Ominous dark clouds and lightning were swirling around Maylands as we gathered at Kathy's place for our meeting on Frenchies Day, 14 July. Given the books, we all knew we were in for difficult, disquieting discussions and thought perhaps Barb, McLassie and Cherilyn played a strategic hand in being apologies - (OK, I may have taken some publisher's license there - we know you were all ridgey-didge).
Our first book was Megan's choice, Infinite Splendours, by Sophie Laguna. If ever a book belied its title, this must be it, but its over to Megan for her summary
Author Sophie Laguna - studied to be a lawyer at Uni of NSW but decided law was not for her & moved to Melbourne to study acting. Whilst working as an actor she completed a Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She is now an author and playwright for both adults and children. She has written many books for young people and has been nominated for a number of awards including Qld Premier’s Awards - has been published in US, UK and in translation through Europe & Asia.
Her first book for adults was released in 2008 - “One foot wrong” which was long listed for the Miles Franklin.
I didn’t know much about this book other than a couple of friends in other book clubs had read it - I think the title “Infinite Splendours” makes you think of lovely long lasting wonders which are obviously always there. This is the case with the colourful landscape & nature of the Grampians where this book is based and depicted in the artwork produced by Lawrence.
It is a very tough book to read and at times I felt I may not finish it. The story begins in the 1950’s with a mother and her two sons (Lawrence & Paul) living on a property in the beautiful surrounds of the Grampians. The father didn’t return from the war and the mother, whilst doing her best to give her sons a happy life, is constantly thinking about her brother who she was separated from when they were children. They are a happy and close threesome until the day that Uncle unexpectedly arrives. Mother is absolutely delighted and takes great care in preparing the house for his visit.
We soon start to feel uncomfortable with this “too good to be true” relative - the younger brother Paul and the elderly neighbour have misgivings but Laurie is quite taken with him and is delighted when he shows an interest in his art. There is a building of tension interspersed with the every day life and happy times of the family. We just know that a terrible fate awaits Laurie at the hands of his uncle. Once the rape occurs you feel utterly dismayed and just want him to speak up, but of course, predators like this tell you it’s “our secret” and make the child feel as if it’s their fault.
I hoped that Paul would say something but he is the younger brother and didn’t really know exactly what was happening and wouldn’t know how to approach the subject. Possibly Laurie thought that saying nothing would save his brother from being abused too. Mother was oblivious to Laurie’s changed demeanour and just wanted her brother to remain a part of her life! Laurie goes from a talented & popular student to one who can’t communicate, develops a debilitating stammer and his life is totally ruined (particularly as he cannot confide in anyone).
After dropping out of school Laurie takes on a job at the dairy where his mother has worked for many years. He is a loner, cannot relate to his workmates and is quite isolated. As he has grown in to adulthood he has not made sense of what has happened years earlier. He cannot change the past, but the question is whether he is doomed to repeat it!
He befriends the young son of the boss and after a few lunchtimes together is suspected by his workmates of grooming the boy and is badly beaten and doesn’t return to the dairy. Just more heartache for the reader to contend with!!
Now he’s home all the time - mentally deteriorating. His art and regular climbs up Wallis his only outlets. The narrative is lightened by the lush description of landscape and the inclusion of art as a form of therapy, hope, salvation and redemption.
In the last third of the book Laurie is a much older man still living in the same house, but on his own. He and brother Paul are no longer close - he both loves and hates him. Laurie’s health has deteriorated, exacerbated by his isolation and Paul attempts to care for him as best he can. He is totally mortified when a new family move in next door but eventually becomes friends with the 10 year old son David - the reader again becomes worried as to whether this will be a healthy friendship.
The ending is very sad although Laurie does save David from the fire and it is rather bitter/sweet that his agent comes looking for him to see if he has survived the fire and discovers all the amazing art work he would never be recognised for.
Laurie’s inability to talk about what had happened to him was what ultimately destroyed him. This is the impact for many abused children who cannot speak of the unspeakable which continues to haunt them throughout their lives.
Our group discussions turned on the experiences of survivors and being believed, along with some critical reflections on the narrative. This included the failure of adults to act (in particular and sadly the 2 key females, mom and the teacher). Hope and redemption were difficult to find in this book and so with furrowed brows, we moved on to Kathy's selection, The Ripping Tree, by Nikki Gemmell.
And now its Kathy's turn
Nikki Gemmell is the best-selling author of thirteen novels and four works of non-fiction. She was born in Wollongong, New South Wales and attended Rose Bay’s Roman Catholic Kincoppal Primary and Secondary School, on a scholarship. She graduated from the University of Technology, Sydney with a Masters in Writing and worked as a radio journalist for ABC Radio and the BBC World Service. For many years, she lived in London but has now settled back in Australia. Her best-known work is the 2003 novel The Bride Stripped Bare, an explicit exploration of female sexuality (which I’ve not read). In fact, The Ripping Tree is my first exposure to Nicki Gemmell. She is the author of fourteen works of fiction and seven non-fiction books. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. When I mentioned my choice to Megan, she commented that Andrew had bought the book for her because she so enjoys Gemmell’s weekly columns for The Australian. And, she also writes novels for children.
The Ripping Tree is an historical thriller, a tale of survival in colonial Australia. It took Gemmell ten years to write, apparently because motherhood got in the way. The author has revealed that the title, The Ripping Tree, is what her son called this type of tree when her family returned to Australia to live. For the main character and the voice in this book, The Ripping Tree was magic because its bark could be used for a million things.
That character, Thomasina Trelora, loses her father and only surviving parent when she is 16 years old and living in England. Her elder half-brother has made a life in Australia, so he returns to ‘take responsibility’ for his orphaned sister, announcing that he has arranged for her to marry a vicar in the fairly newly settled island continent. Having been raised by her father, it becomes clear that she is highly untypical of that era’s ‘young lady’. When she is orphaned, it becomes quickly obvious that she and her brother are not in any way close, and that he and his wife are disgusted by her lack of feminine training. They are constantly critical of Tom’s behaviour on the long journey to Australia, and Tom, devastated about having to leave her homeland and being made to marry a complete stranger, can only think of a way to escape the claustrophobic world that, as far as her brother is concerned, is rescuing her.
Just as they are nearing their destination, a fierce storm dashes the boat into the rocks leaving Thomasina as the only survivor. Her rescuer leaves her, wrapped in bark from the ripping tree, on the doorstep of “Willowbrae”.
Unlike a review by Frank O’Shea in the Canberra Times in April this year, in my first reading of the book, I was mainly interested in the tale and finding out what was going to happen to this young girl. O’Shea was distracted and says he was ‘…so bogged down in the elegant prose that the story is in danger of being ignored.’ His second reading allowed him to truly absorb the storyline. In my second reading, I was reminded that the story was being told by Thomasina, now a grandmother, to her daughter and her daughter’s children who had just visited Willowbrae. They thought it was a wonderful place and were keen to spend more time there, so Tom decided to read them her own handwritten tale about the property.
I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style in my first read, but in the second reading, I became much more conscious of the beautiful and descriptive prose Gemmell used throughout the story. An example, in relation to Thomasina’s rescue, when she was barely conscious, Gemmell wrote:
“Spit on fingertips – rubbed my eyes into cleanness, into sight, and I blinked wide with relief”
“….A palm before me was something – what – to hold, look at, eat – yes, eat. Pale, unappetizing, globulous. I didn’t recognise, was afraid.
“…This hand on my back kept rubbing and rubbing and the food came at me again and it wouldn’t scrape past the dryness in my throat, and I gagged. I retched the food out.
“….Then lips. At mine. Oh, the goodness. What? This….softness. This tenderness. I arced in some kind of instinct to meet the flesh that was saving me in a great transference of warmth and connection and trust; but no, it was practicality, merely that. Masticated food was being passed to me, lip to lip, and I flushed and swallowed without tasting, then like a horse, ate greedily from a palm held flat. The hand that had been rubbing my back and propping me up and cleaning my eyes with spit wasn’t white – but black.
Thomasina’s first feeling is that she has truly been saved from the fate her brother had wanted to create for her, and that she would finally be able take control of her own life. She wakes to see a young boy staring at her who is the youngest son of the family living in the homestead where she has been left. “Mouse”, as he is called by the family, is extremely lonely and desperate for someone’s love. He believes Tom may be a mermaid and nicknames her “Poss”. He begins to share some of his secret adventures with her as she recovers from her ordeal, and Tom begins to realise there are many layers to Willowbrae, and finds that she wants to peel away at those layers, much like the bark on the Ripping Tree. She wants to expose the core of truth and honesty with this highly unusual family.
The story covers only 7 days, and each day with the family makes her want to ask more and more questions – questions that are not welcomed by the family members. She becomes justifiably fearful that she might be in danger and doesn’t know who to trust. She is certainly not confident in giving away her true identity, lest that knowledge leads to her being married off to the vicar to whom she had been promised by her half-brother.
The vicar turns out to be one of the town visitors who come asking questions, wanting to know her true identity. He is not an attractive man and appears to have no confidence in himself when he is with her. She has no way of knowing, but wonders if this might be the vicar to whom she has been promised. On his second and third visit to Willowbrae, when they are able to get to know each other a bit better, Tom and the Vicar find a common respect and care for each other. She also discovers he is the vicar intended for her by her brother.
Tom is closely guarded by the maternal figure in the household who fears Poss might be taken away if she is able to recall her true identity. “Mouse’s” mother has offered “Poss” the opportunity to stay at Willowbrae, to be a governess to her young son, as well as to provide her with a much needed female companion.
Poss comes to learn that the mother is a completely frazzled woman, with no patience for much at all, especially the wild country she has been forced to make her home. It soon becomes clear that the mother is trying to replace the daughter she lost and adored some years before. She describes it as very fortuitous that Poss should be the only survivor of the shipwreck, with no memory of who she is or to whom she may belong, and to have been left, like a miracle, on the Willowbrae door stoop.
In one of Mouse’s adventure outings, they discover a dead Aboriginal woman and child. Much to Mouse’s distress, Poss becomes obsessed with convincing the family to remove the dead bodies and give them a proper burial. And it is from this point on in the story that the truth is uncovered about this family’s beliefs and horrible treatment of Aboriginals.
Poss makes such a nuisance of herself that the family are able to persuade a doctor that she is suffering from hysteria, a fashionable ailment of the day, so that she can be sent to a primitive asylum from which she may never escape.
The story is an uncomfortable reminder of early Australian history, and I was left wanting to know more. Tom obviously escaped her confinement and went on to have a family and grandchildren. Did she marry the vicar? Were the family ever exposed for their treatment and behaviour of the natives? Will Gemmell consider a second book?
We agreed the exposure of aboriginal experiences when white people arrived needs to be told, distressing as they are - but there was uncertainty in the group as to whether this was the strong book it could have been. Some of us found the writing difficult at times, and some of the main characters were drawn a bit too 'loosely' - which perhaps had the effect of losing the impact of the narrative. The storyline took place over 7 days and though we all know miracles can occur on this timeline (?), it created some credibility gaps as well.
Yes, the weather indeed foreshadowed our gut wrenching books - but then, putting aside our individual views its incontestable that the themes of both books deserve to be out in the open and talked about. A wise woman once said 'Whenever I see a taboo, I just think that's something we need to drag
screaming out into the light and discuss. Because taboos are where our
fears live, and taboos are the things that keep us tiny.' So perhaps without knowing it, we all grew a little bit on Frenchies night, and we can thank the authors and selectors for that.
After collective sighs of relief, Kathy came to the rescue with fabulous oranges and lemon cake, decorated with amazing edible flowers, and we all assumed she was auditioning for the next edition of 'MasterChef'. Kathy kindly offered to share the recipe - but not until after the next finals series (not really - just let her know! and I'm putting up my hand Kathy). Over tea and cake, the mood was lightened with jokes from Mog and the specially invited French guest all the way from the room next door, Pierre.
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| The hand goes for the Oranges & Lemon cake |
Our next meeting was rescheduled to Wednesday 15 September 2021, assuming our host (McLassie) agrees to the change. Book selections are:
McLassie: The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, by Claire Wright
Marg P: The three burials of Lotty Keen, by Krissy Keen
Stay warm, stay reading and stay safe everyone.
