I dived deeper than ever,
feeling less and less human
in the lake’s little twilight zone,
only metres deep but fully expecting
creatures from books to shine
through the blackening water.
As the light left me,
my lungs throbbed coldly,
meaningfully,
and fear forced retreat.
I was distraught. Teasingly,
lovingly, older relatives
made things up:
An old nymph,
a known thief
this side of the lake,
had stolen my cap,
thinking it a vessel
of what I was,
hoping to gain
some of my youth.
She gripped the cap
and prayed, but the wrinkles
only continued to blossom.
Sold, the cap became the property
of goose grandees or the plaything
of drunken bears or the crown
of Canadian Crusoes
at midnight mountaintop revelries.
In my dreams, the saga went on:
after a storm, the thing spent
an autumn up a tree. The marvel
of the season, it barely escaped
the iconoclasm of beavers,
for whom the faux-fur maple leaf design
brought to mind the fur-mad butcher men
of their past. Furious,
they made beaver history
by building a dam up a tree,
but history was spoiled
by the wind.
Such was my fancy;
and when ants did donuts
on the car window,
I saw Herodotus’ giant ants
carving out the mountainsides,
and wondered why
whoever made the myths
forgot the ants
who carved Alberta
into dappled towers,
amphitheatric not just
in size and shape but more
in the way faces grin from the rock,
short-lived characters won and lost
with the changing of the light,
webbed into each other,
Siamese cast members
forming real-time Rushmores.
I was young:
a sudden distant glint
was not just a car,
but the desperate Morse
of lost Americans
imprisoned by a cabal
of cursed bipedal moose;
howls at bedtime
were not wolves
but wolf-nursed
wild men of other centuries;
the angry bear reported in the area
was not just hungry or rabid
but a woman willed into a bear
by revanchist treefolk sorcerers,
mourning her lost breasts,
fumbling to approximate
the opposable thumb,
stirring potions, buying
caps containing humanity.
As the rental car grumbled
toward S Half Diamond Ranch,
perhaps wanting to stretch our legs,
but more likely because
we understood that
the winner would
briefly become a man,
the right to jump out
and open the gate
was squabbled over
by me and my brothers
with the wide-eyed whirl
of the brawling dragonflies,
heralds of the Canadian summer.
At that age,
I often thought about
a school project where we
tagged plastic teddy bears
and mixed them back into the bowl:
the easiest way of counting.
You could capture and release
a thousand blue dragonflies
and never see one you tagged:
for they’d sped away
to join their confreres
at the noisy nodding logs,
lounging midair at happy hour,
forming secret dragonfly societies,
I supposed, loving and hating
each other before dying
after two weeks in little graves
near the shore, abdomens
thinning into twigs,
wings whitening into petals;
or expiring on the water
and drifting into the night
like war-weary Vikings;
except for the dragonfly
which died on me,
who my brothers
and I honoured
with a proper funeral:
daisies propped in the dust,
reeds looped into an arch,
a libation of pink lemonade.
***
Yesterday, I jumped into the lake
with the nostalgia of the nymph
and the recidivism of the nymph
and the perseverance of giant ants
carving mountains and the hardihood
of the faces at the Banff amphitheatre
and the frustration of the bear woman
and the ambition of bickering brothers
and the insistence of dragonflies
who won’t stop being reborn
from twigs and petal,
and, ignoring
what books say
about underwater creatures,
I dove far down and scratched
at the spot from eight years ago,
and, sure enough, rising hugely
from the ancient mud,
disturbing the quiet life
of the seaweed, creating
little avalanches over my fingers,
the long-lost maple leaf
is brought to light,
its colours restored
by the silent pillars of sun,
and the hat and I rise
smiling to the surface.
Comments Off on 2024 Book Releases to Watch Out For
The beginning of a new academic year calls for fresh distractions, and I come fully equipped to help you drain your wallets and your study time. Even better, you can tell yourself you’re wasting neither; reading is good for you, it makes you smart. You might as well be studying for your actual degree. Girl maths is calculating how many pretty hardcover novels you could buy with the money you saved by pirating your textbooks online (for legal purposes, this is a joke).
Full disclosure, this list does not offer very much in the way of nonfiction, aside from a few little numbers I especially liked the look of, which I’ve put in their own category. Sorry to the non-fiction buffs, but also not really.
General Fiction:
The Mother of All Things by Alexis Landau
(Releases May 7)
This one is for all my dark academia girlies. Think The Secret History but more human, and with a healthy dose of female rage.
Ava Zaretsky is a wife, mother, and art history professor. Following her husband to a film shoot in Bulgaria one summer, she is ‘swept up into a circle of women who reenact ancient Greco-Roman mystery rites of initiation, bringing her research to life and illuminating the story of a 5th-century-BC mother-daughter pair whose sense of female loyalty to each other and connection to the divine feminine guides Ava in her exploration of the eternal stages of womanhood.’
Read the full synopsis (and preorder, if you like) here.
See also:
Table for Two by Amor Towles (releases April 2)
From the bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway, and Rules of Civility comes a collection of six short stories set in turn-of-the-(twenty-first)-century New York City and a novella set in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Fans may recognise some characters from Rules of Civility.
What I Would Do to You by Georgia Harper (releases March 26)
A speculative fiction which places the reader in a near-future Australia, where the death penalty is legalised—but the family of the victim must carry it out themselves.
Fantasy/Science Fiction:
The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake (The Atlas Six #3)
(Released January 9)
Is it the year for dark academia, or are publishers milking this trend a little bit? Here’s another one which will be a favourite with the dark academics among us.
That was cynical of me—when they don’t feel formulaic, tropey, and artificial (read: exclusively written to test their luck on BookTok), the dark academia branding can work well. This series seems to resonate with a very wide audience, so I’m sure we can expect good things.
The final instalment in the Atlas Six trilogy which more or less pioneered the BookTok cult of dark academia, The Atlas Complex is ‘a race to survive as the Society recruits are faced with the question of what they’re willing to betray for limitless power—and who will be destroyed along the way.’
More info here.
See also:
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas (released January 30)
I’m personally an SJM hater, but as that is a controversial opinion I’ll mention that House of Flame and Shadow came out last month. It’s the third instalment in the Crescent City series, and the Google animation was a jump-scare when I was researching for this article. As one of my friends said, Oh God, she got to the tech bros.
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi (released January 23)
Elves, fairies, high stakes and romance providing all the escapist vibes for your Semester 1.
Tales of the Celestial Kingdom by Sue Lynn Tan (released February 6)
An illustrated collection of short stories set in the world of fantasy romance duology Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Heart of the Sun Warrior, inspired by Chinese legend.
Historical Fiction:
All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore
(Releases April 4)
‘A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.’
Aside from a gorgeous cover, All We Were Promised proffers commentary on racial injustice, Western slavery, class divides, and female friendship. We follow three young Black women in 1937 Philadelphia fighting for freedom, inspired by the real-life Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Philadelphia abolitionist movements during the early 19th century.
I expect this one will be a brilliant debut from Ashton Lattimore, award-winning journalist and former lawyer.
More info here.
See also:
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo (Releases April 9)
The author of Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, and Ninth House delves into the world of adult historical fantasy, set in the Spanish Golden Age.
Literary Fiction:
Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson
(Releases April 11)
Recent years have seen some brilliant literary voices coming out of Ireland—I’m thinking of Sally Rooney, John Boyne, Maggie O’Farrell, among others—so I have high hopes for Sinéad Gleeson’s debut Hagstone.
Drawing on myth and folklore, Hagstone places our protagonist Nell on an isolated island, ‘the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape…and the feminine.’ The island is inhabited by a commune of women who travel from all over the world seeking its refuge. Described as ‘beautifully written, prescient and eerily haunting,’ I think this one will be gorgeous.
More info here.
See also:
Until August by Gabriel García Márquez (releases March 12)
This one is super exciting—a lost novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, to be published with the permission of his two sons. Sure to be an instant modern classic.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez (releases March 5)
‘A mesmerising novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death.’ (Macmillan)
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor (releases April 25)
Set on a remote Welsh island, this one is a study of ‘loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community.’ (Penguin Random House)
Nonfiction: A Novel by Julie Myerson (released January 2)
I want to read this based on the title alone. Nonfiction dissects the relationship between a mother and her child. We look at motherhood, addiction, and the act of writing.
Crime & Thriller:
Anna O by Matthew Blake
(Released January 31)
Predictably and unsurprisingly, I work at a little independent bookshop in Kingston, which is in part how I’ve devised this list. Since its release at the end of January, Anna O has been selling well. According to our customer base, at least, it probably isn’t quite the ‘instant global phenomenon’ HarperCollins eagerly declares it to be, but it’s definitely getting some solid attention.
Anna O is an ‘ingenious’ (The Times) psychological thriller interested in the human mind and its subconscious. Anna O, suspected of the murder of her two best friends, has been in a deep sleep for four years. Forensic psychologist Doctor Benedict Prince must find a way to wake her, and in the process any information about what happened the night of the murders.
‘As he begins Anna O’s treatment – studying his patient’s dreams, combing her memories, visiting the site where the horrors played out – he pulls on the thread of a much deeper, darker mystery. Awakening Anna O isn’t the end of the story, it’s just the beginning.’
More info here.
See also:
Butter by Asako Yuzuki (releases March 6)
I believe Butter has met with success overseas, and is being published for the first time in Australia. We’re getting so much fantastic Japanese literature, which I’m loving (Japan and Ireland absolutely killing the game). Inspired by a real case, Butter is ‘a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.’ (HarperCollins)
James by Percival Everett (releases March 19)
A ‘harrowing and fiercely funny’ (Penguin) retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
Romance:
Funny Story by Emily Henry
(Releases April 23)
I think Emily Henry (author of Beach Read, Book Lovers, and You and Me on Vacation among other titles) could quite reasonably be called the mother of BookTok romance. Maybe I should confess that I haven’t actually read any of her novels yet, simply because romance isn’t a genre that I tend to gravitate towards, but her readership is so large and so devoted that it’s pretty clear Funny Story will be big this year.
There is absolutely something to be said for the importance of the romance genre, and the questionable foundations on which we often dismiss it as unimportant or holding less literary value. Romance as a genre is often written by women, typically for women, centring female characters. Lately I’ve been interested in the way we determine our hierarchies of artistic value, and the potential sociocultural issues underlying the way we perceive literature and its importance. Emily Henry herself did an interview with The Age last year which I thoroughly enjoyed—if you’d like to give it a read, here’s a link.
But I digress. Funny Story sets our heroine Daphne in a small town, ‘propositioning [her ex’s fiancé’s ex, Miles] to move in. As roommates of course. A temporary solution until she gets a new job literally anywhere else.’ The ‘awkward exes of exes-to-friends-to-lovers’ trope is a new one for sure, but I have no doubt all the romance lovers will eat it up.
More info here.
See also:
Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey (released February 13)
The bestselling author of It Happened One Summer is jumping on the sports romance trend, but the love interest ‘was once golf’s hottest rising star’ (HarperCollins, italics added by me for emphasis). A romance novel where our protagonist is the hardcore fangirl of a ‘gorgeous, grumpy golfer’ sounds insane, and if I end up reading it you can be so sure of a review. (If not, someone else read it and tell me how it is.)
Token Non-Fiction:
Outspoken by Dr Sima Samar
(Releases March 6)
This list has been almost entirely composed of fiction (sorry, not sorry), and while there were several non-fiction titles I wanted to include, for the sake of keeping this readable and a not-absurd length we’ll stick with this super important memoir which I’m hoping to read when I can get my hands on it.
‘The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan’s Sima Samar: medical doctor, public official, founder of schools and hospitals, thorn in the side of the Taliban, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and lifelong advocate for girls and women.’
Outspoken is relevant and necessary; it recounts how Simar ‘[became] a revolutionary,’ single-handedly providing medical aid to remote areas and fighting tirelessly for the rights of Afghan women, and ‘all the citizens of her country.’ Important reading for our 2024.
More info here.
See also:
The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul (releases March 6)
‘From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance.’ (HarperCollins)
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler (releases March 19)
Who’s Afraid of Gender? studies the relationship between authoritarian movements and gender as a concept, and the fearmongering surrounding particularly non-binary and trans people promoted by certain ‘anti-gender ideology movements’. ‘From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.’ (Macmillan)
Rebel Rising by Rebel Wilson (releases April 3)
A memoir from Rebel Wilson is so certain to be thoroughly iconic. Recalling her rise to fame with all the insane anecdotes our little hearts could desire, you just know this one will go crazy.
That’s all I’ve got for you today, but I always have one eye on the upcoming releases throughout the year, so expect a part two somewhere in your (relatively) near future.
Until next time!
Comments Off on Review: How to Date Men When You Hate Men
Fair warning: if you’ve come here in search of some profound insight into the matters of the heart, I apologise. I’m just an 18-year-old girl with uncommendable dating experience, who is also severely prone to falling into a pit of crippling anxiety at the mere sight of a text from a guy (it takes me five hours and a solid brainstorming session with three other friends to respond to a simple “Hey” followed by a series of sleepless nights). So, for the sake of honesty, I’ll admit I don’t know shit.
Perhaps now you can also see how a ‘self-help’ book called How To Date Men When You Hate Men would entice someone like me. To be clear, neither I nor the author hate men, we just hate the troubles we’ve to endure to date them and the patriarchal bit of it all.
For a long time, it was a running joke in my friend group that this book held the key to fixing our love lives. Armed with foolproof strategies to sail through the treacherous waters of dating a guy, we’d be unstoppable! So here I was, embarking on this transcendental journey, flipping through the pages of the book like a madwoman and hoping to finally learn the art of dating men just in time for Valentine’s Day. No more being lonely and miserable, I had declared!
By the first chapter, bitter disappointment had settled in. I had fallen prey to clickbait. The book was (unfortunately) neither misandrist propaganda nor, as the author herself admits, a proper “how to” book.
It hypes you up in the beginning, and you, naïve little you, are convinced that you’re about to read something so earth-shatteringly revolutionary that you will single-handedly end patriarchy and the systemic sexism prevalent in our society. But you’ll soon realise this is just a patronising version of your girls’ group chat.
‘It’s not that there are “good men” versus “bad men” (though there are some obvious monsters): all men have received this coding. They aren’t born evil, they’re born into an evil system! It just didn’t sound as catchy to name the book How to Date Men When They Are Born into and Brainwashed by an Evil System That Mightily Oppresses Women.’
The author, Blythe Roberson, is an American comedian and humour writer, who has previously written for publications like The New Yorker and The Onion. As expected, you can sense the immaculate sarcasm and wit right off the bat. Unexpectedly, though, it quickly falls flat.
Throughout the book, Roberson makes various attempts to put modern dating problems in a comedic and engaging light. Sadly she misses the mark almost every single time. Roberson fills the book with quirky little displays of her hilarity, but because the book is so inconclusive everything she writes becomes almost irrelevant due to the lack of direction. The snarky comments that probably would’ve gotten her a good laugh in a different format soon turn annoying (looking at the 125, 689, 871 Trump jokes).
This humour severely lacks purpose. Roberson describes the book as ‘made up of so many opinions all clumped together that they just might have congealed into some sort of worldview’, taking a step further to boldly call it a ‘comedy philosophy book’. I like to call it the ‘Roberson’s Attempt at Turning Her Journal Therapy Journey Commercial’ book. It truly does seem like she was advised by her therapist to try to pen down her feelings, and she thought, well, why not turn this into a book and make some money out of it?
Her personal reflections and all the bottled-up frustration she harbours towards dating finally find the light of day in these pages. She talks so extensively about patriarchy and its impact on modern dating that you wonder if you really are about to read a social philosophy book, but she doesn’t explore this problem with any depth or nuance and you’re just left pondering. The book ends up being a collection of Roberson’s dating expeditions. So, while I yearn to learn more about the nitty gritties of Roberson’s ‘intersectional-socialist-matriarchal revolution’, I find myself learning the superficialities of Roberson’s date with some film student named Luke instead.
While the first half of the book might irk you, to give Roberson due credit, the second half does get better.
‘And so: you, right now, are a full tree. You don’t need to be in love to count as a human. Look—you already ARE a human, existing!’
Even though it’s cliché big sister advice and I know at this point we’re all tired of listening to the ‘you can only be loved if you love yourself first’ crap, it is undeniably true, and Roberson’s take on it is, dare I say, quite refreshing! She preaches against overthinking by emphasising that ultimately people will always do what their heart desires and so, if they are talking to you, it is because they want to! Probably nothing you haven’t heard before, but it’s the unwavering conviction with which Roberson almost commands the reader to stop over-analysing every little thing that almost has me convinced every guy is in love with me.
Okay, I don’t actually hate How To Date Men When You Hate Men. I know by now I might’ve convinced you otherwise, but genuinely, my only qualm with this book is that it shouldn’t have been a book. The way Roberson describes her dating mishaps and all the valuable lessons she’s gleaned from dating guys all these years make for solid entertainment. Not for a book. But, perhaps, as the set for her Netflix special. Oh, what wasted potential the book has. It’s relatable and charming, with seamlessly woven humour, while also targeting the idiosyncrasies of modern society. It could have been a 10/10 comedy show.
For me, the true measure of a book lies in the emotion it evokes. Often, over time, plots and character arcs get buried and decay with memory, but the emotions etched in the heart stand the test of time. The brain forgets, but the heart remembers. And while this book did have moments of Roberson’s glittering wit, it failed to leave an imprint. All I’d remember five years later would be the riveting title.
So, final remarks. Firstly, nobody really knows what love is. Some days it’s peeling an orange, while other days even taking a bullet might not be enough. All we know is that love is cataclysmic in the most beautiful ways and sadly, no book will ever have the answer to all your questions. You just have to wing it, as frightening as that might be.
Secondly, don’t read this book. You probably won’t read it til the end (unless you’ve thought it’d be cool to review it for Valentine’s). I recommend spending that time hating some other aspect of your life.
Lastly, if you do plan on spending Valentine’s alone, all sad and pathetic (like me), remember that it’s just a day. A Wednesday too, literally nothing special. The human experience will have us all being melancholic the rest of the year, even those cringy people in love (I’m just jealous). Go get yourself an ice cream and be a hater for a day.
Comments Off on ANU Arts Revue: Sending Brian Back to Kansas
Arts Revue opens with a joke. Not a skit, a single joke. The keyboard player gets up, walks to centre stage, and announces that he’s going to tell a joke that’s ‘okay to say’, because he heard it on the radio.
“How does a pornstar get paid?
Income.”
(Get it, because it sounds like in-cum?)
It wasn’t a bad joke – it was fine, it got a laugh – but we were left confused. Who was this guy, who didn’t appear in a single skit after his one joke? Why was this the opener? Were they stalling while they sorted out technical issues? Did he just really want to be a part of it, while also playing his keyboard?
Arts Revue left all of these questions unanswered, but it gave us a great show to make up for it. The just-fine pornstar joke is thankfully followed by an excellent ‘Life is a Highway’ parody, ‘Life is a Parkes Way’, full of jokes about the perils of driving in Canberra. This was the first of many solid parodies. A special shoutout to ‘Love is an Open Door/There’s Vomit on the Floor’, an ode to a scenario many a Senior Resident has faced on a Thursday night, and a long but funny and oddly heartwarming skit where the Phantom of the Opera joins the Backstreet Boys. Though these were all good, the highlight had to be the number about society keeping Miss Piggy and Kermit apart. The costuming – a frog suit, a dress and a cheap wig – was exactly what you’d expect, and Georgia Mcculloch’s performance as Kermit was especially moving. From Kermit to Brian Schmidt’s American accent to the practised cadence of a newsreader, Mcculloch’s unique talent for impressions – ie. ‘doing funny voices’ – meant she never once broke character.
If a powerful, poignant anthem about the enduring power of frog-pig sex doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, then Arts Revue provided plenty of ANU-related comedy for the average revue enjoyer. A breakup between ANU and Schmidt, where his Nobel Prize is the other woman, captured the heartbreak of Schmidt’s departure. Even the Devil himself, accompanied by a grovelling minion he had an insane amount of sexual tension with, visited to announce his plans for a new and improved ANU. These ranged from not-that-bad-maybe-an-improvement-actually (sinking Wamburun into the depths of Hell) to downright evil (quadruple-factor authentication for every sign-on).
Not all of the skits were this good. A few were just drawn-out puns. A woman goes to the doctor about a lump on her arm; it’s Taylor Cyst, a cyst that plays Taylor Swift songs. Bird watchers make jokes about seeing nice pairs of tits. The latter does get points for walking right up to my co-writer and implying they had thrush, though. Excellent audience participation, almost as good as the bit where they turned off all the lights and ran a guided meditation, lulling us all into a false sense of security so that they could steal our belongings. Thankfully everything was returned after the show – no need to press charges.
Charlie Joyce Thompson deserves a special mention for bringing an extra laugh to every skit he starred in. His delivery, accents, acting and improv were fantastic and he had us keeling over, whether he was playing Miss Piggy or a South African High Court judge.
We saw Arts Revue on the opening night, so we were ready to forgive any tech issues. Which is good, because there were a fair few of them: lights going up randomly during scenes that were supposed to be dark (at least we think so), Taylor Swift playing during the devil’s speech and the wrong Powerpoint playing during a student presentation skit – somehow, this last one was still kind of funny.
Nonetheless, Arts Revue proved a funny, well-coordinated, well-acted performance. Its strengths were its actors and its parodies and musical numbers, each one somehow better than the last. It ended with a bang: a parody of ‘I’m Just Ken’ to the tune of “I’m Just Brian” and mashed up with even more Backstreet Boys. A fantastic way to the end night, and a charming and funny end to the revue season.
Comments Off on Review – The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
The unread piles of books beginning to crowd my little B&G room have a peculiar habit of growing faster than I can explain away, but in spite of my love of stories, there are very few authors whose books I will always, without fail, scramble to get hold of. When I do, I will steal away with them, fingers crossed for upcoming grey skies and rain, the kettle boiling, Hozier/Lorde/Bon Iver (no, I won’t be taking criticisms on my obnoxious music tastes) playing, and curl up to try and squeeze myself between the letters, to temporarily live inside the pages.
One such author is Pip Williams, the writer behind 2021 multi-award-winning debut The Dictionary of Lost Words and, more recently, The Bookbinder of Jericho. And while I didn’t find it quite as beautifully executed as Dictionary, Bookbinder didn’t disappoint.
I was first made aware of the novel late last year, when Williams’ publisher Affirm Press posted a cover reveal on their Instagram. I was ecstatic, then promptly let it fall to the back of my mind. In March of 2023, I was vaguely aware of its finally landing on shelves, but even the new books of one’s much-beloved storytellers may be pushed aside by the chaos, the newness of things when one moves to a far-off city for university. (“Far-off” sounds like something the narrator of a fairy tale might say, so I’m happy applying it here as someone from Newcastle, New South Wales, exactly four and a half hours’ drive away.)
It wasn’t until the event Williams hosted in partnership with the Canberra Times and the ANU, held in the Kambri Cultural Centre on campus, that I recalled my excitement and determined to have it in my hands as soon as possible. I might note that this resolution was conditional: my first priority was to avoid paying the $32.99 it was being sold for at the event. I was fairly confident I could persuade Affirm to send me a copy in exchange for a review as I had so thoroughly enjoyed Dictionary, which they kindly did. (Thanks besties.) I left the lecture theatre more eager to read than I had been in a long while.
I remember feeling that The Dictionary of Lost Words embodied everything I love about words and literature. Bookbinder carries a lot of the same themes (and largely shares the context and setting, with a few familiar characters). Set against the atmospheric backdrop of Oxford University, The Bookbinder of Jericho explores the life, relationships, and ambitions of a woman in early 20th century England. Throughout the novel, Williams navigates these experiences through the lenses of literature, war, social class, and gender. We follow young, “pretty Peggy Jones,” a bindery-girl at Oxford University Press, whose job is to “bind the books, not read them,” but who longs to study instead.
Bookbinder’s great strength is its characters, who are already complex when we meet them, and whose development throughout the novel is seamless. Here, I think it did a better job than Dictionary, which felt marginally more inclined towards aestheticism than fleshed-out characters and their relationships. I also loved the relatively slow but realistic and still compelling plot, which is becoming characteristic of Williams’ writing—the dream for people like me, who are always in it for the vibe of the thing.
I think the novel left something to be desired in the writing, though. The beautiful prose was what I found most striking about Dictionary, but unfortunately I wasn’t especially impressed by the writing in Bookbinder. There is every possibility that my tastes have just changed since reading the former, but I sense an inkling of a shift in William’s style from the first book to the second, and that maybe something of the earlier eloquence was lost in favour of wider appeal. Much of the criticism Dictionary received was relating to what (I feel) may simply have been its literary style. Historical fiction doesn’t typically lean this way, but Williams’ writing is vaguely reminiscent of emerging literary voices in the vein of R.F. Kuang and Sally Rooney. I suspect that, understandably, there may have been expectations for the style which were not met, which might have put some readers off. Something about the style of Bookbinder felt more in line with its genre, but less in the distinctive voice of Pip Williams. I wonder if this was in response to some of the negative feedback on Dictionary. I also would like to note, however, that I have read very legitimate grievances, and if this book wasn’t for you, that’s so valid. Take my thoughts with a grain of salt; I’m only one person, one perspective. I have no authority whatsoever on the subject—I just talk with wildly unearned confidence.
I liked some of what Williams had to say about women’s suffrage, a topic she engages with a lot throughout the novel—super appropriate, of course, for the mid-WWII period. Her main idea is the fact that the vote did not extend to all women—only those in possession of land or a degree (which Oxford wouldn’t provide to women, even on the completion of a “degree course”)—excluding the vast majority. However, in only touching on land ownership and education, Bookbinder really only delves into class, and to me it felt like there was a gap left to be filled—the glaring whiteness of the early women’s suffrage movement, and the exclusion of women of colour in a context where it was made near impossible for women of colour to obtain either land or a degree. In a 2018 article for UK organisation Voting Counts, Natalie Leal writes, “While there was no direct, obvious discrimination based on race written into the legislation, implicit structural discrimination was still writ large, as so often happens race and class intersected.”
There is a surprising lack of conversation regarding this in relation to her books, possibly due to their both being fairly new. I did some digging to see if anyone else had reached a similar conclusion to me, and eventually stumbled upon a blog post which touched on the space for racial discourse in The Dictionary of Lost Words, which I found resonated with what may be considered the gap in Bookbinder.
Jenny A. at Righter of Words takes a brief but thought-provoking linguistic approach, which I would have loved to read more of. Dictionary has a particular interest in the way that certain kinds of words go ignored in particular circles (notably academic and literary). The protagonist Esme is raised in an Oxford ‘scriptorium,’ where words are collected and compiled—and routinely excluded—for each edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Esme begins to collate her own volume of omitted ‘women’s words’ which are overlooked—usually for vulgarity or being ‘lesser than’: they are “by women, about women, and for women” . Dictionary is interested in the words that are left out of a book which, having historically been put together chiefly by white men, is fundamentally biased, and asks whether that truly makes them any less credible or valuable.
The author notes that Dictionary is “focused…on early feminism in predominantly white circles,” but wonders about vernacular which is typically used within the circles of particular racial minorities, and is often looked down upon. They mention AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) as a well-known example, and consider it a “missed opportunity.” I agree; some ideas about the way that all women’s words (including and perhaps especially women of colour) have been excluded could have made for such a brilliant contribution to the plot.
Slightly more recent ideas about intersectional feminism didn’t quite reach these books, and I do think so much depth could have been added with a deeper dive into the historical exclusion of all women within academia, suffrage, and linguistics. Of course, however, not all books need to cover all issues, and Dictionary and Bookbinder absolutely pose valuable questions about class and gender. I thoroughly enjoyed both, and maintain that both are valuable contributions to Australian—and global—literature.
With the announcement of The Dictionary of Lost Words being adapted for TV, I hope to see more of Pip Williams and conversation surrounding her books. I’m excited to see what she produces next.
Kneel with me, smell here: dirt turned red from white.
Look up at the open canopy, shadows
You made for us. It’s the hellfire of night
Where the ouroboros ends and rage grows.
I inherited this anger chest-to-chest with my mother,
As we watched the hillside, the eagles, burn–
Listening to the cries of ancestors
Holding hot leaden breath, waiting our turn.
Call me an animal? I’ll grow canines.
Didn’t your forefathers tell you, warn you:
Don’t bring a dog leash to a genocide.
I want to hollow out your chest, fill you
With the scorching ash of my matriarchs–
Them ones you insist you left in the past.
I often hear Western scholars preach about the ouroboros, without knowing how it feels to lose a beginning. Black Summer is the story of the displacement of my family. At 16, I wanted nothing more than to see somebody else suffer for what happened to us. I wished that the boiling force inside me — that one everybody kept calling ‘teenage angst’ — could cheat time and blow apart the hull of the first ship to touch these shores. These days, my matriarchs tell me how proud they are, that I choose to unleash my rage one day at a time.
Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva
Running Time: 189 minutes
Rating: 2/10
Babylon is lurid, aggressive, and utterly demented.
Damien Chazelle’s deep thrust into Dante’s Inferno of Hollywood stardom and obscenity, set amidst the technological metamorphosis of cinema and sound from the 1920s onwards, is a relentless barrage of visceral debauchery, sexual objectification, and human degradation. Chazelle has practically modelled the plot of Babylon on Singin’ in the Rain. As the moviemaking industry confronts the impending transition from the silent pictures to the immensely popular ‘talkies’, the careers of some of Hollywood’s nascent and established stars face ruination and obsolescence. So Babylon follows the contours of Singin’ in the Rain, except the former lacks any of the wholesome charm of the latter, and features orgies. It is a three hour lumbering beast of a movie that regularly refuses to die quietly, and it is not a picture I am inclined to ever watch again.
In recent years, it has become public knowledge that the Hollywood film industry has long harbored a toxic underbelly; wherein lies the expectation that one should degrade and subjugate themselves to make headway in the industry. This is Babylon’s treatise: to enlighten the viewer to a historical precedent of gendered and racialized discrimination and abuse within the Hollywood film industry. However, in the age of #metoo and #oscarssowhite, wherein the dominance of white, male power within the entertainment industry has come to the fore of the public consciousness amidst much scrutiny and debate, and where strides are being made to hold abusers to account, and to advocate for greater degrees of inclusivity, representation and respect within the industry, Chazelle’s treatise unfortunately feels both outdated and intensely laboured. And laboured it is in Babylon, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the pornographic sensibility of a horny teenager. Chazelle may believe that his movie belongs to the zeitgeist, except Babylon is more provocative than introspective, and it quite regularly feels like a regression, in lieu of a progression, in challenging the structures of white, male power that has long pervaded Hollywood. We should endeavour to find solutions, not reopen old wounds.
Chazelle’s contribution to the historical narrative of Hollywood culture involves the perverse degradation and depravity of its human subjects, which endures for the entirety of its three hour runtime. In the eternity that it takes to move from an elephant excreting onto a camera lens to a descent into the bowels of an L.A snuff dungeon, I wondered if the self-styled provocateur, Damien Chazelle, is punishing his audience as much as his characters. The film is an exhaustingly perennial exercise in human denigration that is summated in a pre-title prologue featuring a boisterous Hollywood mansion party filled with end-to-end debauchery that sets the underlying tone of the movie, and it never relents. Most scenes end with a grisly punchline, and it is truly exasperating. Babylon seeks to illuminate the institutionalised intolerance that white, heterosexual Hollywood has historically fostered towards race, gender, and sexuality, and whilst the film does confer rare moments of topical dialogue to its audience, Chazelle is all too keen to return to the hedonistic excesses of champagne, cocaine and sex, often depriving those fleeting moments of their power.
In what will surely become the most discussed sequence of the film, the climax of Babylon transports us through a cosmic, Space Odyssey-esque montage of cinema’s technological evolution, from cinema’s early beginnings and innovations, such as the conception and the capture of the moving image, to the more recent advances made in the filmmaking process i.e CGI and motion-capture. The montage is crudely stitched together as if Chazelle and his film editor, Tom Cross, only conceived of it a few hours before the production deadline. Ironically, the montage celebrates films that are infinitely superior to Babylon, such as Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as well as films that are not so great such as James Cameron’s technically superb, but albeit total bloat-fest Avatar. But what does the montage actually signify? In essence, the montage illustrates how the art of cinema has ultimately endured, thrived, and evolved throughout the decades, despite the personal toll that Hollywood has demanded from its artists. Ultimately though, it is yet another trite argument on the separation of Hollywood art from the Hollywood culture that produces it, and worst still, Chazelle proves himself to be too immature to handle such themes with any tact. Furthermore, the montage creates a dissonance between the evolution of filmmaking technology and the personal losses that come from pursuing a Hollywood career. These two ideas are often irreconcilable, and lack elucidation, but if I had to guess, I’d conclude that Chazelle holds the belief that achievement and progress always requires some measure of personal sacrifice, and that, whilst cinema will live on through its technological change, its stars will inevitably fade. However, as the weight of the film’s preceding three hours of carnage bears down on its montaged climax, one can’t help but interpret Chazelle’s controlling idea as nothing short of cynical and misguided, especially given the recent developments coming out of Hollywood visual effects houses detailing the exploitative working conditions that artists are operating under for demanding and unscrupulous film studios like Marvel Studios and Disney.
Damien Chazelle’s long-time collaborator, Justin Hurwitz, infuses the film with a pulsating and jazzy score – which has been riding high on my Apple Music playlist for a few weeks now. It is the film’s single most creative element, and it certainly accentuates the film’s manic persona. To my ear, the soundtrack also features melodies that are inspired by Hurwitz’s Oscar-winning score from Chazelle’s 2012 La La Land. This is a purposeful decision made by both Hurwitz and Chazelle. La La Land is arguably a love letter to the Hollywood dream, and therefore, Hurwitz’s allusion to La La Land lends a profoundly darker note to Babylon’s nightmarish inversion of that very same dream.
With all its grotesquely lurid and over-the-top proceedings, Babylon evidently wants to polarise audiences and wants to be deemed ‘provocative’ yet one cannot help but feel that such an intent is merely an attempt to excuse the film’s appalling lack of both substance and of any adept directing on Chazelle’s part. Babylon is crude and humourless, and frankly, I was given more enjoyment out of wondering what the boomer couple in front of me thought of the ‘golden-shower scene’. The film’s inter-textual relationship with Singin’ in the Rain is also misjudged, and I doubt that Stanley Donen or Gene Kelly would have appreciated their feel-good film being used as the inspiration for this story. With Babylon, Chazelle self-styles himself as a provocateur and an auteur, which might just be the film’s flattest joke of all given that he’s made one of the worst films of 2023 thus far.
Let yourself be whole now
With your hands in the Earth
Your feet in the crystal shallows
Your core grounded and unshakeable
Let yourself be swallowed
Taken entirely
By the evanescent tide of you as complete
With no gleam or hesitation
Saunter on
To the greatest motion with no name
Where you do not have the answers
Only the tools
To carve and make space
For your wholeness
To breathe
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 2 ‘To Be Confirmed’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
A girl imagines she could jump.
Despite a window in place,
and four metres of space.
Still, she imagines.
Above her,
the noise is –
Leaking.
Through his head
phones he can hear –
it.
It’s not quite a buzz –
he can hear it even though
it’s not quite a buzz and
He’s wearing his headphones and
it’s leaking.
The girl adjacent wants you to
Please excuse the pun.
As she speaks, the room
cannot find the pun.
Yet,
The room does not exist
but for his eyes,
Thinks a boy as he
lets his hand fall,
between their two chairs.
The man in the corner pulls at his hair
because he is looking at the girl looking
at the window
imagining she could jump.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Swaying gently,
Solidly moored by a vast civilisation of roots below.
Generations of growth and decay,
Growth and decay.
Life goes on for the Eucalypts.
Slivers of bark
Suspended by svelte branches.
Slender limbs macabrely examine their former skin.
An ashen pallor to the trunk,
Smudged shades of grey and green and blue and white
By the brush of Albert Namatjira.
The ghost gum stands tall and straight on this plane and in the next.
For want of water, nurture and relief,
Pines and Firs and Oaks will wither and crumble
Under the golden sun in the red dirt of the Lucky Country.
Far from home.
Something so pale and so spindly
Should succumb to the will of the colonisers.
Nature should bend to man’s will.
And yet in my lifetime and the next, the Eucalypt is well rooted.