JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The House of Lies by Renee McBryde

The House of Lies
Renee McBryde
February 2017
Hachette Publishers

Renee McBryde grew up in Sydney with her single mother and her grandparents, and when she was very little found out that her father was actually in prison for double murder. And despite what he told Renee, he didn’t kill those two men in self-defence.

The House of Lies is the compelling true story of Renee’s life, up until she’s in her early twenties. Finding out that her father didn’t work on a cordial farm and was, in fact, in prison had a huge effect on the rest of her life. She grew up believing that as the daughter of a double murderer, she didn’t deserve much in the way of happiness – so instead she found misery at home and in her relationships.

“Darling, it really is time for you to know that I don’t really live on the Cottee’s farm, or work for Cottee’s Cordial…I live in a place called jail.”

This memoir is a slow-build, harrowing story. Renee’s revelation about her father is a catalyst for a lot of decisions she makes later in her life. She always clashes with her mother, who gave birth to Renee when she was just 16. The reader starts to realise the shame and embarrassment Renee feels for her family’s situaton, and how this manifests in her life. She can’t tell anyone about her father, but she desperately wants to. She gets bullied at school, goes through periods of obesity and then anorexia, and her mother goes through a string of failed relationships that Renee feels separate from.

“I didn’t need to know every detail about what had happened. But when it came to the idea of having a father I just couldn’t let it go. I started to doubt myself. Maybe I had been too judgemental of my father, too immature about decisions and situations I could never understand. Maybe if I was more open-minded there could still be way for me to build something with him.”

Renee doubts herself a lot in the early years of her life, feeling like she doesn’t deserve the best and that she is being punished whenever something goes wrong. She suffers a painful assault during her university years, and then spends years in an abusive relationship. She believes it’s her own fault that her boyfriend Ben is beating her, and these chapters really highlight was it’s like for a victim of domestic violence. For someone who’s never experienced it, those chapters were eye-opening. The guilt and the shame of that relationship, and the subsequent courage that it takes to leave that kind of relationship is overwhelming to read and really illustrates to the reader the kind of person Renee is.

“When things were good with Ben, I could clearly picture how our life would roll out together: the house, the children; all the things we had talked about. But when it was bad, I wondered how I was ever going to get out.”

Renee’s memoir is a reflection on a time from long ago. She now lives in Alice Springs, is married, and has three kids. The House of Lies really only delves into her life until Renee’s early to mid 20s, however it does feel like the difficult childhood and teenage years that she had were the worst of it, and she used the experiences to set herself on a much healthier path, both physically and mentally.

At times, this memoir is hard to read. But, it’s also inspiring and courageous and brave. I really loved reading it.

Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay

Bread Street Kitchen
Gordon Ramsay
December 2016
Hachette Australia

Bread Street Kitchen is a collection of 100 fresh new recipes from Gordon Ramsay and the award-winning team at Bread Street Kitchen. The restaurant itself (and accompanying bar) are set in the heart of London, in the shadow of St Pauls. Their menu is based on fresh seasonal ingredients and relaxed all day dining, and there are now Bread Street Kitchen restaurants in Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

This cookbook features recipes for all occasions: breakfast, lunch, dinner, weekends, sharing, snacking and midweek suppers. Versatile recipes and beautiful imagery fill the pages and there are descriptive, introductory pages for each section. The recipes are new, fresh and simple to cook at home. Most of the recipes are for relaxed, sociable eating, with Crispy Duck Salad, Eggs Piperade and Steak Sandwich being just a few examples from the book.

I found this cookbook beautiful and really easy to use. I love that all recipes had photographs accompanied beside them, and that all of the instructions were clear and easy to follow. Personally, I think Gordon Ramsay has a tendency to include too many ingredients. For most of the recipes I cooked from this book, I ended up dropping off a few things from the list and the food still tasted fantastic. Since this book is promoting a relaxed, easygoing feel, I think the recipes should’ve included fewer ingredients. Some of the ingredients are also quite expensive, so one meal can be quite pricey. Perhaps too pricey for people who are just cooking for themselves or are on a budget.

Some of the other recipes in the book include Ricotta Hotcakes with Honeycomb butter, Seat Trout with Clarms, and Slow Roast Pork Belly with Apple and Cinnamon Sauce. One of the recipes I cooked (and loved!) was the Butterflied Chicken Breasts from page 194:

Bread Street Kitchen has cooking options for everyone, for every meal of the week. I particularly loved the midweek suppers section, with quite a few seafood, red meat and chicken options. The instructions are detailed and lengthy, which look daunting at first but become incredibly helpful when cooking. The photographs are artistic and beautiful and the book includes recipes for some everyday meals you wouldn’t expect in a Gordon Ramsay cookbook, for example Shepherd’s Pie and Brownies. I recommend this cookbook for readers who are looking for versatility and meals for every occasion, but also those of you who are looking for recipes that you can experiment with or will challenge you.

Tracks by Robyn Davidson

Tracks is a memoir about Robyn Davidson’s 1977 perilous journey across 2,700 kilometres of hostile Australian desert to the sea; she traveled with just four camels and a dog as company.

Unlike other travel memories where the author seems to be in search of their identity or perhaps an understanding of what their life has become, Tracks is very much about Robyn’s independence. She wants to make the trek alone for as long as possible, understanding nature and animals and the Australian outback. She grows quite frustrated with tourists as their journeys intersect and she finds great solace in the little communities and villages that she stays in along the way.

“I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there’s no going back.”

She spends a great deal of time preparing for her journey, and it’s quite an overwhelming experience for her. Her preparation was longer than the trip itself. She journeyed from Alice Springs down south to the lip of the Indian Ocean, with only the camels and her dog Diggity for company.

It took Robyn many months to learn how to manage the camels that she takes with her on the trip. They require a lot of attention and care, and Robyn has to learn a lot of information about their medical needs in case they run into trouble on the road.

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Robyn is a very fierce, blunt, independent woman who didn’t think her trek was that big of a deal. Not many people knew she was even going. She just wanted to be left alone, but she also needed money, so National Geographic offered her funding in exchange for her story. And that’s how she was dubbed ‘the camel lady’ by Australia. She is seen as a courageous woman, motivated by the beauty of the Australian landscape and an empathy for women and for Indigenous people.

Even though Robyn deliberately didn’t dwell on her life before her journey, I would’ve liked to gain more of an insight into Robyn before her trip to Alice Springs. The reader doesn’t really get a sense of why she suddenly decided to make the trek, or what was the trigger for her to make that decision. You do feel like there’s a big section of the story missing that could’ve easily been inserted as a chapter or perhaps a prologue at the beginning.

Tracks is regarded as an exceptional piece of travel writing, but it’s also a piece of writing that reflects heavily on sexism and racism. During her journey, she writes about how women – particularly Indigenous Australian women – were treated at the time.

Robyn also comments on how many times she was told that it would be too dangerous for her to venture into the outback alone. Men leered at her and called her names, and the Indigenous Australians were subjected to many racist taunts and racist dialogue.

“I had planned to camp in the creek with the Aborigines until I could find a job and a place to stay, but the harbingers of doom on the train had told me it was suicide to do such a thing. Everyone, from the chronic drunks to the stony men and women with brown wrinkled faces and burnt-out expressions, to the waiters in tuxedos who served and consumed enormous amounts of alcohol, all of them warned me against it. The black were unequivocally the enemy – dirty, lazy, dangerous.”

Tracks is a short book and an easy read. There’s a lot of insight into a somewhat unknown part of the Australian landscape, and the reader can learn a lot from Tracks. It’s a raw, engaging insight into Robyn’s journey.