Tampered With

Tampa. This is a word heavy with meaning in the Australian political landscape. It's an odd little aside that the recently published and hugely controversial book Tampa (Alison Nutting) must have caused a faint stirring of unease in many Australian minds at first hearing of the title. I certainly sensed dangerous territory before I actually knew what the book was about. I highly doubt Nutting is aware of the Australian context but it's rather tidy that such an unrelated incident has added to the swirl of foreboding and uncomfortableness  - in my mind at the very least*.

The book itself is controversial because it is the story (in first person narrative) of a predatory, female paedophile. Lolita in reverse. I was keen to read it because I had an excellent discussion with an enthusiastic and passionate bookseller who completely sold it to me. I also thought it would be interesting to compare with Lolita, which is on my list to reread.

I found it surprisingly easy to read. Despite the very weighty issues that are associated with the book's content, Nutting has quite a breezy, light style of writing and I read the novel in a couple of days. I wonder if this style is part of the problem many readers have. What I mean is that it's flippancy and palatableness in terms of style sits uneasily with the disgustingly distasteful nature of the content. In this sense I can see similarities to Lolita although from memory (I read it in 2000) there is far more intellectual clout in terms of wordplay and literary trickery in Lolita.

I think the book is worth reading. I would even go so far as to say I enjoyed it. I think it raises interesting, uncomfortable question about power, consent and gender. Yet it also had me considering the value of fiction as a method of truth-telling. I honestly don't think I could stomach a memoir that dealt with this stuff, but knowing it is fiction made it bearable. Possibly the only way topics like this can be explored is through the veil of fiction and I really think explorations and discussions of such taboo subjects can only add to our understanding of people and the world.


*Tampa is the name of a boat carrying refugees that was turned back from Australian waters in 2001. The "Tampa affair" has turned out to be the opening chapter in a long and ongoing, highly emotional and fraught saga on refugee policies and treatment of refugees by the Australian government.

One Schtick, Two Books

I have recently acquired two cookbooks based on TV shows. Oddly enough, I haven't really watched either of the shows in question. Normally, I wouldn't have even bothered to look at such books if I wasn't a fan of the accompanying program but I think I have been converted - just like when I discovered it's possible to love a soundtrack without ever having seen the film.

Last night I made the second recipe from The Little Paris Kitchen. I'll be honest - I had watched one episode of this and found it fairly forgettable. I would only think to watch further episodes if I were on a plane and the only other viewing options were Milo and Otis or Deal or no Deal.

But back to the book itself: It's rather nice and I am keen to try lots of the promised treats it contains. Puy Lentil Salad with Goat's Cheese, Beetroot and Dill was a big, fat-arsed winner. I was too lazy to make the dill vinaigrette so just added fresh dill and a splash of white vinegar to the bowl and it was so good; a brilliant balance of sweet, earthy, creamy and crunchy.

I had never even heard of Spice Trip when Tallboy brought the book home, and still haven't seen any of the program at all. By directly comparing these two books I can say that I like The Little Paris Kitchen quite a lot and that I obsessively love Spice Trip. I have only made one thing from Spice Trip (delicious, easy, exciting flavours) but I have spent a lot of time dreaming and drooling over the pages. There seem to be so many things I want to try; things I had never heard of or imagined but suddenly feel I need in my life quite badly. I made Steak with Grilled Vegetables and Cumin and Garlic Yoghurt a few weeks ago but I will not be stopping there. I have my eye on Black Cherries in Red Wine and Pepper with Sweet Yoghurt but I seem to see something else fabulous every time I open the book, so i suspect I will be raving abut it for some time to come.

A few thoughts.

One of the most beautiful books I can recall reading in the last four or five years has got to be Tinkers by Paul Harding, so I am very excited to be reading his second novel Enon. Like Tinkers, it's fairly short. Also like Tinkers, I will be taking my time to read it.

So far, it's been on the go for 6 days and I am only up to page 76. I just want to enjoy the process, and the best way to do that seems to be allowing time for the ideas and words to float around in my mind. There has been a lot of book-in-lap-and-gazing-out-the-window going on during my train rides to and from work this week.

What I think I like best about Harding's writing is his ability to slow down time. He makes everything feel simpler, clearer, more beautiful and less frenetic. He allows the reader to pause and muse and contemplate as though there is no timetable for which one is answerable (I haven't missed my stop on the train yet but we shall have to see what the rest of the week holds).

Well, this is awkward...

I have been doing plenty of reading recently, but didn't quite feel like writing about any of it. I'm now in a bit of a quandary over whether or not I should mention these books on the blog at all, or just pretend the previous month never happened. The last time I was faced with a dilemma like this was the school swimming trip in year four. One of the teachers found a pair of underpants on the ground and waved them about like she was stranded on a desert island and trying to attract the attention of an overhead rescue plane. "Who do THESE belong to? Everyone? KIDS!! EVERYONE!!! I have found some undies and THEY MUST BELONG TO SOMEBODY!" *waves embarrassing underpants extremely vigorously from the end of excessively straight arm*

On that particular occasion, the humiliation of owning up was too great, so I kept quiet and went commando for the afternoon. TODAY I am a far more mature and together person so have decided on the nobler course of action. More importantly, the situation does not involve undergarments so I will give you a brief (ha ha. I am hilarious!) run down of what I have been reading lately.

Cooked; a Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan
Full of super fascinating facts and ideas. It inspired me to preserve some limes. Yesterday was three weeks from preserving day so I opened up the jar and was pleased to discover it worked! I shall now spend the next 12 months trying to think of recipes that could do with the addition of the world's saltiest ingredient. On a critical note, I felt he tried to force a structure on the material that didn't really work and that irritated me at times but not enough to stop reading.


Out of Shape; Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit by Mel Campbell
I felt this book asked a lot of great questions, but didn't really explore the answers to my satisfaction. So it certainly gave me a lot to think about and I think it was a great subject to tackle. I really enjyed reading it but did feel left wanting more.


(Quarterly Essay 50) Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny by Anna Goldsworthy
Brilliant, spot on, thought provoking. I appreciate Goldsworthy's ability to look at situations in an unbiased, clear-headed manner, and draw thoroughly excellent conclusions from her material.

Can You See the 'End' in 'Friend'?

Just between us, I loved Just Between Us in that want-to-stroke-the-book-when-not-reading-it kind of a way. It is a collection of essays and short stories on the nature of female friendship, and how and why it can go wrong. So many of the pieces resonated with me and mirrored my own experiences that I felt hungry to keep reading more.

I love the idea of a book that is written completely by women about something very important to women, but repeatedly dismissed and belittled in mainstream culture. I suppose it validated my feelings and experiences in a way that nothing else has. I have been in agonies of guilt about what to do when I felt a friendship was no longer nourishing or fun, and have struggled to figure out what the best course of action to take might be. It's a massive comfort to know I'm not the only one.

Of all the chapters in the book, Liz Byrski's essay was the most illuminating. I suspect I am going to turn her words over in my mind for some time to come. I examined all my previous friendship breakups through this new prism of knowledge and everything made a whole lot more sense. It was what Oprah calls "an Aha moment". It was like that time I replaced parsley with dill in my favourite mushroom and leek risotto (thanks for the recipe Brona) and realised how much more harmonious the flavours could be. It was, simply put, brilliant.

My Book Love

Simple but complicated question: what makes you love a book?

@randomhouse recently posed this question on twitter and I realised that there was no way I could answer it in one or even two or three tweets. In a way, this entire blog has been my attempt to answer that question, and I don't think I will ever finish answering it, as long as there are more books to be read. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth a crack here, where I have more room for verbal gesticulation.


I love a book that makes me cry, that makes me remember something I once felt just as strongly as if it were happening again. A book where I can completely and utterly feel myself in a character's shoes, and experience their emotions as my own.

I love a book where the words are so beautiful I want to pluck them off the page, turn them into a brooch, and wear them on my chest. A book where the words sound like a delicately tinkling piano, a cup of tea after a storm of tears, or the water sparkling on Sydney Harbour on a Saturday morning.

I love a book that makes me rethink the world.

I love a book that is so full of ideas I can spent hours discussing them with people.

And that doesn't even begin to cover cookbooks, which I love for the promise they hold of experiences to come. The delicious tastes to be created, the happiness and contentment that will come from sharing food with people dear to me, and the wonderful evenings of talk and good times and laughter that will be held together with food cooked from the pages of such books.

I took a break from writing this post to visit our local farmers market and discussed some of these ideas with Tallboy over coffee and croissants on the grass*. I asked him the same question and found it fascinating that his answer was quite different from mine, bringing home the point that there are almost as many reasons to read as there are people. Here is an edited version of what makes him love a book:

"The riches and the originality of the lived experience that's displayed on the page; whether fiction or non-fiction ... and it's a bonus if the book smells nice too".






*Yes, I am showing off. It was idyllic. And also I am bending the truth a little; I had an almond croissant but Tallboy had a slice of rhubarb crumble.

Star Light, Star Bright

"He owned solid things: houses, ship-loads of half-spoiled fruit, dilapidated little shops, collections of other people's battered and abandoned possessions. He could never wring from them enough money to buy the laughter and the security his mother had denied him when he was a child".

If you like that sentence then you really should take yourself off and get your hands on some Stella Gibbons to read. She has such a subtle, cheeky, cut-through way with words that are often lovely and lilting at the same time. After having read Starlight (quoted above) I can understand both why Gibbons had so many novels published, and also why all of her books apart from Cold Comfort Farm went out of print for several decades. I loved reading Starlight , and it was full of little gems where the words are put together so beautifully you stop reading to bask in them for a moment. But I found the ending deeply unsatisfying. Some of the characters had very neat and tidy endings, while for others there was no ending at all, and it felt too uneven. In trying to puzzle out the ending I realised other holes in the story-telling that just did not hold up to scrutiny.

I have now read a few of Gibbons' novels and they are a mixed bag. I am going to read as many of them as I can get my hands on because I love her approach to words, and because Cold Comfort Farm and Westwood are two supremely wonderful books. I wouldn't tell people not to read Starlight, but to be aware of what to expect. I would give the first three quarters of the book 4.5 stars, and the final quarter 3 stars. In conclusion: not too shabby, 3 and a bit stars.