I was delighted to witness a friend and colleague’s book launch the other night. It’s taken Siang a few years to get to this stage and I admire her dedication and drive in achieving this goal.

When she’s not at work she’s inevitably at home writing and when you work full-time even just writing a book is a great effort.

Well, she did have some time off to finish the book, but finish it she did and it was recently published by Harper Collins and launched the other night. The book is called Handpicked, by Siew Siang Tay and the picture below is Siang signing someone’s copy at the launch.

The launch was fun and it was a bit like a work reunion as Siang invited quite a few ex-colleagues so it was great chatting to them amongst the formalities of the evening.

I have a copy  of the book (signed by the author of course) but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Buying fiction books for me is a luxury these days but I gladly bought a copy to support Siang. I also don’t read many books set in South Australia so I look forward to reading it for this aspect alone.

She’s finishing off her second novel and already planning her third so hopefully there will be more book launches to come. Keep an eye out for her at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in May.

Yesterday she got home after a night out and not wanting to do much else, turned on her modem and her laptop. She’s a bit of a statistics junkie and felt the draw of checking her blog stats to see if there had been any surge in visitors, or not.

It was a resounding not. She thought that maybe the stats were wrong and there was a nought missing at the end. She did a bit of checking around and everything appeared to be normal. Her blog was up and there had been no downtime. It was a big disappointment especially as her stats had spiked to an all time high during the week.

Even when checking her favourite blogs, there weren’t as many blog posts as normal. What’s happened she wondered? Where is everyone? Usually there were a lot more people providing her with a tale to read over a late breakfast on a Sunday morning.

It wasn’t until this morning when she read this post over at Miscellaneous Adventures of an Australian Mum that she realised where those readers may have gone. Miscellaneous Mum’s denying her husband her husbandly rights but apart from this little post, she’s probably denying her blogging duties too. And so are a lot of others.

As for the stat junkie, she hasn’t yet got her copy of the latest Harry Potter book. She’s keen to read it, but not so keen that she wanted to line up on a cold Saturday morning to get her copy.

She’ll probably find out what happens before she reads it but that doesn’t bother her too much because the joy is in the reading of the story and if a major plot has been revealed beforehand, that’s not too bad.

She would like to know if it’s really good and if it lives up to the others? In fact, she will probably have to read the others again just to get back into the Harry Potter groove.

In the meantime, she’s still checking her stats to see if her readers have come back.

PS: Speaking of groove, this was for day 7 of the blogging groove project.

Once again I decided to join in the Patrick White Readers’ Group - this time for ‘The Solid Mandala‘. The other book this group has done was ‘The Vivisector’ which I waded through and you can read my thoughts here, here and here.

I really liked the first chapter of ‘The Solid Mandala’ which is refreshingly short, unlike most of the remaining chapters in this book and most of the chapters in ‘The Vivisector’. I liked the way the protagonists, Arthur and Waldo Brown are introduced by Mrs Dun and Mrs Poulter as they are on the bus. White is very good a setting a scene and describing his characters so that we get to know the twins a bit before they make an appearance.

Then I started on Chapter 2 about Waldo and got bogged down after a little while. As I kept reading I kept wondering what the heck was happening. There didn’t seem to be any point at all other than learning about what Waldo, his brother and their parents were like. We learn that Waldo is the smaller one and Arthur is the stronger, healthier twin but he likes to help his mum knead the dough. They don’t let their father know this though, as it’s not a manly thing to do.

Then I got up to page 86 in my book and I haven’t continued. Ooh, I have loads of excuses which I won’t go into here but if you read the last week or two’s worth of entries in my blog you’ll get the idea. I feel a bit like I’ve failed, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.

I did, however, watch the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club last night to see what they said about it. It was interesting that the two older panellists, Jacki Weaver and Jason Stegar both liked the book. Jacki Weaver said it was her favourite one and she absolutely loves Patrick White. She said that you needed commitment and compassion to read it while Jason admitted it wasn’t an easy read, but he enjoyed it and he saw Patrick White in Waldo.

I don’t know that much about Patrick White but I think his way with words is reflected in Waldo’s character on p 36 of my book (the 1966 edition published by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd), ‘Because words were not in Arthur’s line. It was Waldo who collected them, like stamps or coins. He made lists of them. He rolled them in his mouth like polished stones.’

The two younger guests, Craig Reucassel and Marieke Hardy both disliked the book a lot. Craig said that he found it difficult. It was dense and overwhelming and nothing happened. He said that no-one would understand the crucial moments but this is where Jacki liked it as she had to use her imagination for these bits. Marieke said reading it was like wading through a vat of cold porridge.

I felt somewhat comforted after watching this that I am not alone in finding this book difficult. I don’t know if I’ll ever borrow it from the library again and try to read it, but when the Patrick White Readers’ Group comes up with the next book I’ll give it a go.

I keep an eye out for the Blogging for Books competition each month, and usually check out TheZeroBoss weblog anyway, so when I saw the topic for this month’s entry I decided to use something I wrote last year. Normally I use it as an excuse for a writing exercise, but not this time.

The topic this month is ‘Dream a little dream’ and mine is about dreams of course. Read for yourself.

I’ve strayed away from my usual first person writing - something I do experiment with occasionally here.

Read my first and second posts in regards to The Vivisector.

Bloody hell it’s been a hard slog getting through these chapters this week and I’m still nowhere near the end of chapter 8.

Normally I can read a book in quite a short time, even a long one like this but because it doesn’t flow too well for me I’m having a bit of a hard time. Not being one to give up too easily I’m getting through it, but I must admit towards the end of chapter 6 I did read quite quickly through it as I was just so sick of it being so long. This time with my reading I’m making some small notes as I go because otherwise I would forget what I want to say, so here’s my thoughts on the three chapters, well two and a bit.

I know it takes a while for things to sink in sometimes but it wasn’t until I got stuck into chapter 6 that I realised girls and women feature a heck of a lot compared to men. The men, apart from Hurtle of course, are really minor characters in the book. The two chapters, I have read so far, that really only feature men are the two ’show the passage of time’ chapters, ie with the grocer in chapter 5 and Mothersole in chapter 7. I got a real feel of how Mothersole regretted giving Hurtle his card, ‘The two men looked at each other, and smiled as each realized he would probably never meet the other again except in nightmares or moments of sentimental weakness.’ (p. 421).

Chapter 7 also informs us what happened to Hero and for the first time since Hurtle was 6 years old we are told his age - 55. I suspect from the spoilers I’ve read that this is necessary for the reading of chapter 8 when he hooks up with Kathy so that we definitely know the huge age difference between them.

Stepping back to the beginning of chapter 6, there’s this: ‘As there was so much he had to paint, the fantasies he was amused to indulge in came no closer to actuality than masturbation to fulfilled love.’ (p. 277). Despite the heavy going of this book for me sometimes, sentences like this jump out at me because they so aptly describe a situation. Quite often we feel there’s so much to do we can’t possibly do it all.

Another observation White makes on p. 285 when Hurtle’s at a party hosted by Olivia Davenport and some of the guests are meeting him for the first time and Mrs Halliday didn’t quite catch his name. When it is repeated for her she says, ‘Oh. Ohhh? Neoh! Not the artist - the painter? Duf-field?’ The way she pronounces ‘Neoh’ and emphasises Duffield reminds me of Prue and Trude in Kath and Kim and their snobbish way of talking and looking at the world. I suspect Mrs Halliday is a snob and we leave her fishing for her compact.

I don’t feel able to comment on the rest of chapter 6 and Hero. Others have more than adequately done that.

After quite enjoying chapters 1 and 2 I got a bit bored as Hurtle got older and the narrative shifted from second to third person.

I still like the way things are described in the book but I found myself re-reading some bits now knowing what the heck was going on. I lost the plot in chapter’s 3 and 4 as he travelled through Europe then completely disconnected from the Courtneys. I need to reread to understand it better but am hesitant to subject myself to it.

By the end of chapter 4 Hurtle is well and truly grown up and I’m not really sure how old he is. Old enough to have been a painter for long enough to gain some recognition and enough money to indulge in some things.

Hurtle seems quite self-obsessed. All the same he has people that love him, Nance and the art dealer, even though he is quite distant from them both physically and emotionally.

And chapter 5, it took me a while to figure out who was masturbating was it Hurtle or the grocer? That came out of left field.

I am taking a bit of a break to read some more Australiana in ‘Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude Get a Life’ by Maureen McCarthy and will reopen The Vivisector very soon. I needed a small break but am looking forward to new chapters opening in his life.

I’ve finally joined a book club of sorts - albeit an online reading group focusing on Patrick White. Read about how all this got started.

I had to dig around to find a copy of The Vivisector and finally got one. My local library didn’t have a copy. The copy I’ve got must be an original. Details are: Published in 1970 by Jonathan Cape Ltd, London. It’s the hardback with a plain orange cover.

I didn’t know whether I’d enjoy it or not but willing to give it a go and now I’m looking forward to each instalment of my reading.

I’m up to about the middle of chapter 2 and they’re quite long chapters so this commentary is only up to the Courtney’s trip to Europe. The brief is to have read chapters 1-3 by today, but I’ll have to catch up on the weekend.

Read a plot summary to this point by Grice.

Points of note to me:

• Hurtle Duffield Courtney is an interesting six year old. He’s comes across as quite arrogant for his age. Others participating in the readers’ group have mentioned his cruelty but cruel wouldn’t be the word I would use. Arrogant, yes, as I mentioned above, and curious, and direct as children are.
• He is also a bit weird and creepy. He keeps talking about brushing up against women and girls, implying that his character is older than he is.
  ‘She would look at him as though he was sick. Till he brushed up against her. He had learnt that this worked with his mother, and with Lena and the girls. He had never tried it out on his father.’ (p 15)
  I can’t think of any six year old I know exploring their sexuality beyond having a bit of play with their willie.
• Having said that, I like his creativeness and how he interprets things as he sees them quite differently from most people.
  ‘If he ever painted Sybil Gibbons he would show her pale-green, vegetable flesh tortured by moonlight and hot sheets, her lips slightly open as he sa they would have to be.’ (p. 129)
  He says himself: ‘I don’t want to be like everyone else.’ (p. 87)
• The use of the second person? ‘You this and you that,’ is quite distracting. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not used to this style as I haven’t encountered it before. Even when I hear people use ‘you’ when they’re obviously talking about themselves annoys me.
• I think if I met Maman in real life she and I wouldn’t be friends. She strikes me as being too needy and a bit shallow.
• And Rhoda. Not quite sure if I feel sorry for her or not. It must be hard for her to have Hurtle arrive as part of the family and realise that he’s their favourite.