I have long wanted to read something by Barbara Comyns (1907-1992), an English novelist widely respected and often championed by book bloggers but her work is hard to come by in Australia — unless you want to place a special order.
So when I saw Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, her third novel, sitting on the shelves at Readings Emporium store on a recent trip to Melbourne, I snapped it up.
First published in 1954, the novel is set about 20 years earlier in the small English village of Warwickshire at around the time of King George VI’s coronation.
It tells the story of the Willoweed family — widower Ebin; his three children, Emma, Dennis and Hattie; his 71-year-old mother; their live-in maids, Norah and Eunice; and the gardener known as Old Ives — and charts their experiences during a series of bizarre and tragic events, which begins with a flood that foreshadows more disaster to come.
Strange objects of pitiful aspect floated past: the bloated body of a drowned sheep, the wool withering about in the water, a white beehive with the perplexed bees still around; a newborn pig, all pink and dead; and the mournful bodies of the peacocks. […] Now a tabby cat with a distended belly passed, its little paws showing above the water, its small head hanging low. [page 8]
That gruesome scene establishes the book’s mood, which is quite dark and oppressive, tinged with just the barest dusting of humour and laced with much cruelty.
Badly behaved grandmother
That cruelty comes in the form of a domineering matriarch — Ebin’s mother, who is called Grandmother Willoweed throughout — who conducts herself with a ruthless disregard for the feelings and well-being of those around her. She terrorises her family by subjecting them to her vile jibes, violent rages and rude behaviour, forcing everyone to tread on metaphorical eggshells.
On one occasion she hurls a brass candlestick down the stairs, repeatedly puts down her son (in front of others) and calls him a fool, and later develops a “pathetic whine” which embarrasses those around her. The word “witch” comes to mind:
She looked like a dreadful old black bird, enormous and horrifying, all weighed down by jet and black plumes and smelling, not of camphor, but chlorodyne. [page 57]
The novel isn’t just about Grandmother Willoweed and her long-suffering family; it also explores a mysterious contagion that infects many of the villagers, causing strange behaviour and fatalities. And with any unexplained pandemic, there are instances of panic, victim-blaming, finger pointing and paranoia. There are many deaths, including those of children.
Eccentric tale
It’s an odd story, morbid and often ghoulish, a mixture of the domestic with the surreal. I didn’t like it very much, nor the distant, almost off-hand style in which it was written, and I struggled to pick it up again whenever I put it down.
Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood for reading about eccentric behaviour and dysfunctional families, but either way, I’m wondering if Barbara Comyns is really for me or whether I just started with the wrong book.
For more favourable reviews, please see those by Jacqui at JacquiWine’s Journal, Simon at Stuck in a Book, and Radz at Radhika’s Reading Retreat.
Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
While Margaret’s blog is more wide-ranging than just books — it spans travel, photography, history, reading and everything in between — I invited her to participate because she’s such a loyal and passionate supporter of Reading Matters and our reading tastes seem fairly aligned.
Margaret describes herself as a “Yorkshire lass” who has spent much of her life living anywhere but Yorkshire.
“For the last ten years though, I’ve been back, exploring the many walks it has to offer, volunteering – at my local library of course – and at the National Treasure which is Fountains Abbey,” she says. “Together with my husband, we still travel in Europe as much as we can, especially in Spain, since our daughter lives there. What else? Singing, blogging, writing … and reading, always reading.”
Without further ado, here are Margaret’s choices:
A favourite book:TheCommissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon
I’m choosing a series, rather than a single book as my go-to comfort read. When seeking the virtual and entirely congenial company of someone fictional, it often has to be Commissario Brunetti, of the Italian State Police. He’s always lived and worked in Venice, a city he loves whilst being alive to its problems. He and his wife Paola are civilised, humane and with a well-developed social conscience. They’re well-read, and they enjoy good food.
Walking the streets of the city with Guido (we’re on first-name terms now) is to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of Italy, as his active and thoughtful brain works on his latest case. Thank you, Donna Leon, for bringing us so many intriguing stories about this special police officer!
A book that changed my world: ‘Mend the Living’ by Meylis de Karangal
I first read this book about eight years ago, and still remember its impact. A boy dies in a road accident as he and his friends return from surfing. His perfect body is there for his mother and his father to see, lying on his hospital bed. Thanks to technology, he breathes, as if in dreamless sleep. But he’s dead. And his parents need to decide whether his organs can be ‘harvested’ so others might live. And they must decide now, watching their son calmly ‘sleeping’.
This is their story. It’s also the story of the hospital staff, medical and otherwise, charged with his care, coming into work from their messy day-to-day lives. They leave behind them evenings of unsatisfactory sex, of football matches missed, and it’s business as usual for them. It’s the story of Simon’s girlfriend, annoyed that he’s preferred to go surfing than snatch a few more hours with her. It’s the story of the woman destined to receive his heart.
This is no medical manual. It’s poetic, beautiful, lyrical, rhythmical – and audacious: a quality which seemed to identify the book for me as ‘very French’. And I want to single out the quality of the translation. This is an extraordinary narrative alongside an intimate exploration of what it is to be human, which invites thought and reflection.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Communist’s Daughter’ by Aroa Moreno Durán
Katia, the daughter of Spanish refugees from the Civil War was raised in East Berlin with all its difficulties and privations. She saw the wall go up, experienced the limitations of the life they were obliged to leave. And she left, with all the difficulties and dangers her leaving represented. But what had she gained? And what might her family have lost?
This is a sparely written, thought-provoking and unsettling book about what it means to be personally and politically uprooted. Though widely read in Spain, this book seems to be a bit under the radar here.
What do you think of Margaret’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
I have read a few books by Donna Leon (all in the early days of this blog) but they didn’t really “grab” me in the way I’d hoped given I’ve been to Venice multiple times and am mildly obsessed with the watery city. The other two books are new-to-me titles and I love the sound of them. Triple Choice Tuesday does terrible things to my wishlist and TBR!
Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 112 pages; 2018. Translated from the Italian by W.J. Strachan.
The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) won Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize for fiction, in 1950. (The author sadly died by suicide a couple of months later.)
It’s the story of a teenage girl whose friendship with an older woman draws her into a bohemian artistic community in 1930s Turin, showing her an alternative way of life.
Sixteen-year-old Ginia works at a dressmakers and lives with her brother, Severino, a nightshift worker, for whom she cooks and cleans.
To alleviate the mundane nature of her work and home life, she’s keen to go “gadding about”, as she describes it, so when she develops a friendship with 20-year-old Amelia who works as an artists’ model, her social life opens up. They go to dance halls, visit cafes and see films at the local movie house. But there’s always tension between them, because Ginia is cautious, whereas Amelia throws that all to the wind.
In public, Amelia dares to go bare-legged (because she can’t afford to buy stockings), making Ginia anxious and worried about what people might say. Yet this also holds an allure for her, because she’s fascinated by Amelia’s way of being in the world, her freedom and her carefree attitude.
‘Being free in the world in the way I am, makes me mad,’ said Amelia. Ginia would have gladly paid money to hear her hold forth so eagerly on many things which she liked, because real confidence consists in knowing what the other person wants and when someone else is pleased by the same things, you no longer feel in awe of her. (page 14)
Loss of innocence
In her short introduction to the novella, Elizabeth Strout explains that Pavese described it as “the story of a virginity that defends itself”. For most of the book, Ginia acts chastely but she’s fascinated by the adults around her and wages an internal battle to overcome her disgust and shame associated with what she sees and what she wants to experience for herself. She knows she has power over men but is fearful of wielding it.
When Amelia gets a new job posing naked for an artist, Ginia asks to watch, not for any voyeuristic tendencies but to observe the artist at work.
They discussed the question for a short part of the walk and Amelia laughed because, dressed or undressed, a model can only be of interest to men and hardly to another girl. The model merely stands there: what is there to see? Ginia said she wanted to see the artist paint her; she had never seen anyone handling colours and it must be nice to watch. (page 12)
When she gets to watch the proceedings, she finds she’s disgusted by the whole sexual objectification of her friend and her friend’s inability to understand that this is what is happening.
Once more she saw Amelia’s swarthy belly in that semi-darkness, that very ordinary face and those drooping breasts. Surely a woman offered a better subject dressed? If painters wanted to do them in the nude, they must have ulterior motives. Why did they not draw from male models? Even Amelia when disgracing herself in that way became a different person; Gina was almost in tears. (page 23)
Later, Amelia introduces her to two artists, Guido and Rodrigues, who share a studio. Ginia is intrigued by the enigmatic Guido, a soldier who is an artist in his spare time, and a love affair develops — ushering her into a more complex adult world.
Compelling novella
The Beautiful Summer has a simple set-up and follows a predictable outcome. But it’s written in such a rich, lyrical language, with an undercurrent of suspense and danger, it makes for a compelling read.
Strout suggests there are hints of Elena Ferrante in the narrative style, to which I concur. Its depiction of female friendship, including its petty rivalries, quarrels and sharing of confidences, is pitch-perfect, and I loved the melancholia at its heart.
It not only explores themes of youth, desire and loss of innocence, but it also poses questions about the male gaze, sexual objectification and women’s position in Italian society at the time. It demands a reread to properly unpick it, but has certainly made me keen to explore more of Pavase’s work — I read, and loved, The House on the Hill last year.
Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
Today’s guest is Rebecca Foster, who blogs at Bookish Beck.
Rebecca is from Maryland, USA but has lived in England since 2007. She works as a freelance proofreader of academic writing, and as a literary critic for BookBrowse, Foreword Reviews and Shelf Awareness. Her book reviews have also appeared in the Church Times, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Times Literary Supplement and Wasafiri.
A former library assistant, she volunteers at her local library and curates her neighbourhood’s Little Free Library. She especially enjoys following literary prizes and has three times been a manuscript judge for the McKitterick Prize for debut novelists over 40.
Without further ado, here are Rebecca’s choices:
A favourite book: ‘Sixpence House’ by Paul Collins
I rarely reread anything, but my three choices are all books that have stood up to a reread.
Apart from some childhood favourites, Sixpence House is probably the book I’ve read the most, usually corresponding with visits to Hay-on-Wye, Wales (eight times so far, between 2004 and 2023). Collins, with his wife and young son, moved to Hay from San Francisco in 2000, hoping to make a life there. As they house-hunted and he edited his manuscript on inventors whose great ideas flopped (Banvard’s Folly), he was drawn into working for Richard Booth, the eccentric bookseller who transformed Hay into the world’s first Book Town.
The memoir is warm, funny in a Bill Bryson-esque way and nostalgic. I first read it in 2003, whetting my appetite for study abroad in the UK.
Each time I visit, Hay has changed: bookshops have closed or opened; the main streets have gentrified, with hipster eateries and coffee houses; and the castle has gone from a ruin to a proper tourist destination. I often wonder what Collins (and Booth, who died in 2019) would make of it today.
Sixpence House also inspired me to make pilgrimages to other Book Towns in the UK and internationally.
A book that changed my world: ‘Conundrum’ by Jan Morris
This was one of the books that helped me to move beyond the conservative Christianity of my upbringing and understand sexuality as a continuum rather than a fixed entity. It’s also one of the very first autobiographical works I remember reading. These days, life writing makes up a huge proportion of my reading.
Morris was a true trans pioneer. Her concise memoir opens: “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.”
It took many years – a journalist’s career, including the scoop of the first summiting of Mount Everest in 1953; marriage and five children; and nearly two decades of hormone therapy – before surgery confirmed her gender identity. Morris describes feeling like she’d been a spy in privileged all-male circles. She also speculates that her travelogues arose from “incessant wandering as an outer expression of my inner journey.”
The focus is more on her unchanging soul than on her body, so Conundrum is not a sexual tell-all but a record of a spiritual quest toward true identity. There is joy in new life rather than regret at time wasted in the ‘wrong’ one.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Sixteenth of June’ by Maya Lang
This playful literary debut has flown under the radar since its release nearly a decade ago. Set on the centenary of the original Bloomsday, it transplants many characters and set pieces from Ulysses to near-contemporary Philadelphia. But even if (like me) you’ve never read James Joyce’s masterpiece, you’ll have no trouble following the plot. In fact, Lang dedicates the book to “all the readers who never made it through Ulysses (or haven’t wanted to try)”.
On 16 June 2004, brothers Leopold and Stephen Portman hold their grandmother Hannah’s funeral at the local synagogue in the morning, and their parents’ annual Bloomsday party at their opulent Delancey Street home in the evening. Between the two thematic poles – genuine grief and regret on the one hand, and superficial entertainment on the other – the story expands to build a nuanced picture of three ambivalent twenty-something lives.
The third side of the novel’s atypical love triangle is Nora, who is Stephen’s best friend from Yale – and Leo’s fiancée. Nora, a trained opera singer, is reeling from her mother’s death from cancer a year ago. During my rereading, I was captivated by the portraits of loss, and the characterisation and dialogue felt fresh as ever.
What do you think of Rebecca’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
I have to admit that these are all new titles to me, and they all sound fantastic, particularly the Joycean-inspired The Sixteenth of June, which has gone straight onto my wishlist!
I am partial to a verse novel (although I have only read a handful), so I was keen to read Ali Cobby Eckermann’s She is the Earth, which was longlisted for this year’s Stella Prize.
The book is a luminous love letter to Mother Nature, including her life-sustaining ecosystems, weather patterns and landscapes.
In many ways, it reminded me of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, but instead of looking at Earth from above, it looks at Earth from the ground up and presents it as a living, breathing organism.
I am staring
at the new day
it grows brighter
and brighter
the sky and the sea
defined by blue
as if breathing now
the water is tidal
inhaling first
exhaling next
the horizon
a definition
(page 59)
This long-form poem is comprised of meditative, two-line stanzas. It’s minimalistic yet brims with rich imagery and pulses with life.
Repeated motifs — of birth, of breath, of “sun and moon and sky”, for instance — abound, creating gentle echoes that deepen the reader’s understanding of the work as you progress through it.
And just like birth, it begins with a sense of violence…
exhausted I am
unable to breathe
I scratch for air
my mouth a cave
(page 5)
But moves towards a more gentle way of being:
from the cosmos
I learn my place
(page 80)
That “learning my place” is a central theme. References to other life forms, such as birds — brolgas, pelicans, owls, for instance — reveal how everything in the natural world has a role to play — and a path to follow.
do not diminish
the role of the mother
do not diminish
the role of the father
do not diminish
the role of the child
do not diminish
the role of the ant
(page 81)
The author, a Yankunytjatjara woman from South Australia, has long struggled to find her place in the world.
She was forcibly removed from her family as one of the Stolen Generations, which caused long-lasting trauma, powerfully evoked in her extraordinary memoir, Too Afraid to Cry (2012). In 2017 she was the first Indigenous person anywhere in the world to win the international Windham-Campbell Prize.
She is the Earth is unlike any other book in Australian literature. Of the works Eckermann has written to date, it could well prove her most enduring.
I read this book for my ongoing #ReadingFirstNationsWriters project, which you can read more about here. To see all the books reviewed for this project, please visit my Reading First Nations Writers page.
Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but has now returned for 2024. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
Davida describes herself as a “66-year-old retired widow who is mildly dyslexic and still loves to read! When I’m not reading or working on my blog, I’m baking bread, making ice cream, and most recently, learning pottery!”
Without further ado, here are Davida’s choices:
A favourite book: ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje
To this day, I can’t recall any other book that blew me away with its lyrical beauty as much as this one. I’m actually so in awe of it, I’ve never dared to write a review! I’m sure people know the story, about a partly bombed-out building, in France, which had been used as a hospital, but now has only one patient, a pilot who has burns over most of his body. The woman caring for him is joined by two others, in a strange triangle of characters.
A book that changed my world: ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe
I read this in High School when Apartheid was still practised in South Africa. From this book, I learned of the cruelty of colonisation and to accept others for the type of person they are and to not judge them on their beliefs, practices or cultural differences. It also taught me that “different” doesn’t mean “bad”; it just means it’s not what I am accustomed to, and it is wonderful to learn about and respect other people, other cultures and other practices.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt’ by Andrea Bobotis
When I read this debut novel just before it was published, I was so impressed with not only the writing but also the cleverness of both the plot and the structure. But hardly anyone else I know has read it, although I see it has gotten a good number of reviews on Goodreads, but not nearly enough, if you ask me. Maybe if more people read it and reviewed it, the author would be more motivated to publish a second novel!
Thanks, Davida, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday. I admit to struggling with The English Patient when I tried to read it in the early 1990s, but I **adore** the film. I haven’t read Things Fall Apart although it’s been in my TBR for many years, and I’ve not heard of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
What do you think of Davida’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
Congratulations to Northern Irish writer Deirdre Madden who has been awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell prize, worth US$175,000! Eight of these awards have been handed out every year since 2013.
(Australia’s own Helen Garner received one in 2016, famously thinking it was a spam email and almost binning the news of her win.)
Madden is one of my favourite writers. In the words of the Windham-Campbell prize committee, she brings to “life the smallest movements of characters’ impulses and thoughts, portraying the intricacies of human lives with compassion and effortless depth”.
Madden’s stories show us how we are both bound and freed by the “unholy wind” of time. Her characters’ lives are intersected by extraordinary events: some political (the Troubles), some economic (the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger), some personal, all sudden openings that offer the rare opportunity for transformation and even transcendence.
Windham-Campbell Prize announcement
I met her once at a Faber showcase when she was promoting Time Present and Time Past and she was so gracious and lovely. In those days I always handed out business cards to writers I met, never expecting anything to come of it, but a few days later she sent me an email, writing “you have a most impressive blog” — swoon. (And yes, I’ve still got that email.)
Her backlist is relatively small — eight novels at last count (she also writes children’s books) — of which I’ve read five:
The best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything…
Sitting on the memorial bench in Ballinamore in March 2011
Today marks the 18th anniversary of Irish writer John McGahern’s death. Long-time followers of this blog, particularly when it was hosted on Typepad, will know that McGahern is my favourite writer.
McGahern was born in County Leitrim in 1934, the eldest child of seven. He was raised on a farm run by his mother, a part-time primary school teacher, while his father, a garda sergeant, lived in the garda barracks at Cootehall in County Roscommon. Following the untimely death of his mother in 1944, McGahern and his siblings moved into the garda barracks to live with their father.
These details are important because they shape so much of his writing; a quest to understand his father’s distant, often cruel behaviour and to make sense of his mother’s passing.
His output was small — just six novels The Barracks, The Dark, The Leavetaking, The Pornographer, Amongst Women, and That They May Face the Rising Sun (published as By the Lake in the US) — but each one beautifully polished and eloquent, with an emphasis on nature, rural Irish life, family dynamics and the tension between tradition and modernity.
He was also an acclaimed short story writer.
A new-to-me discovery
I discovered McGahern in the British summer of 2006 when I read his debut novel The Barracks. I’m not entirely sure why I came to read him, other than his death, aged 71, was relatively recent and he had been described in various newspaper articles as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
In his obituary, published in The Guardian, he was hailed as “arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett”.
As a lover of Irish literary fiction, I was amazed I’d never heard of him before and I suspect that’s why I bought his first book, published in 1963, to see what all the fuss was about.
I loved The Barracks so much that I bought his entire backlist (of novels) in one hit. Unusually, they were all sitting on the shelves at Waterstone’s Picadilly, almost as if they were waiting for me to take them home. I also bought his memoir, imaginatively titled Memoir, one of the most affecting books I have ever read.
Over the next 12 months, I devoured all the novels bar one because I didn’t want to be in a position where I had no more McGahern books left to read. I’m a “completist” but even so, all these years later, The Pornographer still sits on my bookshelves unread. Perhaps this year I will be brave enough to read it.
I might even dig out some of his short story collections because since discovering McGahern I have long got over my prejudice against the short story form!
A visit to McGahern country
In March 2011, I had the privilege of going on a self-guided trip to “McGahern country” with my partner Mr Reading Matters. I wrote about the short trip on my old blog, long since deleted, but I thought now was a good time to resurrect it, particularly as I have seen reviews of his work on other book blogs in recent weeks.
I think he’s also come to many people’s attention via the success of Irish writer Claire Keegan, who champions his work and is clearly influenced by his style and themes.
Whatever the case, it always delights me to see readers discovering his writing and appreciating its quiet beauty (and dark overtones) for the first time.
Lough Rynn Castle Hotel in Co. Leitrim, Ireland
On our trip all those years ago, we stayed at the rather wonderful Lough Rynn Castle Hotel, in Mohill, Co. Leitrim, deliberately chosen because it housed a small library dedicated to John McGahern. It was the perfect base to explore the area, where the author spent much of his life.
The John McGahern Library
The John McGahern Library was opened by the then-Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in November 2006 in the presence of McGahern’s widow, Madeline.
It’s housed in a small but sumptuous room on the hotel’s ground floor. The colour scheme is a mix of deep ruby reds and golds, complemented by mahogany timber furniture and glass-fronted bookshelves.
The shelves are lined with various hardcover books, mainly Irish novels and biographies. There is supposedly a selection of rare first edition volumes among them, but I was too scared to touch anything lest I caused damage — and, anyway, many of the titles were behind glass.
First editions of McGahern’s work under lock and key
Of course, a library dedicated to John McGahern has to include copies of his books and a collection of first editions can be seen in a glass display case over which a framed portrait of the great man hangs on the wall.
With its touch of luxury — the stiff-backed chairs, the small chandelier, the fireplace — I’m sure it’s a long way from the priest’s library that McGahern used to riffle through as a child but it is a truly beautiful and fitting memorial to one of Ireland’s greatest writers.
The shores of Lough Rynn
Glorious weather
During our trip, the weather was glorious — blue skies and sunshine, so unusual for Ireland where it can teem with rain for days on end. And as we pootled along the roads of McGahern’s native Leitrim we got a real sense of the beautiful landscape — rolling green hills, woodlands and lakes — that the writer loved so much.
Of course, there’s no “McGahern Country” map you can follow ( certainly in 2011, Discover Ireland hadn’t wised up to that one yet, but perhaps things have changed?), so much of our adventure was based on internet research and reference to a tour that my friend Trevor Cook had made the year before.
We got lost a few times and had one hair-raising episode in our hire car when we thought the wilds of rural Ireland would swallow us whole. We were looking for the farmhouse that McGahern had supposedly spent some time in as a child, but the gravel road we followed — and which we had spent a good half-hour looking for — led us a merry dance through bumpy terrain and wild woodland. Eventually, it became a boreen (rural track) masquerading as a swamp.
A soon-to-be treacherous boreen
As the hedgerows closed in around us and the surface of the track got muddier and muddier, it seemed inevitable that we were going to get bogged (not long after the photograph above was taken the road conditions deteriorated drastically). But Mr Reading Matters, who was driving, held his nerve and pushed on through (I kept my eyes closed). And then, just when we least expected it, we turned a corner where there was a quiet stretch of tarmac waiting to meet us. The sense of relief was enormous.
We never did find that farmhouse.
McGahern landmarks
But we did find plenty of other landmarks associated with McGahern. Here are some of them:
The plaque that commemorates his last novel
This plaque on the footpath in Ballinamore commemorates McGahern’s last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, which was first published in 2001. It sits at the foot of a memorial bench (see the photograph at the top of this post).
The abbey that stars in McGahern’s last novel
Fenagh Abbey, in Fenagh, was built on the site of a 6th-century monastery founded by St Caillin. It sits atop a hillside overlooking the local village and surrounding landscape. In That They May Face the Rising Sun, this is the graveyard where the character Johnny Murphy is buried.
The garda barracks that stars in his debut novel
The barracks in Cootehall, just over the border in Co. Roscommon, where McGahern’s father, a garda sergeant, was based and where the family, including John, lived after the death of his mother. This is also the basis for the barracks in McGahern’s debut novel of the same name.
McGahern is buried alongside his mother
This is McGahern’s plain but dignified grave. He is buried alongside his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was 10 years old, in the grounds of St Patrick’s church, Aughawillan. The inscription on the cross reads:
Susan McManus McGahern, NT
2 May 1902 – 28 June 1944
John McGahern
12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006
Find out more
You can read all my reviews of McGahern’s work on my McGahern page.
And McGahern’s obituary published in The Guardian is worth revisiting if you wish to find out more about his life and his work.
Please excuse the poor quality of the photographs in this post. They were originally taken on a digital camera (not a smartphone) in 2011 and have been “rescued” from the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine because I no longer hold the originals.
I wrote this post for Cathy’s #ReadingIrelandMonth24. You can find out more about this annual blog event at Cathy’s blog 746 Books.
Fiction – paperback; Europa Editions; 300 pages; 2023. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson.
Children’s right to privacy in the Internet age is at the heart of Kids Run the Show, a provocative novel — part crime thriller, part social commentary — by French writer Delphine de Vigan.
The story focuses on Mélanie Claux, a young mother of two, who exploits her children online for financial gain.
It is set against a backdrop of calls to regulate the commercial exploitation of children by their parents and to classify the activity as work. In fact, in 2021, France introduced a law to protect “child influencers” on social media because it regards it as a form of child labour, which is already outlawed. The legislation is designed to protect the rights of children who are making money online via online platforms and the Internet.
Mélanie, a failed reality TV star (she got voted off Loft Story, France’s first reality TV show, an adaptation of the Big Brother franchise, early in the first season), is desperate for love and attention. Unable to achieve it for herself, she sets about achieving it vicariously through her children via a YouTube account called “Happy Recess”.
Here she posts cute videos of 8-year-old Sammy and 6-year-old Kimmy, which go viral, attract millions of “likes” and rack up the follower numbers. Happy Recess becomes so successful it generates enough money to support both Mélanie and her husband, Bruno, who live in a beautiful apartment full of beautiful objects, many of which are “freebies” sent to them for review or endorsement purposes.
Kidnapped for ransom
But when Kimmy disappears while playing hide-and-seek with other children in their apartment building early one evening, Mélanie’s carefully curated life begins to fall apart.
At 21:30 Mélanie Claux received a short private message on her Instagram account. The sender, whose name was unknown to her, had no followers of their own. Everything indicated that the account had been created with the sole purpose of sending her the following message: “Kid missing, deal coming,” which confirmed the theory of kidnapping for ransom. (page 33)
The case is referred to the Paris Crime Squad and investigative officer Clara Roussel has the thankless task of trawling through hours and hours of Happy Recess YouTube videos, looking for clues to Kimmy’s disappearance.
The list of suspects is long (possibly anyone who has ever watched a Kimmy video) and Clara’s task is a challenging one. But this isn’t a strict police procedural, rather it’s a thought-provoking examination of how social media has eroded our sense of privacy and created new opportunities to generate lucrative income streams — but at what cost?
The borders between private and public had disappeared long ago. This staging of the self, of one’s everyday life, the pursuit of likes: this was not something Mélanie had made up. It had become a way of life, a way of being in the world. One-third of the children who were born already had a digital life. (page 190)
The last section of the novel fast-forwards to 2031 to look at the long-term impact of the case on each of the main protagonists. It makes for uncomfortable reading.
Kids Run the Show is a clarion call, warning parents about the dangers of turning children into media stars before they are old enough to understand the consequences of their fame.
Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday, an ad-hoc series I kicked off in 2010 which has been on hiatus for several years — but now it’s time to bring it back. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.If you’d like to take part simply visit this post and fill in the form!
Bill, who is based in Perth, Western Australia, has previously taken part in Triple Choice Tuesday (see here, in 2017). He describes himself as an “old, white guy” but most of us know him as an erudite literary blogger who makes his living driving a truck across Australia. It’s always interesting to see what he’s reading and listening to on the road.
Without further ado, here are Bill’s choices:
A favourite book: ‘The Midnight Robber’ by Nalo Hopkinson
Look, everyone knows my favourite book is Normal People by Sally Rooney, but how can I explain that? The Midnight Robber is brilliant science fiction (SF) about a planet settled entirely by Jamaicans. It’s written in patois by Canadian/Jamaican woman author Nalo Hopkinson.
A book that changed my world: ‘That Deadman Dance’ by Kim Scott
This was the first book I paid any attention to, written by an Australian Indigenous author. You can never look at white settlement the same way again. When you’ve read that, read Another Day in the Colony by Dr Chelsea Watego, and feel about one foot tall.
A book that deserves a wider audience: ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin
Everyone should read Le Guin (1929-2018). She is immensely thoughtful about all sorts of subjects and a brilliant storyteller. Here she sets her story in two worlds: one which is rationally self-governed, and the other which is a lot like the Earth.
Thanks, Bill, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday, once again.This is certainly an interesting trio of books, the only one that is familiar to me is That Deadman Dance (reviewed here).
What do you think of Bill’s choices? Have you read any of these books?
Reading Matters 