Tag Archives: australian authors

Book Review: How to Survive your Magical Family by Clare Rhoden

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I don’t read too many young adult fantasy novels but I’m glad I read this one.

Who could resist a magic family who live in a home filled with magical cats?

It begins with fourteen-year-old Toby who lives with his older sister, Helen, and his dad. Poor Toby is the only one in the family who does not seem to have any magical power beyond understanding cats. One night he and his sister find a cat and her litter of kittens. Toby also finds a silver bracelet. What he finds is not ordinary, as a mature cat called Katkin springs out ostensibly from the bracelet she’s been caught in for many years.

And so starts a series of events involving Toby’s kidnapping and the unfolding of secrets his family has kept from him. Stepping in is another character, Toby’s next-door neighbour, Mia who witnesses Toby’s kidnapping and gives chase.

The kidnapper, Orsa is pure evil as you’d expect but the crows and the cats are on the side of good as they help to try to free Toby. The big question is why has he been targeted.

The story is told from Toby’s as well as Mia’s points of view. It moves fast keeping the reader engaged wanting to turn the page to know more.  Both of these characters were likeable but the one I loved the most was Katkin. Her story and her personality was quite endearing.

It’s also a coming of age story as Toby realises the importance of his place in his family and the power he truly has. It’s a delightful book. Could there be a sequel? With the ending, I suspect there might be.

Book Review: The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland

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I have mixed feelings about this book which is about love, sisters, daughters, sorrow and grief mixed with fairytales and women’s voices.

Sound like a lot? It is and it’s quite a long read.

The story opens with Esther. A swan crashes into her ute from above and she thinks it’s her missing sisters spirit. Her sister Aura last seen walking along the beach disappeared twelve months earlier and Esther has been called home for a memorial service. She has a fractious relationship with her tattooist mother Freya but together with her therapist father, Esther is asked to go to Denmark. Why? Because her sister had lived there for three years before returning home  broken and deeply sad and they believe Esther should go and find out what happened.

The plot slowly unfolds as we discover stories surrounding tattooing and how women’s stories can be told on their skin. We discover that Aura has a childhood diary where her teenage ramblings stop when she’s about to turn sixteen. It picks up again when she’s in Denmark when her studies into folklore and fairy tales brings her to write about the seven skins, lines and passages she also has tattooed on her body the meaning of which remains a mystery.

I enjoyed the imagery and the arc of Esther’s character even though she wasn’t a particularly likeable character but that wasn’t the point. Her grief and the trauma of losing her older sister, the relationships around her and her self-discovery was touching and quite moving. The other characters weren’t terribly engaging either serving little purpose than to tiptoe around Esther.

Mostly the novel centres on Esther’s point of view with occasional drifts to others and this I found to be unfulfilling because it failed to move the story along. I also found long chunks of information about each skin, her flashbacks about her sister and the fairy tale reference to be quite repetitive. Even her one night stand with Tom was repeated a few times. There was a lot of detail and description which was nice when it deserved a place but many times, I found it merely slowed the story down. Perhaps that was the intention for this slow boil of a novel but it didn’t suit me.

A minor plot issue, but given that Freya came from Denmark herself, why she as a mother would not hop on a plane to find out what happened to her own daughter did lose me a bit. I didn’t really buy her reasons but took the leap of faith and accepted it.

Having said that, there was lots about this novel I did enjoy. The idea that grief can paralyse a person, the bonds of sisters, especially an older sister’s impact on her younger sister ( I must remember that, as I am an older sister). It is beautifully written and quite lyrical but overall it didn’t quite work for me.

Book Review: The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell

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This story is loosely based on Henry Lawson’s 1892 poem, The Drovers Wife. The author, Leah Purcell has reimagined it and focused on the bleak harshness for women and indigenous people during that time.

Molly Johnson lives in the high country in a shanty with her four children. The oldest, Danny is only twelve. Her husband, Joe never appears in the story as he is away droving. It’s just as well because when he is home, he’s drunk and violent. Molly is pregnant and isolated having only her children around her. Her life although harsh and unforgiving is challenged by the people who visit. The new policeman arrives with his wife and child having survived drowning in a flooded river. Next is Yakuda, an aboriginal man, in shackles who is wanted for allegedly killing a family.

The story plunges the reader into anxiety for Molly, her children and her survival as well as for Yakuda. But you can’t help but admire their gutsy determination for a better life as their relationship grows.

But this is not a story with a happy ending, so prepare yourself. The switch on occasion from third person to first person can be off putting but the story is a powerful one giving the reader a very unromanticised version of early Australia, a place of violence where women and the indigenous are little more than indentured slaves with few rights or voice or place.

The story has been made into a play where it first was brought to life and is now also a movie released in 2021 starring Purcell herself. I must now find it and watch it. And if you can check this one out.

Book Review: Not Now, Not Ever edited by Julia Gillard

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For those of you who aren’t Australian, Julia Gillard was our first female Prime Minister. She took on the role with gusto and purpose batting away every critical and nasty comment about her physical appearance to her personal relationship as an unmarried childless woman. Hurtful and devastating to any women let alone the leader of our country. Yet Julia carried on until she didn’t. That day in 2012 when she finally stood up to the Opposition Leader and his party and called him out for his sexist behaviour not just to her but to all Australian women, was a momentous one inspiring a shift if just a little that day, but which has grown and inspired many since. Indeed, it as pertinent now as it was then reminding women everywhere around the world that enough is enough.

This book is about that speech but is so much more. Julia has brought together a collection of essays from other women some of whom admitted that the speech was a wake-up call for action. Jess Hill, a young journalist was asked to investigate domestic violence and once she began digging was horrified at what she found in homes and families around the country. In Barak Obama’s administration having to deal with constant racism, the speech was used to galvanise and inspire.  In homes around Australia, it made people sit up and think and commence action.

I was in a leadership role myself at the time, working in a mainly male team having had to battle sexism which was never apparent on the surface. There were policies in place. But I do remember that year, our organisation had all male leaders undergo an intensive course on changing their attitudes and behaviours around sexism in the workplace. It was a truly incredible thing for a corporate organisation to do.

“Sexism experienced is a societal problem impacting on people’s perceptions of safety, confidence, health and wellbeing.”  More importantly sexism reinforces women’s individual and social disadvantages and if we want a fairer happier society, then the move to gender equality is urgent. Unfortunately, for most countries and in Australia this is not forecast to be reached for at least 150 years. Too late for me or my daughters.

This book is an important one to read and it is easy to follow and understand, inspiring and educating us about how sexism and misogyny affect each and every one of us. So go and get this one, learn and act. It’ll help you to understand so that we all move our society in a better, fairer direction.

Book Review: Wildflowers by Peggy Frew

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I have really loved Frew’s last two books, Hope Farm and Islands so I knew I just had to get Wildflowers.

Like the others, Wildflowers is  a story of family and in this case, the relationship and challenges of three sisters. Meg is the oldest, followed a year later by Nina and then four years after is Amber.

The story is largely centred around Nina and the affect on her by Amber, with her addiction and Meg who has an overwhelming need to fix and nurture Amber. When Meg decides that she and Nina need to perform an intervention on Amber, they whisk her younger sister away to a remote far north Queensland house. It’s here that good intentions slide and their relationship is tested.

Told from Nina’s point of view, its her gaze at her sisters and her largely ineffectual parents that gives us perspective.  From the opening, it’s clear that Nina who has packed up her belongings in boxes, not showering, or eating properly, is in the one who is really in trouble.

Nina reflects on her own life, her sexual life of disappointments, her inability to voice her thoughts  or even her ability to function. As her state of mind deteriorates before and after the intervention she slides into a space where no-one notices her crisis.

The sisters all perform and live in their assigned roles from childhood. “Meg, ten, is the Good One, and Nina, nine is the Forgetful One, and Amber, little Bam, only five is the Wild One, a puppy, a seal cub.” Often labelling children with their designated role means they wear it for life. Frew explores the roles of the sisters each fractured within the family.

Nina is a dislocated observer trying to make some meaning of her life as well as of her her family and her sisters as she reflects on what happened in QLD five years earlier. She is struck with an inertia and apathy yet unable to vocalise and stop Meg who is hellbent on fixing Amber. Nina struggles with the morals of what is going on but her weakness paralyses her from taking any action. She comes face to face with understanding who her sisters actually are. As is so often the case, Frew explores the question of how well we really know our siblings and our actions dependant on our designated role. It’s an interesting idea and one that is explored well.

Beyond the family, Nina reflects on her list of sexual partners, none of whom create a meaningful relationship. Tarnished by her experiences she slowly realises that it is not what she wants and without any real action she drifts away from these men.

But we never truly get a deep understanding of Nina and her motivations, nor do we learn much more about Amber or Meg. Yet the relationships between them change and evolve as they weave in and out of each other’s lives as siblings do.

It’s not a happy novel and reminds me a little of Sorrow and Bliss without the wit. But the writing is descriptive, the rainforest, the party house and the landmarks in Melbourne to name a few. It’s also emotive and confronting and in the end hopeful.

Wildflowers is unsettling and at times, confronting. From the first few pages, I was invested but this may not be a novel for everyone.

Book Review: Limberlost by Robbie Arnott

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Arnott is a Tasmanian author and certainly one to watch. Limberlost is his third novel and the first I’ve read of his work.

This is a coming-of-age novel about fifteen-year-old Ned who lives with his father and sister on their apple orchard in the Tamar Valley. It’s 1943 and his two older brothers away at war, leave a pall of anxiety over the household. Ned keeps himself busy during the summer school holidays with chores and trapping rabbits to sell as skins for hats for the soldiers. Ned is anxious about killing the animals but has a dream to use the money to buy a boat. It’s wartime so he questions his motives and wonders about his selfish dream. With his friend Jackbird, he finds time to fish and swim in the nearby river and lose himself to the imagination of a legendary whale at the mouth of the river. The narrative flips intermittently to Ned as a man who is forever reminded of what happened that summer of ’43.

Firstly, the writing is sublime, and although it’s not a long book (226 pages) each sentence is carefully considered, evoking beauty and feeling for the characters and the landscape. ‘The wind warmed, then died. The sun bit and clawed. Mud hardened into dirt, before falling apart as dust. Sweat crusted onto skin as soon as it leaked free. With no freshness to feed on, the rabbits disappeared.’

Ned is a boy and then a man of few words, lacking confidence to voice what is truly bothering him, always trying to do the right thing hoping for approval from his father, his sister and eventually his absent brothers. ‘He avoided thinking about anything that brought on the sting. The war. The school year that awaited him. The mare. His father. How his father, after he’d read Toby’s letter, had asked Ned if anything had come from Bill. The blank fissure in the old man’s face when Ned had shaken his head.’

Ned is also deeply conflicted by his obsessions and secrets, as his dreams collide with the reality of the failing farm and the absence of his brothers. But it is so beautifully juxtaposed with Ned as an adult bringing joy as he matures to be a caring, loving family man.

This truly is a magical story, beautifully written digging Ned into you, making you care and want the best for him. I predict this one will win a few awards, so go out and buy this new release.

Book Review: The Tilt by Chris Hammer

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I was unaware that this novel is the second in a series, but it mattered little. It really was suitable as a standalone.

The tension begins from the first page when a woman plans to blow up a regulator wall, while a man runs frantically through a forest dodging shooters. Three months later a skeleton belonging to a man missing since 1943 is found. Detective Constable Nell Buchanan is assigned to investigate, returning to her home town where her family still lives. She’s has a difficult relationship with her family which peaks our curiosity. Then another body turns up.

This is not your classical rural crime novel as it has many layers flipping back and forwards in timeline, often without warning. There are also many characters to keep you on your toes as you, the reader try to piece the family and community ties both past and present.

The writing is brilliant, descriptive as it is beautiful, placing us in the Australian landscape of forest, river and small country town. ‘The lack of wind meant there was nothing to mitigate the oppression that enveloped the weatherboard house on the plain above the Cadell Tilt. It baked and it sweated and it cowered, its iron roof shimmering like a skillet.’

The locals are cringe-worthy. ‘He has a face like a slab of marble, white and veined with pink, topped with a strawberry-blond mullet so thickly woven it could be a doormat.’ And they are suspicious, curious and not always friendly.

Tension grows from the shadowy presence of preppers, cookers and twitchers as we’re never really sure who they are.  Nell becomes embroiled in an old family feud as things get personal and old grudges emerge the more she digs deeper into the mystery.

Nell herself gives little away and at times I wondered if she really had grown up in the area as she seemed quite disconnected. She certainly didn’t head down memory lane to give us much insight into anything more than her family background. But then that was the point as the family tree came together like a piece out of ancestory.com. As I read I was kind of wishing I had the chart to refer to but when I saw it mapped out at the end, I realised that advanced knowledge would give away some of the twists. And there are a lot of twists much like the Murray River so well featured in the family saga.

I really loved this novel, the first I’ve read by Hammer and I’ll be searching for the rest.