on its head.

Science is starting to look at how trees, and forests, act. There is evidence trees communicate – for example, they can warn each other of insect attack in time to set up defences – and they can recognise their own species and will help and support each other.

It’s impossible to read this without being a little awed by what trees are capable of, and horrified by how much humans have misunderstood what good tree management looks like.

I finished it wanting two things: a similar book on Australian trees, and to spend some quality time in an old-growth forest.

This book was published in September 2016. 

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Orphans of the Carnival, by Carol Birch

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in Based on a true story, dark

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booker prize, Julia Pastrana

This was a story that I found fascinating and horrifying, mostly because it’s true.  

orphans-of-the-carnivalJulia Pastrana was one of the most famous “freaks” of the 19th Century, captivating and horrifying audiences across the world as the singing and dancing ape/bear woman.

She was famous for the long dark hair that covered her body – a condition now known as hypertrichosis terminalis – and for the ape-like appearance of her face, mostly because of the crooked extra set of teeth that distorted her mouth.

A native Mexican, she joined a travelling freak show in New Orleans, immediately becoming the star of the show.

She later married her manager, Theo Lent, and became pregnant, but both she and their son died days after Theo Jr was born.

Theo then had them stuffed and mounted, and he toured with their corpses for many years.

Julia Pastrana

Birch, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her book Jamrach’s Menagerie, spends quite a lot of time inside Theo’s angst-ridden head, which becomes a bit tiresome.

Also threaded through is the poignant story of Rose, a modern-day collector of discarded and unloved relics.

Overall, it’s a heartbreaking story, and it’s genuinely horrifying because it’s true.

The final coda I found out online: she remained a scientific curiosity long after her death and was finally buried in her native Mexico only three years ago.

This book was published in October 2016

Poum and Alexandre, by Catherine de Saint Phalle

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in Australian, literature, memoir

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On Brunswick Ground

Catherine de Saint Phalle is a newish arrival to Melbourne. Her first local book  – On Brunswick Ground (see my review below) – was as grounded in the air and the sense of Melbourne as any book could be. Her second, released this month, takes her back to her Parisian upbringing, in what was a myth-filled, charmed childhood. She’s terrific at evoking the sensations, the emotion, of being in a particular place at a particular time, and it’s a skill that infuses both books. First, the memoir. 

screenshot-2016-11-26-13-23-13Catherine is only a child when she realises there is a situation in her family.

It’s something disreputable, something that makes her relatives disapprove, something that makes it impossible for her to attend the local Catholic school run by French nuns.

Catherine observes, without judgment but with constant fascination, the eccentric world her parents create.

Her mother Marie-Antoinette, known to all as Poum, is an elegant, fragrant creature, welcomed with open arms when she goes into Guerlain on the Champs-Elysees. She spends hours in bed reading The Odyssey, and at other times mysteriously disappears all day.

Catherine’s father, Alexandre, a banker who perhaps stretches the boundaries at times, goes elsewhere each weekend for reasons Catherine is not told.

For her parents, dark tales of the guillotine or unearthed corpses are soothing and enjoyable; it is a fascination – for death, for bloody history, for the great myths – that binds them all.

And there is Sylvia, her English nanny, who disapproves of Catherine’s parents and their difficult relatives, but is a source of comfort and security to Catherine, until one day she is gone.

This memoir of an unusual, myth-infused childhood is full of love and charm, but with reality always acknowledged on the fringes.

It’s beautifully written, with some real magic about it.

De Saint Phalle – born in England, raised in France and now living in Melbourne – last year released On Brunswick Ground, a compelling story of friendship and love in a suburb still dealing with the death of Jill Meagher.

This book was published in November 2016. My review was also published in the Herald Sun Weekend magazine

On Brunswick Ground, by Catherine de Saint Phalle

on-brunswick-ground“Tonight I’m in a bar in Brunswick, on a high stool with a book and a beer …”

The book begins as it continues, deeply grounded in the look, the feel, and the facts of this inner-northern Melbourne suburb.

It begins on the day of the peace march that mourned Jill Meagher, whose death is a constant presence throughout.

Like Jill, the unnamed female narrator is an immigrant to the country and the suburb. She finds work with a local gardener and writes when she can.

The women in her orbit are Stella, who manages her local bar; Stella’s daughter Mary, who has donned a burqua for reasons she won’t disclose; colleague Mitali, who seems surrounded by death; and Bernice, a radio host desperate to have a child.

The men – husbands, lovers, and exes – are largely peripheral, important but not centrestage.

It is a novel of ebb and flow, of big losses and the warmth of new friendships.

This is the first Australian novel from de Saint Phalle, who has multiple publications in her native France.  Assured and often poetic, it has the affectionate and closely observed feel of an outsider who has made herself at home.

This book was published in July 2015. My review was also published in the Herald Sun Weekend magazine at that time.

The Birdman’s Wife, by Melissa Ashley

24 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in Australian, historic

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john gould

This was a long overdue idea for a book, and I was fascinated by Elizabeth Gould’s life. But I found the story oddly flat, and perhaps a little too dependant on a PhD thesis.  

the-birdmans-wifeJohn Gould has long been “the birdman”, with his massive work The Birds of Australia for decades the definitive guide to our native birdlife.

But the conventional view of him as responsible for the now-iconic bird illustrations in his books is definitively thrown out in this novel, which traces the life of his wife, Elizabeth.

In this, Elizabeth steps boldly out from husband’s giant shadow to take her own place as a historically important avian artist and adventurer.

She married the energetic and charismatic Gould in 1929, and soon started on what would be her life’s work of illustrating her husband’s collection of birds, while producing eight children, two of whom died.

When he travelled to Australia in 1838 to produce his seven-volume masterwork, Elizabeth went on the demanding two-year journey with him, taking only her eldest boy, Henry, and giving birth to her seventh child during the expedition.

She died soon after she returned to England, in the days after the birth of her eighth child.

Based on Ashley’s PhD on Elizabeth, the book is carefully researched, but spends quite a lot of time describing the processes of killing, describing and preparing birds, which makes some sections a bit slow.

This book was published in September 2016. My review was first published in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. 

 

Frantumaglia, by Elena Ferrante

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in non-fiction

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Neapolitan quartet

I have just finished the last of Ferrante’s Neapolitan books, and this was the perfect thing to read next. Her fans will find a lot to enjoy in something that offers thought-provoking ideas on every page. 

screenshot-2016-11-24-10-51-33Frantumaglia is a fascinating companion piece, both to the remarkable books Elena Ferrante has written and to the on-going discussion about the author’s real identity.

Whichever camp you are in on the identity issue – and I’m in the “I don’t care who she really is so long as I can read her books” camp – this offers a great deal of interest.

Best known for the Neapolitan Quartet, an international bestseller that started with My Brilliant Friend, Ferrante has become a literary powerhouse.

This book explores her letters, answers to readers’ questions and a selection of interviews (usually conducted by email).

Her serious commitment to her writing and the stories she tells is revealed on every page. She answers at great depth – one set of answers to five questions goes on for 60 pages, with tangents, memories, inspirations and lines of thought all carefully constructed into one coherent and thorough response.

At times, the series of interviews threatened to become tedious, with very similar  questions (especially about her identity) asked repeatedly. But she kept answering, often including something new to keep it fresh.

I’m not sure such a book would have been published without the worldwide interest in who she really is, but her fans should be grateful: it is a highly readable resource that is both powerful and insightful.

My copy is absolutely littered with markers for things I want to go back to – insights about writing, about her characters, about life. I can’t remember the last time I did that to any book, but she said so much that I wanted to think about, at length.

The first section dealt largely with her first couple of books, written before her Neapolitan series. My interest in this was a little patchy, as it contained a lot of fine detail on books I haven’t yet read.

My main frustration with the book was the way that the description of what a section was about didn’t come until the end that section. For example, in that 60-page answer to a set of questions I mention above, the actual questions and the source of them don’t appear come until after her answer. I wondered if it had something to do with Ferrante’s obsession with letting the text speak for itself, but I found it annoying, and it happened repeatedly.

Thus book was published in October 2016. My review is a slightly expanded version of a piece written for the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. 

Mayan Mendacity, By LJM Owen

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in Australian, crime, historic

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olmec obituary, shekilda

LJM Owen is proving that Echo Press was smart to put its faith in this initially crowd-funded, self-published author. The second book in the planned series is much stronger than the first, and will surely expand her audience.

mayan-mendacity_low-resDr Elizabeth Pimms, the Intermillenial Sleuth, is back with a new mystery set between modern Canberra and ancient Guatemala.

Dramatic change is present on all fronts – Elizabeth’s boyfriend is coming home after a long stint abroad, there’s a promotion at the library, her brother is facing major surgery, and she lands some work in the area she loves most – archeology.

Specifically, work on some mysterious Mayan skulls and bones from a little-known Guatemalan site, which we know will have something to do with Lady Six Sky, a Mayan ruler who took power in 682.

Elizabeth, who has a complicated home life that includes Welsh, French and Chinese grandparents and a range of unruly siblings, also has to deal with an explosive claim from a colleague that she has an unknown half-sister, also the child of Elizabeth’s late father.

When someone starts messing with the Mayan remains in the lab, things start to become almost overwhelming.

This is the second in the Dr Pimms series (there are nine planned), from the Canberra-based author who shares her heroine’s qualifications and interest in archeology, librarianship and palaeogenetics.

It’s a fun, interesting read and sets the scene for what should be a thoroughly enjoyable and popular series.

Owen’s first book Olmec Obituary was crowd-funded, before being picked up by Echo Press.

This book was launched last week at the SheKilda crime writing convention in Melbourne. November 2016. 

Under a Pole Star, by Stef Penney

20 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Corinna Hente in historic, literature

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Costa awards

 

Stef Penny has an affinity for stories set in deep ice and snow. The Costa prize-winner is a wonderful writer, but this one felt a bit long.

stef-penneyFlora Mackie is 12 in 1883 when she first sails with her father, a Scottish  whaling captain, into Arctic waters.

She loves the regular trips, until her father decides she’s become too interesting to the sailors on board.

Determined to continue her icy explorations, she pushes her way into university in London to get some qualifications.

New Yorker Jakob de Beyn, a young geologist, joins an expedition to the Arctic with a star explorer, where he meets Flora. There is an instant connection, but there are endless barriers in their way.

On the one hand, this is a story is of women and politics in the context of a great Victorian-era adventure – the search for the north pole. It’s fascinating, though it’s easy to get a bit lost in the number of different expeditions going on.

On the other hand, it’s a passionate love story. Sex is a regular theme, and our heroes’ sex lives are explored in fairly thorough detail.

Then there’s the modern thread, set in 1948, that gives it a bit of a Titanic feel.

There is a lot to like (particularly on the science/adventure/mystery side) but, at about 600 pages, it felt too long.

Penney won Costa Book of the Year for The Tenderness of Wolves.

My review first appeared in the Herald Sun’s Weekend magazine. The book was published in November 2016. 

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