'A Power of Roses' by Ruth Park

Summary: Roses were rarely seen at the old Jerusalem hotel.

Life is hard, and for some of the tenants a luxury might be warm feet, cat's meat stew or a five-bob coat from a jumble sale.

In A Power of Roses, Ruth Park draws vivid portraits of Miriam, the tough adolescent heroine; her Uncle Puss, a canny old Irishman; and a colourful assortment of inhabitants who live in the hotel's damp, rat-infested rooms.

MY THOUGHTS:

This story begins so bleakly, I almost talked myself into abandoning it after the first few chapters. But I ended up loving it. So much so that on the strength of reading it, I've just ordered another batch of Ruth Park's vintage novels. 

It tells a story about the riff-raff residents of the dilapidated Jerusalem apartments in the heart of Sydney. These folk each do their best to stay dignified when just trying to stay adequately fed and clothed is incredibly difficult and demoralizing. It begins with young Miriam McKillop buying 'backbones for me cat,' because she and her uncle can't afford higher quality fish. However, the collection of tails, fins, and fish heads is destined to flavor their own stew.

These two are the heart of the story; Irish migrant Uncle Puss McKillop (whose real name is Percival or 'Perce') and canny young Miriam, the great niece he has brought up, who can love with great ferocity. 

Not only does Ruth Park weave us right into the picture with her world-building, but she does it in an intriguing metaphysical way. She entices us readers with the probability of a deeper, invisible plane of existence which infuses the more lovable characters with optimism and hope. For example, 'Miriam was aware of a fairy world, hanging heavenlike behind the accidents of this life', and hence so are we.  

To mention a few other colorful characters their story entwines with, there is young Dunkie, a handsome and opinionated boy who can't walk, and whose self-focus naturally reflects his narrow physical outlook. There is the desperately devout Mr Creepin' Christmas, who runs the fish n' chip shop, and Mr Holland, the shy young minister whose job feels way out of his depth. 

At one stage, the community is rocked by the healing ministry of the Reverend Doctor Maisley, who operates his outreach in a similar style to the Duke and the King from Huckleberry Finn. And I'll keep secret the identity of one of my favorite characters who ushers in change with great panache.

There is a lad named Porgy Ketchel whose fondest dream is to someday work on a garbage truck, which he fears is out of his league. The most menacing presence in the book is Porgy's father, Cheap Billy Ketchel, a vicious and resentful bully who keeps rehearsing his litany of injustices. I'd challenge any reader to come up with a single redeeming quality for this bloke. 

Looking back over the plot, it seems to me that Park uses some form of literary natural selection to weed out the more malevolent and negative influences from the Jerusalem, so that only the benign, loving, and harmless remain. And brace yourselves for a perfectly planned and executed revenge mission with a real Australian bite. It probably couldn't be done now, with our high-tech surveillance tools, but one character quietly does many others a colossal favor.  

The author blurb in this old edition reveals that Ruth Park, along with her husband, D'Arcy Niland, was forced to live in a Sydney slum tenement for a while, owing to the shortage of adequate housing following World War Two. Aha, no wonder her descriptions bear such a compassionate insider's touch. Park's writing is alchemical, spinning gold from straw. 

The ending brims with heartbreaking closures and exciting new beginnings. As for the title, we are rewarded by learning why 'a power of roses' is Uncle Puss's whole life philosophy all condensed into four words. 

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'This is not a book about Benedict Cumberbatch' by Tabitha Carvan

Summary: In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence...and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to, unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there's true, untapped power in finding your "thing" (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.

MY THOUGHTS:

It is the subtitle that attracted me to this book. What a quirky and timely read it is. And you don't have to even admire Benedict Cumberbatch to appreciate it. I, for one, haven't succumbed to his charm, but still wouldn't have missed reading this. 

Tabitha, a wife and mother  living in Canberra, describes how she discovered Benedict Cumberbatch when her children were small. 

'Something lurched into motion in the pit of my belly, that churning, squeezing madness for more that leaves you in no doubt why they call it a crush.'

Since then she's watched the Sherlock series and the Marvel movies many times over, along with every other starring role of her idol's. And her life became shinier, illuminated, and far more fun than ever before, although she was performing the same old roles in the home and workplace. 

The difference to her outlook was so remarkable that Tabitha Carvan took it upon herself to find the hideaways of others with similar stories to share. Although most of the women interviewed for this book are fellow 'Cumberbitches' our fannish 'thing' can be anything that lights us up in the same way. 

This book is first and foremost an enthusiastic and convincing defense of passionate fandoms; the liberation document we never realized we so badly need. It strikes such a chord with me, I know I'm among this book's target audience. You'll feel the same way, if the description fits. We are the people whose benign hobbies are sometimes denigrated and trivialized as time-wasting and unproductive, making us inclined to keep them intensely private. The Protestant Work Ethic has infiltrated our western culture in its insidious way until we feel sheepish at best and shamed at worst. Whoever would have imagined we'd need an earnest voice like Tabitha's to tell us the truth. The transforming pleasure we get from our fandoms and passions is all the justification we need! 

Quiet personal tragedies undoubtedly abound. Casualties of voluntary diminishment are surely everywhere. Those who heed the content of subtle yet powerful guilt trips will never know what fun they've missed. For the alternative of this vibrant, imaginative, switched-on life (in other words, not having a 'thing') does not feel bad but merely normal. Once about twenty years ago, a well-meaning friend of mine described how she'd switched off her vivid imagination for the sake of peace and contentment. I left her house in a sort of daze, thinking, 'Nope, too great a sacrifice. I could never do that.'

Fanfiction gets a good wrap-up in this book. As a keen fanfic author, I appreciate Tabitha's fondness for it. She has a wonderful analogy about a woman who discovered an entire hidden apartment behind her bathroom mirror. That's precisely how I felt when I thought I'd exhausted the mileage I could get from my beloved book series, then discovered these untapped masterpieces about the same favourite characters.

The statistics of Archive of Our Own (one of my second homes) proves that it is actually more like a teeming metropolis than an extra apartment. Yes, there will always be stigma from people likening fanfiction to paint-by-number art, or packaged cake mixes, or Elvis impersonators.  But those of us who are busy doing it know full well that derivative needn't mean unchallenging or un-fascinating.  

If there is one thing that occasionally irritates me about Tabitha's style, it's her exaggerated self-deprecation, since she is clearly a highly intelligent and successful person who has maintained a viral blog and an up-to-date career interviewing scientists for cutting-edge articles, not to mention getting this book deal. 'Why all the false modesty,' I kept wanting to ask her. Yet after awhile, this stopped bothering me since her ultimate message is so enjoyable and uniquely presented. 

As I often do, I read other reviews after forming the bones of mine. One man wrote a scathing, one-star review asking, 'When she's on her death bed, will she really think, "I'm glad I spent all that time thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch?"' 

I'm certain Tabitha would reply, 'Hell, yeah!' It was satisfying to see several commenters tell him, 'You've obviously missed the whole point of the book.' That reviewer was clearly just the sort of person who might stamp out our joy in his reasonable sounding, yet scornfully dismissive way. 

This is a happy-making book, fresh and colorful enough to dip into many times. I'm glad a fellow Aussie had the brainwave to give this subject the book-length coverage it deserves. 

(Oh, and by the way, I learned that many people producing fan art and fan fiction on the internet are women in their fifties. So there you go, I have many cohorts and didn't even know it.)

Note: If you'd like to read more about fanfic, or even read some of my own fanfic, then start here.

🌟🌟🌟🌟½

'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson

Note: This was a book recommendation which I came across in another novel, often the best way of discovering new reading matter. Sometimes suggestions from fictional characters are worth following up even more than those from our real life friends. It happens that Jane Penderwick counts Finn Taverner, from this story, among her favorite imaginary book boyfriends. So when I spotted the spine at the secondhand shop, I thought I'd take my chance on it. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

 Although published in the early 21st century, this YA novel has real vintage, steampunk vibes. The story starts in 1910. Maia Fielding is an orphan who's being sent out to the Carter family, distant relatives of hers who live along the banks of the Amazon River in Brazil and operate a rubber plantation. She looks forward to meeting their identical twin daughters nearly her own age. Maia is accompanied by the resourceful Miss Minton, who's been engaged as governess for all three girls. 

Reality is a rude shock. It turns out Mrs Carter is a germ phobe who has transformed their home into a sterile bubble to keep out the tropical environment. Mr Carter is a creepy collector of glass eyes, and Beatrice and Gwendolyn's whole goal in life is to shun work and plague people. What's more, the Carter family has only agreed to take Maia under their roof in order to receive the financial benefits they'll be paid. 

But Maia befriends two boys who are in dire straits of their own. Finn Taverner is the son of a deceased naturalist. He's doing his best to dodge two private investigators who are determined to take him back to England to claim an inheritance he doesn't want. And poor, wistful Clovis King is a young itinerant actor traveling with a crooked troupe who exploits him. Clovis' nostalgia for England is unrelenting. (I quickly anticipated a possible plot of intentional mistaken identity, but the story delivers so much more than that. Deception is brilliant when everyone benefits, including the dupes.)

The novel is a tribute to the Amazon jungles and rainforests, and the mighty river which sometimes seems to swell to the size of the sea itself. (Hence its title.) The pages are bulging with capuchin monkeys, manatees, alligators, sloths, umbrella birds and many other colorful critters. Yet Ibbotson provides a balanced view that it is not everyone's cup of tea. Clovis' hankering for British rainstorms, bread-and-butter puddings, and village greens is equally convincing. 

A highlight for me is the influence of Miss Minton, governess extraordinaire, whose quiet, behind-the-scenes wisdom and manipulations are pure gold. She prioritizes spending her salary on excellent books, at the expense of her threadbare wardrobe and sparse personal effects. ('If you want something badly enough, you usually get it. But you have to take what goes along with it.')

Ibbotson's droll descriptions get my thumbs-up too. Those poor detectives, Mr Trapwood and Mr Low. 'Both their stomachs had become boiling caverns of agony and wind.' And the Carter twins are described as, 'pale insect grubs who exist only to be fed and groomed by others.'

So overall, Miss Minton's words hold true. 'Whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage and an open mind may find themselves in Paradise.' Yet at the same time, there exists a geographical and lifestyle sweet spot for every one of us, which we owe it to ourselves to discover if we possibly can. 

I'm willing to track down more of Ibbotson's YA books on the basis of this one. 

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