Right chapter two.
I was right – we have returned to the past.
It’s 1950, Ellie is 7 and her dad has just died from tuberculosis.
Her uncle (father’s brother) makes them move out of their mansion and into an apartment in the ‘slums’. There is an implication that this move is a punishment because Ellie’s mother has refused to marry him.
Ellie is going to start school and she is hoping to make friends.
We learn her mother is descended from Qajar royalty.
Filed under Fiction, Historical Fiction, Paper, Summary
This was long listed for the Women’s Prize for non-fiction in 2024. I promptly bought it and I have just finished it.
Here’s the blurb …
The gripping story of three young women who came of age and into power in a world dominated by men.
Orphaned from infancy, Catherine de’Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to King Henry II of France, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power behind the throne during a period of intense civil strife. In 1546 Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would become Queen of Spain. Two years later Catherine welcomed to her nursery the beguiling young Mary, Queen of Scots, who would become her daughter-in-law.
These years at the French court bound Catherine, Elisabeth and Mary to one another through blood and marriage, alliance and friendship, love and filial piety – bonds that were tested when they were forced to part and take on new roles in different kingdoms. As queens, they lived through the sea changes that transformed sixteenth century Europe; a time of expanding empires, religious discord and popular revolt. They would learn that to rule was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched attitudes of their time. A crown could exalt a young women equally it could destroy her.
This was fascinating. I already knew a bit about Mary, Queen of Scots, having read Embroidering Her Truth by Clare Hunter, and I had heard of Catherine de’Medici (and I have watched a bit of The Serpent Queen), but I had never even heard of Elizabeth de Valois.
This book has a nice easy style (conversational almost), not burdened by jargon. The writing is good and the events so compelling, and sometimes exciting, it’s like reading an historical fiction novel.
A review.
Filed under 5, History, Non-Fiction, Paper, Recommended, Serious
This is my latest book club book, which (I am embarrased to say), I already had in my pile.
As per my previous post, I am going to talk about chapter 1 – heaps of spoilers.
There are two quotes before the book starts
I googled Forugh Farrokhzad she was a poet and film maker who died when she was 32 in a car accident. She was divorced and had little access to her son (apparently because of all of her affairs). A strong feminist voice.
and
I believe Footsteps in the Dark is an academic text, the subtitle is The Hidden Histories of Popular Music.
Ok, on to chapter 1.
Chapter 1 (December 1981 New York)
We have a narrator – Ellie. She’s living in New York selling perfume (one of those people who want to squirt you as you walk through a department store).
I am thinking this chapter might be a bit of a framing device.
Ellie is from Iran. Her husband is an academic and they left Iran before the revolution. She had a friend, Homa, and it appears that Ellie did something terrible to her and they have been estranged for 17 years.
Out of the blue a letter arrives from Homa – breezy and full of news, but giving her phone number and requesting and urgent call.
Will Ellie call her?
On the way to catch the train home after work, Ellie gives her slice of pizza and all of her cash to an old beggar woman. Why is this in the book? Are we meant to see Ellie in a kind light (so we think better of her when we know what she did)
The bitter, sour notes would forever remind me of one long-ago night in Iran. The night when an act of betrayal changed the entire course of my friendship with Homa and both of our lives.
At the end of my shift, I removed my name pin, put it in the counter drawer, then pulled on my warm camel coat and striped leg warmers
I had to put the leg warmer one in, so eighties.
Filed under Fiction, Historical Fiction, Summary
I reserved this at the library, it took about a year for it to be my turn, but once I got started, I knew I needed my own copy.
Here is the blurb …
Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and her least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people – but she is actually the only guest at the Cornwall Inn who isn’t here for the big event.
When the bride discovers her elaborate destination wedding could be ruined by a divorced and depressed stranger, she is furious. Lila has spent months accounting for every detail and every possible disaster – except for, well, Phoebe… Soon both women find their best laid plans derailed and an unlikely confidante in one another.
I have been trialing a new approach to reading – to ensure that I am actually taking things in – I have been writing chapter summaries (after reading each chapter twice) along with my thoughts and comments.
It did occur to me when I got to the end of this novel that I should have uploaded my summaries one at a time – or at least my thoughts on that chapter. Don’t worry, I am not going to inflict them all on you now.
This novel resonanted with me, the characters were incredibly life-like in all of their messy, kind and ordinary ways.
It was about honesty – being honest with ourselves and others. About having the confidence to choose the bigger life rather than drifting.
Phoebe is devasted by her divorce (to the point of suicide). She realises over the days of the wedding (yes days!) that her life has been contained – always trying to do the right thing, and to not be too much. When she no longer cares what people think she starts speaking her truth. I think many women would identify with this – trying to be good, all things to all people.
Lila wants the wedding to be perfect because then her life, and her marriage will be perfect.
And Gary? Well he’s just standing by letting Lila make all of the plans.
There are some funny moments and some very poignant ones.
All in all a very satisfying novel.
Some of my favourite quotes
Her whole life felt like work now. Even the parts that used to be the most fun, like reading over the summer or orgasming during sex or having conversations with her husband at dinner. They felt like things she had to be really good at now, in order to prove that everything was normal.
“I don’t know. It’s just what I believe,” Phoebe says. One of the few things Nietzsche wrote that she agreed with in graduate school. “Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.”
But that is how it happens, she realises. One moment of pretending to be great leads to the next moment of pretending to be great, and ten years later, she realises she has spent her entire life just pretending to be great.
She doesn’t have to be anything, ever. Her husband is not watching. Her father is not watching. Nobody was ever really watching, except Phoebe. Phoebe was the only person waiting in the dark to condemn herself for every single thing when the day was over.
And it was perfect. It really was. But life is strange, always thinking this one thing is going to make you happy, because then you get it, and then maybe you’re not as happy as you imagined you would be, because every day is still just every day. Like the happiness becomes so big, you have no choice but to live inside of it, until you can no longer see it or feel it. And so you start to fixate on something else – you want a child, and then the child is here, and that happiness is so big, it begins to feel like nothing. Like just the air around you.
You do things in the moment for the person you hope you might be two years from now. You don’t kill yourself when you’re sad because one day you might not be sad, and you might want to go surfing with a man you really like?
To collect is to care more than most. But it is also to hoard. To take things out of the world and make them only yours.
A review.
Filed under 5, Fiction, Paper, Recommended
After my success at listening to War and Peace, I decided to try Anna Karenina, and this version is read by Maggie Gyllenhaal (what could be better?).
Here is the Goodreads blurb …
Acclaimed by many as the world’s greatest novel, Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature – with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author’s own views and convictions.
Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, ‘He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.
I am sure that everyone knows the story of Anna Karenina. And I have watched several adaptations; this one – with Keira Knightley, this one – with Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean as Vronsky, and a modern Australian version, The Beautiful Lie – with Sarah Snook.
Given that I felt I knew the story, I was pleasantly surprised by the novel. I have always thought that Karenin and Vronsky dashing and heroic, and Anna makes really bad decisions. However, now I think Karenin was good, but too christian, and Vronsky is a cad, and Anna still makes really bad decisions.
Although to be fair to Anna, this was the time before divorce, and she was stuck in a marriage with an old boring man, and she had nothing to do.
Vronsky should not have pursued her so relentlessly. He was selfish and self-centred.
Anna reminded me of Madame Bovary – that need for drama, romance and love. Not to mention blowing up their own lives. Madame Bovary was serialised in 1856 and Anna Karenina was published in 1878. Was Tolstoy having a conversation with Flaubert? Or is this a common type of woman in the 19th Century?
I did, however, like Levin and Kitty. They made up for all of the awful, selfish characters.
A review.
Filed under 4, Audio, Fiction, Format, Historical Fiction, Recommended, Serious
I won this book and I wasn’t sure if I would like it, but I did.
Here’s the description
Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire.
Mama, I made it
out of your home,
alive, raised by the
voices in my head.
With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire’s hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.
The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.
These poems are about the immigrant and refugee experience. Gender violence, child abuse, but also the strength gained through female friendships. The poems are beautiful and moving, and very meaningful but also frustrating (why are these terrible things still happening?)
A review.
Miss A got this from Dymocks as an advanced reader copy. It languished on my pile until a friend read it, and then I finally dug it out. I have read the first one, and I think it is better if you read the first one before this one.
Here’s the blurb …
To most of Regency high society, forty-two-year-old Lady Augusta Colebrook, or Gus, and her twin sister, Julia, are just unmarried ladies of a certain age—hardly worth a second glance. But the Colebrook twins are far from useless old maids. They are secretly protecting women and children ignored by society and the law.
When Lord Evan—a charming escaped convict who has won Gus’s heart—needs to hide his sister and her lover from their vindictive brother, Gus and Julia take the two women into their home. They know what it is like to have a powerful and overbearing brother. But Lord Evan’s complicated past puts them all in danger. Gus knows they must clear his name of murder if he is to survive the thieftakers who hunt him. But it is no easy task—the fatal duel was twenty years ago and a key witness is nowhere to be found.
In a deadly cat-and-mouse game, Gus, Julia, and Lord Evan must dodge their pursuers and investigate Lord Evan’s past. They will be thrust into the ugly underworld of Georgian gentlemen’s clubs, spies, and ruthless bounty hunters, not to mention the everyday threat of narrow-minded brothers. Will the truth be found in time, or will the dangerous secrets from the past destroy family bonds and rip new love and lives apart?
These novels are adventurous romps. They’re full of period detail, but the heroines and heroes have modern sensibilities (at least as to how they view women). The villains are despicable and evil, and then there are the men (and women) who have extremely conservative views (Lord Duffy for instance).
There is an occasional reference to Austen – one of the characters is reading Sense and Sensibility and another character is given the false name of Miss Dashwood.
He glared at me. “I do not take my leave of you, Augusta. You will not receive my courtesy until you behave in the manner of a gentle woman and a sister.”
Very Lady Catherine De Burgh.
These are lots of fun and the end sets up the next one.
A review.
Filed under 4, Australian, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Paper, Recommended, Romance
