A Caring Life by Keith Cox

 

Keith Cox’s autobiography starts with his childhood in country New South Wales and goes on to detail his remarkable life as a nurse, eventuating as a nurse practitioner specialising in the care and treatment of cancer patients. Keith has devoted his life to bringing care and comfort to those who have needed him, and along the way he has made enduring friendships and earned the everlasting gratitude of countless people.

In the earlier part of the book Keith talks of his large, loving family and the beginnings and evolution of his career. The next section, though, was where I became emotionally involved with the story. Keith tells stories of his involvement with his patients, and anyone who has been close to a cancer sufferer will understand how someone like Keith can bring great comfort to patients and also to their families. His goodness and kindness shine through from the pages and his competence and efficiency were obviously recognised by the leading cancer specialists in the State.

I was especially interested in Keith’s visits to hospitals and care centres in Papua New Guinea. It seemed like hospitals and health care conditions hadn’t changed since we were there in the late 1980s to the time he was there, and for the same reasons. I must admit I had to put the book down for a while because of the tears welling in my eyes after reading about Keith’s efforts in Moresby and Lae. 

Keith has undertaken a lot of good works which I hope a lot of people will read about. He is a religious man who practises his religion in the way it is meant to be in his love for his fellow human beings.

To quote Anthony Warlow: Keith Cox “… is one of this country’s silent heroes.”

Published by Macmillan

The Rat Catcher by Kim Kelly

 

This is a book Henry Lawson would have been proud of.  It is a lovely story about Patrick O’Reilly who loved Rosie Hughes.  In Sydney in 1900 Patrick took a job with the Plague Department as a rat catcher; the bubonic plague was raging and rats, of which there were thousands in the city, were being infected by fleas and had to be caught and killed. Patrick needed the job in order to have enough money to live on and to send some back to his mother in Ireland.

Patrick’s one big problem was that he loved the rats as he did all creatures and although he understood it was necessary to eliminate them if the plague was to be beaten he hated the cruelty he had to inflict on them.

Rosie Hughes was a beautiful Irish girl whom Patrick loved from the moment he met her. This was all very sweet, but life in old Sydney was harsh and a constant battle for survival. Kim Kelly captures the sights, sounds and smells of the city as well as the day-to-day struggle for survival, the prejudices  and the stark contrast between rich and poor. We are very fortunate that so many old buildings are still standing and anyone who knows Sydney well will find that Kim has recreated a time and a mood that they can put themselves into through places like the Queen Victoria building, the old department stores, the Quay and so on. 

Lots of old terraced houses were still standing when I was a child and, of course, The Rocks area is a wonderful reminder of Sydney’s early days and books like The Rat Catcher are a brilliant way to keep our history alive.

Congratulations, Kim Kelly (and not just on behalf of my Irish ancestors) on this terrific evocation of our early days!

Published by Brio Books

Nothing but the Truth by The Secret Barrister

 

SB’s views at the start of their career on the outcomes of prosecutions, criminal trials and the dispensing of justice have been formed, quite naturally, through newspapers and John Grisham type novels. They find the reality is not, as in every other aspect of existence, black and white, one size fits all.  Courts are overwhelmed, police are understaffed and the mitigating circumstances behind criminal acts in a huge, multicultural society make nothing simple. The hardest thing for a defender or a prosecutor to handle would have to be the massive delays between bringing a matter to court and following it through.

The true-to-life, although obviously disguised, cases written about are shocking and sad in equal measure; however, there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. In the midst of their heart-breaking, back-breaking every day working life, the Secret Barrister is a very funny person who retains a brilliant sense of humour.

This is a wonderfully honest look at a justice system seriously in need of an overhaul but there is always hope as long as there are people like the Secret Barrister keeping watch.

Published by Picador.

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

 

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami has been translated from the Japanese. Fuyuko is a proof reader who, in order to do her job perfectly, cannot become immersed in the subject of any manuscript she is reading. She, therefore, never actually reads books or becomes aware of happenings outside her working life, so absorbed is she in her work.

Fuyuko’s workmates eventually give up on trying to include her in their after work socialising activities and she spends all of her time away from work in her tiny flat where in her self-absorption she has no interest in reading or listening to music but she finds comfort in drinking beer and, it seems, an extraordinary amount of saki!

Throughout the course of the novel a former co-worker works hard at building a friendship with Fuyuko, and Fuyuko herself ventures forth and eventually establishes a kind of a relationship with a man who says he is a physics teacher and she asks him to talk to her about light, a subject she finds mysterious and full of wonder.

Every page of the book is filled with the minutiae of Fuyuko’s daily thoughts. She lives inside her own mind and finds it difficult to venture out and respond to what is happening around her. It’s an extraordinary book, unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Is it okay if my favourite part is how (but not why) soil soup is made?

Published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan

The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

 

I’ve loved stories that feature bees and beekeepers and the almost mystical relationship between them ever since I read David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon a long time ago. When the bees appeared in The Dance Tree I knew this book was going to be something special, even though it wasn’t always easy reading about the trials of life in sixteenth century Strazbourg. 

The extraordinary ‘dancing plague’ which happened in Strazbourg in 1518 has been sometimes interpreted as seizures brought on by eating infected grains but was most likely, apparently, a mass religious hysteria. The drought at the centre of The Dancing Tree was one of the extreme weather events which happened in the sixteenth century; people were starving and religion was used in horrifying ways, basically, as a means of controlling the masses. Superstitions which are unthinkable to us in our present time were accepted without question which made it possible for people to hold themselves responsible for the tribulations they suffered every day.

Of course, even in those extremely oppressive times, human nature was always, eventually, going to win out over artificial restraints. Lisbet, the character around whom the story of The Dance Tree revolves, is a woman whose life experiences keep teaching her that kindness, compassion and love are always going to be the driving forces in her life, over fear and superstition. Her relationship with the bees fills her with empathy for fellow creatures, her childlessness fills her with sadness but also with hope, she discovers tolerance comes much more naturally than bigotry.

How lucky for us living now that people in past times survived and rose above incredible seeming tribulations, ensuring that civilisation would endure.  Thank you, Kiran Millwood Hargrave for writing this wonderful, inspirational book.

Published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan

One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter

 

Liv’s world has been turned upside down. This is the story of how she goes about turning it right side up. 

One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter is warm, witty and wise. When Liv’s husband walks out on what she thought was their perfectly happy marriage to take up with his much younger yoga teacher Liv suddenly has to rethink her whole life. She decides to leave London and go to Neswick, a village in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales where she and her sister enjoyed a lot of happy times when they were children. Very fortunately for Liv, her share from the sale of the house she and her husband owned in London has left her with the means to buy a house in the Dales and take a breather while she tries to establish her new existence.

Liv develops a theory that all it takes for anyone to get on the path that is right for them is one good thing. Liv’s one good thing happens when she comes across, falls for and adopts an old dog from a shelter and from then on she meets the people who are going to become important to her as she will be to them. She finds joy and purpose in all of her new relationships and Harry the dog is with her all the way.

It’s a story about dealing with loneliness and grief with love and trust and hope, and the setting of the Yorkshire Dales is perfect. It is a big book but I could have wrapped myself up in its warmth and comfort for as long as Alexandra Potter would have me.

I have only been to Yorkshire as a visitor but it is a magical, beautiful part of the world and I loved reading about it in this book. The Brontë parsonage and the village of Haworth are definitely as eerily atmospheric as Liv’s pupil, Maya, experiences them to be. Brrr!  

Before I float away on a cloud of memories I will record my rating of 5 out of 5. I only post reviews of books I have loved and recommend highly and this is one!

Published by Pan Macmillan

Wild Dogs by Michael Trant

 

Gabe Ahern is a dingo hunter, or ‘dogger’, living and working in the West Australian outback. It is an ugly, horrible way to make a living but as Gabe says, although he is referring mainly to his sideline in supplying grog to a dry community, somebody is going to do it so it might as well be him. Despite his hard, roughened exterior he is a fundamentally good man carrying within him the unbearable sadness of losing his beloved Valerie in terribly tragic circumstances.

Quite unwittingly, and most unwillingly, Gabe finds himself thrown into an extraordinary story involving an Afghan refugee, a highly professional gang of people smugglers, a roo shooter/hitman, bent coppers, good coppers, an unlikely hero and more.

I am not going to throw out any spoilers and take the edge off this incredibly edgy, heart stopping, twisting and turning but intricately character driven thriller. Michael Trant uses an interesting device of telling the story as it is happening to one character and then later showing what was happening at the same time to another character, which makes for a particularly satisfying way of following the story. This is done in a beautifully moving way towards the end of the book.

The opening chapters about Gabe’s methods of dingo hunting are pretty confronting, but so too are the chapters seen through the eyes of a female dingo. I love books that do this and I rate Wild Dogs as a 5 Star read.

It’s just a fabulous read from a brilliant Australian writer.

Published by Penguin Random House