Beaut Commute

The Lacuna

So I've been umming and ahhing about recommending this book for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is quite a large tome and so not so easy to lug around with you on public transport. Secondly, I LOVED Barbara Kingsolver's previous books The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer. A lot. Read them both twice. And for a while I wasn't sure whether I LOVED this book.

 

But.

 

It's stayed with me you see. Residual wafts of characters and colours and thoughts keep coming back. I think I do love this book but not the way you might have loved Molly Ringwald. More the way that you realised you actually loved Ally Sheedy.  

 

Kingsolver is such a master of narrative style that all her books are interesting to read simply to see what devices she has chosen. In The Lacuna the story is told through letters and diary entries (nothing new there) but also newspaper stories and reviews.

 

The latter two I found a fascinating method of storytelling because an issue I am very interested in which is whether there can be more 'truth' in 'fiction'. By this I mean whether the constraints of newspaper requirements (sell papers, make it snappy and sensational) can mean the real emotion and honest motivations behind an event is lost.

 

For example, in 1936, New Zealand journalist Robin Hyde wrote her first novel, Passport to Hell which related incidents in the life of a James Douglas Stark (Starkie), a returned WWI veteran. Two years later the sequel, Nor the years Condemn, was published. This time Hyde had written a fictional account of Starkie's life in the post-war boom and bust environment of NZ.

 

NTYC, to me, provides the emotion behind Starkie's actions and I think, more accurately portrays to me the frustrations and challenges that these men experienced. Certainly, I engage much more with Hyde's story than carefully (positively) worded newspaper articles of the time. The truth of how people 'felt' at this time was better conveyed by a made-up story.

 

I think I would have liked the opportunity to have had a glass of red and a talk to Hyde about truth. She once said:

"Shakespeare kept saying, ‘to thine own self be true’ … I began to wonder, which self? True to which self … I was always in bad trouble with the truth. Not so much knowing what it is, as knowing which it is. My truths had second selves, split personalities, double faces… .”

 

Anyhoo. Back to The Lacuna. The story is told by Harrison Shepherd, a writer cum cook for Mexican surrealists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. His diaries and notebooks document the relationship between the painters and exiled Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalya. After Trotsky's assassination Shepherd returns to his native America and writes books with the help of his able stenographer.  For more about the plot and a great review I would recommend this from the Sydney Morning Herald.

 

Okay. Crikey. That's a long post. And I'm currently reading Wolf Hall, another big book that will also deserve a rave. Interesting that three books mentioned in this post have fascinating male narrators written by women….

 

Birdman goes wild

 

The last few days I have driven to work. I feel guilty but I also do love to feel the hum of an engine under me. Even if it is a Nissan Pulsar.

Anyway, this does mean I listen to breakfast radio. Earlier I said that if I could, I would marry The New Yorker. I stay true to that vow, but it's entirely possible I'd have a steamy affair with ABC National Radio.

 

I was a passionate listener of Radio New Zealand National while living in Aotearoa. In fact I recall a housemate in New Zealand once saying to me 'I heard two male voices coming from your room this morning - do you have something to tell me?". To which I replied "Uh huh. It was Geoff Robinson and Sean Plunket". (Radio NZ 'Morning Report' presenters. They were on my radio. Not my bed)". (Funny story about Sean Plunket, he once announced his newly discovered Italian ancestry in his work office saying something like, 'Who'd thought! I'm a Count!" to which some smart alec replied "Sure there's an 'o' in that?").

 

So yes, I love Breakfast with Fran Kelly, the AM team and the wonderfully witty Warwick Hadfield. But my favourite morning radio is BIRDMAN GOES WILD on RRR at 8.15am Thursday mornings.

 

Birdman, Sean Dooley, is a comedian, writer and a twitcher. What a bloody perfect mix.  This week he was talking about his close encounter with a Cassowary, a beautiful, strange and frightening bird. His storytelling is funny and evocative and a welcome relief when you are tackling the Eastern Freeway of a Thursday morn.

 

Those in Melbourne can listen to "Birdman Goes Wild" with Sean Dooley on 102.7 FM. Others can download some of the excellent RRR podcasts, including the breakfast shows with Birdman, here.