Author Archives: Cecilia Quirk

About Cecilia Quirk

Cecilia Quirk's ultimate goal in life is to become 'Avatar: The Last Airbender's' Uncle Iroh, or as close a proximation as possible for a redhaired white woman. Or Granny Weatherwax. Or hell, both. She enjoys green tea, long walks, manipulating causality and afternoons at home. She lives in the Magical Kingdom of the Roundabouts and works as a wild gnome herder.
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Who Dunne It

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GONE GIRL

Gillian Flynn (Phoenix Fiction, 2013) ISBN: 978-0-7538-2766-6

I’d apologise for the title, but Gillian Flynn has got to have had that pun in mind as she wrote this much talked-about thriller.  Centred on the disappearance of beautiful Amy Elliott Dunne and the increasing suspicion on her husband Nick, the story truly does beg the question, pun and all.  The alternative title was even worse, so consider yourselves lucky.

Gone Girl is, despite its popularity, not something I would typically be drawn to.  I wrote in my last review of my aversion to Midsomer Murders and I am sorry to report the taint has spread to cover pretty much the entire mystery genre.  I’m not entirely sure why I dislike the genre so much, but I don’t enjoy reading mysteries or watching procedurals.  Still, I’d heard many good things about Gone Girl before my mother, a fan of mystery novels and procedurals, said I should read it.  The film adaptation starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, opened early last month and has achieved not insignificant box office success.

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It’s a Sair Fecht

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OUTLANDER

Diana Gabaldon (Delacorte Books, 1991) ISBN: 0385302304

***WARNING: the following review contains SPOILERS and discussion of sexual violence, torture, and sexual identity.***

When I first heard of Outlander, a time-traveller’s love story set against the Jacobite uprising in 18th century Scotland and written by an American, I cringed.  This is admittedly because I am a recovering literary snob.  I’m aware it a massive generalisation, but I am cautious of books written about Britain by Americans.  I have been put off by the Midsomer Murders series, which according to my mother (I haven’t done any research) is written by an American and features all of the most cringeworthy, twee stereotypes of Middle England you can think of.   As a descendant of highland Scots* myself, I feared Diana Gabaldon might have given the 18th century highlands a similar treatment.  Reading her inspiration and reasons for commencing the novel did not help my confidence.  In my imagination the series was a horrific combination of corset-ripper Mills & Boone and Lord Tennyson’s The Highwayman.

Nonetheless, when recommended the television series based on the books by a person whose opinion on such things I trust, I decided to give it a chance.  I’m glad I did.  The series is great.  It even managed to cast actual Scottish people for the most part, which is a sadly rare feat.  They even mostly use the Inverness accent and speak actual, real Gaelic.  Very exciting stuff for someone who has become used to Hollywood’s tendency to both confuse Irish and Scottish accents, and hire people who can’t pull of either accent well.

Then the show went on mid-season hiatus until April.  April.  It left me on a cliff-hanger until April.

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Everyone’s dead, Dave

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A FINE BALANCE

Rohinton Mistry (McClelland and Stewart, 1995) ISBN: 0-679-44608

Rohinton Mistry’s Giller Prize-winning novel A Fine Balance is one of those books I am able to appreciate only on an aesthetic level. It is very well-written, intricately plotted, and full of excellently-drawn, memorable characters. I liked it well enough to start with. The final third of the novel, though, is (spoiler alert) an intentional and miserable spiral downwards. Fair warning: this review will give away the ending of the novel.

A Fine Balance is the story of five people who together struggle to make a living in the changing economic climate of 1970s and 1980s India. There are two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, who have been driven from their village through a combination of caste-violence and economic necessity to Mumbai. There is the Parsi widow Dina, who employs the tailors when her own eyesight has failed to the extent that she can no longer support herself with her own sewing. Then there is the student Maneck who boards with Dina while studying in Mumbai.

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Another World Waits Under the Stairs

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THE KINGDOM OF GODS

N K Jemisin (2011) ISBN: 9781841498195

The last of N K Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, The Kingdom of Gods follows trickster god Sieh as he forms a complicated relationship with the descendants of his former slavemasters, the last Arameri heirs.

Set some hundred years after the events of The Broken Kingdoms, this novel features a world teetering on the edge of political and social collapse.  The Arameri dynasty has, without its god-slaves, fallen into decline and struggles to retain power and influence through other means.  In this respect, The Kingdom of Gods is very interesting. Medieval Stasis is one of my least favourite tropes, and the feverish efforts of the remaining Arameri to hold onto the dregs of their empire strike a realistic chord. Unfortunately, in most other respects I found this book the least enjoyable of the series.     Continue reading

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Everything You’ve Ever Seen

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THE BROKEN KINGDOMS

 N K Jemisin (Orbit, 2010) ISBN 9780316043960

The Broken Kingdoms is the second in N K Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.  Set 10 years after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, it follows blind artist Oree Shoth as she takes in a silent homeless man and becomes involved in uncovering the cause of serial god-murders.  The breakdown of the millenia-old power structures due to the events of the previous book is just beginning to show and the world feels at a turning point.

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Listen As The Night Falls

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the_hundred_thousand_kingdomsTHE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS

N K Jemisin (Orbit, 2010) ISBN 0316075973

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first of N K Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.  The trilogy is set over several centuries, beginning here with the story of Yeine Darre, the young ruler of a poor and vulnerable region.  She is brought to Sky, the glittering capital of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, upon being named heir to the Arameri family and thus to world leadership, by her estranged grandfather.  The Arameri have become masters of their world because they have as their slaves an assortment of powerful gods, the Enefadeh.  Yeine quickly learns she is not the only heir, but has competition in the form of psychopathic Scimina and her brother Relad.  Meanwhile Yeine investigates her mother’s murder, aligns with the Enefadeh in their quest for freedom, and struggles to defend her home kingdom from annihilation.  She is especially drawn to the most powerful of the Enefadeh, Nahadoth.

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The Place Where God Does Not Exist

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snowSNOW

Orhan Pamuk (trans. Maureen Freely)

Faber and Faber (2004) ISBN 978-0-571-25823-9

Of Orhan Pamuk’s many gifts as a Nobel-awarded writer, one of the most fascinating is his ability to blur the lines between real life and fiction.  Though the people he creates in his novels can speak and behave in ways that are surreal, in the context of his writing they are believable.  This is a gift he shares with Haruki Murakami, a writer with whom I am more familiar, though the style and themes of Pamuk’s work is very different to Murakami’s.  To qualify this observation I must add that I have thus far read only two and a half of Pamuk’s novels–The Museum of Innocence, which I didn’t particularly like; My Name is Red, which I promise I will one day finish; and Snow, which I review here.  As in The Museum of Innocence, Pamuk is himself a character in Snow, which contributes to a feeling that the story, despite its surreal moments, might be true.

This edition of Snow was published as part of Faber and Faber’s ‘Revolutionary Fiction’ series, described as “celebrating provocative political fiction from around the world”.  It centres upon the Turkish headscarf controversy, with which I have only passing familiarity, and the suicides of young women who have refused to remove their scarves and thus been banned by the Turkish secular state from attending school.  A spate of such suicides occurred in the south-eastern city of Batman, but in the novel they occurred rather in the city of Kars, close to the Armenian border.  “Kar” is the Turkish word for “snow”.  This is played upon also in the name of the novel’s chief character, Ka.

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Seasons Of Love

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Mark Reads/Mark Watches (markdoesstuff.com)

I recommend review blog Mark Does Stuff to almost everyone I know, sooner or later.  So, while reviewing a review blog might seem unorthodox, I would like to recommend him here, too.  Blogger Mark Oshiro is, from all appearances, a warm-hearted and engaged person.  I have been following him since his first foray into total-book reviews, Mark Reads Twilight, some years ago.  This project, and all projects since, start with his near-complete lack of knowledge of the subject matter.  There have been some surprising gaps in his pop-culture knowledge, many of them made understandable by aspects of his upbringing which he relates in several reviews.  It has been a delight to watch his style and personality develop over time.

Though it doesn’t likely mean much in this era of fan-involvement, I was inordinately pleased when Mark Oshiro added me back as a friend on facebook.  Being shy and socially awkward, I have since made no effort to contact him.  He has speculated about a possible journey to Australia next year.  To demonstrate my affection I almost offered him transport across Melbourne before managing to restrain myself until he threw out the question*.  Yes, a virtual internet stranger.  He has that effect on people.  Or perhaps it’s just me.

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The Hundred Years Bore

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in_a_dark_wood_wanderingIN A DARK WOOD WANDERING

Hella S. Haasse  (trans. Lewis C. Kaplan and Anita Miller, Arrow Books, 1989, ISBN 0 09 9744708)

In a Dark Wood Wandering appears to be a compulsory part of any good second-hand bookshop collection.  Though compared at its release to The Name of the Rose and similar works of medieval-based fiction, it seems to have been largely forgotten.  Impelled by its glorious cover, despite my mother’s warnings not to judge a book that way, I have attempted several times to start this book.  As a medievalist and historical literature fan this novel seemed theoretically ideal.  Sadly, the effort required in getting into the novel was not well repaid. Continue reading

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Every Book You Read In High School

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book_logoAn occasional viewer of ABC’s First Tuesday Bookclub, I tuned in the other month to see the “classic” up for review was Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.  Having nursed a fierce loathing for that novel since studying it for English in year 10, I watched, somewhat in the hope of having my opinion confirmed.  Obviously I knew by then that teachers don’t intentionally assign books students will hate, but I was still surprised when a majority of the panel loved it.  “To reject this book,” one panelist gushed (to paraphrase), “is to reject the nourishment of life.”

Well then.

To clarify, I wasn’t one of those students who refused to read assigned texts.  I didn’t, either, automatically hate assigned texts.  I actively enjoyed reading and analysing most of the set books*.  On learning a friend in the literature class* had to write an essay on 1984, I became very excited and volunteered to write it for her*.  Nonetheless, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of the three assigned books I hated with a passion.  They were as follows:

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The World Was Silent When We Died

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half_of_a_yellow_sunHALF OF A YELLOW SUN

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Fourth Estate, 2006, ISBN: 9780007200283

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun was, from memory, a very fashionable book to have read some years ago.  It achieved great success worldwide, receiving the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 and many positive reviews.  Set before and during the Nigerian Civil War, the novel examines colonial and post-colonial Nigerian politics, white attitudes towards black Africa, international reactions to the Civil War, nationalism and varying forms of hypocrisy, amongst other themes.  Despite the sharpness of Adichie’s criticisms, though, the novel is easy to read and very accessible to those who, like me, have little background knowledge about Nigeria or the Igbo people. Continue reading

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Not The New Gallipoli

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birdsong

BIRDSONG

Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, 1994, ISBN 0099387913)

It might seem a strange choice for a 14-year-old girl, but Sebastian Faulks’ WWI period piece Birdsong was one of my favourite books through high school.  Possibly the first properly ‘adult’ literary novel I ever read, it provoked a deep emotional response and stoked a brief obsession with the distant horrors of the 20th century.  I am also quite certain it rekindled my childhood terror of birds, a fear I share with the novel’s chief character, Stephen Wraysford.  I recently reread the book and was pleased to discover that most of my initial impressions of it remain true: the book is not a light read, but it is a marvellously fluid one.  It is evocative and heartbreaking.  Most importantly, like any good historical novel*, it works to reveal new aspects of a well-studied time period and of the people who endured the First World War.  It does not glorify the war or its soldiers, both official and unofficial.  As we near the hundredth anniversary of the war’s commencement, Birdsong still holds an important message about the nature of the First World War in the historical imagination. Continue reading

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