Winter Solstice

     June 21st is the date of the winter solstice in Australia. This day has set me thinking about my neighbours who, like me, will be turning on their lights and warming their rooms as they prepare for the long, cold night ahead.

     When I was young, neighbours were remote figures dimly glimpsed, as though through a rain-spattered window. We seemed to have so little in common. A casual wave, a few words about the weather...a rare irritation with barking dogs or an overhanging tree branch.
     But now I'm older and I live in a settled street where I have come to know most of my neighbours. They reflect my own journey through the decades. Childhood and adolescence; marriage and parenting; work and change. I see houses sold, and new people arriving. Where on my timeline will they fit?

     As I go along the street, I am in familiar, friendly territory. Benson, the Golden Retriever, shows up at the gate, hoping for a tidbit. Melanie the one-eyed cat stares crookedly from a driveway.
     I stop to collect the mail for Bob and Jan, who are away on their New Zealand cruise.
     I wonder if Jannine is sick. Her car is in the driveway and she hasn't taken in her rubbish bin. Perhaps I'll phone her later.
     I can hear Peter's radio, tuned to its '60s hits. He emerges from his workshop, grumbling that his arthritis is giving him gyp. We exchange goods--a carrot cake for a tray of his free-range eggs. His hens are a happy sound, clucking as they wake to daylight.

     I value these encounters. They are small connections but they count.
     As night closes in on the shortest day, I will look out on the darkened world, comforted by the warm glow of lights in my neighbours' windows.

(Comments are appreciated. I apologise that Blogger does not accept my replies, informing me that I do not exist!)
    

Memoir Writing

We leave a shadow as we walk through life.

Recently I have been reading memoirs, in preparation for a workshop I was booked to give.
The breadth of style and topic this form inspires is astonishing. Narrative, letters, diaries, blogs...how can I compare Paris in Love, Eloisa James' light-hearted account of her year in Paris, with Joan Didion's stark contemplation of ageing in Blue Nights?

Childhood, too, can be mined by the memoir writer. Has any writer surpassed the naturalist Gerald Durrell's delightful Corfu trilogy? In My Family and Other Animals, he takes us to an idyllic summer roaming the Greek Island, free to explore the landscape's hills and bays with his dog, Roger.
I closed all these books, feeling privileged to have shared these lives with their pleasures, fears and discoveries.

The day of the workshop arrived. It was intended for senior citizens, and the faces gazing back at me showed, like my own, the passage of time. Having agreed that, unlike autobiography, you can write as many memoirs as you choose, the class each shared a random topic for the coming exercises. Some spoke out fluently. Others hesitated. A couple of people waved me away as if to say, "I'm not ready."
I noticed the transforming effect of each person's words. Faces became youthful, shedding decades as they relived moments of emotion. For our feelings seem to be the key to what we most vividly remember.

Nostalgia, pride, regret, even fear was sketched. Smiles and laughter chopped through the barriers of strangers. It was as though, sharing memories that mattered, we were like Hansel and Gretel, tiptoeing through life's unknown forest, our trail of experience scattering a path we could look back on. Memoir is a wonderful medium. Who is your favourite author of memoir?

Adoption Stories

Coincidentally, two books I borrowed from the library recently had the theme of adoption.

The stories couldn't be more different. "The Bad Mother", a novel by Isabelle Gray, is deliberately titled to intrigue. In fact, the character Tessa Parker is an excellent mother to her two teenagers. It is she who blames herself quite unfairly when her son runs away from home. Tessa's perceived failings and inattention to her family, however, seem excusable, given that she has only just found out she was adopted. To loving parents, yes. Somehow, Tessa tracks her origins, discovering her real father is serving jail time. Even so, she can't resisting meeting him, unwittingly offering naive trust to a dubious man. The tension level in this book is maintained very well. Along with Tessa, we suffer the confusion, misplaced hope and fear that erode her confidence as she searches for the truth.

The second book is a kind of memoir. Jeanette Winterson is of course a prize-winning author, well-known for several novels including her book, "Oranges are not the Only Fruit," where a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents falls in love with a woman. That painful story of judgment and punishment reminds us of just how harsh the world was, if you happened to be different. The title of this later volume is "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal,"  which were the parting words she was offered as she was driven from her home at sixteen.

This is another painful read. The author is honest without blaming. She feels the wrench from her birth mother intuitively, while her adoptive mother deals out religion and punishment. Her daughter spends time in the coal hole or is put to sit on the doorstep overnight. Yet there is some kind of bond. "She was a monster but she was my monster," is the adult Jeanette's response when the birth mother she eventually traces seems to criticize the other woman. The author can be funny, and has a devastating eye for the ridiculous moments in life. One hopes these candid soul searchings bring some sort of catharsis and peace.

Meanwhile, I guarantee you won't want to put these books down! They are both great reads, and touch on serious issues in our culture and its ideas of parenting.

Bill. The Life of William Dobell. (Review)

Life as we live it is an unpredictable, messy business. Only when it is over can a perceptive biographer bring shape and meaning to our existence. Scott Bevan has succeeded admirably as he charts the fortunes of Sir William Dobell, known to his friends simply as ‘Bill’.

This is an excellent biography; the kind you read like a thriller, unable to put the book aside. At 457 pages of text plus a daunting 36 pages of references, this speaks not only for the interest of the subject but also the research and writing skill of the author, Scott Bevan. With carefully-chosen language and strong verbs he brings alive the visual landscapes where Dobell lived and worked. A Cultural Centre glares across the park; Catalinas heave themselves into the sky.

Setting is imperative in this account. After a debilitating court case, it seems that Dobell restored his health and sanity by retreating to the sleepy, lake-side village of Wangi Wangi, on Lake Macquarie’s shore. Living with his older sister Alice at Allowah, their simple cottage by the lake, he resumed painting and found a healing routine walking his dogs, visiting the local library or drinking with mates at the pub. Not the life of an important artist, one might think. But Dobell is presented as a simple man, pulled into the limelight of notoriety by the famous court case challenging his right to paint as he saw.

He cannot avoid the art world and its pretensions, painting and meeting politicians, artists, and the names of the day. Fame attracts him, yet he is more comfortable with the characters who have no claim to fame, except that he chose to portray them in his own visual way. He dislikes publicity yet is constantly in the news. He seems doomed to inspire controversy, though he proclaims he prefers to be left alone to paint. Endearing anecdotes reveal his foibles and fears. He hates driving. His last car has 14 kilometres on the speedo when he dies. He has no egg cups, so uses a cut-up toilet roll to serve a boiled egg to his visitor. His dogs won’t budge from the shop door until he buys them each an ice cream.

Somehow these little points humanise a man who has earned both lavish praise and vitriolic criticism. People describe him as ‘gentle’, ‘nervous’, ‘sensitive’, yet there is often a touch of malice to his portrayals. As he ages, he avoids Sydney, preferring the undemanding charm of Newcastle’s fringes. As a Newcastle resident myself, I enjoyed the part this city played in the life of a complex and gifted man. This is a wonderful read and I heartily recommend it to anyone curious about the dichotomy of this artist’s public and private lives.

Valentine Romance

In the Western world we pepper the year with days of special significance.

Valentine's Day ushers in moods of rejoicing and hope, when, briefly, people can forget our political, global and personal woes, and remember the joys of love and friendship.

When I moved from New Zealand to Australia in 1986, I found myself in the company of a group who dressed up and recreated medieval times. Romance and courtly behavior were high on their agenda. As well as the feasting and jousting, roses and verses were normal courtship aids. How impressed I was!

I am happy to tell you I found my own romance here, and have never left this magnificent country.
I wrote the first draft of VALENTINE MASQUERADE a long time ago. Recently I found the old manuscript. I was about to burn it, but started reading and became engrossed in the story. After a rewrite, it was accepted by Sweet Cravings Publishers in America.

I have been a writer for several decades, but only lately have I turned to writing romance, including all the ups and downs of understanding and loving another human being. My dogs also feature in each book, bringing their own special kind of love to each story.

As a special gift to you for Valentine's Day, my publisher has reduced the ebook price of VALENTINE MASQUERADE to only 99 cents on their website.

I hope you will grab a copy and share the journey of my lovers and the beautiful dog on the cover.

Available now until February 14th:  http://store.sweetcravingspublishing.com/index.php?main_page=book_info&cPath=4&products_id=206

Who's your pin-up? I vote for Cary Grant

I’ve been enjoying a Cary Grant feast.

Born Archie Leach, he had a chequered childhood. His mother was placed in a mental home for depression (it happened in those days) and he was expelled from his high school. His career began in vaudeville, where he learned such skills as stilt walking, acrobatics, juggling and mime.

     Cary Grant hit Hollywood in 1931, and went on to be voted the most popular male film star of all time. He was incredibly versatile. He played in comedies, dramas, naval epics, romances, drama and suspense. Even the grumpy Alfred Hitchcock loved him.

     His life apart from acting had many highs and lows. He married five times, producing only one child, a daughter who was as infatuated with her father as the rest of the female population. Cary also attracted men, leading to suggestions he was bi-sexual.

     His interest in yoga, hypnotism and mysticism suggest that his inner life was a struggle. In seeking to come to terms with himself, he used LSD, then a legal compound one of his wives introduced him to. He claimed it was effective.

     He was a hard worker, and suffered the cerebral haemorrhage that caused his death when he was preparing to go on stage with his one man show in America. He was 82. One cannot help thinking he was lucky, enduring only a few hours before dying, and working right to the end of his long life.

     Cary Grant left us a gift in his legacy of films. Old, many in black and white, with none of the frills and million dollar effects of today, his movies entertain and grip. He wasn’t using stand-ins when he did his back flips in Holiday, or sang, whistled and danced his way to stardom. At the same time, a lost era of fashion, hairstyles, décor and transport remind us how things were back in the 30s and 40s.

     Even fashions in male pin-ups have changed. Today’s sexy male is admired for his pecs, abs and buns. But for me, the brooding good looks of Cary Grant, fully dressed, take my vote.

     Do you ever wonder how your books might be viewed by posterity?  Our work reflects the norms of this century and decade. There are no computers or cell phones in Cary’s movies, and the cars are collectors’ items, if they are still around. In the future, what will be happening to values, to how we dress and eat, how we get around? What technology will be available?

      I wonder!

Homage to a Master Storyteller.

As troops assemble in the name of peace, a timely reminder of war's reality is offered to us by the Australian novelist, Tom Keneally. His portrait of the Great War as it affected those who fought and particularly those who nursed the wounded, is an unforgettable experience.
     Here is my review of 'The Daughters of Mars'.
    

Homage to a Master Storyteller., August 29, 2014 By Margaret Sutherland    This review is from: The Daughters Of Mars (Kindle Edition) There are already 226 reviews of this book so what makes me want to write another? It is rare to find a book I regard with wholehearted admiration. What did I admire? Everything. The scope of the story, the writing, the research, the compassion, the acceptance of life in all its conflict. This is just a big, marvellous novel. I feel I have lived through the First World War. I am a nurse, and I can imagine the challenge of going from a country hospital in Australia to work in the field of bloodshed, amputation and agony. Sometimes it seems kinder to let the injured die, except that nurses and doctors may not make such decisions. The Durance sisters have experienced one parallel before they go overseas. Their mother, dying of cancer, moves Sally Durance to consider euthanasia, using morphine. Her sister, Naomi, seems to pre-emp her sister, taking the burden of the decision on her shoulders. Working through a misunderstanding brings the sisters close, as does the near-drowning they share when their troop ship is torpedoed. Gas attacks, pneumonia, gangrene, blindness, shell shock, syphilis...it's not a pretty world, and the comforts are uncertain. Sally has 'a soul destined for belief' while Naomi is 'disappointed with the deity.' There are days of compensation; a day in Paris, viewing the Louvre and Notre Dame 'from whose tower she could see the hatted heads of men in the open-topped pissoirs, capable without embarrassment of lifting their hats to passing ladies.' There is room for brief romance and the hope of future marriage, but all emotions exist against a random backdrop. Nothing is secure and death can strike the most unlikely victims. Yet how much can people care about the fate of others? Life still goes on. Farmers and their wives plough and plant, indifferent to the nearby field of crosses. Time can be found for a Sunday game of cricket. Naomi, always philosophical, decides that 'life was so ridiculous...that it must be accepted and worshipped as it came.' Some reviews remark on the odd ending of the book. It is an odd ending. But by that stage I was totally in Tom Keneally's hands and willing to go wherever he led. The ending didn't matter. In life there is no ending, just beginnings and more beginnings.