Lenny’s Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee

Inside the CBCA Shortlist

I have read all of Karen Foxlee’s books as they’ve been published, beginning with her novels for adults and young adults, The Anatomy of Wings and the stunning The Midnight Dress, a tale of a teenage girl’s murder where tension simmers exquisitely. It is an alluring, mesmeric mystery with a finely wrought, menacing atmosphere. I reviewed it for the Weekend Australian Review in 2013 (see review below).

Then came her two gothic magical novels for children, Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy and A Most Magical Girl, which was shortlisted for the CBCA in 2017. I wrote about it here.

Her first picture book, Horatio Squeaky, will be published in July and she is now writing a story set in a magical world with her eleven-year-old daughter.

It was a great pleasure to meet Karen in Sydney recently and hear her speak about her latest novel Lenny’s Book of Everything (Allen&Unwin), which is for older children, young adults and adults as well. It is shortlisted in the CBCA Older Readers category. Younger readers will also find value in it.

It has already won the children’s category of the Indies awards.

Lenny is a small birdlike character, in contrast to her younger brother Davey who’s born after the moon-landing and grows and grows. The plot at first seems like a fairy-tale but it is realism with snatches of everyday magic, for example, the children’s mother is made of worries and magic and her magic is leaking out.

The ongoing arrival of an encyclopaedia set brings adventure and freedom especially the section on “B” for beetles and birds.

The bird motifs and symbols, such as a giant Canada goose, which Davey hopes to ride, are beautifully integrated into the story.

The writing is powerful and poetic. It is an exceptional novel that lauds kindness and love.

Karen explained in Sydney that her character Kitty in A Most Magical Girl changed many times. In contrast, Lenny “was waiting for me”. Lenny was a “bubbling pot of emotions, longing for her absent father”. Karen wanted to write about someone different and about loving someone different. Some of the background emotion came from Karen’s own feelings for her obese mother and her love and shame for her. Karen also wore a back-brace for five years and so knew what it felt like to be different. After her mother’s death, these circumstances “bubbled into the boy who grew” – Davey. Karen also brought her own memories of her childhood encyclopedia set into the story.

I believe that Lenny’s Book of Everything is the book of our time, speaking to everyone.

Karen Foxlee’s website is https://karenfoxlee.com/

Using the book with students:

Bird Motifs Read the references to birds throughout the novel. Examples are the albatross, p32; Davey’s imaginary eagle, p64; and the Canada Goose, p323. Discuss the different roles of these birds. Students reinterpret one of these in words or images.

Imaginative Descriptions Read some of the imaginative descriptions such as the balloon ride at night, p65; the encyclopedia headquarters, p105; and the Sound of Music Spink cousins, p132. Students could select music to match one or more of these scenes.

Figurative Language Find examples of the figurative language such as “ponderous summer clouds sweeping their shadows over the sunbaking cars”, p3; “I was folding up all the dusty roads. Scrunching them up, a fistful of paper ribbons”, p180, and others. Identify these as metaphors, similes, personification and more.

“Last Times” Photorealism Lenny thinks that “Life is full of last times, so many of them you don’t even know they are happening. The last time you struggle to tie your shoelaces … The last time your mother reads you a bedtime story…” p245. Students discuss insignificant and significant last times, including the last time they did something and possibly, the last time they saw somebody.

Photorealism was a popular art form in 1970s America where this novel is set. Students use the technique of photorealism by photographing a simulation of “a last time” they have discussed, printing it and transferring it (using a projector, grid or transfer paper) onto a canvas. Then they paint the canvas to look like a photo.

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The Midnight Dress

Murder mystery stitched into coming-of-age tale

Joy Lawn

Karen Foxlee

12:00AMFebruary 09, 2013

TheAustralian

KAREN Foxlee’s 2007 debut novel, The Anatomy of Wings, won acclaim and awards. The Queensland writer’s follow-up, The Midnight Dress, a crossover novel aimed at adults and young adults, far surpasses it. Tension and atmosphere simmer exquisitely in this tale of a teenage girl’s murder.

Rose Lovell has never had a home. She travels with her binge-drinking father, living in caravan parks across the country. She is thin and constrains her flamboyant red curls with pins and black hair colouring.

When she arrives at Leonora State High School in far north Queensland, preparation for the Harvest Parade, where all the girls need a new dress to wear for the float and the crowning of harvest queen and princesses, is under way. Rose is befriended by kind and beautiful Pearl Kelly, who sees only goodness in people and who suggests Rose ask enigmatic seamstress Edith Baker to make her dress.

Edie is a credible old-woman character, but is also a new literary creation: an Australian “wise-woman”, not overtly derived from myth or fairytale but from the rainforest and fabric. Even though we learn Edie’s story, especially the joyous quicksilver account of her mother sewing a hidden assignation letter into her future husband’s new suit pocket, Edie retains an aura of intangible, benign mystery.

Like her own mother, Edie is drawn to the ineffable rainforest, its sanctuary and voice. The rainforest nurtures and provides gifts of exotic fruit and nuts: blue quandongs, rose walnuts, the topaz tamarind and porcelain fruit. The rainforest is where Edie and her mother built a house high in the trees at Weeping Rock but, after becoming a haven for Rose, it eventually becomes a place of betrayal.

As Rose and Edie discover and create Rose’s midnight dress, her changing appearance reflects her growing contentment and strength from climbing the mountain and being nourished by people and the land.

Foxlee ingrains the shadow of murder into her storylines. Very early in the book we are subtly forewarned that the wearer is destined for another plane: ” … the dress is a magical thing, it makes her look so heavenly.” At the harvest festival the girls must walk down the catwalk in their pretty dresses.

“One of the girls is chosen [as a harvest queen or princess]. And sacrificed,” says Rose.

The structure also enhances the mystery. In italics at the beginning of each chapter an omniscient narrator describes the murder and its investigation. This allows a privileged view into scenes that need careful, evasive telling before ultimately they merge in time with the major narrative.

Although some fairytale elements are included, such as Rose’s deep sleep for three days before the parade, The Midnight Dress is set in quite recent history. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster becomes a magnified foreboding of death as well as a link with Pearl’s unknown Russian father. Pearl is learning Russian and sending letters to men with his surname. Rose also loves writing. The author’s own writing avoids abstruse words but creates a sensory picture of a secretive, lush paradise threatened by a serpent.

Even though she lives in a caravan park called Paradise, Rose belongs in Edie’s “Eden” for now. Names are part of Foxlee’s cache of symbols: “love” is found in Rose’s surname Lovell, and a river and bird (falcon) are placed inside the name of Murray Falconer, the young man drawn to water who falls in love with her. “Weeping Rock” deservedly suggests a parallel with the similar finely wrought, menacing atmosphere of Picnic at Hanging Rock, where girls also go missing.

Images of cloth and stitches thread the iconic midnight dress to the other strands of the narrative but the hints of sewing rituals and the cover image of the “sewn” title and buttons may wrongly deter some prospective readers. Instead, this impeccably weighted bildungsroman-mystery is a rare find that many readers will treasure.

Desire for a leisurely read to savour the story and its seductive writing will vie with intense curiosity to rush ahead and discover what really happened to the murdered girl in this alluring, mesmeric mystery.

The Midnight Dress
By Karen Foxlee
UQP, 336pp, $29.95

Joy Lawn is a freelance writer.