Andrea Goldsmith (1)Rezensionen

The wait for a new novel from Andrea Goldsmith is nearly over: her ninth novel The Buried Life is due for release from Transit Lounge in March 2025, so I need to get cracking with the temptations of her backlist!

The last of her print editions on my TBR* was Facing the Music, from 1994, and of course I was always going to love it because I enjoy novels that explore the creative life.

The book description asks:
Facing the Music explores the dark side of ambition and the ambiguous passions that surround creativity. What is a fair price to for an artistic life? And who should pay?

Who indeed? Who pays the price for genius of any kind?

This is a topic that arises again in Goldsmith's 2013 novel, The Memory Trap, As I wrote in my review,

Ramsay Blake is a virtuoso pianist with an international career, but his obsession with his music makes him narcissistic, selfish and purposefully helpless. His stepfather George Tiller is lured into his orbit and becomes his helpmeet, pushing aside all others including Ramsay’s brother Sean. Zoe has no hope of reciprocal love from Ramsay, but she pursues it all the same, rationalising his more-than-appalling behaviour towards her, and damaging her relationship with Elliot.

Why do people do this?

There is a scent to success and it is wondrously powerful; it works like a pheromone on others, while acting as a catalyst for new work. In time, the successful person tends to accommodate to success — which matters not in the least as long as the work continues. (Facing the Music, p.3)

Though there are instances of men taking on this role (e.g. John George Robertson, the husband of author Henry Handel Richardson), women have been doing this support work since forever and not just in the creative industries. They support their men to be butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers; to be Big Deals in politics or in the corporate world and they're usually doing the pack work in a small business too. In times past, it was just expected of women; today, it ought to be a conscious matter of choice and an equal partnership.

Duncan Bayle is an awful character. Hot-housed by his mother and taken on by Juliet who sees herself as a partner in his musical career as a composer of note, he is selfish and unreasonable and takes it for granted that the world exists to nurture his genius. Juliet is the one who provides the steady income; who doubles as his secretary/manager; and who (of course) is also the woman who takes care of the domestic responsibilities. His extra-marital liaisons are routine; his failure to acknowledge her is habit. And when their daughter Anna finally arcs up about Duncan steamrollering her career choices, Juliet acquiesces in the estrangement without a murmur. She puts up with it all because she thinks he is a genius.

The reader, familiar with the biographies of cranky musicians like Beethoven, ponders the issue: it's easier to think that Duncan should not exploit his wife and child when his career is faltering, when his compositions are not very good. Let him buy and iron his own shirts, right? But what if he's a genius like Beethoven? Should someone like Beethoven take a turn at the washing up or cooking dinner? Unsupported genius might mean less of — or even the loss of — magnificent music.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/17/facing-the-music-1994-by-andrea-goldsmith/

The author has managed to open the door into the lives of immigrants and see into their past to reveal motivations, ambitions, loves, losses and secrets.

Add a twist of family dynamics and you've got a compelling read that unfolds until the end!

The story starts out in Leningrad where we meet Galina Kogan on the day her mother, her only family, dies. Before her death, Galina and her mother had decided to emigrate, taking advantage of Gobachev's policy of allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Walking home, Galina stumbles and collides with a tall young man, who helps her up and apologizes profusely in a mixture of Russian and English. He introduces himself as Andrew Morrow. He explains that he is Australian. He is an artist specializing in mosaics and is assisting on the restoration of famous mosaics at a nearby church. He gives Galina his business card.

Several months later, Galina emigrates. Officially, the only possible destination is Israel, but Galina wants to go to an English speaking country. On a whim, she decides to go to Australia, the home of the young man she collided with on the day her mother died. Officially, Soviet Jews are only permitted to emigrate to Israel, but once outside the Soviet Union, many pick other destinations. Galina is stranded in Italy as a refugee for some time. While in Italy, Galina sees a news reel about Italian emigrants living in the town of Carleton, outside Melbourne. Eventually she receives permission to emigrate to Australia.

Once there, Galina lives with a kindly Orthodox Jewish couple who assist emigres. She obtains two part time jobs working as an artist. She eventually moves out on her own and looks for housing in Carleton. She enjoys her new living place, but feels lonely. She digs out Andrew's business card and calls him.

That is the real beginning of the story. Andrew is Galina's guide to life in Australia. She meets his parents and his mother becomes a sort of aunt to her. His father gives her work as an illustrator. Increasingly, Galina becomes enmeshed in their lives. And then Galina is visited by someone from her Soviet past.

The middle of the book is well written, but there are too many subplots and some of them are not believable. The book ends abruptly with several plot lines unresolved. The ending feels rushed and it almost feels as if the author didn't know how she wanted the story to end. So, well worth reading, but ultimately unsatisfying.

This was very, very good, once I got into the flow of it. The story starts out in Leningrad where resident Galina meets visiting Australian artist Andrew and they strike up a conversation. Andrew gives her his card and a while later when Galina is deciding she has to leave Gorvachev's Russia, of all the places she thinks she might want to exile to, she picks Melbourne solely because that is where that nice young man lived. It takes them another while to finally get together, but Galina comes to enjoy her adventures with Andrew while he quickly falls in love with her, as do his parents. Their story does not progress quickly at all but is an interesting one nonetheless. I enjoyed reading about his art, mosaics, and her many talents as a budding illustrator. Much is made of the contrasts between Leningrad and Melbourne, one being that Galina is trying to be a modern woman in a new country but her traditions and mores keep coming back to haunt her.

A good portion of the book is spent on Andrew's parents, their relationship, their midlife crises, and their extra-curricular activities. I loved the mother, a housewife with many regrets about not having a career; and her hobby of collecting old letters was fascinating. Even in their chapters, Galina is ever present and having an effect on their lives.

It is one of those endings where you have to imagine how a couple of things will turn out. I am OK with that. Many thanks to Scribe Publishing and LibraryThings.com for my advanced copy.

I thought I reviewed this book, but must not have finished the review, so.......
Overall I enjoyed the book but for some reason did not find that I became involved with the characters. Some did not seem to me to be really true to life. The ending also left a lot to be resolved.

When Galina Kogan’s mother dies, she leaves Gorbachev’s Russia for a life in Australia. Originally, she and her mother had planned to emigrate to America together, but her mother’s death and a chance encounter with a young Australian, Andrew Morrow, has Galina making an impulsive change of plans. Melbourne becomes her final destination and she’s faced with making a life on her own in a strange city. But Galina isn’t the only character in Andrea Goldsmith’s novel experiencing upheaval and life change. Both Sylvie and Leonard Morrow, Andrew’s parents, experience their own. In fact, Andrew seems the least affected and in some ways, the most marginal of characters in the book, yet it was he who set everything in motion.

I found so much to like about Invented Lives, my first Goldsmith novel. I thought Galina was finely drawn, as was her transition from Leningrad to Melbourne. Her entire experience as a émigré seemed meant to speak across decades, even though her circumstances could not be totally dissimilar from today’s migrant’s world. My only real complaint is that most of the particularly significant action took place in the latter half of the book and that said, the narrative, to me, would have been far richer had the stories come sooner.

Before going forward, I would like to thank LibraryThing for selecting me to receive one of the advanced copies, as well as Scribe for participating in EarlyReview. I look forward to doing more of this in the future! This is a more negative review. Full review below. Thank you for reading.

From ancient Homer to modern Joyce, the theme of exile has been one allowing for a grand gesture of exhibition; a grand voyage through various struggles and their successive moments of overcoming. Andrea Goldsmith’s novel, Invented Lives, unfortunately, does not fly nearly as high as these classic authors’ works; to be blunt, it reads as though it barely wishes to get off the ground. I was intrigued by the themes of exile and loss as advertised in the description of the novel because of my weighty admiration for Joyce and this was one of the driving forces behind my interest in pursuing this novel. Joyce and many of his Irish contemporaries had produced exquisite works of literature due to circumstances and I thought this novel would be a little treat in 2019 where literature tells a much different story than it did 100 years ago. But the distance and time does mean all novels must be a disappointment. Little did I know, the novel would let me down in ways I was not prepared for. Let us indulge.

Invented Lives tells the story of Galina Kolga’s conflicting move to Australia, her mixed-emotions love encounters with Andrew Morrow, and the dissolving marriage of Andrew’s parents, Sylvie and Leonard. Set in the late 1980’s, readers are introduced to many sign-of-the-times topics which ring as true to readers of today as they may have in the 80’s: homosexuality, feminism, the evolving value of love vs. independence, and – for Galina, most importantly – the heavy issue of leaving a troubled home to find a better life for oneself. Exile, immigration, refuge. Each character in the novel can be said to take ownership to one of the issues listed (Leonard-homosexuality; Sylvie-feminism, love vs. independence; uncle Kolga – familial constructs). I believe Goldsmith was shooting too high by trying to include all of these heavy themes as major plotlines. Justly so, the language and narrative technique are almost as messy as the heavily packed subject board. At certain moments, I found myself noting the beauty of lengthy descriptions; however, next to this I scribbled in the margins: where is this talent in the rest of the novel? Galina shares feelings of confusion and being lost upon arriving in Australia; in some aspect, by trying to create a world that she cannot create because it is not first-hand experience, Goldsmith’s prose feels lost in a similar sense. For a specific passage on this thought, see the final paragraph of chapter six. Perspective is key, yes; you are what you know.

The most unbearable components of this novel are the rushed unraveling of events and the corny, imperfect dialogues. In fact, much of the pages in this novel are weak, corny, distracted, and rushed. Perhaps I am far too removed from the life of romance to find any of this sweet, but the relationship of Andrew and Galina is extremely putrid until the last three pages of the novel, for reasons mentioned above. Breaking their connection is the over-dramatized and far too uninteresting character of Galina’s uncle who forces himself into Galina’s life. If Goldsmith wanted this familial allegiance which Galina feels obligated to uphold– here the Uncle-Niece dependency – to be a takeaway, she failed in this remark. I was scoffing and scrunching my nose at every turn of the page by the time Galina found herself catering to every need of the grimy intruder. The amount of distress she endured to satisfy her evil uncle is not something worth applauding. Next, we also must remember the scattered relationship of Leonard and Winston: Winston’s departure and never-to-be-seen-again digression and the ambiguity of Leonard’s test results are just a few of the elements which remain unresolved. What happened to Winston? Does Leonard actually have HIV, or is he wishing to celebrate with his wife because his test is negative?

Returning to Andrew and Galina as a pair, note that much of the conflict between these two is so uncomfortable that it feels unnatural. In one of the few arguments they get into regarding art (Andrew is a mosaicist, Galina an illustrator), the conversation is so silly and unbelievable that I am unsure why it was allowed to be sent to print. The only redeeming qualities of the narrative come earlier in the novel. I think Goldsmith does a crafty job of bringing two souls together in the first few chapters. The distance between Andrew and Galina can be felt and mid-way through the novel one just knows that they are close, connected, and happy with each other. Two souls, both who left home (Galina to Australia, Andrew on leave in Russia), reunited to create a world of their own in a new space.

By the time one might think this novel is about Andrew and Galina’s growth as friends – or lovers – the narrative does a 180 and becomes what I would take away as the most delightful arcs of the novel: the struggles of Sylvie and Leonard. If I personally could have spoken to Goldsmith while she was writing this novel, I would have tried as hard as one might try to encourage the novel be scrapped entirely and be re-written as an epistolary think-piece of the rise and downfall of Sylvie as a woman and her relationship with her husband, Leonard. Invented Lives presents plentiful heavy-hearted moments for expansion and revelation which, had they been properly expanded upon, could have made this novel a 5-star work. I would recommend this book to a middle-aged reader who has nothing better to do with their time. I might even consider cleaning the house before picking up this novel.

This is one that I had a lot of trouble getting through. I did not feel much for any of the characters, and did not know where it was heading. If you are interested in Soviet Jewish history I guess you may find it more compelling. I thought it was going to be a love story between Galina and Andrew and then it just veered off into a detailed story about his parents and their whole history, then it went back to Galina's now passed on mother and her story. I just got more and more confused as things went on. I guess you could look at it as a study of people who aren't sure who they are, are trying to get through life as best as they can, but there is really nothing happy or funny about the people involved. It was not my cup of tea.

This was an early reviewer book, and I enjoyed it overall The book is mostly about a young Russian Jew, who emigrates to Australia in 1986. I appreciated that the book made me think about that experience, what it would be like to be exiled, and learning to adapt to a new country. There is a side story about an Australian family, and some of the secrets that can be part of a marriage. Goldsmith's writing is competent, but she does a bit too much telling rather than showing, so the narrative often feels heavy handed and forced. However, the plot and setting were interesting enough to keep me happily reading.½

I received a copy of this novel courtesy of LibraryThing Early Reviewers (giveaway) and the publisher.

I am not the target audience for this book, and that became even more painfully obvious as I read on. I found the main cast of characters (Galina, Andrew, Slyvie, and Leonard) to be one-dimensional, self-absorbed, absolutely miserable, and all adept to the same kind of maladapted learned helplessness, unable or unwilling to go against the inertia of their lives. They never communicate, and thus, never find effective ways to change their misery. I know they never communicate, because there is a minimum of dialog in this book, and what dialog there is is mostly emotionless intellectual arguments that might appeal on some cerebral level to those filled with the same sort of existential angst as these characters, but which I found to be incredibly dull at best and eye-rollingly cringey at worst.

There is nothing that actually ties these characters together. Galina and Andrew have a chance encounter in 1985 in Leningrad, and from that one moment in time Galina decides to move to Melbourne. Not because she has any feelings for Andrew, but because she knows that he's from there. From that one encounter, Andrew constructs an entire relationship with Galina in his head, to the point of creepy obsessiveness, that only his crippling social anxiety keeps at bay. Galina knows that he's in love with her but she doesn't share his feelings; she just never bothers to tell him and assumes that one day he'll either figure it out for himself or understand anyway. And how exactly Sylvie and Leonard, Andrew's parents, become enamoured of Galina is never really made clear. We're told, rather than shown, about their interactions, just like we're told, rather than shown, that these people live in 1980s Australia. Historical events are noted in the backdrop but there is no link to our characters. For all that the historical events of the 1980s matter or have an impact on this story, these characters might as well be living their lives in 2019.

As for the secondary characters, they border on stereotypes: the lithe Winston, terrified of AIDS (which apparently doesn't exist in Asia, his home territory); Mikhail, the crusty Soviet turncoat who crushes niece Galina's spirit the second he appears in her life.

There is no growth for these characters over the course of the novel. There is plenty of change, most of it plot-driven, but no growth. They are just as miserable at the end as they are at the beginning, but for different reasons.

The overarching theme of this book is exile. I know that's the overarching theme because we are hit over the head with it time and again. While these characters wallow in their misery, they have long internal monologues about how isolated they feel and how that compares to physical exile from a home country. I found this all quite insulting; there is a way to write an entertaining story and still be able to have motifs and themes shine through. I don't need the author to bash me over the head with it to "get it."

I did not enjoy this book at all; I found myself wondering, what was the point of this novel, other than the define the various ways exile can isolate a person's life? I already knew that, I didn't need to read 330 pages of miserable people being miserable and not opening their mouths to do anything about that misery to understand that.

It's hard to express the intense pleasure of reading Andrea Goldsmith's new novel, Invented Lives. It's not just that it's an absorbing novel that held my interest from start to finish, it's also a book filled with insights that will stay with me for a long time.

While the central character in Invented Lives is Galina Kagan, a Russian émigré to Melbourne, and the novel focusses on her feelings of loss and not belonging, there are other kinds of exile in the novel. One of the most interesting is that of Sylvie Morrow. This older woman, mother to Andrew Morrow who's fallen in love with Galina, is reminiscent of Philippa Finemore in Goldsmith's Modern Interiors (1991). Like Philippa, Sylvie suffered a kind of exile imposed by her gender, because women of her generation were excluded from full participation in society. She was too young to experience the liberating effects of WW2 on women's work, but in adulthood was just the right age to be relegated to postwar domesticity. And just as Philippa finds widowhood liberating, Sylvie in middle age experiences a different kind of widowhood that opens up new worlds for her long-stifled energies too.

Galina's courage is the catalyst for Sylvie's metamorphosis. It is the 1980s, and Gorbachev's reforms in the USSR have enabled Galina's emigration from Leningrad in the wake of her mother's death. Lidiya had been the sole surviving member of her family, the others having fallen victim to Stalin's Terror. But as secular Jews even under perestroika Lidiya and Galina still had few prospects in anti-Semitic Russia, and they were sceptical of Soviet reforms. So when restrictions on Jewish travel were relaxed, mother and daughter submitted requests to leave, knowing that they were signing over the right to change their minds. When Lidiya dies, the bereft Galina grasps the opportunity anyway, and comes to Melbourne, chosen as her destination because of her chance encounter with Andrew Morrow.

Andrew was in Leningrad to study mosaics when he helped Galina to her feet after she took a tumble on the icy pavement. You'll need to view the slide show on my travel blog to see these stunning mosaics in the Church of Spilled Blood in what is now St Petersburg. But about half way through the novel, Galina and Andrew have a little tiff about the power of art. She's just beginning to forge a career as a children's book illustrator and he's an art academic specialising in mosaics. In a throwaway line that he doesn't really believe, he says that art never saves lives. She, the child of a survivor of the WW2 Siege of Leningrad, knows better. She knows from her mother that inspiring broadcasts of Olga Berggolt's poetry gave hope and that she was a symbol of strength and determination to survive; she knows that Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was written in honour of the besieged city and that its performance by starving musicians gave the city energy instead of despair. Galina knows that Akhmatova's 'Requiem' in the prison lines at the height of Stalin's Terror told people that the world would know of these terrible times, and she knows that people risked their lives to read samizdat in post-Stalinist times because they knew it would make them stronger.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/06/24/invented-lives-by-andrea-goldsmith/

Andrea Goldsmith is one of my favourite authors. I loved Reunion, and I loved The Memory Trap even more. This year she has a new book called Invented Lives (Scribe, April) so I wanted to read one of her books beforehand that I’ve had on my shelves since (dare I admit it?) 2008. I’d read The Prosperous Thief when it was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2003, and so when I found Modern Interiors (1991) in a second-hand bookshop, I knew it was a steal for $5.00. It turned out to be the perfect antidote to two books I’d borrowed and expected to like, which today went back to the library unread. This is when ‘standby’ books come into their own, when I’ve had a disappointment and I want to be sure that the next book is going to be good reading.
Modern Interiors has the tagline behind its rich façade the modern interior may not be all it pretends, but this book is a frank exploration into family obligations. What do we owe them, and what do they owe us? How do we deal with the pressure to hold families together even when they don’t deliver even the most rudimentary satisfactions and you don’t share values that are fundamental to identity and integrity? I thought about this just yesterday when the ABC reported on a survey about the psychological damage done by the Same-Sex Marriage survey, because I have a friend still traumatised by learning that his family didn’t care, and voted No.
Families can be thoughtless and cruel, and they can be exploitative. In Modern Interiors, there are two women, one old and one young, who have problematic families. Amy Vaughan is young, and has cast off her mother and sister because they are toxic human beings; Philippa Finemore is old and rich, and she struggles with the fact that two of her three children are awful people who just want to use her.
But while Amy feels she is better off without her family, she still needs the kind of support that families are supposed to provide. She has endured years of soul-destroying confidence-sapping misery which still blights her young life because she is afraid of relationships of any kind. She needs a mentor, and sometimes, she needs mothering. Philippa, OTOH, appears to have everything: money, confidence, comfort and style—and a nice man who’s comes into her life since widowhood. One of her children, the one she likes because he is accepting of her recent choices, is far away in London and though she misses him, she’s happy that he’s fulfilling his dreams. But her other children are openly hostile to her new independence—and deeply resentful that she is spending what they regard as their money on a charitable foundation and a new home at an inconvenient distance when baby-sitting is required.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/26/modern-interiors-by-andrea-goldsmith/

The book drew me in from the beginning but about three-quarters of the way through there was a bit of a lull. The end was a bit confusing, so I did have to read it twice but overall a decent, interesting book.½

Reunion is bursting with ideas, which is what keeps it interesting when the four friends central to its narrative have their frequent moments of loathsomeness. Many great intellects are mentioned (making me wish my too-short reading life had left me familiar with their works, rather than just their names). Though some of the characters (particularly Connie) seem a bit shallow, I liked how Goldsmith let the story unfurl slowly and unexpectedly.½

This explores the lives of four university friends covering themes of
friendship, love , power and betrayal. It is set in Melbourne and played out
against some of the city's famous landmarks. This is such an interesting
novel , intelligent writing that is full of ideas as the author by shifting
the narrators details the inner lives and thoughts of her characters.

Themes of betrayal, obsession, delusion and guilt underlie Reunion, which like Goldsmith’s other novels is a novel of ideas, driven by characters with rich personalities. Babyboomers all, four friends meet again for the first time as a group after many years abroad. Their university friendship has been sustained however by regular contact, and in the case of Ava and Jack, a twenty-year correspondence. Ava’s a successful novelist with writer’s block; Jack’s a B-grade backwater academic suddenly in demand because of Islamic terrorism. Helen is a molecular biologist worried about her work being used for bioterrorism, and Conrad (Connie) is a philosopher, a sort of Aussie Alain de Botton, with books and TV shows to his credit but in a moral maelstrom of his own making. See the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/reunion-by-andrea-goldsmith-2/