Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an ABC podcast.
Hello and welcome to the Bookshelf on ABC RN, on ABC Listen, free to air TV and wherever and whenever you want your bookish podcasts. I'm Kate Evans.
And I'm Cassie McCullough here as always with three new works of fiction and a whole bunch of people who know their books.
And we know that your To Be Read piles are getting bigger and bigger, not just with the help of us and this program, but with the help of the ABC Book Club Facebook group. This week, there have been some terrific discussions about musicians and artists in fiction. as well as people asking for reading suggestions for their kids. The suggestions really fly around on that book club group.
Chapter 2: What are the key themes in Kate Grenville's A Room Made of Leaves?
Yeah, it's a lot of lively chat, I must say. So let's get on with this week's books. We're talking about Kate Grenville's new fictional memoir of Elizabeth MacArthur, A Room Made of Leaves.
and a 1960s rock and roll novel from English writer David Mitchell in Utopia Avenue.
But first up to South Korea and into the lives of some 20-something women as they try to survive downtown Seoul.
불안해 하지마 이렇게 얘기하는 나도 사실 불안해
K-pop, room salons, the 10% of most beautiful women in South Korea, and some encounters with the international crazy rich Asian set, as well as the poor underclass. That's the world we're flung into in Francis Cha's novel, If I Had Your Face.
Frances Cha grew up in South Korea, Hong Kong and the US, but she now lives permanently in the US. She's also worked for CNN in Seoul as well. And this debut novel of hers takes us into the lives of these women.
They're all living in Seoul in an apartment block, and they're just getting by. They all have pretty interesting histories, but we meet them in the present, beginning with three who are really obsessed with their looks. There's old friends Soojin and Ara, and their neighbour Kyuri, who works in a room salon. So Cassie, what's a room salon?
Well, Kate, I had to look this up, of course, because I'm such an innocent. But a room salon is kind of a bit like a drinking bar meets karaoke, where there's a awful gender imbalance. And that is that the blokes are all businessmen who pay money for the company of women in these places. And of course, the women don't get very much of the money that the men pay to spend time with them.
There's a sliding scale. Some of them are very obviously all about sexual transactions and some of them perhaps hide that a little bit more. And maybe that's where the price difference is as well.
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Chapter 3: How does Frances Cha's If I Had Your Face explore beauty standards?
Yeah, that was quite shocking, wasn't it? But you can sure, you know, use your street skills and that gives us a glimpse into what her childhood was like.
Cassie, I was also particularly interested in the character of Miho and then I wondered whether that was a bit dodgy of me and it was because she was the most Western of all of the women in that although she was very poor and she grew up in an orphanage, she got a scholarship to go to New York. And she's the only one of this group who's not interested in having cosmetic surgery.
And she's looking at the world through eyes that are very much informed by art. And so I probably found her the easiest to make sense of But then she also enters this mega rich world through somebody she meets at the university. And that's this crazy world of really, really rich people.
Yeah, she's an interesting character and she's got this incredible natural beauty through her hair. So she doesn't need any fixing up if I've got the right character. This is part of what I'm saying. Like I just couldn't quite keep a track of of the attributes of each of these women.
But I think what makes her interesting is her relationship with yet another woman whose name is Ruby, who was the real true artist, the one who had transcended her wealth and her position to be truly one of life's aesthetic gods. She just could, everything that you see through her eyes is reborn.
And Miho worshipped her until her death, and that I thought was one of the interesting parts, particularly interesting parts of the novel. There's a lot in it. I mean, there's the lives of each of these women and their backgrounds, but then we're also learning about, you know, Korean culture, Korean history. It is a fascinating novel.
Possibly the reason I managed to keep track of them, I mean, partly I did, I used my post-it notes and kept flicking back and forward, But also I read it in one sitting, which made it work as a sort of ensemble novel, because we do have to keep track of a lot of characters, which is a little bit tricky.
Yeah, no, look, I really liked it too. But I think some of the characters just shouldn't have been there. Like I'm going to say at Wanner, there's just this random character, Wanner, who's living this pretty boring life, who's, you know, trying to get pregnant and, like, she doesn't really fit in. And I don't know why she was there.
And I don't know, you know, why in the beginning we were introduced to so many... side small characters and so we attached a lot of attention to them and then had to learn about all these others. So I think there was a sort of structural problem with it.
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Chapter 4: What cultural insights does If I Had Your Face provide about South Korea?
noah glass so the book addresses gail's work thematically it doesn't address it novel by novel but rather looks at some of the kind of key patterns that i see appearing in gail's work so what's her best book don't ask me it may be her next book maybe her next book so we'll wait and see
And Tanya, you've also written with Paul Giannone a book called Half the Perfect World, Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, which won the 2019 Prime Minister's Award for Nonfiction. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And so that is about writers like George Johnson, Charmian Clift, Leonard Cohen. But I think you're also quite interested in artistic collaborators.
Is that your next project?
Yeah, so building on the work that Paul and I did for that earlier book, we're looking now at creative couples, particularly in Australia and particularly in the 60s, and thinking about writing as being a collaborative act. So we're trying to push that idea that writing isn't only about individuals in garroted rooms, but rather thinking about creative couples in their social context.
So that's the next project that stems from that book.
So does that mean when they are both brilliant or where one is seen to be brilliant but in fact it's the other one who's been doing all the hard work?
Well, I mean, I guess in the case of some couples, they actually write collaboratively, like side by side at the desk. But I think there's also a lot of friction in relationships that have artistic pursuits at their centre as well.
So we're really interested in investigating the domestic arrangements around creative couples and also thinking about the ways in which they work together and how they think of themselves as couples. So our interest really lies with those couples that see themselves as creative partners as
And also with us is Julian Novitz, critic, fiction writer and lecturer in creative writing and literature at the Swinburne University of Technology. Hi, Julian.
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Chapter 5: What makes David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue a unique rock and roll novel?
There are streets and parks named after her in Western Sydney, as well as a high school and an agricultural institute. And I know, Cassie, that I've read at least one other novel about her life. And just a few years ago, Michelle Scott Tucker wrote a new biography of her called Elizabeth MacArthur, A Life at the End of the World.
Yes, and that is mentioned in Kate Grenville's book as one of the source materials for her research. So the question is, why Elizabeth MacArthur? And then the next question is, what's history and what's fiction? I spoke to her last week and this is what she said on that point. The basic idea of the book is that it is the pretend memoir of a real person.
So the real person obviously is Elizabeth MacArthur and I've set the book up so that the book you're reading is supposed to be the secret memoirs that a woman of her age would never in fact have written. Those women were rendered silenced really by their society. So I thought let's finally give one of them a voice. We only have them in terms of their rather bland and boring letters.
Let's see what they really thought behind all that.
Chapter 6: How are the characters in Utopia Avenue introduced and developed?
So I decided to write... a memoir that I pretend to have found, you know, hidden in the roof of an old house. And it was great fun inhabiting that fantasy that I was writing her memoirs. It is needless to say, all fiction. Tanya Dalziel, what did you make when you realised what the conceit and premise of this book was?
Well, I guess the conceit of the book is an historian's dream. The idea that there's this kind of cachet of unknown private papers belonging to Elizabeth MacArthur, which just has been suddenly discovered, is something that I guess historians and fiction writers long for. And the idea that Kate Grenfell actually sets herself up in the text and
as a character of sorts as well, I thought was a really interesting device. So we're introduced to her as a kind of curator of these papers. And so it sets up the author as an agent within the story being told, which I think is something that is asking us to think about that idea of the trafficking between fact and fiction at the very beginning of the text.
Yes, and I think she is having fun with that role. I mean, it is a little bit like... Antiques roadshow barn find of the Australian history world, like the idea that Elizabeth MacArthur had left all these incredibly revealing letters and inner thoughts in a – I think it was wrapped in some wax paper in the rafters of Elizabeth Farm or something – Yeah, that's the setup.
So we meet young Elizabeth Veal, as she then is, in Devon at the beginning of the novel, as it starts. Now, the real Elizabeth Veal was born in 1766, a farmer's daughter in a tiny little village in Devon. But she's about five when we meet her. Her father's dead. Her mother is remarrying and then leaves her with her grandfather, who eventually dies.
gets her a better position, or she finds it for herself really, in the family of a local reverend because her best friend is the daughter, Bridie, and they're a similar age and this turns out to be a friendship that lasts forever. And then soon enough, you know, she grows up and meets John MacArthur. What did you think about this?
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Chapter 7: What are the supernatural elements present in Utopia Avenue?
I was reminded it was very, almost a little bit of Austin, a little bit of the Brontes, a little bit of Thomas Hardy, I thought.
Yeah, I think the novel is very aware of that context and that inheritance. There's reference to Jane Austen throughout the novel. And I think you were talking before about the ways in which the beginning is kind of tongue-in-cheek. I think the book takes on the wit of... of Austen. I think it's really interested in being poised as well as quite funny in the way that Austen's work is.
But I guess unlike Austen's writing, which is kind of famed for the way in which its point of view works, which is that the thoughts of the characters kind of merge with the narrative voice, this book is very much centred on the first person. So it's very much from Elizabeth's point of view and we don't really get to know much beyond that because the text is really interested in her inner life.
So it's a very linear story that kind of moves from childhood, but it's also told retrospectively. So the idea is that it's the older Elizabeth reflecting back on her life and telling the story. So certainly there's instances in the novel which I think deliberately recall Austen and Hardy and others that you mentioned. And of course, MacArthur is drawn as an entirely unsympathetic figure.
Yes. I mean, he's a real rotter, isn't he? I mean, as soon as we meet John MacArthur, we're under no illusions of his character. And perhaps that is because we are looking through a young woman's eyes with an older woman's brain.
I think so. I mean, he's presented from the... He has his perhaps seductions. There's the hint at the beginning that Elizabeth falls for him for some reason. But as the narrative unfolds, the older, wiser Elizabeth doesn't let us forget that this man is unloving, at times sexually violent, and in pursuit of the honour that he feels is owed him.
He's driven by this idea of keeping his honour or indeed producing it because... Of course, in large part, he's there because he has accrued a big debt so that he can become a kind of gentlemanly figure.
Yes, he's far more Wickham than Darcy. And we learn that he has this kind of nasty streak where if there's even the scent of a slight to him and his honour...
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Chapter 8: How does plastic surgery play a role in the lives of characters in If I Had Your Face?
then it's all-out war and he'll go to any lengths to satisfy his anger and revenge, which is a particularly unattractive trait.
Yeah, he's always scheming and is certainly not shy of reaching for his pistols at every opportunity. So he's certainly, there's no mystery as to where the narrative sympathies lie and it's certainly not with him.
Yes. And sadly, Elizabeth Veal is all too aware of his true nature by the time she has to marry him. And we won't go into why that is, but I think people can imagine why it is. Her lifelong challenge will be trying to really voyage around his problems and make the best of life.
I think so. I mean, I think that the novel is attentive to the limited opportunities to women at the time. And, you know, they were owned by their husbands and all those kinds of issues that are subtly referenced in the text. And, of course, in contrast to MacArthur, who's this really thoroughly dislikable person. figure, Elizabeth offers a kind of contrast.
She's pictured as passionate and curious. And I think really importantly, she's also pictured as coming to knowledge of the catastrophe of so-called settlement in Australia. So she offers a very different idea than that which MacArthur is presented to represent.
Yes, and this is what makes, I think, the substantive part of the second section of the novel. We go from Devon, we go to Sydney Cove, and this is where we meet some of the figures of the day. Arthur Phillip, what contentch.
And eventually Elizabeth meets William Dawes, who Kate Grenfell has written about in the past, in The Lieutenant, which is, though the character in The Lieutenant is not named William Dawes, everyone realises that it is. And in particular, that book focuses in on his relationship with a Gadigal woman, Padigarang.
And once again, the Gadigal appear in this book and so does Padigarang and with a different storyline, it has to be said. What did you think of the portrayals of the Indigenous people? And later on we learn about conflicts out where the MacArthur Farm was settled in Parramatta and in particular that incident with Pemulwuy and his people out there.
What did you make of the politics of seeing that through Elizabeth's eyes?
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