14 comfort reads for isolation or a long weekend

With everything that’s going on in the world, and everyone either in lockdown or being urged to stay home, I think we need the comfort and escape of reading more than ever.

Here are some of my favourite reads when I want to shut the world out for a while.

Stephanie’s Journal by Stephanie Alexander

This is one of my favourite books (it’s one of my mate Veggie Mama’s too!) - it is the diary Stephanie Alexander kept in the year 1997, which turned out to be a momentous one for her. She closed her famous restaurant in Melbourne, opened the Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder, and held three residential cooking schools in Tuscany with her friend Maggie Beer. I have read this countless times - at least once a year since I bought it in 2001 sometime. It’s just wonderful. I particularly love reading about the cooking school in the magical Tuscan countryside, and all the mouthwatering food they cooked. It’s also a retreat back to a simpler age, where Stephanie’s mention of fax machines and “the internet” are very charming indeed.

My Life in France by Julia Child 

This is one of my favourite books. It is just pure joy, from start to finish. Julia finds herself in a foreign country, not speaking the language, knowing very few people and wanting to discover her purpose in life. "At age thirty-seven, I was still discovering who I was," she writes. I feel very similarly! Her delight in discovering the pleasures of food and cooking, and her incredible work ethic and refusal to give up on a project she believed in wholeheartedly, is a balm for the soul for anyone feeling a little cynical or dejected. Never give up! 

Mariana by Monica Dickens

This book is a real delight. Persephone Books refer to it as a “hot water bottle novel” and that’s exactly what it is - a book you can curl up with on the sofa and escape into. Mostly set in England between the world wars, it’s the coming-of-age story of Mary, whom we follow from childhood right through to the early years of the Second World War where she is desperately waiting to hear whether her husband has survived the bombing of his ship. We see Mary’s idyllic childhood summers at her grandparents’ country home, her school days and life at home in a London flat with her widowed bohemian dressmaker mother and actor uncle, her hilarious adventures at drama school and eventually travels to Paris, and all the misguided decisions, in love and all else, she makes along the way. It is a very funny, poignant and heartwarming book all at once.

84 Charing Cross Road / The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

“I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: ‘It's there.’” Oh, this glorious book. What a treat. If you love London and books, I highly recommend it. It’s as charming and delightful as everyone says.

A Basket by The Door by Sophie Hansen

This book has barely left my side since I bought it last month. Full of gorgeous photos that capture the beauty and abundance of each season in country mainland Australia, Sophie’s words and recipes are a true delight. It’s a stunning book, beautifully styled and put together. I have made so many dishes from it (a rare thing for me, despite adoring cookbooks and having perhaps a thousand of them) and everything I’ve made, from the sumptuous apple butter to the nutty wholesome oatcakes, has been sublime. As the title suggests, leaving “a basket by the door” for a friend, neighbour or family member when they might be in need of help or nourishment is a beautiful thing to do at any time, but particularly in these times, it is a wonderfully kind and thoughtful gesture. A lovely cookbook to escape into to help you make the most of the abundant autumn (fresh food-wise) we’re currently enjoying in Australia.

The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard (five books in total, this is the first)

Anyone who hasn’t read this series is in for a marvellous treat - and now would be the perfect time. I discovered the series in 2015 - I snapped up the first in the series at the local charity bookshop, and the next day I bought all the rest!  The series follows the fortunes of an upper middle-class family, the Cazalets, before and after the Second World War, with five books in all. It’s utterly enthralling, like ‘Enid Blyton for grownups’ as one of my friends put it. If you want a series to get lost in, I highly recommend them. 

Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

This has been a great escapist read for me since the first time I read it, borrowed from the Glenorchy library when I was about 21, desperate to travel, live abroad and see Italy with my own eyes. It’s so evocative and poetic, filled with affection for Italy and food, and reading it now is like sitting down for a coffee or limoncello with a friend you haven’t seen for 10 years or so but who is just as vibrant and thoughtful as they ever were. There are lines in this book that I often think of (“may summer last a thousand years” for example) and images that are so poignantly brought to life - like the man eating Christmas Eve dinner alone in a trattoria, cracking each fresh walnut one by one - that they have never left me. Armchair travel at its best, this wonderful book always makes me feel hopeful about the future and reminds me that beauty and joy can be found everywhere, and that it’s never too late to do something magical, whether it’s planting a garden or chucking it all in to buy a house in Italy.

The Tea Chest by Josephine Moon

This is a lovely curl-up-with-a-cup-of-tea read (fittingly!). The Tea Chest follows the journey of an Australian woman who moves to London to open a tea shop (like T2 or Whittard’s but with a magical element!) and the lives of various other women she encounters to help her make this dream a reality. All of the women have their own demons to battle and the story ultimately is about resilience, following your dreams and trusting yourself.

White Heart by Heather Rose

This is a book I reread every year - this is why. It’s a novel about a woman named Farley who grows up in Tasmania and who, in the face of a devastating loss (though we don’t realise exactly what this loss was until near the end), goes searching elsewhere - overseas and mainland Australia - for meaning, wholeness and love. When I first read it, aged 19, I thought it was one of the most beautifully written books I’d ever read. I still do.

The Christmas Chronicles and The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

I have said many times over the years, and almost certainly on this blog before, that Nigel Slater could write a book about paint drying and I would buy it. If you love food and find reading about it relaxing and fun, then you will be delighted with either, or both, of these two of his, which are probably my favourites of all his books. Both are written in a diary format - The Kitchen Diaries covers a whole year of eating and The Christmas Chronicles covers only November to mid-January - and are magnificently evocative and poetic in true Nigel style. In Kitchen Diaries he shares what he cooks each day, making the most of what’s in season, but occasionally there’s takeaway or something simple eaten with a beer in front of the TV (reassuring!). CC is a celebration of his favourite time of year - Christmas, and winter in general. A cold Christmas is something I wholeheartedly embraced while I lived in the UK and this wonderful book made me look forward to winter for the first time in my life. As winter is approaching in Australia, I think I’ll have to read it again! Either way, if you want to escape from life for a while, Nigel is an ideal companion.

The Fortnight in September by R.C Sheriff

Also one of my beloved Persephone books and one of the most accomplished, most finely observed novels I have ever read. The premise is so simple - we follow the Stevens family on their annual two week holiday to the seaside in Bognor Regis. They are a typical middle-class 1930s family and have been going to the same B&B run by the same people for a very long time. Their holiday is as well-planned and thought out as their daily lives in South London, Mr Stevens has thought of everything down to the packing of the suitcases, the timings of the trains and which beach hut to hire for the best perspective. The B&B isn’t quite as comfortable as it used to be - slightly shabby, the landlady a little older and dottier - but the Stevens family do what they’ve always done and make the best of things. It’s an absolutely fascinating novel and so finely and accurately observed. Like I said, such a simple premise but the novel manages to capture all the big concerns of life within it - love, hope, disappointment, home, family, the passing of the years. I also loved how the very feeling of being on holiday is captured in this book - how the arrival at one’s destination is so anticipated and exciting, and then the days begin to roll by faster and faster and before you know it, the holiday is over and it’s time to go back home, to normal life. Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E Stevenson

Also mentioned in my Persephone post and one of my favourites of theirs. Written in 1934 and hence reflecting the concerns of women at the time, without the financial security of marriage, Miss Barbara Buncle finds herself needing to supplement her already meagre income. She does what many people think will bring certain fame and fortune - write and publish a book! She writes a novel based on her village and all the people who live in it, thinking that changing names and writing it under a pseudonym will be sufficient to hide their true identities. To her huge surprise, her book (or John Smith’s book!) is a huge bestseller and her publisher wants a sequel, but lo and behold, all the villagers have read it, recognise themselves and their village immediately (which says it all, as some of it isn’t flattering!), are outraged and determined to find out who ‘John Smith’ is and make ‘him’ pay. No one suspects the dowdy and quiet Miss Buncle for a second, which is where all the hilarity ensues - but also makes an interesting observation that people often do have hidden lives and assumptions we make about others can so very often be wrong. It’s absorbing, intelligent and very charming.

Love and Hunger by Charlotte Wood

From one of my favourite novelists, this is a wonderful collection of essays about food, cooking, sharing meals with friends and family, the psychology of eating, and how food can soothe and comfort. Wood’s observations are warm and witty, and the recipes are fantastic too (I have made Jane’s Citrus Couscous several times). Part memoir, part cookbook, this is a food lover's delight.

I hope this has given you some inspiration for delightful books to escape into and curl up with over the next little while. If you read any of them, or have any comfort reads of your own to suggest, let me know!

my favourite reads of 2019

Another year over, and another favourite reads of the year post to write! But at least I’m not writing this in February or, as I did one year, August.

2019 was a wonderful reading year for me where I made up for being away from Australia for nearly 12 years and gulped down literature I had heard about but not managed to get my hands on - and I have only just scratched the surface! I feasted heartily on fiction and non-fiction alike. According to Goodreads, I read 108 books in 2019 - I’m sure I missed logging a couple (and I haven’t logged any I’ve read for my studies) - and of those 108:

• 2 were re-reads

• 57 were non-fiction

• 4 were poetry collections or plays (I thought I’d read more - clearly not!)

• 47 were fiction

• 10 were by men

• 98 were by women

• 5 were by women of colour.

I won’t lie, I’m surprised and really disappointed in myself for the last one, especially with the countless amazing indigenous writers in this country. I honestly thought it was more than that, as the five I read had a huge effect on me and I thought about them a lot - but that is hugely disproportionate. I clearly need to up my game in this regard to read more widely and beyond my own world view. It is something I will be more conscious of this year.

It was, as always, hard to choose my favourites of the year but I narrowed it down to these 11.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

My aunt gave me this book and also Normal People for my birthday. This was my pick of the two! It’s so compelling, thought-provoking and different. I was not the kind of 21-year-old that Conversations’ main characters are, but I was equally naive and self-righteous and this story about Frances, Bobbi and their “friends” brought it all back! All in all, it’s a very well-executed coming of age story and an interesting exploration of female friendships too. Rooney writes with the kind of restraint I can only dream of. Very worthy of the hype.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

A worthy winner of this year’s Booker Prize - this is a magnificent book that deserves to win every prize it’s eligible for! Girl, Woman, Other shines a light on contemporary Britain in a way I’ve rarely seen in other books - other reviews have described it like a choir of different women’s voices, and I think that’s very accurate! It reads like a beautiful prose poem, with a cast of fascinating characters, all of whom have a story of either racism, prejudice, abuse, misogyny or poverty (often all of them) which they fight to overcome. The writing is so visceral and poetic - you are in these characters’ shoes, hearts, heads and beds. And you won’t forget them in a hurry.

I learned a lot reading this book, not just about issues I have been privileged not to experience firsthand but about humanity. This book is a perfect example of how fiction is often the perfect vehicle for the greatest concerns of our time.

Barefoot Pilgrimage by Andrea Corr

A beautifully written memoir that you can see is actually trying to capture the feeling of memory, of remembering. The narrative is subtle in parts, but surprisingly revealing too. Andrea is a woman who owns her success but also her vulnerabilities. The story she shares in this book is mostly about what it’s like to not have your parents alive anymore, about the preciousness of life, and the desire to capture what you remember before you too are no longer here. If you’re a Corrs fan, you’ll adore it. But you’ll also enjoy it and be moved if you like to read memoirs that are a bit different and poetic. The Corrs’ last album Jupiter Calling has the same mood - trying to capture the beauty and pain of life in one container. Beautiful, and highly recommended.

Why You Are Australian: A Letter to My Children by Nikki Gemmell

This book was a much-needed companion in January 2019. Tom and I had been back in Australia for only a few weeks and I felt dazed and disoriented, like a time traveller. Not that we doubted the decision to move back here, not for a second, but the move brought up a lot of discomfort and a lot of things I hadn’t realised I still needed to face. Gemmell quotes Les Murray (being interviewed by Ramona Koval) quite early in the book - “I came back to go mad. That’s what you do if you’ve got old, unfinished business back in a place and you go back there, you’ll tend to deal with it. “ Oh how those words rang true.

In this book, Nikki Gemmell and her husband - Australians who had lived in the UK for over 10 years and now raising a young family - decide, after a series of life-altering events, that perhaps moving home is the answer. Nikki articulates so beautifully (better than I ever could) the ache for home, for the familiar, for space, for warmth, for family; and also the resistance and sadness when you start dismantling the home and life you chose and created for yourself, even though it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Nikki wants to give her children the carefree, idyllic childhood she had. And so they begin the process to return and decide to do a trial run, spending a few months in Australia with the children, enrolling them in schools, etc. Australia is still a wonderful place, and the children love it. But Nikki does find herself wrestling with what lies underneath Australia’s sun-drenched “she’ll be right mate” reputation - the ugliness of racism and overt nationalism, tall poppy syndrome, natural disasters - and has to consider whether the Australia she grew up in is now a thing of the past.

I felt so seen reading this book - the aspects of life in London that Nikki loved but that also drove her mad were also some of my biggest joys and frustrations; her yearnings for Australia were the same as mine, and the things that she found difficult and alienating when she returned have also been some of my experiences. It’s a nostalgic but honest and (as always) beautifully written book. Highly recommended for any returning expat!

Back, After The Break by Osher Günsberg

I was not expecting this to be one of my reads of the year, but on reflection it simply had to be. In 2018 I listened to an interview with Osher where he confessed to working on edits of this book in the cab to the studio! The interview was fascinating so when I saw the book at the library last summer I was curious to give it a read.

I wasn’t prepared for how compelling a book it is - this is honest, frank and brave writing. While some of Osher’s decisions and aspects of his lifestyle are not always easy to empathise with, many of the insights he has on his road to redemption I found very relatable.

I had tears in my eyes when he writes about reclaiming a sense of identity through changing his name. His stability and sense of worth have certainly been hard-won. This excellent, compulsively readable book shines a bright light on mental illness and works hard to dispel the stigma around it. It’s a very important book and one I am still thinking about nearly a year later.

The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright

In my attempt to read all the books on the Stella Prize longlist, I picked this one up in March last year - by the end of 2019 it was still one of the best books I’d read all year. This is a stunning collection of essays about life, chronic illness, friendship, love, family, animals, travel and belonging - and particularly the need to feel at home, in many senses of the word. I absolutely loved it and it made me seek out and read all of Fiona Wright’s work, particularly her poetry. She’s a wonderful writer.

The Woman Who Wanted More by Vicky Zimmerman

Charming, funny and uplifting, The Woman Who Wanted More is a wonderful read from a talented writer. It is a celebration of food and female friendship, full of insights about life, the choices we make and the effect those we encounter have on us. Heartbreak is always best remedied with food and with good friends, and this book shows why. It's an empowering reminder that life is full of opportunities, once we are open to them. And that admitting you've failed is "not really failure; it's the first step towards the future". Highly recommended!

The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo

A very relatable story about loss, grief, guilt, redemption, family and community. I could barely put it down - one night I just kept reading until the battery on my Kindle died. The characterisation is superb, I particularly liked Sarah, the court-appointed lawyer. The descriptions of Melbourne are spot on - I spent a lot of time in the parts of the city where the novel takes place and it was a pleasant trip down memory lane, despite the sadness of the story. Compulsive and moving reading, I highly recommend it.

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

I am yet to read a Dorothy Whipple book that I don’t declare magnificent - she is a simply wonderful writer and probably one of the twentieth-century’s most under-appreciated. The main story of The Priory takes place around the crumbling estate of Saunby, which has been in the family for generations but now being run into the ground by Major Marwood whose main priority in life is cricket. He is reluctant to spend money on anything else, including his two grown daughters Christine and Penelope (who still live in the estate’s nursery!) and his spinster sister, Victoria. All of this changes when the Major decides it’s time he remarried. His new wife, Anthea, is determined to get her new home into some sort of order and does away with many relics of the estate’s former life - including the hapless cook Mrs Nall and the Major’s beloved cricket - and, finding herself pregnant with twins (to the Major’s great horror), decides Christine and Penelope must leave the nursery and engages a no-nonsense nanny Nurse Pye (reminiscent of Sister Evangelina in Call the Midwife!) to come and live with the family and help her with the new babies. Christine and Penelope are aghast and actively look for ways they might be able to escape. Unfortunately, as they didn’t have much of an education and therefore have little chance of getting decent jobs to support themselves, their only option is to get married themselves.

Behind the scenes - or below-stairs - are the lives of the servants at Saunby, equally interesting and full of drama. There’s a love triangle between the Major’s right-hand man Thompson, a former professional cricketer, and the two maids, sweet and sunny Bessy and the manipulative Bertha, which plays out very dramatically!

It’s a fascinating novel and entirely absorbing. I love Whipple’s stories for their remarkable insights into human nature and observations about the changing nature of life, and The Priory is no exception. It’s a treat to see the characters grow and change too as they adapt to their altered circumstances - some characters start off as admirable, earnest and well-meaning but turn out to be very selfish, and vice versa. This novel also explores the lack of options available for women at the time - if a marriage did not eventuate or, even worse, failed, things really could get very desperate (and indeed they do for some women in this book). I loved the ending, as it was so hopeful, though it was also tinged with sadness, knowing that the Second World War was just around the corner.

The Confession by Jessie Burton

Of her three novels, I think this is Jessie Burton's finest and the one I have most enjoyed so far. It's an intimate, intelligent and compelling novel that explores the lives of several different women. It takes place across two timelines - the early 1980s in London, LA and New York, and 2017-18 in London. The characters are well-drawn, believable and tender - Connie, in particular, is brought to life very well, I had visions of Eileen Atkins playing her in a TV adaptation if it goes that way! - and though it's an emotional and absorbing tale, there's also a lot of humour. Rose's nice enough but ultimately ineffectual boyfriend Joe with his burrito business Joerritos, for example, and the emotional strain of spending Christmas in the middle of nowhere with your strange in-laws!

While ultimately there is one big confession which the story builds towards, The Confession actually contains many of them. So many of the characters aren't telling the truth, to others or to themselves. But it is possible, they discover, to free yourself from the ghosts of the past. New beginnings are always possible - but you have to choose them. I actually found more sage life advice in the pages of this novel than I did in some motivational books I read last year. This is a novel I can see myself rereading, and I don't say that often. 

Bruny by Heather Rose

Another magnificent novel from Heather Rose - she never disappoints. I highly recommend reading the the prologue of this book with Ludovico Einaudi’s “Uno” on the stereo - it wasn’t a deliberate pairing on my part, but an accidental one, and it only heightened the tension evident in the first few pages! Bruny is quite a departure for Heather Rose in terms of subject matter - this is a political thriller about the smoke and mirrors world of modern governments and overdevelopment - but it also delivers what she’s always done best. And as a recently returned Tasmanian, I had a good laugh at the digs she makes at this state and its inhabitants (they are so true)! Bruny is a dystopian family drama that will make you think and probably weep. The world in it is all too recognisable. Most of all, it is a plea to us all to fight to protect the places we love.

***

So, reading goals for 2020 - try to do some non PhD reading (hard but essential for the maintenance of sanity) and read more widely. More diverse writers, more indigenous Australian writing. More poetry. I want to be challenged. If you have any recommendations, please let me know in the comments.

As always, I’d love to hear your favourite reads of the last year too!

PS: As I mention every year, any links to Amazon are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and end up making a purchase, I get a small commission. Many thanks for your support xx

william, an englishman: a book for its time, and ours

William, An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton was the first book published by my beloved Persephone Books in 1999, a reprint from the novel’s original publication in 1919. If you don’t know about my love affair with Persephone, do check out this post to be brought up to speed!

I stockpiled a number of Persephones before leaving London and this was among them. I read it at bedtime over the course of a few weeks, not something I’d recommend, as it’s not an escapist read to send you off into a dreamy, calm sleep. But it is an incredible book for its time - and for ours.

William and Griselda are young newlyweds, both heavily involved in various causes and social justice, extremely earnest and ready to fight for what they believe in. But they are in actual fact very impressionable, have been swept up in these various movements that were rocking the social foundations of Britain in 1914 (namely socialism and suffrage), and parrot the beliefs of the movements they support, as opposed to analysing and considering them, determining their own moral compasses rather than blindly following a crowd. They think they know what “fight” means but really, they haven’t a clue.

They honeymoon at a remote rural cottage in Belgium in August 1914. After three weeks of contentment, they are blissfully unaware of the world around them (they don't know war has been declared, let alone that Belgium has been invaded) and they don’t even speak the language so they cannot understand the warnings from the farmer's wife who cooks for them (despite everything it's amusing that William and Griselda are so oblivious).

On the day of their departure, they go to the farmhouse nearby to arrange for the boy to carry their suitcases to the train station, as he did when they arrived. Instead, they find the house deserted, with all the people and animals gone, and a lot of evidence to suggest they left in a real hurry. Bewildered, William and Griselda begin their way into the village to the train station on foot, when they are captured by the invading German troops. They finally learn what has happened and from that moment on, are caught up in the brutal, cruel horrors of war - a real one.

Cicely Hamilton spent the entire First World War on the frontline in France - she wrote this novel in a tent during the hostilities. You can tell. This is a woman who saw the horrors of that war firsthand and was unapologetic about exposing the ignorance of so many people as to what was really going on, what "war" really means when you're caught up in the middle of it. As an Australian soldier I knew, who died of his wounds in Iraq some years ago now, said, "it's not beer and skittles."

At the same time, this novel is not entirely "anti war" - Hamilton actually goes after the pacifists quite a bit too, asserting that they live in a "paradise of fools", that the things that were happening in Europe were horrific and the British war effort was actually very important and vital to fight the evil that was brewing on the European mainland.

William and Griselda are initially taken prisoner by the Germans, and separated at this point. William eventually makes an escape and finds Griselda, whose clothes are torn and spirit is crushed, she is utterly traumatised. Hamilton doesn't spell out what's happened to Griselda - we’ve already worked it out. The restraint with which she writes this scene, when they are reunited, is quite extraordinary.

Weakened from injuries and lack of food, the pair attempt to get to safety through the Belgian countryside to the French border. They are helped by travellers along the way, managing to remain out of sight of the enemy. But a road accident weakens Griselda further - and a few days later, as a kindly villager gives them a lift in their cart, she dies lying on a pile of straw.

William then mercifully finds someone who speaks English and manages to get through the trauma of burying his wife. His Good Samaritan, Edith, helps him get the train to Paris and eventually another train and boat back to England, where he arrives a broken man.

Having seen the horrors of what is happening in Europe and determined to stop it, he attempts to enlist in the Army, but he is rejected because he doesn't meet the height requirement. "Oh don't worry, in a few months they won't care about that," William's friend Faraday consoles him. And oh how true that turned out to be.

In the meantime, William attends meetings that he used to go to all the time, full of fiery speeches to motivate everyone into supporting the socialist and pacifist causes, which he loved and felt a sense of community in. But now, he is appalled. These people aren't brave - he realises - for they have sacrificed nothing. They haven't got the first clue what he's been through, what thousands are going through, of the brutality, the horror of what he's witnessed and what he's so cruelly lost. And it must be stopped. Now is not the time for pacifism, in his opinion. He is incensed, enraged and utterly broken.

Eventually he does get accepted by the Army and ends up in what one might deem a communications job - he writes letters, takes dictation, files documents. But then William moves to the third phase of his character development - utter disillusionment. What difference has he actually made? He has done his duty, yes, but what has been the point?

“He hated the war as it affected himself, was weary of the war in general; all he longed for was its ending, which meant his release from imprisonment; but neither hatred nor weariness had blinded his eyes to the folly of that other blindness which had denied that war could be.”

Eventually, as was the fate of so many, he is involved in combat, suffers massive injuries, and dies quietly in a field hospital.

It is not a happy read, but Hamilton did not intend it to be. I think she thought people had their heads far enough into the sand and they needed a reality check. This book won the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse, the highest honour bestowed on female authors in 1919 (probably the equivalent of the Stella or the Women's Prize today) and no wonder. It’s unforgettable. And I think it's just as relevant a read now as it was then.

my favourite reads of 2018

Books should always be accompanied by tea and homemade cake where possible.

In true Phil tradition, I wait until it is quite embarrassing to have a blog post with “2018” in the title to divulge my favourite reads of the last year. Also in my usual style, some of the best books were discovered and read in the final days of December, hence the long mulling over. But now I have decided and I hope you will enjoy hearing about my choices and maybe even be inspired to read them yourself. As always, I’d love to hear what your favourite reads of last year were too.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

Full disclosure, Holly is a friend and I had been eagerly anticipating this book for years but I bought my own copy (which is the best way to support a friend who publishes a book! Buy it! Buy two! I speak from experience here) and was under no obligation to say nice things about it in public. But that is neither here nor there because I have nothing but nice things to say about it!

Lost Flowers is a read you won't forget in a hurry. Exquisitely written, this is a compelling story of grief, heartbreak, love, magic, wonder and redemption, with Australia's beautiful landscapes (bush, sea and desert) as the backdrop. Despite very dark subject matter, Holly has crafted a truly beautiful story that reads almost like a fairytale and brings it alive with luscious detail, particularly when it comes to Australia's native flowers, the vehicle through which young Alice Hart learns to communicate again after a violent family tragedy. 

But flowers can only say so much and the book's ultimate, powerful message is that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot run away from grief, from pain and from your past because it will always find you. There are some very dark times for Alice as she ignores danger signals time and time again - which is so unsettling as a reader, because you end up caring so much about her! - but Alice's story is, in the end, a hopeful one as she realises that facing pain and owning your story is the only way to move forward and claim your rightful place in the world. 

Books don't often move me in the way this one did. The storytelling is truly spectacular and the character of Alice Hart is the lost, frightened child seeking love and belonging that I think speaks to that part of all of us. Holly is a magical writer and I'd say this book is destined to become something of an Australian classic.

Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple

I mentioned this book in my post about my love affair with Persephone Books which was well and truly rekindled in 2018. Someone At A Distance has probably been my favourite Persephone so far, and that is saying something, because they are yet to publish something I don’t enjoy!

Described as "a fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage", I was quite unprepared for how compelling and absorbing this tale would be. It's a novel all about relationships, how they form and also how they fall apart. Sometimes all it can take is 'someone at a distance' for that to happen. The novel follows what happens to this family when the husband/father is unfaithful, and the emotional devastation that has on everyone - there’s no great twist, per se, but the book’s genius and charm lies in how it explores the emotional lives of the characters, and how compassionately Whipple manages to do this. And I think Louise (the other woman) is by far the most repugnant character I’ve ever come across in literature. Dorothy Whipple was an extraordinary writer and I now want to read everything she ever wrote.

The Tuscan Cookbook by Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer

Stephanie’s Journal is one of my favourite books (it’s one of my mate Veggie Mama’s too!) - it is the diary Stephanie Alexander kept in the year 1997, which turned out to be a momentous one for her. She closed her famous restaurant in Melbourne, opened the Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder, and held three residential cooking schools in Tuscany with her friend Maggie Beer. I have read the journal countless times - at least once a year since I bought it off the sale table in Fullers Bookshop in 2001 sometime - but I had never read the cookbook that Stephanie and Maggie put out the year after the cooking schools, which naturally were full! Of course, it was published 20 years ago and it wasn’t easy to get a copy in the UK - but an Amazon secondhand seller came to rescue and I managed to get a copy that was signed by Stephanie herself! (I shall have to hope I run into Maggie sometime now that I’m back in Oz so she can sign it too!) It was such a treat to read this book after many years of imagining the cooking school, in the magical Tuscan countryside, and all the mouthwatering food they cooked. It has not only added to my enjoyment of one of my favourite books but it was a sumptuous read in its own right, with so many delicious recipes and ideas. So many recipes for cavolo nero, my favourite vegetable!

Home Cook by Thomasina Miers

I could not leave this book out of my favourites of the year, primarily because I cooked so much from it in 2018. Every recipe from this book that I’ve tried is an absolute winner. My favourite was the marmalade breakfast muffins, which I must have made every week for a couple of months, I just couldn’t get enough! When you’re an experienced cook it’s very rare when a book comes along that gives you new ideas and fresh energy to get into the kitchen and try some different things. Highly recommended!

The entire works of Diana Henry but particularly How To Eat A Peach and Food from Plenty

Diana Henry is fast becoming my favourite food writer. Her words are so evocative and poetic, you can practically smell what she’s cooking. This is a woman who loves food and has lived it. So many of the milestones in her life have a food story linked to it somehow, and I find this so interesting to read. Stories behind food and dishes, when they are told well, add greatly to my enjoyment of a recipe. I made quite a few dishes from How To Eat A Peach (which Tom got me for my birthday) over the long, hot summer we enjoyed in the UK last year and they were all excellent. It’s a lovely summery book, evidenced in the great variety of recipes for ice creams and sorbets (and such inventive combinations!). Perfect to sit with a cold glass of something indulgent and plan a dinner party with. Towards the end of the year, I noticed that nearly all Diana Henry’s books were 99p on Kindle for a few weeks, so I bought all of them (apart from the one entirely devoted to chicken, seeing I don’t eat it!). As with Thomasina Miers, it is rare for me to encounter a food writer that makes me want to actually cook their recipes as opposed to just soak up their exquisite prose.

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E Stevenson

Also mentioned in my Persephone post and one of my favourites of theirs. Written in 1934 and hence reflecting the concerns of women at the time, without the financial security of marriage, Miss Barbara Buncle finds herself needing to supplement her already meagre income. She does what many people think will bring certain fame and fortune - write and publish a book! She writes a novel based on her village and all the people who live in it, thinking that changing names and writing it under a pseudonym will be sufficient to hide their true identities. To her huge surprise, her book (or John Smith’s book!) is a huge bestseller and her publisher wants a sequel, but lo and behold, all the villagers have read it, recognise themselves and their village immediately (which says it all, as some of it isn’t flattering!), are outraged and determined to find out who ‘John Smith’ is and make ‘him’ pay. No one suspects the dowdy and quiet Miss Buncle for a second, which is where all the hilarity ensues - but also makes an interesting observation that people often do have hidden lives and assumptions we make about others can so very often be wrong. It’s absorbing, intelligent and very charming.

84 Charing Cross Road / The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

“I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: ‘It's there.’” Oh, this glorious book. What a treat. I’d wanted to read it for years - and on one sunny Sunday in September last year I read it, the whole thing (my edition included the sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street), and adored it. Do you ever read a book and as you’re reading it you know you’ve found a new favourite you’ll read again and again? That was this book for me. If you love London and books, I highly recommend it. It’s as charming and delightful as everyone says.

The Fortnight in September by R.C Sheriff

Also a Persephone book and an unusual one in that it was written by a man! But this was one of the most accomplished, most finely observed novels I have ever read. The premise is so simple - we follow the Stevens family on their annual two week holiday to the seaside in Bognor Regis. They are a typical middle-class 1930s family and have been going to the same B&B run by the same people for a very long time. Their holiday is as well-planned and thought out as their daily lives in South London, Mr Stevens has thought of everything down to the packing of the suitcases, the timings of the trains and which beach hut to hire for the best perspective. The B&B isn’t quite as comfortable as it used to be - slightly shabby, the landlady a little older and dottier - but the Stevens family do what they’ve always done and make the best of things. It’s an absolutely fascinating novel and so finely and accurately observed. Like I said, such a simple premise but the novel manages to capture all the big concerns of life within it - love, hope, disappointment, home, family, the passing of the years. I also loved how the very feeling of being on holiday is captured in this book - how the arrival at one’s destination is so anticipated and exciting, and then the days begin to roll by faster and faster and before you know it, the holiday is over and it’s time to go back home, to normal life. Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

I had been meaning to read this book for years and it felt poetic that I read it in November, during my last autumn in London. I seem to be enjoying novels that are more character studies, perhaps reflective of the direction my own writing is taking. In Quartet in Autumn, we meet four people who are colleagues sharing the same office - two men, two women, all of whom are nearing retirement age. The setting is London in the late 1970s and it’s an interesting study of loneliness and friendship, and how people’s inner and outer lives can be poles apart. Pym’s ability to write about the humdrum existences of these people without losing the reader at any point is quite incredible. I am studying her techniques intently! A writer of great tenderness and humour. I loved it.

One Day in December by Josie Silver

Instagram friends raving about this book + 99p on Kindle + 23 hours of flying from London to Melbourne = done deal! I wanted an absorbing, fun read for the London to Singapore leg of our journey home to Australia in December (ha!) and I got that and more with One Day in December. Wow. Good thing I was able to read the entire thing in one sitting because it is such a sweet, compelling and emotional story that I would have found it hard to put down otherwise.  I won't say anything about the plot - all I will say is that is it very, very rare for me to be moved to tears by a book. I cried a few times during the reading, but by the end I was a sobbing mess! Maybe it's because I was sleep deprived and emotional about returning home, who knows! But if you want a romantic and unputdownable holiday read that will really make you think about love, friendship, life and fate, I couldn't recommend this more highly.

The Empress of Australia: A Post War Memoir by Harry Leslie Smith

Harry Leslie Smith sadly passed away just as I was discovering his work late last year. I would highly recommend watching his speech at the Labour Party Conference in 2014. A man who lived through the depression of the 1930s, the Second World War and enormous social change throughout his lifetime, in his eighties and nineties Harry became a passionate political voice, speaking out about NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and how the world his generation helped to build out of the rubble of depression, social inequality and the terror of war is slowly eroding. “Don’t let my past be your future,” he warned. This particular memoir was about life in Britain after he was demobbed from service in 1948 and attempted to make a life back in his hometown with his German wife. The attitude towards her was quite shocking (but I was also shocked to realise that it’s not dissimilar to attitudes towards immigrants and foreigners in modern day Britain! Very little has actually changed. Even the scene that takes place at peak hour in Paddington station when Harry and Friede are trying to get home from Gatwick was hauntingly similar to my experiences! But that’s a post for another day) and Harry’s valiant attempts to make a home for her are so noble and heartbreaking, but sadly it all unravels as Friede simply can’t adjust to the culture shock of post-war austerity Britain and Harry’s hopes of making a good life in working class Halifax fade rapidly. Eventually the story has a happy ending as they decide to emigrate to Canada on the ship from which this memoir derives its title. I read this as part of research for my novel, also set in 1948, and will refer to it often. What a brave, extraordinary man he was. I’m so glad he wrote his stories down.

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

One of the first books I borrowed from the library on landing in Hobart! In this book, journalist Leigh Sales interviews several people who have suffered or been involved in high-profile tragedies such as the Thredbo landslide and Port Arthur (I found that one the hardest to read) and how they coped with the trauma and attention that followed. After all, the days that these tragedies took place were just another ordinary day, to begin with. They woke up that morning having no idea by evening their lives would be forever altered. The interviews are powerful and honest. And alongside these very courageous testimonies is Leigh exploring the idea that none of us know when something will happen that changes everything. We have no ability to control these kinds of events happening to us, or our loved ones. We are all vulnerable. And if the worst does happen, what do you do then? Any Ordinary Day is such a compelling book about human capacity for resilience, courage, kindness and endurance. I wouldn’t recommend reading it before bed (!) but any other time you need to feel reminded of the resilience of human beings, the ability of communities to rally round and support each other, or just to feel nothing but unbridled gratitude for your life’s many blessings, this is a great read.

What books did you most enjoy reading in 2018?

PS: As I mention every year, any links to Amazon are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and end up making a purchase, I get a small commission. Many thanks for your support xx

[poem] advice to myself by louise erdrich

A coffee I enjoyed in Bali last week.

Advice to Myself 

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons 
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Poem: "Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich, from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.  Sourced from The Writer’s Almanac.