'Ash Road' by Ivan Southall

I've chosen this for the Bushfire category of my 2025 Aussie Reading Challenge. I seemed to remember a few different fire themed novels around the place, including one called, 'You Name it, It's Burning.' I couldn't put my hands on that one, but luckily Ash Road was in a pile of recent acquisitions from a goodwill shop.  

MY THOUGHTS:

This was first published in 1966, and won the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award for Older Readers in 1966. It is one of those stories that just covers one single day.

Three fifteen-year-olds, Harry, Graham, and Wallace, are delighted to be camping unattended in the Aussie bush. They're a bit annoyed when they're forbidden to light campfires, since they'd been looking forward to their own cooking, but the north wind is hot and hard, and the scrub as dry as tinder. The locals know that a tiny flame may quickly become a monster. During the early hours of the morning, the boys accidentally start a raging blaze anyway, when Graham knocks over their bottle of methylated spirits near their faulty heater.

Consequences are catastrophic. Many properties are burned to the ground, livestock and wildlife are lost, and human lives seriously endangered. As well as the culpable trio, the story focuses on several residents who live along Ash Road and mistakenly assume their location will remain well out of the raging fire's path. While able-bodied adults head off to assist with relief efforts, the children and elderly folk left to hold down the fort are terrified to find the fire closing in on them. 

Five-year-old Julie Buckingham unwittingly overflows the bathtub and depletes the family's rainwater stores; Grandpa Tanner remembers an identical blaze around 1913, Peter Fairhall feels frustrated by his grandparents' protective initiative to send him away, and the George family are trying to protect their perishing raspberry crop. The day doesn't unfold the way anyone expects. 

It was a contemporary tale of its time, but Australia was on the brink of a total change. Currency is still pounds sterling, temperature is measured in Fahrenheit, and distance in miles. Only fairly senior citizens would remember this now. (Not me! I wasn't born yet.) Therefore it's an interesting snapshot from the not-so-distant past. I once updated all my technology details for the second printing of a contemporary novel, but this example suggests it may be more interesting to let novels age like fine wine. I would never change things again.

Under Southall's skillful pen, the fire becomes the main antagonist it deserves to be. 

'The smoke cloud was a pale brown overcast with billows of white and curious areas of mahogany and streaks of sulphurous-looking yellow. The sun shone through like a white plate in a bowl full of dye... There was ash on the road too, unnumbered flakes of it lying in the gravel and in the grass at the edges and caught up like black flowers in twigs and foliage... It was like a black and white photograph of enormous proportions, in the midst of which candles burned mysteriously.'

And how about this excellent description of the vile temper of the day itself.

'It was an angry day; not just wild or rough but savage in itself, actively angry against every living thing. It hated plants and trees and birds and animals, and they wilted from its hatred or withered up and died or panted in distress in shady places.'  

In spite of his evocative descriptions (which I believe helped win him that award), I find the fleeting time span covered doesn't really do justice to the extensive cast of characters. The plot has unpredictable moments when it draws complete strangers together, but it is ultimately one day in their lives. An extremely traumatic day, I grant you that, but I prefer longer time spans in stories to really get to know people. And the untimely death of one character who couldn't ever win a trick saddens me enough to knock off a couple of stars. 

Still, if part of Southall's goal was to warn people about the potential terror of bushfires, and subsequent need to take extreme caution, he surely succeeded.

🌟🌟🌟   

'Meditations for Mortals' by Oliver Burkeman

Summary: Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

MY THOUGHTS:

Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks was among my top reads of 2022, which inclines me to pick up anything else he writes.  

He suggests the uplifting benefit of the 'Done' list, as opposed to the guilt-inducing 'To Do.' For, 'it implicitly invites you to compare your output to the hypothetical situation in which you stayed in bed and did nothing at all.'

He addresses how to tackle reading lists in our culture of TMI, for as he says, it's evident in the 21st century that we're no longer hunting for needles in haystacks but facing towering mountains of needles. Treating our TBR piles as rivers instead of bottomless buckets is key here. We can dip in to pick a few choices here and there, without feeling guilty for letting others simply float past, even those deemed special or important by others. We should resist the urge to stockpile knowledge in our reading, and simply trust that each good book is subtly changing us into better people. Oh, and it's quite okay to read just for fun.

Regarding self-esteem, Burkeman suggests that too many of us tether it to the most crazy-making standard of all, which is 'realizing our potential.' This is a recipe for staying ever restless, for how can we ever know there is not more potential left to realize?

Then there's the TMI of daily living in our world of western media and digital technology. The horror and injustice of the whole world is flashed before us daily, with the implicit demand that we react with heartache and empathy every single time. Burkeman breaks the news that social media platforms invite us to care about more human suffering than the greatest saints in history would have encountered in their entire lives. No wonder compassion burn-out hits some of us so hard. His advice is not to retreat into our shells, overcome by the sheer hopelessness of it all, but simply to focus on one single battle we're willing to get involved with. 

He echoes advice I always seem to need hearing. Worrying is trying to figure out ways to cross bridges we may never even come to! (It's similar to Mark Twain's wisdom about refusing paying debts we may never owe, Jesus' teaching that every day has trouble enough of its own, or perhaps the old proverb, 'Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.') To all this, Burkeman would add, 'Don't let the future destroy the present!' This has been a major stumbling block of my life, so I always appreciate having it reinforced.

Very interestingly, he's isolated the optimal number of hours required to chip away at our passion projects or professional goals, before our brains turn to mush and diminishing returns set in. It is just 3 - 4 hours! Therefore we'd do well to set non-negotiable rings around this time block, and let the rest of the day fritter itself away in the inevitable paperwork, errands, walks and socializing, or what Burkeman calls the 'usual fragmentary chaos of life.' Yet without being too rigid, we ought to make this goal 'daily-ish' for things have a way of happening. 

One thing I have trouble agreeing with is Burkeman's notion of 'scruffy hospitality.' This is allowing ourselves to be 'real' when we invite people over, and not putting it off until everything is perfect. Although I always feel refreshed as the recipient of scruffy hospitality, I fear I'll never be able to embrace this one. It goes too much against my upbringing, and as my in-laws are also pretty perfectionistic, it's a double whammy. Besides, there is always a fear lurking that my 'pristine' is a match for other people's 'scruffy' anyway. So nope, I think I'll always be running around with dusters and vacuum cleaners to create the illusion that I've got my act together. 

But the theory is good. 

I'll finish off with his comment about 'what premodern people knew.' It is simply that since life is so inherently confusing and precarious, then joy, if it's ever to be found at all, is going to have to be found now, in the midst of confusion and precariousness.

🌟🌟🌟🌟    

'Spiderweb for Two' by Elizabeth Enright

Summary: It's the fourth and final instalment of the Melendy Quartet. Left alone when Rush and Mona go away to boarding school, Randy and Oliver are lonely and bored until a mysterious letter brings the first of many clues to a mystery that takes all winter to solve.

MY THOUGHTS:

For years it seems Then There Were Five was meant to be the last book in the Melendy series. While the first three were all published between 1941 and 1944, this final novel didn't appear until 1954; ten years from the starting point with a seven year gap. That struck me as a red flag at the outset. (When Mary Norton did a similar thing with The Borrowers Avenged, it was a facepalm.) 

Then the story concept fueled my misgivings. While Mona, Rush, and Mark are all away at boarding school, Randy and Oliver are at loose ends with nothing to do but mope around Four-Story Mistake by themselves. One day they receive an anonymous letter that sparks an intriguing scavenger hunt to occupy them all season while the others are away. I hated the idea of the older siblings being written out of most of the action, but being a Melendy book, I read it anyway. 

It isn't half bad. The clever, poetic clues are a challenge for us readers as well as the two kids. The masterminds behind the challenge really intend for them to work hard for it, and it is great when we discover their identities. Not in the least surprising, given the extreme inside knowledge they evidently possess, but very satisfying. 

The whole boarding school thread is a bugbear of mine. What a shame to break up such a close-knit family who all love their home. When Randy and Oliver suggest homeschooling their own kids, I'm right on board with them. Still, having said that, I understand Father Melendy's reasoning in this instance. Given their ages and exceptional talents, it is inevitable that Mona, Rush, and Mark require far more specialized training in their fields than Carthage Public School is able to offer. 

Just the same, I can't help taking off a star for their absence anyway. Don't get me wrong, Randy and Oliver are both delightful. I love her endearing, whimsical nature and his self-contained nerdiness. But I feel we need more of the others to make any plot really shine. It lacks a certain spice without Mona's performative ways, and Rush's mischievous, spot-on sense of humor. Even though we never get to physically hear Rush's excellent piano playing through the pages, this final book is still a bar short of a symphony without him in it more. We need all four siblings as the corners of a whole package, the Melendy Quartet.

As a point of interest, I'm positive Randy is one of those rare, highly creative souls with synesthesia, that condition when one or more of the five senses crosses paths with awesome results. We're not told outright, but when she describes her perception of different days of the week as different colored, her unusual piquancy all through the series all makes sense. (She shares this attribute with The Story Girl, created by Lucy Maud Montgomery.)

Needless to say, my favorite chapters are the ones when they're all reunited, for Christmas and summer breaks from school. 

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Start with The Saturdays, then The Four-Story Mistake, followed by Then There Were Five.

(And for a treat when the Melendys grow up, click here.)