Australia, New Zealand, and Adrian Bell – welcome to episode 82!
In the first half, we do a topic suggested by Lindsay – books by Australians and books by people from New Zealand. And my GOODNESS we don’t know anywhere near enough to be discussing it. But we plough on!
In the second half, we look at two non-fiction books by Adrian Bell: Corduroy and A Suffolk Harvest.
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The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life by Jane Emery
Rose Macaulay by Constance Babington Smith
Rose Macaulay: A Biography by Sarah LeFanu
Aunt Mame by Patrick Dennis
Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
Circe by Madeline Miller
‘The Garden Party’ by Katherine Mansfield
Janet Frame
Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh
My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Emma by Jane Austen
My Place by Sally Morgan
The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
The Harp in the South by Ruth Park
Poor Man’s Orange by Ruth Park
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Breathe by Tim Winton
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin
Elizabeth von Arnim
Barbara Comyns
Sylvia Townsend Warner
A.A. Milne
Corduroy by Adrian Bell
A Suffolk Harvest by Adrian Bell
The Balcony by Adrian Bell
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather
This is why I don’t join a *real* book group – I would rebel totally about having to read a book I didn’t want to.
As for New Zealand vs Australia – I’ve not read enough of either to comment. But Katherine Mansfield! Always Katherine Mansfield! :DDD
I bought the Rural Trilogy from Slightly Foxed after you mentioned ‘Corduroy’ in a previous episode. I purchased as a gift for my mother whose dad was a farmer in Suffolk around the same time as Adrian Bell. Of course, I had to read them first when I found out you were doing this episode. :) Thank you for the amazing recommendation – I’m now trying to find everything I can! I just read ‘At the Field’s Edge: Adrian Bell and the English Countryside’ by Richard Hawking. It discusses Bell’s themes of environmentalism, the results of agri-business on small, diverse farms, and the effects on rural communities. Highly recommend!
Kiwi here; books to start with – Bone People by Keri Hulme, Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones and anything by Witi Ihimaera or Patricia Grace. Janet Frame wrote several novels but her autobiographical books are the most popular. Maurice Gee and VIncent O’Malley are other great authors.
I can honestly say that I never hear or about the Commonweath; hopefully we’ve outgrown that! It might be whānau/family connection though; people for whom living in the UK is an option (usually through grandparent or parent visas) may identify more strongly with the idea of a shared culture.
Noho ora mai/Stay well
Years ago I read the books, by Mary Scott (published in the 1950ies, for example “Breakfast at six”) about her life as a sheepfarmer’s wife in NZ (https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4s14/scott-mary-edith).
I enjoyed them tremendously, they are a bit like Monica Dickens’s books.
Hi Simon and Rachel,
Aussie here – felt the need to up-date you both on your knowledge of Australian writers as the ones that you discussed, for the most part, were very old titles that are often found in op.shops…. need I say more.
I’m surprised that you haven’t heard of Patrick White (Nobel Prize for Literature) – a dense writer, but, like Virginia Woolf, worth the effort of close reading. Also Christina Stead, David Malouf, Tim Winton (don’t stop after reading “Breathe”), Peter Carey, Helen Garner and my favourite, Alex Miller. Rachel, knowing that you love Stegner and Maxwell, you should read Shirley Hazzard’s “Transit of Venus”. Poetry – Les Murray is often suggested as being worthy of the Nobel Prize.
There are many, many others..
Re Australian history – a gentle reminder that the people who treated the Aboriginals so badly in the early days of settlement didn’t think of themselves as “Australian” – they were British settlers (not all of them were convicts and if they were, they had committed minor crimes to get here – the murderers etc were hung back in Britain). Granted, the Aboriginal people today are treated very unfairly, but paradoxically we do honour their culture. A must read about them and their way of life is “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe.
Hope this helps, love your podcast and blogs.
Kristine
BTW I hated “The Slap” and I have never watched “Neighbours” or Home and Away” and I don’t know anyone who does. They’re no more typical of a broad cross-section of Aussie life than Coronation Street was of British life. :)
Thanks for the suggestions! They’re all authors I’ve heard of- but there’s a big difference between having heard of them and having read them, of course! (Though did like the one Helen Garner I’d read and had intended to read it.) Though old titles in op shops are my favourite thing in any country’s literature!
It always makes me sad how neglected Neighbours is in its own country. Give it a try!