Helen HodgmanRecensioni

At 196 pages, Passing Remarks by Helen Hodgman (1945-2022) only just scrapes into my definition of a novella but I read it anyway for Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck. Passing Remarks (1998) was Helen Hodgman's penultimate novel (1945-2022), and it is quite different to her other books that I've read.

Blues Skies (1976) is, despite its title, a sardonic portrait of marriage and motherhood in Tasmanian suburbia; Jack and Jill (1978) is a macabre twist on Tasmanian Gothic; and Hodgman's last novel The Bad Policeman (2001) is a tragi-comedy about an anti-hero with an heroic streak. (See my reviews here and here and here.) Though impossible to read now without the awareness that its preoccupation with ageing foreshadowed the author's own long, slow descent into dependence on others due to Parkinson's Disease — Passing Remarks is, as I showed in this Sensational Snippet, often outrageously funny.

Passing Remarks is also a novel of lesbian love. There is not much about Hodgman's private life in the public domain, but she married young and had a daughter within a marriage that appears to have lasted quite some time. (His Wikipedia page makes no mention of his personal life, except that he re-married in 1984). But in an interview at the SMH on the reissue of Jack and Jill in the Text Classics series, Hodgman revealed that she had fallen in love with a woman in what was described as a catastrophic affair that consumed her emotionally. Whether there were autobiographical elements in Passing Remarks or not, Hodgman writes convincingly about the lesbian milieu, and the problems that confront a May-September relationship.

The story is narrated mostly from the intimate perspective of Rosemary, whose breakup with Billie has precipitated a mid-life crisis; but told also from the point of view of Billie, the much younger lover who has left her.

For Rosemary, the break-up is a catastrophic moment of truth. It's not triggered by any dramatic moment, only Billie's desire to visit her mother who's living a hippie lifestyle in Bundagen on the NSW north coast, and then to travel north, to work perhaps in Byron Bay, or even go as far as Cairns. Billie sets off on her Harley insouciant about this departure, but it sends a chill down Rosemary's spine. She worries that it is her minor signs of bodily ageing that remind Billie of her mother.

What's the matter?' But Rosemary cannot tell Billie she is scared of being alone, not necessarily in the immediate future but in the longer term. Old and alone. Ill and lonely. This morning it seems possible people she's always dismissed as pathetic have a point. Stay married and live longer. Stay together and live.

But Hodgman doesn't dwell on it, Rosemary's inner dialogue undercuts itself.

They'd be printing it on bumperstickers next. Rosemary tells herself to stop it. You get a cat and you cope, Rosemary tells herself firmly. Or a dog, if you must. A dog is always pleased to see you when you get home from work. What she needs is a drink. She knows alcohol is a depressant, but, quite honestly, in the short term at least, it does the trick. Luckily there's still a bottle of champagne in the fridge. She opens it, hands a glass to Billie.

'To your travels,' she says and drinks.

'Cheers, lover,' says Billie. And Rosemary reminds herself that she'd rather be dead than totter handcuffed and in tandem towards the grave. (p.16)

As she reflects on major problem in the relationship — the age difference — Rosemary revisits incidents from their time together that hint at other issues.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/11/24/passing-remarks-1998-by-helen-hodgman/

Novellas in November is a good time to tackle some of the backlog of Aussie titles from the 20th century.

The late Helen Hodgman (1945-2022) was a Tasmanian author of six highly regarded novels. Jack and Jill (1978) was her second novel (after Blue Skies, 1976, see my review) and it won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Although Jack and Jill is set in outback NSW, this macabre novella has the ambience of Tasmanian Gothic.

From the first page, Hodgman demolishes any ideas of a bucolic lifestyle.

Wilma Limb lay beneath greying bedclothes, so thin she barely raised a bump. Her daughter Jill, that impatient baby, pounded her tight-shut lids with blunt fingers. The bruised flesh slit open far enough to release a flicker of jaundiced spite and then closed again. Eager for more attention, Jill gathered a fold of flaky skin from her mother's cheek and pinched. Wilma groaned and clawed at her, parting her lips in a rigid grin, a slight scum gathering at the corners of her mouth. Crowing happily, Jill fled to the kitchen. The black wiry hair that framed her round face in a halo of crinkly strands shone in the morning sun. 'Little Bottle Brush', her father called her. Today there was no Daddy to tickle and tease her. He was off mending fences. (p.7)

By the time he comes back, Jill has been alone in the house with her mother's corpse for four days.

Spurning curiosity and probable judgements about his wife's ghastly end, Douggie sets off for elsewhere with Jill, abandoning her occasionally for overnight trysts with the policeman's wife. He locks Jill inside with the Correspondence School wireless set so that she can't skive off. He doesn't want any stickybeaking stranger accusing him of not doing his best.

And he does do his best, running his farm single-handed, buying books for her from Sydney and even learning to knit. They're better off than most...

Douggie heard over the wireless set how things were bad. The jolly swagmen increased. Each carried his woeful tale of no jobs, dole queues, steakless days and hard times. As they told of wives and kiddies left behind in squalor, Jill grinned at her father, poked fun at them behind their unmanly backs. She didn't trust these no-hopers and kept an eye on them from the tops of trees, lying in wait to drop dead leaves down the backs of their necks. (p.13)

By now, Jill is five.

Tohttps://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/15/jack-and-jill-by-helen-hodgman/ read the rest of my review please visit

The setting and story sounded interesting but I was not able to get into the story. The characters remained either flat or were unappealing. I couldn't identify with any of them or even understand them.
The writing style was good though. I will try another book by this author later.
Maybe the wrong book at the wrong time. Or a book which is too far away from my life and my experiences.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see that title The Bad Policeman? Corrupt, venal cops not averse to dealing in drugs and some serious violence like Gilou in the French TV series Engrenages (Spiral)? The old-fashioned sort like the ones in The Bill who bash suspects to get a confession because they "know" they're guilty and give young offenders a kick in the backside but don't bother to charge them? Or those clichéd world-weary types who are too cynical to make much effort and will turn a blind eye to a traffic offence as a favour for a mate?

It's not so easy to answer the question about Mark Blainey, the overweight country cop who narrates Helen Hodgman's novel. He's done some bad things, and he fails the major case he stumbles into, plus he has a cynical view of the job he's made his career:

Cops versus robbers. If you blew a whistle and ordered both teams to change sides, no one would notice the difference, especially the players. (p.101)

Hodgman's choice to make Mark the narrator of the novel means that we see things from his point-of-view and we need to keep a sharp eye out for self-deception. Self-pity too, because he wife Marilyn has left him for a dentist in New Zealand and he really misses her. He knows he's failed as a husband and a father because he's also got a lousy relationship with his son Jason.

I thought about love and I thought about the apostle Paul which is something I don't often do, but if you really want to feel bad about love, Paul's your man. You realise when you read the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (13:4-8) that you may think you're pretty crash hot at loving but, according to Paul, you're a total f------ non-starter. (p.97)

He reads the epistle at his mother's funeral...and gets ticked off by his bossy sister for reading the old-fashioned version of it, with 'love thinketh no evil' and 'love never faileth' and so on. He's had a book of poetry published, but really, he can't get anything right.

Mark's also about to lose his best mate and work partner Steve. He lets Steve do the serious work when they're on duty because Steve is ambitious, whereas he is content to keep reminding everyone that he's only a constable, not a sergeant.

This all seems a bit heavy, but the tone of the first half of novella is dry, sardonic and amusing, even endearing at times, as when Mark gets landed with a kitten and realises that 'this is what it's like when someone is dependent on you'. This tone shifts, however, in the second half.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/16/the-bad-policeman-by-helen-hodgman/

I came to these two short novels by Scottish born, Australian writer Helen Hodgman with no expectations at all. At first I found the voice a little unusual, but certainly intriguing and very readable. Blue Skies is a novella of post-natal depression and domestic stagnation which results in suicide and murder.

“The beach waited in its early-morning perfection just for me and the odd dog-exerciser. When the sun rose higher, the pale yellow sand became an almost desert blaze. The black rocks crouched like primitive worship stones, antipodean Stonehenges.
Later, when the noon blaze subsided, the local women came down. Those nearest could walk laden with bright beach-bags and babies, carting the many necessities for enjoying an hour in the open. Those from further up the road would drive, the wheels of their small economical second-cars spurting up dust sprays and rutting the sand at the edge. Most people gathered together towards the end of the beach. The hitherto mysterious rocks were then pressed into domestic service, their flat tops used as tables, their crevices as storage spaces for cold drinks and for keeping bits of clothing out of the sand.”

Finding Blue Skies to be very well written, with its atmosphere of unsettling claustrophobia, that unusual voice pulled me right in. In the first novel of the two we find ourselves in Tasmania – where a young wife and mother finds the empty afternoons hang heavily, the clock always reading three o’clock. She watches her new next door neighbour Olive mow the grass, with indifference, take the baby down to the beach where she listens to the chatter of the other young mums who gather by the sea.

“I stopped going to the beach.
I concentrated my efforts not on airing the baby but on abandoning it. By being polite and behaving well, I could buy myself bits of free time. The person I had mostly to be nice to was my husband’s mother. This was because she lived at a pram-pushable distance and loved looking after the baby. Not every day: that wouldn’t have been right. But she was good for two days a week.
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On these days I could take off and forget the street, the beach and three o’clock in the afternoon.”

Two days a week the narrator travels by bus to the local town, where she shakes off the mantle of married young mother, for clandestine meetings, lunch, drinking and posing for photographs she stumbles through her life with seeming unconcern. On Tuesdays she sees Jonathon, who she used to work for, on Thursdays it’s Ben the photographer – married to her best friend Gloria. Hodgman brilliantly recreates a sun drenched sensuality and domestic danger. There is a pervading sense of impending disaster, as this troubled young mother lives only for Tuesdays and Thursdays, encountering a predatory bus driver along the way

At home, the young mother plays the part of dull James’s wife and Angelica’s mum to the best of her ability, but she views her little family as belonging more to her mother-in-law than to her. Next door Olive continues to cut the grass; the clock still says three o’clock.

Blue Skies runs to only about 105 pages, and so it’s quite possible for me to say too much, it is perhaps obvious that the young woman at the centre of this memorable novella is suffering from post-natal depression, although this term is never used. All I will say is that the ending is bizarrely shocking – and memorable.

Jack and Jill is just a few pages longer than Blue Skies, and its themes are as equally unsettling. Hodgman won the Somerset Maugham prize for this short novel in 1978.

“…the advantage would be all on her side. Jack had done her so much harm already. She could draw on the credit for a lifetime.”

It opens with a shocking scene; a small child left alone with her dying mother, is found several days later by her father, in a terrible state while her mother lies now dead in another room. The child is Jill, her father Douggie, after the death of his wife, the two live a hand to mouth sort of existence on their New South Wales outback property. The time scale of this novel is something like thirty years, taking us from the depression ridden era to the changing times of the 1960’s.

When Jill is still an adolescent Jack arrives looking for work, and Douggie takes him on. From here on in, begin all of Jill’s problems. It is the start of an uncomfortable relationship, certainly it’s no boy meets girl romance. Jill is attracted and repelled by Jack – horrified by her first violent sexual experience when she is too young, and Jack is selfish, predatory and obsessive – she naturally turns away from him. As Jack goes off to war he says –

“You’ll be sorry you treated me this way when I’m dead.’ He flung her aside and marched away, vowing to love her forever.
‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ he yelled back at her. ‘So there.’
Jill picked up her book and thoughtfully squashed a line of ants that had strayed between the pages.”

Jill finds herself influenced hugely by Miss Thomas, a teacher who sees a lot of potential in Jill, and so while Jack is off at the war, Jill is at university. Jack returns from the war, confined to a wheelchair – still crazy about Jill. Jill runs away to England, where she discovers Barnaby – the child hero of the series of successful children’s books she writes. She sails home, writing to Jack from aboard ship.

“She was writing to Jack, telling him how she was coming back to him after all because – east, west, home’s best, and better the devil you know. Keep it simple she thought.

She airmailed the letter in Bombay, which seemed a suitably overwrought and exotic place from which to seal her fate, and settled down to enjoy the trip.”

Back in Australia Jill enters into a sexless marriage – where she holds the balance of power, writing her Barnaby books while Jack lives in hope, carving wooden crucifixes. The Raelene arrives, a fan of Jill’s books she offers to help with some secretarial tasks – and stays – her presence threatening to change everything.

The ending of Jack and Jill is also a surprise – but for different reasons to Blue Skies – but it is every bit as memorable.

When I looked this book up on Goodreads – before starting to read it – I was nearly put off reading it by the lacklustre responses it seemed to have collected from other readers. I wonder why that is – because I think Helen Hodgman is a very good writer, she surprises her reader’s and that is something I appreciate. True, her characters are not very likeable – that never really bothers me, I actually often find that a reason for really liking a novel or story – unlikeable characters so often much more believable and certainly more interesting than likeable ones. I’ve done a bit of online searching, and found very little about Helen Hodgman, though it does appear she wrote a few other novels. They will quite definitely be worth checking out. Hogdman’s landscape is recognisably Australian, and that from someone who has never been there, and stopped watching neighbours in the 1990s – but I am a sucker for a strong sense of place. Perhaps some of you will know something more about Helen Hodgman and fill me in – but for me she appears to be a really very good writer who has been forgotten. Perhaps she is better known down under – I hope so.

Blue Skies is Helen Hodgman’s debut novel, written in 1976. This edition includes an insightful introduction by Danielle Wood. The setting is 1970’s Tasmanian suburbia. The story is narrated by a young wife and mother who finds herself unable to muster any enthusiasm for the life she and her neighbours are leading. She avoids the daily gathering of mothers and children at the beach by hiding in her home. Her only respite from the despair in her life and the oppression she feels from the relentless blue skies are the days when she leaves her daughter with her mother-in-law and conducts her affairs with Jonathan the restaurateur (Tuesdays) and Ben the artist, her oldest friend’s husband (Thursdays). As events unfold, her perception of the world around her seems increasingly surreal. More and more, she comes across as either vague or selfish. Suspicions the reader has formed about her may be firmed in the final pages.Hodgman has crafted an extraordinary novel. With an economy of words, her descriptions are vivid and powerful; the atmosphere of 70’s suburbia is brilliantly conveyed; the mood of the narrator is clearly felt. It is easy to see why this Australian classic novel met with high acclaim when it was first published.

Blue Skies is Helen Hodgman’s debut novel, written in 1976. This edition includes an insightful introduction by Danielle Wood. The setting is 1970’s Tasmanian suburbia. The story is narrated by a young wife and mother who finds herself unable to muster any enthusiasm for the life she and her neighbours are leading. She avoids the daily gathering of mothers and children at the beach by hiding in her home. Her only respite from the despair in her life and the oppression she feels from the relentless blue skies are the days when she leaves her daughter with her mother-in-law and conducts her affairs with Jonathan the restaurateur (Tuesdays) and Ben the artist, her oldest friend’s husband (Thursdays). As events unfold, her perception of the world around her seems increasingly surreal. More and more, she comes across as either vague or selfish. Suspicions the reader has formed about her may be firmed in the final pages.Hodgman has crafted an extraordinary novel. With an economy of words, her descriptions are vivid and powerful; the atmosphere of 70’s suburbia is brilliantly conveyed; the mood of the narrator is clearly felt. It is easy to see why this Australian classic novel met with high acclaim when it was first published.

I really didn't know what to make of these stories. They certainly didn't engage with my emotions....and I think that was an entirely deliberate strategy by Hodgman. Dramatic events (e.g. sex, death) are treated as though they are just another element of the day. I don't share that view - it's not my experience- so it was hard to relate to her protagonists. Further, the stories are quite unrealistic (e.g. woman killed by lawnmower which explodes due to running over a stone) and although I did find them interesting enough to get past Nancy Pearl's cutoff, I don't think Hodgman could have kept me reading if the stories were closer to normal novel length. The story "Jack and Jill" really did degenerate into almost a Disney cartoon towards the end. This might be OK for some people, but I definitely won't be adding Helen Hodgman to my Favourite Authors list.

THE BAD POLICEMAN begins with a day in the life of Australian Police Constable Marcus Blainey. In fact the book recounts many such days. Blainey tells us right from the beginning that he has "done bad things". He is only too conscious of what a contrast he is to his patrol car partner Steve, ever eager, always ambitious.

In truth life has dealt Mark Blainey many blows. His marriage has collapsed - what policeman's hasn't? - and the job doesn't always allow him to dispense the sort of justice he would like to see. But then he often takes the easy way out. The poet in him is ever conscious of a burden of human misery and stupidity. Mark Blainey is disillusioned by the job, often ready to take advantage when it is on offer, but one thing really gets to him - young children caught up in the nightmare worlds of adult predators.

I changed my mind a number of times while reading THE BAD POLICEMAN. It is not a novel in the conventional sense of the word, more a series of connected incidents occurring in Marcus Blainey's world. And yet there are story threads, in the way that things that happen to us in our everyday lives are often connected to other things that have happened to us.

In the long run, I decided it was an interesting book, not because it is crime fiction in the usual sense of a murder mystery or a thriller, but there are crimes. The structure allows it to be almost stream of consciousness, with Marcus Blainey using the reader as a confessional, a way to vent his frustrations at his inability to right wrongs.

I didn't like it quite as much as Sunnie, and a bit more than Sally. Despite the fact that it is relatively short, I didn't find it a particularly quick read. And it's not a cheerful book - you have been warned! At times the language may offend as well.

Opening Sentence: '...What I think is: some are born into the world only to hate it...'

A quick read that is hard to pin down and review - a sort of a 'what just happened?' event. Constable Marcus Blainey has done things that he is not proud of. He is also proud of the badder things that he hasn't done. The story follows a short period of Marcus's life. His wife has left him, there is a mining disaster where he has to notify the widow only to become involved with her, and his partner, Steve, is his only friend. He is also a poet - with a published piece of work.

During the course of the book Marcus describes what is going on around him - mostly the corruption - and he is constant turmoil as to if he should report it or not. Then he justifies why he doesn't. He is also quite honest in how he has problems forming relationships outside of the force. There is a loose story, but really there is no beginning or end - just a middle.

A few of my friends have read this book and can't make up their minds as to whether Marcus is a bad policeman, a bad person who is a policeman, or simply someone who is trying to survive. I lean to the last. So much of what Hodgman has written is familiar - having an ex-cop as a husband has given an insight into Marcus's thoughts. I would hear my hubby and his mates anguish over situations and events - seeing some bad things happen and then deciding how bad the bad was - was it bad enough to report or just keep your head down and not make trouble. How can they live like this? Some become like Marcus, some bow to the pressure and become part of the culture, others fight it tooth and nail. Most just leave, bringing their tortured memories with them and learn to live again and smell the daisies.

How do you describe a book that doesn’t fit? How do you say this is a book where nothing momentous happens, yet it does? How do you describe a tragedy that is as funny as it is tragic? How do you nail jelly to a wall?

Constable Blainey is a uniformed police officer stationed in a town 100 kilometres West of Sydney (i.e. The Blue Mountains). He is divorced, lives alone and isn’t close to his only (grown up) son. Blainey is a poet in his spare time. He has had a small book of verse published, but he’s a bit self-conscious about that. He regards his partner, Steve as his only real friend.

THE BAD POLICEMAN is Blainey’s own inner dialogue with himself. The people he meets, the things he witnesses, decisions he makes all pile on top of each other to bring him to where we meet him in the book. He sees corruption around him, both small and large. He debates with himself which he can act on and which he can’t. This leads to even more inner turmoil. We see Blainey as he sees himself, stripped bare of all pretence or facade. What Blainey sees in himself he doesn’t like. A number of things happen that effect his life which leads him to a crisis point.
Blainey takes us through his days from his own point of view. At times his thoughts are confused and confusing; almost stream of consciousness. The book is many things, often funny, sometimes heartbreakingly tragic but it is never dull. THE BAD POLICEMAN poses the obvious question. Is Blainey a bad policeman, a bad man, both or neither? The reader must make up their own mind.

At just 173 pages THE BAD POLICEMAN isn’t a long book, but what it lacks in length it sure makes up for in substance. I found it one of the most compelling things I’ve read in quite a long while and couldn’t put it down.

I confess to not putting a category or genre on this book because I'm not really sure what it fits into (other than fiction of course).

This is a fabulous little book - the story of Marcus Blainey, a poet who works as a cop. The cop persona is taking over rapidly and he's not coping well.

Marcus tells his own story - and he's very very hard on himself. It might be that he's got a point in some places, but really he's not quite as bad as he seems to think he is. But he doesn't cope well with anything much in his life. When his wife left him I don't think he saw it coming, when his son stepped away from him, I doubt he'll ever work out why. His police partner is a bit of an overachiever, but I don't think Marcus can quite figure out why and I know his partner doesn't get Marcus. But he's not completely disconnected from everything - he has joined a men's support group (which is probably part of the problem from the sounds of it), he finds himself attracted to women - but there's something offputting about being attracted to the widow of a man whose death he had to report to her on duty.

Perhaps not unexpectedly events conspire to change things for Marcus - as far as everyone else is concerned. Despite his panic when he finds himself completely unable to react or cope when a child he knows appears to be in danger, somehow he becomes the hero. But in typical Marcus fashion - he doesn't think so.

Fast-paced and refreshingly tightly written, THE BAD POLICEMAN is sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. Always claustrophobic most of the book happens in his own mind - and that's not a comfortable place to be.

have I lost this book? It's so good.