Book Review: There Was Still Love by Favel Parrett
Heart and Home: We All Need a Dose of There Was Still Love.
We first enter the cosy world of There Was Still Love (2019), by Miles Franklin awarded novelist Favel Parrett, through the imagery of brown suitcases. They are packed with precious and practical keepsakes, travelling across the world to help keep their owners safe. We learn that it can be difficult to fit all of ones’ memories, hopes, and future possibilities in such a small case. The story intertwines the lives of twin sisters and their families across time, space, and world events.
Twin sisters – Máňa (grandma) and Eva (Babi) – live in Melbourne and Prague respectively. They were separated in 1938 during World War Two when Germany took control of their homeland, Czechoslovakia. Máňa was sent to London where she was to meet her future husband, Bill (Vilém), with their journey ending in Melbourne. Eva stayed in Prague; a challenging time for her and her family due to food shortages, safety concerns, and a country in flux. Through careful and loving storytelling, Favel Parrett allows the reader to become a part of her personal prose as she shares her family’s history.
The story is told from the perspective of several characters – mainly the two grandchildren, Ludêk and Malá Liŝka (Little Fox) during the early 1980s.The children share their experiences of living with grandparents that have endured upheavals in their lives affecting them into their old age. They speak of the food that is shared, the everyday enjoyment of the crunch of a Nova gherkin; rock’n’roll; their favourite food – cucumber salad; and the steady love of their elders. The family unit is important to each sister and is demonstrated through the care they take to make the best from the little they have. Small acts of kindness make this tender story ring true for anyone who has felt the sure embrace of a loving grandparent.
The effects of displacement, threat to safety and inevitable immigration can be felt the world over. Favel Parrett’s thoughtful story draws our attention to the fact that many families have been forced through political instability or through personal choice to leave their home country. No matter what the circumstances, ‘home’ is what most humans crave. A place that we belong, a place that we are safe, and a place where we can share love and happiness with family and friends.
The shadow that falls over the family is one that is felt by many. It is one of being ‘other’, the foreigner, or immigrant. Eva feels like a forgotten piece of history as the tanks roll into the city during the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968. Liberalism and freedom – experienced by the Czech people for only a few months – is ended by the Soviet Union, and Eva is made to feel like an outsider in her own city: her own country. On the other side of the world her sister Máňa is forever feeling like she must curb her true self. She must hide her accent, fit her strong face into the crowds of ‘plain-featured’ women, and the most hurtful of all, being called a ‘wog’ by an impatient man at a local, Melbourne bakery. She is still classed as ‘foreign’ by the country that she calls home.
I look up at my grandma, and she looks completely normal – her face still like stone. But then a tear, just a small one, spills down her soft, powdered cheek and she does not wipe it away.
Favel Parrett’s careful crafting of her characters allows the reader to become enveloped in the story. She has become adept at making the everyday trivialities of life, like sharing a cup of tea with a friend, feel like significant moments. In her award-winning book When the Night Comes (2014), Parrett welcomes us into a tale of friendship, longing and what ‘home’ means to each of us. Parrett has an ability to craft simple words into eloquent prose describing self-discovery, heartache and belonging. Home is important to each of the characters in her books. It is what drives Eva’s daughter Alena, and mother to Ludêk, to give up her ‘freedom’ as a world-touring performer in Prague’s Black Light Theatre and return to Prague. Alena’s ultimate desertion to live freely in Australia would have resulted in her family being punished in the communist-ruled country.
There Was Still Love is a wonderful story which will make you long for the security of being a child in a family that shows true affection for one another. It will make you question your own beliefs as to what makes a home, and the sacrifices you would make to create it. Favel Parrett introduces us to a family that has its own battles but come together to form a stable and caring unit, cherishing the good in life: Like gherkins, cucumber salad and rock’n’roll.
____________________________
Book Review: We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson
The YA novel, We Are The Ants, by Shaun David Hutchinson was published in 2016 by Simon Pulse. It is a story about Henry Denton, a seventeen-year-old gay teenager living in Florida. Henry and his family are doing it tough. Henry has lost his boyfriend to suicide, is being bullied at school and is facing a real conundrum of whether to save the earth or not (by alien abductors). Henry’s mother is angry, irritable, and undervalued, his brother Charlie is about to become a father, his nana is facing memory loss and her freedom due to Alzheimer’s and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Shaun David Hutchinson has created a story in which the reader can find themselves. The guilt felt by those left behind by suicide, wondering if they could or should have done more, seen more, listened more, is real and devastating. The loneliness that family members can feel when they isolate themselves due to health problems, identity issues, anger, shame, and bullying is tangible. Shaun interweaves Henry’s story with apocalyptic scenarios highlighting ways in which the world could be destroyed. These brief breaks from the main story are alarming, imaginative, increasingly relevant and a way in which the reader can imagine the world ending. Due to the predicament that Henry finds himself in when alien beings keep abducting him and communicating with him that he has a limited time in which to save or destroy the earth, we the reader are forced to look at our own thoughts if we were to be placed in this situation. Would we save the world and why?
Being an adult and reading a young adult book about suicide, teen bullying, alien abduction, and apocalyptic scenarios is beneficial. I have seen the world through the eyes of a teen, many teens. I have seen their worries, their troubles, their loneliness. They are much the same as mine. We can ponder the whys and hows of life, its meaning, but what we can be sure of is that life is what you make it. Life can be snuffed out without a second thought. We Are The Ants is a disturbing and profound book that will plunge you to the depths of sadness, and awaken a sense of gravitas in us all.