Break out the Bubbly - Farewell to 2013

 
Willy looking noble

2013 was in all a pretty interesting year, with no personal disasters to mar it. It is now exactly three years since I quit work, and I find I still enjoy retirement enormously and don’t miss work at all.  There are always plenty of things to do to fill time, and even if a lot of that is spent in front of a computer, I rarely get bored.

A highlight of the year for me was witnessing Black Caviar winning two of the last races of her career, and being part of the crowd on the occasions when she was at the track. I watched Australian Story last Sunday, which featured the Black Caviar story and was thrilled and moved all over again, seeing her win her races so effortlessly. She certainly was one in a million, and it will be a long time before we see her like again.

This year I attended more race meetings than ever before, and I saw all the equine stars strutting their stuff up close – Atlantic Jewel, It’s A Dundeel, Fiorente etc, etc.  I’m looking forward to the Melbourne autumn racing season, when I will venture track wise again.

Cat stand off

In January this year we adopted Talya, the Russian Princess, so she’s been living with us for almost a year.  Both she and Willy are used to each other now, and despite Talya occasionally being aggressive to Willy, he appears to take this in his stride. They’ll never be friends, but  they are not sworn enemies either, and tolerate each other quite well. Most days when it’s cool they will sleep on the bed together, Willy on my pillow, Talya on B’s, only a few feet apart. Also Willy appears to have come to an accommodation with Monty the cat next door, as they haven’t brawled for ages, and have been observed sitting peacefully together in the front yard of the house two doors up.

Books & Music

I didn’t get to many live shows this year, but the few I did attend were all different and equally enjoyable. The discovery of the year was The Milk Carton Kids, who hopefully will return in 2014.  As I also didn’t listen to music all that much and bought very few CDs, I haven’t any particular favourites from 2013. Patty Griffin’s new CD American Kid was one of the best, as was The Milk Carton Kids’ The Ash & Clay, but nothing much else really took my fancy.

As usual I read many books, some rereads of old favourites and quite a few new books.

My best of 2013 are:

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver – my review is here.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – my review is here.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. This novel is very different to her Jackson Brodie series, but an engaging and clever novel just the same.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – a coming of age novel, a thriller, a page turner fraught with anxiety.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler – my review is here.

Hild by Nicola Griffith – I finished this novel the other night, and I’m still haunted by it. It is an imaginative biography of St Hilda of Whitby, set in a turbulent seventh century Britain.  It is a remarkable novel with a remarkable heroine. Hild leaps from the page in all her  intelligent complexity. I loved this book, and can hardly wait for its sequel.

Last Friends by Jane Gardham – the third book in the Old Filth trilogy, tells the story of Filth’s rival, Terry Veneering. It was laugh out loud funny in parts, and quite as wonderful as anything Jane Gardham has written.

I just realised that my favourite novels of 2013 were all written by women, with one exception. I’m sure I did read books by male writers, but they didn’t grab me as much as the books mentioned above.

Despite the title of this post, I have no intention of breaking out any bubbly tonight. As usual we’ll be spending a quiet evening at home with the cats.

To finish, here’s a card we received from friends at Christmas and thought hilariously appropriate.

Happy New Year everyone! May your 2014 be full of delightful surprises, good health and happiness.

If You Read One Book This Year…

…it has to be The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. 

When I wrote in my recent review of Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Flight Behaviour, that it would take a really special book to knock it off the top my list of favourite reads for 2013, I didn’t expect one to come along so soon.

The Orphan Master’s Son was actually published last year and my attention was drawn to it in the Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction for 2012 list.  I made a note of it at the time and downloaded the Kindle version recently. 

Set in North Korea during Kim Jong Il’s reign, it is the story of orphan Pak Jun Do, who is variously a tunnel fighter in the DMZ, a kidnapper and a radio interceptor on board a fishing ship at sea. It is also a chilling portrayal of the 1984 world that is present day North Korea.

However, the novel is not as grim and depressing as you might expect. In fact some parts of it are very funny and others are heartbreakingly sad. It has scenes of gross brutality, but beauty and self sacrifice too.

Some of my favourite writers were also taken with the book.

David Mitchell writes that it is “An addictive novel of daring ingenuity; a study of sacrifice and freedom in a citizen-eating dynasty; and a timely reminder that anonymous victims of oppression are also human beings who love. A brave and impressive book.”

Zadie Smith writes “The Orphan Master’s Son performs an unusual form of sorcery, taking a frankly cruel and absurd reality and somehow converting it into a humane and believable fiction. It’s an epic feat of story-telling. It’s thrillingly written, and it's just thrilling period.”

I totally agree with David Mitchell, Zadie Smith and the following critic, whoever he is:

“I've never read anything like it. This is truly an amazing reading experience, a tremendous accomplishment. I could spend days talking about how much I love this book. It sounds like overstatement, but no. The Orphan Master's Son is a masterpiece.” —Charles Bock

Let it be noted that The Orphan Master’s Son is destined to be a classic, cult, or otherwise, and it’s a rare thrill to discover such a marvellous new writer.

The Orphan Master’s Son has joined my list of all time favourite books. This time, while reading the novel, I realised that it was the first time I was reading a novel I would reread over and over again, and savoured it as such. You never re-experience that thrill of reading a masterpiece for the first time, ever again, though subsequent readings reveal new insights and depths unseen initially.

You can get the physical book very cheaply in Australia. I found a copy of the paperback at The Book Grocer for $10.00, as a present for a friend, though I have sourced and have purchased a signed hard cover first edition for myself.