Lauren Moffatt Fall 2014

If I was a rich woman, my wardrobe would be made up of Lauren Moffatt. I've loved her stuff for so long now that when she releases new collections, I tend to load up her website and just sigh wisfully into it. (I mean, I would cut off an arm if I could get my hands on this dress from her spring collection). Her new fall one is actually a little less whimsical than normal, showing a real maturity in her as a designer. The silhouettes swing from loose and forgiving, to well-tailored and cinch waisted. I kind of love it a whole lot. You can view her full collection over on her website.

 

 

Sunday Short: Wolf like Me by Antonia Hayes

My inevitable downfall was the sun, the trigger of an intense flare of illness. My friend Bella and I had gone on a holiday to the beach, where we sat on the hot sand all day and read Doris Lessing, and lay out on cheap inflatable lilos tied to a buoy, floating under the Mediterranean sun. We jumped off rugged clay cliffs into the sea, sipped on pineapple-flavoured cocktails, laughed and danced to Europop. After a week our skin was dusky and our hair fell in saltwater waves. But I came home with a fever, my limbs aching, and covered in a violet shock of bruises. One leg was indigo and covered in welts. In the days following the holiday, my body was so heavy that I couldn’t get out of bed for almost a week, and so sore that, incapable of standing up, I vomited in my sheets and lay in a pool of my own sick for several hours until I could move.

There seems to be a surge of writing about illness lately, and it's been interesting to both be privy to it and to write about it myself. 'Wolf like Me' by Antonia Hayes is definitely one of the better pieces I've read, tracing her diagnosis of Lupus in beautifully poetic prose,while writing about something which is, well, not exactly beautiful. She captures the ugliness of illness, the insecurity of something incurable, and the anxiety that accompanies knowing something's wrong without knowing exactly what that is. It's a pretty great piece of writing.  

You can read 'Wolf like Me' over on the Meanjin website.

A Book a Week: 'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller (14/52)

Yossarian is a man on the edge. Or so he'd have you think. Set during the tail end of World War II, Catch-22 trails the lives of an Air Force squadron posted on Pianosa, and fully details the anger, dehumanisation and insanity of war with a satire bite.

Joseph Heller really is a master of satire. This book is equal parts emphatic, hilarious, tragic and rage inducing, both for content and style. I totally get why people love it, hold it up in esteem, but I found it a very frustrating read - repetitive and too long, and some of the best lines of dialogue I've ever read weighed down by heavy exposition. So I guess my feelings are mixed at best. I kind of wanted to get them on paper before I talk about it in my bookclub tonight, because I know for a fact that the two people coming despise the sucker and, while I didn't, I can really see why they did. It's a little too self-aware, a little too long (or a lot too long), and tends to talk around things instead of about them. I liked Yossarian though, and Nately and even Minderbinder and Doc Daneeka, enjoyed my time with them, even if I frequently found myself frustrated by them. Then again, that's mostly the point of Catch-22, exploring the futility, the anguish, the frustration and, well, the catch of it.

3 out of 5 false ailments.

Friday Finds

- Hear Sylvia Plath read her poem The Birthday Present.

- The new Jurassic Park adds more ladies! And awesome ladies too!

- These ritual photos of make-up routines are pretty lovely and fascinating too.

- These 22 photos of foxes are even lovelier.

- And to take you out for the weekend, have 26 majestic dogs.

A Book a Week: 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore (13/52)

In a dystopian United Kingdom, much of the world has been destroyed, politically, culturally and morally. A fascist party called Norsefire has exterminated its opponents in concentration camps and now rules the country as a police state. V stands firmly in opposition. An anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, he begins an violent, intricate campaign to murder his former captives, take down the government and change the new social norm. At his side is his new protege, Evey Hammond, who resists at first, but is quickly swept up in V's mission.

So, hm. I wonder if I'm the wrong sort of reader for this story, a part of the wrong generation maybe lacking the zeal and anger that Moore so thoroughly imbues into this story. It's not that I didn't enjoy it! I did! I found it compelling and interesting and containing some pretty solid writing and great, shadowy art; however, it also reads as a bit camp, a bit too elaborate and a bit too theatrical. I also had a bit of trouble discerning between the wide range of white, dark haired male supporting characters, who all seemed to act and speak the same way. Often, when one was killed off, I had difficulties knowing who, exactly, it was.

V was also not entirely what I expected. I saw the movie years ago, and don't remember him as being quite as ruthless as he is in the graphic novel. He's biting, nasty and totally cutthroat (sometimes literally) in getting his way. The effect is actually a good one, making him less likable and infinitely more so all at once. Bleeding hearts club, this is not, and it's nice to have a hero so unambiguously bad for a change.

Speaking of hearts though, Evey's the big, beating one of this story. Her journey from a nervous, sweet-natured girl unwittingly in a bad situation to a smart, ruthless woman orchestrating bad situations was by far the most compelling storyline in V for Vendetta, even if some of the symbolism used to get there felt a little heavy handed at times (getting rid of the children's toys, the letter, the mask).

It's a good read, but not one that resonated with me as much as I know it has with other readers.

3.5 out of 5 Scarlet Carsons.

Eat Me! Bread and Butter

  
How cute is this?! Totally mod and odd all at once, the Eat Me! Bread and Butter look is a gorgeous collection for a warmer winter, something that totally speaks to me as, y'know, Brisbane doesn't get all that cold, even with winter stretching its legs in July. Anyway, love this. 

You can have a better look at Eat Me! Bread and Butter over on Miss Moss' blog.

 

  

 

  

Sunday Short: The Insiders by Nicholas Brooks

One day, after he’d been doing it for a few years, he borrowed a friend’s camera and asked if I’d come down and take photos. Because I had nothing better to do, and because I secretly admired the way he made everything look so easy, I agreed. I followed him to the break wall at the mouth of the river and, after a quick lesson on how to use the camera, I stood on the rocks and did my best to snap pictures of him as he moved across the waves. Most of the photos I took turned out blurry and poorly framed, as we found out later when we went through them in his bedroom, but there was one that was clear and bright and sharp.

The Flashers series is one that keeps delivering, and The Insiders is a pretty great addition to it. Short, sharp, and remarkably painful, it's a snapshot of two brothers before and after a shattering accident. Nicholas Brooks tight prose lends a simple weight to the situation and, even before the incident, you know this isn't going to be something that ends well.

You can read 'The Insiders' over on the Seizure website.