Guest Post: A Wander Through the Weird & Wonderful World of the Edwardians

Intro

Welcome to Australian author and new pen friend Natalie Bayley. As part of the blog tour for Bone Rites, Natalie is going to share some interesting facts about the Edwardian period. Stick around for the giveaway at the end, but for now, take us back in time Nat!

A Wander through the Weird & Wonderful World of the Edwardians

I chose to set my award-winning (ahem, I still love saying that) novel, Bone Rites, in the Edwardian and post-Edwardian period because I’m fascinated by that era. Writing historical fiction is like jumping in a time machine and living another life for a while. And while the so-called ‘golden era’ of 1901-1914 was followed by a horrifying war and a flu pandemic that killed an estimated 5% of the world’s population, it was a wild, experimental time of intense social revolution and technological invention.

Talking of inventions, if you’ve ever watched TV you’ve probably seen an episode of the phenomenally successful series, Downton Abbey. Writer Julian Fellowes took great pains to ensure the show was historically on point, and it certainly highlights Edwardian class divisions. While Lady Mary sips tea on the lawn and bitches about her sister, dozens of minions are rushing around behind the scenes, cooking, cleaning, carrying and generally co-ordinating her life of leisure. The show reveals how the working class below stairs were beginning to resent their servitude, yet the upper (literally – upstairs!) classes were also starting to question this feudal hangover. They recognised that their poorly paid ‘slaveys’ or ‘drudges’ had access to all the family’s darkest secrets. What ‘the butler saw’ was every morally dubious thing their employers did. And yet, without the advantage of our modern labour-saving devices, the owners of these huge houses depended on their servant help too much to prioritise privacy over maintaining centuries of privilege.

So, what do you do when your servants know all of your secrets? Just put on a cap and apron, slip below stairs and spy on them in return. Following the lead of their party-going king and queen, Edwardians loved putting on fancy dress and pretending to be someone else. For a while, it was quite the thing for society ladies to dress up as maids in order to infiltrate a friend’s house for a laugh. Perhaps this was inspired by the 1904 play, Lady Madcap, by Paul Rubens, in which an Earl’s rebellious daughter holds a ball at her father's castle without telling him and pretends to be her own maid. She has a great deal of fun confusing everyone, but I don’t think it was the ensuing chaos that made the play a success; it was the possibility of subverting those rigid class codes just by wearing the right clothes.

A few years later, there was a trend of holding servant-themed costume parties where guests were invited to dress up as servants (complete with a parlourmaid’s bib-apron or a footman’s knee breeches) and serve dinner to their hosts. I’m sure the real servants thought this was exceedingly droll (not). Think of George Bernard Shaw’s quintessentially Edwardian play, Pygmalion, (1912, later adapted as My Fair Lady) in which a cockney flower girl has a wash, a few elocution lessons, and a new frock, before convincing everyone she’s a duchess.

Inspired by this Edwardian enthusiasm for role play, my novel’s unlikely heroine, Lady Kathryn, spends some time pretending to be a maid in an aristocratic household. Avoiding spoilers, what she gets up to below stairs would make even the most sanguine Edwardian aristocrat faint clean away, but Kathryn’s experiences give her a great deal of insight into the self-abasement that lies behind her world of privilege.

The other aspect of Edwardian life I find fascinating is their enthusiasm for the cornucopia of drugs that were readily available back then. Like many other women during the war years, Kathryn gives a ‘war kit’ to a soldier heading to the front. These care packages, which could be bought over the counter at department stores like Harrods, consisted of packets of tea and sugar, hypodermic syringes, grains of morphia and vials of cocaine. Drugs we would now consider illegal and highly dangerous were as commonplace as aspirin in the Edwardian era.

Kathryn’s later interest in opiates was also far from unusual. The 1902 British Medical Journal critiques the prevalence of morphine use at society tea parties:

“A number of ladies meet about 4 o’clock every afternoon, tea is served, servants are sent out of the room, the door is locked, the guests bare their arms, and the hostess produces a small hypodermic syringe with which she administers an injection to each person in turn. If one injection is not sufficient to satisfy any particular guest, a second or even a third is given.”

That would explain how they managed to endure those bone-crushing corsets...

For more insights on the weird and wonderful Edwardians, I invite you to step into the strange world of Lady Kathryn Darkling in my novel, Bone Rites, published October 31st by Aurora Metro Books.

Giveaway

For your chance to WIN a signed copy of Bone Rites by Natalie Bayley, enter my international giveaway here. 

Carpe Librum!

Extract: What She Said - The Art of Inspiring Action Through Speech by Monica Lunin

* Courtesy of the author and Wiley *

Intro

Speeches are made around the world every day, however some speeches resonate with us long after they were made and have brought about great social change. Today I'm pleased to bring you an extract from What She Said - The Art of Inspiring Action Through Speech by Monica Lunin.

I've chosen to share 'the lady's not for turning' speech made by former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when addressing the Conservative Party in Brighton, UK in 1980. There's no denying Thatcher was quite the orator, no matter your politics.

About the Author

Sydney-based author Monica Lunin is a communications expert, speaker and writer. She is the co-owner of MOJOLOGIC, a consultancy that specialises in developing the skills of communication, influence and leadership. Monica Lunin has curated and analysed 40 of the greatest speeches made by a diverse group of strong and empowering women throughout history to create What She Said - The Art of Inspiring Action Through Speech.

Extract

In October 1980, Margaret Thatcher delivered a lengthy (40-minute) speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, UK. She had a lot to say to her fellow party members and provided much to analyse, but this phrase lives on in infamy: ‘the lady’s not for turning’. A twist on The Lady’s Not for Burning, a 1948 play by Christopher Fry about a witchcraft trial, perhaps this phrase is so memorable because it is rather enigmatic and, therefore, interesting.

The mention of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s name will provoke a reaction from most people who have even a little bit of political awareness. This was certainly true in the time she was in power but seems to have evolved into an even deeper legacy of divisiveness. Ideology notwithstanding, Thatcher’s attainment of the top job and the years she held her position were unprecedented, and they remain a standout achievement for a woman in leadership.

Thatcher was known as a committed conservative. Her policies were almost always polarising, but we all knew, and still know, what she stood for. The ‘Iron Lady’ rarely indulged concepts of the left and remained steadfast in her convictions throughout her tenure and her lifetime.

When Thatcher delivered the speech extracted here, she had been in power for about a year and, in that time, unemployment had risen from 1.5 to 2 million people. In addition to facing opposition from the Labour Party and the public, she was also fending off criticism from within her own party. Some conservatives opposed Thatcher’s radical free-market policies. She was under fire.

In this speech - particularly her declaration of strength - Thatcher signals her commitment to the policy she has set in motion. Indeed, most of the speech is about arguing for and defending her strategy. These are words intended to demand the respect she deserves, and encourage her allies to hold the line.

What She Said

"Most of my Cabinet colleagues have started their speeches of reply by paying very well deserved tributes to their junior ministers. Now at Number 10, I have no junior ministers - there’s just Denis [Thatcher] and me, and I could not do without him. I am, however, very fortunate in having a marvellous deputy who is wonderful in all places at all times in all things - Willie Whitelaw.
… When I am asked for a detailed forecast of what will happen in the coming months or years, I remember Sam Goldwyn’s advice: ‘Never prophesy, especially about the future.’ Nevertheless — Nevertheless —

[Heckler interjects.]

Never mind - it’s wet outside. I expect they wanted to come in. You cannot blame them; it is always better where the Tories are. And you - and perhaps they - will be looking to me this afternoon for an indication of how the Government sees the task before us and why we are tackling it the way we are.

… It was Anthony Eden who chose for us the goal of a ‘property- owning democracy’. But for all the time that I’ve been in public affairs that has been beyond the reach of so many who were denied the right to the most basic ownership of all - the homes in which they live. They wanted to buy. Many could afford to buy. But they happened to live under the jurisdiction of a Socialist council, which would not sell and did not believe in the independence that comes with ownership. Now Michael Heseltine has given them the chance to turn a dream into reality. And all this, Mr Chairman, and a lot more, in seventeen months. The Left continues to refer with relish to the death of capitalism. Well, if this is the death of capitalism, I must say it is quite a way to go.

But all this will avail us little unless we achieve our prime economic objective: the defeat of inflation. Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading armies do. Inflation is the parent of unemployment. It is the unseen robber of those who have saved. No policy which puts at risk the defeat of inflation - however great its short-term attraction - can be right. Our policy for the defeat of inflation is, in fact, traditional. It existed long before Sterling M3 embellished the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, or ‘monetarism’ became a convenient term of political invective.

… If I could press a button and genuinely solve the unemployment problem, do you think that I would not press that button this instant? Does anyone imagine that there is the smallest political gain in letting this unemployment continue, or that there is some obscure economic religion which demands this level of unemployment as part of its ritual?

… So what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of commonsense. If it is not, we shall not be diverted from our course.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase the ‘U’ turn, I have only one thing to say. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’ I say that not only to you but to our friends overseas, and also to those who are not our friends.

… I have always known that that task was vital. Since last week it has become even more vital than ever. We close our Conference in the aftermath of that sinister Utopia unveiled at Blackpool. Let Labour’s Orwellian nightmare of the Left be the spur for us to dedicate with a new urgency our every ounce of energy and moral strength to rebuild the fortunes of this free nation.

If we were to fail, that freedom could be imperilled. So let us resist the blandishments of the faint hearts; let us ignore the howls and threats of the extremists; let us stand together and do our duty. And we shall not fail.

How She Did That

Handle the hecklers
Early in Margaret Thatcher’s speech, she faced an interruption from the floor. This came from a protester who had breached security and entered the hall, shouting ‘Power to the workers. Tories out!’

Thatcher used this as an opportunity to ad lib a retort:

Never mind - it’s wet outside. I expect they wanted to come in. You cannot blame them; it is always better where the Tories are. And you - and perhaps they - will be looking to me this afternoon for an indication of how the Government sees the task before us and why we are tackling it the way we are.

Her response shows a certain level of comfort in her position at the podium. While her speech was no doubt fully prepared, such off-the-cuff refutations are a sign of oratorical skill.

Thatcher was no comedian but this technique of pausing midstream to directly engage with a heckler is something you might see in a comedy club. Sometimes you can gain more ground by facing off than by raising your voice over the dissenters and refusing to be interrupted. Thatcher saw an opening for a joke and she took it.

Choose your moment. If interruptions persist, you may need to take them on directly. Look out for opportunities to win support and release the tension with a touch a humour.

Use metaphor
Typically, Margaret Thatcher is light on the use of metaphor. And this speech is no exception. Her persona is pragmatic and her rhetoric is generally aligned to that identity. However, Thatcher indulges sparingly in this particularly effective rhetorical flourish, which certainly enhances the speech.

She refers to the potential for ‘another winter of discontent’ but then disputes this metaphor, going on to say,

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of commonsense. If it is not, we shall not be diverted from our course.

This is a deft, if slightly out of character, use of rhetorical flair. The lesson here is to make the most of your chosen metaphor. Thatcher combines here seasonal metaphor with a literary allusion and adds a bit of poetry. And in her characteristic thoroughness, she satisfyingly closes the loop. This small flourish makes the speech memorable.

Recognise the contribution of others
In highlighting the successes of the party, Margaret Thatcher is diligent in mentioning those involved by name. She begins by thanking her husband, Denis Thatcher, and mentions her deputy, Willie Whitelaw. In the full version of the speech (see Sources), she also mentions the budget created by Geoffrey Howe, and then goes on to share the limelight with multiple players, including Jim Prior, Keith Joseph, David Howell, John Nott and Norman Fowler. She also acknowledges Michael Heseltine, Anthony Eden, Lord Carrington - and the list goes on.

This speech is just one example of hundreds delivered by Thatcher in her many years in politics. It is a good example of her ‘speechcraft’ - in which she uses the podium, as all politicians must, to reiterate and reinforce her platform, to whip up support among her own party and knock back her opponents.

Observing the arc of Thatcher’s poise and presence is also interesting. If you were to watch the speeches from her early years in politics, you would see a very different style. A similar commitment to learning and practising the craft will benefit you and what you seek to achieve, now and in the long term.

Edited extract from What She Said: The Art of Inspiring Action Through Speech (Wiley $29.95) by Monica Lunin.

Conclusion

I hope you were inspired by this speech and managed to gain some insight into the force that was Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Is there a speech from history that has inspired you?

Guest Review: Snotlings - The Boogie Monster by Tarryn Mallick

* Copy courtesy of the author *

Intro

James Harris

Junior guest reviewer James Harris has been reading up a storm over the holidays and discovered a new favourite Australian author. Snotlings - The Boogie Monster by Tarryn Mallick and illustrated by Nahum Ziersch is a laugh out loud thriller starring boogers and germs for children aged 7-12 years. I'll let James tell you all about it as he 'picks out' the best parts 😆

James' Review

Lucky for me Tarryn Mallick saw a review that I did on Carpe Librum and asked me to review her new book Snotlings. So it sounded really awesome - a whole world of boogers up someone’s nose, what's not to be excited about?

Firstly, it came in the mail. I never get mail so that was really exciting. And it was in a cool box, with a magnifying glass and some trading cards that were a bit like Pokémon cards, but were from the characters in the book. SO cool. And it was signed by the author and I was one of the first ever children to read the book! And there was 40 tiny pictures of snotlings to find in the book, which was fun to use the magnifying glass for. So I wanted to start this book straight away (but Mum made me finish the one I was reading first).

There is this boy called Jackson, who is a kid about my age who NEVER vacuums his room (which sounds like me..!). He has a booger collection in his room, and one day he picks his nose and sees the booger move. So he uses a magnifying glass to look at it and finds a little warrior named Flick. This opens up the story about a whole world inside his nose where there is a war going on. There is good guys (the snotlings who have really cool names like Flick, Loogie, Crust, Goober) who live in Stickly Castle, and the bad guys (Mucuszar and his army of germs). And then they come out to the real world and try to destroy it by turning them into nose picking zombies. Jackson and his friends have to stop this all from happening, and explain it to the adults.

I liked this because it was funny and was easy to imagine the world because it painted a clear image in my head of the world up Jackson’s nose. I really hope there will be a book 2 because I think it has a lot of potential and this book has already based the story so well, it would be easy to jump into a new story of the snotlings.

I give it 5 snotballs out of 5 (and totally worth picking your nose for….)

James' Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: Spacecraft by Timothy Morton

* Copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Australia *

Intro

It happens to the best of us.... we pick up a book with the hope of being transported, yet it completely fails to take off. We're coming to the end of my series of Object Lessons reviews thanks to Bloomsbury Australia, and in this installation, guest reviewer Neil Béchervaise shares his reading experience of Spacecraft by Timothy Morton.

Neil's Review

For those who have enjoyed the complexities of Edmund Husserl’s early twentieth century Phenomenology and Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction from a half-century later; for those who delighted in the antics of The Muppets and then in Star Wars, Star Trek, et al, Morton’s near-encounters with spacecraft may be an inimitable intellectual challenge. Those, on the other hand, who entered the pages of Spacecraft expecting to be informed and engaged may be rather disappointed.

Morton’s passion for the philosophical underpinnings of space science fiction allows him to wander at warp speed from Han Solo and Chewbacca to Princess Leia, Kermit and Miss Piggy; from a depthy deconstruction of the infinity contained within Dr Who’s most definitely finite TARDIS to the garbage which is the Millennium Falcon.

Considerably more excited by the potential for the space through which spacecraft might travel or, borrowing from Einstein’s relativity theories in which space might travel past the spacecraft, Morton’s exploration manages to introduce the sexual implications of an object being drawn into a largely incomprehensible body. Touching on the nipples of the spacecraft, the gunnery turrets and the control centres, Spacecraft explores political imperatives - fascism, Marxism, imperialism – as he draws on Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Beckett’s Endgame to illustrate the philosophical machinations of his apparent heroes, the authors and their on-screen characters.

Timothy Morton’s Spacecraft added little to my understanding of spacecraft as I thought I understood them. Instead, it offered a complex polemic that will be quite familiar to disciples of Derrida, Foucault and Irigaray in which the intension of the author may always present a challenge for the reader.

Spacecraft will probably appeal to those who have sought to make sense of that complexity which is space by studying the film and television depictions of a world from which all boundaries have been removed, all identifiable positions contested and all relativities absorbed into a commercial singularity most easily understood from the viewpoint of a droid, or maybe a muppet.

As Morton observes in his closing fusillade:

“It’s something to think about now that we are literally ‘after the end of the world,’ [because] “America never was a country, never did achieve escape velocity from slavery and property.” Page 111

As one reviewer has observed, Timothy Morton’s Spacecraft takes the best part of a whole day to read – but it is not until the end that the political angst is fully revealed. And by that time, the spacecraft has departed – or maybe it has been left behind, garbage, until it is reclaimed for another purpose, perhaps.

Neil's Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: Echoes of War by Tania Blanchard

* Copy courtesy of Simon & Schuster *

Intro

Guest reviewer Neil Béchervaise is back to share his review of Echoes of War by Australian author Tania Blanchard.

Neil's Review

Having focused her earlier novels on events deriving from her father’s German family (see review of Letters from Berlin), Blanchard’s latest work introduces her mother’s Italian heritage.

Pre-WWII Calabria is a complex rural setting; a farming community sitting on the edge of a tectonic plate at the toe of Italy, it is severely affected by earthquakes and tsunamis. Its politics are confused between the demands of the local mafia and those of corrupt government officials. More immediately, conflicted memories of WWI and the rising influence of Mussolini’s fascist ideal of a revived Roman empire have been sparked by Italy’s brutal north-African conquest of Abyssinia in 1935.

Echoes of War is a powerful novel about powerful women; women emerging from the archaic traditions of mindless male domination to challenge their assigned status and strive towards more independent futures. Their paths, need it be said, are not easy. Teenaged Giulia enrages her father by insisting on being allowed to study herbal medicine which, despite its trailing connections with witchcraft, is still widely accepted across their community. Younger sister, Paola has a strong sense of purpose in improving the performance of the family farm while their brother and his two best friends join the army and are quickly disenchanted with the brutality of war.

Prevented from running away to join the Red Cross, Giulia is persuaded to spend time in a convent where, it transpires, she can indulge her passion for learning herbal medicine from a highly respected monk. Returning with strong recommendations of her suitability as a healer, and with the support of her mother, aunt and sister, Giulia once more infuriates her father with what he sees as her wilfulness. In a rage he determines that she will be tamed in an arranged marriage to a widowed fisherman, Massimo. Fortunately, Massimo is both amazingly solicitous and patient. He supports her passion for healing and encourages her practice across the community.

As Mussolini joins with Hitler and the war becomes ever more brutal, a massive earthquake and its ensuing tsunami wipe out the coastal fishing town and wartime conditions further impact the community. When their father is recalled into active service, Paola’s business and farming acumen support the family. Giulia’s friendship with her brother’s friend, Stefano, develops with their shared interest in healing. As Stefano, now with the army medical corps and studying medicine, observes:

“…the potential of combining … the ancient and the modern, the knowledge with the practical. Surely that’s best for the patient.” Page 209

Prior to the introduction of penicillin and in the absence of formal psychological practice, Giulia and Stefano work together, when they can, to provide meaningful medical assistance in both war damaged towns and in the battle zones of both partisan and military forces.

The role of the Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, as both a criminal organisation and as an anti-fascist political influence suggests a level of stability for a corruption-dogged society which, otherwise, might develop into a modern democracy. As it is presented, however, Blanchard’s apparently loving and supportive Don is shown to be as much a victim of his inheritance as he is a perpetrator of its continuance. Both a powerful humanitarian force and an increasingly influential criminal, his role remains conflicted and his impact on the community remains ambiguous as the population migrates, to America, to Canada, to Australia.

Blanchard’s latest novel is far more recognisable as a history of family than some of her previous works. Its connections between family, religion, and medicine/healing are both engaging and, at times, challenging. Her connection of the region with its ancient Greek and Byzantine roots provides an interesting insight into Mussolini’s obsession with reclaiming ‘lost empire’. More importantly perhaps, it helps to explain the determination of those who remain to restore the stability they have sought since the region, once called Magna Graecia, was settled in the 8th Century BC.

Echoes of War is a powerful evocation of a time, a place and a cultural vision which provided a significant boost to Australia’s population and its development as a multi-cultural destination of choice for refugees – both voluntary and choiceless. In closing, this novel reminds its readers that almost all of us are ‘boat people’.

Neil's Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: The Super Adventures of Ollie and Bea by Renee Treml

Guest reviewer James Harris, aged 9

* Copy courtesy of Allen & Unwin *

Intro

It's a pleasure to welcome James Harris back to Carpe Librum with his review from The Super Adventures of Ollie and Bea by Renee Treml. It's Owl Good is Book 1, and Squeals on Wheels is Book 2 in this junior fiction series and James really enjoyed them. Over to you James, what did you think?

James' Review

I was so lucky to get a copy of these graphic fiction books to review. They are aimed at young readers 4-7. I am 9, but I thought I would read them anyway and I really liked them. They were funny and I liked the illustrations. I think they would be very good for kids who maybe are scared of reading or who find a page of words hard to read. There were not too many colours and they had chapters also, which I think young kids would really like. They also both told a story which is important for young kids to know.

It's Owl Good (Book 1) in
The Super Adventures of Ollie
and Bea by Renee Treml
Allen & Unwin

It's Owl Good sets the scene for how an owl (Ollie) and a rabbit (Bea) they become friends, and Ollie wears glasses and they try to find their superpowers. In Squeals on Wheels, Bea is a bit scared of looking silly on roller skates, but Ollie shows Bea that you should just be having fun and not worrying about things like that. I think these type of lessons are important and kids will like them.

I really enjoyed these books, I think other young kids would too. I will be donating these copies to the junior library at my school for the kindy and grade 1 kids because I think they will love them! Best of all, the author lives in Australia! I give them 4.5 stars each.

James' Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: Hyphen by Pardis Mahdavi

* Copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Australia *

Intro

It's time for another instalment in my series of book reviews from the Object Lessons series by Bloomsbury Academic. This time, Neil Béchervaise takes a look at Hyphen by Pardis Mahdavi.

Neil's Review

What a pleasure to meet an object that is, at once, informative, entertaining and insightful. Pardis Mahdavi’s Hyphen is a delightful relief from the ‘full-court press’ of the publish-or-perish academic approach of several other ‘Objects’ I have tried to read. Her personal narrative as an academic who strongly identifies with her students confirms both the power of the hyphen as a point of connection and as a reminder of the potential difference that the punctuation mark commands.

Identifying Dionysus Thrax, the second century Greek student of Aristarchus, as the scholar who invented the hyphen and the apostrophe, Mahdavi provides an easy-to-understand outline of the value of his punctuation innovations for reducing the reader’s/speaker’s difficulties in separating and providing intended emphasis on words which were written without any spacing at all. 

“…[clarifying] for the speaker [how] the words should be understood – and spoken – as a single entity.” Page 16

By the time she introduces the 1440’s role of Gutenberg’s bible as probably the next-most significant development in clarifying our ability to read written text with the emphasis that the author intended, Mahdavi has already established her own identity as dependent on the role of the hyphen in twenty-first century America.

Weaving the backgrounds and college-formative experiences of several of her ‘hyphenated American’ students into her own Iranian-American-feminist-activist narrative, including her arrest and interrogation as an American spy when she speaks in Tehran, Mahdavi provides a chilling insight into the difference between multi-cultural inclusivity and multi-racial bigotry.

Drawing on the first generation Chinese-American, Mexican-American and African-American origins of three of her students at Arizona State University, Pardis Mahdavi foregrounds the issues that both she and they encounter in locating the fine line between being accepted as Americans and maintaining the integrity of their birthrights. Ania, identifying as Latin-American is called out for daring to represent her fellow Latinx students while being unable to speak her mother’s Mexican Spanish. Nigerian-American AdeChike’s ‘bending a knee’ while the national anthem is played before his football game leaves a football crowd with no memory of the final game score but an enduring memory of the un-American coloured player's action. Chinese-American Daniel adds outrage at their homosexuality when they seek to have their sperm preserved before undergoing sex-change therapy – and changing their pronominal identity to she. The ‘hyphenated Americans’ seek acceptance into what appears to be an unapologetically racist society, their skin colour no more an issue than their hyphenated identity.

Supporting her beguiling social narrative with the historical refusals of successive American Presidents and supportive power figures across the nation to accept any identification except ‘American’, Mahdavi identifies establishment efforts to remove the hyphen from the naming of the New-York Historical Society. She compounds her observation with infuriated reactions to the removal of the hyphen from over 1600 previously conjoined ‘words’ in the 2007 edition of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. The response, she argues, denies recognition of the evolutionary role of the hyphen as a grammatical bridge – as exemplified in health care becoming health-care before morphing into healthcare.

While unapologetically admitting that this review contains ‘spoilers’, I have to assert that Hyphen has broken all my resistance to the Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series. I can readily accept that hyphens and dashes are different -

“The dash divides. The hyphen connects. Brings together.” Page 129

So maybe there will come a ‘dash’ but that may be pushing my luck a step too far.

More importantly, more emotionally, I feel that I have a better understanding of how, 

“Living in the gap – or embracing the hyphen, as I like to refer to it – is important because there is great strength in being able to bridge, connect and birth new things.” Page 142

Through her own and her students’ lived experience as ‘hyphenated Americans’, Pardis Mahdavi’s has given a scope and a depth to both the grammatical and the lived meaning of the hyphen – not only for Americans but for everyone who sees themselves as a more complex being than the tick-a-box descriptions with which society too often labels and dismisses us.

Neil's Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: Email by Randy Malamud

* Copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Australia *

INTRO

In a continuation of my series of reviews from Bloomsbury Academic's Object Lessons is a guest review by Neil Béchervaise of Email by Randy Malamud.

Neil's Review

To: Critical_Readers@everywhere.wot
CC: other_readers@elsewear.wot.qt
BCC: sum_mmoor@nocansee.wot

Subject: Randy Malamud's email re Email

Hi reader,

150 pages about email definitely provides an object lesson in the value of emergent technologies.

Isn't it great that we now have entire IT departments to manage our computer requirements? That we have a 'safe' password with miscellaneous C@ps,l0wer case letters and randOm num3rals secured @ some mysterious location beyond the grasp of hackers - Russian, Nigerian and teenager-next-door - that we can finally relax at work? That we can trawl through our emails at leisure, reply all - or maybe BCC the few who really need to know - and feel relatively comfortable in recognition of the fact that our actual effectiveness has dropped by about 25% and that is quite all right?

Malamud's contribution to Bloomsbury's series of 70-odd Object Lessons provides some interesting history in the development of communications technology, some salutary lessons in the value of its implementation and a very well researched but never quite explicitly stated argument for why we should probably dismiss the old chestnut that "Computers are your friends, they save you time".

Indubitably, email has become one of the great time-fillers of the 21st century - so far. Yes we wake to check our emails, we take our phone with us to the wash-room (just in case anything important comes through) and we check for those crucial after-hours messages before we turn out the lights at night. Malamud's Email, however, does even more than that. It provides a deeply considered commentary on both the relative value of the email when compared with that personalised yet almost extinct ink-to-paper communication, the letter.

Querying the authenticity of 'the in-box', within which accumulates, without so much as a secretary or a postie ever passing, the 'junk mail' and 'spam' accumulate, Malamud provides a humorous if somewhat cynical (and is that ironic, or not?) several hours of reading which could have been spent clearing and/or replying to another overload of vital mail.

I must say that I enjoyed Randy Malamud's Email. It dragged me away from my keyboard, reminded me of a time long passed when I, too, took time out to write (and cross out and rewrite and add margin notes on paper with a pen or a pencil). More significantly, Email engaged me in a brief reflection on the extent to which we have endangered our social networking skills with technology. Most of all perhaps, it gave me a laugh at the susceptibility of the academic to enticements to publish - so s/he does not perish. Maybe email has a place, after all.

Neil's Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Guest Review: Post Mortem by Gary Bell

* Copy courtesy of Bloomsbury *

INTRO

Post Mortem is the second in the series by Gary Bell featuring Barrister Elliot Rook QC, a character with a secret criminal past. Guest reviewer Neil Béchervaise shares his review below.

NEIL'S REVIEW

The central character in Gary Bell’s second novel has apparently moved from convicted fraudster through homeless student sleeping rough to barrister and QC in the inner court chambers of a respected London legal firm. The publisher’s blurb suggests that knowledge of this background would destroy his career. As a lay reader, I would have thought so too; I would have thought he could never get so far. In fact, while this may provide an interesting backstory to an otherwise fairly plausible tale of corruption, drug-peddling and murder within the prison system and Wormwood Scrubs in particular, it does push the limits.

In equally dubious fashion, ‘pupil’ lawyer Zara’s desperate quest for recognition and acceptance into the same legal firm ahead of apparently numerous similarly qualified and ambitious young ‘pupils’ suggests that the author may be trying too hard. In the only real elaboration of her character, Zara is described on Page 20 as “a gay woman of mixed race with a council-estate background and thick Nottinghamshire accent” – an unlikely recruit to a leading London law firm? Fortunately, the real story lies in the solution of ‘the crime’.

Rook’s early encounter with a kennel-full of killer dogs being trained for illegal dog-fights leads to his saving a particularly cruelly treated ‘bait dog’ and encountering an especially large, white, rare and savage breed, dogo argentinos, illegal in the UK but being trained, here, for ‘special customers’.

When the image of a large white dog appears behind the front door of Rook’s latest client, Charli, charged with smuggling illegal drugs into the prison where she works, the basis for the plot is established. Before she has even been arrested, however, 13 prison inmates have been murdered. But how are the offences connected?

As Rook and Zara collaborate to bring related cases to court, Bell’s capacity to inter-relate complex legal points with a compelling storyline offers fascinating insights into the evolution of the criminal gang in Britain. From the territorial protection of inner-city slums to the evolution of racially based criminal gangs promoted through massive housing projects, Post Mortem offers insights into the manipulation of the poorer classes. At the same time, it identifies the legal and humanitarian issues arising from overcrowding and unemployment among those groups who have been ‘left behind’ across a shift in social and economic needs since the industrial revolution.

The ultimate overlap between criminal and judicial power presented in Bell’s denouement, while perhaps a little too convenient, presents his readers with a fascinating picture of the entrenched issues of class, race and social necessity in Britain in the twenty-first century. Public housing may reduce homelessness but it does not, it seems, address the fundamental issue of purpose in life, regardless of the country it is focused within.

Bell’s Post Mortem has its problems with character and plot plausibility but the thematic issues it raises and the range of action it presents between crime and justice make it an interesting read.

Neil's Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★