Anne Summers (1) (1945–)

It might seem like reading a 700 page book about women in another country halfway across the world would have little reward. In fact, I was worried that might be the case. I was wrong about that. In spite of the author's reiterating that this was the world of women in Australia, I found little unfamiliar. Oh, some of the phrases - our Madonna and Whore turned into Damn Whores and God's Police, but the roles and the rhetoric, the societal expectations and the demands made on women were more similar than different. The names of the early pioneers were, of course, not familiar, except when she was discussing the UK and US movements that inspired the Australian feminists. In the end, though, this book was perhaps too depressingly familiar. All that changes is the cities and states, the politicians, and the terms used for familiar objects. It is a valuable resource to look at ways in which seemingly ordinary things, like living in the suburbs, were turned into ways to isolate women and police their roles. Oh, and I do much prefer the term they use for domestic violence - wife bashing sounds so much more authentic than wife battering, and doesn't bring up those odd images of women deep fried by Long John Silver's.… (mer)

We have made a conscious effort to read more non-fiction this year, so our first choice was this investigative journey from Anne Summers.
Firstly, we found the title slightly misleading … implying a more mother/daughter narrative. Instead, Summers sets her nose to the grindstone trying to uncover the circumstances around two portraits her mother sat for in her childhood for the artist Constance Stokes.

Those of us who finished this book felt the author lost her way. And although we found the world of Australian artists in Melbourne during the 20s and 30s extremely interesting, and Stokes herself an intriguing character, the genealogy of the art collector Lydia was drawn out and dreary with little to connect us.
Why Summers felt she needed to tread this path we are not sure, but Vanessa felt that the author and Lydia shared some personality traits which could explain her fascination with this Russian immigrant.
As a group, there was little love for this book. Some believed the writing poorly thought out with nothing to set it apart or make it anything special. Cathy went into the book with high hopes but found it to be not what she had hoped. Although readable, she felt the author went off on tangents that did not really interest her.

To us, Summers seems to have written this book for the express purpose of recording her findings during the search for her mother’s lost portrait (the whole existence of which we are not even confident still survives). Regardless of her reasons or rationale, our group could not rate this read higher than five to six and would only describe it as a put-downable coffee table book (Mary’s words). There was however, some interest in her highly respected reputation as a writer and we will no doubt be picking up something else of hers in the near future.… (mer)