aww-badge-2015-200x300HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope 2015 has started well for you all. I’m feeling refreshed after a couple of restful weeks with my husband and daughters. It was as relaxing as life with a 5 year old and 1 year old gets!

The second half of 2014 was hectic. I finished my novel, signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster, and applied for and was awarded a PhD scholarship. In my personal life we had a really bad winter for illness, and my one year old went from one thing to another for about four months. Luckily she was better by the time our family came to visit, and we had a wonderful few weeks exploring Hong Kong and Australia with our loved ones.

So, what does 2015 hold for me? Lots of writing, I hope – and lots of reading, if I’m lucky! To that end, I will sign up once again for the Australian Women Writers Challenge in 2015, and I will aim for the Franklin level, which means reading 10 books by Australian women writers. This challenge is open to anyone, so click on the link to join in!

And now it’s confession time. I also signed up for the Franklin level last year, and when I tallied up I have only read eight. Aargh! What’s more, I read most of them in the first few months of the year, before life intervened. The good news is I enjoyed every single one of them. Here they are:

 

Charlie Whisky Foxtrot and The Ark by Annabel Smith.

In 2014 I read two completely different books by the same author – which immediately underlines just how talented Annabel is.

Charlie Whisky Foxtrot is the story of two brothers who have lost one another, until Whisky has an accident that leaves him in a coma, and Charlie is forced to re-examine how and why their relationship has become so complex. Annabel’s use of the phonetic alphabet to thematically underpin each chapter is inspired, her writing is brilliant, and this novel won her a MUBA nomination.

Inventing The Ark allowed Annabel to play with narrative form even further – it’s a dystopian, epistolary novel with interactive components! A team of scientists and their families have retreated to a bunker known as The Ark – caretakers of five billion plant seeds that hold the key to the future of life on Earth. As oil supplies dwindle and anarchy creeps into the world, their leader locks the doors – a decision that sparks tension and distrust, and soon everyone fears they are held captive alongside their enemy. The claustrophobic world Annabel creates is compelling, and the character studies are fascinating.

 

The Mistake by Wendy James

I love Wendy’s writing. I was completely engrossed in this family story, and I admired how Wendy was able to maintain sympathy for a character whose child has disappeared, possibly through her own wrongdoing. What I loved most was that you don’t know what has happened until the very last page – the ending left a shiver down my spine. Fabulous!

 

Into My Arms by Kylie Ladd

Kylie is brilliant at character studies and family stories, and this book has at its heart a terrible predicament that is sensitively handled to make this an engrossing read.

 

Back Again by Susan May

I loved Susan’s short story ‘The War Veteran’, which was part of the From the Indie Side anthology that included my own short story ‘Cipher’. With Back Again, Susan has cleverly developed another short story into a full-length novel. Back Again is the story of a mother who is forced to relive the day she loses her child again and again, until she can figure out how to change fate. It’s a unique time-twisting thriller, and packs an emotional punch.

 

Wave Length by A J Betts

The story of a young boy determined to ace his exams and get into uni. This wonderful novel explores the nature of family, ambition, perceptions of aging, finding meaning and purpose in life, and a whole lot more. I absolutely loved it.

 

Have You Seen Ally Queen? by Deb Fitzpatrick

A great companion read to Wave Length! Ally Queen is uprooted from city life and taken to live in the country with her parents and younger brother. It means a new high school, a new house, and new friends – and she is not happy about any of it! While she is defiantly struggling with the changes this has wrought upon her life, her mother suffers from a nervous breakdown – but amongst the turmoil, a new friend offers her the chance to see life a little differently. A great coming-of-age book about identity, fitting in, and the realities of family life.

 

True Spirit by Jessica Watson

I seem to have read quite a bit about teenagers this year – perhaps subconsciously preparing for some Young Adult fiction writing! I picked up this one because I wanted an insight into what could make a sixteen-year-old girl decide to sail solo around the world. I was captivated by the insights into sailing and the ups and downs of her journey. I’m awed by Jessica’s strength and self-reliance. In the book she talks at length about the support of her parents. I only hope I can offer something similar to my girls to help them pursue their dreams – especially if they are slightly terrifying ones!

 

So there’s my eight. I’m off to a good start this year towards achieving Franklin as I’m absorbed in Dawn Barker’s Let Her Go. There’s a definite bias towards Western Australian authors in my 2014 round-up, and I hope to continue that focus this year. Buying local is a great idea, and not just for groceries. Many authors have trouble earning a decent living, just as many readers have trouble affording lots of books! If you alternate between the library and the bookshops, please consider supporting your talented local authors by seeking them out, buying their books and helping to build their profile. And if you can’t afford that, then the authors you love will all be grateful if you take time to post a glowing review on Amazon, GoodReads, Booktopia, Fishpond, and anywhere else you can think of!

I’ll have more for you soon on the release date of The Spirit Road. Meanwhile, I’m about to get busy writing the next one.

Wishing you all a peaceful, prosperous and healthy 2015.

Sara xcol-md-2

At the beginning of last year I signed up for the 2013 Australian Women Writers Challenge. This fantastic challenge began in 2012, and was devised by Elizabeth Lhuede to focus attention on literary works by Australian women. You can read all about the background here. I entered at the middle level – Miles – which asks you to read 6 titles, and I was aware that, considering the year ahead, even this might prove a challenge. Nevertheless, I made a strong start, and I had read three titles by February – Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and Searching for the Secret River, and Kate Morton’s The Secret Keeper.

In February I entered an intense researching and drafting period for my new book, which is set in the Lake District, and so my reading veered away from Australian literature for a few months as I focused on Northern England. However, during this time I also read and enjoyed The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty. I stopped writing in July, and I had a lovely period of reading, adding The Good Wife by Emma Chapman, and Elemental by Amanda Curtin to my tally. I was absolutely engrossed in both these books. Emma’s novel is a hugely impressive debut which absolutely deserves the praise it received in the New York Times recently! Elemental was the second Amanda Curtin novel I had read (The Sinkings was the first), and I was swept up in the story of Scottish Meggie. If you’re looking for beautiful, poised and poignant writing, and unique stories, go no further than Amanda.

So, by the end of July I had read all the titles I needed to complete the challenge. Surely I would read lots more by the end of the year.

Then, this happened:

Sara Final Edit-22

 

END. OF. READING!

Yep, since August reading has been very restricted. My two girls have kept me extremely busy in the latter half of 2013. If I had the chance to sit down with a book the chances were that I’d be asleep within five minutes.

However… I also work occasionally as a freelance book editor, and I have been on Bronwyn Parry’s editorial team for a while now. During 2013 I worked with her on Darkening Skies, and editing Bronwyn’s books is always a pleasure. I also worked on Jenny Bond’s Perfect North (Hachette), a beautifully written epic tale about a doomed hot-air balloon expedition to the North Pole, and Jenny Valentish’s fabulous and hilarious debut My Life in Reviews, which will be published by Allen & Unwin in 2014.

So that takes my final tally to 9. Hurray!

My reading wish list for this year includes anything I haven’t read that’s on the AWW wrap-up list or the impressive inaugural 2013 Stella Prize long list. That’s before I even look at the new releases. So it’s a no-brainer to sign up again for the AWW challenge in 2014. Care to join me? col-md-2

Toni Morrison BelovedI am delighted to be appearing on Annabel Smith’s blog today talking about one of my favourite works of fiction, Beloved by Toni Morrison. To read the piece in full, click here.col-md-2

Searching for the Secret River is the extraordinary story of how Kate Grenville came to write her award-winning novel. It all begins with her ancestor Solomon Wiseman, transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life, but who later became a wealthy man and built his colonial mansion on the Hawkesbury.

Increasingly obsessed with his story, Grenville pursues him from Sydney to London and back, and then up the Hawkesbury itself. Slowly she begins to realise she must write about him, and begins to discover what kind of book she will write. Grenville opens the door and invites the reader into her writing room, and tells us about how this novel was formed, the research she did, the false starts she made and the frustrations she experienced.

 

Having devoured The Secret River, I felt lucky to have this to hand. I am always fascinated by other people’s writing processes, and there were a number of things I really enjoyed about this book. I felt a strong kinship with Kate’s search among archives for pieces of information that would help her put together her story, having just done something similar for Shallow Breath. I thought she did pretty well in not getting the book bogged in details that were probably fascinating to her but perhaps not so much to an outsider – there were only a couple of times I felt I was getting a bit lost in facts and figures.

I really valued the importance Kate placed on visiting the places she was writing about, where possible, to get a feel for them, to try to become a part of the story, and flesh out the small details that would make the book interesting and memorable. I loved envisaging Kate climbing down to stand next to the Thames, and pocketing a bit of old roof tile!

What I also liked very much was how Kate outlines her struggles to find the way to tell this story – the false starts, the realisations, the certainties becoming uncertainties. I think it’s a wonderful thing for all writers to see that a fantastic book comes about through hard work, through being prepared to question your own decisions and change your mind, and that it is not just an effortless slipstream from mind to paper for even the most talented of novelists.col-md-2

In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand.But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. 

Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself.Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals—Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring—are finding their own ways to respond to them.

Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.

Inspired by research into her own family history, Kate Grenville vividly creates the reality of settler life, its longings, dangers and dilemmas. The Secret River is a brilliantly written book, a groundbreaking story about identity, belonging and ownership.

 

Whenever I’m in London I am always captivated by the sense that I am walking through history, that each grandiose building or cobbled alleyway holds a host of hidden stories – some completely lost, others glimpsed through tiny carvings, or street names, or, if you’re really lucky, commemorative plaques. So I loved reading long-ago London brought back to life so vividly. The book is also a stark reminder of the timeless horrors of being poor, and the desperation that often led the destitute to lives of crime. William Thornhill and his family came alive to me from the first page to the last. Kate Grenville absolutely inhabits these characters, and makes it look effortless – a master’s trick, which actually belies an incredible amount of hard work (see also my review of Searching for the Secret River).

Once the story moved to Australia, Grenville’s writing adjusts seamlessly. The story made my senses come alive to the descriptions of the Australian bush. Once Grenville moves on to describing the settlers’ contact with the local Indigenous people, the simple scenes and actions of the characters are pared back to allow the reader to experience for themselves the fear and suspicion, the miscommunications, and the resulting horrors. Thornhill’s thoughts and decisions were frustrating, at times horrifying, but believable. It might be a fictional story but it points to a number of confronting truths.

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At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting– he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd– whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself– Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

 

This is classified as a Young Adult book, but its appeal is much, much broader than that. The simple, precise narrative tells the story of Conor, a young boy dealing with a terrible event in his life, who has dreamlike episodes where he faces his ‘monster’. It is a book about the horror of loss, the burden of helplessness, the terror of truth, and the insistent voice of hope. A raw, beautiful story.col-md-2

What would you do if the world outside was deadly,

and the air you breathed could kill?

And you lived in a place

where every birth required a death,

and the choices you made could save lives

—or destroy them.

This is Jules’s story.

This is the world of Wool.

 

 

From the blurb alone I had a strong suspicion I was going to love this book, and I wasn’t wrong. I’m a big fan of dystopian fiction, I love reading about alternative societies that are so different in some ways and yet intensely familiar in others. Not only has Hugh Howey constructed an absorbing vision of an intimidating future world, he has also created a fast-paced thriller which will ensure you don’t want to put this book down.col-md-2

1961 England. Laurel Nicolson is sixteen years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.

Fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress, living in London. She returns to Green Acres for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday and finds herself overwhelmed by memories and questions she has not thought about for decades. She decides to find out the truth about the events of that summer day and lay to rest her own feelings of guilt. One photograph, of her mother and a woman Laurel has never met, called Vivian, is her first clue.

The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams, the lengths some people go to fulfill them, and the strange consequences they sometimes have. It is a story of lovers, friends, dreamers and schemers, play-acting and deception told against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

 

I was keen to get stuck in to this book after I heard Kate Morton talking about it at Joondalup Library back in November, but I forced myself to wait until Christmas so I had enough time. I loved The Shifting Fog and the Forgotten Garden, and in this, Kate’s fourth novel, there are more intriguing characters, a few superb secrets that last all the way through, and effortless shifts of character perspectives, which I so enjoy in stories.

There is a delicacy to Kate’s language that I love. She doesn’t fill a sentence unnecessarily, but on so many occasions her word choice enhances her descriptions beautifully. As as result it’s easy to get lost in her gentle style of storytelling. I was absorbed into the characters’ stories – I went over all the options in my mind and so I did guess some of the big twists and turns, but I never settled on anything with too much certainty for it to spoil the intrigue for me. The novel really brings the Blitz to life as well. (I hadn’t realised just how many bombs were dropped on London until I read an article in the Daily Mail about a month ago – the word Blitz really does sum it up.)

My only criticism, being very nit-picking, is that I found it extremely convenient that Laurel and Gerry could research so much of their mother’s past because everyone involved seemed to have had their diaries and letters placed in museum archives. But this is a very small quibble, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret Keeper. You can find out more about all Kate’s books at www.katemorton.com.

I’m counting this as one of my reads for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.col-md-2

There’s a link to the answers at the bottom of the page when you’ve finished! You can also find the images in the gallery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you’ve finished, find the answers here!

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