The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman, Random House, $32.95.
There was an international bidding war for this debut novel by Australian author Margot Stedman and while the plotline is solid, it is the mesmerising quality of the writing that has caused the much deserved commotion.
Stedman’s descriptions are superb: vivid and accessible without being overblown.
Set for the most part in the 1920s, this is the story of quiet, reliable but enigmatic Tom Sherbourne who, desperate to escape the painful memories of his feted actions in World War I, happily signs up for banishment to the uninhabited island of Janus Rock, off the coast of Western Australia, to work as a lighthouse keeper and find much-needed peace.
Here, like Tom, we fall in love with the isolation, the power of nature and the rhythms of a simple and ordered life.
“It seemed his lungs could never be large enough to breathe in this much air, his eyes could never see this much space, nor could he hear the full extent of the rolling, roaring ocean. For the briefest moment, he had no edges.”
The sense of freedom is intense and invigorating, and when Tom brings his new wife, Isobel, to share his oblivion, the pair set about trying to expand their family.
Despite her attachment to Tom, Izzy — who, to be honest, is a little wet — is crippled with loneliness and aches to have a child, but she is plagued with miscarriages.
So when a baby and a dead body are washed ashore in a dingy, it seems as if God is handing them a lifeline which Izzy, engulfed with a needy mother’s love, grabs with both hands.
What follows is, at times, predictable and many of the characters are stuck in two dimensions, but the sheer passion and poetry of Stedman’s prose carries us on a wave of emotion and heartbreak, as we teeter on a tightrope between right and wrong.
Destined for book club discussions around the globe.
About the author
Margot Stedman was born and raised in Perth, and although she now lives in London, Perth is “still definitely home”.
Margot decided she wanted to write in 1997, but didn’t start until 2008.
“I never plan what I write. I usually start with a picture in my imagination, or a sentence, or the sound of a voice. The Light Between Oceans started when I closed my eyes to imagine a scene and a lighthouse turned up.
“I could see a woman and, later, a man, who I worked out was the lightkeeper, and I gradually realised it was his story.”
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Georgie Gardner, her husband Tim and their children Bronte, six, and Angus, four. Photo by Michelle Holden.
On the surface, Georgie Gardner appears to have a perfect life. She has a loving husband, two healthy children and a fulfilling career as a news reader on Channel Nine’s Today — but underneath the flawless facade lurks a traumatic childhood that has made her what she is today.
Georgie was one of four children born and bred in Perth. Her early childhood was happy but when she was five years old, her parents went through a bitter divorce.
Her mother remarried shortly afterwards and Georgie’s world turned upside down.
Her new post-divorce life had all the trappings of domestic bliss. She lived in Dalkeith, one of Perth’s most affluent suburbs. She attended St Hilda’s, the Western Australian capital’s most exclusive private girl’s school.
Her mother was a pillar of Perth society and her new stepfather was the son of the state’s governor and a well-known lawyer.
There were trips to Government House when the queen was visiting, tea parties and pretty frocks. From the outside, theirs was a life of privilege and respectability, but beyond the white picket fence and behind closed doors, life was infinitely more complicated.
“There was a tumultuous divorce when we were very young and it led to difficulties in the house we were growing up in with our mother and stepfather, and it was not pleasant,” explains Georgie’s younger brother, John.
“I don’t have particularly fond memories of childhood myself and I know Georgie doesn’t.”
Suzanne Julian is one of Georgie’s oldest friends. They met at school when they were 12 years old. Suzanne remembers Georgie as a “natural leader” with “the gift of the gab and a wicked sense of humour” who had lead roles in all the school musicals such that “everyone assumed she was going to leave school and become an actress”.
Suzanne also spent a lot of time at Georgie’s house and saw first-hand the tensions with which Georgie and her siblings lived. “I was very aware of what was playing out in her home life,” recalls Suzanne.
“Everything was not as it seemed on the outside. There was a lot of pressure on Georgie as a young girl — there were things going on at home that were not pleasant. You can go to the best school and wear a nice uniform, but if things are not right at home, you are no better off than anyone else.
“Georgie has definitely been affected by her family situation over the years. Knowing all the crap she has been through, the way she has blossomed is such a credit to her. Instead of dwelling on it, she has carved out such an amazing, impressive life.”
When asked, Georgie herself won’t be drawn on exactly what the home life “unpleasantness” comprised, except to say she and her siblings suffered after their mother remarried.
“We had a privileged upbringing, in the material and opportunity sense, but there was a lot of turbulence and confusion, and deep sadness brought on by a pretty bitter divorce,” she says. “During the darkest period, my friends and siblings got me through.”
Though she won’t say it outright, it’s obvious that Georgie experienced some sort of trauma growing up. She says she doesn’t want to talk about it publicly — “It risks hurting too many people I care about” — yet it clearly gives shape to her every day.
She has only limited contact with her mother now and mainly for the sake of not denying her children a relationship with their grandmother.
And yet she’s also acutely aware of the privileges she enjoyed and the opportunities afforded by her education and upbringing. She bristles visibly at any suggestion she is a victim.
“I never feel, ‘Woe is me’, because I have so much in my life now to be grateful for and I have managed to extricate myself from that toxic environment and surround myself with beautiful, loving, incredible people,” she says.
“Suffice to say, divorce can be very destructive and a fair amount of pain and misunderstanding exists to this day. But I try and focus on the positives and, without question, my greatest achievement is creating the family unit I have now. They’re my world. I’m at my happiest when I’m with my family.”
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman have two beautiful daughters, but no matter how lovely his girls are, Keith will always love his wife more.
While most parents would confess to loving their children more than their partner, Keith says his Nicole is the centre of his universe, and always will be.
“We’re very, very tight as a family unit and the children are our life, but I know the order of my love,” the country music star tells the April issue The Australian Women’s Weekly. “It’s my wife and then my daughters. I just think it’s really important for the kids.”
“There are too many parents who start to lose the plot a little and start to give all their love to the kids, and then the partner starts to go without. And then everybody loses. As a kid, all I needed to know was that my parents were solid. Kids shouldn’t feel like they are being favoured. It’s a dangerous place.”
Keith and Nicole, both 44, met in Los Angeles in 2005 and married in Sydney the following year. Nicole gave birth to their first daughter, Sunday Rose, in July 2008 and their second child Faith was born to a surrogate in December 2010.
Keith says Nicole is his “spiritual other half” and says it is absolutely impossible not to love her.
“I truly think there are only two kinds of people in the world,” Keith says. “There are people who love Nic and people who haven’t met her yet. I really do. People who say negative things about her, I think, well, you just can’t have met her yet. You can’t have.
“Because she’s sensitive and joyous, and wonderfully compassionate and empathetic towards people, and she has a heart that is just infinite in size. She has such a zest for life. And she’s as loyal as the day is long. And I still can’t quite believe I got to marry her, quite frankly.”
Keith is a coach on new singing show The Voice, which airs on the Nine Network from Sunday, April 15, at 6.30pm. Keith’s latest album, Get Closer, is available now. For more information, visit the official Keith Urban website.
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Do you love your partner more than your children?
Gordon Wood and his family. Photography by Damian Bennett. Styling by Vanessa Pennisi.
For Gordon Wood, going to jail was traumatic. But it was nothing compared to how he felt the night his girlfriend, Caroline Byrne, died.
He still grieves for her, and wonders whether he could have done anything to prevent her death.
“It still weighs heavily on me, whether I could have done more in the days before she died, whether I should have read some of the signals better,” he tells The Weekly, breaking down in public for the first time since Caroline’s death.
Caroline Byrne died in 1995 at notorious Sydney suicide spot The Gap. Some believed Gordon, who worked for stockbroker Rene Rivkin, had killed her because she knew too much about his business dealings.
Gordon was found guilty of her murder in 2008, but this year, the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the verdict, questioning the evidence and arguments from his original trial.
Gordon declined to give evidence in court and has never spoken publicly about Caroline’s death or their relationship.
Breaking his silence to The Weekly, Gordon was reduced to tears twice during the interview.
Once, when he spoke about the days before Caroline died; the second when he spoke about the future he hoped they would share.
“When I met Caroline, it was clear to me why I was on this planet [and that] was to be a husband and a father,” he says.
“I don’t care if I clean toilets; I knew that was it. I knew we were going to get married and have children, and whatever else I did, I was going to do that brilliantly.”
Gordon says rumours of a gay affair with his boss, Rene Rivkin, were “nonsense”, and that Rene was not a criminal.
“To call him a fraudster is unfair, he wasn’t. He might have sailed close to the wind in terms of taxes and what have you [but] in my knowledge and experience, he was a lovely guy.”
When asked how the Wood family felt about Caroline’s father Tony’s belief that Gordon was guilty, his sister Jackie said: “We understand how difficult it would be to accept one suicide in the family [Caroline’s mother committed suicide]. We understand how impossible it would be to accept a second one. And I guess now he’s got a difficult task ahead of him of actually dealing with the fact that his daughter committed suicide.”
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
The actress breaks down as Pax’s biological mother asks for his return.
Dwarfed by the two oversized teddy bears they were carrying, Zahara and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt giggled and stumbled their way through LA airport last week. But their superstar mother couldn’t even crack a smile. Angelina Jolie looked tense and exhausted after their flight from Amsterdam. Now Woman’s Day can reveal it wasn’t the long-haul journey with two young children that had the mum-of-six seemingly shattered.
We’re told Ange is battling a private nightmare over fears she could lose her adopted son Pax, with a source close to the family claiming she’s been “knocked for six” by a request from the eight-year-old’s Vietnamese biological mother, via the orphanage he came from, to meet him.
“Angelina is in a total spin about this,” the insider reveals. “She is torn about what the right thing to do is. She has always felt slightly insecure about Pax and this is just making matters worse. She’s terrified he’ll choose his birth family over her.”
Pham Thu Dung, 32 – who says she’s clean of the heroin addiction that saw Pax placed in an orphanage – has told authorities she wants Brad, 48, and Ange, 36, to bring the boy to Vietnam to spend time with her and his extended family. “Dung says it’s important Pax knows where he comes from and is aware of his heritage,” a Vietnamese source says. “She is desperate to meet her son after only seeing pictures of him in magazines.” “My dream is that one day he’ll visit me and call me mother,” Dung herself says.
Read more about Pax’s biological mum and why she wants him back in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale Monday March 26, 2012.
Octomum Nadya Suleman has posed topless for Closer magazine showing off her post-baby body after losing 64kg. The mother of 14, who had octuplets in 2009, is claiming she has “never looked this good”.
“I just pinged back into shape like a rubber band after the kids, I don’t know how I did it. I eat like a horse, don’t count calories and have never owned a set of scales,” she said.
“I gained an entire human when I was pregnant with the octuplets, going from 140 pounds [63kg] to over 266 pounds [120kg], but two months later, I was a size eight again. Now, I never weigh myself.”
With 14 children to take care of she also claims that she has been celibate for 13 years with all her children being conceived through IVF.
Nadya Suleman on the cover of *Closer* Magazine.
Nadya Suleman on the cover of Closer Magazine.
Now and then: Nadya now and when she was pregnant with octuplets in 2009.
Nadya says she eats 15 portions of fruit or veges a day and runs over 60 kilometers a week.
“I get too much male attention, but I won’t date until the octuplets are 18 – I live for them.”
“I know I’m beautiful – I don’t need a man to tell me that,” she says.
Nadya says her kids “have structure and discipline” and “don’t know what candy is”.
“I’ve done a really great job with them. I don’t get any credit,” she said.
Weiss details her “mission” to get Bea — who was clinically obese at 42kg and just 132cm tall — to slim down.
This included refusing to give Bea dinner, banning her from enjoying her school’s Pizza Fridays, and publicly “deriding” her daughter when she accepted calorific treats like cookies or chocolate from other adults.
In another embarrassing incident, Weiss snatched a cup of hot chocolate out of Bea’s hands and poured it into the garbage bin when the barista couldn’t tell her the exact kilojoule count of the beverage.
While most parents would agree that Weiss’s behaviour was wrong, no one seems to know what would have been right in this situation — do you tell your child they are fat or protect their feelings and say nothing?
Childhood obesity expert and paediatrician Dr Matt Sabin says children’s age determines whether parents should discuss their weight or keep quiet.
Sabin runs an obesity clinic at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital and says there is no need to sit young children down to discuss their weight.
“When we see young children in the clinic, all of the intervention is delivered to the parents,” Sabin says.
“The child plays in a corner while we talk to the parents about changing the family’s lifestyle to make more time for exercise and preparing healthy meals.”
When dealing with teens, however, Sabin says you can’t avoid discussing the issue with the child head-on.
“The story is very different with adolescents because they’re a lot more autonomous,” he says.
“They have their own money, they can make their own decisions about what they eat and what activities they do.
“In those instances we have to really grapple with the adolescent to make them understand the long-term health benefits of losing weight.”
If your child is overweight, Sabin says it is crucial to tackle the issue immediately to avoid weight becoming a lifelong struggle.
“Once you’re an overweight adult, your body really defends your weight,” Sabin says.
“It’s the classic yo-yo cycle. They go on a diet, do it for a period of time and then when they give up their body basically sucks back all that weight and usually a bit more.
“But young children are a little bit more malleable. It may well be that interventions will be able to change their weight trajectory. And that’s really exciting because it means is that it’s not a preordained destiny for these children to become bigger than their parents.”
Dr Sabin’s tips for dealing with overweight children
How to tell if your child is overweight: Body Mass Index (BMI) is the accepted medical method but it can be very difficult for parents to work out. A more useful indicator is waist measurement. No matter what your age, your waist should measure half your height or less. If it is bigger than that, you’re overweight.
What to do about it if they are: If your child is overweight, make lifestyle changes as a family. Cut down on fast food, eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, reduce portion sizes and get moving.
Don’t expect kids to lose weight: You should be aiming to stop your child from putting on weight, not losing the puppy fat they have. Losing lots of weight is bad for children’s growth and development. If you stop the weight gain, the child will eventually fall back into a normal weight range.
What’s in it for you?: Improving your family’s lifestyle is not only good for your kids — it’s good for you too. We get a lot of parents saying, “My child has stopped gaining weight and I’ve lost 20kg”. So what are you waiting for?
Prince William has surprised Kate Middleton with a romantic Swiss ski holiday to make up for missing Valentine’s Day.
The Duke of Cambridge arrived back in the UK last Wednesday after seven weeks in the Falkland Islands.
It was the longest the couple have been apart since their brief split in 2007 and an “emotional” Kate was waiting at the airfield to welcome her husband home.
The duchess thought she and William would spend a few days at their Kensington Palace cottage before returning to their farmhouse in Anglesey, Wales, but William had other plans.
The 29-year-old took Kate straight to the airport and whisked her away to a luxury chalet in Verbier, Switzerland.
“William missed Kate terribly when he was away,” a source told the UK’s Daily Mirror.
“They spent Valentine’s Day apart and he has been thinking for some time how to make it up to his wife. He wanted a reunion in the most romantic possible fashion.
“They’ve had some brilliant times skiing, and William decided a getaway in Switzerland, where they can wear goggles and hats and go around unnoticed, would be perfect.
“Kate was delighted when he eventually told her about his plans and cannot wait for the pair to spend some quality time together.”
Switzerland’s ski slopes are special to William and Kate. They shared their first public kiss in Klosters in 2006 and have enjoyed several snowy holidays since.
William and Kate weren’t the only royal couple getting cosy on the weekend — Prince Harry spent Friday night with his on/off girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
Harry and Chelsy were both invited to celebrate Princess Eugenie’s 22nd birthday at Windsor Castle.
Harry — who has recently been spotted wearing a silver “love” pendant Chelsy gave him in the early days of their relationship — and Chelsy sat next to each other at the intimate dinner party and chatted all night, leaving fellow guests wondering if their on/off romance was back on again.
“Clearly they are still close,” a palace insider told the UK’s Sunday Express. “They appeared at ease with each other and were chatting happily together.
“Whether they have rekindled their relationship is anyone’s guess but they certainly seemed very friendly.”
The queen was delighted to learn of the nuptials and went in to congratulate the couple and pose for wedding photos, with her husband Prince Philip in tow.
“It was very special — it was so lovely that she took the trouble to speak to us,” bride Frances told The Sun newspaper.
“She said I looked lovely and she wanted to wish us all the best for the future. We’re going to have to get a bigger wedding album now. Not many people will have pictures like that!”
Prince Philip — who is notorious for making inappropriate comments — also rose to the occasion, keeping his foot out of his mouth and impressing the newlyweds.
“He was a charming fella — for me it was the icing on the cake,” John Canning said.
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