Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

The beast’s garden

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9780857980403

The beast’s garden
Kate Forsythe
Vintage Books
2015

The story: Ava is a young German, living in Berlin during the Second World War. She is deeply concerned about her closest friends, who are Jews, and does what she can to look after them. She marries a Nazi officer, Leo, in order to save her father. Ava abhors everything Leo supposedly stands for, but falls deeply in love with him at the same time. As Ava does what she can to support an underground resistance movement, she gradually discovers that Leo is not as he seems – he is doing his part to stop Hitler. Their lives, along with their friends and family, descend into madness and chaos, as the war progresses. Ava uses all her courage and intellect to help Leo out of the brutality of war.

The highlights: ‘Ava fell in love the night the Nazis first showed their true faces to the world.’ Fabulous opening sentence! This book is about Ava’s personal story juxtaposed with World War II, and the first sentence captures all of that.

The horrors of the concentration camps, where Ava’s friend Rupert spent most of the war, are detailed with bleak, horrifying imagery. I dreamt one night of concentration camps in the middle of reading The beast’s garden. I’m not sure whether concentration camps and constant references to homeless and hungry Germans are a highlight but Kate Forsythe is such a wonderful storyteller that the painful details are a necessary part of the World War II imagery. I only studied World War history from an Australian perspective at school, and then through Jewish history at university. To see German history through the eyes of those against Hitler is a unique vantage point.

‘… the newly arrived prisoners looked around. Long rows of wooden huts. High concrete walls. Coils of barbed wire. Machine-gunners in watchtowers. Endless rows of hollow-eyed prisoners in striped uniforms. And by the wall, a heap of dead naked men, stiff as driftwood, stacked in a neat pile, head to feet like sardines.’

All of the characters are strong, and many of them show the difficulty in being caught between standing up for their country and standing against their country’s leader. Anger and passion in equal doses.

‘Ava had to deflect their suspicions somehow. She tried to imagine she was a good Nazi wife. She’d be overawed to be here at Goebbels’ private residence, and dazzled by all the uniforms and medals. She’d be ambitious for her husband, and disappointed that he had lost his job at the Abwehr. She’d worship the Führer and believe all the propoganda that said Germany was winning the war. She’d want a piece of the glory and the booty.’

Kate Forsythe uses the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale The singing, springing lark, which is the original story of Beauty and the beast. Ava is Beauty – but she has the lark’s voice as she studies singing at the conservatory. And without giving the ending away, it is Ava who does the rescuing in the end, just like Beauty who follows the lark to rescue it. You don’t need to know ‘The singing, springing lark’ to appreciate this book but it’s an interesting way to understand the structure.

I have to admit, I kept sneaking away from the kids after school to read half a chapter here and there. I did the same thing with Kate Forsythe’s Wild Girl and Bitter Greens – they were just so good!

Have you read The beast’s garden or any of Kate Forsythe’s other books?

Burial rites

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Burial rites

Hannah Kent

Picador, Pan Macmillan Australia

2013

 

The story: Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a young Icelandic woman is destined for execution for murdering two men in 1829. The story of exactly what happened leading up to the night of the murders is told in a few ways – official letters, short poems, witness testimonials, and then Agnes’ viewpoint as well as an omniscient narrator. This allows us to empathise with Agnes but also understand the other characters as well. The daily life of those living on farms in Iceland, the weather and the vastness of the land all contribute to the backdrop of Agnes’ story.

The highlights: I was drawn in by the storytelling, by the action in the present as well as Agnes’ recollections, told to the young Assistant Reverend sent to save her soul before her death. Hannah Kent shows us Agnes the murderer at the beginning of the novel, and slowly, slowly, we gain empathy for Agnes as we hear her childhood story of abandonment and her work history on many different farms in Iceland. The past and present weave beautifully together – there isn’t any sense of awkward dialogue or intrusive backstory.

This book does not offer any hope or fairytale ending. I found it a compelling read because I wanted to know Agnes’ story, and I wanted to know the truth of what happened on the night of the murders, even though Agnes believes there’s ‘no such thing as truth.’ She told Reverend Tóti, ‘I’ve told the truth and you can see for yourself how it has served me.’

Hannah Kent calls her book ‘a dark love letter to Iceland’. I found the descriptions of Iceland and its people really intriguing – the weather and the distance between farms – no wonder Agnes told Magrét, ‘Loneliness threatened to bite you at every turn.’

I listened to Hannah present at the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne last year. She was part of a panel presenting their top five tips for writing. Her account from her blog can be found here. Love, love, love all her tips – that’s why I bought Burial Rites that day. I knew a writer with so much perception would be worth reading!

Go set a watchman

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Go set a watchmango set a watchman
Harper Lee
2015
William Heinemann

The story: This book, of course, follows the same characters from To kill a mockingbird, published in 1960. This time, the setting is the same in Maycomb, Alabama but twenty-six year-old Jean-Louise Finch is no longer called Scout and she is merely visiting her father, Atticus, from New York City. [Read more…]

The eye of the sheep

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eye of the sheep - book review

The eye of the sheep

Sofie Laguna
Allen and Unwin
2014

Winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin award

The story: Jimmy is the narrator – we meet him when he is six and the novel ends when he’s eleven. Jimmy sees the world differently from other kids – he counts sheep to fall asleep, he connects lines to people and he likes to repeat what others have said. His older brother Robby tolerates him with affection (sometimes), his mother understands and loves him and his father is frustrated and angered by him. The build-up of tragedy for Jimmy’s family is heartbreaking.

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