READING MATTER

DAY 58-59

Sitting on the bottom of the staircase in Birchalls in Launceston is one of my frequent stopping places, scanning the first few pages of a little pile of novels from their ‘Specials’ table. Books are probably my one true weakness, and when you’re on a very strict budget you quickly learn the best spots to go hunting. Apart from fossicking in the second hand stores and charity shops, I have a few favourite haunts whose ‘specials’ tables have yielded some real bargains. Like my $80 hardcover edition of Lord of the Rings snavelled up for $20 a few years ago.

Have found in the past few years, not by intention but usually discovered in the course of reading the book, that I have picked up a fair number of author’s debut novels. As well as being delighted with my choices, I am often astonished at the author’s ability to craft a story that is both enthralling as well as enlightening, as the following will prove if you happen by a copy.

Testimony of Taliesin Jones Rhidian Brook

I heard the Owl call my name Margaret Craven

Coiled in the Heart Scott Elliott

Cold Mountain Charles Frazier

Village of Stone Xiaolu Guo

The Centre of Winter Marya Hornbacher

Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt

The Memory of Running Ron McLarty

The Deep End of the Ocean Jacquelyn Mitchard

My Place Sally Morgan

The Icarus Girl Helen Oyeyemi

Why she left us Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

One Thousand Chestnut Trees Mira Stout

Have just finished Half of a Yellow Sun, an ambitious second novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian born writer who at only 32 years old, displays a wisdom in bringing a portion of her country’s history to life as it is interwoven into the fictional lives of her main characters. The story fluctuates between the early 60s and the Nigerian-Biafran war of the late 60s. Adichie lost both grandfathers in the war so her family’s connections to the conflict are strong. Main characters, intellectual Odenigbo, his partner Olanna and their child, their houseboy Ugwu, Olanna’s twin sister Kainene and her partner Richard who as a white British expatriate, sees himself very much as a Biafran.

We see the workings out of the complexity of the relationships of the sisters and their partners through the decade, how they experience the war from different perspectives, but how all eventually have to engage with the ravages of the conflict and its consequences for them personally, for their families, communities and their country.

For Adichie the issues which led to the conflict of the 60s still remain unresolved, borne out by my neighbours who are back on a brief visit from Nigeria and live in a community which was at the centre of the conflict at the time. The oppression of colonialism, the denegration and devaluation of the indigenous culture and its people, are all seen in stark reality.

Give me a factual account of the same events and I’d struggle to get through it, but if skillfully done the essential historical facts and their impact at a grassroots level can be strongly felt. I seem to have a habit of choosing novels set in non Western cultures in times of turmoil, and am currently part way through another debut novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, set in India amidst the caste system, winning the Booker Prize of 1997. Will let you know what I think when I’ve finished it but it’s looking good.