This Book Made Me Pea-Green With Envy

Most of us read Harper Lee's seminal novel To Kill a Mockingbird as young people. It moved us. We railed against small town intolerance and were thrilled when Atticus Finch stepped up to tackle prejudice and fight for freedom. The way Atticus explains discrimination to his children serves to reinforce the baselessness of racism and we vowed to be inclusive in our dealings with people from minorities.

Craig Silvey's much publicised second novel Jasper Jones transplants these ideas to a fictional Western Australian town in 1965. The plucky young protagonist, Charlie Bucktin, has read Harper Lee and Mark Twain and constantly endeavours to apply these lessons to the dreadful event he witnesses with the town's outcast Jasper Jones. 'What would Atticus do?'

Jasper Jones inspired many emotions within me -- the chief one being envy. I'm bitter that someone could have crafted such a simple, perfect novel, I'm jealous of the wonderful friendship that exists between Charlie Bucktin and his best friend Jeffrey Lu, (their dialogue is so sparkling, so full of wit and love it just about makes you want to cry), I covet the wonderful metaphors dotted throughout the novel -- the most important being who is the braver of the superheros Batman or Superman? Superman has superpowers and need only be afraid of Kryptonite, but Batman has no special ability and needs to summon human courage in order to save the day. Indeed, Charlie must learn overcome his mortal fears and muster the nerve to face life's challenges and see the truth. I yearn for the sweetness and naivety of the affection that blossoms between Charlie and his first love. (I'm aware that I'm talking about the characters in the novel as if they are real, and not a construct of the author, but that's the green-eyed-monster inducing genius of Craig Silvey -- he writes each of the characters with almost as many flaws as strengths and makes you feel as if you really know them!) But the thing I envy most of all, is that one of you might find the novel and will get to discover it all for the first time.

Emotional Eating

You know how sometimes, you think you are in for one kind of experience, and you end up completely diverted through no fault of your own? Like when you went to someone else’s house as a child and you thought you were getting Vegemite, but it was actually Promite and it was so, so wrong? You’d happily existed on this earth without ever having run into Promite, but your friend insisted that it was just as popular in other countries and was essentially the same thing and you just didn’t know what to believe in any more?

This happened to me a few years ago when I picked up the book Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin – ‘A no-nonsense, tough love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous.’ I’d had a pretty indulgent Christmas and was vulnerable at the airport, killing time in their overpriced bookshop. I was attracted to the deceptive Chick Lit drawing on the front and thought: ‘That’s me! I’m savvy! I want to look fabulous! This sounds like fun!’ What I got was a dossier on the horrors of the food industry that read like Mein Kampf for Veganism and 'pure' eating. I was railroaded into being at the very least a vegetarian as they yelled things at me like: ‘Coffee is for pussies’ (ok, I see where you’re going with this) and ‘Suck your mother’s tits. Go on. Suck your mother’s tits’ (now dairy is out) and ‘You are a total moron if you think the Atkins diet will make you thin.’ (This came from a chapter entitled the ‘Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh Diet'.) Rory and Kim achieved their aim – they conned me into reading their book and made one more person a vegetarian. This lasted about 3 years. I was doing well and then started to waver. I blame bacon. It smells fabulous and that’s nothing compared with the salty, salty goodness that enchants your taste buds when you eat it. My friends devoured in front of me while I was trying to make do with avocado and tomato on toast. I hadn’t yet faltered, but I was teetering on the brink. So I prayed for a sign, and I got one while watching Ellen one day. It was all innocuous stuff. Ellen was jokin’, Ellen was dancin’ with the ladies and then Ellen was interviewin’ Jonathan Safran Foer about his book Eating Animals. The usually fictional writer had just had a baby boy and wanted to be more informed about what he was feeding his kid. He went a huntin’ for information about meat and how it gets to our plate. He was so sweet! So knowledgeable! But importantly, since he too had shilly-shallied in his vegetarianism, he wouldn't yell at me.

So I read the book. And I cried like a child who’s just found out that Santa isn’t real. The way he describes how a factory farmed animal lives and dies would break the heart of the most hardened carnivore, and then comes the information about the correlation between diseases and meat, environmental destruction and meat, species extinction and meat…you get the idea. What’s great about this book, however is that Safran Foer thoroughly examines each perspective, searching for answers. He interviews activists, hobby farmers, factory farmers, vegetarian ranchers, slaughterhouse employees and many others. He’s not trying to blame anyone, he’s just working out what to feed his family. And so I’m back on the path. And like James Brown, I feel good. It was just the diversion I needed.

Gripped by Monkey Grip

I'm three quarters through this remarkable novel by Australian literary giant, Helen Garner. Set in 1970s Melbourne, it charts the sporadic interactions between a group of fringe-dwelling, drug-addled, boundary- pushing bohemians as they endeavour to confront traditional systems of family, relationships, money and sex. All of this frontier-battling invariably leads to much confusion; the protagonist Nora strives to live free of monogamy, yet desires to be loved above all things. Her relationship with the actor/junkie Javo is the monkey grip that will not loosen. What is particularly compelling is the way that the women fight for sexual freedom, yet continue to bear the brunt of contraception and child-rearing. One wonders how much has changed? Some have lauded Garner's stream of consciousness style, and others have dismissed the work as a published diary. (Garner based much of Monkey Grip on her own diaries, many of which she sadly burned in the 1980s.) But her fluid prose, dream descriptions and veracious account of a younger Melbourne have left this reader haunted and wanting more. (And also wishing I was a member of a book club so that I could hear some other opinions!)