The Van Diemen History Prize 2022-23

I have some rather brilliant news to share - I am the joint winner (with Assoc Prof Terry Mulhern of the University of Melbourne) of the Van Diemen History Writing Prize 2022-23!

My essay, “Anatomy of a Scandal: A Love Triangle in 1820s Hobart Town”, which details the event and people at the centre of my PhD project, will be published in an anthology of Tasmanian history writing in mid-2023.

I have to make special mention of John, a reader in Queensland, who sparked this whole thing - he read an article of mine in a family history magazine and was under the impression that my PhD novel was already finished (not even close!!) and published (dreaming!), and he contacted Forty South to enquire, as they are Tasmania’s leading independent publisher. They rang me (well, they rang Tom because he was connected to them through his work, #Hobart!) to let me know there had been some interest. “You should enter our history writing prize,” they suggested when I told them what I was working on.

Ten months later, here we are. I never in a million years thought I would win - I was just happy that I wrote something I was pleased with and made the deadline. Just entering felt like a win, to be honest. All I wanted out of this year, as I’ve written previously, was to stop letting my inner critic run the show and just try. To put my hat in the ring and start playing in the arena where I feel my true work is. Without the constant distractions, comparisons and time suck of social media, I had no excuses, only myself getting in my own way. And I was determined to get out of it.

But more than that, there is a special kind of momentum within this project, that I’ve never had on anything I’ve worked on before. The response I get from people when I tell them about the novel, and the central characters and incidents that I wrote about in my Van Diemen essay, is always enthusiastic and curious. I can’t wait to see what happens next with it…and actually finish it, of course.

Thank you Forty South for this great honour. To have such wonderful recognition at this stage of the project (I liken it to Mile 16 of the marathon, there’s still quite a way to go!) has been incredible, humbling and deeply encouraging, and my gratitude for this support and validation of my work is truly boundless.

catching up

Dear friends, how have you been? It feels like ages since I last wrote a post - last week was simply too much of a whirlwind to even contemplate it. And now, it’s Friday yet again, and it will be November before we know it.

The last fortnight has held a lot of work, a lot of running around, a lot of a-ha moments, and a lot of signs that I have probably been working too hard and need to take it easy. Therapy has shown me that busy-ness and work, much as I enjoy it, is also how I distract myself and keep at bay things I might not want to talk about or am not ready to process yet. It’s been that kind of year, and I’m sure it will continue that way until it’s out. Such is the way of things, I’ve learned.

As always I find my anchoring in writing, in music, in reading, in meditation, in nature and in the company of the people I love most. How deeply grateful I am to have all those things.

The main event is that we had a joyful celebration of Tom’s birthday, which was quite a change from his last two birthdays - in 2020 we could only have a limited number of people to the house, and last year we were completely locked down (an introvert’s dream birthday, you could say). So that’s leading on nicely to…

Favourite experience/s of the week

A quiet but fun-filled day celebrating Tom, where we did all his favourite things and had lovely visits and Facetimes with family and friends. We shared a cake with our niece and nephew who are heart-burstingly adorable. And we had a wonderful trip to Gold Class where we saw a great film, had champagne brought to us, and felt very spoiled indeed. You only turn 42 once, after all, and I’m glad my darling Tommy got to do it in style.

I also attended my friend Holly’s book event in Hobart - despite getting caught in a biblical downpour on the way there and therefore looking like I’d been for a swim in my clothes when I arrived, it was a wonderful, memorable and inspiring evening as expected!

Reading

I finished Lucy Caldwell’s excellent short story collection Intimacies - about young women trying to find their place in the world, navigating emigration, motherhood, nostalgia, loss, temptation. I really enjoyed it. It also inspired me to trawl through my hard drives and find short stories I wrote during my London years that I never quite finished, on very similar themes. I discovered Lucy Caldwell quite by accident and I’m so glad I did! She’s a great writer, deserving of as much praise as Sally Rooney, in my opinion.

I’m dipping in and out of Break the Internet by Olivia Yallop which is basically a deep dive into the world of influencers and the industry that has built up around them, particularly over the last seven or so years. I’m finding it both infuriating and fascinating! The internet, and the world, was a very different place when I started blogging in 2005. Back then it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to watch a video of someone unboxing something, let alone that you might get famous, amass millions of followers and a veritable fortune for doing so. Some children I used to babysit (who are now, naturally, in their twenties!) have done just that, which boggles my mind. It’s an interesting experience to read this book as someone who didn’t exactly have a non-existent online profile themselves back in the day, and to be torn between feeling like I dodged a bullet or missed the boat. On balance I think it was the former. Either way it’s a great read and showcases what a disturbing landscape has been created in terms of why and how people get famous these days. A perfect companion/antidote would be So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, an excellent book I read a few years ago, which hammers home the very dark side of “going viral”.

Rereading Natalie Goldberg’s The True Secret of Writing - I started reading The Body Keeps the Score but found that a bit heavy for bedtime reading, so switched to something that would get me in my happy place! Natalie’s words always make me want to write. I should also reread Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing, one of my favourite books on the creative life.

I also finished reading a wonderful biography of Gwen Harwood and writing a review of it, which I’ll hopefully be able to share in a few weeks.

Creative Boom: Beat the industry’s seven deadly sins with these brilliant books - I want to read all of these!

Catapult: Trying to escape the trap of digital productivity by Richa Kaul Padte - oh boy, how I related to this! My own stepping away from social media at the start of the year was a spontaneous decision but in the nearly 10 months that have elapsed since then, I can see it was something that had been brewing in my subconscious for a very long time. Padte makes some really interesting points about social media turning your life into a performance even when you are consciously trying to subvert that idea:

Even when I am not posting a picture, when I have ideologically committed to not posting it, I am still producing it in my mind’s eye. This compulsive documentation of my surroundings isn’t for personal use; instead, it is vertically shot and artfully arranged for a grid I can’t seem to escape. It’s what the environmentalist Vandana Shiva terms elsewhere a “colonization of the mind,” which feels, in the digital era, inextricably linked with the logic of productivity.

To be honest, I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year. I deactivated Facebook quite some time before this year’s complete exodus, so it’s been even longer since I was on there in many meaningful way. It has profoundly changed my life and outlook. I have so much to say about it and I’ll do another update for you all soon. Thank you Richa Kaul Padte for throwing a log on my internal fire!

I finished Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop Bad Pop which was as wonderful as I had anticipated. I wonder about doing a project of my own along similar lines - I have boxes and boxes of detritus from my childhood and early adulthood that my parents stored for me while I lived in the UK, and now naturally boxes of ephemera from my life in the UK too. Jarvis ponders in his book, as he is faced with an unwieldy pile of mess in his loft - why do we save things? Why do we collect things? What do these random piles of stuff we amass in the course of our lives and keep hidden away say about us and what we value? What sort of story do they tell about us and our lives? These are fascinating questions and I very much enjoyed Jarvis’s attempts to answer them.

And finally, I am listening to Toni Morrison’s Beloved on audiobook, read by the author herself, as I finish an embroidery project. It’s blowing my mind. Our Hidden Nerve session on Thursday (I can’t quite believe we only have one more to go) featured a few passages from it as an illustration of the presenter’s point about use of metaphor, how to create sensuousness in your writing without being obvious, and also how to write about anger. It was a really big penny-drop moment for me and I think it deserves a post all of its own, so stay tuned for that.

Listening to

On my morning runs, I’ve been doing something different and listening to affirmations over house music. Elroy Spoonface Powell (Chakra Blue) is my favourite. It’s a great change, and particularly good on days I feel a bit slow and lethargic. Running is a great mood lifter anyway but with these affirmations in my AirPods, it’s a complete endorphin-filled experience! Highly recommended. You can listen to Chakra Blue on Tidal (as I do) or Spotify.

Happy Place: The Craig David episode was brilliant. If you’re a recovering people pleaser, this will resonate.

Chill and Prosper with Denise Duffield-Thomas: I don’t know how this landed in my feed but I’m glad I discovered it. I listened to the episode where Denise talks about how to fix undercharging and overdelivering in business and I had quite a few a-ha moments! Worth a listen for all you freelancers out there!

I have recently made a playlist of favourite classical tracks and have recently rediscovered Brahms’ Serenades which were a favourite of mine as a teenager, which I played non-stop (but quietly) when I sat up late writing by candlelight like Jo March in Little Women. I love how music instantly transports you back to the time you associate with it, I could practically see my school bag in the corner.

Eating

I made Deliciously Ella’s spiced cauliflower and cashew pilaf traybake again (pictured) which was even nicer than the first time - probably because I added some chilli powder, haha! It’s a really easy and delicious meal, I thoroughly recommend trying it out.

An Italian-flavoured two lentil soup which I made a vat of - took a container round to my sister who has a newborn and an almost-three-year-old, and then we enjoyed the rest both as a soup with bread and then as a pasta sauce the next day when it had thickened overnight. Love a meal that does double duty!

Vegan chocolate cake for Tom’s birthday - which our niece pronounced “delicious”! - and vegan banana bread, just for something extra!

I made a rather divine creamy broccoli pasta with capers and aged cashew cheese, which we both loved. I think there was a sweet potato mac and cheese in there too.

Now I’m trying to meal plan for the next week and this is what I have in mind:

• Quinoa pad thai (a Rachel Ama recipe, from her second and latest book)

• Fennel and butter bean stew

• Veggie burgers

• Some sort of curry, most likely an Indian flavoured one because I bought a rather addictive mango pickle from Namaste Spices in Moonah and am glad of any excuse to eat it

• Chickpea and sausage casserole

• Most likely a pasta as well, which Tom has said on many occasions he could happily eat every day!

That’s all I’ve got so far! What’s on your meal plan?

Watching

Tom and I went to see Amsterdam for his birthday outing and we LOVED it. Never, ever believe the online reviews. I’m glad we didn’t! It’s quite something when a film set nearly 90 years ago manages to say a great deal about the present day.

Amsterdam is a complex murder mystery that unfolds alongside a poignant tale of love and friendship between three people who met and bonded on the battlefields of the First World War. Despite the horrors they witnessed and endured at the Front, Burt (Christian Bale), Harold (John David Washington) and Valerie (Margot Robbie) spend a happy period of living it up in post-war Amsterdam, and all return to America feeling hopeful and optimistic about the future. Nearly 15 years later, the three are drawn back together when their old army colonel dies suddenly. His daughter (Taylor Swift) believes he has been murdered and asks Burt and Harold, who have stayed in touch all this time and are still best friends, to investigate on the quiet. Unfortunately, the daughter’s hunch is correct and she too is bumped off before Burt and Harold can confirm her suspicions. There is then an extensive flashback to their time in the army and in Amsterdam, which give the viewer many clues as to how they’ve ended up in this situation. Back in 1930s New York, they find themselves unexpectedly reunited with Valerie and the three join forces once again to unearth the culprit and to also expose some dangerous right-wing underground activities that are brewing, some of which involve a few people they know.

Written and directed by David O.Russell, Amsterdam is a very clever and well-produced film full of dark humour but with also some very serious messages about the world we live in today: the prejudices that are still alive and well; how needless suffering is allowed to happen; how tolerance of dangerous rhetoric can have terrible consequences (the theme of turning a blind eye was brilliantly symbolised with the use of eyes in Valerie’s artwork and in Burt’s glass eye); the futility of war and greed; and that choosing love over hate is vital but not enough on its own. We also have to fight to protect kindness, which is usually the first casualty of power being pursued at all costs. “I’m very happy to be unimportant and live in a place that has love and beauty,” muses Valerie. “Art and love, that’s what makes life worth living.”

I have spent much of the last six years despairing over the state of politics in the Western world, as I imagine many of you have too. Living in the UK as Brexit rumbled and the Tories stripped the country’s integrity away piece by piece; sharing my American friends’ horror, grief and fear as Trump was voted in; too numb to cry as I watched the Australian election results in 2019 and we learned Morrison was staying where he was for the foreseeable. In each situation, I always wondered HOW?! How has this been allowed to happen?! I am no political scientist but I am a historian. And the great lesson of history is that people and nations rarely learn from it. Watching this film, two years on from the ousting of Trump, was a curious thing. I have listened to many podcasts and read many articles about the situation and conditions that were created in America that allowed him to rise to power in the first place, but it never crystallised more for me than in the watching of Amsterdam. All the clues are there, if you want to see them. It’s not about the 1930s, or the aftermath of the First World War. It’s about the world we have lived in for the past few decades, and where it all came from.

Honestly, I cannot recommend it enough. As does the birthday boy, who said “if they were releasing it on 4K Blu-Ray tomorrow, we’d be watching again tomorrow. I can’t wait to see it again!”

Wearing

I haven’t worn them yet but I finally bit the bullet and bought myself two pairs of new running tights, as the ones I bought in 2019 are starting to get holes in them! In fact most of my running gear is very old - I still have the Sweaty Betty capris I ran the London Marathon in (which also have holes, so I use those for gardening), Lorna Jane gear I’ve had since 2013, yoga pants I bought in Canada in 2007 (!), the list goes on. It’s all lasted pretty well considering how I practically live in workout gear. My friend Anita recommended Australian brand Abi + Joseph to me ages ago and this week they had a 70% off sale, so I was out of excuses! I’m excited to run in tights that have a pocket for my phone, instead of using my spi-belt that has never sat on my hips properly or wearing a jacket with zipped pockets, which just gets too hot this time of year. Will report back.

Quote of the week

Holly quoted this short poem by Mary Oliver at her event last Friday evening, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I think it sums up the human experience in general!

“We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.” - Mary Oliver

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Have a happy and safe weekend xx

this week

Mrs Hunt’s Cottage, Maria Island. Picture by Tom!

After a pretty rough past couple of weeks, this one has been really good for the soul.

We went to a family wedding up on the east coast, and you can’t help but feel happy at a wedding, surrounded by love! This one was particularly sweet and romantic, and it was lovely to see some people I haven’t seen for ages. We decided to make the most of being in the area and took a day trip to Maria Island - a place I had never been, and was utterly blown away by. It was one of those places that is truly magical, that pictures and words will never do justice to. If you ever visit Tasmania, it is a must do. We’re already planning a return, but staying longer!

I had also forgotten the profound impact that a change of scene can have on your mood and outlook. We’ve barely left the house since the borders opened and I hadn’t appreciated how much we needed just a little break in the routine. It has been a literal and metaphorical gust of fresh air!

Favourite experiences of the week

Maria Island was absolutely spectacular. We haven’t stopped talking or thinking about it! The ferry from Triabunna was a breeze - though I highly recommend booking as far ahead as you can. I stupidly left it to the day before, thinking we could stroll up to the marina like we did with Rottnest Island when we visited Perth in 2020 (before covid). It wasn’t a complete disaster but as the earliest and latest crossings were already full we only had half a day to explore rather than the full day. But that’s OK, we’ll definitely be going back!

I just love spending time in nature, and getting up close and personal with adorable wombats was one of the highlights of the visit:

One of about a thousand pictures we took of a mother wombat and her joey, who were totally unbothered by the presence of humans.

A Cape Barren goose in its lush natural habitat.

The lesser-spotted writer of this blog post on the deck of Mrs Hunt’s Cottage (the house in the first photo).

The Painted Cliffs.

A beautiful tree.

I mean LOOK at that water!

It was extremely hard to pick a leading image for this week’s This Week, let me tell you!

With my husband of nearly twelve years! Attending a wedding always makes us feel very nostalgic for ours!

The wedding was also a highlight, because it’s always wonderful to be in the presence of love and joy. Whenever I go to a wedding I can’t help but be overwhelmed with happy memories of my own, remembering the incredible high of it all and how full to bursting with love you feel, not just for your new spouse but for all the people sharing in your excitement and wishing you well. And it’s so wonderful to know someone you care about is having the same experience, and you get to be a part of it. The happy couple were also very blessed with the weather, it was an unseasonably warm and sunny autumn day, and the setting was stunning.

We enjoyed the festivities so much that one of my sisters suggested that Tom and I renew our vows at some point and have another wedding for all the Australian family who couldn’t make it to London in 2010. We’re certainly thinking about it!

Looking forward to

Another upcoming wedding, this time of a dear friend. Another dear friend visiting Tassie soon. Finishing the introduction to my thesis. Potentially another trip to Maria Island before the end of the season!

Reading

The Writer Laid Bare by Lee Kofman - I’ve just started this and just want to tell every writer I know to buy a copy and read it ASAP. Incredibly insightful and relatable!

The Practical Australian Gardener by Peter Cundall - I plan to make good use of the Easter break and get some jobs in the garden done as the fruitfulness of autumn is starting to wind down.

Bigger than Us by Fearne Cotton - a lovely book I dipped into each night at bedtime, about intuition, connection and “finding meaning in a messy world”. Some really beautiful reminders to trust the Universe a bit more and to stay open rather than close down when life gets tricky.

Sydney Review of Books:  Plath Traps by Felicity Plunkett

Poetry Foundation: Sylvia’s Table by David Trinidad

Listening to

The Shift: Marian Keyes on menopause, Botox and learning to be shameless - I particularly loved this quote from Marian, “Other people’s anger and judgement is utterly survivable and, ultimately, it’s not even important.” I also enjoyed the follow up with Marian which aired last month.

Now You’re Asking, with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn: The High School Problem and The Co-Dependency Problem, both enjoyed while gardening. I love this podcast, Marian and Tara are so kind, encouraging and understanding with their answers to problems sent in by listeners (apart from the idiot who wrote in saying that he had cheated on his wife and now didn’t understand why she didn’t trust him - their response to that was gold). You might notice that my listening habits tend to reflect the fact that when I’ve really enjoyed an interview with a particular person, I start listening to everything I can find with them in it! I’ll try not to be too repetitive or boring in that regard, haha.

My main writing playlist on TIDAL - it’s so full of goodness, for my writer’s brain at least!

Eating

We made fresh pasta dough with chickpea water and it was utterly amazing. Like, life-changing. I couldn’t recommend trying it more highly!

It seemed to be the week of pasta - I also made a Moroccan pumpkin, chickpea and feta pasta which was delicious.

Lots of hiking and road trip food - energy balls, apples, muesli bars, mini packets of chips.

Today is Good Friday so I’ve procured fresh hot cross buns - as this is the appropriate day of the year to eat them, not on Boxing Day when the supermarkets start selling them! I enjoy a fruit bun as much as the next person but I do think we lose something when something that is meant to be saved for a particular time of the year is simply made available once another major holiday is out of the way, or even all year round as is often the case. OK, I’ll get off my soap box now.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the potatoes with garlic, oil, herbs and preserved lemon at my cousin’s wedding (made by another cousin)!

Picking

The remaining red (or red-ish!) tomatoes and there’s still a few zucchini that may or may not be coaxed into their fullest expression by the heatwave we’re expecting over the Easter weekend. I will also dig up the first potatoes over the long weekend, I think.

Watching

American Beauty - I hadn’t seen this film for many years and we enjoyed it last Friday night. On this rewatch, I found it more funny than I did dark (as I had on previous watchings) and I wondered why that might be so - perhaps it was because I found it rather amusing to watch a privileged white man explode his current life in the pursuit of a supposedly more authentic one. And I agree with Stephanie Zacharek’s take that American Beauty is “a movie from a time when we didn’t know what we wanted. From where we stand now, the dark, buried desires of affluent suburban men and women, no matter how ludicrously they’re presented, seem even a little touching. Maybe that’s partly because our eyes have been opened to the way so many men—unlike Lester, regardless of how you feel about him—have simply taken what they wanted, with no regard to whom they’re hurting.”

Fences (iTunes) - another great film based on an August Wilson play. We saw a clip of this played in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and were immediately intrigued. It’s set in 1950s Pittsburgh and centres around a middle-aged garbage collector named Troy (Denzel Washington), a man who appears jovial and charming on the surface but deep down is very bitter about his failures in life and his missed opportunities in professional sport, which were primarily due to being too old for the professional leagues by the time Black people were allowed to play in them. His son Cory (Jovan Adepo) now has the opportunity to go to college thanks to his talent in football, but Troy is dead-set against the idea. Odie Henderson said in his review that “anyone who had a strict taskmaster as a parent will find parts of Fences unendurable” and, indeed, Troy’s brutality and pig-headedness in dealing with his son is hard to watch and ends up driving Cory away. Unfolding in parallel is the revelation of Troy’s infidelity which devastates his devoted, long-suffering wife Rose (Viola Davis) and has some permanent consequences. It’s superbly acted, and very powerful, but we weren’t wild about the ending, which seemed a little neat and sentimental given everything that had preceded it. But worth a watch, for Viola Davis’s performance alone.

Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent)(Netflix) - our addiction to this fabulous show continues, but we only have a few episodes left! I hope they make more!

Wearing

I had at least five people comment on my outfit at the wedding - which was my glorious Keshet jumpsuit, both stylish and incredibly comfortable! The photographer came over at one point and just said “Keshet?” which made us both laugh! They are certainly a distinctive Tassie brand for those in the know. I do want to get some more of them because they are so wonderful to wear.

Quote of the week

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.” - Jean-Luc Godard

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post with me, please do! A Happy Easter and Pesach Sameach to those celebrating this weekend xx

keeping a promise

I have wanted to do my PhD for a very long time. Apparently I even talked about it at school! In my last year of my BA I remember it being all-consuming, and being devastated when, convinced I was speeding merrily along that path, I reached a dead end after my Honours year. 

But life went on. As some things ended, I found new beginnings. I moved interstate, then overseas. This time last year, more than 15 years had passed since reaching that dead end. Tom and I were packing up our lives in London, our flights back to Australia booked, his visa safely approved. I was in a routine I’d been in for years, though admittedly at the tail end of it. The daily grind. Happy enough but wondering if this particular dream would ever see the light of day after the best part of two decades in a cupboard. 

If anyone had told me a year later I would be enrolled in my PhD and attending seminars at University of Technology Sydney, meeting my supervisor who is one of the most creative, motivating and intelligent women I’ve ever met, well....I would have wanted to believe it. But I still thought it was unlikely. 

I entered the UTS building last Thursday and thought I would explode with joy. I sat at tables with some of this country’s brightest minds, most respected historians and highly praised writers and thought.....I belong here. Not in an arrogant way, you understand. I am honoured and beyond grateful to be here, but I also know this is where I’m meant to be. These are my people. This is work I understand and want to do with all my heart.

But this isn’t happening because I was ready. I thought my PhD was still years away. I’m here and doing it because life decided I was ready. After all these years, the space suddenly opened and when it did, I didn’t question it. With encouragement from some wonderful people, I jumped. 

This feels like the biggest journey of my life. Bigger than the move to Melbourne or London, bigger than the quest to get fit and healthy, bigger than the marathon. This is the keeping of a promise to my younger self, my most essential self. I want to look back on my life and know that, despite taking the scenic route, I did not fail her. 

So if you’re reading this, wondering if your own dream - the biggest dream of your true, most authentic self - will ever happen, please take heart.

Trust yourself and the timing of life. 

And never, ever give up. 

if you want eternity you must be fearless: my favourite reads of 2016

Let's get something out in the open straight away - 2016 was a sucky old year in many, many respects and I for one was not sorry to see the back of it. This year, 2017, already feels lighter, like the heavy energy of the last twelve months has lifted. That said, there are still a few loose ends to be tied up and one of them was deciding on my favourite reads of the year and sharing them on the old blog, as has become a Phil Tradition.

I thought it would be hard to narrow down, as always, but for a change there was a clear winner....the book I was most excited about in 2016 and most enjoyed reading, in fact I enjoyed it so much I read it twice in two months, was The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (Allen and Unwin, 2016).  It hasn't been released in physical form in the UK, so last September when one of my best friends was visiting, she brought me a copy over, mere weeks after release! 

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

Heather is one of my heroes. She has been publishing wonderful, exquisitely written fiction, for adults and children, for the best part of two decades now. Whenever someone has asked me in the past to name my favourite writers, and I listed Heather among them, nine times out of ten they wouldn't have heard of her. But this novel is getting her some much deserved and long overdue attention in Australian literary circles - in fact, it's been shortlisted for this year's Stella Prize.  (UPDATE: it won!!)

"I think art saves people all the time."

The Museum of Modern Love seems like such a simple story on the surface, but Heather Rose is in fact threading together many, multi-layered, complex themes and ideas, highlighting that simplicity is often a guise for the most complicated things, art most of all.

Intertwined with a unique exploration of art - what it is, what it isn't, how do you get it to mean something, how does the public's reaction to it influence its meaning and power - is a story about love, loss, grief, heartbreak, betrayal and, most of all, courage. 

The novel takes place against the backdrop of a real life event - the three-month performance of 'The Artist is Present' by Marina Abramovic in New York City in 2010. For those who don't know, the piece involved the artist sitting still for 7 hours a day and inviting members of the public to sit opposite her. There was no interaction in the traditional sense - no touching, no speaking - but artist and audience member sat opposite each other and held eye contact, for however short or long a time as the audience member wanted, or could bear. Many found it a very moving experience and came back again, to sit opposite the artist, and to be seen by her. 

"She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live?"

In The Museum of Modern Love, a fictional tale unravels about several people who find themselves witnessing, or participating, in Abramovic's performance and how it affects their lives. The central character is Arky Levin, a celebrated composer of film scores, who is grieving for his terminally-ill wife who hasn't physically died yet but, out of supposedly wanting to spare him grief, moved herself into a care facility and cut off all contact with him.  His 22 year old daughter also seems to want little to do with him. Unsurprisingly, Arky finds inspiration is eluding him. Arky somehow ends up at "The Artist is Present" and, over the course of the next three months, watches the performance unfold and various aspects of his life untangle in response. 

I loved the insight into the creative process from perspectives other than writing and acting - the visual arts, architecture, music composition. For a novel, it is a remarkable manual for artists. It even opens with Marina Abramovic's "Seven Steps" (which I now have pinned on the wall above my writing desk).

Therefore, for me, The Museum of Modern Love is almost a manifesto. Heather Rose is asking us, as we read, to think about art and how we connect with it. Connection, after all, as shown through the interweaving stories of all the novel's characters, is what matters, and art is one of the most powerful ways we can connect with each other. But it takes courage to connect, because in reaching out, in asking to be seen, we make ourselves vulnerable. That is art too. Making art is an act of courage. Therefore, live (and create art) with courage. That is the key ingredient.

This is an original, beautiful and utterly compelling novel. I never tire of Heather's writing - to me, her words are like fine wine, only improving with time.

"Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity you must be fearless."

But wait, there's more

There were so many other books I read in 2016 that I loved, that gave me great comfort, that made me laugh and think, that have been consigned to shelves all within easy reach so I can refer to them again. Here are a few of them!

A Notable Woman by Jean Lucey Pratt

I did a lot of research for my current work in progress, which involved reading a lot of war diaries, biographies and history texts about 1940s London. The best of these were A Notable Woman by Jean Lucey Pratt (Canongate, 2015) and Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson (Penguin, 2012). 

Jean Lucey Pratt was a lifelong diarist who also contributed to the Mass Observation project. Her collected diaries - A Notable Woman - cover nearly her whole life, from her first diary as a child in the 1920s to her old age in the 1980s. She was my age during the second world war and her diaries of course focus on those events but also her daily life and concerns, her dreams, anxieties and longings which for the most part remained unchanged by the war and all its dramas and hardships. She was still a woman who was figuring out who she was and what she wanted, and often pondered about all the what ifs, missed chances and the might-have-beens. It made me realise that the only thing that distinguishes each decade in history is technology - the human heart, with all its wants and needs, remains the same. I enjoyed her later years as much as I did the war years. She was funny, brave and inspiring. This book was a joy to read.

Millions Like Us is also a fascinating read, following the lives of a dozen women of various ages and backgrounds and the changes inn their lives over the course of the second world war.....and, most interestingly for me, what happened once peace came. The seeds of the feminist revolution that came a few decades later were sown, but many were keen for life to resume as it was, which made things very complicated. It was absolutely enthralling to read and an impressive piece of work, I highly recommend it.

Nobody Told Me by Hollie McNish

Another of my favourite reads of last year was Nobody Told Me (Blackfriars, 2016), a poetry collection by Hollie McNish, which has since won the 2016 Ted Hughes Award. It is a collection of stories, taken from diaries the poet kept during her pregnancy and the early days and years of her daughter's life, of being a young parent in modern Britain. To put it simply - everyone should read Nobody Told Me. Parents, people who want to be parents, and people who don't want to be parents. Those who are and do will feel some solidarity and understanding, those who don't will have their ignorance smashed to smithereens. After reading this book you'll never think 'why would you bring a child on a train at peak hour?' ever again. Hollie's voice is mesmerising, raw, vulnerable, honest, and full of joy. I applaud her and her bravery.

The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

I was also blown away by The Course of Love by Alain de Botton (Simon & Schuster, 2016). Known for his wonderful works of non-fiction, this time de Botton has written a novel that follows the relationship of Rabih and Kirsten over, as the title suggests, the course of their love.

This isn't your typical novel, that's for sure. It reads like a case history in parts, like philosophy in others, and there are other sections where  the writing is very lyrical indeed. Whichever genre you think it might fit best, it is a stunning exploration of what it takes to have a successful long term relationship. I think we all know that falling in love is easy. It is the maintaining of that love over the long term, over the course of our lives, that is the real challenge. 

Basically, the Romantic notion of love is what sets so many of us up for a fall. Romance is only part of the story. We are ready for marriage, de Botton writes, when we are prepared to love rather than be loved and compatibility, he explains, is an achievement of love - it shouldn't be a precondition. 

The exploration of this particular marriage between Rabih and Kirsten covers pretty much everything - disillusionment, loss of desire, adultery, "immature rages, late-night threats of divorce, sullen silences, slammed doors and everyday acts of thoughtlessness and cruelty", as well as the loneliness and fear of being vulnerable that can be felt in long term relationships. Alain de Botton has a voyeur's eye as he zooms in on Rabih and Kirsten, going beyond their physical bodies and into their hearts and minds, where he can see everything and how their past experiences, childhood traumas, their earliest experiences of love and what it meant and how you were supposed to show it, are now playing out in their marriage.  

There are many truths in The Course of Love, some of which (having been through a divorce and now having been repartnered for nearly a decade) I knew very intimately. Some of de Botton's observations were so accurate they made me squirm a little. I highlighted a lot of passages on my Kindle version!

Ultimately, I came away from reading this wonderful, wise book feeling reassured and comforted. Human beings are complicated and no relationship is perfect. Love can be quite messy, entailing a lot of compromise, and de Botton's stance is that you can only ever really love and make a success out of a long term relationship if you are prepared to accept that your partner isn't perfect and inevitably they will disappoint you. So much of our disillusionment in life comes from expecting people (not just our lovers, our friends and families too) to be mind readers and meet our needs without our ever having to articulate them, so we need to take a bit more responsibility for ourselves and our own happiness, rather than pour all our hopes into one person.  Also, the occasional blips that you might worry about are actually far more common than you think (well, that, or Alain de Botton must have had my house bugged at some point!).

I think this book should be compulsory reading for anyone thinking about getting married. Having got divorced at 26, when I remarried at 29 I think I definitely went into it with my eyes wide open and with realistic expectations - spare yourself what I went through in my first marriage to get to that point, however, and read The Course of Love instead! 

I could go on about all the books I read and enjoyed last year - if you want to see them, and what I'm reading on a more regular basis than once a year, I am on Goodreads and you are welcome to add me as a friend! 

The best book of 2017 so far? For me, it would have to be Between A Wolf and A Dog by Georgia Blain. I read it in the first few days of January and the poetic and moving experience of reading it I hope bodes well for the rest of my reading year (it has so far). 

What was the best book you read in 2016?