Author: rlsmithwriting

Book review: Graft by Maggie MacKellar

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Graft by Maggie Mackellar is beautifully written memoir about life on the land. The story carries us through an annual cycle of seasons on a Merino sheep farm in Tasmania. Maggie reflects on the land on which she lives and her life in a year of drought.

My older brother had pebbles in his mouth instead of words. His tongue is thick. It sticks out when it shouldn’t. At this time I am remembering, he smashed and grabbed and pinched and pulled and broke the world every day, over and again. 

Maggie’s youngest child is on the cusp of adulthood and heading out into the world. As her son’s world opens up, Maggie must come to terms with his loss to the world and recraft her identity as an empty nester.

I am hollowed by his going. By my children’s passage through me and out into the world. With their birth I put on the cloak of motherhood and now it’s time to take it off. I feel naked without it, a person I don’t recognise.

Anyone who has experienced farming life knows it is both beautiful and brutal because it brings us into an intimate relationship with nature, birth and death and how they interplay with the seasons and climate. These elements are rendered strikingly.

In my mind I walk over the land. I run my hands through the grass as if it were the hair on my head. I dig my fingers into the dirt as if the soil were the crust of my skin.

Lambing season inevitably results in the lambs of some sheep dying and the mothers of some lambs dying. Part of Maggie’s job is to try to match up the orphans with sheep whose lamb died, with the hope that both will thrive.

Today we found a ewe cast. Her lamb had come with both legs back. She’d managed to push his head out but now he was stuck fast. 

Graft combines meditative nature writing and personal essay on themes including loss, mothering, identity and resilience. The memoir is the first of Maggie Mackellar’s books that I have read, but I will be adding more to my reading list.

Comedy review: Hello Mr Radio

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Walking into the theatre to see Hello Mr Radio, on as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival, is visually arresting. The stage has been turned into a radio studio using colour blocking. Three characters motionless stand on the stage, cleverly camouflaged. All have identical beards. There is a sign advising the audience to keep their mobile phones on for the duration of the show.

Tune into 98.5 1/2 every Tuesday for a dose of absurdist comedy. Fergus Mackerel, pony tail flying, delivers an hour of absurdist comedy, along with a string of wacky guests, including a spellcaster, and audience members who call-in to talk about road haulage and their mums chopping boards. Think 1970s fashion and style – around the time of the introduction of colour TV.

The show has an off-beat nostalgic feel. It’s like getting in an old car that only has one radio station and a slightly dodgy aerial, and going for a drive you weren’t expecting on a sunny day. Hello Mr Radio is dry, character driven, humour, with clever language play and great timing. 

Hello Mr Radio is created and performed by Handful of Bugs with Alex Donnelly, Ayesha Harris-Westman and James Colbourn-Keogh on stage. The show is produced by SKINT with music and sound design by Thomas Bradford.  

Hello Mr Radio is on at The Malthouse Playbox until 19th April.

Book review: The Mermaid the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

I read The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall with my book group and loved it. Queer + Pirates, what more could you want? 

There’s freedom in stories, you know. We read them and we become something else. We imagine different lives, and while we turn the pages, we get to live them. To escape the lot we’re given.

The story is a young adult swashbuckling, fantastical, sapphic, girls own adventure. There are pirates, mermaids, greed driven, despotic overlords, hero’s and villains. Not that different to the real world really…colonialism, imperialism, misogyny. 

Corsets are stupid

Flora and her brother became pirate crew in order to have a place to live and food in their bellies. Gender fluid and black, Flora disguises herself as a man called Florian (think Pope Joan?) and falls in love with one of the passengers – Lady Evelyn Hasegawa. 

If Florian was the wall that guarded Flora, then Evelyn had scaled his heights.

Evelyn is on board supposedly to be wed in an arranged marriage at their destination. In actual fact her parents had sold her to the highest bidder due to her difference (code for lesbian). There’s a catch as the wealthy passengers are about to be told they are to be sold as slaves. So of course Florian has to rescue Evelyn. 

After that, she wondered, how improper was it — really — to slap a man in the face for staring?

The pair make a daring escape, rescuing a mermaid in the process, who then along with the sea (a character with thoughts and feelings) rescues them – spitting them out on an island shore where a witch revives them.

There’s nothing out there to punish evil, no one out there to reward the righteous. We’re all just adrift.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is brimming with diversity, adventure, romance and a good lashing of the kind of violence, blood and guts colonialism is famous for. A fun read and other worldly adventure.

Book review: Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

I spent the weekend at my dad’s place near the beach. It’s a locale not so far from Melbourne but Telstra has largely abandoned it. As a result, there was no internet and little phone coverage. Thus the late review. The few days were very relaxing in a beautiful spot. It was perfect for writing a review set in the Greek islands. 

In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor. I could hear everything. The rumbling earthquake of a ship and spider crabs moving between weeds.

In Deborah Levy’s novel Hot Milk, a mother and daughter travel to Spain. They are seeking diagnosis of, and treatment for, the mother’s mysterious paralysis illness.  

She had no God to plead to for mercy or luck. It would be true to say she depended instead on human kindness and painkillers.

Twenty-five year old almost anthropologist turned waitress, Sofia is her mother’s primary carer. They remortgage the house to pay for treatment by an alternative medicine specialist called Dr Gomez in his Spanish clinic. The doctor, who works with his daughter, is obsessed with a pregnant white cat that lives in his office. It is unclear whether Gomez is legitimate or a quack.

I am my mother’s burden. She is my creditor and I pay her with my legs. They are always running around for her.

Rose frequently uses a wheelchair due to a mysterious intermittent paralysis of her legs and feet. As the story evolves it becomes apparent that Dr Gomez suspects hypochondria rather than a physical illness. He thinks both women are complicit in the illness – Rose for attention and love, and Sophia to avoid making a life of her own. He makes it his mission to try and help both the woman. For Sophia this includes setting a task to steal a fish from the market to build her courage.

Sometimes, I find myself limping. It’s as if my body remembers the way I walk with my mother. Memory is not always reliable. It is not the whole truth. Even I know that.

While in Spain Sofia takes on lovers and explores her sexuality and identity. She meets local Juan when he treats her for Medusa stings after swimming in jellyfish infested waters. She also has a passionate love affair with a German woman called Ingrid. 

Empathy is more painful than medusa stings

Sophia’s relationship with her Greek father is also complex. We discover this when she goes to meet him in Athens. It is their first meeting in eleven years. She wants his help but is unable to ask for it, and her father equally unable to offer.

It would take a while for me not to think of the Greek language as the father who walked out on me

Hot Milk is an exquisite character study of ineffectual parenting. An exploration of the inner world of Sophia and her search for individuation, personal and sexual identity.

My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep

Hot Milk is a beautifully set, fragmented, quirky and strange story. It is lyrical, haunting and a little depressed. The story is almost dream-like and brimming with poetic metaphors. Sophia strives to become bolder. In doing so, she define herself and her life. Hot Milk was short listed for the 2016 Booker Prize.

Comedy review: Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

The audience is seated for Melbourne International Comedy Festival show Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan, and it’s a full house. The entry door opens. A woman walks in. She scans the crowd looking surprised. Then she thanks us for coming to her birthday party. She’s turning 26. 

Right from the start Whelan spills snappy one liners that have the audience in fits of laughter. 

Whelan grabs a drink from under a nearby audience member’s chair and takes a swig. Then she looks at the label. It’s called A Drink that makes you Reminisce. At first she resists, then gives into it and climbs on the stage. And we are introduced to to the world of Taylah Whelan. 

Whelan has great energy and comedic timing. She is smart and dynamic, with a self-effacing frank honesty in her delivery. 

It’s Taylah Whelan’s fifth birthday. She’s growing up in Palmerston, a suburb of Darwin. ‘A Place for People’. It soon becomes apparent that it’s probably not a place for Taylah though. Her Irish mother has got her a friend – a talking cat she names Elvis. Dad is an awkward bloke who doesn’t know how to effectively communicate with his kid. 

Each time she has a sip of A Drink that makes you Reminisce, we travel to Taylah at a different milestone birthday. She is twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-six. Along the way we discover a little more about Whelan. We learn about the formation of her identity through theatrical self-deprecating and insightful delivery. Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan is a laugh out loud show. And did I mention the talking cat?

Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan is crated and performed by the title’s namesake. The show is directed by Kaite Head and produced by SKINT. Set and quirky cat design are by Max Arnold, and voice work by Elliot Wood, Ayesha Harris-Westman and Alex Donnelly

Dust off your party frock and get along to Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan for a cracking good laugh. The show is playing at the Motley Bauhaus in The Cellar till 1st of April. Tickets from Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Comedy review: Cabin Pressure

On By rlsmithwritingIn Reviews2 Comments

Cabin Pressure, on as part of Melbourne International Comedy festival, is a laugh out loud high altitude romp. Climb onboard  Bijoux airlines for a flight to nowhere or somewhere…choose your own adventure. 

This is a show that is totally relatable for anyone who has been on an airplane.  What do you do when you find yourself in a bullet shaped steel tube with a bunch of people you’ve never met, being served by a trolley dolly with a mandate to please? Kick back and enjoy the ride of course. One lucky person will be upgraded to business class.

The show has optional audience participation. I can say hand on heart this element is no pressure and low key. At the performance I went to, those who started with no participation eye masks on (their heads) took them off half way through the show. Several looked like they hoped to be asked to join in the hilarity.

Cabin Pressure is a mix of clowning and immersive theatre. The show has the timing and pacing to give you edge of your seat belly laughs. Go along for gags that will remind you of the absurdity of airline travel. Next time you board a plane you will have a bigger smile on your face.

The show is created and performed by Sunny Youngsmith. Their previous shows include Ned Kelly The Big Gay Musical and Meaty Sue’s Big Farma. 

Cabin Pressure is on at the Motley Wherehaus at 430 Queen Street, Melbourne until 5th April. The venue is conveniently located across the road from Queen Victoria Market parking and near a range of public transport routes.

Grab a ticket for take-off!

Book review: The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Queer, atmospheric, and lyrical, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén is a noirish drama. 

Only two things have come with me all the way to New York City from south of the Mason-Dixon Line: a bottle of Wild Turkey from what I once called home and an orange telephone.

In 1950’s New York, two Shakespearean actors marry for convenience. Margaret Shoard, who struggles with her mental health, marries her best friend Wesley. He is trying to avoid the scrutiny of the House Un-American Activities Committee for his relations with men. The two are asexual soul mates. 

We were all of us strays, blacklisted or rich enough yet stymied by arrest records, the city’s shiniest if unpalatable dross.

Margaret plays Lady Macbeth on opening night. She identifies a little too much with her character which leads to a mental breakdown. She can’t work so wanders the streets of New York and takes prescription medication to get through her aimless days. After Wesley is hired to perform at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the New Mexico desert over the summer, Margaret thinks this opportunity might be just what she needs. It could help her get her mojo back.

Every day of mine is a gift

What unfolds is drug fueled months of complicated arrangements with another theatre employee. The threesome results in a pregnancy, visitations from Lady Macbeth, and abuse.

Her gaze was bright and glittering with drink. She was the sort who held her liquor by way of deepened elegance and wit rather than sloppy dissolution.

Love, betrayal, female rage, self-discovery, theatre mobsters, and plenty of nods to the Bard can be found in The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf. Content warning the story includes sexual assault, self-harm, murder and substance abuse. 

Book review: Artists, Siblings, Visionaries by Judith Mackrell

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Judith Mackrell dives into the early lives of artist siblings Gwen and Augustus (Gus) John in her biography Artists, Sibling, Visionaries. It’s a wild ride. Set in early 20th century Britain, the artists are both socially awkward but John lived a notoriously bohemian life. He was an adulterer and bigamist who fathered a large number of children with multiple women. There were so many he seemed to lose track of them himself. In contrast, Gwen was an introvert. She was bisexual, fiercely independent, quiet and deeply private. 

People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow.

Growing up in Wales, the siblings had an inner turbulence in common. They attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the 1890s, the first art school to admit women. Later, Gus lived in England while Gwen settled in Paris. 

Gwen and Gus had once thought that money was irrelevant. As students, they’d believed that all they needed was a roof over their heads, materials with which to paint—and their freedom.

Initially Augustus appeared to be the rising star. This was possibly in large part because he was an outgoing and handsome young man in a man’s world. However, his life became so complex that art often took a back seat. It was the shy introverted Gwen who was (posthumously) recognised as the greater painter of the two.

Even now, at twenty-one, Gwen had no control of her own money; as an unmarried woman, she was barred from opening a bank account.

Gwen was the muse and lover of Rodin, 36 years her senior. The relationship was a source of both pain and joy for Gwen and the most significant of her life. It was only after converting to Catholicism she was able to break free of the hold Rodin had over her. Her subsequent, largely solitary, existence in life was marked by a fierce loyalty to her art.

In 50 years’ time I will be known as the brother of Gwen John.

The creative struggle and its tension with commerce are alive throughout Artists, Siblings, Visionaries. The bond and rivalry of siblings pursuing the same profession was also a strong theme. The book focuses centrally on Gwen’s struggle to live a creative life, often relying on her brother for financial support. It highlights how constrained the world was for women of the times. This created tension throughout the book. In Artists, Siblings, Visionaries, Mackrell makes the humans behind the artwork visible with all their dreams, fears, and flaws. It was wonderful to read.

Book review: Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy is a great title for starters. After all, our self protective measures only ever allow us to see what we want to.

At its heart Things I Don’t Want to Know explores what makes a person want to write. How do we keep doing it in the face of adversity? It is a response to George Orwell’s essay on writing, ‘Why I write’. The existential crisis at the opening catches the reader immediately. 

That spring when life was hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn’t see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations.

Levy’s writing is exceptional and sophisticated. The book is a short memoir that transitions between Mallorca, South Africa and England. It has four parts, each chapter titled after one of Orwell’s motivations. Two parts are Levy’s life as she’s writing it. One is about her father, an ANC supporter who was jailed in South Africa when she was a child. The fourth is about being a teenager in North London.

Smoking cheap Spanish filthy sock-tobacco under a pine tree was so much better than trying to hold it together on escalators. There was something comforting about being literally lost when I was lost in every other way…

Majorca is at the beginning soon after the escalator crisis. It chronicles an emotional crisis. It also covers the challenges of being a mother and a creative. The final chapter picks up where the author left off in Majorca. Levy has a connection with a Chinese shopkeeper. This results in a realisation. Anywhere with a power point to plug in her laptop to write is where she wants to be.

I rearranged the chair and sat at the desk. And then I looked at the walls to check out the power points so I could plug in my laptop. The hole in the wall nearest to the desk was placed above the basin, a precarious socket for a gentleman’s electric razor. That spring in Majorca, when life was very hard and I simply could not see where there was to get to, it occurred to me that where I had to get to was that socket. Even more useful to a writer than a room of her own is an extension lead and a variety of adaptors for Europe, Asia and Africa.

Levy was born in Apartheid South Africa. She then lived with her godmother after her father was imprisoned. She never really fitted in. After her father was released the family exiled to England. The chapter on egoism explores her teenage self writing on napkins and wearing lime green platform shoes.

When a female writer walks a female character into the center of her literary enquiry (or a forest) and this character starts to project shadow and light all over the place, she will have to find a language that is in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the Societal System in the first place. She will have to be canny in how she sets about doing this because she will have many delusions of her own. In fact it would be best if she was uncanny.

Things I Don’t Want to Know is worth reading for the prose alone. It is also a fascinating dive into the deep self-reflection of a writer.

Book review: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

On By rlsmithwritingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Plot twists abound in domestic suspense/psychological thriller The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. It’s got a feel of Sleeping With the Enemy meets Single White Female with its volatile domestic setting. The story involves a wealthy couple, Andrew and Nina. Their hired help, Millie, lives in a room in the attic.  

Sometimes people do exactly what you think they’re going to do, and they still manage to disappoint you.

Homeless ex-con Millie is hired by the frumpy, volatile, and slightly unhinged Nina. Her job is to keep house for Nina, her hot charming husband Andrew, and her precocious blonde daughter. The women of the household always wear white. 

“My mother always says the only way two people can keep a secret,” she says, “is if one of them is dead”.

Millie thinks Nina has hired her without looking into her past. She’s a little taken aback when shown to her small attic room. The window in the room won’t open, and the door has a lock on the outside. She decides to believe that the room was once just a storage cupboard, and it’s better than a prison cell. 

Then again, plenty of men are idiots.

There is also Enzo, the non-English speaking gardener who lurks outside muttering in Italian that the place is not safe. Millie assumes it’s because Nina is so difficult. 

Dad always says that if you’re going to do something wrong, at least be smart enough not to let anybody see you do it.

The Housemaid is full of plot twists, bizarre behaviour, and secrets and lies, like any good psychological thriller. Millie and Nina’s narration takes the reader on a roller coaster ride. Their crazy domestic life includes a doozie of a twist at the end. It’s a compelling fast read for lovers of domestic suspense. The Housemaid left me feeling like my life is comfortably pedestrian.