The blurb (from Goodreads):
Lara had always wished she was a dog, and one day, just for a short time, she actually became one. This is how it happened.
In a mulberry brick house on the harbour that Lara explores while her mother cleans, Lara meets Pierre, a boy about her age with a beautiful antique puppet theatre. With his puppets, he tells her a story about a boy whose family has been eaten by wolves. The boy is lost. He needs to find his grandmother. Lara takes the part of a dog, but suddenly she can no longer tell where she ends and Dog begins. Or is she Wolf? Caught up in Pierre's story, Lara has to fight to protect her identity - and her new friend. Can she help Pierre find his way home?
Pierre's Not There is a lyrical, captivating and imaginative story that can be read on many levels.
My Thoughts:
Pierre’s Not There is the latest children’s book by the Australian Children’s Laureate, Ursula Dubosarsky. It’s a delightful magical fable with subtle undercurrents of darker themes - a girl turns into a wolf to save a boy who is trapped in a sorrowful past. The story has some beautiful fairy tale elements to it, as well as a magical puppet theatre, and is the kind of book I would have happily devoured as an eight-year-old. Beautifully written as always, with lovely illustrations by Christopher Nielson.
You might also like to read my review of The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-post-the-extremely-inconvenient-adventures-of-bronte-mettlestone-by-jaclyn-moriarty
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
In this timeless tale of two mortal princesses- one beautiful and one unattractive- C.S. Lewis reworks the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche into an enduring piece of contemporary fiction. This is the story of Orual, Psyche's embittered and ugly older sister, who possessively and harmfully loves Psyche. Much to Orual's frustration, Psyche is loved by Cupid, the god of love himself, setting the troubled Orual on a path of moral development.
Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, the struggles between sacred and profane love are illuminated as Orual learns that we cannot understand the intent of the gods "till we have faces" and sincerity in our souls and selves.
My Thoughts:
When I was a little girl, I spent many a long summer holiday with my great-aunts in the seaside town of Merewether, about an hour's drive north of my hometown of Sydney.
I remember one year, when I was about twelve, lying on the floor in their living-room and looking through the bookshelves in search of something to read. My eye fell upon a novel called Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis, and I grabbed it eagerly. I loved the Narnia books - they were my all-time favourite books - and so I confidently expected I would love this book too.
The very first line both startled me and intrigued me:
I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.
It was clear at once this was not going to be a tale set in the magical, funny, wondrous world of Narnia, but something much darker and more grown-up. With a little shiver of anticipation, I lay down behind my great-aunt's green velvet wingchair and gave myself over to the story, the first adult book I ever read.
Till We Have Faces was Lewis's last book, published in 1956, the year that he married Joy Davidman, the American poet and writer whose tragic death in 1960 was immortalized in the movie Shadowlands with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. It is believed that Joy inspired Orual, the central character in Till We Have Faces.
The book is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of ‘Cupid and Psyche’. I was not familiar with the myth when I read the book, but understood it easily, possibly because of the strong echoes the story has with that of the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ fairytale.
In brief, the myth tells the story of Psyche, who wed Cupid, the God of Love; he gave her everything a woman could want except the sight of his own face. Her jealous elder sisters convinced her to take a candle and shine it upon her husband's face while he slept. Psyche did so, but a drop of hot wax fell on Cupid's face and woke him. Angry and disappointed, he cast her out and she had to undertake a set of seemingly impossible tasks before she could win him back.
Lewis said that the Cupid and Psyche myth had haunted him all his life. He tried to write it in poetic form, and as a play, before at last writing it from the point of view of the jealous older sister, Orual.
Originally the manuscript was titled Bareface, with an interplay of multiple meanings: Orual's facial deformity, which she hides with a mask; Psyche's mortal beauty; and the invisible god's Cupid and Aphrodite, who are supposedly the most beautiful of all. However, Lewis's editor rejected this title, thinking it sounded like a Western, and so Lewis re-named it after a line from the book in which Orual says, 'How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?'
When I first read this book, at the age of twelve, I don't think I understood what C.S. Lewis meant by this line. I do know that when I read it – and recognized it as the title and so having some kind of special significance – it stirred all sorts of new thoughts and feelings in me. I dimly realized that Orual could only grasp the truth about the gods – and so understand the meaning of the universe – once she had realized the truth about herself.
Here is the whole quote:
Lightly men talk of saying what they mean... When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak openly, nor let us answer. Till that need can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
I was puzzled and moved and enthralled by this passage, and bookmarked it in my great-aunt's book with a frangipani flower that had fallen from the tree in their garden. That flower, now brown and withered and without fragrance, still marks the page.
With this book, C.S Lewis somehow taught me that stories can contain in them some kind of truth that cannot always be easily expressed, or understood with the intellect alone. He also gave me a deep and abiding love of stories that retell older stories, and find new truths hidden within the old.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
When Sheila Kohler was thirty-seven, she received the heart-stopping news that her sister Maxine, only two years older, was killed when her husband drove them off a deserted road in Johannesburg. Stunned by the news, she immediately flew back to the country where she was born, determined to find answers and forced to reckon with his history of violence and the lingering effects of their most unusual childhood--one marked by death and the misguided love of their mother.
In her signature spare and incisive prose, Sheila Kohler recounts the lives she and her sister led. Flashing back to their storybook childhood at the family estate, Crossways, Kohler tells of the death of her father when she and Maxine were girls, which led to the family abandoning their house and the girls being raised by their mother, at turns distant and suffocating. We follow them to the cloistered Anglican boarding school where they first learn of separation and later their studies in Rome and Paris where they plan grand lives for themselves--lives that are interrupted when both marry young and discover they have made poor choices. Kohler evokes the bond between sisters and shows how that bond changes but never breaks, even after death.
My Thoughts:
Sheila Kohler is a South-African-born author best known for her novel Cracks, inspired by her experiences as a girl in a boarding school in the remote African veld which was turned into a movie a few years ago starring Eva Green. She has written that her novel was partly inspired by her long obsession with the theme of violence in intimate relationships, caused by the death of her sister after her brutal, controlling brother-in-law drove their car off the road.
Once We Were Sisters is Sheila Kohler’s memoir of her privileged childhood growing up in apartheid South Africa, the traumatic death of her father and consequent banishment to boarding school with her older sister Maxine, and her escape from the claustrophobic family atmosphere to Paris, university, and sexual freedom.
At the centre of the memoir is her close bond with her sister, who stayed behind in Johannesburg to marry and raise a family. Sheila Kohler writes of their narcissistic alcoholic mother, their struggles to balance freedom and family, and Sheila’s growing fear for her sister who has become trapped in a brutal marriage. The writing is direct and incisive, constantly circling back to Maxine’s tragic and mysterious death, and the shock waves it sends through Sheila’s life.
You might also like my review of Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-eggs…skull-by-bri-lee
I am very excited to be able to announce I have begun a new novel!
It’s a retelling of the ancient myth of Psyche, a haunting tale of love and loss and redemption which follows a young woman’s journey to the underworld and back as she seeks to atone for her betrayal of her beloved. The story of ‘Cupid & Psyche’ has been told for more than eight thousand years. I hope to infuse it with new life as a life-affirming celebration of feminine desire, strength and disobedience.
In brief, the myth centres on a young woman named Psyche who was so beautiful that people compared her to Venus, the goddess of love. The goddess was angered and sent her son Cupid to punish Psyche by pricking her with one of his arrows. But Psyche woke and looked at him, and he was so startled that he pierced himself with his own arrow and was overcome with longing for her.
Cupid contrived to have Pysche brought to him as his bride but told her that she must never look at his face, coming to her only under the cover of darkness.
Psyche’s sisters persuade her to light a lamp and look upon him. Psyche leans too close in her ardour, and a drop of burning oil falls upon his skin. The young god had never before felt pain. He flees from her, and Psyche realises that she has lost everything. She begs for help from Aphrodite, who sets her three impossible tasks. Psyche fulfils the three tasks but then is given a final quest that is truly impossible. Aphrodite tells Psyche that she must fetch beauty from Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. This means Psyche must die.
So she climbs to the top of a tower and is about to throw herself down when the wind speaks to her. She is told the secret of travelling to the Underworld, and how to prevail upon Charon, the ferryman of the dead, to take her across the black waters of the Styx. Psyche summons all her courage and sets out on her dark and dangerous journey into the land of the dead. However, the box she is given does not contain beauty; it contains infernal sleep. She looks within and is struck down into a cursed sleep. Only then, having risked everything for love, does Psyche find her true destiny. Cupid finds her and forgives her, and kisses her so she can live again.
It was first written down by the author Lucius Apuleius in Metamorphoses, but appears in ancient Roman art from the 6th century BCE, with Psyche usually distinguished by butterfly wings, since the word ‘psyche’, in ancient Greek, means ‘the breath of life’ or ‘soul’, as well as ‘butterfly’.
I have been fascinated by the story of Psyche since I read Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis when I was a child. I’ve written before about my discovery of this little-known novel by the author of my beloved Narnia books HERE.
I first read it when I was about twelve, and spending the summer holidays with my great-aunts. I was lying on the floor in their living-room, looking through their bookshelves, and saw a book with the name of my favourite author on the spine. I grabbed it at once, and took it outside to read in the shade of my great-aunts’ frangipani tree. The book was, of course, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis – but it was very different from his Narnia books.
The very first line both startled me and intrigued me:
I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.
Reading C. S. Lewis’s retelling of this ancient story of love and loss was a key moment for me, beginning my love of mythic retellings. ‘Cupid & Psyche is the root of many of my favourite fairy tales, such as ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘The Singing, Springing Lark’ and ‘West of the Sun, East of the Moon’.
I have already begun writing it!
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the early twentieth century’s most famous – and almost forgotten – authors. She was ahead of her time in her understanding of women and their often thwarted pursuit of happiness. Born in Sydney in the mid-1800s, she went on to write many internationally bestselling novels, marry a Prussian Count and then an English Lord, develop close friendships with H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster, and raise five children.
Intrigued by von Arnim’s extraordinary life, Gabrielle Carey sets off on a literary and philosophical journey to learn about this bold and witty author. More than a biography, Only Happiness Here is also a personal investigation into our perennial obsession with finding joy.
My Thoughts:
Many years ago, I read Elizabeth & Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim, a wonderfully warm and funny book about a young woman who restores an unloved garden and finds true peace and joy there. I re-read it again every few years (it’s so slim it only takes me a few hours), as a kind of restorative medicine for the soul. I also adore her novel Enchanted April which in 1991 was turned into a charming movie starring Miranda Richardson and Josie Lawrence.
I did not realise that Elizabeth von Arnim was Australian, and grew up only half-an-hour away from me until recently. This really sparked my interest in her life, and I began to read up on her. So imagine my delight when I found Gabrielle Carey had written a bibliomemoir of her life and work called Only Happiness Here, exploring her own love of Elizabeth’s von Arnim’s work and how much it taught her about the secret of a life filled with contentment, purpose and joy.
I love bibliomemoirs. They are one of my favourite genres to read. Combining the biography of a writer with the reader’s own personal response to their work, they are like having a wonderful conversation with a kindred spirit. I curled up with Gabrielle Carey’s book one Sunday morning soon after finishing my latest novel (which feels a little like you are convalescing after a very long illness), and devoured the whole book in a single sitting. I then watched the Enchanted April movie again. It was a truly delightful day.
Elizabeth von Arnim was born in Sydney in the mid-1880s, grew up in Kirribilli, went to Europe with her family on a kind of Grand Tour, and met and married a much older German count (nicknamed ‘the man of wroth’ in Elizabeth and her German Garden). Her first book became a runaway bestseller, and she went on to have a fascinating & flourishing career. She scandalously left the German count and later married a mad English lord, and was close friends (and perhaps lovers) with E. M. Forster & H. G. Wells. Her life was bold and joyous and enviable, and I loved discovering it through Gabrielle Carey’s thoughtful and insightful book. Give yourself a treat and buy Only Happiness Here in a bundle with Elizabeth and her German Garden and Enchanted April – I promise you it’s a dose of sunshine and sea air for your soul.
You might also like to read my review of Take Courage: Anne Bronte and The Art of Life 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 WILD GIRL was named the Most Memorable Love Story of 2013 by Australian readers, and earned a starred review by the American Library Association Booklist, who called it “a beautiful and often heartbreaking love story that is sure to move and captivate readers.’
THE WILD GIRL tells one of the greatest untold love stories of all time – the poignant romance between Wilhelm Grimm and the young woman who told him many of his most famous stories. Her name was Dortchen Wild, and she grew up next door to the Grimm family in Hessen-Cassel, a small German kingdom that was one of the first to fall to Napoleon. It was a time of war and tyranny and terror, when the collecting of a few old half-forgotten tales was all the young Grimm brothers could do to resist the oppressive rule of the French.
It is one of my favourites of my own books – here is the Prologue for you to read – and if you’d like to know more about the true history behind the book, here’s an earlier blog of mine.
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The Blurb (from Goodreads):
No matter how far she travels as she hitchhikes across Australia, she can't outrun the stigma or the memories that haunt her. Sharp, sassy and determined not to be broken, she accepts a job as a cook on a fishing boat. Totally inexperienced, both as a sailor and a chef, a girl among tough working men and literally all at sea, Kacey confronts more than just the elements on the journey that follows. Facing a ferocious storm as well as treachery, she learns how to fashion a new story for herself-one in which she is strong enough to be the hero. These are captivating memories of growing up in Australia, and the tribulations Heyman encounters and escapes. Unsentimental and unflinching, she stares down disaster and looks back with a healthy rage and exhilarating intelligence.
My Thoughts:
I was on a panel with Kathryn Heyman at the Bellingen Writers & Readers Festival, and heard her read a passage from her new memoir, Fury. I bought it straightwaway – the excerpt she read was so full of power and grace and beauty, and felt so relevant for the times in which we live, that I knew I had to read it.
Fury is an incredibly powerful & moving memoir of Kathryn’s survival & recovery after an traumatic assault, and the subsequent struggle to see her attacker charged & punished. The sections detailing the assault and the trial are confronting & heartbreaking, as are many of her other memories from her childhood growing up in a world in which sexism and sexual violence is so endemic. These scenes cut very close to home – some happened to me or to women whom I love. It’s a clarion call for change in our world, and a book I hope many will read for that reason.
But it is also a story of survival, recovery, and redemption, and a beautiful paean to the ocean & its wild power to heal and transform us. The writing is glorious, the structure intricate and cleverly constructed, and the story so intimate and vulnerable, it made me weep. One of my best reads of the year so far.
You might also like to read my review Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-take-six-girls-the-lives-of-the-mitford-sisters-by-laura-thompson
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit?
Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.
My Thoughts:
Maggie O’Farrell was a new discovery for me this year, and I am now consuming all of her ouevre with voracity. I keep thinking: why haven’t I read her before? What took me so long to discover her?
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox tells the story of two woman who lives collide when Iris discovers she has a great-aunt she never knew locked up in a mental asylum for more than 60 years. The narrative slips back and forth between Iris and Esme and her sister Kitty, who has dementia, and is centred on the conundrums at the heart of the story – why was Esme committed? And what will happen now she is to be released?
With delicacy and deftness, Maggie O’Farrell weaves the lives of these three women into a truly haunting novel that I cannot stop thinking about. So good it is humbling.
You might also like to read my review of I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-i-am-i-am-i-am-seventeen-brushes-with-death-by-maggie-ofarrell
Exciting News
I have such exciting news to share with you!
For the last couple of years, I have been working on a most unusual project with Wendy Sharpe, the Archibald-winning artist. Wendy has been creating art inspired by my words, and I’ve been writing poems and other text inspired by her art.
We have just signed a contract with Upswell Publishing to publish our book. Here is the notice in Books+Publishing:
Upswell is delighted to announce the acquisition of an illustrated book capturing a unique collaboration by writer Kate Forsyth and artist Wendy Sharpe tracking in collage the life-cycle of a woman. Poignant, humorous and sexy, ‘Alchemy’ is due for release in October 2022.
I’m so thrilled!
Alchemy is quite unlike any other book on the market, I think. It’s both an art book and a collection of poetry, but transcends both genres.
It is an astonishingly candid and powerful memoir of one woman’s life, and an archetypal exploration of all women’s life, the Heroine’s Journey from Maiden to Woman to Crone.
It reveals a poet’s response to a painter’s art, and a painter’s response to a poet’s craft.
It explores the very act of human creation – what drives us to write and paint and make, and what creativity means to both maker and audience.
Our aim with this book was to create something truly remarkable, a meeting of hands and hearts and minds. We wanted it to be a feast for all the senses, filled with surprises and moments of profound connection. The writing encompasses poems, favourite passages from my stories and novels, extracts from my diaries and notebooks, musings on creativity, and glimpses into my secret life. The visual component includes Wendy’s paintings, drawings, sketches, scribbles, photographs, and assemblages of found objects.
What Wendy and I wanted to do with Alchemy was to explore and honour the crucial rites of passage in a woman’s life. There has never been a better time to celebrate women’s lives than now. So we are really hoping this book will strike a chime!
Here is Wendy’s painting of us creating Alchemy together.
In other news, I’ve been rewriting The Crimson Thread, taking in the comments and suggestions of my agent Tara and my publisher Meredith. I can’t tell you how lucky I am to work with such perceptive, insightful and passionately interested people! Their understanding of what it is I aim to do, married with their knowledge of the marketplace - pure gold!
I have also been thinking and daydreaming about what I will write next. I hope to share with you soon!
Thanks to the difficulties of lockdown, the publication date of The Gardener’s Son & the Golden Bird & Other Tales of Gentle Young Men has been postponed to March next year. I’ll keep you in the loop for when you can pre-order.
Read more about the Long-Lost Fairy-Tales collection HERE
And finally, given I cannot go anywhere or do anything thanks to the never-ending lockdown in Sydney, I’m taking on a few more mentorees – so if you’d like to work with me, simply check out the Australian Writers mentoring program at HERE
Bright blessings upon you all!
Kate
