Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

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In conversation with Hanya Yanagihara

May 27, 2022 by Karen Comer 1 Comment

I went out with my bookclub one night this week to hear American author Hanya Yanagihara in conversation with writer Benjamin Law at the Capitol Theatre, part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Yanagihara is the author of three novels, and she was here in Australia to discuss her third novel, To Paradise. This is a doorstopper of a novel – 700 pages – so heavy I needed to sit upright in bed to read it!

It’s a triptych – three parts to be appreciated together. The novel is an imagining of America, told through repeated characters – there is a David, Charles, Nathaniel, Edward, Peter in each section. The three sections are set one hundred years apart – in 1893, 1993 and 2093. It’s book that moves the reader along effortlessly but also requires the reader to work hard, to find connections between the characters in the different sections, think through the science on the third section and understand the history of the various settings. I do love a book that makes me work a little!

Yanagihara – as you would expect after reading her book – was articulate and thoughtful in her responses to Law’s questions. She was also humble, and so grateful for the warm response from readers.

It’s almost winter, friends – the perfect time to treat yourself to a big book with big ideas which will keep you company through the cold!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction

The Stella longlist 2022

March 4, 2022 by Karen Comer 1 Comment

Earlier this week, I attended the announcement of the Stella Prize longlist on behalf of Springfield, one of Stella’s sponsors. Wonderful night for the 10th Stella Prize, a prize awarded annually to Australian women and non-binary writers – the descriptions of each of the 12 longlisted books made me want to read them all.

The five judges – Melissa Lucashenko, Cate Kennedy, Sisonke Mismang, Declan Fry and Oliver Reeson – discussed the books, an impressive list which included seven debut authors and five First Nations writers. The longlist consisted of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories and a graphic novel – surely something for everyone!

The 2022 Stella longlist:

  • Coming of age in the war on terror by Randa Abdel-Fattah – non-fiction
  • Take care by Eunice Andrada – poetry
  • Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen – poetry
  • She is haunted by Paige Clark – short stories
  • No document by Anwen Crawford – non-fiction
  • Bodies of light by Jennifer Down – novel
  • Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss – novel
  • Stone fruit by Lee Lai – graphic novel
  • Permafrost by SJ Norman – short fiction
  • Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki – poetry and prose
  • The open by Lucy Van – poetry
  • Another day in the colony by Chelsea Watego – non-fiction

I hope you find something from this wonderful list to read over the next few months!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short stories Tagged With: Stella Prize

Devotion by Hannah Kent – book review

November 26, 2021 by Karen Comer 2 Comments

Hannah Kent’s Devotion is one of my favourite reads for this year. It’s historical fiction, beginning in Prussia in 1836 and continuing with an ocean journey to South Australia.

It’s the story of Hanne, a fifteen-year-old girl who feels she is a disappointment to her mother as she’s not quite ready to think about marriage, and she’s not like the other girls her age who are already planning their married futures.

When she meets Thea, she no longer feels so alone. She’s grateful Thea and her family, like the rest of their Old Lutheran community, have made the decision to leave Prussia for Australia in order to practise their faith without fear of persecution.

I was halfway through reading Devotion one night when I read a few pages and decided that what I was reading was too impossible to comprehend. Clearly, I was exhausted and I should put the book down and go to sleep.

When I continued reading the following night, I realised that I had not misread the previous chapter. No spoilers here but goodness, that section was breathtaking!

Kent’s writing is lyrical and evocative –

Now. years later, sitting on the lip of this valley, I can make prayer beads of the trees that crown me, the small living things glimpsed if I am still and silent. Red gum, blue gum, quandong, stringy bark. And the birds, ever here, ever singing, a liturgy to govern the hours towards gods of cry and shriek and call.

Devotion was my suggestion for our bookclub – I’m sure other bookclubs would enjoy reading it, too. It is also a beautiful-looking book with a textured, linen-like cover and an embossed design, like the whitework Hanne’s mother teaches her. It’ll be a book I’ll read again in a couple of years.

And the winners from last week’s giveaway are:

  • Vanessa – How to bee
  • Kathy – The beast’s garden
  • Kristine – Elsewhere girls

Congratulations to all the winners – I’ll be in touch!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, Giveaway

Girl, woman, other – book review

November 5, 2021 by Karen Comer 3 Comments

When a friend told me that she was reading a book that didn’t use fullstops, quotation marks or capital letters at the beginning of sentences and it sounded like a poem, I knew I had to read it. Bernadine Evaristo’s book Girl, woman, other was published in 2019 and won the Booker Prize that year.

It’s about 12 girls/women/others centred around Britain, each with their own section so we are instantly taken into the minds, hearts and lives of all of them. The 12 characters have lives which intersect each other’s, sometimes in familial ways, sometimes through friendship or work relationships. The last chapter brings it all together.

I loved the sense of floating through the book, feeling as if I were on a meandering river which flowed its way through the different stories. The lack of ‘proper’ punctuation certainly added to that effect.

The stories, connecting past, present and future, connecting women of all different sexualities, class, education, financial means, are compelling. The characters are sad, humorous, tender, angry, passionate, invisible, loud, scared, defiant, shocking, desperate, creative – and so much more.

So now I am following my friend’s lead, and telling you, my friends, about this book that doesn’t use conventional punctuation and reads like a poem. I hope you feel like you need to read it, too!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction

The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo – book review

October 29, 2021 by Karen Comer 1 Comment

Such a fabulous book title – The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid! Miss 15 and one of her friends both enjoyed this adult novel, and I did, too.

Loosely based on Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, the book begins with glamorous Hollywood actor Evelyn Hugo, ready to share her life story with an unknown magazine writer, Monique Grant.

Evelyn recounts her Hollywood career, and her choices to marry and leave her seven husbands. Monique’s story is woven in between Evelyn’s tale. As a reader, you just know that there must be more of a connection between Evelyn and Monique, and the big reveal is absolutely surprising.

Miss 15 warned me I’d never guess the plot twist, and she was right! It was the perfect ending – both surprising and inevitable.

This would be a fabulous summer read – engaging characters, a compelling plot and a fabulous Hollywood background from the 1950s to 2017.

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, Reading

Lincoln in the Bardo – book review

September 24, 2021 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

I was almost about to apologise for taking so long to read this much-discussed book, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2017. But I will not, because I have read many other wonderful books in that time! But I’m so glad I’ve now read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, both for the story and the structure.

The story is about President Lincoln’s eleven-year-old son, Willie, who dies and is buried. Lincoln returns a few times to the graveyard to hold his son’s body. This is all based on historical documents.

Saunders has taken these facts and woven a story told by the multiple ghosts in the graveyard, as well as using a few historical sources.

At first the effect of these multiple voices, sometimes one liners, sometimes a few pages, is jarring. Who are all these voices, how to keep track of them? But once you’re a little way in, you start to recognise the voices without even needing to flick to the name of the voice beneath the extract.

Fun fact – 166 actors were needed to record the audio book!

To have all these voices, quite distinctive, gradually revealing parts of their own story while they watch the President embrace his dead son makes for compelling reading.

And if you think that ghosts are static characters who can’t change, think again!

This is such a memorable read – one of my favourites for the year. I only finished it last night and am looking forward to discussing it with someone who has read it! So if you’ve read it, let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Adult Fiction

Fleishman is in trouble – book review

April 30, 2021 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

Fleishman is in trouble by debut novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner is the sort of book you want to discuss with someone – as you’re reading it, as soon as you’ve finished reading it – perfect bookclub material.

Toby Fleishman is a New York hepatologist with a recently separated wife and two children. The story begins with a newfound sense of sexual freedom for Fleishman – he’s free to indulge in all sorts of sexual encounters – online, in person, dates that work, dates that don’t work. He’s almost giddy with it – as a five-foot-five Jewish man who was overweight as a child, all of a sudden there are women who want him.

But his ex-wife Rachael goes missing. She’s dropped the kids off a day earlier than expected without telling him, gone off to a yoga weekend retreat and hasn’t come back.

Fleishman navigates the difficult world of his medical work, his two children (thank goodness for summer camps), his missing ex-wife and his forays into dating.

Brodesser-Aknew explores relationships not only through Fleishman’s marriage but through the stories of the women he dates, as well as his two best friends, Libby (going through her own existential crisis in her marriage to a perfectly nice man) and Seth (never committed, constantly dating, recently engaged). Fleishman becomes ‘the wife’, as his divorce lawyer tells him – he earns less money than Rachael and he has more responsibilities with the kids.

it was interesting to observe the gradual decline of Fleishman’s interest in online dating apps, once his twelve-year-old daughter received her phone. There’s a small incident with her and a photo, which shocks Fleishman and makes him question his own obsession with the photos women on dating apps have sent him.

The narrator is Libby, Fleishman’s friend from college days. She appears and disappears, leaving the reader a tad bemused that she pops up out of nowhere to insert herself in the story. I did wonder how Libby could possibly know so intimately Fleishman’s thoughts and feelings, let alone the nuanced and detailed encounters with Rachael, his kids, his co-workers?

And yet her invisibility in parts of the novel echo not only Rachael’s disappearance but also the general theme of women’s invisibility throughout the novel.

…whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man…

Rachael is only seen through Fleishman’s eyes for the majority of the novel – it is only towards the end that we catch a glimpse through Libby of Rachael. While Fleishman is an empathetic character, a doctor who ‘sees’ his patients, an involved and tender dad, we realise at the end of the novel that perhaps his view of his marriage (and his friendship with Libby) was not entirely accurate.

See – so much to discuss!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction

Cate Kennedy – workshop

March 5, 2021 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

During Melbourne’s last lockdown of five days, I was supposed to attend a writing workshop with Australian short story writer and poet Cate Kennedy at the Wheeler Centre in the city. She kindly offered to run the workshop online. So that Saturday I spent the day in my study looking at a screen of the unknown faces of my fellow participants as well as Cate’s fabulously detailed slides.

I have long been a fan of Cate’s short stories and poems. Her poems about the miscarriage of her son and the birth of her daughter are heartbreaking. Her two short story collections, Dark Roots and Like a house on fire, have stayed with me long after I finished reading them. Cate focuses on ordinary people, and she shines a light on them to show both their vulnerability and strength.

Her characters are us – a woman organising herself and her family before she goes to a doctor’s appointment to have a lump checked, a man making poor decisions after his partner has left him, a woman struggling at work on her first day back after maternity leave, a young girl rebelling against her mother’s family Christmas photo, a young cleaner befriending an elderly man in hospital. But it’s never about just these events – there’s a subtext of anger or loss or relationship concerns which adds a quiet background hum that sometimes rises to a roar of frustration or despair. Cate discussed the idea that conflict, even though small, brings the inner life of characters to the surface.

Cate was generous with sharing her knowledge and experience with a set of slides which whizzed us through the different elements of creating stories. ‘Emerging writers always have wonderful ideas,’ she told us, ‘it’s about the execution.’ Too true.

Cate’s latest short story collection, Like a house on fire, is on the Yr 12 VCE English curriculum. My Yr 12 son’s first SAC (School Assessed Coursework) was to write an addition or adaption of one of Cate’s stories. It’s such a wonderful opportunity for students to try to understand another human being, through reading about ordinary people’s circumstances and choices and then writing a response. Cate’s stories can be so subtle, that students are encouraged to look at her characters and empathise with them while they imagine different possibilities for them.

What does that elderly man need at the end of his life? What sort of person will that young girl, rebelling against her mother, grow up to be? Cate told us,

The story is the transformation of the narrator.”

So how does that elderly man change the young cleaner’s life? How will that young girl grow up to parent her own children?

Writing is about imagining different scenarios, putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, daydreaming about different possibilities for ourselves, reinventing ourselves as characters. Cate urged us to go into the ‘vortex of doom’, to face any resistance we have on the page, to allow the secrets of our characters and their inner worlds to float up to the surface, to be examined in the light. Therein lies transformation.

The wonderful thing about students studying these short stories is that hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, they gain insight into their own lives. That in writing their additions or adaptions, they look beneath the surface of Cate’s characters and see what they really want, how they strive to reach it, and how they transform when often they don’t get what they want but instead what they need. In fiction – and life.


Thank you very much for your kind comments last week – I’m glad to be back too in such wonderful company!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, Poetry, Reading, Short stories, Workshops

Dear readers, it’s been a while

February 26, 2021 by Karen Comer 11 Comments

Dear readers, it’s been a while since I last posted. My website updated itself in December and there were problems that seemed insurmountable because it was December and there were work deadlines and Christmas deadlines and general December busyness.

Thank you to the lovely Nic from Planning with Kids who helped me with the technical side of my blog as well as giving me a big pep talk for continuing on!

There is news to catch up on!

Reading

I’ve been reading a lovely pile of books – my usual mix of fiction, non-fiction, children, young adult and poetry. Standout books include Seth Godin’s The practice (non-fiction), Cate Kennedy’s The taste of river water (poetry), The forty rules of love by Elif Shafak (novel) and The girl who became a tree by Joseph Coelho (young adult). Reviews for some of these books coming!

Editing

I have a mix of projects at the moment which makes my editing life varied and exciting. I’ve almost finished editing a fabulously detailed family history of six generations dating back to Scotland in the 1850s, I’ve proofread a book about wills which has prompted me to have conversations with family members, I’m about to start reading an exciting crime novel for a general reader’s report and I edited a wonderfully lyrical essay on nature.

Writing

My first middle-grade verse novel is under submission so I’ve been researching for my young adult verse novel. I’ve almost finished this now, so I’m ready to look at the structure of the first draft. Are my key scenes in the right places? Do they match up with my research? Do my two main characters meet up at the right moment?

Facilitating

I’m now the facilitator for the online Springfield writers’ group. This is a talented, oh so talented group of women who are writing poems, essays, novels, short stories, memoirs, non-fiction. We meet once a week to discuss two writers’ work and the creative collaboration in this group is a tangible thing.

Creating

Apart from creating a weekly menu of lunches and dinners and snacks which lately have NOT been as creative as my other pursuits, I’ve been teaching myself to weave. Last year during the lockdowns, I found quilting and sewing to be an antidote to the news cycle. I have a beautiful weaving kit and I am making a random, unplanned small weaving in soft dusky pinks, creams and burgundies.

Tutoring

I am constantly telling my children how lucky they are to have me as a mother but it’s only when I cook their favourite meal or help them with an English essay that they truly appreciate me! Mr 17 is in year 12 this year and we have already spent some time together talking through his first SAC. I also read through a few of his mates’ pieces – one of them named a character Karen. I am not sure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult – the character was rather annoying!

Your news …

Please tell me what you have been reading, writing or creating – I’d love to know.

Filed Under: Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction, Art, Editing, Poetry, Reading, Writing, Young adult

The Dutch house by Ann Patchett – book review

November 8, 2019 by Karen Comer 4 Comments

Ann Patchett is one of my favourite American novelists. I’m immediately drawn into her books, whether her book is set in the Amazon (State of wonder), about a group of terrorists who befriend their captives (Bel Canto) or her collection of essays (This is the story of a happy marriage).

Her latest novel is The Dutch House, set in Pennsylvania. There are no terrorists, no lost characters in the Amazon. In fact, this is a relatively quiet book with considerably less tension than her previous novels. The only thing at stake is a house, not someone’s life.

But as in all of Patchett’s novels, readers are immediately drawn into the lives of her characters. The Dutch House is told from Danny’s point of view, and follows the story of Danny and his older sister Maeve growing up in the Dutch house and their eventual dismissal from it. (I’m not spoiling anything – this is all revealed in pieces within the first chapter).

And perhaps that’s Patchett’s skill – as a reader you know what’s coming but you’re still going to turn each page for the sheer pleasure of reading her words.

Patchett is also a bookshop owner, and she has a passionate commitment to ensuring her hometown, Nashville, is well supplied with books.

There’s a great conversation between Patchett and Elizabeth Gilbert through the New York Library conversations and an interview with Patchett in The Guardian where she talks about the modern-day fairy tale qualities of The Dutch House and its theme of grief and loss.

This is definitely one of my favourite books for the year!

Filed Under: Adult Fiction Tagged With: adult fiction, book review

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