Scene from a Park

watching

one playing cricket, stumps unsteady in overgrown grass
one climbing the dinosaur bones of the yellow painted frame
one spinning to dizziness on the whirling roundabout -

on the hill, looking, the panic rises black and choking, but -

what's there to do? a parent must -

parent

so with both hands firmly the snarling thing is grasped and she contends for balance
against the weight that would push her sideways into the earth and

a small body presses into her side, laughing
and it costs her, it costs her, but she smiles
and her voice is almost normal as she says
I liked your cartwheels! Can you do more?

and she tightens her mind against the hurricane and waits for the sick wave to recede
and breathes grass and eucalypt and sweat, forcing a slowing of the heart
by ferocious will and nothing else

and says
I think there's rain coming, loves,
we should go soon

as the storm moves past and drops her down, draggled,
on the soft green grass with three children

like she never even left at all.

- Kathy, 30/9/2014

How to be both

I am over at Global Comment today, reviewing Ali Smith's Booker-shortlisted How to be both. This is my fourth Booker shortlist review and my seventh from the longlist; you can see links to the others in the list below. I'll be getting a review of Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North up soon, and will try to get through and review the final shortlistee, Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others, before the prize is announced.

Come chat over at Global Comment if you want!

Other Man Booker reviews:
J
Orfeo
The Dog
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The Wake
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

A random observation about character age and continuity

I get annoyed - really, really annoyed - with age-related inconsistency and implausibility in books. It annoys me more than any other continuity / suspension of disbelief error would do. (It doesn't annoy me as much as, say, homophobia, racism or bad writing, but on the gnat-bite scale of minor irritants, it ranks high).

By this I mean -

Character A is Character B and C's sibling. Character A is a woman young enough to have a small son, so let's say, what, mid-late 30s? Maybe early 40s? YET CHARACTERS B and C ARE WELL INTO THEIR SIXTIES.

Case in point: Digory's mother and Aunt Letty / Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew.

Or this -

Within the same canon, characters of the same age are described variously as "young", "middle-aged", "elderly", "old", or "in the prime of life".

Agatha Christie, I'm looking at you (and especially the difference in how 40 year old men and 40 year old women are described).

Further, this -

Character A is the parent of Character B and C, but as everyone's age is given at different points in the plot, the application of simple mathematics reveals that Character A was a preternaturally advanced 9-year-old.

(This one pops up oftener than it should in the speculative fiction scene).

I can suspend my disbelief with series characters who don't age at a normal rate - I'm good with people hovering in their 40s or 50s for thirty elapsed book years, that's a step I am willing to take because it's an intentional suspension of natural law for the purposes of story. Laziness with getting age relationships right or possible irritates me, though, and I suspect it always will. It's one of the many reasons that in my own series, I have a file on every recurrent character which includes their birthdates. Call me anal, but my characters ain't ever going to have siblings old enough to be their parents accidentally - if I do that, it'll be on purpose :-)

The Royal Melbourne Show

We took our kids to the Royal Melbourne Show today. This is the very first time they've been, although their aunt usually brings them each a showbag from her annual visits. My partner and I last went to the Show 14 years ago, well before our first child was born, and I remember enjoying it but finding it exhausting and a bit stressy with the press of crowds everywhere.

I have been hesistant to take them before now, with a combination of fear of extreme expenditure and distaste for the crowding (especially with a pram or pusher) holding me back. This year, though, our youngest is 5.5 and well able to keep up with the group on foot, so we thought, oh well - it's worth a try.

All three kids were very excited and enthused about going, and have spent a few days researching their desired showbags on the Show website. We had a slight glitch getting going this morning, with still-not-100% youngest declaring herself to be too sick to go, but she was persuaded by talk of baby animals, and off we went.


We ended up spending 5 hours at the Show all up, most of it remarkably harmoniously and enjoyably (not a given in an outing with three children, as anyone who has wrangled same would attest). We petted baby animals, watched the dog breed judging, perused the prize animal tent, watched a quite clever but (I have to say) borderline skeevy magic show, visited the food pavillions, and found time for my perennial favourite, the arts, crafts and cookery pavillion. (Check out that chicken cake! And how about the rainbow serpent? The bar is definitely raised now for birthday cakes in this house ...)

Of course, kids being kids, they also had a ride on a fairly low-key rollercoaster, and showbags were procured - 2 apiece. However, we did manage to steer them away from most of the carnie attractions, which are such a massive cash-suck. Fairy floss and gelato were adequate compensation for not being allowed to feed the clowns or throw darts at balloons :-)

Overall, I really enjoyed the day. The car parking was much better organised and less stressful than I remember it being, and there seemed to be a more manageable amount of people - we weren't crowded anywhere, indoors or outdoors, and didn't have to queue to do anything (including go to the loo!) Maybe that's because we went mid-week, whereas when we were young adults we always went Saturday? Or maybe Show numbers are down? I don't know, but it certainly made for a more pleasant family experience than I was necessarily expecting.

It was a very pricey day, no denying - but I bought the combined Show / Aquarium entry ticket, and that, combined with restricting the kids to two showbags total value $30 apiece, helped keep it within spec. We did drop over $300 today but we'll "save" over $100 when we take the kids to the Aquarium next, so overall, as a huge family day out in a school holidays that doesn't include going away anywhere, I can live with it. I think we'll probably make it a biennial event now - every second year seems like a fair proposition.

Man Booker Shortlist

I'm over at Global Comment today, considering the Man Booker shortlist. What did you think of it?