JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Talking Cure by Professor Gillian Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship

The essence of successful therapy is the relationship between the therapist and the patient, a dance of growing trust and understanding. It is an intimate, messy, often surprising and sometimes confusing business -but when it works, it’s life-changing.

In The Talking Cure, psychotherapists Gill Straker and Jacqui Winship bring us nine inspiring stories of transformation.

They introduce us to their clients, fictional amalgams of real-life cases, and reveal how the art of talking and listening helps us to understand deep-seated issues that profoundly influence who we are in the world and how we see ourselves in relation to others. We come to understand that the transformative power of the therapeutic relationship can be replicated in our everyday lives by the simple practice of paying attention and being present with those we love.

Whether you have experienced therapy (or are tempted to try it), or you are just intrigued by the possibilities of a little-understood but transformative process, this wise and compassionate book will deepen your sense of what it is to be open to connection – and your appreciation that to be human is to be a little bit mad.

The Talking Cure by Professor Gillian Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship brings together eight common struggles brought to therapists.

In each chapter, we meet a different patient with a very different issue that they’re struggling with, and Gillian and Jacqui track their progress and break down their struggles for the reader. Whilst each story in this book is fictional — for confidentiality reasons — the patients are an amalgamation of real patients that exist in the world.

Each hidden struggle in the book is something that is commonly experienced by people within — and outside — of a therapist’s office, including difficult children, closed-off boyfriends, spouses shaken by an unexpected affair, people-pleasers, and more.

It’s quite surprising to recognise yourself in some of these patients. You find yourself genuinely fascinated to see some of your own behaviour in these fictional people, and you can’t help but glimpse the checklist at the end of each chapter to see how much of that ‘category’ you might fit into.

“Meredith had spent so much time thinking about Jade, and imagining her needs and wishes, that her capacity to observe and see her daughter’s actual needs and wishes was impaired. Jade had become a creation of Meredith’s own making.”

Insightful and interesting, The Talking Cure will entice many adult readers interested in learning more about psychology of humans. Don’t try to diagnose yourself with this book though. As I’ve mentioned, the stories in each of the chapters are fictitious and the checklists are merely there as a guide, so take this experience with a grain of salt.

“As I sat in the room with Charlene I experienced her loneliness. Yet even as she was sharing her distress, I felt strangely unmoved. I didn’t feel invited into her world. I felt spoken at rather than spoken to; it seemed to me that I was being asked to bear witness to a story Charlene was telling, but I was prohibited from participating in a dialogue with her.”

Admittedly, The Talking Cure feels a little formulaic after a while. You meet the patient, the psychiatrist reflects on what the ‘struggle’ is and what its effect is, the psychiatrist asks about their childhood and determines that their relationship with their parents and/or siblings explains how they are now, the psychiatrist asks questions to make the patient realise this on their own, and then there’s a checklist for readers to follow. It’s obviously part of the process, but to be completely honest, I was a bit bored by the 5th or 6th chapter.

Additionally, I found Gillian and Jacqui to be incredibly cold in their exchange with the patients (or at least their documented exchange), and truthfully, I never felt that I warmed to either of them throughout the book. There’s something removed about reading these stories, where you never really feel like you’re ‘there’. You feel like a fly on the wall, and sometimes it’s not that interesting.

I’d recommend this book to adult readers who are genuinely interested in the psychology of the human experience, but if you need a little guidance or help with your life, I don’t think this is the first book you should pick up in your journey.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Talking Cure: Normal people, their hidden struggles and the life-changing power of therapy
Professor Gillian Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship
June 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal

Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man to brave the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people.

Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the king.

If Zafira was exposed as a girl, her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed compassion, his father would brutally punish him. War is brewing in Arawiya, and when Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover an artifact that can restore magic and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the king on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs-and the prize they seek poses a threat greater than either can imagine.

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal is the first book in a new fantasy series set in the fictional, once-magical country called Arawiya — inspired by the Middle East and ancient Arabia. The book is about conquering fear and taking identity into your own hands.

Zafira is a hunter who disguises herself as a man every time she enters the Arz — a dark, dangerous and cursed forest where people have gone missing or deranged. Everyone else avoids the forest, but Zafira hunts inside it to provide for her family, friends and village, and to support herself.

Nasir is a Prince and an assassin, and he’s very good. He’s the son of the cruel and horrid Sultan and Nasir does his father’s bidding without ever questioning his actions or his father’s motives. In a way, he seems to have been brainwashed by his father.

“Nasir took the weapons on his person, along with a rucksack containing a few provisions and a change of clothes. He expected this journey to be quick, no longer than a few weeks. Head straight through the Arz, sail to Sharr, follow the Hunter, and bring back the lost Jawarat.”

I had such high hopes for this book, and I’ve been looking forward to it for months. And whilst the premise is intriguing enough and the characters readable, the pacing is a huge letdown. Zafira and Nasir are given a task right at the beginning of a book — they must hunt down a lost artefact that will restore magic to the land, rid the world of evil, and destroy the cursed Arz forest — but then not much happens for the first half of the book. There’s so much dialogue and so much banter, but not a lot of action or plot.

The prose is a bit up and down — sometimes it’s wonderful, lyrical, beautiful. Other times it’s jilted and awkward, and a little too forced. I think perhaps the story was overwritten and needed a good stripping back in the editing stage.

Additionally, the book is told with dual perspectives and most chapters are really short. There’ll be a tense moment in Zafira’s perspective, and then when we get to a heightened moment, the chapter ends and the POV switches to Nasir. It’s a bit jolting and uncomfortable for the reader, and I think the structure could’ve been improved for a better reading experience.

“Her pulse quickened. Against reason, she wanted to go on the quest. To claim this victory for herself. At the very least, she wanted answers. Could a book really bring back magic? Was the caliph involved? He wasn’t bad. If, somehow, he found out she was a woman, she would find her way around. He wouldn’t chop off her head.”

Grief is a strong theme in the book. Zafira’s father went crazy in the Arz and it led to his death, and she’s still very much traumatised by his passing. And Nasir’s mother recently died, and he’s been left alone to deal with his cruel and evil father. It’s a strong theme that runs throughout the book, and I’m sure many readers will be able to relate to Zafira and Nasir’s grief over the death of their beloved parents.

“For once, she appreciated the fearsome, incalculable strangeness of the Arz that made the men disappear. The two Sarasins could be leagues away, and neither she nor they would ever know it. Such was the Arz. This was why so many people who entered never returned — they couldn’t find their way back.”

This book will appeal to fantasy readers, but seasoned readers. This is not the kind of book to give a reluctant reader, and this is not the kind of book that will keep the attention of someone who doesn’t read often. The pacing is too slow and the characters a little too one-dimensional.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

We Hunt the Flame
Hafsah Faizal
May 2019
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Women’s Work by Megan K. Stack

After her first book was published to acclaim, journalist Megan K. Stack got pregnant and quit her job to write. She pictured herself pen in hand while the baby napped, but instead found herself traumatised by a difficult birth and shell-shocked by the start of motherhood.

Living abroad provided her with access to affordable domestic labour, and, sure enough, hiring a nanny gave her back the ability to work. At first, Megan thought she had little in common with the women she hired. They were important to her because they made her free. She wanted them to be happy, but she didn’t want to know the details of their lives. That didn’t work for long.

When Pooja, an Indian nanny who had been absorbed into the family, disappeared one night with no explanation, Megan was forced to confront the truth: these women were not replaceable, and her life had become inextricably intertwined with theirs. She set off on a journey to find out where they really come from and understand the global and personal implications of wages paid, services received, and emotional boundaries drawn in the home.

Women’s Work by Megan K. Stack is a memoir about raising children abroad, and the relationship that Megan forms with her hired help — Xiao Li, Pooja and Mary.

I identified many issues with the work. Megan is incredibly naive and at times snobby, and her husband Tom really doesn’t come off well. I’m surprised they’re still married, and Megan never seems to confront his role in their relationship and their family. Tom doesn’t help, and he doesn’t even try to help. He’s lazy and judgemental, and makes no effort to understand how much work goes on at home to look after the children. And…..Megan lets it happen. It’s like she doesn’t even care to notice. Her entire book is about the role of women in taking care of children, and rarely does she seem to confront the role of the husband and father in her household, and how he’s not aiding the situation?

“On Sunday Tom discovered that hanging out with tiny children was not a sun-washed field and overflowing picnic basket, but a jumble of physical needs and messy rooms and senseless tears. On Sunday I discovered that my partner didn’t know where the diapers were kept and thought it prudent to let crusty dishes fester in the sink because a ‘maid’ would arrive twenty-four hours later.”

I found the structure of the book quite problematic. Megan is talking about these WOC who help her raise her kids — the fact she has more than one WOC helping her in India should give you an indication of their level of wealth in the countries they’re living in — and while she’s trying to articulate her experiences with them and their role in her family, what she’s really doing is attempting to capture their journey and their life struggles but it’s from her own perspective. And her perspective is skewed. She’s a privileged, rich white woman. What could she possibly understand about these women and their struggles?

To give you an example, she hires Pooja in India to help with the family responsibilities. At first, Pooja is responsible for the cooking, but then afterwards, Pooja takes on more responsibilities looking after the kids. After a while, Pooja develops a drinking problem and becomes irresponsible around the kids. Megan fires her. We learn later that Pooja’s husband was incredibly abusive towards her — physically and emotionally — and no one helped Pooja when he physically attacked her. She got pregnant and performed a self-induced abortion in Megan’s house because she knew she couldn’t go through with the pregnancy, and then she turned to alcohol to cope with what happened to her. But we don’t learn this until the final pages of the book. So when we’re reading from Megan’s POV and she’s angry at Pooja for being reckless around her kids, we can’t help but agree. Pooja is a liability! She must be fired! And then we don’t find out until the very end just how hard Pooja’s life has been and how her poverty and her social status and her total lack of support system attributed to this.

“I agreed to move our family to India with one explicit condition: I would hire domestic staff guiltlessly and lavishly. I’d outsource shopping, meal planning, cooking, cleaning, and laundry. It was Tom’s career that pushed us into India, but I was determined that my work, too, should benefit.”

This book is actually incredibly well-written, so I finished it rather quickly. I enjoyed the direction of the chapters and I wanted to find out more about Megan’s live-in hired help. I wanted to hear their stories, so I kept reading. But Megan? I don’t think this book paints her in a positive light, and I didn’t really take to her. She’s privileged and she’s rich and she takes it upon herself to tell the stories of her help, when really, she doesn’t have a strong cultural understanding of their lives or their suffering. She’s telling their stories from her perspective, and her perspective is incredibly warped and narrow-minded.

I guess I can commend Megan on her acknowledgement of her own judgement. in the beginning, her maid takes her child for a walk and immediately Megan stresses out and worries that they’ve kidnapped her child to sell into slavery. Acknowledging this incredibly judgemental thought means she’s not holding any secrets back in the book. I guess there’s bravery in allowing yourself to look bad.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Women’s Work
Megan K. Stack
May 2019
Scribe Publications

Hare’s Fur by Trevor Shearston

What a swift odd turn his life had taken. A teenage girl with a ring in her nose was sliding ware into his drying racks.

Russell Bass is a potter living on the edge of Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. His wife has been dead less than a year and, although he has a few close friends, he is living a mostly solitary life. Each month he hikes into the valley below his house to collect rock for glazes from a remote creek bed. One autumn morning, he finds a chocolate wrapper on the path. His curiosity leads him to a cave where three siblings — two young children and a teenage girl — are camped out, hiding from social services and the police.

Although they bolt at first, Russell slowly gains their trust, and, little by little, this unlikely group of outsiders begin to form a fragile bond.

In luminous prose that captures the feel of hands on clay and the smell of cold rainforest as vividly as it does the minute twists and turns of human relationships, Hare’s Fur tells an exquisite story of grief, kindness, art, and the transformation that can grow from the seeds of trust.

Hare’s Fur by Trevor Shearston is a literary novella about life, family, loss and the fragility of life and everything in it.

‘Hare’s fur’ is a specific pottery pattern that resembles the fur of a rabbit. Protagonist Russell is in his seventies and lives alone in the Blue Mountains. He is a professional potter. Russell takes a lot of time with his work, making sure to give everything due attention and detail. Russell applies that same attention and concern to the three kids he meets in the woods. They’re frightened and wary, and he is determined to earn their trust and help them.

“He was startled on the return walk when a small hand took his. The boy didn’t risk looking to his face for consent. He gripped back and shortened stride, coughing to swallow away the tightness in his throat. He couldn’t, and finally had to pretend to sneeze so he could wipe his eyes. He thought he must have held a child’s hand since Michael, but couldn’t think whose child.”

Hare’s Fur is rich with description and imagery, taking the reader on a journey of observation and reflection. The symbolism of the story and the characters is not lost. Russell works with pottery — fragile objects. He lives alone since his wife suddenly passed, and he doesn’t have many friends.

These three kids he meets are fragile too, much like the objects he works with. They’ve run away from a troubled home life, a broken family. He befriends them and earns their trust. They have much to learn from each other.

Unfortunately, the pacing really bothered me for most of this novel. There’s so much internal monologue and so much detailed description, that I felt the story was moving too slowly for it to really grip me. I found my attention waning — I found myself flicking through to see how many pages I had left to go.

“The fire was dead, but sitting round and black in the ashes was an object it took him a moment to recognise, so long since he’d seen one, a cast-iron camp oven. It must already have been here, no child could have carried it. The cutlery looked to be of the same vintage, with thick tines and handles.”

Hare’s Fur will be ideal for readers who are looking for character-driven stories, and not necessarily plot-driven. This is for readers who love a slow burn, with overly descriptive imagery and paragraphs. If you’re looking for something fast-paced, then this book isn’t for you.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Hare’s Fur
Trevor Shearston
March 2019
Scribe Publications

The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton

From the author of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender comes a haunting maelstrom of magic and murder in the lush, moody Pacific Northwest.

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbours. Guilt and fear instead led the island’s original eight settlers to burn “the witch” out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward one hundred–some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life.

She has reason to hope: First, her supernatural powers, if they can be called that, are unexceptional. Second, her love life is nonexistent, which means she might escape the other perverse side effect of the matriarch’s backfiring curse, too. But then a mysterious book comes out, promising to cast any spell for the right price. Nor senses a storm coming and is pretty sure she’ll be smack in the eye of it.

The Price Guide to the Occult is a young adult fantasy novel from Leslye Walton, about a young girl and her journey towards facing up to her villainous mother.

Nor is the youngest of the Blackburn women, cursed for generations. She just wants to lead a normal teenage life, until she stumbles upon a book — written by her mother — that can cast any spell. She’s thrust into a world she doesn’t fully understand, and her evil mother — who once tried to kill her — returns into her life to wreak havoc.

Truthfully, I don’t see this novel holding the attention of a child or teenager. It struggled to hold my attention, and I’m in my late twenties. The prose is very descriptive, which at first made me admire the book, but after a while, I realised the book is actually just very overwritten and the pace very slow. The book sits at 278 pages, and if it were any longer I think I would’ve given up before the end.

“Nor watched her mother’s blood inch its way across the roof, then stop. Weakened and defeated, Fern slumped to the ground as Nor breathed a shaky sigh of relief. Perhaps the madness was finally over.”

Despite the ominous setting and the murderous plot, the stakes never felt high enough in the book. The characters never felt realistic or complex enough for me to sympathise for them, and the villain never scary enough for me to fear her. Additionally, I never really warmed to the love story or the romance of the book.

My favourite part of the book was the prologue, however it’s about Nor’s ancestor Rona and so the rest of the novel isn’t about her.

“Nor was dreaming again. In her dream, she was standing in a cold and unfamiliar room. The walls and floor were made of stone. The room had a foul door to it, a mix of rot and decay, and the metallic scent of blood. The only way out was a winding stone staircase.”

The pacing is one of the major reasons this book didn’t work for me. It takes a long time before the conflict between Fern and Nor arises, and the book weaves between past and present so often that it’s easy to get confused by events.

This book has an amazing backstory. A truly wonderful prologue. But unfortunately the rest of this book wasn’t for me.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Price Guide to the Occult
Leslye Walton
April 2019
Walker Books Australia