I was walking down the zig zag this week and peeked over the fence at my old garden (roses now in bloom), got a bit nostalgic and wrote a poem about the Nor’wester …
then, this morning a dear friend in Sunny Nelson sent me a photo of her blooms
November means roses erupting all over the show bundles of scented beauty in clusters on arbours standard and staked, rambling and rambunctious glossy leaves before the aphids arrive, thorns rise up and out in defence protection agents before grandma or whomever arrives with secateurs
quickly, take yourself down to the garden to breathe in the fragrances, heavy, light some say green tea or honey, but rush, rush why don’t you before that damn Nor’wester arrives to startle the tuis, shift the kereru, entwining cabbage tree flora to sway and dangle
why did you plant those roses right here in line of the wind, in clay soil near the sea, surrounded by manuka, kanuka, kawakawa, beech those cabbage trees, the flax bushes, the kowhai did you think your Constance Spry would not fly away shedding petals in November?
But still, year in, year out you cosset them Your favourite flowers, out of place in your native garden where geckos manoeuvre unseen where tuatara might once have been, but no you wanted roses, by the sea, so you could glimpse perfection, inhale summer then you curse the Nor’wester
My publisher was recently visiting Hydra and spoke to a bookseller there who has been selling the Greek translation of ‘Daughters of Messene’ Οι κόρες της Μεσσήνης and was planning to order more in. This prompted me to look at any new Greek reviews and I found this wonderful review. I’ve had to use Google translate and I’m just going to post some of the parts of this review that gave me a heart glow.
If you speak and read fluent Greek I will post a link to the full review below. In the meantime:
Όμορφη και στρωτή αφήγηση καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια του μυθιστορήματος με μια πλοκή τόσο όσο χρειάζεται ώστε να προκαλεί το ενδιαφέρον του αναγνώστη να διαβάσει τη συνέχεια με λαχτάρα.
Beautiful and layered storytelling throughout the novel with just enough of a plot to keep the reader interested and eager to read more.
Με ποιητικό λυρισμό αγγίζει με τη λογοτεχνική της πένα θέματα που έχουν σημαδέψει γενιές ολόκληρες και καταφέρνει να τους δώσει το ύφος και την αξία που τους αναλογεί. Χωρίς μελοδραματισμούς, η συγγραφέας μέσα από την πορεία της συγκεκριμένης οικογένειας, μιλάει για τις γυναίκες που έμειναν και υπέμειναν τα πάντα στη διχασμένη Ελλάδα, για τις γυναίκες που μετανάστευσαν στην άλλη άκρη του κόσμου για να ξεχάσουν και να αναζητήσουν ένα καλύτερο αύριο χωρίς όμως να ξεχάσουν τα ήθη, τα έθιμα και τις αντιλήψεις τους, για τις γυναίκες που πάντα αναζητούν και παλεύουν.
With poetic lyricism, she touches with her literary pen subjects that have marked entire generations and manages to give them the style and value that is attributed to them. Without melodrama, the author, through the path of this particular family, talks about the women who stayed and endured everything in divided Greece, about the women who migrated to the other side of the world to forget and look for a better tomorrow without forgetting their morals, customs and perceptions, about women always seeking and fighting.
Τέλος, θα ήθελα να να τονίσω ότι μέσα από αυτό το υπέροχο, αληθινό και συγκινητικό μυθιστόρημα που μας ταξιδεύει στο χρόνο, παρελθόν-παρόν, δίνοντας μας και την ελπίδα του μέλλοντος, η συγγραφέας δίνει το ιστορικό πλαίσιο της Ελλάδας και αποτυπώνει τη ζωή κάθε Έλληνα των τελευταίων εκατό χρόνων μαζί με τα ήθη, τα έθιμα, τη κουλτούρα, τη καθημερινή μας συμπεριφορά, την ιδιοσυγκρασία μας, τα όμορφα αλλά και τα στραβά μας, αλήθειες που βλέποντας τες αποτυπωμένες στο χαρτί, εμένα προσωπικά με έκαναν να χαμογελάσω, γιατί διέκρινα το χιούμορ της αλλά και την αλήθεια σε όλα αυτά που περιέγραψε και πραγματικά είμαστε αυτοί οι άνθρωποι
Finally, I would like to emphasize that through this wonderful, true and moving novel that takes us through time, past-present, giving us hope for the future, the author gives the historical context of Greece and captures the life of every Greek of the last hundred years together with the manners, the customs, the culture, our daily behavior, our temperament, the beautiful but also the ugly, truths that, seeing them printed on paper, made me personally smile, because I saw the her humor but also the truth in everything she described and we really are these people.
You will learn your times table under Mr Luxon Turn off your mobile phone and focus in class You will have multiple assessments under Erika And you’d better make sure that you can pass
Forget the Arts you silly child, ‘cos they won’t make a buck For you, or for anyone, and it’s not just down to luck You’ll need to learn to multiply, to know how to cook the books Make a spreadsheet work for you and not just for the crooks
How to cancel a ferry build and make it look like saving And when the bill gets larger, pretend you’re well just waving And not drowning – mathematicians are not frowning Decide to build a bridge instead calculations in your head
A tunnel here, a tunnel there, and speed limits upping everywhere Phonetics will only get you so far but speed will move your motorcar And should you crash, your head might smash, and oh alas A and E is not so flash, they’re understaffed I hear…
There’s tele doctors everywhere and if things get really rough We could fundraise for a helicopter just before you snuff it But never fear, a plan is here, mathematics to the rescue Let me test you, oh what a shame, the accident has hurt your brain
Hold up your hand and count to five, to prove to me you’re still alive We’ll pop you in the hallway while we ask our 14 layers to assess The likelihood that you’ll survive, oh no, you cannot count to five You’ve died… well, that’s not good, too late to test your mathematics
A hymn or two, perhaps a poem, let’s hope the eulogists are known wordsmiths or they could recite the ten times table
I inadvertently generated 98 comments on Facebook. Admittedly, many of those 98 comments are my responses to the comments. The topic is the devastating news that Alice Munro, a literary hero to many of us, had willingly and knowingly, covered up the sexual abuse of her nine-year-old daughter.
What are we to do with this news? I was first alerted when a Creative Writing teacher I admire, posted on Twitter that she will never teach Munro again. I was taken aback by this and even once I knew the full story, I wondered if this cancelling of Munro was the right thing. It ran through my mind that teaching Munro in the light of this new evidence would be, well potentially fascinating. But then I stopped and thought about this and realised it would be vicarious and abusive to have students interrogating stories she has written that allude to such abuse… something akin to abusing her daughter all over again.
Another friend described what Munro has done as reprehensible but also ‘moral frailty’ and I liked this description. But it also appears to forgive or excuse, and I found myself, to some extent wanting to do this. Someone else in the lengthy thread mentioned that often mothers who have themselves been abused are more likely to turn a blind eye when abuse happens to their own daughters. I recall a school friend who I stayed in touch with, she married early and had four or more children. She married the boy who used to deliver our fruit and veges. We knew his Dad and we knew him. He had the loveliest open face and was a hard-working reliable young man with an alcoholic father. Roll forward many years, and my friend left her hard-working husband whom we all really liked and admired. It turned out he had been physically abusive. It turned out too that my school-friend’s father had also hit her mother. She told me her mother had ignored her black eyes.
Someone else posted a link to an article written by the daughter of Jan Morris, another one of my literary heroes. ‘Conundrum’ was a ground-breaking memoir in 1974. Morris’s travel writing and more recent musings on ageing have accompanied me throughout my life. I’ve admired what appeared in the public eye as an almost seamless transition from one identity as a male journalist on Hilary’s expedition to Everest, to a gender reassignment and an ongoing loving relationship with her ex-wife (they divorced but continued to live together). It’s a kind of fairy tale. Alas, Morris’s daughter Suki Morys who was only six when her then father began his transition, sees Morris and their journey as parent and daughter in quite a different light.
Suki wrote an account of her childhood and confusion in the British Sunday Times. She claims that Morris was ‘selfish, neglectful, sexist and deeply unkind’. Gosh. And as we all recognise, every child has their own version of childhood and accounts from siblings and parents may vary. Of course, it is entirely possible Morris was all of these things and also an extraordinary writer.
But when sexual abuse occurs as in the case of the Munro cover-up, there is no alternative version. And deeply concerning is that Munro knew this would eventually be known. Such lack of courage not to have faced this head on, and to hell with her literary legacy. So, we her readers are left to loathe, cancel, or try to understand… the more comments that came into my thread, the more I realise it is impossible to understand.
A few years ago, I watched a short clip of Sam Hunt and Gary McCormack visiting a Girls School somewhere in New Zealand. I cannot locate the clip on you-tube anymore, so perhaps it has been removed. It was in the height of their fame as minstrels and roving poets. Indeed, I recall returning to New Zealand from my OE, living in Auckland and being enchanted by the sight of Sam Hunt leaping a small picket fence outside a pub or café in Parnell to entertain patrons. It looked entirely spontaneous. But I digress. The clip I am speaking of, has disturbed me ever since. Gary was wearing some very short shorts, Kiwi-bloke-style and I think Sam was in his usual stovepipe attire. The thing that startled me was these young schoolgirls sitting doe-eyed and attentive (in the company of two adult women teachers watching over them), as Sam read a poem overladen with double entendre. From my observation of the short clip, the young schoolgirls were oblivious to the sexual innuendo, but the teachers could not have been. I was struck by the power imbalance and manipulation at work. And yes, I know, it was a different era, and I might have even laughed myself, had I watched it back then. I wonder how the teachers who sat there, back then, if they reflect, feel. What might they have done? To react would have drawn attention to the inappropriate insinuations in the ‘poem’… letting it wash over their heads as it seemed to, may well have been the right choice. Our lives on replay are complex as we move from an era where men set the agenda more often than not about what was or wasn’t okay.
Recently, my book group read ‘Life with Picasso’ by Francoise Gilot. It generated really strong feelings and responses. Personally, I found the book riveting and felt that Francoise Gilot had reclaimed her agency and her art along with candidly admitting to her own complicity in the acceptance of what was a very abusive relationship. I learned so much about Picasso the man and the artist through her lens and I was full of admiration for the way she reclaimed her space in the art world against all odds. The word ‘hate’ was used in regard to Picasso in some of our vivid responses to this work. Some in the group felt hate was far too strong an emotion and others were unequivocal. We bring our own stories to our reading of any novel or memoir, and I never fail to find new ways to see the world through belonging to a book group.
We read to find ourselves. Do we write to find ourselves? Was Alice Munro writing these stories because she failed in her moral duty to take the right action for her daughter, herself and her family?
But, Munro was not alone, the whole extended family were complicit in the cover-up. Her father and stepmother, even after hearing of the abuse, allowed her to go on holiday year after year to see her mother and this monster Gerald Fremlin. The idea that the father insisted her sister accompany her to protect her beggar’s belief. Imagine two daughters being molested by your ex-wife’s husband? It seems the entire family was willing to keep the silence for the sake of Munro’s literary legacy… until now where they appear to be fully supportive of Andrea Robin Skinner’s story.
And then of course, the discourse will continue, whether to cancel, Munro, (indeed all the literary Monsters) and I’ve ordered ‘Monsters’ by Claire Dederer from my local library (as urged to do in my thread of 98 comments and climbing).
Most of my literary friends are judging Munro ruthlessly and without reservation. I blame my Catholic childhood where all sins could be expunged, or forgiven with a few devout Hail Marys, and a really fervent Glory Be. I want to understand the complexity of her feelings for such a ruthless swine as Fremlin. With all the public prestige that she had, to think she needed his affirmation even more than the safety of her own daughter and grandchildren.
Is this why we read and why we write. The answers continue to elude us. The same stories repeated as if new and ghastly, yet really on replay.
And here is a brutal take down of Munro’s legacy (ouch)..
This was published in the Listener in 2005. I’m re-posting it on Anzac Day, 2023 as I missed our local Anzac Parade at home with a lurgy. I always like to remember my Dad on this day.
a curious half hour 