🌞 April Sun in ... err... Edinburgh? 🌞
🛫🛫Love is in the air (again!) and a bumper crop of books in case you miss me while I'm gone 🛫🛫
Well hello lovely,
As this newsletter hits your inbox, I am fourteen days away from leaving on a jet plane. In your world, this might not be monumental but in my world this is hugely significant. You see, I haven’t been overseas since 1998 (excepting a quick work jaunt across the trough when I was pregnant with Ms 18.) In the auspicious year of 1998, I travelled with my then 7-year-old daughter and my mum to spend three glorious weeks in Italy. We had a ball — the memories are fond and plentiful.
Fast forward twenty-six years and I am going to Edinburgh for that 7-year-old’s wedding. She’s now 33 and has lived in Edinburgh since the UK ummed and aahed about the merits of Brexit. What’s the connection, I (don’t) here you ask. Because she was hired into the Scottish public service as part of their ‘oh my goodness, if we leave the EU, we’ll have to do everything by ourselves’ recruitment drive. I digress. My point is, I am going to the UK for the first time in my life, to one of the best cities in the world, to bear witness as my eldest daughter marries her great love … By myself!!!
That’s right. No husband, no teenagers. No dinners to cook, clothes to wash etc etc etc for three whole weeks. So many things are planned — a trip crammed to bursting with joy and new experiences. And, it occurs to me, not only have I not been overseas for a ridiculously long period of time, I couldn’t even tell you when I last had three weeks off. Excluding those first few weeks and months of motherhood, which one can hardly classify as a holiday, I suspect it was in … you guessed it … 1998.
I know you will miss me terribly (Ha!) And, as I care almost as deeply about your welfare as I do about making sure my children are adequately fed and watered in my absence (and the cat) I am sharing a bumper crop of books to tide you over whilst I’m gone. Plus two excellent giveaways. And new events to add to the calendar for when I return.
Here we go!
Behind the Scenes
It’ll come as no surprise to you that I’ve been editing :-) Have I made as much progress as I would like? No. Am I happy with the quality of my progress so far? Yes.
What can I say? I keep reminding myself that Maggie O’Farrell purportedly did 47 drafts of Hamnet. I am not going to be doing 47 individual drafts of this story — not on your Nellie! My editing style is to deep dive into each scene and rigorously examine it to make sure it is doing all the important stuff it needs to do. I won’t move onto the next scene until I have exhausted all the possibilities or the scene now meets with my approval. That could be three passes, five, ten, whatever it takes. And it is only when I get to the end of this round of edits and see how the story works as a whole that I will know what else it needs. Between you and me, I think it’s getting there — slowly.
On the plus side, I have a working title — The Importance of Being Delia. It may not stick but it tells me that I know what this story is about and keeps me on track. Though I’m curious to know if you like it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I’m more than happy to go back to the drawing board.
It was a slight fib to tell you that I am traveling alone to the UK. The Importance of Being Delia is coming with me. There is an awful lot of downtime in airport lounges, on planes and trains, so I may as well use that time wisely. Who knows? Perhaps the characters might develop a slight Scottish burr!
Books to Love
I’ve read a lot of really good books — too many to squeeze into this newsletter. So a couple of quick shout outs before I get into the reviews and giveaways. Do grab hold of a copy of Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion’s The Glass House. Anne’s expertise as a practicing psychiatrist makes this exploration of mental health care shine. It’s funny, smart and thought-provoking.
The other book I think you’d love is All The Words We Know by Bruce Nash. It’s a funny and moving story about Rose who is in her eighties and has dementia. When her friend is found dead after an apparent fall from the window in their aged-care facility, Rose decides to investigate. Just gorgeous.
Tilda is Visible by Jane Tara
Successful business woman, Tilda Finch, looks in the mirror one morning and notices her little finger is missing. She can feel it, she just can’t see it. A visit to her GP confirms the diagnosis. Tilda is in the early stages of invisibility. It’s what she’s suspected for years. Unfortunately, the condition is degenerative and without serious intervention, Tilda is destined to disappear altogether.
So begins Tilda’s journey. She attends a support group for women, the Invisibility Advocacy Organisation. Meditation, diet, exercise are all in the mix but the hard work of healing means Tilda has to deal with the fallout from her messy divorce and her even messier childhood. It’s been swept under the emotional carpet for years and look where it has got her. It is time to reclaim what was lost and decide who she wants to be.
Tilda is Visible is inspired by Jane’s experience, common to so many women — that once you hit your forties, you start to not be noticed. A few years later, interestingly, and horrifyingly, Jane was misdiagnosed with a condition that would send her blind. In the intervening three months before she was correctly diagnosed, the prospect of never seeing herself again dramatically shifted Jane’s perspective on aging and her fundamental sense of self.
Tilda is Visible is about a lot more than aging and our relationship with it. It is about how childhood trauma shapes the adult we become and how important it is to come to terms with this and heal our wounds. It’s about love — between mothers and daughters, the sisterhood and that special person who really sees you. Gorgeous, compassionate and laugh out loud funny, if you adored Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry, you will love Tilda is Visible.
You can hear Jane Tara and I chatting about the writing of Tilda is Visible on the Writes4Women podcast on your favourite platform or find the episode over on the Writes4Women website here and you can read Jane’s substack over here
Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
35 year-old Winona Dalloway is a writer of romantic fiction, wife and mother of two. She begins her day before her husband and children stir. It is the only time she can be herself, free of the tugs and demands of daily life. To keep the panic at bay, she survives on a series of lists. If nothing else, it gives her something to cross off, a momentary thrill that she has achieved something.
Today, her list reminds her that she needs to pick up groceries, she has a specialist appointment about her heart, because, as her husband reminds her constantly, there is definitely something very wrong with her. Every activity, in these hours of freedom between school drop off and pick up, brings her closer to having to go home and prepare a meal for the important people her husband wants to impress. But as Winona weighs up the list of what is good about her life and what is not, the Transcendence Project, as she terms it, she begins to see that today marks the beginning and the end of life as she knows it.
Do not be deceived by the slightness of Miranda Darling’s novella for Thunderhead packs a mighty punch. It is a darkly funny, honest and insightful and also painful story of a woman trying to reconcile how she became who she is and how to reclaim who she was. The Thunderhead of the title is her husband. Winona is trapped in a controlling marriage, yet at the point we the reader are allowed into her story, Winona is a woman on the brink of change. What makes Thunderhead such a pleasure to read is Winona’s rich inner life. From the outside she looks like an introverted mum in overalls, a bit scatty, eager to please. But inside she is a sharply intelligent, creative, worldly creature who sees the way things are very clearly. So clearly, in fact, her husband should be terrified.
This is the kind of book that invites you to re-read passages simply for the pleasure of enjoying the writing. Thunderhead sweeps you up in a narrative that feels excruciatingly personal yet also wise, insightful and joyous. Winona Dalloway’s story is a roller-coaster of emotion that will make you gasp, hold your breath and sigh with relief. Simply put, Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead is a brilliant, poetic subversive story.
To win a copy of Thunderhead, scroll down to Giveaways Galore!
Appreciation by Liam Pieper
Oli Darling is, quite literally, the darling of the Australian art establishment. This queer son of the squattocracy in his flannelette shirts, RM Williams boots and his old ute, has works that hang in the finest homes and in every gallery that matters. With a new exhibition to promote, he’s invited onto a Q&A-type program. High as a kite, he tells the nation what he really thinks. Oli Darling’s fall from grace is spectacular. Faster than you can say privileged white guy, Oliver Darling is cancelled.
As his art works are pulled from walls around the country, Oli’s agent, Anton, dusts off the action plan he prepared long ago for just such a moment. Oli will write his memoir. Or rather, given he is incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence, Oli will work with a ghost writer and together they will spin a story that will resurrect Oli’s tattered career. As they delve into his past, Oli starts to realise that as long as the drugs were plentiful and the money kept rolling in, he’s been more than happy to leave the business side of things to Anton. Clueless, narcissistic Oli is about to discover exactly who’s been underwriting this supposedly stellar career and the myth that is Oli Darling.
Liam Pieper has written the social satire of our times — white male privilege, cancel culture, the rise and fall of social media influences and influencers. Appreciation examines what it means to be authentic in the modern world where appearance is everything. Oli Darling’s downfall is narrated by a storyteller who manages to be both empathetic to Oli’s plight as well relishing the schadenfreude. Pieper is an experienced ghost writer himself and brings this inside knowledge to the story in a such a delightfully entertaining and wicked way. Intricately plotted with an satisfyingly climatic twist, Appreciation is a laugh-out-loud funny tale that cuts to the bone.
Bone Lands by Pip Fioretti
In 1911, on a cold winter’s night, the country celebrates the coronation of a new King. Out in NSW’s prosperous wool country, a lone mounted trooper, Augustus Hawkins, discovers the brutally murdered bodies of three young people. They are the children of one of the district’s wealthiest families, the Kirkbrides. And they might still be alive if Hawkins had been doing his job instead of fulfilling more earthly pleasures.
The arrival of detectives from Sydney put Hawkins’ actions under the spotlight. This is a man who bears the scars of his years in the Boer War, who drinks to excess and howls in terror in the night. But Hawkins is also a man with a strong sense of justice. For better or worse, the vast western plains of NSW is his territory. The people who live here are his responsibility and whoever murdered these children has him to answer to. But not everyone wants the truth to come out, because the answers to Hawkins questions might just reveal how the Kirkbrides became so wealthy, longstanding family rivalries and the brutality generated by living in such a harsh land.
There is a flurry of praise for Pip Fioretti’s first foray into crime fiction and deservedly so. Australia’s dramatic natural landscape is the perfect world in which to embed a story, as the recent renaissance in crime fiction proves. Bone Lands is firmly in the same ranks as novels like Jane Harper’s The Dry and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands yet Fioretti gives this a unique twist by setting her story at the beginning of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched, Fioretti makes setting an important character in this tautly scripted story of the outsider who must seek justice when no one else wants it. Hawkins is an excellently flawed character, up against the wool aristocracy and the hard men who make the wealth for others to accumulate. Fioretti’s female characters are also women shaped by the men and the country where they live and Fioretti grounds their choices in place and history. Every character is fully realised and this makes Bone Lands a gripping read right to the end when the truth is almost too much to bear.
To win a copy of Bone Lands, scroll down to Giveaways Galore!
Giveaways Galore!
I’m excited to have two wonderful books to giveaway this month. Thanks to our friends at Scribe Publications, I have **three** copies of Thunderhead to giveaway. All you have to do is send me a reply email with the answer to the question below.
What is Winona’s nickname for her husband?
Thanks to the good folk at Affirm Press, to be in the running to win one of **three** copies of Bone Lands, all you have to do is send me a reply email with the answer to the questions below.
Where is Bone Lands set?
The fine print: Giveaways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on Tuesday 16 April. Good luck!
Remember, if you want to enter for each book, you can do so in one email.
Upcoming Events
Shellharbour Library
5.30pm Friday 24 May 2024
Join us for an inspiring evening dedicated to celebrating the literary talent within our community! Hosted by Shellharbour Libraries, this event promises an enriching experience for book lovers and supporters of local South Coast talent alike. We will be hosting Hayley Scrivenor (Dirt Town, #1 Australian bestseller), Meredith Jaffe (The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison, 2023 Better Reading Top 100), Kell Woods (After the Forest, Sunday Times Bestseller) Emma Darragh (Debut Novelist) for this special event coinciding with our Sydney Writer’s Festival programming.
Engage with the authors themselves as they share the stories behind their books, their creative processes, and the journey to publication. Browse through the book displays, chat with the authors, and perhaps even purchase a signed copy of your next favourite read to support local writers!
Free but bookings essential. Tickets are available here
South Coast Writers Festival
13 & 14 July 2024
Thirroul District Community Centre and Library
With a festival line-up featuring an array of stellar award-winning authors, talented new voices, acclaimed poets, broadcasters and thinkers, and over 18 sessions to choose from, the South Coast Readers and Writers Festival promises a weekend filled with captivating stories, thought-provoking discussions, and inspiring conversations.
Program details to be released. In the meantime, if you would like to be a part of their Sydney Writers Festival Live & Local satellite program, which includes sessions beamed in from SWF as well as local events, then you can find out what is on and how to get tickets over here
New Voices Down Under
In our March edition, we celebrate our one year anniversary with a bumper issue of fantastic new fiction from Australian authors. In Meet the Author, we had a fascinating chat with Lisa Medved about her novel, The Engraver’s Secret, inspired by the relationship between master painter Peter Paul Rubens and his engraver, Lucas Vorsterman.
For you chance to **win** a copy of The Husbands and/or The Engraver’s Secret, you must be a subscriber and answer the two questions in the March newsletter. You can do both of those things by clicking the button below.
The end of the cup
Well, my friend, my cup is empty. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I’ll be back in your inbox in June with all the wedding news and photos of my Scottish adventures. Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone :-)
Don’t forget, you can check out updates on events at www.meredithjaffe.com or, why don’t you leave a comment below or drop me a line. I love hearing from you!
Keep well,
I seem to have missed the email to reply to, I'll send a new email and hope I can still enter the draw for the books! These ones sound so good and relatable (sadly)😍😍😍😍😍