BLOOD: THE STUFF OF LIFE by Lawrence Hill

BLOOD: THE STUFF OF LIFE by Lawrence Hill

This book arose out of a lecture series given by the author at the University of Toronto. Divided into five chapters, which I guess represent five lectures he gave, this book is difficult to give a label to. A mix of science, biology, medicine, history, social commentary and personal memoir it covers all sorts of stuff about blood:  the good stuff in our bodies that carries around oxygen that keeps us alive; the bad stuff that carries diseases such as HIV, malaria, plague; who invented blood transfusions; Lady MacBeth and that damned spot; blood as a weapon of power; his musings on blood being thicker than water or not; do men and women have different blood; human sacrifice; drug taking in sport; and taking up most of the book blood as a factor in race, culture and ethnicity. And this latter theme is really what the author is looking at in his exploration of blood and what it all means.

By way of background, Lawrence Hill is a successful Canadian author, whose black father and white mother migrated from the US to Canada when they got married in 1953 to escape the difficulties such a union at the time brought. He grew up in a family very involved in human rights, and most of his writings are concerned with issues of identity, especially race. For those of a certain age, you may be surprised to know that the author's brother is Dan Hill, he who sang that tear jerker song of the 1970s 'Sometimes When We Touch'. On googling their images, to me they look nothing like brothers, and I can understand his fascination and intense interest in looking at how our origins and blood lines define us. But more importantly perhaps how others see us and may label us differently from what we ourselves think we may be.

This, then is the crux of the book, and although it wasn't quite what I thought it would be, it really is a most interesting and informative read. There may be a little too much self-indulgence on the part of the author, but in a world where peoples of different cultures, religions, races, and ethnicities are meeting and having children of their own, these are very real issues that he is bringing up. It made me feel good to be an NZer, where on our five yearly census form, under the 'Which Ethnic Group Do You Belong To' there is a space for 'Other' where increasingly people are simply putting 'New Zealander' rather than identifying themselves as just one of the many others listed.






CATHERINE THE GREAT: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN by Robert Massie

CATHERINE THE GREAT: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN by Robert Massie

This is a fabulous biography of a woman who changed the face of Russia in every possible way during her reign of 34 years. Born in Prussia into one of the ruling families, she went to Russian court at the age of 14, found herself bethrothed to the young grandson of Peter the Great and some three years later married to him. Like all young ladies of wealth/title, she was destined to be married off to a man/family at some stage, and by the some very good fortune she found herself at the Russian court. And so began her long love affair with Russia, determined to make it a better place than she arrived in 1744. 

She didn't succeed in all her endeavours, but by the time she died, the lands  under Russia's control had extended significiantly into what was then Poland, and as far south as the Black Sea. She presided over what became known as Russia's Golden Age, the Age of Enlightenment, and also worked very hard, with mixed succes at improving the plight of the serf class, who really were no more than slaves, and treated accordingly.

This book is a huge read - 573 pages - but easy to read and well worth the time taken. The author won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Peter the Great, and also wrote two highly regarded biographys - one about the Romanov dynasty started by Peter the Great and the other, Nicholas and Alexandra, detailing the downfall of the Romanov dynasty early last century. Much of the narrative has been drawn from Catherine's own memoirs, and the hundreds of letters she exchanged with all sorts of famous people of the time - other European monarchs, writers and philosophers, lovers, her own advisers and generals. She was a woman of enormous intellect, focus and determination, and what she managed to achieve in her time is quite remarkable.

Numerous legends have grown over the centuries about her sexual appetite and tendencies: this book puts paid to much of it!  There is no doubt she was one fierce lady who took no prisoners, but this biography also shows much of her human side and beneath that awesome heart there was a real woman.

ELIZABETH IS MISSING by Emma Healey


 ELIZABETH IS MISSING by Emma Healey

Review copy provided by Penguin Group (NZ) via Booksellers NZ.

Wow, this novel is great, a stunning first novel, and reading all the media releases in the UK on this book, the young author is a wonderful new talent. How can someone so young - the author is only 28 -  write so eloquently and  masterfully, but above all with such compassion about the issues of dementia in elderly people. Are there even many 28 year olds out there with more than a passing interest in elderly people? That is the first surprising thing about this book. The second is her ability to get inside the head and soul of an 84 year old woman and write so knowingly about what is going on in there. There is  confusion, frustration, rage and anger, realisation that something is not qutie right, and yet in her writing the author manages to hold all the craziness together with the lucidness.

With an ageing population, issues such as dementia and Alzheimer's are just not going to go away and many of us, if we haven't already, will be facing such issues in our own parents and maybe in ourselves or spouses. So often we see old age senility from the outside - as the child, grandchild, caregiver, spouse, neighbour or friend. Not as the person actually experiencing it. I have no idea if what is going on in Maud's head happens or not, but by hokey, the author has created a very compelling and realistic character.

Maud is 84, a widow, still living in her own home with caregiver, Carla, popping in every morning, and her daughter Helen who is in her 50s, taking on the rest of the caring/supervising. Maud knows she is becoming a bit of a handful but can't seem to fully realise why that is, or what should be done about it. Her major problem, at the moment, is trying to find her friend Elizabeth - another elderly lady - who seems to have simply disappered. Maud asks everyone, all the time, if they have seen Elizabeth, and is a known face at the local police station where she regularly goes to report her missing, but of course she can't remember ever doing so! So every visit to the police station is a first visit.
Her short term memory may be shot, but her long term memory is razor sharp. She begins to associate Elizabeth's disappearance with that of her older sister in 1946 when Maud was 15. Sukey was married to Frank, and one day simply disappeared. No trace of her was ever found. In post war Britain things were still pretty tough with rationing, people  homeless after losing their homes in bombings, men or women traumatised by war time experiences, simply running away with surprising regularity. Even as a youngster, Maud never thought that Sukey had run away, and now all these years later, it still preys on her mind.

The author weaves these two different worlds in Maud's mind, as well as her interacations with the real world so expertly, so cleverly. As her mind continues to unravel, there are times when you really don't know whether Maud herself is in the present or the past. It is terrific stuff, all told in Maud's voice. A very ordinary lady who would appear to have had a very ordinary life, but has such a deep inner life as she tries to find where Elizabeth is. Watching her interactions with her daughter, neighbours, medical people and others Maud sees in her day, we also get a picture of how heart breaking losing one's mind is to those watching, the pressures and stresses they deal with in looking after someone like Maud. And all from the pen of a 28 year old. Amazing.




BEHIND THE SUN by Deborah Challinor


BEHIND THE SUN by Deborah Challinor

This is the first novel in a series aboaut four young women, convicted felons, who are transported to the penal colony of Botany Bay in the late 1820s. As the descendant of one such young woman, I have more than the average interest in their story and what life would have been like for such a young woman of the time. The author is Australian convict royalty indeed, being descended from three convicts, one of whom arrived in Botany Bay on the same ship as my ancestor - the Lady Juliana in 1789, also infamously known as the Floating Brothel, but that is another story.

This story is set some forty years later, when the settlement of Sydney was growing and becoming more established. Ships carrying convicts were still regular arrivals until 1840, with the women convicts being offloaded and transferred to the Parramatta Female Factory Precint, a short distance up the Parramatta River. The author says in her notes that 20% of Australians, and no doubt a fair few New Zealanders, are descended from women who went through the factory gates.

The book begins in London, where Friday, Harriet, Sarah and Rachel are each caught and convicted of crimes ranging from prosititution, stealing some material, stealing jewellery, and being destitute. Although they are from vastly different backgrounds, one they meet in Newgate Gaol - truly lovely place - they forge an inseparable bond which sees them through the voyage to New South Wales. Much of the book is taken up with the voyage, providing a detailed account of shipboard life which was actually not too bad compared with being in Newgate Gaol. The food was reasonable, the captain was a reasonably enlightened man, it seems the women in general got on, and I imagine once the distress of leaving England and loved ones, plus the sea legs were found, for many of the women, their lives were vastly improved. For some not so much, as the ship did carry male passengers, and of course the crew. Amongst other happenings on board, Rachel catches the eye of one particular passenger, the consequences of which reverbarate long after the ship's arrival in Botany Bay.

Their arrival in Botany Bay signals the beginning of their seven years of punishment beginning with the transfer to the Parramatta Factory where they stay until suitable employment is found, usually in a shop or as a domestic servant. Being a novel, life for each of the girls takes many and interesting turns, but throughout they have each other and the loyalty between them is very strong.

This is excellent historical fiction. The author has extensively researched London life in the early 19th century, court transcripts of trials, the back stories of many convict women - I was amazed to read that about 65% of convict women could read and around half of these could write. Newgate Gaol, shipboard life and crews, early Sydney, the Parramatta Factory and the lives of many female convicts in Sydney and the surrounds are almost as interesting as the characters. The four main characters are interesting and complex young women, with quite different back stories who are thrown together in what must have been a frightening time and facing an unknown future. The scene is well and truly set for the next novel in the series, and I look forward to reading that in due course.