The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Sometimes even destiny needs a little bit of help. When childhood sweethearts Justine (Sagittarius and serious skeptic) and Nick (Aquarius and true believer) bump into each other as adults, a life-changing love affair seems inevitable. To Justine, anyway. Especially when she learns Nick is an astrological devotee, whose decisions are guided by the stars, and more specifically, by the horoscopes in his favorite magazine. The same magazine Justine happens to write for.
As Nick continues to not fall headlong in love with her, Justine decides to take Nick’s horoscope, and Fate itself, into her own hands. But, of course, Nick is not the only Aquarius making important life choices according to what is written in the stars.
Charting the ripple effects of Justine’s astrological meddling, STAR-CROSSED is a delicious, intelligent, and affecting love story about friendship, chance, and how we all navigate the kinds of choices that are hard to face alone.
My Thoughts:
This novel is pure delight! I bought it on a sudden whim, feeling in need of something light-hearted and easy to read, and instead find myself reading the cleverest and most engaging contemporary romance I’ve ever encountered. There is so much to love in this book – it’s funny and yet poignant too, making me laugh out loud one moment and dab away a little tear the next. It’s crammed full of dozens and dozens of characters, yet each one is so deftly and vividly drawn that you have no trouble remembering who is who, and you find yourself a little in love with them all. It’s very Australian and yet very universal, and is crying out to be made into a rom-com. Oh, so much to love in this book!
Basically, an aspiring journalist named Justine bumps into her teenage crush one day and her heart gives an almighty bound. Discovering that gorgeous Nick relies on life advice from the horoscope page in the magazine she works for, Justine thinks she might give just a little tweak to his star sign that month. After all, what harm could it do?
I cannot say anymore without completely undoing the magic that is Star-Crossed. Read it and be charmed.
You might also like to read my review of Love or Nearest Offer by Adele Geras:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-love-or-nearest-offer-by-adele-geras
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
For the ten years from 1902, when Australia’s suffrage campaigners won the vote for white women, the world looked to this trailblazing young democracy for inspiration.
Clare Wright’s epic new history tells the story of that victory—and of Australia’s role in the subsequent international struggle—through the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, the flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters, and artist Dora Meeson Coates, who painted the controversial Australian banner carried in the British suffragettes’ monster marches of 1908 and 1911.
Clare Wright’s Stella Prize-winning 'The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka' retold one of Australia’s foundation stories from a fresh new perspective. With You Daughters of Freedom she brings to life a time when Australian democracy was the envy of the world—and the standard bearer for progress in a shining new century.
My Thoughts:
I am a banner-waving feminist, and so hyper-aware of the long and difficult battle for women’s rights in this world. So when Richard Glover recommended Clare Wright’s monumental history of the Australian suffragists on our Word of Mouth episide with him and his wife Debra Oswald, I went out and bought it at once.
I’ve been reading it in stages ever since. It is ENORMOUS! Four-hundred-and-seventy-nine pages long, to be precise. But every word of it is utterly fascinating. I’ve kept it on my desktop and read a few pages most days. I have learned so much, and it has re-ignited the fire in my belly.
Clare Wright uses as her central symbol the women’s banner, hand-sewn by a woman named Dora Meeson Coates, which was first held aloft in 1908 when ten thousand women marched to the Albert Hall in london. It now hangs in Parliament House in Canberra, but has had many other adventures along the way, and I intend to go and see it next time I am in the capital city.
Central to the book ar ethe stories of five brave, clever and defiant women who suffered hardship, poverty, mockery and personal ehartbreak to fight for Ausrtalian women’s rights. Their names – which should be more widely known – are Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel, Dora Montefiore, Muriel Matters, and Dora Meeson Coates, along with a great many others.
Clare Wright’s research is extraordinary, and her storytelling techniques suberb. Her book has subsequently been shortlisted for a number of awards including The Prime Minister's Literary Awards and the Queensland Literary Awards.
It’s a must-read for any Australian woman (though don’t try carrying it around in your handbag!)
You might also like to read my review of Take Courage:Anne Bronte by Samantha Ellis....
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-take-courage-anne-bronte-and-the-art-of-life-by-samantha-ellis
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
More than a century has passed since Liliath crept into the empty sarcophagus of Saint Marguerite, fleeing the Fall of Ystara. But she emerges from her magical sleep still beautiful, looking no more than nineteen, and once again renews her single-minded quest to be united with her lover, Palleniel, the archangel of Ystara.
A seemingly impossible quest, but Liliath is one of the greatest practitioners of angelic magic to have ever lived, summoning angels and forcing them to do her bidding.
Liliath knew that most of the inhabitants of Ystara died from the Ash Blood plague or were transformed into beastlings, and she herself led the survivors who fled into neighboring Sarance. Now she learns that angels shun the Ystaran’s descendants. If they are touched by angelic magic, their blood will turn to ash. They are known as Refusers, and can only live the most lowly lives.
But Liliath cares nothing for the descendants of her people, save how they can serve her. It is four young Sarancians who hold her interest: Simeon, a studious doctor-in-training; Henri, a dedicated fortune hunter; Agnez, an adventurous musketeer cadet; and Dorotea, an icon-maker and scholar of angelic magic. They are the key to her quest.
The four feel a strange kinship from the moment they meet, but do not know why, or suspect their importance. All become pawns in Liliath’s grand scheme to fulfill her destiny and be united with the love of her life. No matter the cost to everyone else. . .
My Thoughts:
Oooh, a new book by Garth Nix!
Ooooh, about angels!
Ooooooh! Set in an alternative 17th century France! With a dedication to Alexandre Dumas and the makers of The Three Musketeers!
It’s a no-brainer. As soon as I heard about it, I had Angel Mage on pre-order and devoured it the moment it arrived.
Garth Nix writes fantasy just the way I like it. Clever, complex, vivid and compelling, with characters that leap off the page and a plot that twists and turns and soars and plunges like a rollercoaster.
This is a new world for him, and I already love it just as much as I love the Old Kingdom. I have a particular soft spot for 17th century France, thanks to the Three Musketeers – indeed I’ve written a book of my own set there and then. And I’ve had a lifelong fascination with angels – I actually collect them, though not perhaps as you imagine.
Anyway, Angel Mage was pure delight from beginning to end. We have a beautiful young mage who can kill an angel and uses her power over them for evil. And then we have four young people drawn inexplicably together, as if by fate. In brief, they are:
Agnez, a dashing Musketeer who can never swallow an insult and who whips out her sword at the slightest provocation.
Henri, the disregarded younger son with a knack for numbers and the need to make his fortune.
Dorotea, the dreamy artist who can see people’s auras and has an uncanny strength in the summoning of angels
Simeon, a very large black doctor-in-training whose parents gave him a sex manual to read when he reached puberty.
One of the things I have always loved about Garth Nix is that he always has such interesting, multifaceted female characters, many of whom are in positions of natural authority. It is such a breath of fresh air in the often misogynistic worlds of fantasy (for example, I just re-read Ursula le Guin’s classic fantasy trilogy which begins with The Wizard of Earthsea, and was dismayed by the depiction of women in that world). Anyway, in Angel Mage there is a great deal of diversity, with characters being of all different colours, beliefs and sexual orientations. I loved this so much, it made my day.
Everything about this young adult fantasy is pure magic! I’m just hoping for many more books set in this wonderful world.
You might also like to read my review of Uprooted by Naomi Novik:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-uprooted-by-naomi-novik
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
1890: Orphaned as a small child, Tilly Kirkland found a loving, safe home with her grandfather in Dorset. But nineteenth-century England is an unforgiving place for a young woman with limited means and as her grandfather's health fails, it seems perfect timing that she meets Jasper Dellafore. Yet her new husband is not all he seems. Alone in the Channel Islands, Tilly finds her dream of a loving marriage is turning into a nightmare.
2012: Bestselling novelist Nina Jones is struggling with writer's block and her disappointing personal life. Nothing is quite working. After a storm damages Starwater, her house on Ember Island, she decides to stay for a while and oversee the repairs: it s a perfect excuse to leave her problems behind her on the mainland. Then Nina discovers diary pages hidden in the walls of the old home. And a mystery unravels that she is determined to solve.
Though the two women are separated by years, Starwater House will alter the course of both their lives. Nina will find that secrets never stay buried and Tilly learns that what matters most is trusting your heart.
My Thoughts:
I get all excited when I hear a new Kimberley Freeman novel is due out. I know I’m in for a real page-turning delight, with a delicious mix of mystery, romance, history and family drama. These are books I like to clear some space for, because I know that once I pick one up I’m utterly compelled to keep on reading till the very end. ‘Ember Island’ was no exception. It weaves together the story of Tilly Kirkland, newly married to a man of secrets in the Channel Islands in 1890; and the story of bestselling novelist Nina Jones, who retreats to a small Queensland island in 2012 in an attempt to heal her broken heart and overcome her crippling writer’s block. The two stories touch as Nina discovers old diary pages hidden in the walls of her dilapidated old house …
You might also like to read my review of Secrets of the Tides by Hannah Richell:
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: Secrets Of The Tides by Hannah Richell
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
A soaring memoir of longing, resilience and delight in the natural world.
In this extraordinary and unexpected book, Patti tells the story of her own long-distance walking over hundreds of kilometres in Europe and of her brother’s obsession with paragliding.
As adults, a tragic accident changes their relationship. One day, Barney’s wing collapses and he plummets to earth, breaking his spine. The story of his struggle to walk again intersects Patti’s long-distance journeys, creating an intense narrative of determination and triumph.
For Patti, walking is a radical act – a return to what has made us all human — that bestows a connection to wild nature and to creativity it self. But as she listens to her pragmatic and methodical brother tell his story, she learns that flying is his door to untrammelled joy too. She realises that she is ‘meeting’ him for the very first time.
This beautiful and inspiring book tells their story and reveals that the siblings share a willingness to take risks and an indefatigable determination. With rare insight and poetic writing,The Joy of High Places combines physical adventure with a powerful emotional journey.
My Thoughts:
All my life I’ve loved to walk. Being out in this beautiful world, moving my body and letting my mind drift, seeing things I’ve never seen before and feeling myself strong and well and full of creative energy – walking is a thing of small, easy, everyday joy.
I’ve always wanted to do a pilgrimage, one foot after another, on a long old road. I listen, with amazed longing, to those of my friends who have done it. A few days, a week, a month, many weeks, spent walking and thinking along paths beaten into the landscape over a thousand years.
I’ve never managed to do it. Children, work, deadlines and duties have all kept me deeply rooted at home (though I do travel as much as I can, having a gypsy soul).
So I love to read about other people walking, and imagine myself doing it one day too. Patti Miller is someone I’ve followed on social media for a long time, loving her accounts and photographs of long arduous walks along the Camino in Spain, and other famous walks in England, France, Switzerland, Greece. I bought myself a pair of hiking boots, and have begun trying to build up my strength and stamina, and I plan where I will walk, one day.
Patti Miller’s new book, The Joy of High Places, is a memoir of walking but also of flying. It begins: ‘One day a few years ago, one of my brothers fell to earth and smashed his spine in several places when his paragliding wing collapsed. He believed he was going to die and then, when he realised he was still alive, he thought he would never walk again.’
Her brother Barney’s struggle to learn to walk again, and fly again, is inspiring and poignant, and offers Patti a chance to examine the human longing to be as a bird, soaring high above the world. It also is an examination of family dynamics, and the way we can know someone all their lives but never know them at all.
But, most of all, The Joy of High Places is a celebration of the human spirit, and of our deep and profound connection with nature.
When I’d finished, I posted a photo of the book surrounded by white flowers on Instagram with the caption: I read THE JOY OF HIGH PLACES by Patti Miller in a single sitting yesterday - I adored it! The word I keep thinking of transcendent - it’s so full of joy, beauty, intelligence & wonder. A paean to the power of walking, flying & family.
One of my favourite books of the year.
You might also like to read my review of The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-wild-places-by-robert-macfarlane
I have always wanted to go to China and see the Great Wall, and last year I finally had to opportunity to do so, as I travelled to Beijing and Inner Mongolia to undertake research for my novel The Blue Rose.
In this novel, my Welsh gardener David travels to China as part of the British embassy to the emperor, led by Lord Macartney. The ambassador wished to persuade the Chinese emperor to open up trade with Britain, which was suffering a huge trade imbalance as the English bought up vast quantities of tea, silk, porcelain and the gorgeous blooms of peonies, camellias, jasmine, magnolias and other exotic Chinese flowers (including the ever-blowing, blood-red rose that is at the heart of my novel).
I travelled with my son Ben, who had just turned twenty. We flew first to Beijing, and had a few days there exploring the old quarter. It was remarkably close to what it must have been like in 1792, when the ambassador and his entourage travelled inside the city walls, among the first Westerners permitted within. My son Ben is very tall, with fair skin and blue-grey eyes, and it was interesting to see how much attention he attracted as we explored the narrow alleyways. It gave me a fascinating insight into what the men of the British embassy must have felt like as they walked the same streets, dressed in their tight breeches and tricorn hats, many of them wearing powdered wigs on their heads.
This is how I wrote the scene in The Blue Rose:
The embassy reached Peking on the 21st of August.
Lord Macartney and Sir George and his son were carried in red lacquer palanquins, gaudily painted with golden dragons, but the rest of the entourage were crammed into common hired carts, with a roof of coarse straw matting. The horses were raw-boned and harnessed with rope, and no attempt had been made to match one to the other. It took seventy carts to carry them all, with four hundred porters trudging ahead, carrying the baggage.
‘This is not how the British embassy should be received!’ Anderson cried. ‘Where is the pomp and spectacle, the magnificence of one great nation welcoming another? Are we not the first nation in the west and China the first nation in the east?’
David and Scotty and a few of the other young men preferred to ride, and – after a great deal of argy-bargy complicated by the language divide – were at last given some short rough-coated ponies to ride, with gaudy over-decorated saddles and bridles. It was a relief to be free of the carts, though, which had no springs of any kind, and David relished the chance to see more of the countryside.
Thousands of people had gathered to watch the procession, climbing the ancient willow trees to see more clearly or pushing so close on to the highway that the Chinese soldiers had to beat them back. Some were struck with wonder and fear, hiding their children behind their gowns. Many others pointed and made unpleasant scoffing sounds. Some even spat.
‘Why do they stare so?’ David asked uncomfortably.
‘They think you devils,’ Father Li explained, in his oddly accented Latin. ‘In Chinese theatre, only devils wear such tight clothes, or have red hair. And your eyes are wild beast eyes, devil eyes.’
‘Maybe I should wear tinted spectacles,’ David muttered, and fixed his gaze on the dusty road.
At last the city walls of Peking reared above them, nearly fifty feet tall and immensely thick. One could have galloped a horse along the wall’s broad top. As the ambassador approached the wall, he was welcomed by the ritual firing of guns, which cast a pall of smoke over the scene. Refreshments of cold fruit and drinks were given to the hot and perspiring foreigners within the shelter of the gate. Then they were ushered into the city, the mandarins leading the way, their servants shading them with silk parasols, soldiers keeping back the crowds with whips.
The road was lined with shops decorated with tall gilded pillars and intricately carved woodwork. Long banners hung with Chinese characters swayed in the breeze. Old men scurried ahead of the entourage, sprinkling water on the roads to keep the dust down.
Riding on his pony, David was able to see over the heads of the teeming crowds and down the narrow alleyways, lined with rows of dilapidated grey houses with grey tiles. They were so low and uniform, and so lacking in windows, it looked like an encampment of army tents.
Men with long bamboo poles resting on their shoulders carried straw baskets filled with persimmons and dragon fruit. A young man in a loose robe and flapping queue ran past, clutching rolls of brightly coloured silks under his arms. An old pedlar with a weathered face and no teeth sat behind a table piled high with desiccated bats, dried snakes in stiff coils, animal horns, ginseng and severed tiger paws.
One shop had a display of exquisite porcelain plates and jars, decorated with sinuous dragons or graceful designs of cobalt-blue roses and peonies. Another shop sold coffins carved from incense cedar, the lid sweeping upwards at either end like the eaves of a temple. A silversmith bent over his work in a window, the tink-tink-tink of his hammer cutting through the clamour of the crowd.
In flimsy street-stalls, blind fortune-tellers read horoscopes, singers warbled to the accompaniment of strangely shaped stringed instruments, and storytellers beguiled their audiences with tales of love, betrayal and reunion.
Ben and I also had a private tour of the Forbidden Palace, which was once utterly forbidden to foreigners. The Macartney embassy were not permitted within, much to their disappointment. They saw only a glimpse:
The road led through a grand gateway of gilded and carved timber, painted with Chinese inscriptions of luck and good fortune, then the cavalcade turned to the west. David saw ahead a glimpse of a high grey wall, and above it a roof of varnished yellow tiles with gently upturned ends, adorned with an array of fanciful figures, shining like gold under the brilliant sun. His heart thumped hard.
‘Look,’ he said to Scotty. ‘The Forbidden City.’
They stared long and hard, but saw no more than a few other golden roofs beyond, then – in the distance – an artificial hill adorned with a pavilion with three stacked roofs, each with those elegant upswept eaves.
Then they turned a corner, and rode beside a high wall. A gate, tall and ornate, painted jade green, lacquer red, imperial yellow, studded with rows of gilded knobs. David instinctively counted. Each door had nine rows of nine knobs.
‘The Emperor’s number,’ Father Li said softly. ‘It sounds like “jiu” which means everlasting. He wears nine dragons on his robes, and there are, I have heard, nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine rooms in the Forbidden City. Only one gate does not have the nine rows of nine studs. That is the Flowery Gate, which has nine rows of eight studs. That is the gate through which the dead pass.’
‘May we go in?’ Thomas asked ebulliently. ‘I’d so love to see inside.’
‘No,’ Father Li replied.
The Forbidden Palace was absolute huge, and it took hours to walk around its many small pavilions and courtyards and gardens. We also went to see an exhibition of imperial treasures, which was of great help to me in describing what the emperor’s court may have looked like in the 1790s.
Another day we drove out to the Great Wall of China. I’ve always wanted to climb the wall, and it’s been on my 50/50 list for ages. It was very hot and very crowded, but we crammed our hats on our heads, slathered ourselves with sunscreen, took bottles of water and set out with great determination.
The wall – called cháng chéng (or ‘long city’ in Chinese) – snakes across China for more than 21,000 kilometres, though much of it is now only rubble. It was originally conceived by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the 3rd century B.C. to keep out barbarian hordes, but it took many hundreds of years to build. Much of it was made as little more than a high rampart of earth, with the series of fortified walkways, steep steps, beacon-towers and guardhouses around Beijing built about 500 years ago. Although few Westerners had seen it, the British embassy knew of its existence and were thrilled at the opportunity to see it. Many brought back souvenirs to Britain.
‘Look!’ David stood up in his stirrups and pointed. ‘There it is.’
Above them a long serpent of stone twisted along the mountain ramparts, writhing down precipitous cliffs and climbing up to great square guard towers and smaller watchtowers. Beyond, sharp mountains like jagged teeth.
A chill ran over David’s body, raising the hairs on his skin.
‘The Great Wall,’ he whispered.
‘What a stupendous piece of work,’ Lord Macartney exclaimed, moved to awe for the first time since arriving in China. The mandarins were surprised, considering the dilapidated old barricade to be of little interest.
‘But it is two thousand years old,’ David exclaimed. ‘And more than five thousand miles long.’
Sir George set his surveyors to measuring the ramparts and parapets, and testing the geology of the stones. The Chinese guards were wary and suspicious, with some reason. David had to admit the British officers had surreptitiously been taking notes of the country’s defences and armaments at every step of their journey.
David and Scotty and a few of the other men set out to climb to the top, accompanied as always by Father Li and a bevy of disgruntled mandarins. The steps were so steep, the back of David’s legs were soon aching. Panting and laughing, they scrambled at last to the highest watchtower. It had the most extraordinary view across steep mountains and valleys, the stone wall scaling the peaks as far as the eye could see.
It was no wonder the wall was called the Stone Dragon, he thought. One could almost imagine it had once flown the skies and now only slept, waiting to be awoken again.
David stood as long as he was permitted, watching the shadow of the Great Wall stretch long. At last, his arms tugged on by three or four different mandarins, he allowed himself to be hustled back down the rough, uneven steps. As he left the wall, he bent and picked up a fragment of broken stone and put it in his pocket.
The British embassy crossed the wall on their way to the emperor’s summer palace, high in the mountains of what is now Inner Mongolia. It took them several weeks of travel on horseback and in palanquins; we drove it in a day.
It was much colder up in the mountains, and we were the only Westerners. As always, my tall blue-eyed son attracted a great deal of attention. Everyone wanted to take selfies with him, and he had to bent down low to try and match their considerably shorter height. Children threw firecrackers at our feet, filling the air with acrid smoke and the street with scraps of red paper that blew about in the icy wind. No-one spoke English, and none of the restaurants had English menus, so choosing what to eat was a challenge. And there was no wifi, so we could not use Google Translate. The supermarkets were filled with tanks of live fish and lobsters and baskets of strange-looking fruit, but we could not find milk anywhere (let alone gin and tonic). It was confronting, bewildering and wonderfully outlandish to our Western eyes, and made me understand what a cultural clash it must have been in 1792, when Lord Macartney first arrived here, against the emperor’s will.
At that time in China, the emperor was meant to be greeted by the grand kowtow, which involved dropping to one’s knees and banging your forehead to the ground nine times. Lord Macartney was determined not to demean himself so, and so declared he would offer the emperor the same reverence he offered his own king. This caused much consternation among the Chinese courtiers, and ultimately led to the failure of the embassy. This is how I describe the scene in The Blue Rose:
On the tenth day of the eighth lunar month in the fifty-eighth year of his rule, the Great Emperor and Son of Heaven, Kien Long, at last permitted the English ambassador and his entourage to appear before the celestial court.
They were roused at three o’clock in the morning and hurried through pitch darkness, only the occasional paper lantern showing the way. For an hour they stumbled through the mist-wreathed night, in irrecoverable confusion, like children playing blindman’s bluff. Then they were left to wait in the cold and dark for hours, stamping their feet and blowing into their hands, muttering testily to each other.
At dawn, a long procession of minor nobles and court officials rode in upon horses, their rank expressed in the embroidered panels upon their robes and the tiers of the jewelled finials upon their hats. They were accompanied by standard-bearers holding aloft long silken banners, and guards dressed in heavy cream jackets studded with brass rivets and conical helmets with a thick tassel of red-dyed horsetail.
Then the emperor was carried into view, seated in a gilded chair borne by sixteen men. He was thin, a little hunched, with smooth ageless skin and dark inscrutable eyes. He wore a loose robe of yellow silk embroidered with five-clawed dragons and stylised clouds, mountains and waves. On his head was a black velvet cap decorated with pearls and peacock feathers. A servant held a long-handled parasol above his head, while musicians playing their strange instruments followed behind. As he came into view, every single man in the crowd dropped to his knees and banged his head to the ground again and again.
With great dignity, Lord Macartney dropped to one knee, removed his hat and bowed his head. David and the other men did the same. The emperor ignored them.
Our trip to China was absolutely fascinating, and helped me visualise the celestial empire of the 1790s so clearly.
And I have managed to cross another adventure off my 50/50 Project!
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
What makes us remember? Why do we forget? And what, exactly, is a memory?
Diving for Seahorses answers these questions and more, offering an illuminating look at one of our most fascinating faculties: our memory. Sisters Hilde and Ylva Østby – one an acclaimed writer the other a neuropsychologist—skilfully interweave history, research and personal stories in this fascinating exploration of the evolving science of memory from its Renaissance beginnings to the present day. They interview top neuroscientists, famous novelists, taxi drivers and quizmasters to help explain how memory works, why it sometimes fails and what we can do to improve it.
Filled with cutting-edge research and compelling case studies, the result is a gripping—and unforgettable—adventure through human memory.
‘UNFORGETTABLE – so many fascinating people, stories and brilliant techniques. I’ll never trust a memory again.’ — Robyn Williams, presenter of The Science Show
‘Gorgeously researched and written. Be prepared to emerge with a different sense of your life’s memories.’ — David Eagleman, neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of The Brain
My Thoughts:
Diving for Seahorses: Exploring the Science and Secrets of Human Memory is an utterly fascinating book about how and why we remember and forget, written by two sisters: the writer Hilde Ostby and the clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Ylva Ostby.
The title is inspired by the tiny curve of brain matter buried deep in our temporal lobes called the hippocampus. The doctor who first dissected that part of the brain in 1564 thought its shape resembled that of a sea horse, and so named it from the Greek - hippos meaning ‘horse’ and kampos, meaning ‘sea monster’.
I am always interested in books about the brain and neurobiology, and have read a great many of them over the years. The Ostby sisters do a great job of making a complex and difficult subject readable and understandable, weaving in memoir and personal anecdote through the science. They are Norwegian, and so are many of the people whom they interview. This also made the book seem really fresh – sometimes the Americentrism of this kind of creative non-fiction can really narrow down thought.
For example, one of the people they speak with is a young man who was injured at Norway’s most horrific mass shooting in 2011. Adrian was hit by the last bullet fired that day, and so he was a witness to the horror. He is tormented by involuntary flashbacks and survivor guilt. Indeed, the whole day was a national trauma for the peaceful Norwegians, a ‘flashbulb memory’. The chapter in which Hilde and Ylva Ostby examine this event, and its reverberations though the national consciousness, is remarkable for its clarity and force in examining the long-term effects of such distress and in finding news ways to manage post-traumatic stress disorder.
The chapter on false and implanted memories is equally riveting, with an exploration of how Norwegian police have changed their methods of interrogation from the US system of confession-focused questioning – which often leads to false confessions – to the British method of ‘investigative interview.’ In fact, every chapter is fascinating! It’s a book I’ll be returning to again and again, I know.
GET YOUR COPY OF DIVING FOR SEAHORSES HEREYou might also like to read Anaesthesia by Kate Cole-Adams:
BOOK REVIEW: Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and The Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole-Adams
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the word-of-mouth folk tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857, the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty, and the crofters are suspicious and hostile, claiming they no longer know their stories. Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach and the crofters tell her that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl has disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the spirits of the unforgiven dead. Initially, Audrey is sure the girls are being abducted, but then she is reminded of her own mother, a Skye woman who disappeared in mysterious circumstances. It seems there is a link to be explored, and Audrey may uncover just what her family have been hiding from her all these years.
My Thoughts:
Take the Isle of Skye in the Highlands of Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century.
Add a curious young woman with a deep love of folklore and fairy tales.
Throw in the body of a girl, her eyes eaten out by birds.
Add a lame old woman with haunted eyes, a young man struggling to find his way in the world, and a laird, a doctor, and a minister who all put their own comfort and desires above the needs of others.
Stir in mist, rain, wind and mud. Add a hefty dollop of secrets and lies. Then deliver it all with pace, style and verve.
The result?
The perfect book for me!
This eerie and atmospheric historical mystery by Anna Mazzola has been justifiably compared to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Beth Underdown’s The Witch Finder’s Sister, two books I absolutely adored. I loved it!
You might also like to read my review of The Last Balfour by Cate Duggan:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-last-balfour-by-cait-duggan
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.
My Thoughts:
James Rebanks’s family have been shepherds in the Lake District for many generations. Growing up on the land, learning his craft at his grandfather’s knee, James has never wanted any other life. His long-ago ancestors would recognise the pattern of his days and seasons, even if they would not understand his Land-Rover or his Twitter feed, for the work of the shepherds on the fells and lake valleys has not changed in centuries. Lambs are born, crows circle, the hay must be harvested, the long snows endured.
A memoir of place as much as of a life, James Rebanks writes with great simplicity and warmth. He is a reader and lover of words as well as a shepherd, and that familiarity with the English language gives his prose a wonderful lilt and rhythm.
Like many people I have always been enchanted by the Lake District because of the great poets and writers that were inspired there – William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome. I made a pilgrimage there a few years ago, and wandered the green hills and tramped through the trees, imagining daffodils dancing and bunny rabbits frisking. I wish I had read this book before I went, as I now have a much deeper and more profound understanding of the landscape – its history, its way of life, and the people who life and work there
You might also like to read my review of The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-reading-cure-how-books-restored-my-appetite-by-laura-freeman
