The Blurb (from Goodreads):
When her elderly mother is hospitalised after an accident, Vicki is summoned to her parents' isolated and run-down ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to care for her father. She has been estranged from her parents for many years (the reasons for which become quickly clear) and is horrified by what she discovers on her arrival.
For years her mother has suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness but carefully hidden her delusions and unpredictable behaviour behind a carefully guarded mask, and has successfully isolated herself and her husband from all their friends. But once in hospital her mask begins to crack and her actions leave everyone baffled and confused ... and eventually scared for their lives.
Meanwhile Vicki's father, who has been systematically starved and harruanged for years, and kept virtually a prisoner in his own home, begins to realise what has happened to him and embarks upon plans of his own to combat his wife.
The ensuing power play between the two takes a dramatic turn and leaves Vicki stuck in the middle of a bizarre and ludicrously strange family dilemma. All this makes for an intensely gripping, yet black-humoured family drama which will leave you on the edge of your seat.
My Thoughts:
This dark confronting memoir won the 2019 Stella Prize, for its terse poetic prose and its unflinching look at dysfunctional family dynamics. Its subject matter makes it a difficult read, and I suspect it one that is likely to divide people.
Vicki grew up in Canada but now lives in Australia. Her parents still live in the family home in cold, remote Alberta. Her mother has fallen and broken her hip. Vicki and her sister travel back to Canada to help, only to find her father isolated and half-starved, and their family house filled with rubbish. It is the first time Vicki has returned home in years. She is estranged from her parents, and both hates and fears her mother. There is a sense that things have happened in the past that Vicki cannot, or will not, talk about. She skirts the topic, hinting at but never describing, acts of malice and deliberate cruelty, that leave the reader curious and unsatisfied (or, at least, left me that way.) I felt so much of the back story was left untold, and Vicki’s decision to leave her sister to deal with the majority of her parents’ care seemed unkind. If we had known more about what her mother had done to cause such hate, this decision might have seemed more like a triumph than a betrayal.
Most of the people in Vicki’s memoir are only described in terms to their relation to her i.e. my mother, my father, my sister, my husband. This too drains away any sense of the personal or intimate.
The book’s greatest strength is the writing, which is lyrical and intense:
“When winter comes, summer is the memory that keeps people going, the remembrance of the long slanting dusk, peonies massed along the path, blossoms as big as balloons, crimson satin petals deepening to the black of dried blood in the waning light.”
And I loved this description of the difference between Vicki and her sister (though to me it seemed as if Vicki was carrying plenty of rage too):
Scratch me and you get grief. It will well up surreptitiously and slip away down any declivity, perhaps undermining the foundations but keeping a low profile and trying not to inconvenience anybody. Scratch my sister...you'll get rage, a geyser of it, like hitting oil after drilling dry, hot rock for months and it suddenly, shockingly, plumes up into the sky, black and viscous, coating everything as it falls to earth. Take care when you scratch.
I also loved The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - read my review here:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-glass-castle-by-jeannette-walls
I first encountered Rainer Maria Rilke when a friend gave me a copy of LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET when I was in my early twenties. It spoke to me very powerfully, and some lines were deeply engraved into my soul:
“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”
I read LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET many times, and moved on to reading all of Rilke’s poems and letters. My favourite collection was called RILKE’S BOOK OF HOURS, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. Their version of Rilke was simple, yet profoundly powerful. It was a book I often picked up to browse through, then would not look at again for years …until I needed it again.
I also read a number of biographies of his life, which was one long struggle to live deeply and intensely, to write truthfully, and to understand love.
Born in Prague, in what was then part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, in 1875, Rilke spent much of his childhood dressed as a girl, as his mother grieved for a daughter who had died after only a week of life some time before his birth.
Unsurprisingly Rilke had a difficult adolescence, was sent to a military school that he hated, and then on to various universities (though he never graduated with a degree). He had a long and intense relationship with a married woman, Lou Andreas-Salomé, who later studied with Sigmund Freud in Vienna. Rilke travelled with Lou and her husband to Russia and met Leo Tolstoy and Boris Pasternak, and later lived in Paris where he worked for the sculptor Auguste Rodin (and was sacked by him for taking poetic license with the letters he wrote on the sculptor’s behalf).
At the age of twenty-five, he married another sculptor, Clara Westhoff, but they had an unconventional marriage, each pursuing their own careers and leaving their daughter Ruth to be raised by Clara’s parents. I have often wondered what their daughter felt about this, and what impact it had upon her. Rilke and his wife then had what he called an ‘interior’ marriage – a relationship conducted mainly through intense, passionate, and self-justifying letters.
His experiences in World War I – which saw him unable to escape from Germany - lead to a long battle with writer’s block. He found refuge in Switzerland, and there wrote many of his most intense and lyrical poems during a high pitch of creativity in February 1922 – a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit". Of these, perhaps the First Elegy is the most famous (and one of my own personal favourites):
‘Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels’
Orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed
in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure,
and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying.’
(This translation by Edward Snow, from ‘The Poetry of Rilke, published North Point Press, 2009).
A long struggle with his health followed, and Rilke died in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, at a sanatorium in Switzerland, from leukemia.
It is said he died after pricking his finger on a rose thorn …
Given his obsession with roses, this seems fitting. He wrote as his epitaph for his grave:
“Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch,
Lust,
niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern”
This is usually translated as:
“Rose, oh pure contradiction,
joy,
of being no-one's sleep under so many lids.”
Though I have also seen it translated as:
‘Oh Rose, pure puzzlement,
desire,
to be nobody’s sleep beneath so many eyelids.’
What the English translation does not convey is the punning similarity between the German for eyelids (Lidern) and songs (Liedern) – so that there may be a covert reference to music and perhaps poetry in this strange and enigmatic set of lines.
I have wondered about this epigraph a lot, trying to understand it. Reading a number of different academic articles about it, I find that no-one really seems to know what it means.
The comparison between rose petals and eyelids may refer to something Rilke wrote in his diary in 1900:
‘I’ve invented a new form of caress: placing a rose gently on a closed eye until its coolness can no longer be felt; only the gentle petal will continue to rest on the eyelid like sleep just before dawn.’
Or perhaps it has more to do with another favourite poem of mine, from Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus:
Erect no gravestone. Just let the rose
bloom every year for him.
For this is Orpheus: metamorphosis
into one thing, then another.
We need not search for other names.
It is Orpheus in the singing, once and for all time.
He comes and goes. Is it not enough
that sometimes he outlasts a bowl of roses?
Oh, if you could understand -- he has no choice but to disappear,
even should he long to stay. As his song
exceeds the present moment,
so he is already gone where we cannot follow.
The lyre's strings do not constrain his hands.
It is in moving farther on that he obeys.
(This translation comes from Joanne Macy http://www.joannamacy.net/poemsilove/rilke-favorites/198-erect-no-gravestones.html The translation by Edward Snow begin ‘Erect no monument. Allow the rose/to unfurl each year on his behalf ..’ and finishes ‘The lyre’s snare doesn’t trap his hands. And he obeys, even as he overreaches.’ One of the problems with reading Rilke in translation is that there are so many different versions! I tend to have favourites that I return to. Of my personal collections, I tend to find Joanne Macy’s translations simpler and more spiritual, Edward Snow’s more literal, and Stephen Cohn’s the most intensely poetic. His translation begins ‘Build no memorial but let the rose/blossom each year according to his pleasure; for this is Orpheus …’ )
I read Rilke in depth again when I was writing my latest novel THE BEAST’S GARDEN, which is a retelling of the Grimm brother’s version of Beauty & the Beast set in Nazi Germany. I was initially drawn to rediscover his work because of Rilke’s obsession with roses, (a potent motif in the French version of the fairy tale).
He has many poems that feature roses as their subject, or as a symbol or metaphor. I’ve always loved these lines, about rose petals falling:
‘And what they shed: how it can be light or heavy,
a cloak, a burden, a wing, a mask — it just depends —
and how they let it fall: as if disrobing for a lover.’
The same poem ends:
“And aren't they all doing the same: only containing themselves,
if to contain oneself means: to transform the world outside
and wind and rain and patience of spring
and guilt and restlessness and disguised fate
and darkness of earth at evening
all the way to the errancy, flight, and coming on of clouds
all the way to the vague influence of the distant stars
into a handful of inwardness.
Now it lies free of cares in the open roses.’
(Rilke, Rainer Maria. "A Bowl of Roses." Trans. Galway Kinell & Hannah Liebman. American Poetry Review 1999 28(3):61
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/poemquot/rosebowl.html
As I was researching and writing THE BEAST’S GARDEN, I read many of my favourite Rilke poems again, and discovered many other key motifs in his work that resonated strongly with the book I was writing – images of birds and angels, flying and falling, stars and dark spaces, and – most importantly - a heartfelt grappling with the meaning of love and death.
I read again a passage that had moved me strongly as a young woman:
‘Love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.’ (from the Seventh Letter in Letters to a Young Poet, New World Library edition).
Here are some of the poems that I reference in my novel.
Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened.
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.
Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb praying as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.
Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
The non-being inside you allows you to vibrate
in full resonance with your world. Use it for once.
To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.
(from Sonnets to Orpheus, No 13, trans. Joanne Macy http://yearwithrilke.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/be-ahead-of-all-parting.html)
and another:
I love you, gentlest of Ways
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.
You, the great homesickness we could never shake
off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us,
you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us,
on the day you made us you created yourself,
and we grew sturdy in your sunlight…
Let your hand rest on the rim of Heaven now
And mutely bear the darkness we bring over you.
(from The Book of Hours, I, 25 – trans. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy, Rilke’s Book of Hourse: Love Poems to God, Riverhead Books, 1996)
Dying is strange and hard
if it is not our death, but a death
that takes us by storm,
when we've ripened none within us.
(from The Book of Hours III; 8 – trans. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy, Rilke’s Book of Hourse: Love Poems to God, Riverhead Books, 1996)
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
From The Book of Hours II, 16
(Hourse: Love Poems to God, Riverhead Books, 1996)
And from the same book (which is one of my favourites):
The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All my becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.”
And another:
You, darkness, of whom I am born —
I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes all the rest.
But the darkness embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations — just as they are.
It lets me imagine a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.
(Here is an interesting blog on the difficulties of translating Rilke, with a number of different interpretations of this poem.
http://www.beyond-the-pale.uk/rilke.htm)
Rediscovering the work of this intense, lyrical, and mystical poet has been one of the greatest joys of my journey in writing THE BEAST’S GARDEN – I hope you will discover some of his work too.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Berlin, 1938. The eve of war. Ernst Schäfer, a young, ambitious zoologist, keen hunter and devoted husband of the beautiful Herta, has come to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who invites him to lead a group of SS scientists to the frozen mountains of Tibet. Their secret mission: to search for the origins of the Aryan race. For Schäfer, the personal consequences of failure are unthinkable, yet little does he know this outlandish expedition will become a prelude to the unimaginable horror soon to overrun Europe.
Using material discovered in field diaries, letters, films, photographs and secret documents, the novel tells the story behind Schäfer through the eyes of his ill-fated lover, Herta. Nazism proved a convenient short-cut to personal glory for Schäfer, who, accompanied by a group of SS scientists, trekked across inhospitable, treacherous terrain on a mission to conduct experiments to 'prove' Nordic heritage. In 1939, the team was flown out of India on Himmler’s flying boats. Schäfer was an instant celebrity on his return to Berlin and, at just twenty-eight, he became one of the most celebrated men in Hitler’s Reich. But his world was about to change, as science was enlisted for racial murder and Himmler sent Schäfer to Dachau to observe and film medical experiments.
The Hollow Bones explores how quickly human relationships and an affinity with nature can be buried under cold ambition.
My Thoughts:
Books set during World War II are immensely popular at the moment, and I read a great many of them because it is one of my favourite periods in history. The Hollow Bones by Leah Kaminsky is one of the most unusual I’ve read. Inspired by the true story of the 1938 expedition to Tibet by the German zoologist Ernst Schäfer, it is not a conventional historical adventure story but a slow, melancholy magic realist novel that reflects on the nature of complicity and the very purpose of life.
Ernst Schäfer’s expedition to Tibet was funded by Heinrich Himmler, head of the sinister Schutzstaffel (SS), who wished to find proof that the Germans were descended from an ancient warrior race. Schäfer does not care who funds his research, as long as he gets to pursue his passion for hunting and collecting. His loving wife Herta is not so sure. She has a disabled sister who is kept hidden for fear the authorities will think their bloodline is tainted; no SS officer could marry unless his wife could prove the purity of their blood.
The novel moves back and forth between the points of view of Herta and Ernst, with a series of poignant scenes that show the difficulty of remaining morally uncorrupted in a world ruled by Nazis. Then another narrative thread emerges, one that is most unexpected and unique: the voice of a baby panda which was shot and stuffed by Ernst Schäfer and is kept in the Philadelphia Museum of National History. The baby panda tells his story in short, stilted sentences that are sometimes childish and sometimes profound:
‘I trouble them; my Death makes them feel uncomfortable. But how is my Eternal Life any worse than Crocodile whose skin covers President’s feet, or Cow whose hide is worn by Small around her middle? I command more respect than the Animal Parts they wear, carry, eat; at least my life has not been anonymously erased.’
At first, I was not sure of the intrusion of the voice of this sentient stuffed animal, particularly when the cub refers to seeing the Writer (i.e. Leah Kaminsky herself) visiting the museum:
‘Writer came once and visited me every day for an entire week they called Fellowship … Writer reads to me sometimes and apologises, calling herself a voyeur. Her heart is heavy because I was torn away and preserved, but her hand pushes Magic Stick furiously across the blank page because I am here. She tells me I am the true Storyteller … My Visitors are like her Readers, she says, each one claiming ownership over the interpretation of the story I tell.’
This authorial intrusion into a work of fiction took me aback. At first I did not like the self-conscious tone, the awkwardness of the device. ‘What a fickle, grumpy woman Writer can be,’ the panda says. But I admired Leah Kaminsky’s boldness in making such an unusual narrative choice, and in the end it became one of my favourite parts of the novel. It gave the book such moral gravity and such freshness of tone. And I’ve continued thinking about the book long after I turned the last page.
If you've enjoyed this review, you may like Citadel by Kate Mosse:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-citadel-by-kate-mosse
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
It isn't often you receive a letter from the dead. When Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in south-west France where, eight years ago, she opened up a chocolate shop. But Vianne is completely unprepared for what she finds there. Women veiled in black, the scent of spices and peppermint tea, and there, on the bank of the river Tannes, facing the square little tower of the church of Saint-Jerome like a piece on a chessboard - slender, bone-white and crowned with a silver crescent moon - a minaret. Nor is it only the incomers from North Africa that have brought big changes to the community. Father Reynaud, Vianne's erstwhile adversary, is now disgraced and under threat. Could it be that Vianne is the only one who can save him?
My Thoughts:
Chocolat is one of my favourite books and Joanne Harris is one of my favourite authors. Her novel Five Quarters of the Orange will always be listed in my top 5 favourite adult books.
However, when I heard that she had written another sequel to Chocolat, I didn’t squeal with excitement and rush out to the bookshop straightaway, as I usually do when one of my favourite writers publishes a new book.
I did go to the bookshop and look at the book, wondering, weighing it in my hands. The gorgeous cover swayed me, the blurb on the back cover enticed me (a return to the little French village of Lansquenet, which had so charmed me in Chocolat … I did like the sound of that).
So I opened the book and read the first chapter. It reads, in its entirety:
‘Someone once told me that, in France alone, a quarter of a million letters are delivered every year to the dead.
What she didn’t tell me is that sometimes the dead write back.’
That’s it. The whole first chapter.
I love writers who have the courage to write such short and simple chapters. Somehow they are always powerful.
With a growing sense of excitement and joy, I turned the page and read the next page and then the next. I was hooked. I wanted to read more. And so I bought Peaches for Monsieur le Curé and took it home with me.
Before I go on and tell you what I feel about the rest of the book, perhaps I should explain why I hadn’t squealed with excitement at the news that Joanne Harris was writing another book about Vianne Rocher.
The fault lies with The Lollipop Shoes, which sits between Chocolat and Peaches. I had squealed in excitement and rushed out to but that one, but, for me, it just didn’t have the same charm and magic as Chocolat. I think it may be because the story alternated between the points of view of Vianne and the antagonist of the story, Zozie de l’Alba, which not only made the story much longer but also took out the element of surprise since we were privy to her thoughts and feelings right from the very beginning and so were never left to wonder whether she was friend or foe. I was also disappointed to find Vianne not working her own particular brand of magic anymore.
I am very happy to say, though, that Peaches for Monsieur le Cure has restored all my faith in Joanne Harris as a novelist. The book is a pleasure to read, vivid, compelling and surprising, with lots of beautiful descriptions of food and cooking and eating, which was one of my favourite aspects of Chocolat. It’s a pleasure to be back in the small French village that we know and love, with its cast of eccentric characters. It’s a clever twist to have Vianne’s former antagonist now one of the primary points of view, and Reynard’s character – stiff-necked, prickly, stubborn yet wanting to do good – is one of the delights of the novel.
The Blurb:
The tale of how the hero Theseus killed the Minotaur, finding his way out of the labyrinth using Ariadne’s ball of red thread, is one of the most intriguing, suggestive and persistent of all myths, and the labyrinth – the beautiful, confounding and terrifying building created for the half-man, half-bull monster – is one of the foundational symbols of human ingenuity and artistry.
Charlotte Higgins, author of the Baillie Gifford-shortlisted Under Another Sky, tracks the origins of the story of the labyrinth in the poems of Homer, Catullus, Virgil and Ovid, and with them builds an ingenious edifice of her own. She follows the idea of the labyrinth through the Cretan excavations of Sir Arthur Evans, the mysterious turf labyrinths of northern Europe, the church labyrinths of medieval French cathedrals and the hedge mazes of Renaissance gardens. Along the way, she traces the labyrinthine ideas of writers from Dante and Borges to George Eliot and Conan Doyle, and of artists from Titian and Velázquez to Picasso and Eva Hesse.
Her intricately constructed narrative asks what it is to be lost, what it is to find one’s way, and what it is to travel the confusing and circuitous path of a lived life. Red Thread is, above all, a winding and unpredictable route through the byways of the author’s imagination – one that leads the reader on a strange and intriguing journey, full of unexpected connections and surprising pleasures
My Thoughts:
I’ve been dipping in and out of this fascinating book on mazes and labyrinths for quite a while now, sometimes reading pages and pages, sometimes only a few lines. That is because this book does not have standard-sized chapters and a strong taut narrative thread, but is instead a winding convoluted exploration of the history and meaning of labyrinths through history, myth, art, psychology and literature.
It begins with her own visit to the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete as a child, a place that I have just been. According to the myth, King Minos ordered the construction of a labyrinth at Knossos to house his wife’s monstrous illegitimate child, the Minotaur. Born with a man’s body and a bull’s head, he feeds in the darkness on the blood of sacrificed youths and maidens. One day, a prince named Theseus comes to Knossos. The Minotaur’s half-sister, Ariadne, gives him a sword and a spool of red thread so that Theseus can kill the monster and escape the labyrinth. It’s a myth with a great many layers of meaning and interpretation, and one that I am now working on myself in a novel-in-progress called The Crimson Thread.
Like Charlotte Higgins, I have always been fascinated by mazes and labyrinths, and by the Minotaur story. I loved this book, which ranges from Dante to Freud to Picasso, and it sparked many new ideas for me. A truly intriguing and informative book.
If you've enjoyed this review, you might also like:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-an-odyssey-a-father-a-son-an-epic-by-daniel-mendelsohn
Most people – when they think of German women’s attitudes towards Adolf Hitler – imagine star-struck blonde Frauleins with their hands stretched high in the Nazi salute.
Some German women were even said to eat the gravel upon which Hitler trod.
There were some German women who feared and hated the Nazi leader, however, and who risked their lives to resist his brutal dictatorship.
Sophie Scholl is probably the most famous. A university student in Munich, she and her brother and some friends set up the White Rose group in the summer of 1942. Together Hans Scholl and his friends Willi Graf and Christoph Probst spread anti-Nazi graffiti and wrote six political leaflets, which Sophie helped distribute in letter-boxes and through the mail. On 18 February 1943, Sophie and her brother took the sixth leaflet to the university to spread around the campus. A janitor grew suspicious and followed them, and so Sophie threw all the leaflets over a balcony. The siblings were caught and turned over to the Gestapo. Christoph was soon arrested too. After a mock-trial, they were all beheaded. Hans was 24, Christoph was 22, and Sophie was only 21.
Hans & Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst
In Berlin, another resistance group was secretly meeting to make plans to overthrow Hitler. Like the White Rose, they tried to express their horror and outrage at the Nazi regime through graffiti and leaflets. They also smuggled Jews and other political prisoners out of the country, gave food and clothing to those who were suffering, and collected evidence of atrocities.
This group was called The Red Orchestra by the Gestapo, who suspected them of selling State secrets to the Soviets and harbouring Russian spies. The group – who simply called themselves the Zirkel (meaning circle) – certainly did try to warn Stalin about Germany’s imminent invasion, though they received no payment for the risks they took. They also warned the US and Great Britain, only to have their approaches mistrusted and ignored.
The Zirkel was led by two couples - Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen and Arvid and Mildred Harnack - and so contemporary scholars often now call them the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Group.
Harro was an officer in the Luftwaffe, and – after the war broek out - worked for Goring’s Reich Aviation Ministry in Berlin. Libertas was the daughter of one of Berlin’s most famous couturiers, Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye, and the granddaughter of Prince Philip of Eulenburg and Hertefeld, once an influential courtier at the imperial court of Kaiser Wilhelm II. She had worked for the MGM office in Berlin, but quit her job and went to work for Goebbels’ propaganda office in the hope of getting access to confidential information.
Arvid was a lawyer and economist who took up a position in the Reich Economic Ministry, while his American-born wife Mildred – previously a university lecturer and author – did translation work for various German publishers and newspapers.
The group’s primary aim was to gather and pass on military intelligence to the Allies, and so they lived double lives, working inside the Nazi death machine whilst trying to sabotage it from within.
Eventually the Gestapo broke the covert operation, and Harro, Libertas, Arvid, Mildred and many more were arrested and executed. Mildred holds the unhappy distinction of being the only American woman executed by the Third Reich.
Mildred Harnack
There were many other women in the Zirkel, such as the half-Jewish artist and photographer Elizabeth Schumacher, and Greta Kuckhoff, who was married to the playwright and dramaturge Adam Kuchoff. Cato Bontjes van Beek (aged 22) and Liane Berkowitz (aged 19) were the youngest of the group, both being executed by guillotine in 1943. (All these women feature as characters in my novel THE BEAST’S GARDEN.)
Also working in Berlin at the same time was a Jewish circle of friends generally known as the Baum Group, named for its leaders, Herbert and Marianne Baum. Most people in the group were young – aged in their twenties – and working as forced labour in Berlin’s armament factories.
Other members included Sala and Martin Kochmann, Heinz Birnbaum, Heinz and Marianne Joachim, Edith and Harry Cohan, Gerd and Hanni Meyer, and the sisters Hella and Alice Hirsch.
Hella Hirsch
The group worked to help the plight of the Berlin Jews, and sabotaged the weapons they were helping to build. They undertook bold graffiti campaigns, and then – in September 1942 - they attempted to blow up Goebbels’ anti-Soviet propaganda exhibit in Berlin, using materials stolen from the factories in which they worked. Only a small fire resulted, but the event was an embarrassment to the Propaganda Minister.
The defiant saboteurs were soon rounded up, tried and executed. Herbert Baum died in prison, with an official report of suicide. Sala Kochmann tried to fling herself from the windows of the Gestapo headquarters and broke her back. She was carried to her execution on a stretcher. Three of the young women – including Alice Hirsch who was only 19 – were spared the guillotine but were then sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. (The Baum Group also features in THE BEAST’S GARDEN).
Another interesting woman who did her best to resist Hitler was the Countess So'oa'emalelagi von Ballestrem-Solf, known as ‘Lagi’ to her friends. Her name is Samoan, given to her when she was born by her father, who was the Governor of samoa in the 1920s and early 1930s. Lagi and her mother Johanna Solf hid fugitive Jews in their house and helped them escape across the border into Switzerland. They also helped prisoners-of-war and smuggled letters and information out of Germany. A Gestapo spy infiltrated their circle and betrayed them. Most of their friends were executed, but Lagi and her mother remained in prison. After a bombing raid destroyed all the evidence, they were both released, but were so damaged in their health from their time in prison that both died a few years after the war.
Finally, no discussion of the resistance of German women would be complete without including the famous Rosenstrasse protest, one of the largest public displays against Hitler.
The event happened in early 1943. The Nazis were quickening their round-ups of Berlin Jews, with thousands being deported in horrific conditions to concentration camps.
Up until this point, Jewish men who had married a non-Jewish woman before the passing of the Nuremburg laws had been protected from the worst of the atrocities. However, Nazi authorities had decided to ignore earlier protestations of protection, and had arrested a large number of these men. They were locked inside a Jewish welfare office on Rosenstrasse.
Their wives went to protest their arrests, surrounding the building and refusing to leave even when soldiers threatened to fire into the crowd. For over a week, the women picketed the building, making it impossible to transfer the prisoners to the train station. Many threats were made, but the women did not back down and eventually the prisoners were released, including those that had already been sent to Auschwitz.
A moving set of sculptures in rose-coloured stone now marks the spot where German women faced up to machine-guns to try and save their loved ones.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Dazzling, poetic and vivid storytelling from one of Australia's greatest writers, which tells the bloody, brutal and enthralling story of the epic journey of the First Fleet.
Originally published as a multi-part serial in The Australian, By Sea and Stars tells the story of the epic voyage which led to the founding of our nation, as told from the point of view of the people who took part - willingly or unwillingly - in it. Drawing from historical sources of the time, including letters and journals, Trent Dalton, one of Australia's best writers, brings this epic voyage, and the people who went on it, to vivid life.
This is not dry history of dates and names. These are gripping stories of real people, from the lowest to the highest. From terrified nine year old chimney sweep and convict John Hudson to conscientious Lieutenant Ralph Clark, pining after his wife and son, to the brave and determined Captain-General Arthur Phillip, the brightest star of the British Navy: these are the people who made the voyage, and these are their stories - of death, duty, glory, lust, violence, escape, mutiny - and a great southern land...
My Thoughts:
By Sea & Stars tells the stories of some of the people whose lives were changed forever by the intrepid journey of the First Fleet from England to Australia in the late 18th century. This is not a textbook, filled with dry facts & explanations, but rather a collection of vividly drawn character sketches & vignettes, drawn from diaries, letters & court records & inspired by the true stories of the convicts, soldiers and local Eora people whose lives were so dramatically altered.
The First Fleet comprised eleven ships, carrying 1420 people in total. Of these, 778 were convicts. The fleet departed Portsmouth on 13 May 1787 and landed in ‘Sydney Cove’ on 26 January 1788 – eight months and thirteen days later.
The book starts with the crime of a nine-year-old chimney sweep named John Hudson who stole a linen shirt, five silk stockings, two aprons and a pistol and so was sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay. He spent three long years on a floating prison hulk moored on the Thames before the Fleet at last set sail. At twelve, he was the youngest convict on board.
Another story brought to life is that of Lieutenant Ralph Clark, who hated serving on the voyage and missed his dear wife Alicia terribly. He called the female convicts ‘damned whores’, but ended up having an affair with 17-year-old Mary Branham, who later gave birth to a daughter named Alicia.
The Fleet’s safe landing in Australia triggered ‘an impulsive night of unbridled passion between landed sailors and female convicts’. This is explained away as the ‘purging of eight months of collective fear and tension’. I was interested by this, and would have liked a more thoughtful appraisal of the event. Were the female convicts willing partners in this impulsive unbridled passion?
Similarly, I was troubled by Trent Dalton’s side-stepping of the biggest issue at the heart of the story of the First Fleet – an event now called ‘Invasion Day’ by many people. I would have liked to have known so much more about the lives of the local Eora people, and how the arrival of the First Fleet impacted them.
Trent Dalton’s writing is lyrical and evocative, and he does a great job of breathing life into the historical record. The book was originally written as a series of articles for ‘The Australian’ newspaper, and this is both an advantage & a disadvantage. It’s very readable, and I whizzed through it in less than an hour. However, it does feel rather lightweight & flimsy, and I was left wanting more.
Nonetheless, By Sea & Stars is a great introduction to the epic journey of the First Fleet & really illuminates the human stories behind the history.
BUY BY SEA & STARS NOWYou may also love One Enchanted Evening by Charlotte Smith:
BOOK REVIEW: One Enchanted Evening by Charlotte Smith
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Scotland, 1561, and a ship comes across the North Sea carrying home Mary, the young, charismatic Queen of Scots, returning after thirteen years in the French court to wrest back control of her throne.
The Blackadder family has long awaited for the Queen's return to bring them justice. Alison Blackadder, disguised as a boy from childhood to protect her from the murderous clan that stole their lands, must learn to be a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, building a web of dependence and reward.
Just as the Queen can trust nobody, Alison discovers lies, danger, and treachery at every turn.
This sweeping, imaginative, and original tale of political intrigue, misplaced loyalty, secret passion, and implacable revenge is based on real characters and events from the reign of Mary Queen of Scots.
The Raven's Heart is a breathtaking epic from a bold, fresh voice. Winner of the Varuna HarperCollins Manuscript Development Award, The Raven's Heart was published in Australia in 2011.
Jesse Blackadder finally had enough of people asking if she was related to Rowan Atkinson, star of the BBC sitcom Blackadder. She traveled to Scotland to find the origins of her surname and discovered the ruins of Blackadder House on the banks of the Blackadder River. The Raven's Heart grew from there. Jesse lives in Byron Bay, Australia.
My Thoughts:
I was sure I was going to love this book as soon as I read the subtitle: ‘The Story of a Quest, a Castle and Mary Queen of Scot’. And I did love it! The Raven’s Heart is a fabulous, dark, surprising historical novel, with a hefty dose of mystery, intrigue, and passion.
Jesse Blackadder says that she had finally had had enough of people asking if she was related to Rowan Atkinson, star of the BBC sitcom ‘Blackadder’. So she travelled to Scotland to find the origins of her surname and discovered the ruins of Blackadder House on the banks of the Blackadder River. Wondering about how the castle came to fall, Jesse Blackadder began to imagine this book ... and then began to write it.
It all made me very jealous of her – what a fabulous last name and what a fabulous heritage to have.
As you all may know, I’ve been fascinated by Mary, Queen of Scots and Scotland since I was a child and so any book set during that bloody and turbulent period was always going to draw me in. However, I thought this version of the famous events of the 1560s was thoughtful, original and unusual, and I really loved the book.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
'Scorching, self-scouring: a young woman finds her steel and learns to wield it' - Helen Garner
EGGSHELL SKULL: A well-established legal doctrine that a defendant must 'take their victim as they find them'. If a single punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime.
But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done?
Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case.
This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.
My Thoughts:
A poised and well-calibrated memoir of a young woman who decides to face her childhood abuser and the courts, despite her inside knowledge of the ordeal that awaits her. The title comes from a legal term that means that, if someone lashes out against someone else and they die because their skull is eggshell-thin, then the attacker is still the cause of their death and so therefore guilty.
Bri Lee is a lawyer. When she was a little girl, one of her brother’s friends assaulted her on a trampoline in their suburban back garden. She never told anyone. The memory haunted her, however. Shame and self-loathing caused a long struggle with eating disorders and self-harm. When she began to work as a judge’s associate in the Queensland District Court, the number of sexual assault cases that came before the bench triggered her memories. Shame turned to anger and to resolve. Even though she knew the difficulty of getting a conviction so long after the event, she at last decided to pursue justice. Eggshell Skull is the story of her journey, and it’s fierce and powerful and very moving.
BUY EGGSHELL SKULL NOWYou may also like my review of Butterfly On A Pin by Alannah Hill:
