A Charm of Powerful Trouble at the Cocoa Book Club

Recently, I have been honored with the opportunity to write the first Cocoa Book Club post. Naturally, to cap off Unofficially Australian Week I chose my other favorite novel, the rapturously beautiful A Charm of Powerful Trouble, by Joanne Horniman.

You can read my full writeup here, but I'd like to leave you with another taste of this novel. Here is an excerpt from sister Lizzie's point of view:

It seems to her that this is a market full of people who look like animals: English animals from picture books of her childhood. That man there selling jewellery, with the small eyes and pinched mouth, is a rat; and the man making coffee, who has black and grey hair brushed back in a wave from his forehead, is a badger.

And she can't help noticing that there are a number of dainty mice, almost an infestation of them--the woman selling fairy wings and dresses, for example, and the one at the plant stall wearing overalls, and the girl walking by clutching her boyfriend's hand as if she's afraid he'll escape from her. They are small women, with small, pointed, pretty faces.

The market is achingly full of luscious food. Lizzie has a large person's appetite, and food attracts her. Watermelons and mangoes, stawberries, rockmelons and pineapples all call to her in high, fruit-like voices says "Eat me, Lizzie, eat me!"

She buys a large fruit salad served in half a scooped-out pineapple with a mound of whipped cream on top, and finds a quiet corner of the market to stop and eat it in. Food is to be savoured and appreciated, she feels, and shouldn't be eaten walking about, or when one's attention is on something else.

She finds herself near a stall where a man in a top-hot made of satin patches is selling coloured balls for juggling. He stands out the front and juggles as if he doesn't care whether people buy or not, and despite herself Lizzie finds herself watching him as she eats; her eye is drawn to him again and again....

This is for the girl: Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful by Brigid Lowry

In the garden there was a mossy statue of Venus de Milo, the goddess of love. There were tamarillos and grapefruit and a plum tree, and purple wisteria petals thrown in the air like confetti. The gum blossoms wore fuzzy red ballet skirts, and a wild tea-rose curled in the window of the shed. Nina was eight years old and she loved the garden. It was a place of secret corners, of light and shade. In this quiet place the girl played alone, making lipstick from petals, and dolls from old wooden pegs. ("Nina")

Tommorrow All Will Be Beautiful collects prose and poems into a stunning whole, with a subtle theme of There is more than this, there is beauty everywhere. Her writing is full of earthly goddess wooed by chocolate dipped pears, women marrying seahorses "carrying a bouquet of red nasturtiums and surrounded by my bridesmaids, a merry row of dancing paper dolls," first crushes that will be "a handsome gypsy boy who'll break my heart, or a soft girl with a diamond in her belly button." There are family stories, tragic deaths and losses of friendship, dreams deferred, and questions of identity hidden within the pocketful of stars. Gracing every story are delicate black and white pencil illustrations, teacups and bamboo and high-heeled sandals layered scrapbook style within the text. I especially love her more experimental pieces: "An Alphabet of Girls with Glorious Names" demonstrates her gift for memorable characters painted with the shortest, brightest strokes of a pen, "Coffee, Love, Everything" is the day in the life of The Frangipani Cafe and its inhabitants delineated by its playlist, "A true story involving elves and starlight" documents the real correspondence between Brigid and a young poet named Grace.

I want to tell them that I spent my whole childhood wanting to be ordinary, to get away from my beat-up family with their beat-up lives; but that ordinary is dreary and special is the best. I wish I could show them my angel statue from Indonesia and the anenomies in my pink-blue silent evening garden. I want to say that my auntie bred snakes and that everything changes; that life is hard but you must treat it softly....("The Mirrored Surface")

Brigid Lowry is queen of opening lines, dreamy protagonists, and collage-like prose. This (sadly, Australia-exclusive) collection of her short pieces and poems is for the girl who holds parties in her head, and the girl who wants a nose ring, and the girl who thinks it's entirely impractical that she can't have a pet dragon--readers as whimsical, tragical, and beautiful as the girls woven into Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful.

Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful is one of those sad Australia-only exclusives. If you've got the dosh, import it from Gleebooks. If not, pick up a copy from a UK distributor; Book Depository has the best price, cheaper than the AU cover price (and free shipping everywhere!).

If you've followed me this far and need a Brigid Lowry fix now, let me introduce you to three titles you can pick up at your local book emporium.

My name is Rosie Moon. I come from a line of women who have flower names. I'm hungry for a juicy life. I lean out my window at night and I can taste it out there, just waiting for me.

Guitar Highway Rose is the story of Rosie and her friend Asher, and how running away can sometimes lead you exactly where you need to be. As they grow, their parents learn how to let go and become their own people.





As I drifted off I remembered the love spell, safely hidden in the pocket of my dressing gown. Money in one pocket, magic spell in the other; a dressing gown of great riches and supernatural power.

Follow the Blue introduces you to Bec and her crazy, messy, loving family as she grows brave enough to let her wild side out to play. It was one of the first books I reviewed; check it out here.





I wish I lived in another time and place, where round bodies were the fashion. Maybe in Paris in 1892. I can see myself, on my balcony, picking a red geranium from my window box, waving to the handsome boy from across the street. How plump and lovely she is, he thinks, as he waves back. I breakfast on buttery croissants, hot chocolate, and peaches, wearing a cream silk kimono and slippers embroidered with golden birds. Or maybe Tahiti, in Gauguin's time when women were big and brown and lovely no one wanted them to be any different.

Things You Either Hate or Love finds Georgia determined to find love and the $500 she needs for the concert of her dreams. Inspired by The Pillow Book, she documents her attempts in lists, journal entries, and little scraps of her day.

*Brigid Lowry's website
*"Saturday Night," a short piece

Literary Fashion: Kiss the Pages

My dear co-grad assistant Heather graduated this spring, and as a gift I wrote her the first chapter of a novel, Kiss the Pages (she added the subtitle Or, How I Saved the World in Just One Summer). Intended to be a send up of the four-girls-with-a-schtick YA novel set in a library as well as a pastiche of the writers we like in general, I made her promise to write me a second chapter for my birthday.

She did, and it was amazing, and I have chapter three in progress as we speak. It's a novel about the quirks of the library system, dealing with broken hearts and weird families, and why you don't piss off the Fae at any cost. Since so many of you guys enjoy literary fashion, I thought I'd share some sets that I've made for the main characters.



Romance outside of ancient myths wasn't exactly a forte of mine. Hell, romance inside ancient myths usually didn't end well, either; someone was always getting cursed by the gods or stolen by enemy troops or sold to the highest bidder or lost to the underworld. Give me books any day--they were safe enough, if you had enough sense not to pick the glowing, whispering, or writing-a-story-with-your-name-in kind

Zoe is based on the work of Neil Gaiman. The Zoe type delights in writing their life story as a folktale, teaching kids how to make origami stars , and researching the best sugar skull recipes, to be prepared for Dia De Los Muertos. She is never without a notebook to jot it all down and a set of markers to illustrate.



I am the girl who wears high-necked lace blouses and corset tops with jeans.

I am the girl who accidentally yanked out one of the meticulously hand-cataloged folklore drawers, scattering stories all over the floor of the research room.

I am also the girl who figured out how to get the Faery Brigade the fuck out of our library.

Juliet is based on the work of Libba Bray, specifically A Great and Terrible Beauty and its sequels. You can find the Juliet type sighing over the Victorian Trading Company catalogue, defrauding the local table-tipper, or searching for a bauble that speaks to her (literally) at the local antique shop. Those quill pens and leather-bound journals that well-meaning relatives like to intimidate you with at gifting times are just right for Juliet's thoughts.


See that girl riding by the book cart, singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend"? That's Fantine. Her parents were hoping for the next Rita Moreno, but they got Ethel Merman in Dita Von Teese's wrappings.

Fantine is based on the work of Rachel Cohn, Gingerbread and its sequels in particular. The Fantine sort of girl stages guerilla theatre performances, cries over black and white films in the local arthouse theater, and holds long debates over whether who would make a better husband, Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Once she's of age, you'll find her belting out obscure showtunes at the local piano bar. (The name of the closest in NYC amuses the heck out of me, by the by. I think it might be the bar that the one in How I Paid For College was based on.)


I usually work in the children’s section, so me and Emma work together a lot. I envy her – she’s got this sense of who she is and what she really wants that I can’t even imagine, even if what she really wants is taken by someone else, and all the confidence she’s got when she’s with us seems to fall away whenever Vassar Girl walks through the room.

Emma is based on the work of David Levithan, especially Boy Meets Boy. Emmas of the world can be found quietly writing postcards to stick in books that they like, knitting sweaters for penguins, and painting landscapes inspired by acid jazz and punk cabaret tunes. She is never without a pocket watercolor palette, tucked into a CD case.

Inquiring minds want to know, which Page are you? Are you a Zoe, a Juliet, a Fantine, or an Emma?

(And now I want to make a quiz, just like the Chicks with Sticks one...)

Whatever You Are, You Revel in It: Notes from the Teenage Undeground by Simmone Howell

Sometimes it takes more than a cursory read to fall for a book. Sometimes it takes five hours of personal time navigating the public transit system of NYC to give it the undivided attention it deserves.

Bev named me after her favourite feminist, Germaine Greer. My namesake was brave and audacious, a sexual libertine, and an authority on Shakespeare. Umm...much to live up to?
Bev insists all that all smart girls have an inner Greer. I picture mine asleep under a rock or kidney stone.

Gem thought she and her unlikely trio of friends would rule their school, leaving the "barcodes" in their waste. Wild Lo leads the pack, slipping into different roles as easily as she slips into Gem's castoff wardrobe. Mira tests the limits of her newfound beauty, still as desperate for attention as the gawky preteen she once was. Gem, however, is in pieces. A little bit she owes to her well-meaning artist mother Bev, who's done her best to combine security with freedom in their nest. A little bit she owes to her father, a cipher who took off to the Bush before she was born and sends dubious haiku every holiday. A little she owes to the summer projects of the past, when she rubs oils into her chakras and lights candles and a cigarette to consult the I Ching.

Lo is inspired to lead the girls Underground this summer, imbuing their days with guerilla art, cinema veritee, and surrealist acts to sabotage their exams. Gem is exhilarated studying such muses as Warhol's Freaks and the second-wave feminists as well as working on the script for her first film, but Lo and Mira have other plans for their Happenings and Gem's hard work. Gracelessly figured into the equation is her video store coworker Dodgy, a film student in love with criminally bad movies and the sound of his own voice. While navigating the wreckage of her friendships after a hysterically bad first Happening, Gem's father decides to reappear, throwing another curve into the path. Ultimately, she transcends her obnoxious peers and comes into her own as a feminist, an filmmaker, and her own self--or at least has found the tools to do so.

I told them about Nico, the Teutonic blonde who front Andy Warhol's "house" band, the Velvet Underground. She looked like an angle and sang like a drone...In the Factory days she had a white suit and a black suit and that was all she wore.
And I told them about Brigid Berlin, who was fat and loud and funny...Her parents were society people, and everything she did horrified them.
And I told them about Viva, who studied art at the Sorbonne, and Ultra Violet, who had a thing with Salvador Dali, and Candy Darling, the realest looking man-woman ever. I talked nonstop for half an hour, telling Lo and Mira about all the beautiful freaks, finishing on Edie tickling her though with a scarlet ibis feather.
"These were women who didn't care!" I summed up.
How cool, not to care.

Sometimes I forget the urgency of teenagerhood. The elements that I found hair-tearingly annoying (Gem's inability to just ditch her friends at the first sign of betrayal, the endless quest to lose her virginity) are true to life for the normal teen who looks past what the media and her peers feed her. In morally bankrupt twentysomethings such as myself, it may inspire one to spread horrible, untrue facts to the young and gullible. ("If you don't lose your vees by the time you're 21, it'll grow teeth and eat all your best knickers!") After seeing Gem subdued time and time again by her rotten so-called friends and love interest, it was wonderful to see her come into her own with her family and new allies in the last act. The writing is crisp and fast-paced, with satisfying emotional depth and great observations: Gem describes the State Library as "filled with the perfume of knowledge," where Mira "finds it a challenge because it's rife with nerd boys" and Lo is "Our Lady of the Microfiche." Oh, all this and Gem's a hoot too.

Dodgy indicated the screen..."Edie [Sedgewick] gave film the best years of her life."
"Maybe it's a good thing. She wouldn't have remembered them otherwise."

Notes from the Teenage Underground is a terrific first effort, carried by its unique angle and refreshing approach to feminism. (Gem is skeptical but open-minded.) I enjoyed it thoroughly, and can't wait to see what Simmone Howell comes up with next.

*Simmone Howell's Website
*Simmone Howell's Livejournal
*Interviews: at Pink World (especially good!), Up Close and Personal, Slayground (also very good!)
*Some of the films featured: I Love You, Alice B. Toklas; The Sandpiper, Midnight Cowboy, Three Coins in the Fountain

I Wrote with Freedom and Courage: Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman

I wonder if I read enough about the lives of other women whether I would find out how I want to live my own. Whether I’d feel surer about what I wanted to do with myself…I feel like I have been waiting my whole life for something to happen. For someone to come along and change me. Or for a grand event, like in an opera—lots of shrill singing and fancy costumes.

But now I want to choose the way I live my life

The big question is, How?

I unabashedly, wildly, ecstatically love this book.

That's why I've put off writing up Secret Scribbled Notebooks, penned by the magnificent Joanne Horniman, for so long. How could I possibly describe this story so close to my heart, this story about growing up as warm but expansive as its setting, the guesthouse named Samarkand?

Kate O'Farrell is perfectly ordinary--17, red-haired and be-freckled, possessing beautiful feet, three notebooks, and a fig tree in which she writes. Red for lists, music, favorite words, and writeups of the books she so loves. Blue for her scant memories of the family that left her, and the one that didn't (her sister Sophie and Samarkand's caretaker, Lil). Yellow is her wonder book, where she looks outside of herself at the events of her life, weaving them into the mythic tale of a woman who eats Turkish delight, tames a fox spirit guide, and works for a publishing house where the editors sing together at lunchtime.

This isn't a book where all that much happens, but at the same time, so much does. Sophie has a baby girl, Hetty, whom Kate loves enormously. After a chance meeting at the local used bookstore, Hope Springs, Kate meets the mysterious Alex. He is her first love, and she puzzles through the intricacies of her relationship with a boy who courts her with mint tea, fresh from the garden, and possesses little more than a typewriter and past as cloudy as her own. Her best friend Marjorie is a vintage darling with Louise Brooks hair who loves physics equations and cake baking in equal amounts, and they quake at the looming exams, ones that will decide Kate's fate. She grows, changes, and passionately loves life; every page has a turn of phrase, an observation that catches my breath and makes me sigh.

Secret Scribbled Notebooks is a story for book lovers. Sophie quotes Oscar Wilde, Lil hides from the guests with chocolates and novels, and Kate falls into the embrace of great literature, who finds that "kissing a book was like hugging a tree. It made me feel better." She reads Anais Nin and Virginia Woolf and Sei Sonogan, finding her thoughts mirrored in literature.

There are several threads that run through the novel: the sisters' missing parents, the question of Sophie and Hetty's future, and Kate's own reluctance to leave what little family she has, questioning if she even has the right to do so. Each reaches its own satisfying, if not always oblique, conclusion. You will ache when you put down this novel, as it hurts to leave her behind--but you will smile, for the gift of having known Secret Scribbled Notebooks. It's the best book you've never read.

I am thrilled to tell you that a companion book from Sophie's point of view, My Candlelight Novel, will be released on the first of September. Currently looks like a Australia-only release thus far, but you may have luck with UK book distributors--I'll be checking The Book Depository like a fiend till it's out. I also like Gleebooks, but shipping from Australia's gone a bit out of my budget--if you can, try them, they've got an excellent selection and are so good to international customers.

*Secret Scribbled Notebooks at GoogleBooks
*Joanne Horniman's other books are Mahalia and Little Wing (companion novels about a young man raising a baby on his own, and the mother's year without her child), as well as A Charm of Powerful Trouble (a sensuous, evocative novel about a slightly mystical family living in a rainforest, which ties for the number one book in my heart next to this one. It also has major points for featuring a Non-Miserable Lesbian Character.)
*Some of the books Kate reads: A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf. The Diaries of Anais Nin, Volume 5. Nausea, by Sartre. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. Good Blonde and Others, by Jack Kerouac.
*The title of the book is from Jack Kerouac's "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose:" "1. Secret scribbled notebooks and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy"

People in my Neighborhood

Photo by X-Bones Photography

* Intern Sarah J did a review of Comic Book Tattoo on the BUST website
which is more comprehensive than anything I could throw down. Awesome!

*Intern Caroline has a fashion-y blog, Louise or Valentine. I swear, is it the season of the blog? Everbody's signing up. Now all we have to do is talk Jessi into joining and I'm set.

*Good LJ friend Carey has a photo/slice of life blog: sun moon stars rain. I'm glad she joined us.

*Styrofoam balls+urban landscape=terrific guerilla art

*Make your own: cherry blossom lights, origami lucky stars, paper roses,
artsy doily racerback tank top

*Recent Francesca Lia Block interview at NOGOODFORME.com (run by three ex-Witchbabies! It's such a small world.), with much talk of future projects and her favorite music. There needs to be a Witchbaby reunion, for serious.

*Ashley Lorelle of Luscious Letters was sweet enough to post this recent Publisher's Weekly article about Francesca Lia Block

Thinking: A Dangerous Occupation

Photo by Janetmck (So much love!)

My life has been one strange swirl of riot grrl theory, comic books, and daily writing, and the culmination of such. Dakota Lane, who is awesome, sent me a couple of books as a thank you for the writeup on BUST. It made me think of her, of Zoe Trope, and the book-lover culture online.

Why do we revere some authors and shun others? There seems to be this undertone of resentment for young authors, or ones that write a bit too close to home, like Zoe did. Instead of seeing a rich memoir, one of the first that dared to speak of post modern sexuality, readers screamed that she had the audacity to publish her LiveJournal (not true), and how could she get a book deal and not them?

The industry goes like this: hopeful author shops their book around, and if they're lucky, they get an agent. If the agent's lucky, they get a sale. If the publisher's lucky, they have a new author for the roster. If the author doesn't get enough sales, then they're out on their luck. Of course, there are other factors--who you know, what's hot, how fast they can get it out, whether you'll bargain your soul or not, and so on and so forth.

Point being, I can understand animosity when it comes to celebrity authors, but the rest of us mortal folk went through the same sweat, blood, and tears to get our babies an ISBN of their own. Don't hate your sisters and brothers in the writing world, sale or no sale--we really are all in this together, till the business model changes.

I genuinely love books and authors, and this blog is my labor of love. If I've gained so much pleasure and knowledge from the things I've read, I feel it's only fair I share that with others, so that the authors gain another devoted reader, so that bibliophiles gain a new favorite to quote on their Facebook and pass on to their best friends and giggle over an iced chai--an ourobouros of book love, if you will. It tastes like a new, delicious turn of phrase you can't stop running through your head, smells like the paperbacks of your youth, and fits easily into a messenger bag.

Embrace the book love, and support your local author. Who knows, they might do you a favor someday. :D