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Anne Skyvington

The Craft of Writing

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Book Reviews

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Book ReviewsBooks

Best Australian Books 2012

It’s that time of the year again when people start talking about the best books read during the year. I recently attended the 2012 “Nib Prize” awarded by the Waverley Library at Bondi for the best book linked to research. There were six finalists, including one work of fiction, Kate Grenville’s Sarah Thornhill about white and black relations during the early days of the colony of New South Wales.

Another interesting finalist that might have won was The People Smuggler by Robin de Crespigny. It’s about the Iraqui, Ali Al Jenabi. He is looked on by many as “the Oskar Schindler of Asia”.

However the winner of the $28,000 was a relatively slim book about, of all things, the history of bookkeeping!

Double Entry by Jane Gleeson-White.

double-entry

It’s much more exciting than it sounds. It traces the birth of double entry accounting back to the fifteenth century in Venice and comes to some very interesting conclusions. One of these was about the high monetary cost of a McDonald’s hamburger in terms of the environment.

And then there was the final of the “First Tuesday Book Club survey ” on the ABC. The results of a survey of viewers’ favourite Aussie books were revealed.

It’s no surprise which book headed the list: Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet.  It’s about two eccentric but endearing families, the Lambs and the Pickles.  They share a large, run-down house on the west coast of Australia.

Two of my favourite reads these summer holidays has been The People Smuggler (Robin de Crespigny) and Unravelling Anne by Laural Saville, both memoirs.

Related articles

Ten Australian books to read before you die – First Tuesday Book Club (booktopia.com.au)

The Oskar Schindler of Asia? (abc.net.au)
Best Australian Books 2012 was last modified: July 13th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
December 8, 2012 0 comment
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Book ReviewsBooksWriting

There’s Something About Helen

the-first-stone-cover-1995

The First Stone 1995

I studied The First Stone by Helen Garner at the University of Technology, Sydney as part of a Master’s degree in Professional Writing. I noticed that there were two camps: those who loved her book, and those who saw her as a traitor of the feminist cause. I was in the former camp, but many of the (younger) women belonged to the other side, along with (I think) the male teacher at the time.

Admittedly, this was one of her more polemical works, in that it dealt with her support of a master at a Melbourne university college, who in 1995 was accused of sexual misconduct towards two female residents. The main reason for her support, I gathered, was her compassion for the master and his family, over what she saw as a minor incident that could have been handled differently. Instead, he and his family had to suffer the ignominy of his sacking and public disgrace.

More recently, I have been part of a book club whose members chose to study Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, set in the seventies in Melbourne. Again there was a polarising effect: we either loved or hated this fictional work based on Helen’s diaries from the time. The book revolves around the lives of members of a communal household and their friends, focusing for the main part on Nora and Javo who are in a co-dependent relationship, he addicted to heroin, she simply love-addicted. They are typical of the hedonistic, often anarchistic, youth that congregated around certain places, such as university campuses, in the 60s and 70s, intent on experimenting with life-styles, drugs and sexual freedom. The strength of the novel is its recording of a social movement at a moment in time that in itself polarised society and widened the generation gap for years to come. Tempers flared during the discussions, one side having only positive things to say about the book, the other side seeing only its flaws. “So honest and brave!” said one side, “A truthful historical account of the 60s and 70s as a poetic/creative era of experimentation, symbolised by the poetry throughout.” ” It needs a good editor!” said the other side.

By coincidence, another friend who belongs to a book group on the Central Coast also read Garner around the same time as my group. To quote her words exactly, she thinks of Helen Garner more as a friend than as a name on a book cover. “Helen got so used to me lining up for her to sign her latest work that she wrote in one: ‘To Denise, in queue after queue’. Another memorable time I happened to see her in David Jones. Holding a brand new copy of her My Hard Heart and a lot of chutzpa, I approached her to sign it. She wrote on the flypage: ‘To Denise, just before Christmas in the DJ’s knicker department! Warm regards.'”

garners-first-novel

Monkey Grip 1977

 Denise goes on to say: “The main reason I think of Helen Garner as a friend is the same one held by many of her readers, especially women. It’s her personal, intimate writing style, which invites the reader into her life and into her heart. She holds nothing back, even if it’s controversial, as it was with The First Stone. She is able to say so much with so few words. Her style is always spare, even chiselled, yet never dry. Re-reading her collection The Feel of Steel I was struck again by the economy of her prose which expresses such fiercely honest emotions. How does she do it? Just as an artist achieves a likeness with a few strokes, so she paints vivid word pictures of feelings, events, sights and smells. Strangely enough, only I and one other member of our book group liked Helen Garner and her work; all the other members disliked her intensely for the very same reasons that I love her. People complained that she was too personal, even invasive with her tell-all style. One woman announced that she didn’t need people like Helen in her life because she sounds too angry. We were discussing The Spare Room, her latest novel in which anger does play a part, but to my mind only to fuel the exposure of suspect alternative medical practices and their exploitation of vulnerable people like the woman in the story. We try to be democratic in our book club, but I began to feel like a voice in the wilderness.”
I have read all of Garner’s books, and place myself squarely on the side of those who love her, and think that she writes well. I lived through the same radical era in Sydney of the 1970s as Garner did in Melbourne. I relate to her perspective and empathise with her exploration of the inner self. I have always admired her honesty and the fact that her books speak of “real life” and “emotional truth” while still using fictional techniques that make for pleasant reading. I admire especially her courage and the fact that she explores, among other things, personal issues and mundane events that are often seen as unimportant by other writers, because they are linked to family and to domesticity. Looking over the Sydney Writers’ Festival program, I am disappointed to see only a mention of Helen Garner in a talk by Brigid Rooney on “Literary Activists” and her “intensely politically engaged” stance as a “crusader of the keyboard.”
Is this, perhaps, what puts the other side off?
Related articles
  • Helen Garner: The Spare Room (2008)
  • Helen Garner on Finding the Right Words
There’s Something About Helen was last modified: July 13th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
September 27, 2012 0 comment
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Book ReviewsBooksWriting

Tirra Lirra By The River by Jessica Anderson

Where does the title of this book come from?

In 1978, Jessica Anderson won the the Miles Franklin Literary Award for her fourth novel, Tirra Lirra by the River, published by Macmillan. It has rarely been out of print since.

Yet many readers are unaware of the origin of the title. It comes from a romantic poem, The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1842; it is his most tragic one.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

The story of the poem: (Thanks to Jane Gleeson-white for her excellent summary of the poem’s plot in her 2010 Overland article “Farewell Jessica Anderson—1916-2010—and Thanks”)

“The title Tirra Lirra by the River comes from one of Tennyson’s most popular and tragic poems, ‘The Lady of Shalott’. It is about a woman, the Lady of Shalott, who is confined in a tower on an island in a river that flows to Camelot. She is cursed to sit alone and to see the bustling world of Camelot below only through its reflection in her mirror. And so she spends her time sitting by her window, watching the reflected world in her mirror, recording it with her needle and thread in tapestry”.

“One day the Lady of Shalott sees in her mirror a dark-haired man riding by. It is Sir Lancelot: ‘“Tirra lirra,” by the river / Sang Sir Lancelot.’ She rushes to her window and looks straight at the world below, the unreflected world, as she is forbidden to do. The curse is triggered, her life must end. The Lady of Shalott goes down to the river where she finds a boat. After writing ‘The Lady of Shalott’ on its prow she lies down and, singing, floats toward Camelot. And she dies with the unfinished song on her lips.”

To plot or not to plot…

Jessica Anderson, the author of one of my favourite books of all time, died on 9th July, 2010 at ninety-three years of age. Her funeral was held at the South Chapel in Malabar, and many literary notables were present including David Malouf, who gave the tribute. She went quietly, her passing being largely unnoticed, which was typical of the woman and of her life. She won the Miles Franklin Award for this novel, written at a time when there was a dearth of fiction by women writers in Australia. She wrote several more novels, one of which, The Impersonaters also won awards. Later on, she made a conscious decision that she would write no more fiction.

The content

The book is written in the first person from the viewpoint of an elderly woman, and describes the character’s life in Queensland, then in London,  and on board the ship that took her there, as well as events unfolding when she returned to Australia. It is written with such spirit, that readers have assumed that the elderly woman was Jessica Anderson, who was, however, in her forties when she wrote the book.

The structure

Tirra Lirra has never been made into a film, partly because much of it is in flash-back mode, which means that the forward movement necessary for action and good cinematography is missing. As someone once said: “Nothing happens in the novel.” In an Australian Book Review article, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes:

“It is a book about the inner life: about memory, imagination, and the still, silent workings of one person’s mind. The novel’s external time frame is not much more than a month or so, while Nora is almost immobilised by illness. But the story is essentially one long act of remembering, covering almost seventy years, punctuated by short forays into the present day when things happen to jog her memory further. There is very little action, except within the frame of her memories. And yet this book has been widely read, widely praised and widely loved by two or three generations of Australians”. https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/reading-australia/jessica-anderson/tirra-lirra-by-the-river-by-jessica-anderson

Plot versus character

The men in my life seem to have no trouble in imagining storylines. I have received help from my brother, whose storyline ideas for me were imaginative and full of surprises. And he reiterated what I already knew myself, that I had to write fiction, not memoir, to escape from the bind of “facts” or “truth”. Whether writing in the first or third person, I can become “me but not me” or try to escape totally from the “I” of the narrator. Fiction is more liberating.

This leads me to postulate the possibility that plotting is a “male skill”, whereas female writers often tend to write more in segments and rearrange these into a workable plot afterwards. Aristotle believed that plot/story were more important than characterisation. Women friends and writers often show a preference for characterisation. I realise that this is akin to saying that men are more rational and women are more emotional: a terrible stereotype!

However, traditional “maculine virtues”, such as heroism, strength and war, can easily be seen as linked to plot lines; and strengths, such as being in touch with deep feelings correlate well with femaleness. Thus: characterisation. That is not to say that men and women fall strictly into either category. For, as a devoted Jungian, I know that each one of us is composed of both female and male qualities in differing degrees: the animus/anima archetype.

Favourite writers who may fit the stereotype

A favourite male writer is the American, Paul Auster, who manages to write interesting stories with male characters. He is that rare breed of writer who is also drawn to experimenting with form in his novels. His memoir-based novel The Invention of Solitude throws some light on his obsession with male characters.  At the beginning of many of his novels, the characters are often dying, old, blind, or linked to death and sickness. The plot is probably the dominant feature in the books that I have read: Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The New York Trilogy, Invisible, Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, and The Music of Chance.

His wife, Siri Hustvedt, probably also fits the stereotype, in that her novels stress the emotional through her characters. The plot lines are strong, but the focus is more on vibrant characters. Books of hers that I have read and loved: The Sorrows of an American, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, and What I Loved.

The answer to plotting or writing in segments…

I have come to realise through my own writings that, no matter how or where you start off, you will almost certainly need to explore the opposite pole of the plot/character continuum, at some stage during the writing or re-writing of your novel or short story.

Tirra Lirra By The River by Jessica Anderson was last modified: July 13th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
September 27, 2012 1 comment
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Book ReviewsBooksWriting

A Young Adult Novel: My French Barrette

Cynthia Rowe was a long-term member of Bondi Writers Group. She was President of the group for nearly four years and is currently the Editor of ‘Haiku Australia’. Cynthia is a successful writer of fiction and poetry. See her website at http//cynthiarowe.com.au.  My review of her book follows:

This is the latest book in the Genna Perrier series, following on from Our Hollow Sofa, Ants in My Dreadlocks, and Stinger in a Sugar Jar.

I must admit to thoroughly enjoying this latest one in the Genna series from so many points of view. It has an exciting plotline to picque the interest of any young adult (and young-at-heart oldie!). Other interesting elements include: mystery, romance, humour, strong characters, and New Caledonian cultural, political and linguistic references.

Continue Reading
A Young Adult Novel: My French Barrette was last modified: July 13th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
September 27, 2012 0 comment
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About Me

About Me

Anne Skyvington

Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. Learn about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir. Subscribe to this blog and receive a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics and events.

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