An interesting time to launch a book

Who could have known, back in December when I started the immune-suppressant Ocrevus treatment for my MS, that a pandemic was brewing? I’ve been feeling particularly exposed and even asked people at my March book launch (more on that later) to refrain from the usually obligatory hugs at the occasion. But now, a month later, I have the results from my latest blood test. My white cells are ‘completely within normal range’, said my GP (she of The Joke fame). Great! So I’m not immune depleted after all! But hang on—the Ocrevus isn’t working? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

We went to Bega a fortnight ago. We stopped at Candelo Stockfeeds for kibble for the dogs, and were amazed and impressed that even at an open-air farm supply place they have implemented a drive-through service. You don’t get out of your car. They ask what you need and a minute later they’re putting it in your boot, handing you a printed invoice and presenting the card-tapper. Then we went to Coles. The Mechanic was a standout there, not just because his mask was bright orange, but because no-one else was wearing a mask at all.

I know masks are a contentious subject. But there are only two ways we know of that this virus can be transmitted—an infected person coughing or sneezing in your face, or by touching a contaminated surface then touching your nose or mouth. And if we can rule out the latter with a mask, let’s do it.

The Masked Mechanic had to go to the auto-parts shop too. Of course. And he dropped off some stock at Candelo Books (more on that later too).

So we completed the whole excursion without me getting out of the car. Why did I even go? I was there riding shotgun with the hand-sanitiser because we both knew he just wouldn’t remember. Dousing him with the stuff on each re-entry.

***

Present circumstances have allowed me the time and space to finish Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. I was intrigued when I heard that it comprises just one sentence of stream-of-consciousness (one review said ‘Ullyses has nothing on this’), and when my brother called to ask for ideas for my birthday present in November, it was my first thought. But somehow I’d missed the detail that it’s over a thousand pages long.

Firstly, it’s not quite true—the ‘one sentence’ bit. Ducks, Newburyport‘s stream-of-consciousness is of an unnamed narrator, an Ohio baker, wife and mother who runs a small business from home supplying pies to local cafes and restaurants. There’s no plot as such, but a storyline and characters do start to emerge as she grapples with the needs and problems of her four kids, her dealings with her customers, a needy guy who’s being overly helpful delivering chicken feed to her door, her dreams, old black-and-white movies and movie stars, interspersed with shopping lists and pepperings of ‘Mommy’—her mother died young.

It’s a strange relationship between reader and protagonist, being inside their head all the time. I began the book thinking, ‘Now this is interesting and ambitious but can I do a thousand pages of it?’ But then I started to really like her, and not just because of her views on Trump, religion and gun culture. Soon I was ensconced.

Not quite all one sentence? Every hundred pages or so, the stream of consciousness breaks off and we’re given a page or two of an episode in the life of a cougar lioness and her cubs. These episodes are written in sentences and paragraphs and are as compelling as the rich inner life of the narrator. Not quite a spoiler, but the lives of our narrator and the lioness do intersect—eventually, obliquely.

So, I loved it. And, even better, now I don’t need to read Ullyses.

If anyone local wants to read it, you can have my copy. We’ve been voluntarily self-isolated for two weeks so we know it’s clean. And if there’s any time to take on a thousand-page novel, it’s now.

***

On Saturday 7 March we launched my memoir Long Road to Dry River at Well Thumbed Books in Cobargo. It was meant to happen in February but it felt too soon after the fires had ripped through, destroying half the businesses on the main street. So 7 March it was, and I’m eternally grateful we didn’t leave it any later because there was certainly no room in the bookshop that day for social-distancing. It was packed.

Thank you to everyone who was there that day. Thanks especially to those who travelled great distances—my sister-in-law Flavienne came down from Sydney that morning, and drove back that afternoon. Thanks to my book-signing scribe, Lauren; to my sales team, Leon and the Mechanic; to my roadie Michael (if not for the PA, those in adjoining rooms and the courtyard would have heard nothing). Thanks to Jack Miller who MCed and officially launched the book, and to Mary Cunnane, who asked some questions I was ready for and a couple I should have been.

If you live in my still-beautiful part of the world, Quaama General Store has copies. Candelo Books in Bega also has stock, and will deliver.

Or buy a copy here using Paypal!