Musings from the Verandah

The cool change is delicious. I have a wet plait snaking down my neck like a tendrilly vine and I am listening to the leaves rustle on the verandah. Being outside is so interesting. Moments of life stories float over the barking dogs and distant hum of Bell Street. I have decided to keep a blog of all of books I have been reading this year as it is so easy to read wonderful things and then forget them. If I succeed in writing this book - my dream - its paying attention to the words that seems important and after all writing is as pleasurable as reading. More so!

Exclamation marks!!! Why is Jane Austen the only person allowed to get away with this and still be considered a good writer. Certainly narrative ingenenuity can't be her claim to fame. I have had an idea for a while to write a witty piece decrying her popularity. I wonder if Jane Austen was alive today with a room and a laptop of her own would she stay home and watch costume dramas on Saturday night? I think not!

I have just finished Dissection by Jacinta O'Halloran. It drew me in. Her writing is very Chekhovian - beautifully observed ordinariness. The main character is a doctor charged with negligence and tapped in a depression. The blurb praised her "stoicism" and while there's stoicism there for sure there's also an estrangement from her husband and her children. Jacinta is admirable in the understated way she reveals this estrangement. But what struck me most was her character's passivity. Having lost all confidence she is passive in the face of her husband's infidelity and the defence of her negligence claim. At first I found the 43 year old with the lines in the mirror a little cliched and depressing but it was honestly observed. There's a moment where she accedes to her husband's lust for another woman that is very bittersweet. I wonder about this bittersweetness. Is it inevitable? I feel as I crawl along these early years of my forties a loss of sweetness and I want it back really. Could this be something to write about - this longing for sweetness? I would like to read a book like this. Perhaps it could be linked to the trip around australia idea. I'd like it not to be particularly romantic but to be infused with a love of humanity.