Review ‘Cold Enough For Snow’ Novella by Jessica Au

*Jessica Au ‘Cold Enough For Snow’ Novella 2022*

A gently flowing story of the tenuous relationship between an adult daughter, the narrator, and her ageing mother during a tourist trip to Japan. The memories, flashbacks and every day minutia come from the daughter. At times the dialogue between the two is fragile, hesitant, and the occasional polite conversation is a description of scenery or food, never their emotions, never connecting on a personal level, but still caring. The daughter remembers her studies and her then boyfriend Laurie. I thought it was surreal when she went kayaking with Laurie and crossed an ancient meteor crater full of deep dark water. Not something I could do but this is not an adventure book, it exposes us to thoughts.

Our memories shift and bend. The grey bookcover perhaps represents the hazy way we walk through life and remember. There’s a mystifying love birds recollection and the daughter even imagines clearing out her mother’s flat, sorting through a lifetime of possessions. Not for gain, just practical, like planning to visit Japan and her mother asking if it was “cold enough for snow”. The story, like the gentle and seemingly never-ending raindrops, carried me through galleries, museums, shopping, rural landscapes and train stations where gifts are carefully chosen for the family. There comes thoughtful gestures from the daughter, always aware of her mother’s pace, watching if she tires, suggesting places to visit and taking care of their meals and travel plans. I enjoyed the calm, methodical pace of this story.

I think you can have memories to talk about, worry about, analyse or just carry close. A meaningful picture of this quiet couple is compiled in my mind without any great realisation on my part until towards the end of the book. “It had been cold outside and warm in the train.” and I felt subtext; is the daughter really with her mother on this journey? Or is she remembering it? Seemingly disconnected, everything does connect to make the daughter an interesting character. Snippets like her restaurant work and her student days were easily imagined. I loved the couple of pages describing her time in Hong Kong and her reluctance to tell her future husband Laurie that she had once lived there.

Wearing puffer jackets, reliving old memories and making new ones, the mother and daughter’s last stopping point is to Inari gates Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto. (The Inari shrine complex is comprised of worship halls at the base of the mountain connected via astounding vermilion torii gate-lined paths). Situated in the mountains, this walk shows their stamina and unspoken mother/daughter bond, each perhaps recalling what they had seen and experienced together. At the end of this novella, the thought conveyed to me is that their journey is not quite over yet.

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2024

Review ‘Old God’s Time’ by Sebastian Barry

This was going to be a St Patrick’s Day post so it is a little late. However, it’s superlative Irish storytelling from Sebastian Barry. A restless novel about love, this is cruel life, and this is an ageing retired police officer who sinks in and out of memories, reality and daydreams. Tom Kettle lives in a small dwelling added onto the side of a castle on a stretch of Irish coastline overlooking granite jetties and a rather fetching island “skulking in the near distance.”

Tom’s past may or may not come to haunt him regarding a murder case he was involved in many years ago. He still has his policeman wits about him when the cops come a-knocking and he goes along with the re-opening of a cold case, the death of a well-known priest which seemed an accident and was logged as an accident but modern forensics has reopened the evidence file and started testing old DNA results.

A touch of the surreal here, words weave in and out of Tom’s mind like an hypnotic dance of discomfort, me thinking How did the priest die? Who was involved? What will the DNA testing reveal?
Gradually, old God’s time exposes the past…

The background story ebbs and flows recounting the past and present of Tom’s life, adored wife June and their two children Winnie and Joe. I puzzled over the things he sees, reality or illusions? Who lives, who has died? Mr Tomelty must be his landlord, but the mother, the mysterious others? What is past, what is present, what is true? There are some quite graphic retellings as well. The paedophile priest who horribly abused and traumatised young children. Not a novel for immature or sensitive readers, it does contain adult experiences, thoughts and flashbacks. It would certainly make a strong addition to any book club discussion.

My Favourite Quote
Tom musing “Enough time goes by and it is as if old things never happened.
Things once fresh, immediate, terrible, receding away into old God’s time,
like the walkers walking so far along Killiney Strand that,
as you watch them,
there is a moment when they are only a black speck,
and then they’re gone.”
Page 166 “Old God’s Time” by Sebastian Barry 2023

The mind of author Sebastian Barry must be a complex thing. I cannot describe the intense settings and the lyrical descriptions Barry has used, the language of description I think many Irish writers seem to instinctively master. Page 104 “On remembering towns, Tom thought every single place would be a peg with a memory hanging from it.” Further along, his flight to Mexico was odd but grimly relevant.

This book reminds me of, but is not similar to, “Under Milkwood” by Dylan Thomas and “One Moonlit Night” by Caradog Prichard, both use human strength, sadness and suffering taken almost to an art-form. I also enjoyed the modern twist in “Himself” by Jess Kidd and “Love and Summer” by humanist William Trevor (yes, mixing Irish and Welsh authors) who mastered that dark troublesome inner voice, that unforgettable undercurrent which makes a good story excellent.

On the whole, I wanted Tom to stay safe in his little room overlooking the sea but the direction and pace of this novel had other ideas. It enchanted me. If you like mystery fiction with a twist, you will be swept along by remarkable literary undercurrents with this one.

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Phone Books and Cake Plate

*Brisbane telephone books © image Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2024*

Many homes have a hoarder, a collector of items, souvenirs, mementoes, toys, anything from sentimental to historical objects which gather dust, get donated, or are disposed of when the collector themselves reach the ephemeral stage.

Exhibit One: These skinny Brisbane telephone books are clinging on to past glories when everyone in business or at home reached for the ubiquitous phone book for a million different reasons. (Of course, prior to that, Directory Assistance were actually real women in the exchange answering calls with plugs and cords). The ‘modern’ phone book was a thick, chunky, printed paper volume in every home, every phone booth and on every desk in Australia. Now the same service is extended a billion times more via electronic means, mainly mobile phones. Except now you have to look more closely, assess more astutely, question more thoroughly the validity and genuineness of what you are reading from an often unverified source via an individual screen.

*Cake Serving Plate and Cake Forks © image Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2024*

Exhibit Two: I pondered longingly on which of my inherited items would have the most value. Neither seem likely. Who wants old phone books and who polishes cake forks to use on a hand-painted cake server with a handle? This one was made and crafted in England by Royal Winton Grimwades pottery. It has all the right marks on the back to suggest it is genuine but relatively worthless. Royal Winton is an English brand of ceramics made by Grimwades Limited, a Stoke-on-Trent based company founded in 1885. The brand is particularly associated with chintzware and did not survive the unsentimental 1960s ethos of ‘Out with the old and in with the new’.

Let’s believe Peter Allen ‘Everything old is new again’. In the future will everyday items become useful again, reused, recycled, or just sentimentally remembered via old movies, ubiquitous YouTube and books—yes, books will still exist! Chat to your sweet grandmother, verbose grandfather or trusted mature person and listen to their stories before AI fiction rewrites their history.

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Postscript: Our personal memories only go back as far as we have lived. Or not. Depends on your age, health and wellbeing. Write those unique experiences down for the future! GBW.

‘The Perilous Promotion of Trilby Moffat’ by Kate Temple

Timekeeper Trilby Moffat’s highflying, hair-raising, non-stop adventures kept me glued to the pages far into the night. A brilliant story, it has exciting characters, dramatic situations and puzzling questions like What is going to happen next? Where is Time Keeper Trilby Moffat’s mother?

There are ideas, clues and cliff-hangers and Trilby has to navigate through it all. I enjoy Jasper Fforde and Jodi Taylor’s time travel books but Trilby takes it to another level of strangeness when she returns to the secret Island Between Time and investigates a time travellers festival suspiciously named Time Harvest Con. Of course, I am not the main reading audience for this book but it is easy to get hooked on the plot.

Among many inventive events, several digs at the adult world pop up e.g. Brian in a pink corporate shirt and a lanyard around his neck which reads ‘Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant of Someone Much More Important’ a running joke. I have to add that Mr Colin, the archetypal baddie, is one of my favourites. Quote ‘Their eyes met, his grey like a dead pigeon, hers the colour of a summer cicada.’

Watch for interesting snippets e.g. ‘We made it out of shards of time treasures…the stuff that can’t be repaired or salvaged,’ added Beatie, and what about Tove, Thumbelina, Xipil, Arwen, recognise those names? Don’t miss a nod to Agatha Christie, flying prehistoric Anton, and find out what is stored in The Passage Of Time or bake cakes in a Time oven. But don’t eat cakes from strangers. Other beautifully inventive stuff kept me reading like Medical Grade Time Spray which has side effects.

I love the way ‘non-adult’ books can use squiggly writing to denote words like Time Swap, and add a chapter crossword puzzle with answers in the back of the book. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the first book in the series yet, this plot is exciting and soon sweeps you along. I do love the bookcover and when I read the related chapter and what the balloon contains I had shivers. Kate Temple is one genius author. I suggest buying this book for a classroom or young family then secretly reading it first.

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

AUTHOR INFO: Kate Temple always wanted a promotion and a corner office with an assistant who wore a small dark poodle for a hat. This didn’t happen. Instead, Kate took on the perilous business of writing books for children. She has written more than twenty books with her writing partner, Jol, and The Perilous Promotion of Trilby Moffat is her second solo book. Kate lives in Sydney with her two children. When she is not writing, Kate enjoys eating cake, and so do the characters in this book.😊

Chiharu Shiota ‘The Soul Trembles’

The Soul Trembles highlights twenty-five years of Chiharu Shiota’s artistic practice. She is renowned internationally for her transformative, large-scale installations constructed from millions of fine threads (mainly black or red) which cluster in space or form complex webs which spill from wall to floor to ceiling, supporting and encompassing all they meet.

Chiharu Shiota’s artistic threads © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2022

I attended the QAGOMA Brisbane 2022 exhibition with friends for my birthday and afterwards my thoughts came up with three words – overwhelming, disconcerting and very memorable!

Shiota’s beautiful and disquieting works express the intangible: memories, dreams, anxiety and silence.

The desk and flying papers reminded me of office work before air-conditioning when someone opened the window…

Place https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibition/chiharu-shiota

Artist https://www.chiharu-shiota.com/

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Shells and Summer Days

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I started to add tags to my photo and realised that most things associated with the beach start with the letter ‘S’ and I’d barely scratched the surface. Sand, sea, swimming, shells. I paused at shells because a sunbeam tinged my glass bowl of seashells which holds countless memories.

… I drifted away… the smell of sunscreen and the feel of sand sifting through my fingers… one day I will take those shells back to the ocean…

In case you missed my front page Photo Of The Week, below I have reproduced the wording which accompanied a close-up photo of my shell collection. More scientific than personal but nonetheless I found it fascinating:

“SHELLS are made of calcium carbonate, in the mineral form of calcite or aragonite. Animals build their shells by extracting the necessary ingredients—dissolved calcium and bicarbonate—from their environment. As the animal grows, its home—the protective shell that surrounds it—must get bigger, and so they grow their shells layer upon layer, creating ‘growth-bands’, or growth increments, within the shell.

“Some of these growth increments are visible on the external surface of the shell, while others are only visible in the internal structure. But the interesting thing about the growth increments is that their width, or thickness, is affected by environmental conditions, like temperature. Some growth increments are a reflection of tidal cycles, some show annual periodicity.

“So the series of growth increments within a shell are essentially a record of the animal’s lifetime and, similar to the study of tree-rings, some scientists study them to make interpretations about the environment where that animal lived and grew. The oldest known individual animal lived in a shell—a specimen of the shellfish Arctica islandica has been documented to be 507 years old.”

For colours, shapes, biodiversity visit Academy of Science
https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/sea-shells

FOSSIL collector, dealer and palaeontologist Mary Anning (1799 –1847) was the inspiration for the tongue twister “She sells sea shells by the sea shore” from the original song written in 1908 by Terry Sullivan relating to Mary Anning’s beach-combing lifestyle. Anning is known for the important finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England.

The fascinating truth behind the old tongue twister
https://www.littlethings.com/she-sells-seashells-meaning

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

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A Home for Leftover Photos

IMG_20180312_105742 — **Laser cut dragon fantasy**

IMG_20171215_065125 — **Laser cut dragon fantasy**

Childhood Status Symbol

Umbrella The SeeThrough Raincoat and Brolly (2)

When we grow up we don’t really shed childhood.  It is tucked away inside us, nice and quiet, suppressed by what we perceive as Adult Behaviour.  Until something triggers that child-proof gate.  Our sillies jump out!  Irrepressible, childlike joy will spring into our hearts, gleam in our eyes and beam from our faces.  Oldies will smile benignly at us but a child will shriek with delight because they understand.  
♦
Anything can trigger your past.  A puppy, red shoes, a TV show, theatre tickets, sweets, that winning point, a favourite song, splashing in a puddle with a clear plastic umbrella, er, wait, what was that?  “A clear plastic umbrella?” said Adult Voice.  Yes, when I was young, the most coveted accessory for primary school students was a clear plastic umbrella.  The plastic was plain, you could see the metal spokes through it and the handle was white.
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It was enthralling to watch raindrops falling on a see-through umbrella held over your friend’s head, water trickling off and dripping onto the ground while she stayed dry.  If you were really fancy (or your father had enough money for kids fripperies) you could buy them with ladybirds or slices of fruit and suchlike imprinted on them.  If you were really rich (and more of a teenager) you teamed it with a short skirt, beehive hairdo and white vinyl go-go boots with lipstick to match.  Trés chic.
♦
I haven’t researched this but I’m pretty sure one or two models would have slinked down the catwalk twisting a clear plastic umbrella shaped like a mushroom.  Or, shock horror, wearing a clear plastic raincoat!  “Personally I think you would sweat horribly inside one of those,” said Adult Voice. Anyhow, here comes the sad part.  I was not one of the groovy girls, I never owned a clear plastic umbrella.
♦
Somehow I managed to survive the ignominy of having a pale blue nylon umbrella.  Its saving grace was a real bamboo handle and it lasted for years.  Once I left it on the bus and my parents tracked it down in the city council’s lost property office.  Hard to believe now, but there it was in all its pale blue opaque glory.  I have since owned a stylish British brolly, frilly French parapluie, Winnie-the-Pooh bear parasol and various brands in various colours mainly used as sunshades.
♦
 Until last week, drum roll please, when I came across a clear plastic umbrella hanging on a sale rack.  It was the standard shape, with the usual opening and closing action and it was only a couple of dollars.  Sold!  I actually whooped with excitement.  Finally, a dream come true.  “Pity it’s a clear sunny day,” said Adult Voice.  I brushed this aside.  Once I was out of crowd eye-range, I shook it out.  So clear, so transparent, so useless in the glare of a hot day.  “Be quiet,” I snapped at Adult Voice.  I pushed the umbrella open and twirled it wildly above my head.  I’d made it.  I had joined the Groovy Girls.  My childish delight brimmed over!  And delight brings recollections.
♦
My very own CPU has flourished several times in light rain, occasionally the plastic will stick together, but that doesn’t stop me opening it just to marvel at the concept.  Truly, an umbrella worth waiting for.  Now I’m thinking about those white vinyl go-go boots...

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

More umbrellas https://thoughtsbecomewords.com/2018/04/21/hrh-queen-elizabeth-ii-birthday/

Assassin and the Actress ‘Reckoning: A Memoir’

A highly charged and deeply honest memoir, ‘Reckoning’ combines research into the life of assassin and Polish World War II survivor Zbigniew Szubanski , father of Australian actress Magda Szubanski, and Magda herself as she struggles to come to terms with her father’s legacy and forge her own career within the world of television and movies. This absorbing, eloquently written book contains remarkable revelations of wartime espionage, emotional family ties and facing the truth, and I was enthralled to the very last page.

First published in 2016, ‘Reckoning’ is Magda’s debut novel, and courageously written. I must admit my initial thoughts were ‘Wow, she’s brave putting that in writing’ but it made me love this book even more. Definitely a five-star read! Magda relates one of those true stories from childhood to adulthood which hits the right cord with just about everyone. We’ve had similar feelings and domestic issues and career changes and sexuality debates and, yes, sadly, the father we got to understand a little too late.

‘Reckoning’ has gone on to bigger things but here’s the first results:
Winner Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award, 2016
Winner Book of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016
Winner Biography of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016
Winner Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, 2016
Winner Indie Award for Non-Fiction, 2016
Winner Victorian Community History Award Judges’ Special Prize, 2016
Shortlisted Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, Australian Book Industry Awards, 2016
Shortlisted Dobbie Literary Award, 2016
Shortlisted National Biography Award, 2016

Website https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/reckoning
Twitter https://twitter.com/magdaszubanski

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Magda Szubanski is one of Australia’s best known comedy performers. She lives in Melbourne and began her career in university revues before writing and appearing in a number of comedy shows. Magda created the iconic character of Sharon Strzelecki in ABC-TV series ‘Kath and Kim’. She performs in theatre productions and has acted in movies – notably ‘Babe’ and ‘Babe Pig in the City’ – and currently ‘Three Summers’ directed by Ben Elton and ‘The BBQ’ directed by Stephen Amis.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward