Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other

At last I have completed my final  self-assigned Great Book for the year:  the  2019  winner of the Booker Prize, Girl,  Woman, Other. This will be a brief review, written as it is on my ipad in the kitchen of our holiday house with relatives arguing over which oil to use to fry an egg.

Ann Boyd – Goldfish Through Summer Rain

Some music for our warm wet La Nina summer. A beautiful composition by Australian composer Ann Boyd played by Riley Lee on shakuhachi and Marshall McGuire on harp.

May you have a peaceful Christmas and New Year and no wrangling over presents.

(I am trying to learn to play this piece on the flute…may take the rest of my life.)

All the best from the Gerts.

Let’s hope 2022 is a vast improvement on 2021.

Patrick Hamilton: The Slaves of Solitude

Songs of Disappearance

In great have I spent libraries…

 

Books red and

Humming spines gold

Mmmmmmm

Spinning I am dizzy

 

Library man with round glasses

Eyes like boiled lollies

‘Give me a kiss

and I’ll give you a penny’

 

Park Street

Holy ground

Green paneled walls

 John Bull’s Weekly

 

Myer Library

Mrs Stewart

Freedom of the lanes

A galleon on the cover

 

Athenaeum Library

Bobs Martin

Marble steps

Old Vogues tied up with string

 

Kensington and Chelsea Library

Confetti on the path

Frank Conroy

Body and Soul

 

Rain falling

My father’s books

Piled up on the skip

Lego ergo sum

 

Helen Garner – How to End a Story: Diaries 1995 -1998

Helen Garner has just published the third volume of excerpts from her diaries from the years 1995 to 1998.  Previously there was Yellow Notebook: Diaries 1978 – 1987 and One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries1987 – 1995. She is nearing eighty now, and her writing has concerned itself with many aspects of Australian life. She has written novels, short stories, non-fiction books about high-profile court cases and always at the back of this she has written journals and observations of her day-to-day life. She is concerned with the sun on leaves, a bird chirping in the back garden, the thrill of riding her bike fast down a bill on the way to the swimming pool, and above all, the life of her emotions. Her loves, her yearning for love and her failures. She is ruthlessly honest in her self-exploration, but in a way that encourages one to reflect on one’s own life.

Kapka Kassabova: Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story

Elizabeth Berridge – Tell it to a Stranger

In his preface to this delightful Persephone Books edition of short stories by Elizabeth Berridge, A N Wilson writes

A short story with the title ‘To Tea with the Colonel’ would suggest to many readers that they were about to enter a comfortable and conservative past, an England which was extremely English. Elizabeth Berridge, though, is a true subversive in that you can never guess, when you start to read one of her tales, where it will lead you.

C.L.R. James: Minty Alley