A COUNTRY TOO FAR: WRITINGS ON ASYLUM SEEKERS edited by Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally

 A COUNTRY TOO FAR: WRITINGS ON ASYLUM SEEKERS edited by Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally

I really can't write a review of this book that could possibly do it any justice, other to say that anyone with half a thinking brain who lives in Australia (primarily), and New Zealand (only because it is the next landfall after Australia) should read it. The following link is by a reviewer (Australian) for The Guardian newspaper, and it says everything that I want to say, but so much better. I urge you to read it.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/australia-culture-blog/2013/oct/28/a-country-too-far-review-book-review

Other than the Aboriginies in Australia, every single person who lives in the countries of New Zealand and Australia migrated to these islands. The asylum seekers who are the subject of this anthology of writings are also seeking a better life. Their much publicised fates once, that is if, they reach the shores of Australia would make most of them wonder why they even bothered. All the contributors are well known Australian writers, with the exception of one who is well known in New Zealand, and they write a mix of fiction, poems and non-fiction mostly from the perpectives of the refugees  themselves - men, women and children. There are also a few writers who have written stories from their own family history which, although not about the asylum seeker/boat people we see nowadays, are every bit as relevant as the current hopefuls.

This is a problem that will not go away.  Australians burying their NIMBY heads in the sand are going to be creating more troubles for themselves. After all how hard can it be for a country of 23 million to treat with dignity and compassion a few thousand desperate migrants a year.

THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt

THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt

First off, it is huge, 771 pages. Secondly it took 11 years to write. Thirdly it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A very big book in so many ways. It is also very very good - engrossing, page turning, full of surprises and twists, exquisitely drawn and very human characters, a terrific story, and after so many pages, an ending that really is quite satisfactory. Author Stephen King said about it "a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind." Little more to be said really.

If you can apply yourself for that number of tightly typed pages, and allow yourself to be lost in the tale, this really is a fabulous read. 13 year old Theo Decker happens to be in the museum with his mother when a terrorist bomb goes off, killing his mother. In his panic, fright, and confusion he comes across a seriously injured an elderly man who gives him a ring and indicates to a picture on the wall, which Theo pulls off the wall and flees. This chance encounter and acquisitions dictate Theo's life for the duration of the story.

I really loved this novel, although it is a shade too long perhaps....there is no doubt it is very wordy, and there are places in the story when I wished it would just hurry up and get on with it, but the author's mastery of the language and how she simply carries you along with the train of thought sort of takes over until before you know it, things are happening again. Not having been a 13 year old boy, I don't know how their brain patterns work, but here is a child desperately trying to survive with no parents, no love, no direction, growing into a man probaby suffering from Post Traumatic Stress, with the only constant in his life being a small priceless painting some 350 years old. I couldn't put this down, and found myself drawn to it,  having to sneak-read another page or two in the long compelling saga.  

DIPLOMATIC LADIES: NEW ZEALAND'S UNSONG ENVOYS by Joanna Woods

 DIPLOMATIC LADIES: NEW ZEALAND'S UNSONG ENVOYS by Joanna Woods

Joanna Woods is highly qualified to be telling the story of New Zealand's 100 year history diplomatic representation through the eyes of the spouses and daughters of its various diplomats. For 22 years she herself was the wife of a diplomat, representing New Zealand in Rome, Teheran, Bahrain, Washington, Athens, Paris and Moscow,  rising up the ranks from a lower level secretary to ambassador.

It does all sound incredibly glamorous and sophisticated, representing your country at the highest level, all those parties, meeting interesting and influential people from everywhere, the travel, the domestic help, education and many expenses paid for. But the reality of this life is actually quite different, and having worked in the foreign service myself, albeit some 30 years ago, I was able to observe how tough this life can be on the spouse and the family. Even though I was not a spouse, so much of this book rang true. I can still see the sadness on the face of the wife of the Head of Mission as she farewelled her children back to school in New Zealand for another protracted period of time. 

In most cases, the NZ mission is one of the smallest in any foreign city hence there is less support available especially when something goes wrong. Family life can be chaotic with children usually going to boarding school back in New Zealand, only seeing their parents in school holidays. The result is many children grow up not feeling as if they are a New Zealander or from any other country for that matter. It was only in the late 1980s that spouses were allowed to work in the country that their husband/wife was sent to. Prior to that the spouse, usually the wife, was expected to be the one who kept the home fires burning. I can recall at the post I was sent to in the mid 1980s that two of the spouses were husbands  - neither was allowed to work, there was literally nothing for them to do. One left half way through the posting.

Joanna Woods has taken just a handful of NZ's diplomatic wives, beginning with the establishment of an official NZ office in London in 1896, the first embassy in Moscow straight after WWII, being in Saigon when it was overtaken by the Viet Cong, early days in Samoa and Tonga, having the first coup in Fiji occuring on your doorstep, being in New York on 9/11, a dalliance with Pierre Trudeau, and driving across borders during the Kuwait hostage crisis in 1990. And many more. The stories and memories are riveting to read, and yes, it is slightly gossiply in style, but what a marvellous homage to the many, many unsong heroes  of New Zealand's diplomacy.

They say that behind every successful man is a woman, and for our diplomats no truer words were spoken. For much of New Zealand's diplomatic history, the spouses have generally been women - strong, intelligent, highly educated and feisty women. Increasingly the spouses are men - the spouse during the Kuwiat hostage situation is a man. Gay and lesbian spouses are also increasingly recognised and taking their rightful place as representatives of New Zealand.

This is a great read, not just of lives far removed from daily life in New Zealand or anywhere for that matter, but of the place that New Zealand has gradually made for itself in the world and the high esteem it is held in, plus giving  us eye witness accounts of a number of events that have shaped the twentieth and early twenty first century.  

 

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson

This novel continually reminds us that our lives hang by a thread - life can be whipped away from us in the time it takes to take a breath. In one instance we have baby Ursula dying at birth because a snow storm prevents the doctor getting there in time. In then next instance her life begins again with the doctor present. In another instance, her mother Sylvie has the foresight to perform CPR - probably unknown in 1910; and in yet another scenario Ursula lives because Sylvie dredges up a pair of scissors and frees the cord from around baby's neck.

Does it all sound far to bizarre? Well, yes it is, but the story or should it be stories of Ursula's life are so comfortably wrapped and contained within such familiar and known boundaries - everday day family life, young adulthood, sibling rivalry, pre-war Germany, the Blitz and the war in general - that it  doesn't feel at all unfamiliar and weird. As we know life is full of what-if moments, and we all wonder how things would have panned out if we had chosen a different path. So in this book, amongst other deaths, Ursula drowns. In the replay she is is saved from drowning, and in another it is another child who drowns. As a young woman, again there are different versions which all have different outcomes. Some good, some not so good. By the end of the book we really have no idea exactly how Ursula's life happened: maybe the idea is that each reader takes the lives they like and puts them altogether to create Ursula's life. We know of course that she didn't try to kill Hitler in the 1930s, but just imagine if she had succeeded!

As weird as all this description so far sounds, it does work, and the result is this wonderful book about Ursula, her family who become as familiar to the reader as Ursula does, and her life, or should that be lives. It is the quality of the writer, of course, who makes all these threads hang together, and Ms Atkinson is superb. Her story of Ursula is as much a commentary on England from 1910 to post-war and the effects these times had on the average person who lived through them. Her sections on the London Blitz are simply amazing and many reviewers have commented on how vividly she portrays what London and its residents went through.

Many reviewers on the likes of Good Reads think it is just plain weird and strange and completely implausible. But don't let that stop you from becoming immersed into Ursula's life, and if you can get past the time changes and jumping backwards and forwards through history, this is a really worthwhile book.