Julie of the Wolves

This children’s book by Jean Craighead George won some awards and is recommended for ten year olds; and includes an attempted rape, a child marriage, and one of the darkest conclusions I’ve ever encountered. They were brave judges! I can imagine this being banned in libraries across America. It’s about an Eskimo girl who escapes her child marriage/rape and goes to live with the wolves. She discovers her father is still alive, but when she finally meets him, he’s not the man she thought he’d be – the great hero. So she walks back out into the snow.

If you were a great animal lover as the author is, you’d get more out of this book – I preferred the scenes with humans in it. She’s a good writer, and the details are both exact and interesting (she was a lifelong environmental scientist who knew her stuff). But for ten year olds? I don’t know.

Passarola Rising

This is the first novel by Australian Azhar Abidi and it’s extremely accomplished. It’s set in the age of Reason, the mid eighteenth century, and stars two brothers who build an airship and start exploring the world. Voltaire makes an appearance amongst a cast of famous names. The descriptions are beautiful and story moves along quickly; and it’s very believable, too. Apparently the two brothers really did design an airship, although they didn’t actually build it and try to fly around the world. But if they had, you can imagine they’d have come up against all the things detailed here – the inquisition calling them sorcerers, the government using them for their own meaningless military objectives, and the philosophers of the day denying the wonders they see on the basis of cold reason.

In the end, the two brothers part company. The narrator chooses an ordinary life, marrying, becoming a businessman and a father. The older brother continues to fly and eventually dies with a vision of a great bird-griffin – the passarola – clearer than anything else in his life. A short life but a good one, the younger brother thinks wistfully – but only occasionally.

It’s a good book for a first writer, and it has all sorts of famous people singing his praises on the front cover. All sorts of famous men, I should clarify; because there are really no women in the book at all. There’s the early temptress and a later wife, both faint ciphers. The real world, says the author, is peopled by men; there aren’t even any women in the background. That’s why it’s a good book, but not a great one – in fact, I find it quite terrifying.

The Secret River

This is a rather depressing novel by Kate Grenville, about the early days of white settlement in Australia. You can tell what’s going to happen from the first line, and the inevitability of it all adds to the gloom.

William Thornhill is born in poverty in London, works hard but still has to steal to stay alive. He’s caught and sent with his family to Sydney. There, he rises in the world through a mix of hard work and theft, and one day gets a glimpse of a beautiful point of land on the Hawkesbury river. He covets it and eventually camps there with his family. Of course, it’s already occupied by the local Aborigines. The same land, the same resources, and therefore only one choice – leave the place or get rid of the locals. Both sides have the opportunity to make the choice, both sides expecting the other to take the hint and leave. Small conflicts turn into larger ones until there is a massacre. The Thornhill family become wealthy and respected, with their lovely house on the point.

It’s a fast-paced story, which keeps you reading even though you know it’s going to end horribly. Grenville’s style isn’t anything unique – typical actually of an Australian writer, reminiscent of Malouf and Keneally and the rest – especially the characterisation and the dialogue. For some reason the way Australian writers put such awkward speech in their characters’ mouths really annoys me, like having to read the Yorkshire in Wuthering Heights. But apart from that, it’s a well-told novel with a calm and reasonable narrator putting down such terrible unknowable things.

My Side of the Mountain

I’ve been wanting to read this children’s book by Jean Craighead George for years and years. It’s a classic American novel about a boy who runs away from home and goes to live in the woods – in a tree, to be exact. He learns how to live off the land, tames a falcon and makes friends with other creatures. It’s very detailed in what he eats and how he takes care of himself.

It was written forty years ago, and you can tell – no child nowadays would be let alone the way this boy is. He gets help from the local librarian and other wanderers, who accept his life choices and agree that his lifestyle beats theirs. He’s considered capable and to have the ability, and the right, to make decisions for himself. It’s definitely a fantasy novel, but it’s a good one. I’d love an Australian version of this with bush tucker and kangaroos, though.

Divisidaro

This is the long-awaited new novel by Michael Ondaatje. Like his earlier books, it uses lyrical language with embedded quotes and dialogue, occasional authorial comment, and fragmented chronology. It does lack the emotional power, the anger which sparked his previous works; it’s a calmer, even a more distant work. But that’s part of it, because “divisidaro” doesn’t just mean “divisions” (one of the more obvious themes) but also “seeing from a distance”.

All the characters are observed in many different ways, first person, third, the main actor, the one on the sidelines. Unlike his earlier novels, which had scattered characters who come together for a time, this is more about the separation. Lovers are divided, parents from children (most of the characters are orphans), siblings, friends. Their time together is often brief and sometimes imaginary. And yet, despite the ever-present divisions, it’s actually the connections which are stronger. They might not be together, but they feature in one another’s life, colour one another’s lives.

I enjoyed this – it’s a book to read slowly, revelling in the language. I didn’t love it as I did his previous works, but then it took a few reads before I embraced them anyway. Perhaps after a couple more rereads I’ll be waxing more lyrical – but at the moment, it’s true to say I liked it.

St Jude's

I grew increasingly uneasy as I read this story by Gemma Sisia. She’s a good Catholic girl from country NSW who saw pictures of the starving Africans and made it her mission to go and save them. She went there, fell in love with an African man and married him (although her family was against her marrying a black man) and was given land by his family to build a school. Through Rotary, she’s raised thousands of dollars to set up this school for poor but intellectually gifted students in the area, and now hundreds of students have been, and continue to be educated.

Good for her, of course, and it’s great that hundreds of kiddies are now educated. That’s not all you learn, though; it’s all because of St Jude and his magical prayer that you pray nine times. Not the African people who provided the land, the idea and the labour for the school – no, apparently they’ve got no sense of honesty (there are several “amusing” stories about their lack of understanding about lying, money, possessions etc), have to be led by Westerners (every time Gemma leaves Australia, she returns to utter chaos), and are unable to care for their children (she tells us that a lot of poverty is because some people just don’t care for their children or possessions). When she starts to feel concerned that perhaps her efforts aren’t exactly saving Tanzania, someone tells her the fable of the starfish (you know, how the boy chucks a few starfish back in the ocean saying “it matters to that one” even though the others are dying).

Of course it matters to the individual – but it also matters to the individual who stays choking on the beach because your good intentions don’t include them. In this case, children who aren’t bright enough (there are entry exams), who don’t work hard enough (there’s a “probationary period” for the students – if they’re not smart enough, they get kicked out), whose parents aren’t good enough (they get inspected too), don’t deserve an education. She says she can’t help everyone – but what is she saying to the other hundreds of kids who don’t make it into her school? One thing alone I’ve learned from working overseas, and that’s that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gemma is full of good intentions, but it would help if she had some insight, as well. This book is another in the long line of books about poor countries which are saved by a Wonderful Westerner, because, apparently, the hopeless locals just can’t do it themselves.

The Driftway

I’ve had Penelope Lively books on my shelf ever since childhood, and now I understand why I never read them. This is a boring book, and the kind of book which annoys me now and would have infuriated me as a child. Paul hasn’t accepted his stepmother into the family – in fact he’s been a brat about it all. After travelling along the Driftway and listening to the stories of people from the past, he realises he’s not the only fish in the pond, and decides to be nicer to his stepmother.

Preaching “be nice” to teenagers through stories like this really irritates me. A novel should be a novel, not a social story. And the individual tales of the people of the past, including soldiers, highwaymen, poachers etc should have been exciting, but were also extremely boring. I read one book of hers that she wrote for adults and really loathed it; this one I didn’t hate, but I’m glad it’s unlikely to be reprinted for a new generation.