Come Writers & Critics

A stellar debut, a late-in-life romance, a no-nonsense cookbook and plenty more in this week’s wrap of news from the book world.

Kylie Mirmohamadi, author of Diving, Falling

A famous artist dies, and when the Will is read, it’s ghastly.

He’s left the paintings to his adult children, which is fine.

He’s left the house - a brutalist masterpiece of concrete and glass, overlookingMelbourne’s Yarra River - to his wife, which is also fine.

But he’s also left a rather pointed amount - $69,000 - to his longtime mistress.

What a mean thing to do. Why would anyone do it? The author Kylie Mirmohamadi laughs, and says: “I think that’s just who he is. He thinks it’s fun, a wicked joke. He is cavalier about other people’s feelings. He’s only thinking about himself.”

The artist in question is fictional: his name, in Kylie’s book, is Ken Black, and he’s already dead when we meet him, in her new book, Diving, Falling (Scribe) which I read over the weekend, and just loved.

Diving, Falling by Kylie Mirmohamadi

Black is a painter. He’s brilliant. Everyone agrees on that. He’s brilliant, and bombastic. Brittle. Moody. Occasionally violent, as these broody moody types tend to be. His widow, Leila, remembers having to shield the children from him. She’s endured the humiliation of his many affairs, including sex with her friends.

Now he’s dead, and Diving, Falling is her story and, as I say, I just loved it. I spoke briefly to the author on publication day this week. She’s 56 years old and, she says, just getting started on what she hopes will be a string of novels. Born in Tamworth, she moved to Sydney for university, and then to Melbourne, where she’s long been associated with LaTrobe. Mirmohamadi is her married name. Her husband is Iranian, and they have an adult daughter.

“I could not have written this book before now,” she says, and I think that’s right, because the widow, Leila, is a woman of a certain age, and it just takes time to know what you know. Leila is burying her husband, embarking on a late-in-life love affair, and negotiating with adult children, while mourning the great Ken Black who, I’m told, is “hand on heart, an entirely fictional character. I really wanted to avoid any parallels with a real life artist.” The house he builds for his family is fictional, too, “although I did read a lot about brutalist architecture, which I’m quite obsessed with. There are a few houses in Melbourne that inspired me, but really, it’s a trope house, isn’t it?”

It is. It’s a literary device, to enable us all to look into Ken Black’s life, and deep into Ken Black’s marriage. Bravo, Kylie. What a marvellous debut.

An Interrupted Life by Ida Di Pastena

The dating world has changed since I was a girl. People don’t go to the Blue Light anymore; they go online. If you’re over 50 - post-nup, but pre-app - you’re bound to be a little nervous, but I’ve had quite a few books on the subject cross my desk this year, and everyone seems to be having a ball.

Exhibit a: Jo Peck’s Suddenly Single at Sixty, which I enjoyed very much, since it ends so happily.

More recently, I read Ida Di Pastena’s An Interrupted Life, which doesn’t end with “and they all lived happily ever after” but is lovely nonetheless.

Here is how Ida approached life as a single woman in her late 50s: “Looking back, I have to acknowledge that leaving my twenty-seven year marriage was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. The process of selling, packing and moving house seemed effortless. The family home was sold in a week, and I bought my new house the very next one.”

The real estate agent says: “The universe is looking out for you”.

Ida talked to other woman, and noticed that the older ones looked at her with a “lack of surprise … a quiet understanding that only older women could know.” She came to understand that she was doing something considered brave, in facing the unknown, but she says it took no time for her to adjust to living alone. She moved into her new house in May, and she was on a dating site by July. She was fifty-eight years old, and had no trouble finding matches, including a marvellous man called Jev, with whom she was soon having the time of her life.

But then, as she writes: “Two years into the relationship, things took a different turn; our life together was going to change, and in a way neither of us cold have imagined.”

Jev becomes tremendously unwell. One of her friends, upon hearing the diagnosis, says: “You should walk now.”

But she doesn’t. She stays, and the book is an account of the journey they have to talk together, right to the edge of the river.

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The Commonsense Cookery Book: the Australian Kitchen Classic

On my desk this week: The Commonsense Cookery Book: the Australian Kitchen Classic - and what can I say?

It’s a classic.

First published in 1914, it contains so many useful tips, and when it comes to putting a meal together, it assumes that you know absolutely nothing.

Case in point, on page 95, you’ll find the recipe for Eggs and Bacon:

1 x lean bacon rasher

1 x egg

Then come the instructions, which are basically: cook the bacon, then the egg, in a hot, non-stick pan.

Excellent advice. Cannot fault it.

It’s also got a recipe for Hard-Boiled Eggs (place eggs in boiling water, and simmer). You’ll also find the gloriously old fashioned Crown Roast of Lamb, which always looks so impressive when you bring it to the table; a plain “meat and vegetable stew”; advice for preparing Welsh Rarebit (which I just loved as a kid) and fricasseed rabbit, which nobody has made for 100 years, because rabbits are now pets (not everywhere; I do understand that).

Anyway, it’s ace.

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Spooling Through by Tim Bowden

The ABC broadcaster, writer and former Tassie boy, Tim Bowden, died at his home in Tuncurry NSW on 1 September. He was 87.

Best-known for hosting the ABC-TV program Backchat from 1986 to 1994, Tim wrote 18 published books include Changi Photographer; One Crowded Hour - Neil

Davis, Combat Cameraman; The Backchat Book; The Way My Father Tells It

and Antarctica And Back In Sixty Days.

He also wrote three books on travelling Australia with his wife Ros in their spunky little vehicle, Penelope; and a memoir, called Spooling Through.

Tim received an Order of Australia for services to public broadcasting in

June 1994. In May 1997 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters

from the University of Tasmania.

His final work, on Tasmanian cinematographer, David Brill – Fifty Years on the Front Lines, will be published in 2025.

Tim’s wife, Ros, predeceased him. They are survived by his two children, Barnaby and Guy and their

families. Vale.

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I hope I don’t get into trouble for getting an enthusiastically heterosexual man - the immediate past present of these pages, Stephen Romei - to review a book about women’s sexual fantasies. He sold me on the idea, saying: “Men need to know about these fantasies, so we can try to make them happen.” Okay, I said, that sounds very generous of you. And the review has maybe the best Margaret Thatcher joke ever told. You’ll find it on page 13. I’m pleased to have an extract today from Cristabel Blackman’s new book about her parents, the painter, Charles Blackman, and the writer, Barbara Blackman. The couple divorced in the 1970s, but their love for each other remained strong. Charles died in 2008. Barbara is now 95 and lives in Canberra, where she isn’t in touch with the world so much as the world is in touch with her. See page 17 for some lovely photographs, too. We also have a new poem, some Notable Books, and a look at a new memoir by Moon Unit Zappa, whose name has fascinated me forever. Enjoy.