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| Inside The Simpsons, 20 years on With The Simpsons more than 20 years old, there is a whole generation of TV watchers who speak the language of the animated show, says a Toronto journalist who has written an insider's look at the program. cbc.ca |
The Good Parents by Joan London Clare Clark on a tangled family webMaya de Jong, an 18-year-old girl from small-town western Australia, moves to Melbourne. There she tentatively embraces her adult self, renting a room in the house of an experimental film-maker and embarking on an affair with her boss. She cannot imagine what her backwoods parents will make of her new life when they visit. But when Toni and Jacob arrive, Maya is gone. Her message says only that she has gone on a business trip. She does not know when she will be back.The scene may seem set for a pacy thriller, but the novel that follows is anything but. While Maya's absence alarms her parents, it is not, as Toni quickly discovers, a matter for the police. Maya after all is a consenting adult, free to make her own choices and set the course of her own life. There is nothing her parents can do but wait for her to come back. But, far from home, denied the comforting structure of routine and trapped by their enforced helplessness, both fall to questioning the choices that have shaped their own lives.At first Toni and Jacob appear as unworldly as Maya believes them to be. But, as their stories develop, Joan London peels away their protective skins to expose layers of complexity and contradiction. Both have themselves rejected the conventions of their own upbringings. The young Toni, to the horror of her resolutely bourgeois parents, became involved with a notorious racketeer, while Jacob, left by his dressmaker mother to bring himself up, sought comfort in the fraternity of a hippy commune. Neither can explain exactly how or why they made the decisions that they did and it is only with many years' distance that either can begin to understand the significance of those decisions. As Toni observes at one point, "you go so lightly and then it defines the rest of your life".The Good Parents examines how as young adults we seek to make our own lives, cutting ourselves out of the family narrative only to repeat patterns already traced by our parents. As Toni and Jacob's stories grow, they encompass an ever-expanding cast of characters, each caught in their own tangled family web. It is testament to London's skill as a storyteller that she not only contrives to control what might, in lesser hands, become a sprawl of diffuse ramblings, but that almost every one of her characters is fully and compellingly realised.As the narrative spreads across Australia, she evokes place with a similar vivid precision. In her lyrical prose landscapes and buildings, even rocks and trees, have an almost human quality; a lonely bungalow "sat with its back turned" to the road, while a teenager's room with its "artery of wires" is the heart of a house. Her characters are formed at least as much by place as by genetic imperative. Almost all of them are trying, in one way or another, to escape; those who come back must accept the responsibilities that come with being rescued.The novel is not without its flaws. Some plot devices are unconvincing, in particular the re-emergence of one character in the guise of guardian angel. Teenage Maya never quite shakes off the opacity of the novel's opening pages and remains too much the composite of other people's points of view. But these shortcomings are more than compensated for by London's gentle acuity and the compassion with which she dissects her characters and brings them, if not to redemption, then at least to something approaching self-knowledge.Towards the end of the novel, unable to comfort each other, Toni retreats to an ashram, while Jacob consoles himself with an almost-affair. Caught up in the painstaking and self-absorbed process of deconstructing their lives, they almost forget how to put the pieces back together again. It is a curious warning from London, herself so meticulous a practitioner of human analysis, but such ambivalence is typical of this subtle, tender novel, a hymn to holding the precious close and to letting it go.Clare Clark's The Nature of Monsters is published by Penguin.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Saturday poem by EA Markham By EA MarkhamMotherbirthdaypoemI've been to Lisbon, if you want to know,on that secret mission between ourselves.And here I am on the 8.27from Sheffield to London. World traveller, me.Why am I thinking of your birthday nowthat you live beyond the counting of days,and turn up unawares like a consciencewe're relieved to admit was always there!I'm on a train from Sheffield to London.You must know Sheffield, you know everything.I'm facing the wrong way, for what it's worth.I sit in the quiet mobile-free coach,something we'll talk about. Oh yes, I didn'tfind that pastry-chef brother in Lisbon.Poetryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Quiz: Test your vampire knowledge So you think you know your hunky vampires, Twilight fans? It was a very hot year for the undead in novels, of course. And Stephenie ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Mother inspired to write by daughter makes Waterstone's prize shortlist Desperate Measures, written by Laura Summers after she struggled to find stories that would resonate with her child, among finalists for £5,000 awardThe debut novel by a mother who turned to fiction after struggling to find literature that spoke to her disabled daughter has been shortlisted for the Waterstone's children's book prize.Laura Summers decided to write Desperate Measures when she realised that very few children's books featured protagonists with learning disabilities. "I've got a daughter with a learning disability [and] I felt there weren't any role models for children with disabilities and their siblings," said Summers, a Bafta-nominated scriptwriter for children's television. "But I didn't want to write a story which was just about disability – I wanted an adventure story too, which was exciting, so it would appeal to as many children as possible." Desperate Measures stars a pair of twins – one of whom was brain-damaged at birth – and follows their lives after they are told their foster parents can't cope and the family will have to be split up. Waterstone's called it "affecting, honest, and totally gripping".Summers wrote the book in the first person, alternating between the voices of the two girls, so readers "would be able to put their feet in the characters' shoes and realise what it felt like". "My daughter without a disability read it and said 'it's not bad, mum'. My daughter with a disability said 'she's like me'. Although it isn't her – and I don't want anyone to think it is my daughter – there are things there she can understand and empathise with," said Summers, who called the shortlisting "fantastic". "It was a surprise – being a first novel, you never know how good it is, if the writing is any good, so I'm really excited," she said.The £5,000 Waterstone's prize is voted for by the chain's booksellers, with nine titles shortlisted for this year's award. Intended to celebrate new and emerging children's authors, the shortlist ranges from Lucy Christopher's story about a girl who cannot face the fact that her father is dying, Flyaway, to a young girl's attempt to look after herself when she is left alone in Suzanne LaFleur's Love, Aubrey."Horror and the supernatural often dominate children's fiction but this year we're seeing that balanced with serious, believable stories, proving that sometimes real-life drama hits closest to home," said Waterstone's children's buying manager Sarah Clarke, calling the line-up a "really strong shortlist".One of the shortlisted titles, Victoria Forester's The Girl Who Could Fly, has been endorsed by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer who called it "the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-Men"." I was smiling the whole time (except for the part where I cried). Prepare to have your heart warmed," Meyer said.Waterstone's booksellers are currently voting for the winner, who will be revealed on 10 February. Previous winners of the prize include Sally Nicholls's story of a terminally ill 11-year-old, Ways to Live Forever, and The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding.The shortlist in full:1 Flyaway by Lucy Christopher2 The Great Hamster Massacre by Katie Davies3 The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester4 Seven Sorcerers by Caro King5 Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur6 The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt7 Desperate Measures by Laura Summers8 Superhuman: Meteorite Strike by A.G Taylor9 The Crowfield Curse by Pat WalshChildren and teenagersAwards and prizesWaterstone'sAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |