Category / Historical Fiction

by Melissa Watts

Finding Eliza

It’s been a while since I blogged so I thought it would be fitting to begin back with a post on Finding Eliza by Heather Whitford Roche.

Finding Eliza is set in 1921 and tells the story of a young man, Knill, and his journey to find his true identity. It’s a story of belonging and family, of responsibility and social mores. It is also strongly about connection to place. In fact the novel is vivid in its sense of place. I will avoid spoilers but as Knill journeys mentally and emotionally he also journeys physically. In each new environment Heather crafts locations that are evocative and clear, that nurture a contemporary reader through the locations of the past. Sometimes when reading historical fiction I find a wedge between myself and the ‘place’ of the novel. Sometimes I feel like an author has dedicated so much effort to ensure that readers connect with their characters that I feel like I am walking through a dimly lit room. While I’m holding the hand of a character I want to see the space clearly, to see the moment in time and what life was like then, but it is missed. This is not the case in Finding Eliza. Each location that Knill finds himself in is evocative making the book a joy to read.

Knill is a delightful protagonist. I enjoyed working through the doubts, frustrations and excitements with him, especially through moments where he challenges himself. The cast of friends around him are equally as infectious and well written.

I must confess to being biased in my reading. Years ago (pre-kids when I had a thing called ‘spare-time’) I used to workshop with Heather. I loved reading the early passages of Knill’s adventures each month, just as I enjoyed receiving Heather’s feedback which was always knowledgeable. So to finally hold in my hand the outcome of all of those years of workshopping was inspiring. All the writers who sat around that table were fantastic writers and I hope their work is published soon as well. Being part of a writing community has some wonderful benefits and seeing your friends publish something that they have worked on for so long is a great feeling. Congratulations to Heather on such a brilliant book.

Heather Whitford Roche, Finding Eliza. 2018, Allandow Press.

by Melissa Watts

Reading wrap up

I can’t believe that it has been so long since my last blog post.

Over the last few years I’ve been caught up in all that a PhD demands, started a small business with my partner and welcomed a baby daughter into the world. I took a break in 2017 to focus on my family (newborn, 3 yo and 5 yo) and now I’m back at the writing desk focused on my PhD novel (well, part-time anyway).

As a result I’m finding some brilliant novels, articles, podcasts and general miscellany that I’d love to start sharing.

Novels:

I’ve recently read a few novels which would likely be branded romance, although I read them for their historical elements mainly their settings in WWII. The first was Elise McCune’s Castle of Dreams (Allen & Unwin, 2016). I met Elise at last years Historical Novel Association of Australia Conference and she was so open with her advice and encouragement on writing in a WWII setting. Her novel is a tale of family secrets but if there was one thing I took away from the novel it was the enduring sense of place that she crafted. Elise’s novel was partly set in a castle – Paronella Park, 120 kms south of Cairns. Throughout the novel is a sense of magic, other-worldliness, that surrounds the castle and its eventual decay. The women I am researching worked in a mansion so I enjoyed how Elise crafted the castle almost as a character.

The second is Anita Heiss’ Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (Simon & Schuster 2017). Again this novel is more than a romance, it is a work of historical fiction that centres on the Cowra POW breakout, the Erambie Station and merges an unlikely relationship between the families on an Aboriginal Mission and an escaped Japanese POW. Again I read this book selfishly – I’m currently reaching WWII Italian interns and Indigenous members of the AWAS (Australian Women’s Army Service) so it interested me on two levels. What I took from this book was the way that Heiss was able to include well researched historical fact into the novel without the reader feeling lectured. I came away feeling like I too had been welcomed into the family by Banjo, his wife and daughter, and like Hiroshi I was learning what it was like to live at Erambie in 1944.

Articles:

A few years ago I gave a talk at the Australian Historical Association Conference titled ‘Fast Women or an Essential Service?’ which looked at the representation of women in the services during WWII. In January Danielle Broadhurst published an article on Vida – The Australian Women’s History Network blog, titled ‘Khaki-mad’: The gendered approach to venereal disease in World War Two – You don’t need to be into venereal diseases to enjoy reading it, it’s a really well researched insight into gendered approaches to health and the war effort.

Little Gems:

I’ve listed below a few things I’ve come across in my procrastination research that made me smile/grit teeth or anything in between.

 

Podcasts:

I know I’m slow to the game but life with a newborn has been so much nicer with podcasts. One of my favourites that I’ve been listening to is The Slow Home podcast. I’m attempting to transition into slow living and minimalism and this podcast has a great mix of academic theory with practical examples for living a slow life. Plus I enjoy the mix of Australian and International guests. It’s worth a listen for anyone trying to slow down and focus on what is important in life.

 

by Melissa Watts

Deborah Burrows – A Time of Secrets

On reading selfishly.
 Secrets
I’ve just finished reading Deborah Burrows’ A Time of Secrets, a novel that I picked up because…well…the cover caught my eye. So yes, I did judge a book by it’s cover, but for very good reason. The woman on the cover is wearing a WWII era AWAS (Australian Women’s Army Service) uniform and I am currently working on a PhD which will be a novel and exegesis focusing on some AWAS members. So of course I plucked the book off the shelf and added it to my ever growing ‘to read’ pile. At this stage of my PhD the majority of my reading has been non-fiction so it was wonderful to come across a novel set in the same era with similar themes.
A Time of Secrets is set in 1943 in Melbourne, with protagonist Stella Aldridge who is an AWAS sergeant working in the Australian Intelligence Bureau. Stella has two important mysteries to solve –  In chapter one she overhears some soldiers discussing a plot for a revenge killing which she determines to investigate, and then her work leads her to another mystery – who is leaking information from the Intelligence Bureau to the enemy? Weaved around these two key plots is romance, murder and the ongoing sense of good-guy/bad-guy with the reader constantly switching loyalties between Stella’s friends and love interests as more secrets are exposed.
This novel was a chance for me to read selfishly. While I read historical fiction quite widely and always take note of how research is woven into the text, I haven’t read any books that draws from the same (or similar) pool of research documents. The women I will be focusing on worked in the Survey Corps in Bendigo, so while there is a big difference in our plots and characterisations it was great to absorb the general mise en scene of WWII Melbourne – the rations, the music and of course, the Americans.
It also got me thinking about the publishing trends for a novel of this type. I’ve been lamenting the lack of representation of women’s war experience in Australia, in both popular culture and formal histories (by ‘lack’ I don’t mean that there is no representation, I just mean that it is minimal – but that’s a post for another time). So it was great to see that there was some shelf space for a novel like this and gave me some hope that mine might also find some space there one day.
Deborah Burrows, A Time of Secrets, Pan Macmillan Australia. 2015.
by Melissa Watts

Manuscript Assessment

Last month I hit two scary milestones – my baby turned 1 and started childcare, and my novel went out on its own for a manuscript assessment. The first day of childcare happened to coincide with me dropping my manuscript off so of course I began drawing obvious parallels, things like recognising that my novel has been with me for the last seven years, in my thoughts daily as I work on it, helping it grow so it can go off one day on its own, just like a child. It’s kept me awake at night, and some days I’ve felt like all I’ve done is wipe excrement off it.

Of course you can’t really compare a manuscript to a child but I was equally as nervous dropping off my baby to his carer’s as I was dropping my novel off to the assessors. But I think manuscript assessment is an important step for a few reasons:

  • Writing is an insular activity. It’s important to share your work eventually, when the time’s right to make sure you are not heading down the wrong path with your editing and plot/character development.
  • It’s important to select an assessor that is right for your work. I’ve selected Jill Blee from Eureka House, as she has a background in Historical Fiction, including the era and location that my novel is set in.
  • I’ve done workshops will Jill before so I know that she will be blunt but honest. I want to know that I’m getting useful feedback, so that I can keep working on the novel to get it to its best stage.
  • I provided Jill with a range of questions that I’ve been wondering about for a few years. Is this character relevant? Is this character clear? Does anyone even care about the plot other than me? I’ve discussed some of the questions with my writing group but none of the other writers have read my novel. It’s important to get feedback on those questions by someone who has dedicated time to consider your work.

Will I take on all of the feedback that Jill provides? Well…I guess only time will tell. Will I be drinking champagne or gin? Probably both.

Please let me know about your experiences of manuscript assessment and how it has worked well (or not) for you.

by Melissa Watts

Place as Character – Toni Jordan Nine Days

art-353-Nine-Days-300x0-184x280 I’ve seen Toni Jordan speak at quite a few events, and I was fortunate enough to hear her again towards the end of last year at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute. It was just after the launch of her latest novel, Nine Days.

I knew about the general premise of the book before I bought it – that Jordan was inspired by a photograph from the Argus records. (The image is on the cover of the book) But what I didn’t know was that the nine days of the title, refers to the plot structure. The novel tells of nine days, spread across seventy years, which transform the lives of each member of the Westaway family.  Each chapter is narrated by a different member of the family as they face their transformative day. However the plot is not structured chronologically. This device is a wonderful tool for driving the plot. Readers are left to fill in some blanks when the novel jumps from 1939 to the weeks immediately after the September 11 collapse of the world trade centre in 2001. We wonder who the new narrator is and how is she related to Kip, the character we’ve just grown to love in chapter one. This continues through the book, and it’s Jordan’s skill as a storyteller that ensures that readers don’t feel dislocated, instead urging them on with a new character who is just as fascinating as the one before. Continue reading →

by Melissa Watts

The Pines Hold Their Secrets

Jill Blee’s historical fiction always grabs a reader early because of its setting, and The Pines Hold Their Secrets is no exception.

Set on Norfolk Island when it was a Penal Colony the novel examines the key elements of politics, religion and social conventions of the time. This is something of a ‘rites of passage’ book, following the protagonist Elise Cartwright on her journey from Hobart to Norfolk Island to join her father who is deployed there as a Super Intendant of Agriculture. His role is a demotion from the profile they had in Hobart, and the motivation for this leaves an outstanding question throughout the novel. Continue reading →

by Melissa Watts

Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute Library

The building contains a glass reading room with a collection of newspapers and early books that were bought to Ballarat* through the wealth amassed by the goldfields. The Institutes Library was initially designed to cater for the education of the miners, but quickly grew to supply miners with newspapers from throughout the world, a collection of books and even a ladies reading room (containing homemaker books and magazines suitable for ladies). Continue reading →

by Melissa Watts

Geraldine Brooks in Melbourne

Last week I went to see Geraldine Brooks in an event organised by Readers Feast bookstore. I am a big fan of Geraldine Brooks and it was fantastic to see a full house. It was located in the Collins street Baptist church which meant I was able to see the front clearly (at my height this is exciting). I was intrigued by the general demographic – in a full church I could only see 9 men around me, and I was left feeling very young by the end of it. The full house did endear me to the fact that people not only buy historical fiction, but they come out on a freezing Melbourne night to hear about it.

Geraldine herself was eloquent and kept her confidence with the range of microphone issues that occurred throughout the night. I enjoyed hearing about how the characters speak to her, once she finds the initial historical fact that catches her interest. She called it “collecting the string” of the story, imagining the story from the fact.

The one thing I can’t stop thinking about is the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Geraldine used the example that she wanted to use the work foetus but was sure that that word would not have been used in 1600. So she used the thesaurus to identify the correct word for the correct period. Originally published in printed form, the thesaurus has now been incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary Online. According to Wikipedia work began on the collection in 1965 and was completed in 2009. It sounds like such a fantastic resource for writers of historical fiction.

by Melissa Watts

Geraldine Brooks

Last week Geraldine Brook’s new novel Caleb’s Crossing made it to number 1 on the Independent books top 10 list.* It was released on May 3.

It’s fantastic that an Australian female author, who writes historical fiction has made it to number 1 in such a short amount of time, and plays into the recent debate about literary awards, chick lit (or perceived chick lit) and the ongoing saga of historical fiction not selling well. Continue reading →