FESTIVALS AND HOLIDAY READING

Well after three months of returning I have finally got my act together to talk about books, writers and the UWRF 2013.

Been a little out of action due to a knee problem and so comes a sleep problem, a mobility problem and associated pain. But I got there, and just avoided all those venues with vertical steps and no bannisters. So you can guess , Balinese venues are all beautifully cultural, so have LOTS of near vertical stairs, rough pathways and no even ground.I spent most of my time at the Neka Museum venue, because it was the most accessible and easiest negotiate.

OUR CURRENT REFUGEE ISSUES

 The main themes of discussions was the global refugee problems and unfortunately Australia's current handling of the issues are indeed appalling.

The discussion panellists included quite a number of refugees who have miraculously, through hell and high water managed to survive and were resililient and resourceful enough to tell their amazing stories, which had most of the audience in tears.

We also heard from that stoic freedom fighter, JULIAN BURNSIDE, the wonderful ROBYN DE CRESPINY and JENNIFER BYRNE'S powerful and moving interviews with INSPIRING WOMEN , which reminded me of her 60 MINUTE journalistic skills.

The stories were sad and brave, and really emphasised that asylum seekers are NOT CUE-JUMPERS, who want to emigrate to Australia, but are fleeing for their very lives and really don't care where they go, just that all their choices are gone. The heart wrenching stories of seeing family members killed, disappear aor tortured was horrific, and at times you felt a deep despair about our human condition, and a sense of shame about our own country's appalling record of human rights over it's short history.

The saving grace were the survivors themselves, who showed how humans can overcome and conquer their natural feelings of despair and fear, to become very valuable, role-models for all members of our community.

Ben Quilty (Archibald Prize winner) was an incredible speaker, who has been regularly visiting a young man from Australia, convicted for drug smuggling and in Denpasar on death row. He is teaching him how to paint after the young man emailed him for help. (pictured)

. I was fortunate enough to see Sebastian Faulkes at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival last year.  He was the head-liner and I got to go to the Amandari Cocktail Party where he was speaking with the fantastic Nury Vittachi. 

I had also seen him speak at the Jaipur Writers Festival last year, so was able to follow his stories and dialogue for the basis of a question about how he felt about his booksbeing turned into movies (which I knew he didnt like so had to admit it!) But he didnt feel too bad about Charlotte Gray because of Cate Blanchette.

I thought the book was a thousand times better, but agree it was a long book that would be difficult to condense easily. I still don't know whether I like the character Charlotte or not. But the story of the recruitment of smart women as spies during the 60's was really interesting and her commitment to her lover Richard was remarkable.

He is a brilliant writer and great raconteur, who after talking to him afterwards revealed a charming, friendly guy.

So I read Charlotte Gray by the pool after the Festival and enjoyed it immensely.

While resting during the festival, I found a copy of some great holiday reading.

Barbara Kingsolver is well-know for Poisonwood Bible which won the 2005 Penguin/Orange Reading Group Book of the Year. The Lacuna won the 2010 Orange Prize for fiction. I loved this novel.It is set in Mexico in 1935 and is narrated by Harrison Shepherd and interspersed by this personal assistant Violet Banks (both fictional).  Shepherd tells his story about working in the famed muralist and painter, and with the enigmatic Frida Kahlo. Sometimes cook, sometimes secretary , Shepherd loves observing and writing, so records his experiences in diaries and notebooks.

Shepherd inadvertantly casts his lot with art and revolution and his aim to live an invisible life is thwarted. He becomes an enemy of America.....

When exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky arrives, he is involved with the politics, loves and lives of the Riviera household. The portrayals and conversations Kingsolver writes are fictional, but she uses historical material, diaries and books as her basis, and the interchanges are very entertaining and larger than life.

Definitely Margueritas, spicy tapas and their sublime art hanging off your walls!!

Our holiday in Bali, October, 2013 was a bit of a mixed experience:  I was booked in for dentistry at the Sanyan Clinic at the Mansion in Baliwood, Ubud but unfortunately, instead of getting three new crowns, which had fallen out due to dodgey work here, I had to have 3 root canals, and dental follow ups for 2 weeks. I also had a dislocated knee which gave me grief.

Well if you have to have dentistry , why not have it while staying in the beautiful Mansion by an Infinity Pool. (But lets face it a root canal IS  a root canal!)

Nevertheless, I did manage to get to the lovely seaside village of Permuteran in North-West Bali, in between this stuff for some snorkelling and swimming.

I hadn't packed any books, as I intended to purchase some at the Festival, so discovered a tiny library at our hotel, which comprised of discarded back-packer books. I found a well-thumbed novel which seemed perfectly suited to a tropical, lazy location.

THE COMEDIANS -GRAHAM GREENE

The book blurb says it all:

 Set in Haiti under a corrupt black dictatorship. The Comedians is a story about the committed and the uncommitted.

"They play their parts, respectable or shady in the foreground: they experience love affairs rather than love; they have enthusiasms- like fanatical Mr Smith for his vegetarian centre- but not a faith; and if they die, they die like Jones, by accident."

Mr Brown is the narrator, a kind of sardonic onlooker who goes for clandestine affairs in a seemingly non-interested way, who is the owner of a once very Gatsby -like hotel, now empty and decrepit due to the changed conditions in Haiti, Mr Jones is a Walter Mitty type character who rather naively goes out of his depth and Mr Smith is a genuine eccentric, who while obviously is a fanatic about the spiritual, physical and ethic benefits of vegetarianism on world peace, plays out his role in a surprisinglyunexpected way.

The novel is very Graham Greene, with evocative images of the seedy aspects of island life, always at odds  with the American influences, yet both cultures are counter-exploitive.

Even though this book was written over 50 years ago, it was great reading on a timber beach lounge, sipping a strange ginger- flavoured cocktail after a day of snorkelling and swimming, watching the interactions of the Balinese staff with the predominantly European tourists.