When does a story become your own?

Your next book club read: 'I Want Everything' and tips on traveling with kids.

Dearest Readers,

I hope you are surviving (and thriving) in this very chilly winter weather. It has been absolutely freezing in Sydney.

The past few weeks I’ve been consumed with work, writing a second draft of my novel and preparing to leave for Europe on Wednesday morning. This trip to Europe will be the longest I’ve been away from my kids which is both terrifying and liberating.

Whilst discussing this dilemma with some friends I realized that this will be the first international flight alone in almost 8 years. As a lot of you will know, we used to travel a lot for my husband’s job, meaning we flew (on average) every two weeks - internationally and domestically.

It’s the most common question I get asked from new mum friends (as I was the first of us to have children). They are baffled as to how I did it: long haul flights solo including one from Paris to LA and then a week in a hotel alone with my then, six month old. The hotel, I should mention, was The Mondrian, which had blasting pool party music from dusk until dawn. Not the best environment for a six month old baby!!!!!!

Len and I at the Mondrian buffet breakfast trying to keep our eyes open. RIP my youthful skin.

My tips for those curious friends are these: have enough snacks, don’t expect to sleep, walk around as much as you can, drink loads of water, and never rely on the baby sleeping in the bassinet - turbulence will always wreck your best laid plans. Bring spare changes of clothes - for everyone. Do NOT give them sugar either unless you want hyperactive kids for half an hour and then ‘screaming the house down tantrums’ for hours after . There’s nowhere to run on a plane, despite your toddler’s best attempts to use the aisle as their own personal running track.

Let the hosties take your kid whilst you go to the bathroom. Don’t try and be a hero and have them on your lap whilst trying to contort pants down your legs.

Been there, done that, traumatized.

I used to breastfeed both boys on takeoff and landing until they were 2 to make sure their ears didn’t hurt. I let them sleep on me, stuffed them full of chicken nuggets before we boarded (which I still do) and gave them free rein of their iPads.

Kids will always feed off your energy so try and keep calm, even though there will be times when you will want to scream yourself when your plane is delayed or they vomit all over your clothes and you have none to change into (it’s happened to me so many times). We once boarded a flight from NYC to Sydney and Lennon got gastro as the plane was taking off.

Don’t get too worked up over judgy people who aren’t thrilled about having a family next to them. It used to make me very anxious but then I reframed to think how sad it must be for a person to be so angry at a baby who hasn’t learnt to speak yet.

I coined the saying ‘Travel days are patient days’ and we use that phrase every time we get in the car for a long drive or on a plane trip to Perth. It works.

So there you have it - nothing revolutionary. No expensive kid mattresses (which I have bought, mind you), no ride-on wheelie luggage (also purchased) or busy books (bought many in my time). Just patience.

Good vibes and patience.

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I’m cooking chilli con carne as I write this, darting between the kitchen and the dining room table. Today I finished the novel ‘I Want Everything’ by Dominic Amerena and my mind has been racing trying to work out how to talk about this excellent book.

The synopsis is this:

The legendary career of reclusive cult author Brenda Shales remains one of Australia’s last unsolved literary mysteries. Her books took the world by storm before she disappeared from the public eye after a mysterious plagiarism case. But when an ambitious young writer stumbles across Brenda at a Melbourne pool, he realises the scoop of a lifetime is floating in front of him: the truth behind why she vanished without a trace. The only problem? He must pretend to be someone he’s not to trick the story out of her.

I could talk about how the atmospheric Amerena’s descriptions of Melbourne are a story in themselves or how beguiling the character of Brenda Shales is - a reclusive author of previous success, now in a nursing home.

But what’s stayed with me most, and what I want to share without giving too much away, are the questions the book poses as it moves along:

What does it mean to create something entirely original? Who owns a story - its’ teller or the person it’s about? Can art ever be separated from the artist? And how far is too far in the pursuit of truth, especially when ambition and ego are the driving factors of the work?

Writers are in the business of leading a reader down a path, and if they get it right, making them feel as though they have stumbled upon a secret gate halfway down the road. The fun of being the reader is trying to guess what might be behind the gate.

I love how elegantly Dominic Amerena has executed what is, at its heart, a tricky and ambitious literary mystery. The novel is a satisfying excursion into an ethical dilemma, Amerena being careful not to hand holding the reader too much.

Unlike ‘Audition’ by Katie Kimatura or ‘Yellowface’ by R.F.Kuang, two thematically adjacent books, ‘I Want Everything’ is deeply satisfying novel. I really recommend it for book clubs as there is SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT.

What are you guys reading and what do I need to take to read on the plane with me ?

Happy Reading!

Jessie

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