Savannah

One of the many books I read during my chemo purgatory was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.  A great book for sleepless nights wondering about the random nature of life.

(designer Lyn Morgan's Greek Revival House in Savannah) 

(living room)

I first bought it at university, prompted I am pretty sure by the rave reviews of my friend Aussie New Yorker but I never quite got to it.

If you have not read this book, it covers the author's lengthy stay in Savannah, at the time of the four trials of antique dealer, Jim Williams, who was tried for the murder of local good time boy (and his assistant), Danny Hansford.

I so loved this book, the humid, creeper clad decadence of the Savannahians, and their eccentric cross dressing, backwoods bars, corrupt politicians, secret affairs, all night parties, internecine rivalries, and the two unforgettable female characters - a local voodoo high priestess and drag queen (the Lady Chablis - formerly Frank).  The writer describes the shady world as Gone with the Wind on Mescalin, one of the many lovely turns of phrase sprinkled in the book.  

I particularly liked Mandy Nichols' observation that it is so much better to be on the 'edge of a party'.

This book is a great exploration of the darker side which hums beneath every city, town and village.   As Minerva the voodoo lady puts it -

'Dead time lasts for one hour -- from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after midnight is for doin' evil.'

This is Jim Williams' house (Mercer House, now a museum I think) which he loved to live in because it annoyed all the 'right people'.

Here are some typical houses from the historic quarter:

(via Young House Love)

(via Pinterest)

For all of Lyn Morgan's stunning house in Savannah, go here.  

It is quite divine and the antithesis of the dark antique filled rooms of Jim Williams.  You can read more about him here. 

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43 Books

Following my last post where I mentioned the books I read during surgery and chemo, a number of people asked me (a) what I read and (b) how I found the time.

The answer to (b) is that when you spend months hooked up to intravenous poison every Monday morning for 4 or so hours, you suddenly have quite a lot of time for reading.

(a bit of our library)

And the answer to (a) is below where I list my 43 books. 

As I have said before, I found reading a bit challenging this year.  I did not want to read anything life changing which would later remind me of where I was when I read it. 

I also found it quite helpful to read about people battling life and death in an escapist sense because it made me feel that they were in more trouble than me (the same reason I have watched a lot of House this year.  They have what disease?   Just made me feel better that I had simple straightforward cancer).  

And also I did occasionally feel pretty brain dead and something simple and soft was just the answer. 

I have to mention the role of my Kindle in all this.  Whilst I love to hold a real book in my hot little hands, the Kindle has so many advantages.  Two in particular I mention: the first is that if you are stuck somewhere and don't feel like reading what you have, you can in 30 seconds download another book.  The second is cost.  On Kindle, most paperbacks are $5 to $7, old classics are free, and even new ones are about $11.  Compared to a shop price of $29 for a new paperback that is a major saving and explains why I could do crazy things like read the balance of the Lee Child oeuvre.  ( I bet not many people put 'Lee Child' and 'oeuvre' in the same sentence). 

So, fully categorised and colour coded, here is the list.   

This post is dedicated to Anton, the lovely silver haired man from the country I met in the oncology suite who reads military history and was always interested in what I was reading.  I hope you are doing okay.  


A mixed bag of fiction

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
One Day by David Nicholls
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak 
The Flaneur by Edmund White
When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (thanks Simone xo)

US loner ex military cop adventures

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
The Visitor by Lee Child
Without Fail by Lee Child
Tripwire by Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
Persuader by Lee Child

I am addicted to Jack Reacher and his slightly improbable but impeccably plotted adventures in the US heartland. 

Self Help and Cancer

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle  (first and last self help book I will ever try to read)
C: Because Cowards get Cancer too by John Diamond
Crazy Sexy Cancer by Kris Carr
The C Word by Lisa Lynch

A classic fast paced WW2 thriller

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
(I also read 'A Dangerous Fortune', epic banking family revenge saga set in late 1800s London).  

Soppy and Likely to Make You Lose Respect for Me

A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy
Temptation by Douglas Kennedy 
State of the Union by Douglas Kennedy
The Moment by Douglas Kennedy (this is his latest book about a doomed romance set in a 1980s separated Berlin.  I don't know about you but I fully loathed the main character by the end of this story - whatever you do don't read this book)
A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve (always love her work although her earlier stuff is superior I think)

Venetian Detective

Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon

2 new US legal thrillers

Innocent by Scott Turow (this is a sequel to Presumed Innocent and is quite brilliant.  His writing is so calm and powerful, and this is a marvellous depiction of a marriage in decay as well). 
The Confession by John Grisham

Adventure for 12 year old girls (and me)

What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
Night birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken
The Witch of Clatteringshaws by Joan Aiken
Midwinter Nightingale by Joan Aiken
Mandy by Julie Andrews (actually I read this to my daughter but it still counts)

You may think this is a bit odd but proper children's literature can be read by adults, I think.  And I may have been regressing just a bit in hospital, so I went on a bit of a Joan Aiken splurge.  These books are amazing, they feature a little Cockney adventuress, Dido Twite and are set in an alternate history in the 1600s and feature a range of kinds (Good King James III and in Midwinter Nightingale a dying King Richard and a baron-werewolf bent on taking over the throne).   You can read about Joan Aiken here. 

Cornish and Scottish Bohemia

Wild Mountain Thyme by Rosamund Pilcher
Coming Home by Rosamund Pilcher
Day of the Storm by Rosamund Pilcher
September by Rosamund Pilcher
Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher


I read The Shell Seekers 20 years ago and it is one of my favourite books ever.  I bought lots of her lesser works on Kindle, some of which are okay, especially Coming Home which is an absorbing story set in Cornwall and London and Malaysia over the 1930s and in WW2.  

Mixture of Non Fiction

At Home by Bill Bryson
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell 
The Big Short by Michael Lewis 
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Love Wisdom and Motherhood by Jessica Rowe
Is there a Nutmeg in the House? by Elizabeth David 
Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich

Two Rock and Roll Tales

Just Kids by Patti Smith
Life by Keith Richards (still reading this one)

Code
One of my favourite books - have read several times now
Not their best work 
Unfinished
Need to be in the right mood for this 
If you want to read something completely different...?

Finally, a very big thank you to Simone from Bottom of the Ironing Basket.  You see, I won her incredibly generous 500th post giveaway of 16 yes 16 books and they have been arriving in my office in twos and threes over the last couple of weeks.  Here are some of them.   Thank you very much lovely S.  xo 

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Escaping Cancer Island

I have had some unusual dreams this year.  It is amazing how one's subconscious takes what is going on in the conscious world and twists and twirls a dream around it.  

So, at the risk of turning into a boring dinner party guest who bangs on about her dreams, I am going to share a couple here.   

(extremely overpriced lily which graced the table last week. I know they are funereal but I love them)

I have always thought recurrent dreams are the most interesting.  They must speak of something deep deep inside. 

My most frequent recurrent dreams since about the age of 20 have been:   (1) waking up on the morning of a university exam and realising I have not done any study or preparation for it  at all (actually that part was true in the case of Ancient French) or (2) running really hard but getting nowhere (often with not enough clothes on).

(frangipani lifted from a tree in the street on our last holiday in central New South Wales)

My new recurrent dreams are (1) giving some very dry legal presentation but I have forgotten my wig so I am with my 'No Hair' as my son calls it in front of 50 unimpressed strangers (2) dreams where I think I am wearing my wig at a meeting but realise at the end that I wasn't and everyone was being very polite and not saying anything (3) the Dr Suess Wig Dream where I think I am wearing a wig but it's the wrong wig and I take it off, then another, then another and underneath them all is the 'right' wig.  

And I had a very memorable epic dream which seemed to go for hours and hours where I was on an island and all the power went out and people were desperately trying to get off because they knew if they got stuck on the island that they would die and all the boats had left and all that was available were charter planes and they were all taken by the old people with brown leathery skins wearing lots of gold jewelry and pastel nylon tracksuits and I was crying at the airline desk saying I don't care what it costs, I will pay anything and do anything to get off this island.    (I can interpret this - the money reference is the fact that this cancer thing is costing a fortune and the older people thing I think relates to the fact that with a couple of exceptions, when I have my chemo I am the youngest person in the oncology suite by at least 15 years.   And I would be lying if I said I didn't feel trapped, if not by the diagnosis then definitely by the endless treatment.)

(my mother's herb pots.  And she didn't need Martha Stewart to tell her to do it this way).

And so it is that I don't want anything to remind me of this time. When it is all over I don't want to listen to a song and think 'Oh yes that is what I listened to when I was having chemo'.   Kind of doesn't have the same nostalgic ring to it as 'Oh yes that was the song I listened to a lot when I first fell in love'.    Which means that I have stayed away from music largely except classical.  

And equally, with books, I don't want to think 'Oh that is the book I read when I was in hospital', or 'that is the book I used to read whilst waiting in the oncology suite'.  So I am reading books I have read before, or books which involve such a sheer form of escapism I will never remember them.    More on those another time.  

(last year's daphne.  This year's lot is just coming into bud.)

It surprises me that some friends of mine who have been through cancer and chemotherapy can't remember the names of the particular chemo they had.  The detail obsessive in me thinks 'how can they possibly not remember something that important?'. But then I realise that they have forced it out of their mind.  They don't want to remember.  They don't want that recall.  

I can't blank out my recall.  And in the typical manner of a lawyer, I need to read as much as I can about new experiences.   I have already mentioned that the Internet can be dangerous.   And books too.  But I have done a bit of cancer book reading. Some has been upsetting, some badly written, others moving beyond words.  I am a bit picky with my cancer books.  Any book that recommends that I 'find my special place' and 'sit there quietly'  gets thrown across the room pretty quick smart. 

Here are the three of the best  writings which I have dipped into whilst on Cancer Island.   And you may say: how are they relevant to me? But I say - they are all well written, and -  ultimately -  about life, not death.  Because that is what these experiences do teach us - to respect and value life and not to worry about its end. 

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. My oncologist suggested it to me, as he worked at the Royal Marsden in London when John Diamond was being treated there.  Believe it or not, on Cancer Island there are good cancers and bad cancers.   I think John Diamond had a bad one: throat cancer which had spread to his tongue and lymph nodes.    

John Diamond was a journalist and broadcaster, perhaps better known for being married to Nigella Lawson.   His 'cancer journey' was pretty horrendous from start to finish but he kept his perspective, and writes so clearly about  his experience that it moved me deeply.   

Diamond (like me) hated being described as fighting a 'battle' or being 'brave' and writes of his desire to whinge, moan and just give up. He also writes hilariously of the policy of 'partial disclosure' most oncologists follow, meaning that they just give you enough information progressively to be going on with, not the whole box and dice (because that would be just too overwhelming). 

This book only peripherally touches on cancer in one chapter when it looks at the 'positive thinking' mantra which plagues so many with serious illness (as in, if you think positive you will be cured, when in fact that has not been proved to be the case) but otherwise reviews the history of positive thinking in the US and forensically dissects the downside of such an approach.   I am all for being optimistic but to me the idea that thinking positively can bring me money, fame or good health for ever is ludicrous.   She also writes scathingly of the infantilisation of breast cancer, and in reference to the teddy bear she was given as part of a support group care package asks if men with prostate cancer are given Matchbox toy cars? 

And finally, I have been avidly reading this man's series of articles published by Vanity Fair:

Like or loathe Christopher Hitchens you would not wish Stage IV oesophagal cancer on your worst enemy.  And he has finally lost his voice, and writes brilliantly and movingly of the pain this causes him, and the importance of being able to voice one's thoughts here. 

I read just a day or so ago that Hitchens has won an award for his cancer writings.  Very well deserved.  I so feel for him.  





Weird chemo side effect no 467:  bye bye big toe nails, baby bye bye.  Yes it's true. I can cope with this I think as I lost one when I dropped a tray on my toe on New Year's Day 2000.   But I wasn't expecting it. Isn't life unpredictable? 

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Singing in the Rain

Life isn't about waiting for the storms to pass

It's about learning to dance in the rain.

A kind stranger emailed me this anonymous quote.   I have been thinking about what it means quite a lot.  

I was blessed during the days I spent in hospital by some suprisingly acceptable television.   A few Hitchcock films, some Grey's Anatomy at 3 am and then this, my favourite film, Singing in the Rain.  When was the last time you stood in the rain like this?  I hardly ever did it, mostly from vanity to stop my hair going frizzy.   Well, soon enough I will have no hair, so standing or singing in the rain will present no vanity issues at all.
 

So two operations (with Christmas in between), a New Year's Eve in a hospital bed, countless scans, x-rays, tests, and lots of poking, prodding and painkillers and a full 8 days in a small room later, I am back home.  And in case one needs any proof that home is better than hospital, here goes:

(gardenias from home by my hospital bed, which did scent the room very nicely for days)

(the real thing on our front verandah)

(chair and window in my second hospital room.  You can just see the corner of the Chinese water torture style ticking clock which my husband had to remove from the wall on the shelf)

(chair and trees at home) 

It has occurred to me that we spend a lot of our lives waiting.  Waiting to finish studying, waiting to meet the right person, waiting to fall pregnant, waiting to get that perfect job \ promotion \ deal \ opportunity. 

For me, I will try living in the now.  Within reason of course. It is absurd to suggest that you cannot think of the future, or plan or look forward.  If I were to only live for this minute, I would be very overweight, and possibly an alcoholic. 

But you can go to extremes.  Part of my old life was full of lists, plans, projects to manage, things to do, tick off, complete, arrange, sort out.  I would lie awake at night thinking of the things I had to do the next day.  I don't think I was stressed about this.  But I liked to have things clear in my head and it was becoming a dreadful self perpetuating habit, which meant that I was over thinking absolutely everything constantly.   I still have this habit.... But I am hoping that my brain can be trained to calm down.  

I have received some amazing things from generous friends, aquaintances and complete strangers.  Your words and thoughts have buoyed me.  Which is strange, because as I have said to several people, I don't particularly care what most other people think.  So who would have thought that so much positivity could help me?  But it does.  Interestingly, in one of the many guides to cancer I have received, one of them is a little pamphlet to help friends and family.  One of the things it advises friends and family not to say is 'be positive' because it may make one feel as if one can't complain or articulate how one really feels.  I think this is a bit extreme.  One of the problems with a diagnosis like this is that it can be tempting to obsessively think about it all the time. That cannot be healthy. And if you have to think about it, think about it, to the extent you can, as a challenge and opportunity.   That, I think, is good advice from anybody. 

So, thank you all, again.

(this arrived from Seymour, a country town north of Melbourne, from a friend of my mother's)

(this turned up from a friend in Paris) 

(this was part of a wonderful bundle of things from Maxabella)

(this came with many other items from Jennie at Posie Patchwork)

I re-read this book over two days last week.  

Of course when I last read this book I shuddered at the chemo and surgery descriptions and thought thank God that will never happen to me. 

This time around I read it with an eye to tips, coping mechanisms and some perspective from the great survivor himself.  When Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996, he was toast.   Even his doctors, giving him survival percentages of 40% privately thought those odds were generous.   It is tempting to think his extreme fitness helped his fight. Or his determination.  But as he says, brave and positive people die from cancer every day.  Whilst not so nice negative people survive to complain another day.   Go figure.  Life is a great lottery.   The being positive I think is perhaps not so much about survival, but about making the experience more manageable, and giving one skills to deal with the post treatment phase, which I believe can be just as challenging as chemotherapy.  

Lance's foundation, Livestrong, fights to improve the lives of those affected by cancer.  Looking at this very well resourced and clearly set out site, it is quite amazing to see how far it has come since it was first established in 1997.  

Every day I learn about the amazing people, volunteers and professionals, who work to help cancer sufferers.   It is a whole new world for me but one which is not dark and grim, but life affirming and uplifting.  

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Salads for Madame Bovary

Whilst looking for some Christmas table inspiration I came across this wonderful French dining room.

And I thought - I know just the woman for this room: the highly imaginative, but unhappy, Emma Bovary, the heroine of Gaustave Flaubert's beautiful book, written in 1854, which I am re-reading at the moment. This book was listed in the top two best books ever written (along with War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy) in a poll of contemporary writers in 2007.   

This was an excellent book for backpacking around the regional cities of France as a young girl, accompanied only by some mournful New Order music on my 'Walkman' (these large plastic portable tape decks seem so dated now don't they?) .  

This room looks like just the place Emma, enticed by the money lender Lheureux, may have excitedly spent money she didn't have decorating, in an effort to make things and in particular, her life, more interesting.    Really, who needs Eat Pray Love when you have a book like this to delve into a complicated female psyche?  After all, Emma Bovary tries all the same things that that woman does from Eat Pray Love (am I the only person on the planet to have found the EPL woman appallingly self indulgent?*):  turns to religion, has affairs, meditates on the meaning of life and indulges in romantic fantasies.

(Isabelle Huppert as Madame Bovary in Claude Chabrol's adaptation from 1991)

For Emma Bovary, in this dining room, I would serve salads.    Something delicate but well flavoured. 

Which coincides nicely with the no 1 item on my Christmas list this year, Salades by Sydney chef Damien Pignolet:

I really am very easy to buy for at Christmas.  Just a few cookbooks and I am a happy girl.  And this one looks to be a cracker.   So Santa, if you are reading this, please can you oblige me? 

Here are some of Pignolet's salads to entice you into summer (or winter!)

(cauliflower, beetroot and celeriac with horseradish cream)

(nicoise salade)

 

(goats cheese fritters, baby beetroot and figs)

(warm salad of scallops, sorrel croutons, grilled red pepper and witlof)

 

I think I could pretty much happily live on salads for the rest of my life.

(* I am aware I have probably made some enemies by this comment.  Please don't judge me by my loathing of this book..... I am of course just a lone voice struggling against the tide).

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Back from the Nether World of Castles

I have spent the last 3 or so days and 4 very long nights half dead in bed from stomach flu, which I could have done without.  If you were to ask me what is the very worst thing about having children I would have to say 'being sick' because it is so hard to recover from anything when you have to attend to their every need and that, combined with guilt that you are not attending to their every need in a remotely satisfactory way, renders the whole experience twice as bad.  Mind you I was fully delirious for one whole day so I didn't much notice how hungry they were.  (Only joking, I did have a husband who can in theory look after them.  But to this day one of my fears which cannot be stilled is the fear of becoming chronically ill.   Who would make sure that the children are really okay?)

I did manage to do a lot of this though:

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (with some weak tea)

Kate Morton is now an 'Internationally Best Selling' author, trumpet her publishers.  Her first two books also received the little golden 'Great Read' sticker handed out by the Australian Women's Weekly which usually guarantees mega sales. It also connotes girly chick lit whirlwind slightly bitter romance. And her work is better than that.  Still pretty fruity in its language, perhaps searching for the less well known word when the ordinary one would do just fine, it's true, but I have loved all her books, resonant with secrets, dark English houses, overgrown gardens, pre and post War romances, and the tragedies and misunderstandings of family relationships.   

Have you ever wondered about your mother's life before she married and had you? I have, and like most people I have never really broached the topic with her.  The Distant Hours explores the life of the heroine's mother as an evacuee to a castle located (I think) in Surrey which was inhabited by three sisters and their mad brilliant writer father in the depths of World War 2 and the secrets the sisters then keep there for 50 years. 

Here is Kate Morton at her desk at home in Brisbane.  Yes she is Australian, but writes so well about England.

photo via The Australian

And most wonderfully The Distant Hours features a castle with a tower and a filled in moat.   Kate Morton recently said in an interview 'I wanted to write something that made me feel so enveloped by a story that the real world dissolves around me'.   I would say that is the secret to all great writing, that transportation into another world, and another point of view.

 

Whilst Kate Morton was apparently inspired by Sissinghurst Castle in her depiction of the fictional Milderhurst Castle, I pictured this castle as the home of the Blythe sisters, Juniper, Persephone and Seraphina.  This is Herstmonceux Castle (Tudor, constructed from 1441) at Bexhill in Sussex, taken I suspect, before it was refurbished. It now houses an outpost of Canada's Queen's University.   

How I wanted to live in a castle when I was little.  And the Distant Hours made me think back to some other favourite castle books.  

I read Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle' many years ago, and when the film was released in 2003 I rushed off to see it by myself.   The film was set here, at Manorbier Castle (Norman, constructed from 1140) in West Wales, a castle which has now, like so many others, fallen into disrepair.

No post about English castles in books would be complete without Malory Towers.   I have read that the real life inspiration for Malory Towers, the four towered school in Cornwall, was this castle, Lulworth Castle (built in 1610) in Dorset.   Isn't it funny that as a child I so fervently wanted to go to boarding school. I probably would have hated it, but the idea of school in a stone castle was just so exciting.

I do often wonder if Brideshead Revisited would have died a quiet 20th century death were it not for the BBC TV series from the early 1980s.  After all, I have to say I found the book a bit turgid.  Far away, at Melbourne University at the time of the TV series, people got up in boaters and blazers channeled Sebastian Flyte in their every utterance.  But the setting, in this, the castle of all castles, Castle Howard in North Yorkshire (built from 1699 to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh), makes up for almost everything else.   

Other castles of my dreams? I prefer them craggy and stormy, like this one, Eilean Donan Castle (originally built in early 13th century as a defence against the Vikings):

Have I missed any other great castle books?

(Photo of Manorbier Castle by Stephen J Franklin)

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