Mt Somers Library

20/05/2026

They just keep coming😊...more good reads!

01/05/2026

Pip Williams's 'The Dictionary of Lost Words' is a historical novel set in late 19th- and early 20th-century Oxford (UK) and is told in the first-person. It is Esme who tells her story over a number of decades, starting in her childhood. With her mother deceased and no siblings, she grows up with her gentle and liberal-minded father, or “Da”, who works as a lexicographer for Dr Murray – the man in charge of making the first Oxford English Dictionary. The little garden shed in which they work is christened the “Scriptorium” - or “Scrippy” - and Esme spends most of her life in and around this place of word collection and interpretion, which to her “felt magical” as a kid:

[...] like everything that ever was and ever could be had been stored within its walls. Books were piled on every surface. Old dictionaries, histories and tales from long ago filled the shelves that separated one desk from another, or created a nook for a chair. Pigeon-holes rose from the floor to the ceiling. They were crammed full of slips, and Da once said that, if I read everyone, I'd understand the meaning of everything.” (p. 8 )

Her presence tolerated by most of the male employees, the precocious girl becomes the team's little helper-scholar and forms an intricate part of the fabric of life in the Scrippy. Sometimes words on slips are discarded, as they are considered inappropriate for inclusion in the Dictionary. Young Esme is inexplicably fascinated by them and secretly starts collecting them, storing them in a trunk hidden under the bed of Lizzie, the Murray family's servant and, in many ways, Esme's surrogate mother.

As Esme outgrows her place under the central sorting table in the little shed and becomes a young woman, her father and her aunt Edith, or “Ditte”, arrange for her to go to a girl's school in Scotland. Her time there is traumatic and an eye-opener to what life can also be like for a young woman in the late 18th century. Esme, always full of words and chatter, returns home in silence, unable to speak of the abusive behaviour she endured there. For some experiences, there is no vocabulary at hand. Luckily for her, she can return to Oxford. As her life unfolds further, her womanhood becomes increasingly defining, and it becomes clear that Williams has designed her main character's story in such a way that it allows the author to use it to tell a number of stories about women whose lives are defined by the mores and manners of the times. The novel, then, is a form of fictional history that we would nowadays label as 'her-story' (instead of 'his-story'): women's history.

Through Esme, we come to know the defiant and attention-seeking Tilda, a feminist actress and suffragette; the devout and hard-working Lizzie, who is fully aware she has but little choices in life; aunt Ditte and her sister Beth, learned spinsters fighting for women's causes under the radar; the pleasant and privileged Murray daughters, educated and active in their own ways for the woman's vote; toothless and penniless marketwoman Mabel, a street-wise survivalist full of interesting words and knowledge; and Sarah, the spade-is-a-spade woman who comes to adopt Esme's baby girl. Esme is affected by all of them and gets to know herself and her place in the world through them. They offer care, insight, friendship and sisterhood. And their talk helps her fill her trunk of slips – by recording their lexicon, she creates a dictionary of women's words – lost words. While the narrative highlights women's experiences, the novel is also peopled by male characters who help form Esme. It is interesting that only men that are supportive of women's rights are more fully developed as a character, such as her father and her future husband Gareth. Misogynists appear, but their voices are marginalised. Gareth briefly but meaningfully states in a discussion about the woman's vote: “It affects us all” (p. 292).

I have only touched upon the surface of this book. It is multi-layered, beautifully designed, and its strength lies in the immense emotional investment the reader comes to have in the characters. The book contains very little judgement. It shows with precision how the generation and/or family you grow up in to a great extent defines the choices you have. And that every choice comes with wins and losses.

02/04/2026

New arrivals and older gems! Come and check them out. We are open Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 4pm😊🙌

01/02/2026

BOOK OF THE MONTH
Title: 'Ash'
Author: Louise Wallace
Publication year: 2024
A review by Elles Smallegoor

A while ago Dunedin-based poet and editor Louise Wallace published her first novel, “Ash”, a succinct but rich work which dives into the life of rural vet and mother-of-two Thea as it comes under pressure from different angles. At work there is the casual and not-so-casual sexism (“when does the real vet get here?” (p. 24)). Gender politics play in the background too as her male colleagues/shareholders are trying to prevent a female colleague from joining as she will likely go on maternity leave. At home, the marriage is sort of okay, but with two kids under five and both Thea and her well-meaning but frequently oblivious husband Nick working, romance is pretty much on the backburner. Her mother-in-law is supportive but also triggers feelings of incompetence and guilt. And then comes the ash: a volcano in the region erupts, upending not only the lives of her clients and their animals but also that of Thea and her family as her son's health is negatively affected. Wallace's novel examines female rage and vexation with a powerful precision.

The main body of the work is taken up by straightforward first-person narration in which the reader follows the day-to-day life of Thea as she navigates her days at home and, later in the book, at work:

I walk in loops because the only other option is open road. Grunting, sweating, I push the bulky pram up the gravel hill. I am on maternity leave, which I seem to have taken to with the spirit of an angsty chihuahua.
'Just join the programme – you get free membership!' Nick keeps encouraging. He is a marketing advisor for an online exercise programme aimed at rural women. The point is that I want to actually leave our house. (p. 10)

This passage, part of the opening page, sets the mood for the following chapters. The physical up-hill battle is symbolic of things to come. Thea's response to her husband's well-meaning remarks points to simmering frustrations. The passage also reveals a lot about her character. Thea is presented as a self-reflective, determined woman of action who knows what she wants but also realises that others fail to notice her needs or struggles. In a few sentences, then, Wallace deftly foreshadows the novel's main concerns and developments.

The narrative is interspersed with pages that render the novel distinctive and more powerful. Wallace the poet is at play here. There are numbered and titled “Figures” which convey thoughts or experiences illustrative of Thea's life. One page, for instance, called “Figure 5. (Checking In)”, only contains the phrase “areyouokay?areyouokay?areyouokay?”, and so on. This is repeated six lines, after which the phrase only appears occasionally and then ends with “and then they stop asking” (p. 32). Other pages called “(Morning)” are particularly powerful. They detail every little action that happens on a particular morning, such as “changelucydirtynappyinbagnappybaginbin” (p. 20). They show the multitude of demands on Thea before she has even left the house to go to work. The “(Fieldnotes)” sections quote verbatim a farmer client who swears every other word (“faaaark”) while complaining about “the mrs” (p. 45). This is only a small selection. Taken together, these poetic pages bring home to the reader in a complex way how every little experience is a meaningful building block in a person's consciousness. It's the little things in life, added up, that come to define our behaviour and thinking, if not our identity.

“Ash” is a compelling vignette of modern womanhood in rural New Zealand and an impressive debut.

07/01/2026

BOOK OF THE MONTH
Title: 'The Brilliance of Birds – A New Zealand Birdventure'
Author: Skye Wishart and Edin Whitehead
Publication year: 2019
A review by Elles Smallegoor

A few years ago journalist and science writer Skye Wishart and seabird scientist and photographer Edin Whitehead joined forces to compile a 384-page reference work of New Zealand birds that would be informed by academic research but speak to a wide audience. Organised alphabetically, starting with the Australasian crested grebe and finishing with the wrybill, the book discusses native, endemic and introduced species in short, (mostly) 6-page chapters, and is meant to inform as well as celebrate. And it surely does – what a treasure of knowledge it contains and what a joy to read. Whitehead's superb photographs really bring home the title of the work: 'The Brilliance of Birds'. With their book the authors make clear that New Zealand and birds go together and must continue to do so: “The absence of these creatures, perfectly evolved in their weird and wonderful ways to occupy various roles in the ecosystem, would make New Zealand less charming, captivating and complete, and certainly less melodious” (p. 6).

Each chapter begins with a page offering the popular, te reo and Latin name, its conservation status and its status as a species (endemic, native or introduced). At the top of the page, the reader can spot a coloured block with the word Freshwater, Coastal & Oceanic, Forest, Alpine & High Country, Open Country, Garden, or Scrubland, offering more guidance on where the bird can be found. Most enjoyable are Wishart and Whitehead's personal descriptions underneath the popular name, which offer an insight into the characteristics of each bird. The Australian magpie, for instance, has as its subtitle: “Quardle-oodle-ardling dive bomber with an overblown reputation” (p. 28); the forest-dwelling stitchbird is “at home in the swinging sixties” (referring to their “promiscuity and infidelity”)(p. 313); the grey warbler is a “tiny, long-suffering foster parent with the sweetest song” (referring to the fact that the cuckoo fools the warbler into raising its chicks) (p. 115). The actual writing within the chapters contain multitudes of well-researched, little-known facts, drawing on nineteenth-century explorer literature, traditional Maori culture and modern-day scientific publications, ensuring readers learn new things about birds they likely think they know fully.

While the book makes clear that humans are the most destructive to bird life, both in the past and the present, it also emphasises that the natural environment of the birds can at times be damaging as well. In a chapter on the black swan, for example, they write: “There used to be more black swans in New Zealand – about 100,000, with 70,000 on Lake Ellesmere alone – until the Wahine storm of 1968 dampened the population to less than 10,000 by annihilating the beds of aquatic plants” (p. 41). While acknowledging and lamenting damages done, the authors are just as keen to discuss the success of conservation projects and the enormous potential that lies ahead. Wishart and Whitehead's passion for New Zealand birdlife oozes off every page and is certainly contagious. After reading this book, I looked more lovingly at our invader-tribe of pukekos and examined more closely the size of their red headshields. I felt a bit safer around our local gang of magpies. And I listened with joy while awake in bed, recognising that that “quee” (p. 182) was indeed the morepork we saw around our house a year ago. It's still here!

04/01/2026

Some recent arrivals. Note: we are now also open on Saturdays from 2 to 4 pm😊.

23/11/2025

Come to our "treasure trove"😊. Books a plenty!

24/10/2025

BOOK OF THE MONTH
Title: 'The Butterfly Man'
Author: Heather Rose
Publication year: 2005 (this Allen & Unwin edition 2025)
A review by Elles Smallegoor

A new edition of Australian author Heather Rose's 2005 novel 'The Butterfly Man' has arrived in the library. It is a sensitive and subtle imaginative work that grew out of a handful of historical facts, the London murder of Sandra Rivett on 7 November 1974 and the disappearance of the Earl of Lucan, also known as Richard John Bingham, a day later, being the two most prominent ones. In the novel Bingham finds himself accused of violently murdering Rivett and flees the country. With the help of some influential individuals he takes on a new identity on the African continent and reinvents himself as the ordinary and slightly rough loner and builder Henry Kennedy. A few years later, he emigrates to Tasmania where he starts a new life.

It is here the reader first meets him. The book opens in the late 1990s and Henry is bed-ridden because of a developing brain tumour. His Vietnamese partner Lili, her recently returned daughter Suki and her grandson Charlie all live under his roof. His ability to speak is affected and his thinking confused. He has just had a stroke:
“I wake to find a young woman sitting beside me. She is Asian. Japanese. Chinese. I don't know. 'Hello, Henry,' she says, smiling and taking my hand. I try to take it back but it doesn't respond. 'It's Suki, Henry.' She has on a red shirt. She has earrings too. Large Indian earrings that move and sparkle. 'I'm sorry, young lady, but I am not Henry.'” (p. 1).

With the unravelling of Henry's mind and strict control over his life, his old identity as the Earl of Lucan clearly begins to re-emerge. A first chapter can often be a clue to a novel's themes. One of the novel's main occupations is to examine how the past can catch up with people, and the first few pages clearly hint at this. As the story progresses, Lili, Suki, and, to a lesser extent, Charlie, will turn out to have some secrets of their own too.

Rose begins her narrative with mystery and suspense; in the first few chapters, the reader still has no knowledge of Henry's – and the others' – chequered past and must wait patiently for their entire stories to be told. In the mean time, while she uses this suspense to compel the reader to keep reading, she creates an intimate picture of a household of humans who live in a small, beautiful Tasmanian mountain community, and who love each other but who also struggle with their own demons while trying to lead a normal working and family life. She introduces Henry's best friend Jimmy, who has not only his own past to deal with but also that of his Aboriginal and Viking (!) ancestors. There is Henry's business partner Stan, who is in a wheelchair but has managed to become a successful architect. Most characters in the novel have reinvented themselves after trauma. Most have done so in a new place. Rose has a great ability to create understanding and compassion for the ways in which they strive to make a new home and identity for themselves, however fraught their relationships sometimes are. She also reveals that the ability of the mind and body to store memory makes any reinvention process highly complicated.

While inspired by real-life events, “The Butterfly Man” is more philosophical than historical. The novel deals with the big themes of life, death, the passing of time, race, nature/nurture, memory and human imperfection. It does so seriously, but throughout the book Rose makes sure there is light-hearted humour as well. Moreover, while it certainly is a contemporary realist novel in many ways, it also leaves room for mystery and magic. We never get to know the full truth about the characters in the novel and there is, especially towards the end, an other-worldly spirit to the book that comforts and heals. If you are looking for a beautiful read in the next few months, this should certainly be on your list.

18/09/2025

07/09/2025

It’s ’Read a Book Day’ today apparently (but then shouldn’t every day be that?). Anyway, here’s a short poem to commemorate the occasion.