What Katie Read: Tara June Winch, Natasha Lester, Jessie Cole and more!

by |December 16, 2019
What Katie Read

Kate Forsyth is one of Australia’s most treasured storytellers. On today’s edition of What Katie Read, she gives us the rundown on all of the best books she’s been reading lately …


What Katie ReadThe Library: A Catalogue of Wonders

by Stuart Kells

This is a fascinating compendium of lore about libraries and bibliophiles, both historical and imagined. Rather than being a dry chronological account of the history of libraries, this book meanders through time and place, following the author’s whimsy. Consequently it visits such famous libraries as the Bodleian and the Folger, as well as invented libraries such as Umberto Eco’s mediaeval library in The Name of the Rose and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s cemetery of forgotten books.

It is probably of greatest interest to serious book collectors, like Stuart Kells himself, though there’s plenty for any lover of books & libraries to enjoy.

‘Much more than accumulations of books, the best libraries are hotspots and organs of civilisation; magical places in which students, scholars, curators, philanthropists, artists, pranksters and flirts come together and make something marvellous,’ Kell writes. An apt description for this book too.

Buy it here


What Katie ReadStaying

by Jessie Cole

Staying is a memoir of loss, grief and bewilderment at the heavy blows life can deal you and – ultimately – a story of healing and recovery. It’s hauntingly beautiful and heartrendingly sad.

Jessie Cole and her younger brother Jake were brought up by their free-thinking parents in a property in far-northern New South Wales. Their father was a psychiatrist, their mother a gentle hippy. They ran wild in the rainforest, swam in the river, read books, communed with nature. Every now and again, their father’s other daughters would come and stay. They were older, worldly-wise, and troubled. Jessie longed for their attention and their approval. She was too young to understand some of the tensions that existed in this extended family uneasily cobbled together.

When Jessie is twelve, one of her half-sisters commits suicide. There is no way to understand why.

‘I could feel my heart banging in my chest. Jumping up, face set, I ran. Into the unbroken green of our land, I ran. I could not cry – could not breathe – and finally, when I felt I might burst, I stopped and my breaths came in sucking gasps. My sister Zoe. Brown-bodied, light-eyed, splint-legged. Songs like swelling rivers. Eyes hard and cold.’

Zoe’s suicide fractures the family, in more ways than one. As Jessie grows up, it casts a terrible shadow over her life, and that of her parents and siblings. Her writing is unflinchingly honest and full of sensitivity and emotion, giving the most potent understanding of the cruel damage such a death can leave behind.

A profoundly moving book.

Buy it here


What Katie ReadThe Golden Egg

by Donna Leon

This is the 22nd book in Donna Leon’s series of bestselling murder mysteries set in modern day Venice. I’ve read many of the books in the series, loving the setting (of course!) and her characters, particularly the clever, quiet, thoughtful Venetian policeman Guido Brunetti and his literature-loving wife, and the wonderful meals she conjures up.

Donna Leon’s mysteries are deceptively slow and simple, yet they always present a tricky puzzle, acute psychological insight, and philosophical musings that avoid black-and-white morality. She does not always deliver neat justice, which can sometimes be frustrating, but this definitely makes the books more authentic in a modern-day Italy riven by scandal and corruption.

The Golden Egg centres on the death of a deaf-mute man from an overdose of sleeping pills. At first Brunetti assumes it is an accidental overdose, but some odd inconsistencies in the case set off alarm bells and he soon realises he is investigating a particularly cruel murder.

Vintage Brunetti!

Buy it here


What Katie ReadJane Austen at Home

by Lucy Worsley

I am a proud Janeite, and have read many books and articles about Jane Austen and her vibrant, amusing and clever novels. This one is a fabulous addition to the oeuvre, and particularly suitable to those who want to understand more about the famous writer and her times without having to slog through the many thick dense academic treatises. Lucy Worsley’s style is warm and intimate, and her knowledge is immense. She has a particular knack for giving us a quick but keen insight into Jane’s life that helps illuminate her writing.

For example: ‘Jane all her life would be interested in ordinary, unexceptional girls and what might happen to them. Her quietest heroine of all, Fanny Price, had ‘no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty’, while Catherine Morland had ‘nothing heroic’ about her, and was ‘occasionally stupid’. Jane’s great achievement would be to let even the ordinary, flawed, human girls who read her books think that they might be heroines too.’

Later, writing about how modern and liberated her heroines seem in comparison to other literary women of the time, Lucy Worsley writes: ‘the enduring reason for Jane’s popularity today is that she seems born outside her time, to be more like one of us, for she lifelong expresses the opposite point of view: in favour of vitality, strength, independence.’

A wonderful literary biography with lots of insights into what everyday life was like for Jane and other women of the early 19th century.

Buy it here


What Katie ReadHearing Maud

by Jessica White

I love creative non-fiction, particularly when it weaves personal memoir with an in-depth examination of some aspect of human culture. And I’ve been interested in deafness and sign language ever since reading about Helen Keller as a child. So as soon as I heard about this book, I knew I was interested in reading it. I then saw Jessica White speak at the Heroines Festival in Thirroul, and found her story so fascinating I bought the book right then.

In brief, Jessica White lost most of her hearing from meningitis at the age of four. I contracted meningitis when I was two, along with encephalitis, but I was lucky enough not to be left with permanent hearing loss (though I was left with a debilitating stutter).

Jessica’s family lived in the country, and there was no support for a deaf child growing up in a hearing and speaking community. She had to learn to lip read and to understand non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions to understand what was happening around her. School was an endless struggle, and her painful isolation and loneliness cut very close to home for me. Jessica found solace and escape in the world of books, in reading and writing, as I did as a child too. After finishing school, she travelled overseas to study. It was during this time that Jessica met another deaf person for the first time. She discovered a whole community of people who lived without sound, communicating easily and fluidly with sign language, and at last began to find a way to live in this world.

It is around this time that Jessica first heard the story of Maud Praed, the deaf daughter of the 19th century Australian novelist Rosa Praed. She was deaf from birth, and – like Jessica – was never taught to sign. A clever, curious child, she found herself shunned by society and increasingly isolated – her own brother suggested that it was too embarrassing being seen in public with her as she struggled to articulate sounds she had never heard. The breakdown of her parents’ marriage and her mother’s intense friendship with the spiritualist medium Nancy Harward caused Maud emotional and psychological distress, and she was committed to a mental asylum at the age of 28. Despite all her pleading letters, she remained there for the rest of her life, dying in the asylum at the age of 67. For most of those years, she lived in utter silence, unable to communicate except in the occasional scribbled notes – pens were not given to inmates for fear of self-harm.

Maud’s story is utterly tragic, and Jessica relates it with great sensitivity and compassion, linking it to both her own life and struggles, and to the history of deafness and sign language. I found it all so fascinating that I was constantly telling people about the book while I was reading it, and I’ve gone on to read more on the subject since.

One of the best creative non-fiction books of the year.

Buy it here


The YieldThe Yield

by Tara June Winch

Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri author whose first novel, Swallow the Air, was published in 2006, when she was only 23. I met her at a literary festival that year, and remember being captivated by her intensity and passion, as well as the beauty of her words. Two years later, she won a mentorship with Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The Yield is her third novel, and entwines three very different voices.

The first is that of an old man, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi, who knows he is soon to die. He decides to record a dictionary of Wiradjuri words to save them from extinction: ‘The yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things: baayanha.’

Poppy Gondiwindi’s life has been spent on his traditional lands, in what was an old Lutheran mission on the banks of the Murrumby River, on Massacre Plains. The second voice is that of the pastor, Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf, who founded the mission at the turn of the 19th century. These two accounts are very different, and show that Tara June Winch is a skilled ventriloquist.

The third voice is that of a young woman, August Gondiwindi, who has been living overseas for many years. Coming home for her grandfather’s funeral, she has to face the ghosts of her past. Discovering that her family’s home is to be repossessed by a mining company, she searches for her grandfather’s dictionary of Wiradjuri language in the hope she can prove a land title claim and so save her country. Along the way, August discovers some truths about herself and her past that help her to travel towards healing and forgiveness.

‘I was born on Ngurambang – can you hear it? – Ngu–ram–bang. If you say it right it hits the back of your mouth and you should taste blood in your words. Every person around should learn the word for country in the old language, the first language – because that is the way to all time, to time travel! You can go all the way back.’

Beautiful and powerful!

Buy it here


What Katie ReadThe French Photographer

by Natasha Lester

I love books that weave together two timelines, particularly if one is set during the dramatic and harrowing events of World War II. And I love books inspired by the true lives of unjustly forgotten women in history. So I was looking forward to Natasha Lester’s new book, which I knew was based loosely on the life story of Lee Miller, a beautiful young American who was a model for Vogue and other magazines before the war, but transformed herself, with enormous determination and talent, into one of the first female war photojournalists.

Natasha has not told Lee Miller’s own story, but rather modelled her fictional character Jessica May upon her. This narrative choice gave Natasha a little more imaginative freedom, while still paying homage to the brave women who travelled to the front and photographed the world at war. Many real women appear in the story including Martha Gellhorn, who was once married to Ernest Hemingway. Natasha also describes many of Lee Miller’s photographs, including the iconic shot of her naked, having a bath in Hitler’s bathtub (though Natasha attributes the photos to her fictional character Jess).

The World War II narrative is the strongest of the two. The modern-day story – set in France in 2005 – features an Australian art curator named D’Arcy Hallworth. She is given a job sorting through an immense cache of photographs kept at a chateau deep in the countryside. She is strongly drawn to Josh, the handsome agent of the mysterious and reclusive photographer who owns the chateau, and their romance develops swiftly and easily. D’Arcy has her own journey of discovery to make, though it cannot, of course, have the emotional depth and drama of the scenes set during the war.

The French Photographer is a complex and nuanced historical romance, with a fascinating and sympathetic central character in Jessica May. Natasha’s writing just gets better and better, with a swift smooth pace and some passages of arresting beauty. I particularly loved the feminist aspect to the novel, which highlights the struggle of women to be taking seriously, and also the long-lasting damage of sexual violence.

Buy it here


What Katie ReadThe Tides Between

by Elizabeth Jane Corbett

This beautiful and delicate tale follows the 1841 journey to Australia of fifteen-year-old Bridie Stewart, her pregnant mother Mary and her stepfather Alf. Mary thinks it is time Bridie cast away childish things and prepare herself for a new life in Port Phillip, but Bridget is still mourning the death of her father and is resentful of her mother’s new husband. Against her mother’s wishes, Bridie packs a notebook filled with her father’s fairy tales.

Also on board the boat are the Welsh musician and storyteller, Rhys Bevan and his wife Siân who is also with child. Rhys and Bridie become friends, and his stories become a real comfort to her. The journey is hard; there is illness, and personality clashes, and class divisions, and a doctor more interested in pursuing an affair with the nurse than in caring for the passengers. Rhys has his own demons to battle, and tragedy strikes as the ship comes ever close to Australia.

Woven though the story are some old Welsh fairy tales, and I particularly loved this aspect of the novel.

Buy it here


What Katie ReadSkin

by Ilka Tampke

Earlier this year I read Songwoman by Ilka Tampke and loved it. I had not realised it was the sequel to Skin, and so I grabbed a copy of the first in the series as soon as I could.

A dark historical fantasy set in Celtic Britain during the early days of the Roman invasion, it tells the story of Ailia, who was discovered as an abandoned newborn on the doorstep of her Tribequeen’s kitchen in the year 28 AD. Since her family is unknown, she has no ‘skin’, a kind of totemic knowledge that defines everyone in her culture. Without ‘skin’, she will always be an outsider. She can lie with a young man during the Beltane fires, for example, but she may not marry, and the hidden knowledge of the druids and the bards is forbidden to her.

Ailia is strong and clever, however, and not content with her lot in life. Rebelliously she seeks to learn whatever she can, and so strays into the Other World, where the Mothers give her gifts to help her discover her destiny. Torn between two lovers, struggling to understand her calling, Ailia will need all her strength and courage to face the invading Roman army.

Skin reminded me of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, which was one of my favourite books when I was a teenager. It has the same mysterious feel and tragic overtones of a magical world coming to an end, and the same beautiful lyrical writing. Highly recommended.

Buy it here


Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel aged seven and has now sold more than a million books worldwide. Her new novel, The Blue Rose, is inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose, moving between Imperial China and France during the ‘Terror’ of the French Revolution. Other novels for adults include Beauty in Thorns, a Pre-Raphaelite reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, Bitter Greens, which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction; and The Beast’s Garden, a stunning retelling of the Grimms’ Beauty and The Beast set in Nazi Germany.

Kate’s books for children include the collection of feminist fairy-tale retellings, Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, illustrated by Lorena Carrington, and the fantasy series The Impossible Quest. Named one of Australia’s Favourite 15 Novelists, Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring Atkinson, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia.

Find out more about Kate Forsyth here

The Blue Roseby Kate Forsyth

The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

Moving between Imperial China and France during the ‘Terror’ of the French Revolution and inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose.

Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at the Chateau de Belisama-sur-le-Lac in Brittany, for her father, the Marquis de Ravoisier, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau’s orchards, gardens and fields an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan the chateau’s new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer...

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