All posts in category Book review

Honey Brown’s Dark Horse

honey-brown-dark-horseYesterday Sydney was hit by a storm from the south east. Rain pounded on the tin roof, gutters overflowed, the temperature plummeted. In my inbox came an email from NetGalley stating that Penguin Australia had approved my request to review Honey Brown’s latest novel, Dark Horse, out this week. I’d read Brown’s Red Queen last year and have heard lots of good things about The Good Daughter, so I couldn’t resist downloading the ebook and peeking at the first page.

That was it for the rest of the day. I was hooked.

If you’re a fan of Jaye Ford’s Beyond Fear, Dawn Barker’s Fractured and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, you’re going to love Dark Horse. It’s quite a ride. I would have read it in one sitting, if I hadn’t had to sleep. I curled up in front of a glowing slow combustion stove and, while the weather went crazy outside, was swept into the drama. Brown has a style that I love: it’s immediate, the descriptions are fresh, the action is urgent. I could almost feel the Victorian alpine hills crowding in, felt every bump and jerk of the heroine’s ride up the mountain on her endurance-trained horse, held my breath at the enormity of what she faced going up, when she reached the summit and going down again. It’s that kind of book: suspenseful, urgent, adrenaline-pumping.

And it’s clever. I’m used to twists in suspense fiction and I can usually read the signs. This book proved no exception, except I realised I was being played. Every time I anticipated the narrative, there was an unexpected payoff; each time I thought something was unlikely or stretched credulity, it proved well motivated or explained.

It was the perfect read for a rainy day, better than a movie. (Far better than its trailer.)

Do I go away with things to think about? I’m not sure. It ranges over what, to me, is very interesting territory: the extremes of human emotions and behaviour; infidelity; depression/mental illness; the breakdown of relationships; childhood trauma and its effects on the family. It belongs to the “family drama with crime” genre that writers like Wendy James and Caroline Overington are so successfully carving a niche in. It’s edgy. It’s sexy, too. But I’m not sure the degree to which it touched me emotionally and intellectually, or simply thrilled me. (To explore this further would necessitate spoilers.)

What it did do is confirm for me that Australian women psychological suspense writers are right up there among the best in the genre. I’m also glad I have two more Honey Brown books, The Good Daughter and After the Darkness, tucked away for another rainy day.

~

This review counts towards the Australian Women Writers Challenge. It has been reviewed elsewhere for the challenge by Simone at Great Aussie Reads and by Brenda in Goodreads.

6 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on April 21, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on April 21, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/04/21/honey-browns-dark-horse/

On Art and Motherhood: or, this is not a romance – The Steele Diaries by Wendy James

wendy-james-steele-diariesThe Steele Diaries, Wendy James’ second novel, originally published in 2008, has recently been re-released as an ebook by Momentum. It’s a novel I’ve looked forward to reading since I discovered a paperback copy on my local library’s discard table. I’d enjoyed James’ The Mistake when I read it as part of the AWW challenge last year and I was hoping for another compulsive read.

This novel didn’t disappoint, but it was different from what I’d anticipated. The Steele Diaries takes a more considered approach than The Mistake, and it wasn’t till halfway through that I felt compelled to keep on turning pages. Loosely, it covers the same territory: family drama – or “Suburban Noir” – with the possibility of crime. In The Steele Diaries, the story unfolds at a gentler pace and has a more literary feel than The Mistake. In the end, however, it packs a similar punch and is arguably even more thought-provoking.

According to James, who was interviewed by Kirsten Krauth last year, the novel was inspired by “stories of various artists’ and writers’ lives — in particular Joy Hester, Sunday Reed, Sylvia Plath, Vanessa Bell, [and] Angelica Garnett — and their differing experiences of motherhood and childhood”. There’s no glossy, sentimentalising of motherhood here; rather, the depiction of the fraught nature of disappointed dreams and imperfect relationships makes for, at times, uncomfortable and confronting reading.

The drama revolves around three women: Ruth, a middle-aged doctor who has recently lost her father; Zelda, Ruth’s mother, an illustrator of children’s books; and Annie, acclaimed artist, Zelda’s mother. It weaves first person narratives from Ruth and Zelda – Zelda’s section being quite literally a “diary” – with a brief account of a time in Annie’s life, as imagined by Zelda.

While depicting the complex and painful relationships between these mothers and daughters, the story dramatises the pressures which childbearing places on a woman’s creativity, sense of autonomy and mental health. It draws on themes familiar to folk and “fairy” tales, the terror of abandonment and the hinted possibility of a mother’s indifference to her child, an indifference which borders on brutality. Such unsafe – even grotesque – preoccupations are reflected in the Art described in the novel, both in Annie’s paintings and Zelda’s wood-block illustrations, as well as in the narrative. Readers are positioned as eavesdroppers or voyeurs on these women’s private lives, a narrative strategy which creates a self-reflexive meditation on Art as a vehicle for telling unpalatable truths, particularly about women’s “failures” to live up to their own and others’ expectations. In portraying these failures, the story both stretches and tests our capacity to respond with sympathy.

Steele-Diaries_ebookGiven the weight of the book’s themes, you’d have to wonder about the covers, both the original – with its face of a beautiful, carefully coiffed woman floating over an Outback scene – and the more recent offering from Momentum, with coy lovers kissing under an umbrella. Both are seriously misleading.

James had something interesting to say to Krauth about book covers and marketing mistakes:

So many novels by women — especially those writing about domestic life — are given covers that don’t quite match the content. My first two novels — one about an infanticide, the other about art and motherhood — were marketed as romances. This misrepresentation certainly doesn’t help establish a readership.

Whatever genre you might call The Steele Diaries, it’s not a romance. Momentum book designers, what were you thinking?

~

This review counts towards Australian Literature Month hosted Kim at Reading Matters (who will donate 50p to the Australian Literacy Foundation for every review of an Australian book during April) as well as Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

ozmonth3

10 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on April 9, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on April 9, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/04/09/on-art-and-motherhood-or-this-is-not-a-romance-the-steele-diaries-by-wendy-james/

Reinventing Rose by Kandy Shepherd – or The Love-Rat Ritual

KandyShepherd_ReinventingRose[3]When I first read Reinventing Rose it was in manuscript form and I knew it by a different title, The Love-Rat Ritual. It’s this early title I love. It wasn’t right for the US market, though: apparently US readers don’t know what a “love rat” is; so it had to go.

Honestly? I didn’t know what a love rat was, either, before I read the book, but this story set me straight. It features quite a few love rats, old, young, gay, straight, male, female. They are human beings who, in their search to find The One – a man or woman with whom they might just possibly create a happy life – sometimes behave badly. Most of us, the story hints, have been love rats at one time or another. Love is tricky, but worth searching for.

With the characteristic humour which fans of Shepherd’s previous award-winning and best-selling novels have come to love, Reinventing Rose tells the tale of a newly divorced school teacher from Bookerville, California. After having met her internet lover Scott offline for outrageously good sex, Rose buys a ticket and flies to Sydney to hook up once more with her handsome Aussie hunk. It’s the start of the US summer school holidays and she’s giving her adventurous side full rein. On arrival, however, she discovers Scott’s not only married, but also his wife has a baby. He’s a love rat of the first order, and only too happy to get rid of Rose before she even leaves the airport.

Scott’s betrayal isn’t the only unwelcome discovery Rose makes as we follow her adventures “down under”. Her struggles to reinvent herself as a stranger in a strange land, however, are made a whole lot easier – and funnier! – by her outgoing Aussie flatmates, botoxed beauty editor Carla and artist-cum-trust-fund heiress Sasha, as well as their fiercely independent neighbour and friend, international model Kelly. These girls – women – are drawn with flair and deserve to star in books of their own.

The humour that propels this story wouldn’t have been possible without Shepherd’s inside knowledge of Sydney’s magazine scene. At the back of the book, Shepherd writes:

One of the things I most enjoyed during my years in women’s magazines was working with reader makeovers. There was something thrilling about helping transform women (and sometimes men) of all ages with the right hair, makeup and fashion advice. Often the makeover gave such a confidence boost it led to positive change in both relationships and career.

Here Shepherd emphasises the transformative powers of the makeover, and this is certainly an important element of the story. What strikes me more, however, are the makeover’s comic absurdities which Shepherd depicts with compassionate good humour, along with the seemingly never-ending obsession these women have in their attempts to look beautiful, to fit in, to attract the right kind of mate.

The story has a deeper side, too, as Rose struggles to come to terms with what she learns about her dead father, that her parents’ “happy ever after” was at the cost of him hiding his sexuality. Rose grows in self-awareness as she reconciles herself with and finally accepts what initially she perceives to be his betrayal.

Technically, Reinventing Rose is a well-written novel; told in first-person present tense, it has an engaging, at times laugh-out-loud style that Shepherd’s skill makes appear effortless. Who will enjoy it? Fans of chick lit and humorous romance, and anyone who enjoys fun, feel-good fiction.

~

This book contributes towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 Challenge. My thanks to the author for giving me a copy.

Leave a Comment
by Elizabeth Lhuede on March 23, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on March 23, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/03/23/reinventing-rose-by-kandy-shepherd-or-the-love-rat-ritual/

Harmless by Julienne van Loon

With the right kind of mindfulness, William Blake tells us, one can behold infinity in a grain of sand. – Janette Turner Hospital on Harmless

When a writer like Janette Turner Hospital pens a back-cover blurb for another Australian author, I pay attention. What is it about Julienne van Loon’s novella, Harmless, soon to be released by Fremantle Press, which has attracted such a gifted admirer? The snippet from Hospital quoted on the front of the book states: Harmless is “suffused with a tough and totally unsentimental compassion”.

harmless-van-loonI notice, too, review words like “unsentimental”; it seems to be used often when female literary authors are praised. Sentimentality implies emotional manipulation, and a lack of subtlety and nuance. The term has been used to dismiss the work of a plethora of “female authors”, especially those writing in genres such as romance. But what does “unsentimental” mean? I’m tempted to think it’s code for “writes like a man”, or “give this book a girlie-looking cover at your peril”. It’s praise, but is it gendered praise?

In van Loon’s case, unsentimental certainly doesn’t mean unemotional. Far from it. Nor does it mean she avoids topics commonly associated with so-called “women’s writing”, such as relationships, children and family; it even has a female protagonist. What it might mean is a kind of unflinching courage to face the darkest aspects of human frailty and vulnerability while avoiding pathos or despair.

Harmless is another one of those “devastating” books that has been my privilege to discover through the Australian Women Writers challenge. It tells the story of an eight-year-old girl whose Thai step-mother has just died, and who is on the way to visit her feckless father in prison, accompanied by the dead stepmother’s frail elderly father. This father, who speaks little English and who is fresh off the plane from Bangkok, has no idea where he is or what to do with this child who has unexpectedly been placed in his care; he believed his daughter to be happily married to a good man, and with children of her own.

The two get lost on the way to the prison; they abandon their car on the edge of scrubland and are separated as they wander off to find help. The landscape is desolate, like the lives van Loon portrays; their survival uncertain.

This novel is about people on the fringes of society, “losers” one might say. Issues of race and class are central, but understated. There’s no obvious moral compass given, no superior perspective the reader is invited to occupy from which to judge these people. Rather, the focus is on love, and lack of love, and what might constitute a family.

By the end, I felt wrung out, hurt by the author’s bleak picture of humanity and yet consoled, too.

Who will enjoy this novella? Anyone who relishes subtle and emotionally powerful prose; who is interested in a portrait of contemporary Australian life that doesn’t shy away from issues of social disadvantage; and who can bear the heartbreak.

~

This review counts towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 challenge. My thanks to the publishers for supplying a review copy.

Title: Harmless by Julienne van Loon
Publisher: Fremantle Press, 2013
ISBN: 9781922089045

10 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on February 12, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on February 12, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/02/12/harmless-by-julienne-van-loon/

Lucy Clark’s A Baby for the Flying Doctor: Boundary-breaking Australian medical romance

A Baby for the Flying Doctor (Medical Romance)I have to say straight up: I’m not the target audience for this book. I borrowed it from a friend to read for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge,* thinking it would be a quick read and might help me reach my target of 50 books by the end of the year. Life got in the way, and I only ended up finishing it after New Year.

It’s not the first Harlequin Mills & Boon (HM&B) Australian medical romance I’ve read. Years ago, I enjoyed reading some books by Marion Lennox set in Tasmania. While this book isn’t up to Lennox’s standard, it does have an interesting aspect to recommend it for readers of the genre and those interested in boundary-breaking romance novels. (Note: the following contains spoilers.)

The story – like all good HM&Bs – centres around the hero and heroine, two doctors who specialise in Emergency Medicine. They meet on a transcontinental train on the way to a conference where one, the English hero, Gil, will be the keynote speaker. The heroine, Euphemia, is a doctor with the Royal Flying Doctor Service who has escaped to live life in the Outback after devoting her childhood and young adulthood to helping care for a brother with Down’s Syndrome. As a teenager, Euphemia – or Phemie, as she’s known – had genetic testing and discovered herself to be a carrier of the “translocation trisomy 21 chromosome… [the] defective chromosome usually related to children being born with Down’s” (p 61).

What makes this story stand out from other HM&B romances I’ve read is the conflict which threatens to prevent Gil and Phemie getting together happily. It’s not just the fact he is a career doctor from the other side of the world, although that is an issue. More importantly, it’s that Phemie doesn’t want to risk having children. She fears subjecting a child to the kind of life she led: growing up in the shadow of a sibling with Down’s. Having a heroine who doesn’t want to fall pregnant is a risk for Clark, because, without careful handling, Phemie could seem unsympathetic. By making Phemie protective of her unborn (healthy) child, Clark attempts to retain the romance reader’s sympathy for her, despite the fact that there’s something narcissistic – although very human and understandable – in this kind of fear. But Clark also goes one step further (and earns my admiration): she has Phemie admit, much and all as she loves her brother, she’s not sure she’s up to the sacrifices required of a parent of someone with Down’s.

Clark manages to resolve Phemie’s conflict in a believable (and yes, happy) way. How? By hedging her bets: arranging for an adoption and having Phemie fall pregnant – with the hinted possibility of genetic testing in utero. Phemie and Gil will become parents, possibly of a biologically healthy child – or possibly only of an adopted child. It’s a happy ending, yes, but one that touches on what years ago was a taboo subject for HM&B novels: the possibility of termination.

Despite this interesting issue, this book didn’t grab me. Why? The written expression lets it down. Cliches abound. Some of the cliches are foregrounded in a way that suggests this author knows better. For example, Phemie thinks of Australia as a “wide brown land” not once, but twice. It nearly had me dropping the book. The second time, however, she pulls herself up with a thought (paraphrasing), “Not brown exactly, more like ochre.” Okay, so real people do think of the landscape in the generic terms of a Dorothea Mackeller poem, but I demand more from my fictional characters if I’m to spend time with them. The world Marion Lennox created with one of her stories, set in a coastal village in Tasmania and somehow involving penguins, is still vivid in my imagination, many years later. Good romance writing is out there. Clark’s flacid language, I’d assume, is symptomatic of the time HM&B authors are given to write their books: some are asked to write three or four a year. Not enough time to craft and hone the language but, even so, some of Clark’s clangers are unforgivable; and they do nothing to elevate the genre’s reputation of being the domain of hack writers.

Who will enjoy A Baby For the Flying Doctor? HM&B regular readers and students of romance interested in topics that push the genre’s boundaries.

This review counts towards my Australian Women Writers 2013 challenge.

* “Lucy Clark” is the pen-name for a husband and wife team.

Leave a Comment
by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 25, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 25, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/01/25/lucy-clarks-a-baby-for-the-flying-doctor-boundary-breaking-australian-medical-romance/

The House of Memories by Monica McInerney: carefully crafted & moving

Following a tragic accident, Ella O’Hanlon flees to the other side of the world in an attempt to escape her grief, leaving behind the two people she blames for her loss: Aidan, the love of her life, and Jess, her spoilt half-sister. (From publisher’s summary.)

house-memoriesI felt uneasy through a fair bit of this book. At first I wasn’t sure whether I was being played with, but then I realised the story line is pretty straight forward. It ranges over a number of different points of view and deftly incorporates a variety of styles. There’s the first-person narrative of the brittle main character Ella; the stage-managed diary entries of her narcissistic younger half-sister, Jess; the folksy-jolly emails of her step-brother Charlie; and the heartfelt letters of her estranged husband Aidan.

The aspects that unnerved me, I discovered, were carefully crafted: I was meant to feel that way. Just as I was meant, slowly, to come to see the complexity behind the tragic events that provide the background to this story.

Last year, as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge, I came across a genre-bending category: “family drama with elements of crime” – the kind that Wendy James and the controversial Caroline Overington do so well. I’m not sure this book fits: it’s perhaps not dark enough; but almost. The story portrays characters who act and react badly, who have been driven to extremes by circumstances, who don’t or can’t always see things from others’ points of view. It’s moving and uneven; uneven not through lack of writerly skill, but because the narrations of the characters – and the characters themselves – aren’t always what they seem.

Who will enjoy The House of Memories? People who love reading about Aussie ex-pats in London and imperfect, blended families; and readers who don’t mind being stretched emotionally in a way that resolves with a sense of hope, if not happiness, at the end.

~

Thanks to the publishers for supplying a review e-copy via NetGalley
The House of Memories, Monica McInerney
Published: September, 2012
Publisher: Penguin Australia, Michael Joseph
ISBN: 9781921518645

3 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 15, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 15, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/01/15/the-house-of-memories-by-monica-mcinerney-carefully-crafted-moving/

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: More like playing a game than reading

Gone GirlGone Girl is clever, maybe too clever.

The point of view characters are smart – smart ironic, rather than emotionally intelligent. The plot contains lots of twists and turns, most of which I foresaw, apart from those toward the end. By then the narrative had stretched so far into incredulity as it struggled to conform to the demands of the plot – rather than illuminating the lives of the characters – I was no longer engaged emotionally. But I was curious to see how it would wind up.

It’s compelling to read and I’m on record as saying I enjoy this kind of book. In its favour, it has a lot to say about gender politics, the impact of popular culture on the way we think of ourselves and others, the roles we play and how we seek to manage others’ perceptions of us. But its self-conscious irony is wearing: like the characters, Flynn appears to enjoy being self-consciously derivative. Derivative of derivative of derivative which is so post- postmodern. Or passe?

Mostly, it’s not an honest book. It reminds me more of playing a game than reading. Fun in a “can’t take my eyes off the accident as we pass” kind of way. It doesn’t make me want to rush out and read more of Flynn’s work, but when I’m in the mood for another suspense or thriller I just may.

6 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book review
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on January 8, 2013

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2013/01/08/gone-girl-by-gillian-flynn-more-like-playing-a-game-than-reading/

More meditation than murder: Sorry by Gail Jones

sorry-jones2Sorry is an unsatisfying book.

After seeing Kevin Rennie’s glowing review earlier this year, I had expectations. I loved Jones’ Dreams of Speaking, the first book I finished for 2012. I’ve heard great things about Five Bells. Sixty Lights has been working its way up my “to be read” pile. Then I was caught at my mum’s house last week without a book to read and saw Sorry on her bookshelf. I’d picked it up at a Lifeline fair and passed it on to her months ago. It seemed the perfect bookend for the year.

Yet I found myself struggling to concentrate and – I admit it – counting the pages to the chapter end.

It’s not the density of the language, though Rennie is right to point out that the book is peppered with old-fashioned phrases. I love Jones’ prose. I relish in her love of words, her passion for books and Shakespeare. The problem was the structure.

If I’d kept in mind as I read that it is “a bit of a murder mystery”, as Rennie calls it, I might’ve been more engaged. But I found little of the sense of urgency or curiosity I associate with that genre. Jones invites her readers into her tale with a graphic, disturbing opening only to abandon them, to let the narrative drift. It drifts across the Northern Territory in the war years of the early 1940s, across the lives of a displaced English couple and their run-wild child, the slow disappointments and cruelty of the anthropologist father and disintegration of his Shakespeare-obsessed wife, the child’s friendships with a succession of Aboriginal companions and a deaf-mute son of a neighbour. The novel gathers momentum with the Japanese bombing of Broome and comes to a denouement with the revelations of the truth behind the novel’s opening.

It is a good – perhaps even great – book. A book, Rennie says, that every Australian should read. But I was left… unsatisfied. The book is “about” things, important and interesting issues. It’s a meditation on language, reading and communication, on intimacy, race relations, prejudice, failure and forgiveness. With such noble themes, it should have moved me more. But what it’s not is the kind of tale I really like, a book that makes me feel intensely, that sweeps me away on a flood of emotion, as well as thought and imagination, and leaves me stranded and exhausted – and changed – at the end.

1 Comment
by Elizabeth Lhuede on December 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on December 18, 2012

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2012/12/18/more-meditation-than-murder-sorry-by-gail-jones/

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

Ever since posting Margo Lanagan’s piece for the Australian Women Writers challenge, I’ve been looking forward to reading Kate Forsyth’s novel, Bitter Greens.

Forsyth isn’t a new author for me – year ago, I read and enjoyed the Witches of Eileanan series – but Bitter Greens is her first novel for adults. The novel ranges over two centuries, combines history and fairytale, and creates portraits of three different women: a real historical character, novelist Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, the girl fabled as “Rapunzel”, and her imagined captor and “witch”, the Venetian courtesan “Selena Leonelli”. It’s more ambitious than any of Forsyth’s Fantasy series, especially in its self-reflexive quality. Central to the tale are themes concerning the art of narrative, and the genesis and profession of story-telling. This ambitious structure is both a strength and a weakness.

While less than a third the way in I was spell-bound, the beginning of the novel didn’t quite sweep me away as I’d hoped. After a page introducing the chief story-teller, Charlotte-Rose, as a child, the narrative jumps to show her as a grown woman. This rapid shift didn’t allow me to get to know Charlotte-Rose, to care about her and know what she wants out of life. I felt little sense of the tragic irony I guessed Forsyth was trying to create, the sense that here is a great character destined to fall. As the book progressed, however, I enjoyed Charlotte-Rose more and more. Forsyth portrays her as a headstrong, sexually active woman, with enough self-interest, stubbornness and resourcefulness to pursue her career in defiance of the mores and life-threatening risks of her time.

I felt more immediate empathy for the other point of view characters, Leonella – the witch – and Margherita – the Rapunzel figure. In these threads of the narrative, Forsyth demonstrates her skill as a Fantasy writer, with the storytelling every bit as enchanting as fairytales of old.

~

This post completes my Aussie Author 2012 challenge, and is part of my ongoing contribution to the Australian Women Writers Challenge. AWW reviews of Bitter Greens include the following:

Kate wrote a guest post for Bree here: Bree 1girl2manybooks.

ISBN-13: 9781741668452
North Sydney, Vintage Australia (Random House) 2012
Borrowed from Avalon Community Library

6 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on November 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Aussie Author Challenge, AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on November 17, 2012

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2012/11/17/bitter-greens-by-kate-forsyth/

The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement by Virginia Lloyd

The only reason I didn’t given this memoir five stars in GoodReads was because I wanted more.

The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement is both a love story and a memoir of loss. There are no surprises: it’s all laid out in the title. The author Virginia Lloyd falls in love and discovers too soon that the illness which her beloved is being treated for is terminal. The memoir alternates between “after” – young widowhood – and “before” – courtship and newly wed. The pivotal moment is the death of John, Virginia’s husband, way too soon at the age of 47.

But death isn’t the book’s theme. The book sings of love and grief, with a persistent chorus to cherish what one has while it lasts, to make the most of each day.

I started this book on Sunday morning and wished I hadn’t as I had to go out and wanted to keep on reading. On Monday morning I read it – weeping – on the bus on my way to my sister’s birthday lunch in the city. I had to force myself to shut the book before I wanted so as to leave time to recover and greet my sister without tears. I finished it last night and wanted to email Virginia at once to tell her how much I loved her story, how it had moved me. But how can you send an email like that to someone who has lost – and written about so beautifully – the love of their life?

Besides, I felt angry. I wanted more of John. I wanted to get to know him better before the book’s pages closed. I wanted to hear him laugh, listen to the music he enjoyed, see the photos of his travels, get to know more of what made this Irish man so special to his wife, his family and many friends.

That’s the brilliance of Lloyd’s book. She doesn’t just depict her grief, she creates it in the reader – she carries the reader into her heart, sharing with us her grief at not having had enough time with someone special, to live and love, to celebrate and explore, before it’s all over and you’re left with only memories.

Reviewed as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.

Disclaimer: I read and reviewed this before Virginia agreed to represent me as my literary agent.

7 Comments
by Elizabeth Lhuede on November 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in AWW challenge, Book review
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Elizabeth Lhuede on November 16, 2012

http://elizabethlhuede.com/2012/11/16/717/

« Older Posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,195 other followers

%d bloggers like this: