Thomas Shapcott

Theatre of Darkness, subtitled Lillian Nordica as Opera, is a very dark book indeed.

As a winner of the Patrick Award in 2000, Thomas Shapcott deserved to be listed in my 'honour roll' of authors supported by White's generosity with his Nobel Prize money. But I didn't have a review of any of Shapcott's oeuvre. It was time to read the sixth of his rel="nofollow" target="_top">seven novels, which I happen to have on the TBR...

The novel is set just before the start of WW1 on Thursday Island a.k.a. Waiben in the Torres Strait, which was a regular port of call for mail and passenger services during the late 19th and early 20th century. Theatre of Darkness, however, is not an historical novel in the ordinary sense of the term. As the reader learns in the Acknowledgments, the catalyst for the novel was an historical event, when the American diva Lillian Nordica (La Nordica) died "of exposure after a shipwreck in Torres Strait, on the eve of the First World War."

Reading on, we find a fictional character who emerges from another actual historical event, the shipwreck in 1890 of the merchant ship RMS Quetta with the loss of 132 mostly European passengers of the 292 lives on board.

#RespectfulNod to Shapcott researching this novel in the years before Wikipedia, not launched until 2001! (And even then, it was years before it had much in the way of Australian content.)

In Theatre of Darkness, Shapcott has made these events his own. He uses this colonial island setting to contrast the European sense of displacement with the Islanders' sense of being at ease on their land, and to explore obsession and fame. To reinforce the importance of music and the Wagnerian theme of the novel, he has structured it like an opera in three acts, with recurring motifs and a suitably dramatic ending.

What happens to fame when a diva of international renown arrives by circumstance in a place where opera is unknown to all but a privileged few, and even they have no access to it or any other kind of orchestral music? From the outset, Lechemere Braun finds it necessary to educate the readers of his little newspaper about the importance of this unexpected celebrity. Lechmere is a man of stature in this small community because his is the only newspaper for four hundred miles. (He also runs the post office and the telegraph station.) He anticipates a little fame of his own with impressive sales of the paper and possible syndication. He dispatches his 'daughter' Quetta to find out more, handing her a hessian bag against the persisting remnants of the cyclone that drive the ship onto the rocks.

TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/06/29/theatre-of-darkness-by-thomas-shapcott/… (más)

One in every 87 births produces a set of twins. 'They're so cute' but also 'Double trouble!' This book of interviews with Australian twins and their families covers all aspects of twinship including the ESP-style communication and intuitive bond twins frequently describe. Tom Shapcott is a twin himself, and he has talked with a range of twins of all ages to compile this warm and fascinating look at the ways in which twins find their path in life - both as an individual personality, and as part of an intimate bonding with their sibling. There are twins who have achieved recognition in their own right in sport, the arts, business and education, and occasionally we find twins who excel in the same field such as Steve and Mark Waugh, or the Hockeyroo twins. Australia Council for seven years, and later the Executive Director of the National Book Council.… (más)