PM's Literary Awards

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards were announced yesterday. Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors!

The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The Awards recognise the importance of literature to our national identity, community and economy.

Particularly in light of this description of the awards, but mostly just personally, I am so sad that Kate Constable's Crow Country is not shortlisted, because it was one of the very best titles released last year and one which perfectly captured the essence of our country and weaved it into a fully enthralling story. It's one of those books that is brilliantly written, thought provoking and engaging for its target audience. It does, however, hover around that line between middle grade fiction and young YA, which may have worked against it. But! Let us now dwell on what isn't, because that will get us nowhere.

Let us celebrate what is! Below are the judges' comments on the five shortlisted titles for the Young Adult category. The judging panel was made up of Judith White, Mary-Ruth Mendel and Bob Sessions:

A Straight Line to my Heart, Bill Condon
Condon writes about teenagers with great empathy. His first-person narrator Tiff is at a crossroads, burning to pursue her dream of becoming a journalist but slow to realise that her greatest story lies in her unconventional family. Skilfully drawn characters, ranging from her adopted grandfather to a gruff reporter colleague, help the reader to become aware that words sometimes conceal more than they reveal.

Alaska, Sue Saliba
Saliba creates a haunting picture of an Australian girl’s struggle with loneliness and uncertainty, set on the edge of the remote Alaskan wilderness. Evocative imagery of forest, snow and wildlife strengthen the fabric of a superbly told story, in which the central character finds a way out of self-absorption and illusion to embrace the complexity of human experience and take responsibility for what she has left behind.

Being Here, Barry Jonsberg
This is a profoundly beautiful story, a memoir of youth retold in old age to a schoolgirl, forging a link between generations. A booklover’s tale, it recalls a girl who escaped from the isolation of country life and family tragedy through both the written page and an unusual friendship with a boy stranger. Jonsberg unravels her memories to give us a compelling affirmation of enduring love.

Pan's Whisper, Sue Lawson
Lawson allows us inside the skin of Pan, a damaged, untrusting foster child in an account that reveals how her own courage, and the caring attention of friends, can unlock the memories that plague her. Told with great sensitivity, Pan’s story shows the hurt that hides behind teenage aggression and how that hurt can be transcended to arrive at a measure of fulfilment.

When We Were Two, Robert Newton
Faultlessly constructed and told with brilliantly understated, tragi-comic dialogue, this is the deeply moving story of two brothers journeying from the bush to the coast on the eve of war. Enhanced by a Chaucerian cast of characters encountered along the way, it tells essentially of a love of family that can survive separation and death itself. This is historical fiction of rare accomplishment.

The Tillermans

Maybe life was like the sea, and all the people were like boats ... Or maybe each boat was a kind of family. Then, what kind of boat would the Tillermans be? A little one, bobbling about, with the mast fallen off? A grubby, worn-down workboat, with Dicey hanging on to the rudder for dear life.
  Everybody who was born was coast on to the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions. Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats - they just went along as best they could, trying to find a harbour.

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt, first published in 1981, is one of those quintessential classic American children's books. Or at least one of those thick-paged, yellowing novels from the 1970s and 80s that have the same feel, the same smell, the same dorky, now-dated cover illustrations. The characters and the worlds they inhabit are small, but the stories are so rich. I don't feel like the authors are trying to impress me with how cool the characters are, but the focus is on creating relationships that ring true, that tell stories of sadness without being shocking or depressing, that capture a little bit of a life so fully.

Dicey and her brothers and sister (James, Sammy and Maybeth) are abandoned by their mother and find themselves alone in a car park in a strange city. When she doesn't come back Dicey decides they will walk to Bridgeport, where they had been headed before their mother left them, to go and stay with a relative there. Within a few pages you know these children so well and your heart fairly breaks for them as they hope to find their Momma waiting for them in Bridgeport.

There's a lot of walking involved, a lot of trudging, lots of stale donuts eaten and every penny they can get their hands on can go five ways. As the children walk, they talk about their Momma - who clearly became a very sad woman unable to care for her family - they sing together and they form an unbreakable unit. When Bridgeport doesn't turn out the way they expected, the Tillermans head off again, in search of an estranged, eccentric grandmother.

This review made me so sad. Of course we're not all going to like the same stories etc etc, and the books have more supporters than critics on Goodreads so I shouldn't complain, but at least try to tell me what made you stop reading.

Homecoming definitely has a wholesome whiff about it, for sure, but in a way that acknowledges and appreciates the dark side of the world and doesn't dismiss it or run away from it. All the children (and most of the grown-ups) learn about right and wrong, about what's important in life - and learn that all these things are difficult and changeable and confusing. The people that the Tillermans encounter on their travels, and the kindness (and cruelty) of strangers, the sea motif and the ideas of home and family all make for the best kind of book, in my opinion.

Homecoming's sequel, Dicey's Song, won the Newbery Medal in 1983.

The Tillerman Cycle: Dicey's Song, A Solitary Blue, The Runner, Sons from Afar, Come a Stranger, Seventeen Against the Dealer.

sometimes i get the urge to read grown up books

if i got to choose four books to take home tonight (if only el cardo credito weren't at the end of its tether and threatening to cut me off and send me to Spenders Anonymous...where i would kick it in the balls with my fancy new 1940s-esque black patent schoolma'am, gal-friday shoes...)

where was i?

oh yes.

under the dome, stephen king (hodder)

who would have thunk i'd ever want to read a stephen king so much? this one looks particularly epic, about a giant dome dropping over a town - cutting birds in half and detroying an aeroplane (killing some of the people inside) as it settles into place. i've just read the first three pages.

the boy next door, irene sabatini (sceptre)

this is a curious one. set in zimbabwe in the 1980s it looks to be the story of a young girl - lindiwe - and the young boy next door who is arrested for setting his stepmother alight. the blurb says "...though eighteeen months later the charges against ian mckenzie are dropped and he returns home, full of charm and swagger." i know very little about africa (and what i do know i only know from spud) and this story, which the blurb says vividly evokes this country's slide into chaos following its independence and it's also a love story.

truth, peter temple (text)

merely because it won the miles franklin. but i'd also have to get the broken shore, cuz i ain't read that yet either.

our tragic universe, scarlett thomas (canongate)

because i LOVED LOVED the end of mr y and have been DYING for another scarlett thomas since. this one's an august release and we'll prob get it in at the shop this week. i don't think i'm going to be able to stop myself buying it, somehow. fingers crossed for a reading copy!
here's the blurb from the text website:
If Kelsey Newman’s theory about the end of the time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg—locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline looming for a book that she can’t write—this thought fills her with dread. Stuck in a labyrinth of her own devising, Meg knows that there must be a way out. And a wild beast living on the Devonshire moors, a ship in a bottle, the science of time and a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe all have a crucial part to play in Meg’s release.
Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.

but i'm lucky, because my nana (who is very old - 93 - but very awesome) went to the sydney launch of p.m. newton's debut novel the old school (viking) and she bought me a copy and posted it to me.

but right now i have three books to review for magpies. they're awesome:
i am a genius of unspeakable evil and i want to be your class president, josh lieb (razorbill)
mimi and the blue slave, catherine bateson (woolshed press) - i've read a couple of chapters and cried. as i do whenever i read a bateson. her books are just so beautiful!
and i've also got an aussie chomp, but i can't remember which one.

to thine own self be true...when reviewing

a couple of months ago i reviewed the left hand of god by paul hoffman. at the time i read and reviewed it there was very little information out about it except publisher's buzz and the occasional website proclaiming it to be the NEXT BIG THING. our penguin rep had told me how awesome it was, that it was going to be huge. it was ok, interesting definitely, but you can read my review to see what i thought.

today i came across a review in the guardian by patrick ness. and essentially he said everything i wanted to say, but better. and so i have resolved to be braver, and trust my own judgement. i might even start drafting my reviews so they sound more eloquent.

also - very excited about patrick ness visiting australia this year, and for the release of chaos walking 3: monsters of men in may. very excited.