Missing by Tom Patterson

 

This is the true story of Mark May who lived as a hermit in bushland around Armidale for thirty five years. Tom Patterson has gathered his material from speaking with Mark’s family and people who knew him, and from reading Mark’s letters in which he spoke of his search for a way to live his life; and he has presented it in a compelling and utterly absorbing way. I was hooked from the first page of this book which was completely different to anything I have ever read.

Mark May was one of seven brothers, an academically brilliant young man studying at ANU under a scholarship. There are some terrific photographs in the book showing Mark’s stunning good looks. He was the second-born of the seven sons and although he was his mother’s favourite he craved his father’s attention. He was prescribed Mogadon for his problems with getting to sleep while still in high school and when that no longer did the trick he was given Mandrax and so on until he was looking for bigger and better solutions.

Mark started spending more and more time out in the bushland areas of New England and gradually started to set up camps where he spent his time reading and writing letters, some of which are published in the book. He was a highly intelligent, extremely complicated person; and I just realised that I am doing what I don’t like seeing others do, which is giving away too much of this fantastic story.

Tom Patterson’s writing is mesmerising. For someone who never knew Mark May to have put his life story together so seamlessly from interviews and letters is a wonderful achievement. I found this book on Libby,  the on-line borrowing service from Parkes Library. I cannot believe my luck!

This is a five star read and I hope it is going to reach a huge audience.

Published by Allen & Unwin

A Great Hope by Jessica Stanley

 

John Clare’s life was complicated. He was a powerful Union leader; he had a wife and two children who had moved out of the family home, and he had a mistress. All in the past tense because the book begins with John’s death. 

Most of the characters in the book are involved in politics, specifically the Labor party, in the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd era; however, this is a story of their personal lives. Jessica Stanley’s writing style is vivid, free flowing and immensely readable. Every time I was away from the book I couldn’t wait to get back to it. Everyone’s story is interesting and every character is so well defined that there was never any turning back the pages to remind myself who was who.

This is a mystery story as well as an intimate look into the lives of John Clare and the people whose lives touched his. I honestly believe that anyone who reads A Great Hope will love it, whatever their political persuasion, and will be looking forward eagerly and hopefully to Jessica Stanley’s next book.

Congratulations, Jessica Stanley. A most definite 5 out of 5 from me.

The Memory of an Elephant by Alex Lasker

 

This moving, beautiful book highlights the insidious practice of elephant poaching, in this case in East Africa. It tells the story of Ishi, a bull elephant who as a baby was the sole survivor of an horrific attack on his family, slaughtering the adult females for their tusks and the babies for no other reason than that they were there. A young boy, Kama, finds the little calf and goes to tell Jean Hathaway who runs an orphanage for abandoned baby animals.  Jean’s husband, Russell, takes some helpers to get Ishi and bring him back to Jean.

In alternating chapters the story is told by Ishi as it would appear to him. He is heartbroken at the loss of his mother and his aunties and as he is the youngest elephant Jean has ever taken into her care it takes all of her skill and patience to find a formula to keep him alive. 

By allowing the elephant’s thoughts into the story, Alex Lasker is able to presume the anguish Ishi is going through and the bewilderment he is feeling, the communication between the different elephant herds, the nurturing role mothers and aunties have in the development of the babies and, of course, the power of an elephant’s memory. 

I have never been to east Africa but I have visited South Africa several times. Africa is a magical continent and it is important for the rest of the world to be aware of what is at stake when the existence of Africa’s unique and wonderful flora and fauna is under threat.

Alex Lasker has written with great sensitivity and, I promise, once you pick this book up you won’t want to put it down.  A very definite 5 out of 5!

Love Marriage by Monica Ali

 

 Love Marriage is a brilliant novel written by Monica Ali. It is a treasure trove of beautifully realised characters and their interactions within their families, romantic relationships and friendships. Yasmin’s parents came from Bangladesh; her father is a GP and Yasmin and her fiancé, Joe, are doctors in the same hospital. 

The story that ensues from this beginning is wonderful in its complexity and it is was hard for me to put the book down or to stop thinking of it at those boringly necessary times when I had to put it aside. Joe is having psychotherapy and the process through which his problems are dealt is fascinating. Yasmin’s parents and younger brother, and Joe’s mother are all playing out their own stories; but Yasmin’s life enters another dimension when she discovers her, shall we say, previously hidden side. It’s at this point that the book goes from merely fascinating to positively riveting reading. WARNING: Readers, you might need to have a glass if ice-cold water handy here, to pour over your head if you become a little over-heated.

This story is like a mixing bowl into which new ingredients keep being added until a big, beautiful cake emerges, quite delicious and thoroughly satisfying!

Monica Ali’s debut novel, Brick Lane, was short listed for the Man Booker prize. Love Marriage is the first book of hers which I have read and I now want to read everything she has written. Absolutely 5 out of 5!

Published by Virago

How to Leave Your Psychopath by Maddy Anholt

 

Maddy Anholt has been a victim and, ultimately, a survivor of psychological abuse. She has written this book in the hope of reaching people who are caught in a toxic relationship, helping them to identify the symptoms and encouraging them to break free, as she did. It was a long, tortuous road for her but she finally took it and she wants to show that it can be done.

The book is written in plain, easy to read chapters, interspersed with Maddy’s heartbreaking words of her own experiences. The part that saddened me most was the sub-chapter titled, The Art of Normalising.  This is the victim gradually coming to accept as normal lines like:

…’Calm down! I wasn’t angry, just upset! What, I’m not allowed to show my emotions?’

‘You need to rein in your paranoia about me and other women, it’s all in your head.’

‘Yes, I shouted and swore, but you drove me to it. It’s only because I care.’

Under the heading Nature or nurture: Psychopath edition Maddy says researchers at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry found that MRI scans which cannot tell ‘…the gender, sexuality, geographic origin or race’ of a brain can easily spot the brains of psychopaths. I can remember a discussion with a reading group of the book, Let’s Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, where the general consensus was Kevin was ‘born bad’ and some of us suggested that Kevin’s brain must have looked different to other brains. I hope I’m right in remembering that Kevin’s mother was anti-social and had some unusual impulses which she kept under control as well. Please forgive me if I’ve got that wrong, it was a long time ago.

I hope this book reaches Maddy Anholt’s intended audience. She says: ‘There is no way I would have gulped down some of the abusive behaviour from my Controlls if they had displayed it when we initially met.

This a 5 star read, full of honesty and truth.

I wish for brave Maddy Anholt a long, happy, self-confident and acceptably  normal life.

Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz

 

Kathryn Schulz had never liked euphemisms for dying; however, ten days after his death she heard herself saying, “I lost my father” because that is how she felt. Her beloved father had been enormously important to her and she had sat by his bedside in the hospital and then the hospice for many long weeks, having to accept that he would soon die. She researched the word “lost” in all its connotations and discovered it had its roots in sorrow. The first part of this memoir deals with what can be lost: minds, lives, self-consciousness, treasures, a species, a father. I have been thinking a lot lately about my approaching (stop kidding yourself!) old age and that I will lose my loved ones, rather than that they will lose me, and I drank in her brilliant, insightful words as if she had written them for me.

Found, the second, and largest, section of the book begins with a true story of a boy who found a meteorite, having watched it hurtling through the sky until it came to rest somewhere near where he was, he was sure. The entire section is devoted, principally, to Kathryn’s search for love, which she found. She writes beautiful words about the meaning of love and about the person she finally found and fell in love with.

The third section is about the word, “and”, its relevance in the English language and “…the role it plays as a kind of linguistic superglue”. I did not know that originally the alphabet comprised the letters A to Z and ended with an ampersand. This fascinating chapter includes references to the dinosaurs, Dante and Shakespeare.

This is a philosophical work and a personal memoir and a truly lovely book.

Published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan