Notes from Eve Abbey ~ March 2016

Sydney Booksellers, some publishers, customers and lots of ex staff turned out in force to remember Peter Milne on 27th January.

We found he was loved and admired by lots of people, not just our own indispensable advisor and friend. Peter's brother flew in from Perth and Fiona Stager from Avid Reader in Brisbane. Robert Milne went home with a beautiful condolence book signed by all. A fantastic photo of Peter beamed to all arrivals and in the window a huge In Memoriam poster shone out. We shall all miss him.

I've been reading The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding, which was one of our bestsellers at Christmas. This was an unlikely success. Harding is a descendant of the Jewish family which had to escape from an idyllic village on the outskirts of Berlin in the Thirties. What started as a curiosity about a home treasured in memory for his grandmother, became an overwhelming interest. He researched right back to the original estate, through various owners and tenants until finally he was able to convince the authorities that this quite ordinary house should be conserved.

Although the house is the main character, the people passing through are all interesting and tell the social history of Germany in the twentieth century. Most interesting of all is the barbed wire fence which was one day erected at the lake edge at the bottom of the garden. This eventually became the Berlin Wall! He calls it A Story of Germany, as indeed it is. Highly recommended and also, if you haven't read Stasiland by Anna Funder, I recommend you now read this fabulous account of the German Democratic Republic.

It is a happy choice that I am now making my way through John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman.  It is over six hundred pages, of which fifty contain notes and then the index. Le Carrés real name is David Cornwell and Ronnie Cornwell, his father, was a consummate con-man who dominated the lives of his sons, David and Antony Cornwell. He is immortalised in A Perfect Spy, my favourite. At one point I feared author Adam Sisman had also been conquered by the charming Ronnie as the first one hundred pages are taken over by Ronnie!

This is a fascinating book. One can tend to forget the enormous success of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, le Carré's third book written while he was working in the secret services. And one can sometimes overlook just how many books Le Carré has written, and continues to write. He worked very hard, especially in the days before a word processor.

He was always diligent, revising proofs right up till the last possible moment and often contributed to the film scripts of his books and even, like Hitchcock, enjoyed a cameo part in several of the films. I think he was indeed addicted to writing. He became fabulously wealthy and very famous. The middle part of the book dealing with negotiations with publishers and film producers is gloriously full of trade gossip. He does become rather angry at the state of the world. He says he became more radical as he grew older and certainly agrees he has had a wonderful life. I think he wrote twenty three books, most of them classified as espionage thrillers, always with a political angle which often proved prescient.

A new book is due soon and his backlist is being reissued regularly as licences expire. These are the titles in his catalogue:

• The Spy who Came in from the Cold
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Smiley's People
• The Secret Pilgrim
• Call for the Dead
• A Delicate Truth
• The Naive and Sentimental Lover
• The Tailor of Panama
• The Mission Song
• The Honourable Schoolboy
• A Murder of Quality
• The Constant Gardener
• A Small Town in Germany
• The Night Manager
• A Most Wanted Man

We also have a DVD set comprising Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People and a Spanish edition of The Constant Gardener Jardinero El Fiel. The biographer widely discusses reviews and plots of the books so you can sort out which title you can start with to dip into le Carré's marvellous catalogue.

Some of us have enjoyed the amusing novels by Michael Wilding featuring Plant the bumbling detective threading his way through bohemian Sydney. Michael has put on his academic gown again so this Emeritus Professor of English and Australian Literature has won the 2015 Prime Minister's Award for Non-Fiction for his latest book Wild Bleak Bohemia: Marcus Clark, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall: A Documentary.

It has also won the Colin Roderick Award. This is a book that has just evolved over the years since Michael was writing about Marcus Clark in the 70's. He has had suggestions and connections from all sorts of people who played a part in fossicking out the story of these three famous Australian authors. Everyone is pleased that it made it into print.

Keep well,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ November 2015

I had trouble starting the latest Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction...

 – All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr – mainly because it seemed too dense – too many details but I did come to revel in this fine book. The author took ten years to finally finish this so take the time to enjoy it. There are two contrasting stories: one about a blind girl whose father works in the Museum of Natural History in Paris where he is in charge of all the keys, and another about a boy and his sister living in an orphanage attached to the mining community in Essen. Their stories finally meet in the small town of St. Malo which was almost totally destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of the Second World War. Marie-Laure has unwittingly become the keeper of a precious stone hunted by the Nazi treasure seekers, while Werner has become a fabled fixer of radios, uneasily serving his Nazi commanders.

Many people at home enjoy the afternoons on ABC Radio listening to Richard Glover’s cheerful approach to life, as well as his columns in the newspapers. He has written a thoughtful and amusing memoir called Flesh Wounds in which he recalls his life growing up with an uncaring mother who is also deceiving every one about her own identity. Quite remarkable really that he has turned out such a well-adjusted, cheerful and amusing person. Many thanks go to his loved wife, scriptwriter and author Debra Oswald. Dare I say “this is a nice book”?

I did enjoy The Waiting Room by Melbourne writer Leah Kaminsky. This is mostly set in Israel where the main character is both a mother and a doctor. Her uneasiness in living daily with the threat of some sort of attack is multiplied by her anxiety for her small son. Her days are also interrupted by the voice of her dead mother, once a holocaust survivor, and now giving her daughter regular advice. Will she remain in Israel with her loved Sabra husband or will she return to Melbourne?

Famous Irish writer John Banville has a new novel out called The Blue Guitar. His books are always finely written and this time you could call the work a “stream of consciousness”. Oliver, the narrator and main character was once a successful artist but now has returned to the small town which was his childhood home. He confesses to a secret delight in stealing small things but stealing his friend’s wife is not so small! The novel covers just one year, the current year in Oliver’s life, told as he writes on a large jotter in the kitchen.

Are you enjoying the television detective series called Vera? I am. The stories come from some of the novels written by Anne Cleeves. I recently read, and enjoyed, the latest in the Vera series, which is called The Moth Catcher. These stories are all set around Newcastle in County Durham and I was happy to note there was not much blood and gore! A friend tells me that the stories Anne Cleeves has written which are set in the Shetland Isles are especially good so I have ordered the first two in the series – Raven Black and White Nights. They are being reissued just now, no doubt as a result of the success of the Vera TV series. I noticed that The Moth Catcher is dedicated to “Brenda with Thanks” so I assume this to be Brenda Blythen who plays Vera on TV. My friend tells me that it is worth reading the Shetland series in correct order as things happen in the lives of the characters.

Keep well,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ August 2015

Did you enjoy the TV version of Kate Grenville's enormously popular The Secret River about life in the early days of settlement?

If you haven't already read this, I hope you can find the time to do so soon. There is quite a lot more in the book that doesn't show in the TV series, while the play concentrates more on the issue of Aboriginal possession. In the book you can read about the life of William and Sal Thornhill in London before they were transported and their on-going relationship with their children. Two following books complete the life of the family. They are The Lieutenant and Sarah Thornhill (granddaughter).

Another really good book is Searching for the Secret River, in which Kate recounts all the work she did researching for The Secret River, in London as well as here. Family historians will definitely enjoy this as well as anyone trying to write a novel. It ends up being a fascinating story.

I was especially pleased to read Forever Young, the fifth book in the Glenroy trilogy written by Steven Carroll. Well, it is no longer a trilogy and is soon to be a sextet! The Glenroy series is The Art of the Engine Driver, The Gift of Speed, The Time we have Taken, Spirit of Progress and now Forever Young. These elegantly written books will be a pleasure for you to discover. I am a great fan. It was a good idea to distribute Forever Young together with a free copy of The Art of the Engine Driver, the first of the series, so you will know the three central characters, Vic, Rita and son Michael. Steven Carroll admits this is very autobiographical. The sixth and final volume will involve Vic in his youth so Forever Young is the end of the family story. Carroll aims to reveal the passionate hearts beneath the surface of suburban calm. His writing style for these stories is unusual and addictive, with constant repetition and soothing rhythm.

Carroll recently won the Prime Minister's Literary Award, in addition to his earlier awards as a Miles Franklin Winner and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He does not use the same style for his other books. There are several stories inspired by poems written by T.S. Eliot, including The Lost Life and A World of Other People.

The Miles Franklin Award was won this year by Sofie Laguna for her second adult novel, The Eye of the Sheep. Not a good title I think, and I was also not anxious to read yet another story about an autistic boy. However, I was quite overcome when I did read it. It became quite thrilling and heart-breaking. The story is told in the voice of the boy, whose imagination is never at rest, and nor is he. Sofie Laguna has done a marvellous job by exactly capturing this. And the story itself is one encountered by many families – with a little too much alcohol and domestic violence. I thoroughly recommend this excellent novel.

A good novel also on the Miles Franklin Shortlist is Golden Boys by Sonya Hartnett, who is better known for her Young Adult and Children's books. Sonya is a totally reliable author. All her books, and there are many, are interesting and good value. Although this book is for adults, it nonetheless features a group of children just beginning to form moral judgements. I really enjoyed this.

Appointment Northwest by successful poet Peter Skrzynecki is a tender memoir about his very first posting as a country school teacher. Straight out of training college he is sent to Joegla, about 50 kilometres out of Armidale, to be sole Teacher-in-Charge of a tiny school with only 14 students. Quite a shock but an opportunity for him to try out his management style. He boards with a local family with whom he makes tight bonds and learns how to negotiate friendships in a small community. More importantly he begins to understand the very close attachment to the landscape which bolsters the locals, and he begins to find his poetic voice. This is a very nice book. Many of you will have read his poetry collection Immigrant Chronicle as it is an HSC required text but I also recommend his autobiography The Sparrow Garden.

Here's a quirky recommendation. Young German doctor, Giulia Enders, has written a very easy to read book called Gut: The Inside story of our body's most under-rated organ. This is all fascinating and is enlivened by line illustrations.

Keep well,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ July 2015

Military historians will enjoy The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East 1914-1920 by Eugene Rogan.

It includes detailed descriptions of the battles in the desert during the First World War when the Ottoman Empire (or what remained of it) decided to ally with Germany. I skipped most of this. I wanted to know how England and France decided what was to become of the end of the Empire – Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine. While both England and France trod carefully during the war, for fear of Islamic uprisings in their colonies in India and North Africa, they did have territorial ambitions as well as wanting access to oil. I didn’t really find out. It is in the Middle East more than any other part of the world that legacies of the Great War continue to be felt to this day. Eugene Rogan is a Fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford and author of the bestselling The Arabs: A History which charts the route from Ottomanism to Arabism to Islamism.

On the back page of Sascha Arango’s thriller The Truth and Other Lies, Text Publishing offer a money-back guarantee if you don’t love it. I don’t think you will be applying for a refund as it keeps you guessing all the way through. Anti-hero Henry is a famous author as well as a man with an unsavoury past and lots of secrets. One of those secrets is it is his wife who actually writes the books. Then his editor and lover unfortunately becomes pregnant to him! Misfortune all around. I was thinking it would make a terrific film – and I now notice Sascha Arango is best known as a scriptwriter in his German homeland. Enjoy it.

I suspect many of you will already have the fascinating memoir-cum-handbook written by long-time New Yorker staffer Mary Norris. It is called Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, (although some co-workers prefer to be called a Word Goddess). I now feel very anxious about the hyphen in the line at the start of this paragraph. So very many difficulties! Who was brave enough to proofread the proofreader’s book? Here is the start of one paragraph: ‘Are we losing the apostrophe? Is it just too much trouble? This little squiggle, so like a comma except it has been hoisted up above the letters instead of hooked below the baseline...’ This is some very serious fun. There is a good chapter on using the pencil which reminds me of another quirky book by James Ward. It is called Adventures in Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case. If you enjoy poking around in a good stationery store this is for you. It is indeed just about stationery unlike an earlier book called The Pencil by Henry Petroski which was a most elegant and philosophical book about design.

Have you seen Helen Mirren’s latest movie The Woman in Gold? Perhaps you would like another story about a Klimt portrait? One which took place right here in Sydney. If so I recommend the memoir by Professor Tim Bonyhady called Good Living Street: The Fortunes of my Viennese Family. At the beginning of the century his family was very involved in the artistic life of Vienna and when they left in 1938 for Australia they brought with them a fabulous private art collection, including a Klimt portrait of his great grandmother, which was housed in a tiny flat in Potts Point.

Amitav Ghosh is a Bengali writer - a historical writer writing from the Asian perspective. His Ibis Trilogy is following Anglo-Asian history in a most meticulous way. The first volume was Sea of Poppies, followed by River of Smoke and now, just arrived, the third and final volume is here – Flood of Fire. His characters are battling their way through Asian history. They are only just up to the end of the end of the first Opium War. Because it has taken so long, and so many pages, (each volume is over 600 pages) Ghosh fears he will never come to the end. You will believe this when you look at the endless bibliography of books, papers and articles which he lists at the end of Flood of Fire.

I first read Ghosh as the author of In An Antique Land, stories written while he lived in an Egyptian village for more than ten years. Then I found The Glass Palace, about Britain in Burma and India, covering the events right up to the Fall of Singapore and after. This is my favourite. It is a cross between family saga and historical novel and is in great favour with Asian readers. When I read the first volume of the Ibis saga I was rather overcome and was most interested in the attention paid to the use of Anglo-Asian words, which were explained as treasures taken from the archives of Neel Rattan Halder. The archives had been smuggled out of China by his grandsons etc. Now, I fear I have been too naive. It seems to me that Neel Rattan Halder is a fictitious character (perhaps Ghosh himself). If you google Ibis Chrestomathy you will find this glossary of fantastic words used in the Ibis trilogy. You will also have become part of an enormous community of people, searching on the Internet, with something to say about Ghosh and the many, many characters in his books.  Read the books and perhaps you will join them? I asked Abbey’s bookseller Lindy Jones to see if there was a glossary in the first volume and she suggested to me that perhaps I needed a Hobson-Jobson. Just so! Hobson-Jobson is the short name for A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. An absolute treasure for Word Nuts. I have just discovered that there is access to Hobson-Jobson online! You might need access to a special font for some of the words. And, I have also just discovered that chrestomathy is defined as ‘a collection of literary passages used in the study of language’.

Enjoy,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey ~ April 2015

Not everyone will immediately recognise the term Anchoress, which is the title for Robyn Cadwallader’s intriguing first novel.

In the Middle Ages an Anchorite or Anchoress was someone who has withdrawn from the world in order to devote their life to God. Cadwallader is a medieval historian and for her Ph.D she wrote a dissertation on the attitude to virginity in the Middle Ages, when a religious life was often a better choice for a woman.

I was surprised to learn that the anchoress, sealed into a small cell attached to the side of the church, also had a parlour and two maids who attended to her wants, while her expenses were guaranteed, in this case by the Lord of the Manor.

Sarah, our Anchoress, has chosen to escape her worldly problems after the death of both her mother and her sister in childbirth. She has already seen the desire in the eyes of Sir Thomas, heir to the manor. This is no romantic serial, but a thoughtful and interesting look at life in the Middle Ages and of the importance of the written word.

The Ancrene Wisse, or Guide to Anchorites, is called by Sarah her Book of Rules and she tries hard to obey. She has a small window and a thin narrow “squint” so that she can see into the church and take part in services and it is her duty to advise and pray for the people who come to visit her.

It seems a small story but is in fact quite thrilling and in places the religious descriptions are both sensuous and physical. An unusual but satisfying book.

Do you remember the amusing novels written in the late Sixties and Seventies by David Lodge? Still fun to read. Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work are now all in one volume called The Campus Trilogy. Lodge was an industrious writer and successful academic with many books to his credit including a big fat novel about H.G. Wells called A Man of Parts. He has now produced a memoir called Quite A Good Time to be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975. Quite so. I agree as I am in that bracket. It is clear-eyed and honest with equal attention given to his writing life, his academic career and his Catholic conscience.

Not everyone will find this riveting but if you have any interest in literary criticism, or academic rivalry you will lap this up. He makes touching reference to Malcolm Bradbury, a colleague and friend at Birmingham University. People often confused them – who wrote what? Bradbury's most famous novel was The History Man, another very funny novel about the Swinging Seventies.

I greatly enjoyed reading Kate Grenville's latest book, One Life: My Mother's Story. It has a coveted sticker on the front bearing the words Women's Weekly Great Read, and indeed it will be for many, many women and some men as well. It is both domestic and literary as well as inspiring. Her mother's country childhood was difficult but this clever, sensitive, practical girl somehow got to university and became one of the few qualified female pharmacists. She even ran her own business several times, usually defeated by the lack of childcare opportunities. And like many other mature women, after the Whitlam Government brought in free university education, she obtained a B.A. with Honours and at long last became what she had always wanted to be – a teacher. It is a story that well illustrates the huge changes in social life since the Second World War, for both men and women.

I enjoyed reading Twiggy: The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest by Andrew Burrell, which won the Business Book of the Year Prize. It is called An Unauthorised Biography and is absolutely fascinating. What a complex, brave and fascinating character! Not just the 'good guy' in the blue shirt and moleskin trousers. Whatever your verdict, people like him are an asset. I'm sending a copy to my son in Western Australia who now works for Woodside.

I have begun the Neapolitan Quartet novels written by Elena Ferrante, who is getting great publicity by remaining totally unknown! Who can she be? Who writes such a fascinating story? Who is really writing what is being called a 'modern masterpiece'? The first novel is called My Brilliant Friend.

Filled with characters, you really need the list of characters at the beginning. And, like a good Saturday afternoon serial, it finishes at a moment where you are left on tenterhooks! Where is the next instalment! For me there are rather too many details (a bit like my attitude to Donna Tartt) but altogether it is an absorbing picture of Italian life in the 1950's. How far will it go?

Like all the reviewers quoted I can't wait for the next instalment. The next two books are The Story of a New Name followed by Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. The fourth book The Forgotten Child is due out from Text Publishing in October. Translation from the Italian is by Ann Goldstein, who is also an editor at The New Yorker.

Abbey's Language Book Centre also has some of the Italian editions.

Entries for the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, run by Australian Book Review, close on 1st May. Is yours finished? Get it in. See australianbookreview.com.au for information.

Keep well,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers

Notes from Eve Abbey - February 2015

People Passing... January marked the passing of two famous book people, loyal customers of Abbeys.

I am sure many of our readers will have memories of Jim Thorburn who began Pocket Bookshop in 1958, first in Angel Place, Penfold Place, Hosking Place but most importantly at 137a King Street. And Thorburn's Technical Bookshop in Castlereagh Street was the first technical shop in Sydney. Jim's shop was a meeting place for many thinkers, he was Ron Abbey's first friend in Sydney, and when he retired in 1979 he became a customer here whenever he came to town. Jim's contribution to W.E.A., University of the Third Age and the State Library was only part of the role he played in the intellectual life of our city. Glasgow-born Jim was almost 91.

Painter Tom Carment and author of our Christmas bestseller, Seven Walks, tells me he remembers buying a book by Krishnamurti from Jim who allowed himself to indulge in a Marxist rave on how books like that were not going to change the world! Famous Australian poet Robert Gray says Jim told him Bertrand Russell was a gadfly! Others will remember Jim with his head on one side so as to read the titles on all the spine-out books on the shelves. Or speaking in the Domain for the Socialist Party of Australia. Have you read Robert's autobiography? It is called The Land I Came Through Last.

Jim's Pocket Bookshop played an important role in the increasing acceptance of paperbacks. At first they were regarded as cheap and nasty, (like pulp fiction, which has, ironically, now become a fashionable word). Gradually the big publishers began issuing fiction and non-fiction in the good paperbacks which we now take as usual. When we first opened Abbey's in Pitt Street in 1968 we sold only paperbacks except for hardback remainders, i.e. those books left over after sales of the first printings taper off. This was regarded as rather bad form, as authors do not receive royalties on remainder sales but remainder sales brought people into the shop and we all love a bargain don't we?

And also in January marvellous Colleen McCullough died peacefully at her home in Norfolk Island. We all remember the excitement when her second novel, The Thorn Birds, became such an international best-seller. It was the first Australian work to achieve such sales, seemingly now over thirty million, and which still continues to sell. She wrote many novels including her seven-novel Masters of Rome series. Before her literary fame she was a neurophysiological researcher and worked at Yale University, where the success that a colleague achieved with his book tempted her to begin writing. Who was it? Erich Segal, author of Love Story!

Even when Colleen was in her wheelchair she always came into Abbey's on her trips to Sydney to check out the books. Many of the books in her famous private library on Ancient Rome came from here. We send Ric Robinson our consolations. And Norfolk Island Library is a good customer too.

And more exciting news! Sydney writer Elizabeth Harrower has really been taken up by The New Yorker. It is very hard to get a short story into that famous magazine but the February 2nd edition contains one of Elizabeth's short stories (rescued from the National Library by Text Publishing) It is called Alice. A sad and memorable story. If you get the New Yorker on-line you can hear Elizabeth reading it herself! I hear Text plan to publish a collection of her short stories. That will be a treat! I remember when Amy Witting had a short story in the New Yorker... how long ago was that? Maybe 1990? Soon after Penguin published I for Isobel but now Text publish this Australian classic and soon it will be followed by Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop. Amy Witting died in 2001.

Even more exciting news just to hand via Sian McNabney, one of Abbey's appreciated booksellers. There is to be a sequel to Harper Lee's amazingly famous To Kill a Mockingbird. It will be issued in July 2015 and is called Go Set a Watchman. In it Scout is a grown woman, returning to her home town to visit her father, Atticus Finch. It all seems genuine. It is claimed this was written before To Kill a Mockingbird and not accepted for publication so Lee began again with Scout as a child.

Talking of remainders... in our Bargains section we have an excellent paperback called 1215: The Year of Magna Carta for only $10. This is by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham and is a treasure house of detail about medieval domestic life which also puts the Charter beside other events happening at that time, such as Genghis Khan entering Beijing. It was published in 2003 so they were a bit ahead of the due date! It is this year, 2015, which is the 800 year anniversary of Magna Carta. It is interesting that the Americans revere the Charter so much. There is a special rotunda at Runnymede erected by the American Bar Association as a "tribute to Magna Carta, a symbol of Freedom Under Law".


I've been re-reading Andrew McGahan's The White Earth, which won the Miles Franklin in 2005, the first year I was on the judging panel. It is the story of a boy living on a far-from successful farm on the Darling Downs who goes to live with his great-uncle on a large station nearby. It is the 1990s when Native Title Act was coming in and rumblings of One Nation began. I was inspired to re-read this because those grand Bunya Bunya trees and their role in Aboriginal corroborees are important characters in the story and I have found four Bunya Bunya trees in a small back street in Manly! These ancient trees are way south of their usual habitat - they must have been there before the street was there! Fortunately they are protected now and the council today was busy gathering the big nuts before they fall on the parked cars!

Keep well,

Eve

Buy these books at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers