Book Review—Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

A widowed Ted Hughes scholar and his two boys try to cope with grief and are visited by Crow, the eponymous figure from Hughes’ Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow. Crow tells the father early on that “I will only stay as long as you need me”, and so beings a multi-voiced narrative, moving between Crow’s musings about the family and the pleasure he finds in grief and Dad and the Boys coming to grips with their grief and Crow in their lives.

Grief reads much like a collection of poems within the frame narrative of a widower and his two boys. Much like grief it lacks coherence, moving between frenzied memories, the drudging inactivity of everyday life that slowly becomes the new normal, and the voices one adopts, sometimes little more than an inexplicable kraah, other times fanciful tales that mix memory and desire. Crow acts as therapist , trickster, substitute, scapegoat, and healer. As in Hughes’ work, it celebrates the uncertainties of the figure, taking sombre pleasure in his multitude of roles in different mythologies, all highly personalised in Grief, with Dad and the Boys coming to realize that this unfathomable figure in their lives is grief itself. There are no answers beyond that, because beyond its existence there is nothing certain about grief.

As alluring as it is distressing, Grief is the Thing with Feathers traverses the territory of sorrow without attempting to simplify its intricacies.

Andreas

Book Review—The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

In a time after the Romans and when the knights of Arthur still live, England is in a time of despair. Ogres are constant nuisances and dragons occasional perils. But worst of all is a mist that has gathered over the moors and valleys, and everyone is caught in a state of amnesia. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple, start to ponder this strange state that has befallen them and their fellows, and decide to go and see their son, who is also a vague memory. Along their journey they meet many dwellers in this cursed land, each with their own affliction and hope to be freed of the mist.

The novel provides many allusions to epic tales and literatures that creates a dense atmosphere. From the despair created by the psychopomp who is in turn tormented by the neglected wife of a passenger, to the heroic warrior with echoes of Beowulf, the conniving monks and treacherous kings, and the legend of Arthur hovering over everyone’s lips. The first few chapters of the novel promise a surreal take on the fantasy genre, with strange omens and eerie sensations. But as the chapters progress these hypnotic passages blend into staples of the fantasy genre, with quests and burdens that need to be fulfilled. There remains a subversive allure, where Arthur’s knight is weary, and the heroic warrior is as motivated by personal grudges as heroic duty, but often these seem more contrived to toil in the genre, and many passages and narrative shifts have little place other than convenience.

But Ishiguro's ability to move from heart-warming elation to devastation is perfect for the search for memories at the heart of The Buried Giant, with memories having both the power to relive past ecstasies but also to inflict regret and lamentations.
Andreas

Movie Club—Sunday Too Far Away

This month the Movie Club will be screening Sunday Too Far Away, directed by Ken Hannam and starring Jack Thompson, Peter Cummins and Reg Lye.

The film follows Folley, a gun (champion) shearer, who joins a new shearing time despite having left the biz. His plan is to lay off the booze, save up some money and move down the coast and buy a prawning boat. He quickly picks up his old habits and is once again immersed in the hard working and hard drinking lifestyle. At the same time, Folley and the other shearers face having a bonus taken away, with 'scab' (non-unionised) workers coming into town and undermining their labour strike.

The film is considered one of the leading films of the Australian New Wave Cinema of the 1970s. These films were publicly funded, and one of the conditions of this arrangement was that they feature themes of Australian life. But film makers often used this opportunity to question assumed elements in national myths and icons, and Sunday Too Far Away is no different. The masculinity and mateship, the drinking and the larrikins are all on show, and often not in a  redeeming light.

Sunday Too Far Away will be showing on Wednesday 9 September @ Narellan Library (corner of Queen and Elyard Street, Narellan) @ 6pm. Tea, coffee, and biscuits provided, but you are more than welcome to bring your own snacks and beverages.

Stay after the screening and join the discussion about the film and its portrayal of life on a shearing station. Share your thoughts or use the discussion questions.

Book Review - The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Told from the point of view of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, the work takes place years after the crucifixion. She lives in hiding, with the only people aware of her identity and location being two of her son’s followers, whom she deems “misfits”. She recounts her perspective of her son’s life and death, while she fends off her “captors”, who are in the process of writing the Gospels.

There is a hint of Life of Brian (1979), as for Mary her son is not the messiah, he’s just a… well, you all know the line. He is one of many rabblerousers discontent with the current order, expressing ideas and thoughts as yet unimagined.

The language is unrelentingly modern and pessimistic. In fact, many reviewers have taken issue with the work’s depiction of Mary as a harsh, cynical, and cowardly old woman who condemns the change she witnesses in her son and runs before the moment of his death in order to save herself from a similar fate. But the actual text is far more sympathetic, more disparaging. True, this is not the sanctified Mary of the church, but nor is she a vile old crone. Her pessimism is not from hate, but sorrow.

A dirge of a lost life and a world destroying itself, the Testament of Mary is as enthralling as it is plaintive. 

Andreas.

Book Review - Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook

Cook’s interrogation of the myth of mateship in the Australian outback follows John Grant, a Sydney born and educated school teacher, who does a stint in a microscopic town in Outback Australia. Looking forward to a six week escape in Sydney he passes through Bundanyabba. Little does he know he will not be getting to Sydney, instead falling into the dark wonderland that is ‘the Yabba’. This is a land of drink and death, of blokes and brutality, and after one night Grant finds himself a broke drifter. Desperate, he passes through the beer glasses of several hosts, experiencing new nightmares with each of these new mates. Upon sobering he realizes the peculiarity that meant you could “sleep with their wives, despoil their daughters, sponge on them, defraud them, do almost anything that would mean at least ostracism in normal society, and they would barely seem to notice it. But refuse to drink with them and you immediately become a mortal enemy.” This is the heart of Cook’s narrative, the harsh, drunken masculinity of ‘mateship’ and its disregard for all else. Like many literary works of the 1970s by male authors the female characters are underdeveloped, mere placeholders and window-dressing. But in the world Cook creates there would be little for them to do, apart from being used and abused. This savage land leaves Grant at the mercy of the two foes he comes to distrust the most, with beer becoming his saving grace and violence his only salvation. An antidote to the heroism of "Banjo" Patterson’s “Man from Snowy River”, Cook rounds out the myth that is the Outback. Wake in Fright is a worthwhile read for anyone wanting to really understand all about Australia. Andreas