Ghost Empire by Richard Fidler

Somebody told me this book has had average reviews. WHAT???? I could barely put it down. Having been to Istanbul many years ago now, it was easy to place the events in this lucid history, and perhaps that’s part of why I loved it so much. But there’s also Richard Fidler’s amazingly easy style. He brings his skills as a conversational type of interviewer directly into his story telling, so that it’s relevant, engaging and grounded. But let me begin at the beginning. This big book is a history of Constantinople, from its inception as the capital of Byzantine Rome to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in the middle of the 1400s. Richard Fidler and his son Joe, both history buffs, are wandering through the city tracking down monuments and relics and then Fidler tells the story behind each one. It’s a good structure, hanging a story off an object as it were, and one I’ve used myself writing a family history. The light peppering of anecdotes and observations from their trip provides some gentle relief from the historic content too. I must admit that though I was a keen reader throughout, there were times where my eyes glazed over a little at the endless battles that took place and some of the descriptions of war tactics. I did confuse some of the historical characters but then I don’t think it’s essential to remember every name. I came away with a sense of the richness of the city’s history, its pivotal political and geographical role through time, an understanding of how the Christian church developed and split into the orthodox and Latin factions if I may call them that, and a complete horror at the cruelty and disregard for human life and wellbeing that was all pervasive. I spent a lot of time investigating the things I was reading on the internet – flicking back and forth on the iPad provides a new dimension to reading – and underlined so many utterly fascinating bits of information in the text that I will probably never look at again. For example: the origin of the term ‘navel-gazing’, which I’m not going into here. I just loved the way Fidler brought together so many incredible stories, patching them into a really readable and so often un-put-downable whole. I loved it so much I sent his radio program website a message telling him – a groupie no less – and he wrote back saying to watch out for his book in Iceland coming up. I’ll be the first in the queue.

The Healing Party by Micheline Lee

A lot of people are making a lot of fuss about this book and on the strength of recommendations from Helen Garner, Annabel Crabbe and Leigh Sales, I bought it. I can see why they carried on about it: the story. It’s largely true I believe and quite an astonishing insight into what it’s like growing up in a Pentecostal Christian family, let alone a migrant one (if you’re a fan of Benjamin Law, and I am a mighty one, you’ll have read his story of growing up with his madly wonderfully crazy Chinese mother, which is both a comfort and a delight for people who have, shall I say, ethnically blended families). Anyhow, this story is good. It’s sad and shocking too, with the damage the crazy old father has inflicted on the writer-daughter something she’ll carry to her grave. I hope this book served as some sort of therapy for her. However, the writing is poor. I can’t say anything kinder about it. It’s the sort of unrestrained diary writing that a teenager plonks down on paper and then discovers twenty years later in the attic and cringes with embarrassment as she/he re-reads it. So my view: OK, interesting, funny, sad but definitely not great.