The Shoes of the Fisherman - Morris West

2017 Reading Calendar - March

When Morris West died at his desk, mid-sentence, on 9 October 1999, he had sold an estimated 60-70 million copies of his novels. His death was reported in London and New York, as well as across Australia. The 7.30 Report paid tribute, sharing excerpts of an interview with Geraldine Doogue in which he talked about life, love, death and the Catholic Church.

The Church seems to have been something of an obsession. He almost, almost took vows as a Christian Brother. Instead, he went on to create what Kerry O'Brien described as 'the so-called Vatican novel', publishing novels that explored morality, belief, religious power.

The Shoes of the Fisherman is one of these. Published in 1963, on the day Pope John X111 died, it is the story of the election of the first Russian Pope.

'The Pope was dead. The Camerlengo had announced it. The Master of Ceremonies, the notaries, the doctors had consigned him under signature into eternity.'

I read this book years ago. Intrigued by the pomp and mystery (for a non-Catholic) of the Catholic Church. Curious about this Australian writer who was read all over the world and doted on by my mother. As we packed up Mum's house to move her into full-time care, her copy of The Shoes of the Fisherman ended up in a box in my living room.

Returning to it was a struggle. My mind couldn't make sense of all cardinals. I lost track of the plot lines - there's the new Pope, at least two retiring cardinals, a priest returning from the spiritual wilderness, a journalist wrestling with an all-consuming love, a woman adrift in Rome. Sometimes I lost my way in the complexity of the sentences. I began to worry I was spending too much time on Twitter, that I was losing my ability to read anything more complex than 140 characters.

Struggle, though, is what I have come to think the novel is about. The struggle to find our way in the world, to live the life that we have chosen or which has been chosen for us. Kiril, the newly appointed Pope, wrestles with his role as the leader of the Church. George Faber, the journalist who has made his career reporting on the Church in Rome, has reached his own crossroads: how much of his soul is he willing to sell to secure marriage to the young Chiara, the deserted wife of a Catholic politician?

The Shoes of the Fisherman is also extraordinarily contemporary, even if sometimes its language feels outdated. Like so many of the book's characters, the world is at a crossroads too. A disaster is pending, unless Russia and America can find a way to work together. Environmental disasters loom. The Catholic Church is losing its eminence in many parts of the world. Kiril wrestles with how to change the Church while honouring its origins.

Morris West left Australia in the late 1950s, not returning until 1980. It is hard to find a sense of Australia in this novel. It is an international book, embracing the wider world without more than a backward glance to the country West had left. The references are brief. There is 'Hanna the Irishman from Australia', joining the other cardinals in the Conclave that will anoint Kiril. And 'A plague in the Philippines can infect Australia within a day'. But that's about it. Yet it's not as though West was completely disinterested in his home country. He returned to live in Sydney, chairing the Council of the National Library of Australia and the National Book Council. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours of 1985 and upgraded to Officer of the Order in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1997.

Today, Morris West's 101st birthday, he is little read and you will probably only find copies of his 30 books tucked on the dusty shelves of secondhand bookshops. Perhaps it's time for those books to be dusted off and read again.

Want more?

• Listen to Morris West via the National Library of Australia. There are two interviews available online - one recorded by Hazel de Berg in 1960; the other recorded by Diana Ritch in 1992.
• Read the New York Times obituary.
• You might also track down the biography, Morris West: Literary Maverick by Maryanne Confoy, published by John Wiley in 2005.

Paris Dreaming - Anita Heiss

2017 Reading Calendar - February

Anita Heiss' novel about a young woman's journey of self-discovery is part of my own 'Paris dreaming'. Published in 2011, I read it before I was able to spend 8 weeks in Paris in 2012, before the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. Rereading it now, I'm reminded that it was one of my first 'guide books' to the city. It also has an innocence and an awareness of the traumas to come.

Ostensibly contemporary women's fiction, or 'choc lit' as Heiss herself has described it, Paris Dreaming is, like all of Heiss' work that I've read, politically aware. On the surface, this is a novel about discovering your self and your true love in one of the most romantic cities in the world. Libby Cutmore is over men and focusing on her career. She may not be interested enough in fashion or food to keep her friends happy, but she is ambitious and determined to make a contribution to the promotion of Indigenous art on an international scale. I think she has a lot in common with Carrie Bradshaw - no matter how much she protests she doesn't need a man, you know she just hasn't met her 'Big' yet. And you know by the end of the novel that she will.

That, though, is just what's happening on the surface. Rereading Paris Dreaming, I was reminded of four things:

• how much I learned about Paris and, especially, the Musee de Quai Branly and Australia's involvement in it;
• the political environment - in Australia but also in France. Libby's friendship with the young Roma seamstress, Sorina, provides an early insight into the impact of the recent mass influx of refugees in Europe. The novel also references the riots on Paris' council estates in 2005-06, as well as the Cronulla riots that occurred at the same time;
• what it's like to read about your own city (Canberra) in fiction. Heiss isn't always complimentary - how many cities compare well to Paris? - but there is something special about reading about your own place; and
• how much I learned about Indigenous Australia, it's art, culture, and politics.

This, I suspect, is really the point of Heiss' writing and it's something she has spoken about. At the 2014 Australian and New Zealand Festival of Literature and Arts, she is reported by Philippa Moore as saying:

“I wanted to connect with Australian women to talk about Aboriginal art, culture, politics, social justice and issues that I am passionate about, and issues that I think all Australians should be engaging with ... But I had to think about ways to engage women who may never have had a cuppa or yarn with an Aboriginal woman before, who may have seen us marching about Black Deaths in Custody or the NT intervention but never understood why. Or worse still, had never thought about us at all.”

This is something I think Heiss does extremely well in her fiction. Whether it's the 'choc lit' Paris Dreaming and it's forerunner, Manhattan Dreaming, or her more recent novels, Tiddas and Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms, Heiss helps me to better understand the lives and the issues faced by Indigenous Australians in a way that is very accessible.

You can read Paris Dreaming for the city and the romance and it will reward you. But if you read it just a little more closely, you will finish the book with an enhanced understanding of what it means to be an Indigenous Australian.

Want more?

• Anita Heiss' website has lots of interesting reads and links
• Whispering Gums' review of Paris Dreaming
• 'From chick lit to choc lit' - Philippa Moore's article on Anita Heiss at the 2014 Australian and New Zealand Festival of Literature and Arts

The Boy Behind the Curtain - Tim Winton

2017 Reading Calendar - January

Late in the day we step out into the withering heat. Most of the sting has gone from the sun but the air is still so hot it's like trying to inhale a fluffy towel fresh from the tumble dryer.

From 'High Tide', The Boy Behind the Curtain

Twenty-two years ago, I stopped reading Tim Winton. There was something about the ending of The Riders that so infuriated me, I swore I would never read him again. Of course, now I can't tell you exactly what it was that made me so mad. And my (gradually dissipating) fury didn't stop me reading his non-fiction when it appeared in newspapers and The Monthly. But it did stop me reading his novels and the highly praised Island Home.

Last October, I decided it was time for a change of heart and it was Winton himself who won me over. At an event at the National Library to promote his non-fiction collection, The Boy Behind the Curtain, he enthralled me with his storytelling and his fearlessness. You can listen to the event online. I bought the book and it sat in my to-be-read pile until now.

When I chose it for the Reading Calendar, I assumed it would be a great read for summer, full of Winton's renowned love for the ocean. And it is. 'High Tide' and 'The Wait and the Flow' take you to the beach and into the sea. But the book reveals more than just the experience of being in and on the water. Many of the essays explore Winton's love of the 'litoral', For Winton, the spaces on the edge - of the sea, of the desert, of civilisation, of society - are the spaces that engage his imagination and they are often the subject of his non-fiction.

The essays in the book are presented chronologically, so we begin with the boy Winton quite literally hiding behind the 'terylene curtain', taking aim with his father's shotgun at people passing by, We watch him grow up, going to university, parenting and grandparenting. He writes about hospitals, class, the environment, Ireland, 2001: A Space Odyssey, art and refugees, about sharks and whales and Ningaloo Reef. Occasionally, he writes about writing, of being taught by Elizabeth Jolley, of the urgent need to 'light out' once a book is finished.

Winton's knowledge of Australian flora and fauna amazes and shames me. In 'Repatriation', I travel alongside him to Lake Moore but am almost left behind by his knowledge of marsupials. Bilbies I know, but boobies, woylies, 'the elusive wambenger, the chuditch ... and several species of dunnarts' have me running to Wikipedia. He calls me back as

A mob of Major Mitchell's cockatoos spills, untidy as a closing-time crowd, from a desert cypress.

I know I will never see cockatoos in any other way again.

Winton surprises me most, though, when he writes about religion, the way it shaped his childhood and continues to inform his life. I'm struck by how little I read about religious belief and I wonder if this reflects my reading choices or whether we hesitate to reveal our spiritual selves in this secular world.

'Twice on Sundays' reveals Winton's childhood as part of the Church of Christ. My grandfather, who died 10 years before I was born, was a Church of Christ minister. By the time I was attending Sunday School, though, the Church of Christ had faded and my mother chose the Methodist Church as the next best thing. I grew up knowing a little about  my grandfather's faith, that full-immersion baptism marked the Church of Christ as different. But if pressed, I wouldn't describe it as 'a counterculture', as Winton does. I still find it hard to reconcile the family picture of my grandfather with the 'militantly religious' upbringing Winton experienced. And yet ... perhaps I can.

The Boy Behind the Curtain is best read slowly, savouring the language, pondering the ideas. Inevitably, as many of the essays have been published previously, there is a sense of familiarity, occasionally of repetition as an incident is revisited in part or from a different angle. And occasionally, Winton sermonises, perhaps not surprising given his upbringing but often disconcerting, breaking the rhythm of his storytelling.

If you have never read any Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain is a great place to begin. And if, like me, you are seeking reconciliation, it is joyful, heartrending,and often thought-provoking.

The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton, published by Penguin Random House Australia, 2016