Swoon. George Johnston is one of my all time faves, but I have never seen a picture of him before. Clift looks gorgeous!

It all ended in tears, of course.

Kimbofo -- if I say this is a rather unflattering photo of her, it will give you some idea of just how gorgeous she really was. Tragic, of course, as Perry points out.

There is an absolutely wonderful biography of Clift by Nadia Wheatley that came out a few years ago. IMHO it's up there with David Marr's bio of Patrick White as the two best Australian literary biographies evah.

Yes, one of those tragic literary love affairs!

Of course.

Kerryn,

Did you HAVE to post about the Wheatley book? I just had to buy it so another $40 now spent on books this week! :-)

I have a novel in my waiting-to-be-read pile called The Broken Book by Susan Johnson and which is based on Clift's life.

Hi Ron,
I am the author of the book in your waiting-to-read pile. I know contributing to these debates is probably not the done thing but since I am an Australian author living in London I regularly read Matilda and regularly find myself straining at the bit, wishing to take part but regularly restraining myself since Matilda largely seems to be a forum for readers and critics rather than writers.
However, in this case, since it is my own book under discussion, I thought I might make a few points if that is OK....one is that my book was inspired by Clift's life rather than closely following or even mirroring the actual lived life in the way that, say, Colm Toibin's THE MASTER was intended to inhabit the consciousness of Henry James. My book was never meant to 'be' Clift, in the way that Kate Mosse's WINTERING was meant to 'be' Sylvia Plath. In fact, Plath's life and diaries were as much as an influence on the character of Katherine Elgin than Clift and, arguably, the fictional Elgin is far closer to Plath than Clift.
The second point I wanted to make was that in a review in AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW (which admitedly I have only read in part) the critic Kerryn Goldsworthy appeared to dislike the book, so I should point out that any comment from Ms Goldsworthy is likely to be negative. I have been following Peter Craven's and Marion Halligan's pieces on reviewing and reviews and both agree that reviewing must be partisan and strong-minded in order to work as reviews at all but - hey - writers on reviewers? A subject on which the writer must remain silent.
But from your own comments which I have read over the years I feel perhaps the book won't be to your taste. I know that is a big assumption and I hope I am wrong. Now there's a debate: women's fiction verses men's fiction: do many men actually read 'women's novels?' And is there such a thing as a 'man's novel'? I did laugh at the cartoon entitled 'Ballad of the Soulful Woman Novelist.'
Anyway, thanks for having THE BROKEN BOOK in your waiting-to-read pile, even if you don't manage to read it! It means a lot to any author when someone buys your book. Warm regards, Susan

Hello Susan,

What an enjoyable surprise to find your comment here this morning. And a very interesting one it was.

I can't speak for Perry as this is his blog but I only wish more working writers of fiction would participate on blogs, even have their own.

About "men's and women's" book: I started Helen Garner's The First Stone this morning and next on the list is Fay Weldon's She May Not Leave. I don't think I have a prefence between male and female writers of fiction except that I do read a lot of fiction with a gay male interest, most (all?) of which is written by men.

I love some of the older fiction by Australian women - Eleanor Dark, Christina Stead and so on. However, I am not a great fan of a lot of the Aussie modern stuff (by men and women) which I label as 'navel-gazing' ie too narrowly focused with little or no real storytelling (I have the same opinion of a lot of recent Australian movies).

It's an interesting topic, this whole men/women book thing especially in Australia where I believe 75% of fiction is bought by women (which is reported as unique to Australia), audiences at writers/writing events reflect this percentage too (in my experience).

Hopefully your comment will generate some more people to join in here with their views.

One last thing: I have just ordered Angela Bennie's Creme de la Phlegm (which Perry mentions in his Weekend Round-Up 2006 #32) which should be an interesting read on Australian book reviewing.

And definitely my last comment because I've been on the 'Net too long today:

you've reminded me that I have both The Master and Wintering in my to-be-read piles (notice I have now gone plural) which I should tell you are taking over the house. I tend to buy an armful of books and by the time I'm halfway through that lot, I've bought another half dozen or so.

Regarding involvement from writers as well as readers critics: I welcome all of it. All comments are moderated so if I think it is getting out of hand and too personal I might step in, but that hasn't happened in any way as yet, so I'm hopeful it'll stay that way.

We are all readers to one degree or another. Critics, readers and writers have different view-points and I'm happy to listen to each and all of them. Discussion, and the provision of fresh insights, is what it's all about. The more involvement the better.

Perry, I neglected to mention that I think Matilda is a terrific site. And, yes, all of us are readers first of all, which leads to all the other stuff...oh, dear, Ron's comment on navel-gazing suggests he and you will definitely hate THE BROKEN BOOK! It is navel-gazing par-excellence -- in that it is largely the story of a depressed middle-aged woman..BUT, seeing all writers must be conscious as readers as well, I tried very hard to make it as lively a read as possible, given the story's final destination. Ah, well...and I also adore Stead and Kylie Tennant and Elizabeth Harrower and Miles Franklin, and a hundred others too. I think there are some very fine contemporary Australian women writers out there too, such as Gillian Mears and Kathleen Stewart and a host of others you might never have heard much about. But I also know a lot of men who are allergic to books by women...no doubt fearing they are all about depressed middle-aged women!!

Well, speaking as a depressed middle-aged man I can say I don't have any major problem with reading women writers. I have a few minor ones in that I haven't found a female crime writer I like yet. On the other hand, my favourite sf writer is Ursula Le Guin, and over the past year I've been impressed by books by Dorothy Porter, Wendy James, Brenda Walker, Charlotte Wood, Sonya Hartnett, Margo Lanagan, and Kate Jennings, amongst others. All Australian and all world-class.

I agree that most of my male friends would probably say they don't (rather than wouldn't) read novels by women. Why the difference? I couldn't say. Ten, maybe five years ago, I would have read very little by women writers. But then I also read very few Australian writers either. We tend to slot into our reading habits early and then stick with them because it's what we know.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to just hand over a novel to a friend like a bottle in a blind wine tasting, with the title and author's name masked and unreadable. That way no prejudice would enter into it. It would be nice but it isn't going to happen.

So how does it feel to have a reader mention your novel on a weblog like this? I've been wondering about this very point as I'm now reading David Whish-Wilson's novel - as detailed at the top of the weblog - and he comments here from time to time. Is it the same as seeing someone reading your novel on the train? I reckon that must be one of the weirdest feelings I can imagine.

Yes, weird is the word...but because I am just coming up to my twentieth year as a fiction writer (my first book was published in 1986) and I am some seven books down, I think you finally get used to your books becoming public property. It's funny, I was just with this friend last week who finished his book after something like five years and instead of feeling elated he said he felt kind of sad. 'No-one will care about it in the same way I do,' he said. Which is really true....BUT you've somehow got to gird your loins or don your armour or something, which my friend knew he would eventually have to do. It's a long process of trying to cut the cord to the book, which I guess is never fully cut (witness my participation in this debate -- and now I will stop the mixed metaphors!)
I really agree with your comments about reading habits. And I think Ursula Le Guin is a wonderful, wonderful writer. I read an interview with her once (in a book about women writers) and she had some terrific things to say. I'll try and dig it out and find some quotes for you (not on the post but I will send to you via email if you like).

I actually came upon my book on a blog booklist and just couldn't resist - I wrote to the blogger and said just that: that it must be the blogging equivalent of seeing someone reading your novel on a train...(Though one should really be wary of this - in Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up, the enthusiastic reader-in-the-train - you're my favourite author!! - has been set up to lure the unsuspecting writer). Anyway, it beats people crossing the road, or the supermarket aisle, to avoid you (one of the drawbacks of living in a small community) because they HAVEN'T read your book yet!

I loved THE BROKEN BOOK, Susan, but have to disagree with you: the depressed, middle-aged Katherine isn't the character that lingers in my memory, but the younger, vital woman, with everything ahead of her. And the naval-gazing's really no more than what's required of any sentient being, Ron, so don't let that put you off.

Wendy,

This may be the blog where you saw your book but just in case it isn't...

Thanks for your kind words Wendy. Actually, YOUR book is on my waiting-to-read list so I haven't read it either but I certainly plan to as the period in which it is set interests me a lot, and I have heard terrific things about it.
But, as I am thick in the midst of a new novel, I am sticking to biographies at the moment. I really hope to get to it in the New Year. Cheers.

Have to confess, Ron, that I actually sent Kim her copy. I fear this might be the blogging equivalent of handing out your crazy tract to all your unsuspecting fellow travellers.

It's hard to imagine ever getting used to the public life of a work, Susan. I've found it kinda excruciating, thus far - all the bad reviews have this remarkable echo effect, while any good ones somehow evaporate...

Hello Perry

Have just this morning discovered your wonderful website and blog - and have been reading for an hour instead of getting on with my history assignment. I can see I'll be spending many happy hours here in future.

Your remark about reading habits being set early is so true. However, I found that joining a book group with eclectic tastes has forced me to read genres and authors I would not have chosen myself and it has been a liberating experience.
I'd recommend joining a book group to anyone who loves reading.

In fact, your fabulous site is almost a similar experience.

Ron: sorry, dude. But YOU won't be sorry.

Susan: I'm sure you will agree that reviewers must call things as they see them, and that there is nothing personal in this. I have had a few real stinkers of reviews myself. But if you didn't read all of my review of The Broken Book then you will have missed this bit: "...there's one chapter in which this book takes flight like a beautiful, dangerous firework. Katherine, desperate to get on with her writing, is having her whole attention insistently claimed by her two little girls and ends up in a deadly battle of wills with one of them. For a moment it turns into a different book altogether, dazzling and disturbing. Johnson has written before, in her memoir A Better Woman, about maternal rage and other difficulties of motherhood ... and given that the parent-child relationship concerns all of us - one way or another - all through our lives, it's a rich and inexhaustible subject for fiction."

Hi Kerryn,

Yes, I certainly agree that reviewers must call things as they see them. And as I said I haven't read your review in full: I am heartened to read that at least you enjoyed some of it.
Perhaps, in retrospect, I should have let readers work out the Clift inspiration on their own, instead of pointing them towards it in an author's note. Probably this decision caused the book to be read in a particular way...however, when the book is released here in the UK next month by Orion, there will be no note so it will be interesting to see how the book is reviewed. One small review in the US publication PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY called it 'sentimental but arresting' or some such!
Thanks for your response: mostly writers and reviewers maintain their traditional dignified distance but I find it kind of warming that cyberspace is breaking this down.
Cheers, Susan

I'm halfway through The Broken Book, Susan, and I am thoroughly absorbed in, and enjoying, it.

yeah, thanks Perry for this great site. as you'd be aware from previous postings, i'm living in fiji at the moment, and while there are plenty of stimulating local writers to hang out with, the focus here is definitely pacific, so its great for me to be able to log into matilda whenever possible and catch up on news from home.

you're both right (perry and susan) about reading and writing. as a writer i write compulsively, daily, and when i'm not writing my novel i'm thinking about my novel, or even narrating it in my sleep occasionally (i'm not sure if that's healthy) - but i still consider myself a reader more than a writer.

writing is what i do, but when i'm writing my novel i'm IN my novel, and progress is so damn slow that its reading other novels that actually makes my world go round, somehow, keeps the whole thing fresh etc...

i know what you mean about your reluctance to post susan, as i was reluctant too, but finally couldn't help myself. it is great to see cyberspace breaking down those invisible barriers between reader and writer, and reviewer. i admit i came to this site because i'd heard about a review of my novel (a good one, i'd heard, so i wanted to see it) in the australian, and wasn't able to find it anywhere else. and it was good to see a reviewer posting here, as a civilian, as it were (as a reader, in fact).

it was also great to see that you're reading my book perry (there are no trains in fiji!) jesus, i hope you like it, but thats one of the things i've learnt about readers responses. its my first novel, so the whole reviewing thing is new to me (apart from the odd short story in the past), and as someone mentioned, although most of the reviews have been very positive, there have been two stinkers (check them out for your own amusement - in the ABR and the courier mail), and while the readers who've tracked me down by email have been complimentary, its been made very clear to me how different people percieve novels differently, and how its perceived is totally out of my control (hardly surprising, i suppose). while i'd love to write a book that everyone loves, i guess thats just about impossible.

its a matter of coincidence, but the last four novels i've read have been by australian women (gail jones, brenda walker, tegan bennett daylight and deborah robertson.) while i've always thought that there was a difference between 'male and female writing', whats most obvious after reading these recent novels is that there appears to be as much difference, perhaps, in terms of style and subject matter, within the gender as between the two, if that makes sense.

i'd be interested in anyone elses take on this, as its a question my students often ask me...

David: Thanks for joining in....I'm really interested in what you think the difference in men's and women's writing is: you mention differences in style and subject matter even within that group of women writers you mentioned, is style and subject matter one of the ways you identify the difference between men and women when it comes to writing? I think it's interesting about subject matter: for example, someone like Jonathan Franzen and THE CORRECTIONS would seem to me to be covering 'traditional' women's subject matter (the family; parent/child relationships; sexuality; childhood) but in a very visceral way in terms of style. And Brenda Walker's book (which I haven't read; I have read Frantzen) would seem to be covering 'traditional' men's subject matter: war. Is it mainly subject matter do you think? Is, say, Delia Falconer's book about the American civil war (which I also haven't read!) identifiable as being written by a woman because of its style? And in what way does the style and subject matter of those women writers you mention vary? Do these questions sound like an exam paper???
Ron: Phew! I am greatly relieved that you are enjoying TBB. I have to say that ever since my first book, my work has really polarised readers: they either absolutely love it, or absolutely hate it. Maybe all books attract such violent emotions? TBB certainly did: that's the one readers feel most strongly about --- for good and bad!

Hey, Susan, i thought i was the one asking for help?

but i'll give it a crack. what i tell my students, in my usual muddled way, is that any good writer - with the writers tools of empathy and imagination, should be able to create authentic characters in an authentic voice - whatever their gender. and i think the writers you have mentioned are able to do that, whatever the subject matter etc (i think of pat barker and the regeneration trilogy as a great example).

some writers are more successful at it than others - that is, transforming themselves imaginatively first, before translating that into narrative and character.

i also think that any differences that exist (and there are always exceptions, and cross-overs) are perhaps more diminished in the area of lit fiction, where the concerns are more generally about the 'human condition', for want of a better word, rather than in the broad genres, where fantasy perhaps plays a bigger part (James Bond/Mills & Boon etc - although as Kerryn pointed out in a recent review of Roth's Everyman - fantasy pops up everywhere.)

i'm not clear that there are any real differences, to be honest, in other words. there may be in real life, but fiction isn't real life.

i had the strange experience recently of a staunchly feminist friend of mine saying she almost exclusively listens to male bands. when asked, she said something along the lines of there being more rawness there...an energy thing. she likes the kind of primal energy that she identifies with certain kinds of male performance, although she's aware that there are plenty of exceptions.

another friend, a successful australian novelist, told me that she was very attracted to the paul schrader film Affliction when it came out, for precisely the same reason. she admired the film's head-on, raw emotional honesty. she seemed to be saying that it was hard for her as a writer to achieve the same thing, that she tended to approach these things indirectly, more patiently sifting experience etc...

i don't know whether they're right or not, or even if i'm making any sense (we have a beautiful four week old daughter in our bed, and i need more sleep!)

i guess it comes down to taste. personally, i like the kind of slow, considered, insightful approach - the building of meaning through the accretion of detail. i find more poetry there, and perhaps even more wisdom, more truth. i like books that move my heart and engage my head. i dont want one without the other - i dont like being driven by a plot or being emotionally manipulated. i want to see the world through someone elses eyes, for a change, someone who sees through the bullshit diguises, who can get under a characters skin, someone who can transform me by way of their story for as long as the story lasts, and after if possible.

there's only good and bad writing, as they say?

There's a discussion going on over at Sara Gran's weblog about this very point, which the author introduces as follows:

As promised; a list of recommended female authors of the non-"women's novel" persuasion. For those of you who weren't in on this from the start, this list began when I realized I was getting a lot of fan mail from men who were telling me that they don't usually read women authors. In fact, most men don't read books by women, not because they're dicks but becasue they don't want to read "women's fiction." So here's some recommended reading for all those folks who might ordinarily shy away from female authors, as compiled a little bit by me but mostly by readers of this here blog.

Included in the list are such writers as Ursula Le Guin, Helen Dewitt, Leigh Brackett, Doris Lessing, Margo Lanagan and Poppy Z Brite, amongst many others.

As for me, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to ignore the gender of the author when I have a book recommended to me. I think it's working. I hope so, anyway.

[Update: I've fixed the link now. Thanks to Ron for pointing it out.]

I'd add pat barker, joyce carol oates, kathy acker and, i think, mary gaitskill.

like i said, i dont pay too much attention to the gender of an author (the best book i've read lately is deborah robertson's Careless - beautifully drawn male and female characters, gutsy, sensitive writing etc)

my current prejudice is against novels written in the first person. its a recent thing, but i'll read a couple of pages, and too often for it to be a coincidence, i go nup, can't do it - the thought of spending 20-30 hours with this narrator is out of the question.

i'll get over it, i guess (i hope).

David: a four week old daughter! I'm amazed you can get to a computer at all --- congratulations, and thanks so much for taking the time to respond. (And congratulations on the novel too --- Fiji seems to be a fertile kind of place...) Couldn't agree more about it all boiling down to fine writing -- it's just such a pity so many blokes have a mental block about women's writing. The links suggested by Ron and Perry are pretty interesting...hope you get lots of sleep. Cheers, Susan (my own two boys, nine and eleven, are away at the moment which is why I have time to join in....)

David: I like to treat my reading a bit like the sustenance I get from food and drink - a balanced diet is what I'm after, a bit of heavy comfort food but sometimes a bit of the light fluffy stuff as well. And everything in between. So novels that make me think and ponder particular points-of-view like the Walker, James, Bradley, Le Guin, Porter etc, that I have mentioned. But I also want to read the take-away style - Ross Macdonald, Ian Rankin, Eric Frank Russell, Garry Disher et al. Each style, genre and type complements the other, and without a balanced diet I reckon I'd be lost.

This is personal preference you understand, and it may well be that some people think I err on the side of genre fiction. I probably do, but I'm not fussed by it.

i like crime fiction too. i didn't want to knock genre fiction, if there is such a thing any more. sciascia, chandler, mosely etc. and i've just been given as a present, and havent been able to put down, a book called on the yard, by a US ex-con, Braly, i think his name is.. a totally male world and funny, clever and machiavellian, in an Oz (HBO) kind of way. Comfort food in a balanced diet is a good way of describing it, i reckon...