Mandy SayerRecensioni

As most readers know, Hazel Rowley (1950-2011) was a superb biographer, and it was fitting that in her memory her family and friends set up the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship valued at $20,000, to support Australian writers working on biography projects.

Award-winning novelist and non-fiction author Mandy Sayer won the fellowship in 2021 for her biography of Australian silent filmmakers, the McDonagh sisters. It was published in 2022 as Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters: Australia's First Female Filmmaking Team, and was shortlisted this year for the 2023 The Age Book of the Year in the non-fiction category.

As you can see from the cover design by Debra Billson, the publishers have signalled the era of the book with Art Deco motifs, but what you can't see from the cover is the clever internal design by Josephine Pajor-Markus. Chapter headings are in 1920s style Cinematic fonts, and the Table of Contents includes a 'Trailer', 21 Main Features and Extras (i.e. a filmography, a bibliography, notes and acknowledgements.)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/30/those-dashing-mcdonagh-sisters-2022-by-mandy...

Oh my! This is a terrific read. It's titled "a memoir of a marriage" but it is much more. Exploring romance, poetry, paranoia, deceit, hope, the clash of cultures, the failure of communication, hope and accomplishment. The world of the street artist is evoked with clarity as Sayer's life segues into the world of academia with new pleasures and unpleasantness. 417 pages that I could not put down.

I really enjoyed this book, the characterization and events did not disappoint.

It’s a while since I reviewed The Australian Long Story edited by Mandy Sayer, and I’d never read her fiction, so it was good to chance upon The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (2007) at the library. A slim novella at 159 pages, it bridges a space between adult fiction and YA, but although the sex is offstage it would be a brave school that listed it for required reading since there’s plenty of strong language…

It’s a very well-written road journey with familiar themes. The teenage narrator Mark Stamp, his sister Ruby and the unnamed baby form a distorted kind of holy trinity as they flee from a very troubled home in a dreary country town when Mark finds his mother’s body. With no money and only a vague idea of getting help from some dubious relations, they set off for the coast with their father Roy in hot pursuit. Like a monster in a horror movie, he keeps surfacing as if indestructible. No sooner do the young people think they’ve shaken him off, than his old Fairlane shows up in the rear vision mirror.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/09/17/the-night-has-a-thousand-eyes-by-mandy-sayer...

I admit historical romance is not something you’d expect me to read but I’m all for literary exploration, so I thought I would give this Australian novel a go. Love in the Years of Lunacy is a typical story of forbidden love, set in war time Sydney. Eighteen year old Pearl is an alto sax player in an all girl jazz band that one day meets African American and jazz legend James Washington and quickly fall in love. While Australia didn’t have any laws to prevent them from falling in love or marrying, like America did, their love was taboo. While there is a lot more that I could probably say to summarise this book, you get the picture and probably can predict what happens. What I want to do is vent all my frustrations about this book (potential spoilers from here on out).

1. Historically Inaccurate
I’d probably enjoy this book a lot more if it wasn’t for the huge inaccuracy that happens in the book. The scene happens while the two love birds are at Luna Park, air raids sound and Sydney is under attack; but wait, there were no bombing in Sydney during World War 2, there was the submarine attack but this book made it sound like Sydney was getting bombed. Why? Most likely wanting to use this as an excuse for the two characters to have sex.

2. Misdiagnosis
So when the two are inevitably separated, Pearl tries to commit suicide; she says she doesn’t want live in a world without him. The Master of Lunacy (this title is government appointed to act as the authority in civil commitment proceedings) diagnoses her of having a fear of dying but when he talked to her and asked her, she told him that she was afraid of dying.

3. Faking it
You know the typical ‘fake that you’ve gotten better’ to stop having to be constantly under supervision? Pearl does this to stop herself from being bored but she did it so well that I think even the writer forgot about her depression after that paragraph ended.

4. The Marriage Proposal
Pearl fakes her recovery so well, she ends up dating the Master of Lunacy; what? Does this not seem like an issue, an irresponsible doctor/patient relationship? Let alone the fact that Pearl was faking being over her depression and over James, so much so she falls in love with the doctor.

5. Cross Dressing Soldier
I get that a woman can fake being a man but faking being a solder in a war zone seems like a huge stretch. Especially when the writer likes to remind the reader just how beautiful Pearl is through the book. But tuck your hair under a hat and bandage her breasts up to make herself look flatter; that would work. How about when she got her period and the blood stained her pants? No one noticed that?

There is so much more I can think of that didn’t sit write with me in this book. I think there was a point I only found out Pearl was a blonde when she showed off her pubic hair to prove she wasn’t a male soldier. I did like the way this book was told in a way that a fictional Indigenous crime writer was listening to the tape recordings of his mother (who he thought was his aunt and also thought he was indigenous at the same time). But apart from that, I have too much I disliked about the book to really enjoy the story. I’ve had my rage about this book now; I can finally get it out of my mind.

Quite a disturbing novel about child abuse; teenagers and a baby on the run after discovering the murder of their mother by their father. The very resourceful Ruby leads Mark and the baby through southern NSW to get away. Written as a thriller, we do find out much later that the baby has not been named as it is Ruby's child from the incest by her father. Such a plot cannot end happily but there is a closing chapter of where they are a few years later.

A novel set during the time of WW11 - a love story between an Australian girl Pearl and a black GI James Washington, both jazz musicians. The story takes place in Australia and in the war zone of New Guinea - an absorbing love story with a musical background. It kept me interested but I guess the ending was a bit predictable.

Mandy Sayer's memoir of her difficult and dysfunctional childhood and adolescence is remarkable for the way she recounts traumatic episodes with such distance, almost as though she is the observer, watching her family destroy themselves and each other. And, indeed, to survive the maelstrom of the violence and alcoholism all around her, it was probably necessary to shield herself, to erect some defences and become the observer/writer that she clearly does so well.
That she and her siblings were abused and neglected emotionally and physically is clear but she is remarkably free from bitterness and criticism - I have not read "Dreamtime Alice" which although written before this book, takes up her story where "Velocity" finishes, in her late teens. Perhaps she has had therapy to help her reach this stage of acceptance; or perhaps writing about her childhood has exorcised some of her demons.
As a social worker from Sydney where the book is largely set, and who has unfortunately seen many such dysfunctional families, I salute Mandy Sayers for expressing so eloquently what so many damaged and destroyed people are not able to. And for demonstrating that there is always help, and hope.

This collection of 15 stories about a few people who, whilst they don't know each other, ar linked together by events or actions of their family members, or lovers. Each story demonstrates a type of love or a way of coping with a type of love. The only story I dodn't like really was that of the drover's wife. But the story of Candy which has the Drover's wife's HUsband in it was a good one. Like Unbalanced, the Drive-in marriage story was fabulous and the one of the wife in a coma was also terrific. I was astounded at how the author managed to link all these people together and not have the stories actually dependant on the previous story.
Well worth a read.

Some beautiful riffs on fairy tales that I loved, as well as many original stories. Sayer snakes in and out of her characters' feelings and bodies most gracefully.