“May a cat eat him and may the devil eat the cat.”

The mountain has eyes. Walking the Postmans Track, Rocky Cape National Park, Tasmania. January 2021.

Paulette Jiles works magic with her writing. Much like the marvellous News of the World, the story within Simon the Fiddler flows like molasses from a spoon. Despite moments of violence and hardship, and its Civil War setting, this is a surprisingly gentle book.

Given the centrality of music – we follow Simon and his companion musicians through Texas at the tail end of the war and immediate years of the Reconstruction – the text's lyrical beauty is unsurprising. While Simon himself is hot-tempered and ill-suited to company, he is no misanthrope, and I found myself warming to him as the story progressed.

Much as life, the journey is a meandering and unpredictable one. Trials and tribulations abound, love is sighted and perused, sadness and grief felt, and the converted goal of just being left alone to play music and carve out a life always seems a ways away.

Jiles constructs a Texas under military law vividly to the reader. The heat, danger and opportunity are rich on every page. The central love story struck me as sweet and worthy, resembling the folk tales of virtuous maidens trapped behind high walls.

It strikes me as unfair to compare the tale of Simon Boudlin with News of the World, as many have done. Yes, this is the lessor book, but most books are indeed inferior to that one, so one must treat it on its own merits. Simon the Fiddler is indeed more old-fashioned and sentimental in tone, but one should expect that in what is ultimately a love story.

As the story approaches the necessary climax, in which Simon’s temper and the injustice of the periods must inevitably collide, I was not let down by the conclusion. The subtle nod to the News of the World was appreciated, and it warmed my heart to feel that these stories exist within the same universe.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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