The Art of Living Alone & Loving It

I don't live alone, but I will one day soon enough. Not a fate that I ever expected, or planned. But one day soon enough Master Wicker will fledge and leave the nest. And I will live alone. Actually it's just occurred to me (right now) that I have never lived alone! I've always had family, or flatmates. I've lived single, but never alone. Short stays in hotels for conferences probably doesn't count. Maybe this will be a bigger change than I had ever contemplated...

The Art of Living Alone & Loving It was one of those books that I picked up and bought the first time I ever saw it in a store. That was a few months ago, and in the past couple of weeks I got around to picking it up. I really enjoyed it. It's a good all round Self Help/Meditation of Life kind of book. The advice contained within could help anyone regardless of how many people are in the house on census night. 

Like most of us Jane Mathews didn't chose to live alone. She "fell into it post divorce - not with an elegant swan dive but a graceless belly flop." But she came to love the freedom and independence. We all want "a life brimming with opportunities and potential, lived in Technicolor, not black and white."

It's not all fun and games though this single lifestyle- living alone is a skill and requires some thought, effort and discipline Jane tells us. "It is always potentially trackpants o'clock." So how do I become a "frolicsome otter" swimming in my independent waters, revelling in every twist and turn?

Our lives are built choice by choice. 

The book is in chapters dealing with all the facts of life - relationships, health, home, finances, interests, spirituality and action, how to actually get things done. There is even a great chapter on Cooking for One- I want to try Cheat's Quesadillas now.... If only I could keep wraps and cheese in the house. Each chapter ends with a one page summary- the Take Aways. 

Chapter 2 Mental Strength and Shift is absolutely fabulous. There are 12 tools to help us be more resilient and tough. It is wise and universally applicable, not relevant just to those living alone. 

The grit in the oyster makes the pearl. 

Vitality, not happiness is the opposite of depression. 

The world is as you perceive it. 

Avoid developing a habit of discontent, which is an emotional cut de sac. 

Jane Mathews is a Barefoot Investor (see my review) fan, and so much of the advice in the finances chapter had a familiar theme. Which is fine, it's all rather sensible advice. I was a bit taken aback in this section when Jane pointed out that those living alone are more vulnerable financially and "We have to think twice about buying things we want but don't need. Every dollar spent now distances us a little from the life we want in the future." Well. Oops. Maybe I should have read that before the changes I've made in the last few months? No regrets though. 

Jane wants us all to live big lives, pushing the boundaries, experiencing new things, learning new things. To enjoy the abundance of time alone, because that's what everyone else wants more of!

Better to be alone than wish you were. 

The chapter on spirituality was the least appealing one to me. My internal landscape is rather barren I'm afraid. I'm quite happy to try new things, and trailing my fingers through the water sounds delightful, but I don't feel the need for oracle cards or to walk labyrinths anytime soon in this lifetime. I am half tempted to try meditation though. 

I love that Jane calls those living alone soloists! Such a strong, empowered word and image. Soloists are the fastest growing demographic. Two million Australians live alone. A quarter of all households. 

You will find you are as capable as you need to be.

I know that I'll reread this book whenever it comes my time to live with myself. 

RN Life Matters interview with Jane Mathews

The Art of Frugal Hedonism

I plucked this book off the library shelves a few months ago when I was cruising (somewhat uncharacteristically) in the Business section! I'd never heard of The Art of Frugal Hedonism, but was captivated by the title and cover. I shoved it in a pile of other books and brought it home. I've borrowed it several times since that day. And read it cover to cover. 

I started reading it one day when at a bit of a loose end, and was immediately pulled in right from the Foreward by Clive Hamilton. It's all really well written as well as being interesting. It's fun and funny, and not at all stodgy.

Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb really know their subject as the book was born out of their beliefs and experiences. In 2016 they were living on $105 each per week (including bills, but excluding rent/mortgage payments) compared to the Australian average of $440 (artificially low because it is including adults and children alike). The Art of Frugal Hedonism is a manifesto of sorts of how to value-add your life without actually paying for it. It teaches us that if we consume less, we have don't have to earn as much to live the same life, we can work less and live more- and it's better for the environment.  

As we grew older, dear reader, your authors noticed that a lot of people in our unbelievably affluent society were struggling to thoroughly enjoy life, despite having it so good. 

The book is 51 chapters full of anecdotes, tips and advice on how to live this life, but with an added dash of philosophy. I particularly enjoyed a new 3 Rs. Relish, Recalibrate and Revel in Resourcefulness. Chapter 2 is simply called Relish, and it advises us to use our own nerve endings to our advantage. They offer rather unconventional advice such as

Stroke your dog's ear between thumb and forefinger and marvel at its silkiness. Snuggle into your bed on a cold night and actually grin about how good it is... Enjoy the rocking movement of a train... Call it mindfulness, call it living in the moment, call it relishing- it's recommended by psychiatrists, hedonists, Buddhist monks and cheapskates alike. 

Stroking my dogs ears has long been one of my favourite activities. It's glorious. And obviously free (well apart from the dog food and vet bills). 

Chapter 6, Recalibrate your Senses suggests a way for us to really appreciate what can be everyday treats for us. 

The basic blueprint for modern first-world living is normalised hyper-abundance and hyper-stimulation, punctuated by desperate attempt at escape when the fallout becomes too distressing. These attempts usually take the form of bouts of restraint (like diets), or of collapse (like illness, or 'lie-by-a-pool-for-two-weeks-getting-drunk' holidays). Frugal Hedonism inverts this pattern by normalising an elegant sufficiency of consumption, and then artfully dotting it with intensely relished abundance.

They point out how good a cold beer tastes after a sweaty day of working in the garden with a friend. How good a hot shower feels after a week or camping (I do know how that feels but fervently hope never to experience it again, I can Relish my daily shower without having to Recalibrate by camping).

Reveling in Resourcefulness, Chapter 17, reminds us how good it feels to problem solve, to fix something that otherwise may be no longer used, or thrown out. I've taken up mending things this year, which does not seem all that big a deal I suppose, but I was so proud of my efforts mending a hole in my flanelette sheet that I took pictures and sent it to friends! Those sheets have lasted out the winter just fine (and indeed are still on the bed, winter isn't quite finished where I live), and I didn't need to buy new sheets this winter. And it seriously was rather quick. Previously I would have consigned them to dog blankets long ago. 

Everyday life used to provide people with ample opportunity to experience the satisfaction of being canny, constructive, and creative to achieve an end via the constant necessity of making things and repairing or repurposing them. Apparently, this feeling is so pleasurable that as those necessary activities which supplied it dwindled, we have invented leisure activities to supply it in their place- cutting up brand new fabric to use for recreational quilting, finding 'shed' projects to tinker on, building model aeroplanes, doing puzzles, gaming. 

Blogging?

Perhaps I would rename Chapter 20- Indulge Your Curiosity, to Remain Curious, to fit with my R theme. I've already recognised the need to remain curious as an important principal in my own life. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it certainly brings great joy to humans. Annie and Adam suggest that knowledge can function in lieu of material goods, and that it is "deep hedonism".

As your understandings amass, you begin to sense the world around you as a dense and majestic cathedral of thrumming, interconnected functions and stories. 

I loved this book so much, I suspect that I'll buy my own copy at some stage. And I'll definitely be searching out their other book The Weed Forager's Handbook and most definitely try to do an Edible Weed Walk on my next visit to Melbourne.

If I'd been paying attention I would have noticed Lisa's review at ANZLitLovers last year.

Or heard the RN Lifematters interview with Annie Raser-Rowland.

I'm not exactly sure if this book qualifies for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, as the second author is a man, but will list it anyway as I'm sure more people would love it too. And I hope they will tell me if it doesn't. Actually I'll ask on twitter. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

The Art of Taxidermy

I do love a verse novel, so I was very excited when I spied The Art of Taxidermy in the Text Catalogue earlier in the year. I eagerly awaited the publication date, and then ordered it from my local bookshop. I picked it up this week. I've really been in a bit of a reading slump for the past few months (and a blogging slump too), and I thought a verse novel would be good for what ails me. It was. 

The Art of Taxidermy tells the story of Charlotte, Lottie, living in South Australia with her father. Her mother has died and her Aunt Hilda hovers closely, helping look after both Charlotte and her father. Lottie is 11. She is a rather sad and lonely child. Alone at school. 

Back there with the kids

who didn't talk to me

was like being at a funeral

every day. 

Lottie becomes obsessed with death.

At the age of eleven

I fell in love

with death

She starts collecting dead things - frogs, skinks, lots of birds, even a red-bellied black snake. But of course all this creates a "fusty fug" in her bedroom and attracts the attention of Aunt Hilda, who is far from enthusiastic about Charlotte's new hobby. 

On a visit to the museum with her scientist father Charlotte sees taxidermied specimens for the first time.

They are perfect-

perfectly dead. 

Not shrinking?

Not disintegrating?

Lottie becomes even more interested in the dead, subsuming her grief for her mother. 

I pulled on layer after layer of her:underwear, stockings,shirts and skirts,coat and shoes.I wrapped myself in herfolded myself upuntil it feltlike a warm hug.

Besides the more obvious themes of grief and death, there are themes of friendship, loneliness, glimpses of Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal relations with white Australia, and the history of German immigrants to South Australia. The book is also full of appreciation for our Australian wildlife and in particular our wonderful birds. 

The Art of Taxidermy was shortlisted for the 2017 Text Prize. The gorgeous cover and illustrations are by Edith Rewa. 

Sharon Kernot is a South Australian author and poet. The Art of Taxidermy is her second novel. 

Teaching Notes

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Claris The Chicest Mouse in Paris

Somehow I had missed the pre publicity for Claris, and so recently I was walking out of my local bookshop (having already bought four books) when I was stopped in my tracks by Claris in the window display. I hadn't noticed her on the way in, despite stopping to look at the Paris themed window. I gasped, turned around, walked straight back in and bought it. I love Paris, obviously. I love kids books. I love Megan Hess's illustrations. And now she's written a picture book. Such a no-brainer that I would buy it, I would read it immediately and that I would love it. All of those things happened.

Claris is the story of a small French mouse. She lives in the mountains of France but is no country bumpkin. Claris fashions haute couture creations from garbage bags. But her friends and relatives just don't care. She dreams of Paris and of finding the stylish people.

Claris gets a lift in a hot air balloon with two frogs, one in a beret. Claris arrives in Paris and sets off to find somewhere to live. There are some hazards along the way of course, like a grumpy cat, and a nasty girl who is a sneering snitch.

From the very outset (with the totally gorgeous endpapers) Claris is utterly delightful. I just love the contrast between Claris' designer outfits and her hairy, mousey little legs.

The story is told in rhyming couplets and is charmant. 

So while the mice feasted on crumbs of éclair,

 she read about handbags in Vanity Fair. 

My copy came with a delightful little Claris pin.

I'm generally too old to have Instagram envy, but oh, Megan Hess's life on Instagram! Can anyone really be that glamorous?

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Paris in July 

Big Little Lies

I've fallen under the thrall of all things Big Little Lies recently. I binge watched the miniseries a few weeks ago. I inhaled it, and just loved it. I'd borrowed a copy from my library as I couldn't get it on my streaming services, and I was a bit worried about the move to an American location. Big Little Lies, the book, is Australian and firmly set in Sydney. Big Little Lies, the series, has moved to Monterey in California. But I loved it so much that I then went out and bought the DVD, so I could watch it again whenever I wanted to (after pressing it onto all of my friends first). I'm very excited that a second series is in production and will be released next year. 

The series has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. Perhaps my favourite discovery is Ituana's breathy, lovely version of You Can't Always Get What You Want. I loved that so much that I took out a trial subscription to Spotify! Which I am enjoying very much. 

Very soon I found myself downloading the audiobook on my new love (Borrowbox). 15 hours 55 minutes! In just two weeks (I'm sure I won't be able to renew it as it's really popular, I had to wait for it)- that's quite an ask for me. But it was pretty easy I guess. Even though I didn't really love Caroline Lee's voice work- I found her rather overwrought Aussie accent a bit much actually. Her narration is fine, but I found her character voices grating for some reason.  But I did love the story and was sucked right in yet again. 

Just in case anyone else has been hiding under a rock Big Little Lies tells the stories of three kindergarten mums. Their friendship, their relationships and families. Madeleine is the feisty one, she's on her second marriage, and is the old hand of the school yard, an expert in the politics and cliques (yes of the parents). Celeste and Jane are both first time kindergarten mums, Celeste is married with twin boys, Jane is the youngest, a single mother with one son, Ziggy. All are juggling busy lives and finding their own way with work life balance, and each has made quite different decisions and compromises in her life. 

From the start of the book and the movie we know that someone has died. But not who. Big Little Lies is a Who Was It? more so than a Whodunnit? There are a number of smaller mysteries along the way and I did guess those whilst watching the show and I kept wondering if I would have guessed them if I read the book first. 

Given that the series was so fresh in my mind, I was very interested in the differences between the book and screen versions- and there are quite a few really. But they tend to be minor - some of the characters have an extra kid in the book (it tends to be the brothers that are left out), Mrs Ponder who lives next to the school didn't make the cut to the small screen. I can't remember Jane's parents being in the series. There are a few story lines that are in the show but not in the book. And of course everyone is richer and everything is grander in Monterey than they were back on the Pirriwee Peninsula. 

Speaking of which the whole Pirriwee setting really annoyed me. The rest of the Sydney suburbs mentioned are real. Jane's parents live in Granville, she lived in Newtown before moving to the peninsula. Why then make up the fictional Pirriwee? Are you really protecting the innocent when it's clearly a Northern Beaches location? Why bother?

Structurally, I really loved the little snippets from parents at the school that began or finished each chapter. Police interviews are not really like this at all I suspect. I'm sure everyone would be much better behaved, but I love all the catty little snippets given in these sections, and the differing insights and information. 

Liane Moriarty is a phenomenally successful Australian author. Rather remarkably two of her sisters are authors too, successful, but not quite in the stratospheric leagues that Liane inhabits. Big Little Lies was my first Liane Moriarty read, I know that there'll be more. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

The Trauma Cleaner

The Trauma Cleaner is having a moment just now. It's doing very well in sales, has a 4.07 Goodreads rating, and has won or been shortlisted for many major awards already. I saw author Sarah Krasnostein at the Sydney Writers Festival recently, so I picked up the book in the week before. Of course I didn't finish it til the week after, but I was glad that I'd made a start on it before our early morning session. 

Biography isn't a genre that I take on all that often, I find memoir more appealing I guess. But Sandra Pankhurst, the trauma cleaner of the title, is a particularly fascinating biographical subject. She was born a boy called Peter and adopted into an abusive family. Peter married young and fathered two children before leaving his family behind, coming out as gay, and later becoming one of the first gender reassignment patients in Australia and marrying again in later life as a woman.

Those family factors alone are interesting enough without the jobs that Peter and then Sandra worked along the way. Including drag queen, prostitue, funeral director, hardware shop owner before becoming a specialised trauma cleaner dealing with the houses of hoarders and crime scenes. It all seems like enough to fill more than one life. 

As a biographer Sarah Krasnostein had her work cut out for though, as Sandra is a very unreliable historian.

She is in her early sixties and simply not old enough for that to be the reason why she is so bad with the basic sequence of her life, particularly her early life. Many facts of Sandra's past are either entirely forgotten, endlessly interchangeable, neurotically ordered, conflicting or loosely tethered to reality. she is open about the fact that drugs have impacted her memory. ('I don't know, I can't remember. The lesson to be learnt is: Do not take drugs, it fucks your brain.') It is also my belief that her memory loss is trauma-induced. 

Of course cognitive impairment can happen in your sixties, but it is not just minor details that have slipped from Sandra's memory. She can't remember "the year of her marriage or whether she had a wedding reception or the births of her children or the details of her divorce or the year of her sex reassignment surgery." Major, major life events. In fact, the major events of a life. Sarah writes a very sympathetic version of Sandra's life.

Using words as disinfectants, we are trauma cleaning. Word by word, sentence by sentence, we are reuniting fragments scattered by chaos to create heat and light. 

But nothing here is sugar coated. Not Sandra's life, or her work. The named chapters relating Sandra's work with horders are particularly interesting. The description of the mess, the chaos, the smell. 

I hang back, sapped for a moment by the smell. Hanging over everything is one of two smells (the other being death) that I will discover and come to know during the time I spend watching Sandra at work: human dirt at close quarters over time. We have no single word for it, this smell. We have no adjective to describe how profoundly repulsive and unsettling it is. It's not just human effluence or rot, nor is it a simple matter of filth or grime or feculence of unwashedness. 

Sarah goes on to wonder if we used to have a word for it in "less hygienic times". I found these passages on smell particularly relatable as I know that smell. I really know it. I have come across that smell in my line of work many times. It is indescribable, but distinctive. It was revelatory to consider it "equally the ineffable smell of defeat, of isolation, of self-hate. Or, more simply, it is the smell of pain."

As a young adult I found Peter both courageous and cowardly. Courageous, or foolhardy, perhaps, to wear makeup to work in a flour mill in the early 1970s (even now I should think), but cowardly to lead a secret life while married to his young wife. Leaving her at home with the kids while he went out to gay nightclubs, taking drugs and being repeatedly unfaithful to his wife. My sympathies lay much more with his wife Linda during these sections. Peter is acting as if he doesn't have a family, and he eventually leaves Linda with nothing, and two children to raise. 

There is a chapter detailing a horrific rape that Sandra suffered at work that was particularly difficult reading. I've never read such a graphic account of a sexual assault- that term alone seems inadequate to cover the brutality of this attack, and almost sounds sanitised. Rape is a much more honest term for what happened to her. 

The Trauma Cleaner is mostly told in alternating chapters. Numbered chapters dealing more strictly with Sandra's story and named chapters showing Sandra at work with hoarders (Sarah wasn't allowed to report on the crime scenes). Sandra show tremendous compassion and empathy with her clients, both as a way to get the job done, but also just in the understanding way she treats people. At times I got a bit lost stylistically, but that was relatively minor and didn't effect my overall enjoyment of this rather unique book. 

The Trauma Cleaner book trailer:

A short SBS profile on Sandra Pankhurst:

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Before I Let You Go

Before I Let You Go is quite a departure from my usual reading tastes. I'd never heard of Kelly Rimmer before I saw the publicity for this book, despite the fact that we live in the same, small Australian town. There are a few reasons for this, as I said it's not a book that I'd usually pick up, and Kelly has had a really interesting path in publishing. She has written four books previously, but these have only been available digitally (at least in Australia, and I think worldwide). But she has achieved extraordinary success along the way. She has sold more than 600,000 digital books, and been translated into 20 languages! And now she is being sold in print for the first time. Obviously her star is on the rise which is fabulous news. I was lucky to be able to attend a local launch, meet Kelly, and get a signed copy. 

Before I Let You Go is the story of two sisters, Lexie and Annie, told in alternating first person voices. The sisters had a difficult upbringing after their father died and their mother remarries. The older girl, Lexie, leaves as soon as she can at 16 and goes on to become a doctor. Annie grows up to a very different life, she is to become an intravenous drug user. Then she becomes pregnant, which is the start of the story. These circumstances would be difficult enough anywhere, but Before I Let You Go is set in Alabama where a law regarding Chemical Endangerment of a Child was enacted in 2006. The law was originally intended to keep children out of meth labs, a completely reasonable aim, however the scope was broadened to include pregnant women using drugs, and babies who test positive to illegal drugs, which is not reasonable, not sensible and in fact dangerous.

I enjoyed the alternating first person voices. This was never confusing as the chapters were clearly named, and different fonts are used for each sister. Annie's sections were written in a journal format style in italics as opposed to Lexie's more conventional narrative. For all of her bad choices, Annie was a warmer, more likeable character, while I found Lexie more difficult, full of anxiety, hand wringing, and burdened by the weight of her own expectations. 

You love like that only once in a lifetime - you can love from a place of innocence only once. 

Both Lexie and her fiancé Sam are doctors, and I had quibbles with some of their characterisations at times. There were also some medical errors which grated, but that is probably something that most readers wouldn't necessarily notice- a "BP monitor" on a forefinger, and two doctors ignoring a fever in a neonate. Fevers in babies less than three months are a big deal, and not just ascribed to being a "first cold".

However, I was really disappointed to find that my Australian copy which proudly proclaims BEST SELLING AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR on the front cover was indeed full of Americanisms. There was no attempt whatsoever to modify the language for Australian publication- and every time I read Mom, acetaminophen or diaper my blood pressure rose. This is a particular hobby horse of mine, I realise that, and yes, I know that this is an American story, but it was printed for an Australian audience, it should be published for us. 

My library now has print copies of all four of her previous books (and they are being heavily borrowed which is great to see). All of those prior books are set in Australia, I will certainly be interested to take a look at one of them.

http://australianwomenwriters.com

The Good People

Not being a great fan of Irish folklore I wasn't naturally drawn to this story, but I loved, loved, loved Burial Rites so much (see my review) that I couldn't stay away for very long. Once again I listened to the audiobook.

The Good People is again set in a rural landscape in the 1820s, this time in Ireland, not Iceland. Once again it is based on a true incident, an event that Hannah came across in a newspaper article whilst researching her first book Burial Rites.

The story centres on Nóra Leahy and her four year old grandson Michael. Nóra has lost both her husband and daughter in the past few months, and then is left to raise Michael on her own in her small cottage. However Michael has a severe illness. Michael was a normal child when Nóra saw him two years ago, but he has deteriorating significantly and now can't walk or talk and requires full time care.

Nóra employs a 14 year old girl, Mary Clifford, to help her look after Michael. Nóra turns to local healer, Nance Roche, for treatments for Michael. She can't afford a doctor, and the priest has told her that there's no hope.

Once again Hannah Kent paints an extraordinarily detailed picture of these womens lives nearly 200 years ago. Her attention to detail is extraordinary. We feel their isolation, their poverty, their struggles, their pride. 

I soon realised that I didn't really know what a changeling was. It's a term that everyone knows I think, but not one that I think of all that much. A changeling is someone who has been swapped by the fairies. A fairy child is left in place of a human child. I'm not sure why the fairies would do that, but it seems they were rather common.

Naturally I was desperate to diagnose Michael, but Hannah purposely did not create his symptoms with a particular condition in mind, and even went so far as to deliberately confuse them. I understand now why she did that (she talks about this particularly in a video with Simon Savidge), but when diagnosis is what you do it's tremendously distracting. 

I loved the narration by Caroline Lennon and indeed I think her lilting Irish accent really helped my enjoyment of the story. The 13+ hours sped by. Although it was annoying that the audiobook did not include the Author's Note (When I can I alway find a physical copy of the books I listen to, to see the layout, any illustrations or diagrams, and check that I'm not missing out on anything).

There's lots and lots of information out there on this books. Lots of interesting interviews with Hannah Kent, and other resources.

How Much History Do You Actually Need For A Historical Novel, an article by Hannah about the varying amounts of source materials she was able to find for both her books. She describes The Good People as "a work of possibility".

A great photo essay of Hannah's photos from Ireland. 

A really great podcast of Hannah Kent at Sydney Writers Festival 2017 where Hannah talks about the paucity of direct sources she was able to find, but talks of her research into the daily lives of rural women in 1820s Ireland, and how she read a lot of Irish fiction to learn the musicality of the language which she really captured.

I do so love being up to date with an author's published works. It is so rare for me. I can't wait for Hannah's third book. 

I listened to this book a few months ago, but am so far behind with blogging this will serve as my first review for the 2018 Australian Women Writers Challenge. Is it just me or does that 2018 AWW badge remind you of childhood neapolitan ice-cream too?

http://australianwomenwriters.com