Odds and sods
March 31st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
On Motherhood
You always love your baby, but you love her even more when she sleeps through the night and you get a good sleep. She was sleeping through the night for a month and then started night feeds again, and I was really getting exhausted. Last night I caught up on my sleep and feel on top of the world.
On writing
I had the coolest thing happen the other day. Went to my local video store and the kid behind the store starts saying my name is familiar. Looks at my card and goes, ‘You’re the writer.’ I’m shocked. ‘How do you know?’ I stammer when my voice returns. Turns out he was one of the students I did a school visit at. He’s Bosnian too so he’s really interested in what I was talking about and my novel.
Reading list-Jennifer Weiner’s Certain Girls
Weiner’s still got it. I could not put this book down and had to whip through it. It was great reading about Cannie Shapiro again as this novel is the follow up to Good in Bed, but ultimately I’m bothered by this book. At the end of Good in Bed Cannie, a big girl with big self esteem issues, has overcome a lot of crappy things and finds a man who loves her as she is. In Certain Girls it’s 13 years down the track and Cannie is a mother to Joy who has hearing problems stemming from her being premature.
The novel is told in alternate points of view from Cannie and her daughter Joy. Cannie is happily married, but is grappling with mothering an adolescent who doesn’t need her as much and a writing career that has detoured. Joy is grappling with the usual teenage rebellions-establishing automany from her mother and figuring out her place at school.
What got to me was the end. Cannie suffers a tragedy and I felt let down. While the book is true to life-not everything has a happy ending, I felt let down because I expected the happy ending from Weiner and it felt like Cannie was being punished. I guess I was disappointed because I had this image of Cannie saling into the sunset whereas now whenever I picture her I see this new direction her life has taken and I feel sad for her. I don’t feel uplifted and maybe the ending cut too close for home to me.
I always feel like the bottom is about to drop out. Like there is only so much luck and good fortune I get in life and the more good things happen, the more that a bad thing is about to come and that’s what it seems like Certain Girls is about.
Reading list so far
March 21st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
After a long break due to the exhausted haze of motherhood I’ve been reading again. So far this year I’ve read:
Simmone Howell’s Everything Beautiful
When you hear a book is set in a Christian camp you get preconceived notions of happy, wholesome campers and God, but Simmone Howell’s second novel Everything Beautiful takes all those notions and tips them on their head.
Riley Rose is overweight and for the most content with her body image, even though she has self esteem issues these are more to do with the fallout from her mother’s death two years before.
I loved Riley. She’s a character you don’t see often. She’s an individual who’s comfortable being apart from everyone else. Everything Beautiful is book that resonates after the last chapter. It’s subtle, real and gritty. In the end it’s not about being saved by God, but rather about saving yourself and I loved that.
Alicia Erian’s Towelhead
I’ve heard about this book for a while and it’s been on my to read list. It’s such an engaging read, slightly disturbing but also really funny.
It sucks you in from the first line which is one of the best first line’s I’ve read:
‘My mother’s boyfriend got a crush on me, so she sent me to live with Daddy.’
As a parent this book also hit its mark because Jasira is so desperate to be loved due to her parent’s self-involvement and all her actions stem from this.
While the subject matter is disturbing the book is not written to sensationalise and shock. There is true empathy for Jasira’s plight and this is what makes it so readable.
L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
I read these as a teenager and collected the whole series. Reading my journals as an adult I found all these quotes attributed to L. M. Montgomery and had to wrack my brains to remember who it was and why I wrote them.
I’m re-reading these because I want my daughter to read these books and have them be a part of her adolescence. Anne is impetuous, good hearted and her adventures are so wholesome, yet the novel still packs a punch and is relevant 100 years after it was first published.
The Good Daughter Praise
March 11th, 2009 § 4 Comments
The book has gone to the printers. Been getting nervy about impending publication but feeling better since I received some good feedback from authors I admire. The praise so far:
‘A raw and honest story about duty and the desire to run free. A strong new voice in Australian fiction.’
MELINA MARCHETTA
‘I love The Good Daughter. It had me in stitches. Hilarious, poignant, gutsy and real.’ RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH
‘Funny, sharp and insightful.’ SIMMONE HOWELL
