It's hard to imagine how people kept a long-distance relationship going before Internet telephony and other forms of instant communication. Liz Byrski wonders the same in her new book: "How did people manage before telephones, before email, before reasonably efficient postal services?" Somehow, they did - Liz certainly did. Remember Me is a memoir of her experience of first love. In 1962, aged seventeen and living in England, she met a thirty-one year old German. It was love at first sight, and the moment was to influence the rest of her life. "...there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. I turned around and you were there. In that moment everything froze. I put my hand on the back of the couch to steady myself." Despite the instant and profound attraction between Liz and Karl - and, nearly forty years later, Liz recalls it with a powerful blend of clarity and emotion - it was doomed to fail. He was divorced, foreign, older; she was young, innocent and powerless. Few around them approved of the relationship and they all thought they knew what was best for the seventeen year-old. Her parents ("generous, warm-hearted conservative people, hanging grimly on to what they had created,") met Karl and liked him but forbade Liz from going to America with him. How could the relationship not end in disaster? Yet, in the first surprise of this book, it's ended by an unexpected twist, instead of the pressure of social convention - and Liz is heartbroken. Thirty-seven years later, Liz Byrski is a successful writer and broadcaster living in Australia. She has two sons and is a grandmother. She has worked hard and reaped the rewards - she knows and is known. But something isn't right: "Sadness is so exhausting and a lifetime of it seems suddenly to have crept up on me and taken me by surprise," she writes. Her family and friends think she needs an adventure - she'll settle for two weeks in England. She gets both. At her childhood home an envelope is waiting for her. "...I stare at the handwriting. Something strange happens to my heartbeat...everything is a blur, I can see nothing but the words on the card, hear nothing but the ringing in my head..." The envelope is from Karl - and Liz's life is turned on its head. Soon afterwards they speak on the phone: 'Remember me?' he asks. They arrange to meet - and again, people close to Liz wonder if it's the right thing to do. The reunion is a success...but, nearly forty years on, can either of them adjust to life with their first love again? There are as many challenges and obstacles as there are attractions. Only the flintiest heart will be unmoved by this tale of love lost and then regained. It's an epic love story, and recalled - and told - with great skill and an almost unbearable honesty. But Remember Me also transcends the romance genre. Early on in her tale, Liz wonders what effect her first love has had on her life. She longed for a great romantic love, but never found it again - did her need for love become a need for work? If so, how does Liz Byrski, outspoken and prominent feminist, reconcile her awakened feelings and the uncertainties that accompany them with the received wisdom of ideology? There are other compelling contrasts. One is the gulf between the emotional and the intellectual. It's represented by Liz's father and Karl colluding on the boundaries of her sexual freedom in 1962 - when she learns of it nearly forty years on, she is angry. But could it have been any different? Can the past and present be separated? In this memorable book, which is so much more than a simple memoir, Liz Byrski has written an extraordinary narrative that is wrenching and profoundly affecting. Remember Me will find a place in Australian literature and in the hearts of thousands.

Sent Forth a Dove provides an insight into the first European ship recorded in history to visit Australia and the work by a team of people in Fremantle, Australia to build a replica of the ship. This book brings together little known parts of the Duyfken story, including background history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). A good read for students of maritime history, shipbuilding and the Aboriginal history of Australia.

I gave this book 2 stars because I loved his other book _Cloudstreet_ and find the author to be amazingly talented.

Unfortunately, I could not get past page 82 in this slow, ponderous story. I gave it multiple efforts but found myself lacking any interest in these characters or their gripes. I initially felt an alignment with Queenie and backed her spontaneous efforts to protest the slaughtering of whales which is the only thriving buisness in the town she lives in. Her actions angered most of the individuals of the town and her newly wed husband, Cleveland. Cleveland is a low-aspiring fellow, not originally from the small whaling town, Angelus. He is pre-occupied by scrapbooks and reading the diaries of the town's expired elder Nathaniel Coupar who is Queenie's great grandfather. Meanwhile, her father, Daniel is a miserably depressed grump who has issues with everyone in town but can't express himself. Then we have another despicably repulsive realtor, Des Pustling, whom I thought could disgust me enough to dredge up some kind of interest to keep me turning the pages. Other bits of folk weave irritatingly in and out, but not enough to hold fast the effort.
I hate to give up on a book, and can not even remember the last time I did, so I kept hoping the story would pick up and grab me, but it just was so much work to stay interested.
There are too many characters to keep track of, and the timeline flips back and forth which was very distracting.

Meanwhile, I am moving on to _Dirt Music_ and _the Riders_; also by Tim Winton with higher expectations.

Readers who are familiar with Tim Winton's work probably know him from Cloudstreet and The Riders, his two most successful adult novels (he also writes children's books). The Riders was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994.

Shallows is one of Winton's first novels, published back in 1984. It won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in Australia. If you have read Winton before, you will love this book. If you are new to Winton, you will soon be seeking out his other works.

The action of the novel takes place in the small Western Australian whaling town of Angelus. Most of the action takes place in 1978, though the novel covers events from 1831, when the town was founded, right up until 1978. The novel centers on the whales which have been hunted in the area for close to 150 years and are close to extinction. A group of international activists arrive in the town, intent on closing down the whaling operations. The activists draw a lot of media attention to Angelus, and a lot of heat from the locals, who are as protective of their jobs and lifestyles as the greenies are of the whales.

A number of local characters find themselves embroiled in these events. Daniel Coupar is the grandson of one of the Nantucket-born whalers, Nathaniel, who founded the town. Daniel, widowed and nearing death, is trying to make sense of his life. His granddaughter, Queenie, has married a no-hoper, Cleve Cookson, who is fascinated by the story of Nathaniel Coupar and devotes many hours to reading his journals about life as a whaler. Queenie often dreams about whales, and finds herself drawn in to the green crowd, much to the chagrin of her husband, grandfather, and most of the townsfolk. She becomes instrumental in the crusade to stop whaling, pitting herself against her community, her husband, and 150 years of family tradition.

While the novel raises many questions about whaling and activism, it raises just as many about ancestry, family responsibility, destiny, and social responsibility.

Winton's prose is, as always, stunning. He has a remarkable talent for conjuring up jaw-dropping prose without getting complicated. He has a wonderful knack for dialogue, especially the Australian vernacular. Non-Australians may struggle with some of the unfamiliar language, while Australians will chuckle with recognition. Winton tells his story from many points of view, creating a complete and balanced tale. While the underlying message might be pro-environmentalist, the whalers and the real estate moguls get their say too. Shallows is a beautiful, rewarding novel, well-worth seeking out.

This book proposes that some groups of early Dutch sailors and passengers, marooned in Western Australia, had considerable influence on some of the Aboriginal cultures of the central west coast of WA. A fairly high proportion of the evidence offered is linguistic, and it is this which I am best equipped to assess. The author is a WA identity and amateur scholar who has achieved popular publication on linguistic and other issues. In this case his linguistic material has been informed by extensive reading in the discipline, and - although his wish to demonstrate his case is obvious - he has apparently made an honest effort to deal with the technicalities. But his treatment nevertheless displays various misconceptions, and in some respects it appears simply naive. These include: popular but long outdated comparative linguistic methodology, use of minority/near-fringe/outdated theories, very loose/inaccurate treatment of phonetics/phonology and spelling, implausible proposals on specific cases, some quite large factual errors, etc. (If some of these features are in fact deliberate, with a view to an intended popular readership, this should be made clear.) The upshot of these shortcomings is that Gerritsen certainly overstates his case. The Aboriginal languages in question do seem to have some unusual features; but in most instances the case that these involve Dutch influence is not strong. There must also be concerns in respect of the degree of cultural and linguistic influence which such groups might be expected to have in such a situation. (But that is not to deny that Dutch and Dutch-speakers might have had SOME influence in the area.)

I found the book very interesting from several prospectives. Thr "Grey Sparrows" lived an incredibly hard life and had a marked dedication to their mission. The dedication began with an idea of the founderess, Mabel Elizabeth Anne Hodges while she was a member of another Anglican order of nuns.

As a sister of the Society of St. Margaret she became accutely aware of the division between the well to do class and the working class within the Church of England. Her vision saw the need for education for the working class rather than Prayer Book ritual. A new and perhaps a rather "evangelical" attitude for an Anglo-Catholic. Unfortunately her Religious Superior did not have her vision and her sense to see such a mission was a true calling. She was advised to leave the order.

I found this part extremely hard to understand as the religious order of her birth was a missionary sisterhood dedicated to the rural poor. I found the inability of the author to get indepth for this parting of the ways as a major weakness in the book.

What I found most ironic in the book is that the order born was true to the founding goal of the mother order... missionaries to the rural poor. The Grey Sparrows lived as St. Francis did by the work of their own hands. It was a hard life with many physical privations and limitations but according to accounts rewards as well.

I also found the pious statements of some of the male clergy living in rectories rather distasteful but there were others, the Bush Brothers,who like the Grey Sparrows lived the life of rural ministers.

It is an interesting historical piece revealing the dedication of some High Church Anglicans work among the working class poor. It also reveals the dated attitudes of the Anglican Church and its religious orders when faced with a woman who really saw the C. of E.'s need to educate the working class and increase both knowledge and social change which would have ultimately increased the membership in the C. of E.

Perhaps the prejudice about the intellectual limitations of the working class limited the clergy and religious of the C.of E. from seeing the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual gifts this group would have nourished and brought to harvest. It is obvious the foundress did not and she and her sisters with effort set an example to the Anglican Church.

This is not a particularly well written book, more a task of love than a masterpiece. However, it is packed with detail and is a valued addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in this Anglo Saxon saint.

As a professional historian (Honours, MA, PhD) I can only say this book is wrong on so many counts it should never have been published. It is an exercise in bias and mythologising and does the publisher no credit.