'Words in Deep Blue' by Cath Crowley

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:  

Second-hand bookshops are full of mysteries  

This is a love story. 

It's the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets, to words. 

It's the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea. 

Now, she's back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal. She's looking for the future in the books people love, and the words that they leave behind.  

Sometimes you need the poets

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is the new contemporary young adult book from Australian favourite, Cath Crowley.

Crowley’s ‘Words in Deep Blue’ is her first new book since 2010’s extraordinary ‘Graffiti Moon’ – and it was worth the wait. It’s a book about books – about loving, reading, and imprinting on books – with the story pivoting around a second-hand bookshop called Howling Books, where a long-lost friend returns to escape grief, and where a family unit and all its individual members have love lives that are well and truly in the in the tumults. It’s mostly the story of Rachel and Henry – once best friends, until Henry fell for a girl called Amy, and Rachel confessed her love only to move away. It’s a story about the Letter Library that resides in Howling Books, where people are encouraged to write in the margins, underline, and use books as conversations to be had with other readers. It’s a book about finding the right book at the right time.

But before I get into just how much I loved this particular book, I want to tell you all about this 2015 article I read in The New Yorker that stays with me. It was by Adam Gopnik, and titled ‘When a Bookstore Closes, an Argument Ends.’ I have a favourite line from that article, and it’s something I kept thinking about while reading ‘Words in Deep Blue’ (indeed; I got so caught up in this story and its wisdom, and especially the characters – that I wanted nothing more than to print out a copy of Gopnik’s article and leave it for Henry or his father Michael, folded into a book in their Letter Library). Here is that line of Gopik’s that I love;

At a minor level, once a bookstore is gone we lose the particular opportunities for adjacency it offers, determined by something other than an algorithm. It is rarely the book you came to seek, but the book next to that book, which changes your mind and heart.

The pivotal setting of ‘Words in Deep Blue’ being Howling Books – a second-hand bookshop – is nothing short of genius. On one level, a book about books is just catnip for readers, and young adult readers especially. And Cath Crowley gets very meta in this book, where she frequently title-drops and author-drops the names of works and writers she loves dearly. Be prepared to read this book with a notepad and pen beside you, so you can quickly jot down the books mentioned that you’ll definitely want to check out later. From John Green’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ to Kirsty Eagar’s ‘Summer Skin’, ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges – this is Crowley revealing quite personal parts of herself, I feel, in the books she loves and has loved. Readers will feel a spark of joy and closeness to the author when they read one of the characters espousing dearly about a book they likewise adore, just as I did with this remembered exchange between father and son;

He and I have had hundreds of conversations about the characters in books. The last one we had was about Vernon God Little, a book by D.B.C. Pierre. I’d love it enough to read twice. 

‘What did you love?’ Dad had asked. 

‘Vernon,’ I’d said, naming the main character. ‘And the way it’s critiquing America. But mainly it’s the language. It’s like he’s left the words out in the sun to buckle a while, and they don’t sound like you’d expect.’

I also loved that this is a book about imprinting on books – which means highlighting, scribbling in the margins, and dog-earing – all the things some bibliophiles get horrified over the very notion! But I am an avowed dog-earer, under-liner, margin-scribbler and I’m glad the characters in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are too. I’m of the firm belief that creases and scribbles in a book are like laugh-lines on a face – signs of love.

This is also a book about loving the places where books can be found and talked about – flesh and bone books, with spines and smells and heft. Though its setting is a second-hand bookshop, the way these characters talk about finding books and connecting with people over stories is in itself a love letter to all bookshops, and libraries, friends who loan their copies, street libraries and any place else that good books and the people who recommend them can be found;

‘I read an article that said second-hand books will be relics eventually,’ I tell him, still trying to make excuses for how things went tonight. 

'Do you know what the word relic actually means, the dictionary definition?’ he asks, offering me the prawn crackers. 

I take one and tell him I don’t know. 

‘It means sacred,’ he says, breaking his cracker in half. ‘As in “the bones of saints.”’

What’s kind of ironic and meta in this book about loving books though, is that all those authors and stories Crowley’s characters mention? Just as many people would list Crowley’s own works amongst the greats that have changed and upheaved them.

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is also a love-story … or, a few love stories really. Rachel and Henry take centre-stage for much of the book, as their history of unrequited love and friends-to-more unfolds amidst grief, jealousy and heartbreak, to eventually evolve into acceptance, forgiveness and revelation. There’s also Henry’s sister, George, who has a secret letter-writing admirer and a boy from school who wants to break through her tough exterior and become friends. Then there’s Henry’s parents whose great love story is in its final throes, and Henry and Rachel’s mutual friend Lola whose great love is music and the band she’s been dreaming about for years.

Anyone who has ever read any of Cath Crowley’s books knows that her characters are exquisite, and those in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are no exception. I remember a long time ago (2013, to be exactly exaggerated) and Cath Crowley wrote in her blog about what I can only assume now was writing this very book. She said;

‘I keep hoping that one day I’ll find a shortcut, a door that takes me from one novel into the next. Takes me straight from Ed and Lucy’s kiss, through a small gap in the air, onto the street where Giselle and Charlie are waiting. Or even better, couldn’t I just walk a little way down the road, and have them existing on different streets in the same world?’
 

I know Crowley was writing about the frustration of finding story, but as one of her readers and biggest fans I wish for it too, on a fundamentally non-fictional level. I think the best way to describe how much I love Cath Crowley’s books is to say how much I want the characters to be real people that I could go visit. I’d love nothing more than to go from watching one of Gracie’s soccer matches, to hearing Charlie Duskin sing and seeking out new Shadow street-art – and now visiting Howling Books to tell Henry that my absolute favourite poem is Anna Akhmatova’s ‘You Will Hear Thunder’, so I could lend him my Everyman's Library Pocket Poets book of hers.

I loved these characters. I loved Henry and Rachel’s enduring friendship amidst complication. I loved meeting Cal in letters. I adored George’s bite;

‘What are you reading?’ he asks this afternoon. 

‘Kafka’s Metamorphosis,’ George says, without looking up. 

‘And what’s it about?’ 

‘Guy turns into a giant bug and eventually dies.’ 

‘Not exactly life-affirming,’ Martin observes. 

‘Life isn’t exactly life-affirming,’ George says.

And my Gosh, did I love reading new words from Cath Crowley. She has a way with language that’s poetically blunt when necessary, or can be languidly lush and is just utterly genius – and there’s just as much to admire in her words as the great wordsmiths her characters esteem.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged according to George, that shit days generally get more shit. Shit nights roll into shit morning that roll into shit afternoons and back into shit starless midnights. Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn’t have. I’m an optimist but tonight I’m coming around to her way of thinking.

I loved ‘Words in Deep Blue’. I waited six years for it, but I fell in love after the first page, and by the last it was a new favourite.

5/5

'Gracie Faltrain' series by Cath Crowley

World, meet Gracie Faltrain. She’s in year 10, is her school’s soccer superstar and the renegade girl who plays on the boy’s team. Gracie is a phenomenal player, because when she’s on the field she grows wings and never misses a goal. But she plays for herself. She doesn’t pass or share the glory – when Gracie Faltrain plays, she plays to win, and nobody better get in her way.

But Gracie is slowly starting to learn that winning by yourself isn’t nearly as satisfying as sharing the triumph with a team. The same way her family isn’t whole when her dad is away and her mum misses him. Or how Gracie is lost when her best friend, Jane, moves to England for her dad’s work, and Gracie becomes a social outcast at school. Soccer is about teamwork, sharing the glory and commiserating the loss . . . the same can be said of friendships and relationships.

We stay with Gracie through to year eleven. She’s still a soccer superstar, but one year on and she has gained a friend – the geeky, shy and sweet Alyce Fuller is firmly under Gracie’s wing. Then there’s Andrew Flemming, Gracie’s soccer teammate who has finally become a friend, and the object of Alyce’s affections. Then there’s Martin Knight – soccer captain and Gracie’s new boyfriend. Martin’s mum left eight years ago, and her absence still stings. But Gracie Faltrain is here to save the day and fix everyone’s problems, even if she doesn’t understand them. Gracie’s about to learn though, that sometimes you’ve got to let yourself lose when there’s just no way to win.

And, finally, we’re with Grace in her final year of high school. Dan Woodbury is a player from the opposition, but that doesn’t mean Gracie can’t be intrigued by his lip-ring and flying skills. Jane is back from England and dreaming of Gracie’s teammate, Corelli, in his Superman suit. Alyce Fuller is completey and totally over Andew Flemming . . . right when he realizes how much he wants her back. Annabelle Orion is going from annoying mean-girl to Gracie’s arch-nemesis in record time, and Martin doesn’t want anything to do with Gracie anymore. But the championships are around the corner, and Gracie has to make some big decisions about where soccer fits into the great scheme of her future.

Cath Crowley’s ‘Gracie Faltrain’ series debuted in 2004 with ‘The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain’. In 2006 Crowley wrote ‘Gracie Faltrain Takes Control’, and she concluded the series in 2008 with ‘Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally)’.

Ever since falling in love with Crowley’s ‘Graffiti Moon’ I have had a voracious appetite for her written word. So it was with utter glee that I delved into the ‘Gracie Faltrain’ series . . . and, as has become her MO, Cath Crowley does not disappoint in the least.

The ‘Gracie Faltrain’ series spans three years in the high school soccer career of one Gracie Faltrain – only girl on the boy’s soccer team and catastrophic klutz. Gracie is a superb character, and even though she’s nothing like Crowley’s other beloved female leads, Charlie Duskin or Lucy, Gracie still has the feel of a Crowley creation. She’s a tomboy with a temper, often time oblivious to the thoughts and feelings of others around her (until it’s too late), loyal to a fault and fiercely competitive. She’s brilliant. Throughout the three books we read how Gracie gets it so, so wrong . . . and sometimes she learns how to save the game, but other times her lesson comes from accepting defeat and knowing when she’s beat.

Helping Gracie along the way is a cast of unforgettable secondary characters aplenty. Gracie is our main narrator, but over the course of three books each major and minor character gets their turn at narrating. Gracie’s parents take the lead a lot in the first book, explaining their side of separation and how hard it is to watch Gracie muck up from the sidelines of her life. But in the final two books the narrative voice is taken over by Gracie’s nearest and dearest friends. There’s her best friend, Alyce, the school nerd who gets her heart broken by a popular soccer jock. Andrew Flemming, said popular jock who learns his own self-worth only when the girl he hurt proves it to him. Jane, Gracie’s other best friend, relegated to England for the first two books but back in Australia for the finale and with a broken internal GPS. Martin Knight, in turns Gracie’s biggest fan and harshest commentator.

Multiple narrations are definitely Cath Crowley’s style – it’s her groove and signature move, and it works pitch-perfectly in ‘Gracie Faltrain’. When I first read the plethora of POVs in ‘The Life and Times’ I was a little overwhelmed – particularly when we get Gracie’s parents narrating too. But it works. Once Crowley gets readers into her rhythm, it becomes the most natural thing to be given a window into these people’s heads, to read the ways they bounce off each other and fall in misunderstandings and tangled webs. And Gracie’s parents offer some of the most poignant insights of the entire series;

HELEN FALTRAIN

I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer.
She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore.

- ‘The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain’

Also, in the multiple narrations, certain character’s voices come to echo Crowley’s other works. Martin Knight is still living in the aftermath of his mother’s abandonment, and there’s a little of the heartsick Charlie Duskin and Ed in him. Likewise, when Gracie’s enemy, Annabelle Orion, takes the narrative reigns, her insights hint at some of the same struggles that Charlie Duskin goes through. It’s the same with Alyce Fuller, the no-hope nerd who is ignored by everyone (including Gracie) in the first book – she too has echoes of Charlie. All of these characters touch on what Cath Crowley is most curious about in her writing – people on the fringe, looking in. She loves the misfits and no-hopers, the ones who kick themselves down . . . and then she writes beautifully about how they get back up. They’re all here in the ‘Gracie Faltrain’ books, and they are lovely to read. But be warned, this is a series that will cause tears. But hey, no pain no gain, and there’s a lot to gain from the ‘Gracie Faltrain’ series.

I love, love, loved all three of these books. This is a wonderful series about fighting for what you want and not being afraid to stuff up, just so long as you admit when you’re wrong and do your damndest to make amends. And this series is funny. Gracie is infectious; her klutzy catastrophes will leave you belly-aching, and the social shenanigans Gracie finds herself in will leave you vicariously red-faced.

Hands up if anyone else fells like they’re in a strange life-looping door that keeps swinging back to hit them on the butt?

- 'Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally)'

Cath Crowley is truly one of Australia’s finest YA authors. ‘Gracie Faltrain’ is a series with a lot of heart; exploring the pitfalls and soars of high school through the wonderfully fumbling Gracie Faltrain. If you loved ‘Graffiti Moon’ and ‘Chasing Charlie Duskin’, then be assured that Cath Crowley has been writing on a role since way back in 2004. . .

5/5

'Chasing Charlie Duskin' by Cath Crowley

From the BLURB:

Charlie Duskin is running. Fleeing from failures and memories and friends who have given up on her. And she's not only running, she's chasing things–like a father who will talk to her, friends who don't think she's as invisible as a piece of cling wrap, and an experience with a boy in which she doesn't look like an idiot.

But Charlie Duskin is about to have the best summer of her life. She's about to meet a friend who'll change her forever. She's about to fall in love. She just doesn't know it yet.

Rose Butler and Charlie Duskin couldn’t be more different.

Charlie lives in the city, with her dad. Her mum died when she was nine, and her dad has been mourning her ever since … and ignoring Charlie in the process. At school, Charlie is a gutless wonder. She’s always a step out of beat, uncoordinated and all too willing to let people walk all over her. Her best friend, Dahlia, is just starting to figure this out – and, as a result, her and Charlie’s friendship is crashing and burning over the summer holidays.

Every Christmas Charlie and her dad return to his childhood town where he and Charlie’s mother fell in love. This time of year should be full of pine trees and celebration. Except this is the first year since Charlie’s grandmother passed away. The last person in the world to think Charlie was truly special, and now she has gone too. Her grandfather isn’t coping, and now Charlie is stuck with two men who can’t seem to come to grips with the absence of the women they loved.

Rose Butler lives next door to Charlie’s grandparent’s house. Her little hometown is a toilet stop – someplace you pass through, but never want to stay. For years now, Rose has been watching Charlie ‘Dorkin’ breeze through her town – always to end up on the freeway, going back to the city and a better life. And this year, Rose might just go with her … because Rose has a scholarship burning a hole in her back pocket. A scholarship to a city school, and out of this dustbowl town.

But Rose will miss her best friend, Dave, and boyfriend, Luke. She’ll miss the river and the falls, and the safety of shared history.

Charlie would give anything to hang out with Rose, Luke and especially Dave. She’d love to feel like she belongs, just for a bit. And to feel wanted. She’d like to be part of a choir, instead of always singing solo.

Rose will get out of this town. Even if it means using Charlie Dorkin to do it.

‘Chasing Charlie Duskin’ is the beloved 2005 YA novel from Cath Crowley.

I came to the Cath Crowley fan club a little late. I read ‘Graffiti Moon’ this year, and loved it. Now I’m back-tracking through Crowley’s previous books … and I really shouldn’t be surprised that ‘Chasing Charlie Duskin’ is as brilliant as I thought it would be.

Charlie Duskin is a frustratingly beautiful character. She is walking wounded – having lost her mother at a young age, which also led to the disappearance of her father as he retreated into grief. Now Charlie is living with more heartache since the recent passing of her grandmother, which lumps her with another male who is not coping well with the death of his beloved wife. As a result of so much tragedy, Charlie is disarmingly negative about herself. She thinks she’s broken – clutzy and embarrassing, unable to talk to boys and utterly invisible. She thinks her best friend, Dahlia, lucked out in the friendship stakes, and is unsurprised when it appears their camaraderie is starting to dissolve. Charlie sings and plays guitar, but all her songs are about wanting to fit in but knowing she never will.

Rose Butler, on the other hand, is a firecracker. She has lived in one place her whole life – with two boys who know her better than anyone else in the world. Her car-mad friend, Dave, and her boyfriend Luke. Rose loves these two - but she hates her town. She feels frustrated by her complacent parents, and their suffocating love. So when Rose is told that she has been awarded a city school scholarship, she keeps it a secret. She doesn’t want to be told she can’t go, and she doesn’t want to see the look on Luke’s face when she tells him she’s leaving.

Rose and Charlie are heading for disaster when both of them (unknowingly and unwittingly) present the other with what they most want in the world. For Charlie, Rose represents everything she can’t be – confident, carefree and cool. For Rose, Charlie is her ticket out – and she intends to be sitting in the car with Dorkin when she and her dad breeze out of town and head into the city.

Disaster is bound to ensue.

Cath Crowley’s books are reading confectionery. Her lyrical words are gooey caramel that get stuck to the roof of your mouth so you can tongue them and savour the sweetness. She looks at the world through dizzying heights and candy-coloured spectacles – and I can’t get enough of her writing or her characters.

Charlie Duskin was sublime. I just wanted to wrap her in a bear hug and whisper words of encouragement in her ear. She’s that kind of character – one you want to bundle off the page and bring home to make hot chocolate for. She’s beautiful and doesn’t know it, and that made her superb.

Rose was equally charming and disarming. The book is told from both points of view – Charlie and Rose’s – and in the beginning, through Charlie’s eyes, I did frown down at Rose and her seemingly perfect life. But Crowley loves shades of grey, and Rose is just a gorgeously lost and nervous as Charlie is (even if she hides it better).

The book is ultimately about the fragility of people, and giving a little kindness to watch them grow. The finale is a chest-swelling crescendo, and a fitting ‘Aha!’ moment for dear Charlie Duskin.

We watch her walk into the spotlight she’s been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it’s about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it’s about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it.

Cath Crowley is certainly an Aussie YA treasure. Her books take you down to the lowest lows (so that you find yourself crying on the train while reading) but then she makes it up to you when her characters soar (so that you do a little fist-pump on the same train ride home). I think that whenever Crowley puts fingers to keyboard, a little bit of magic happens … I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

5/5

'Graffiti Moon' by Cath CROWLEY

From the BLURB:

"Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers."

It’s the end of Year 12. Lucy’s looking for Shadow, the graffiti artist everyone talks about.

His work is all over the city, but he is nowhere.

Ed, the last guy she wants to see at the moment, says he knows where to find him. He takes Lucy on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s thoughts about heartbreak and escape echo around the city walls.

But the one thing Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right before her eyes.

Lucy is finishing Year 12, and if there’s one thing she wants more than anything in the world, it’s to meet Shadow. Shadow who spray-paints images of sleeping birds, perfect blue skies and boys with grass-hearts. Lucy knows that if she meets Shadow, she will fall in love with him.

Ed has just been fired and needs to make rent money, pronto. Kicking around the city and spraying your heart on your sleeve is all well and good fun, but it won’t pay the bills.

Lucy has given herself one night dedicated to finding Shadow.

Ed has decided to risk life, limb and jail-time to earn an easy buck.

A collision is bound to happen.

Cath Crowley’s novel is like a Bill Henson photo. Soft around the edges, full of dark and luminescence and reminiscence that’s both heartbreaking and painful. In other words, this novel is incandescently wonderful.

Ed’s character is a vigilante spray artist. He’s not dissimilar to the UK’s infamously anonymous ‘Banksy’. Ed sprays images of honesty and discomfort on the sides of trains, storefronts and skate parks. When he breaks up with his girlfriend he sprays an image of himself with a grass heart, and her with a lawnmower. With any lesser novelist, ‘Graffiti Moon’ could have choked and perished with all the references to visual street art – but not with Crowley. Her words have a gorgeous lyricism to them. Her sentences run together like song lyrics and when her characters have so much passion for the art they are seeing, the lack of visualization and precision of description mean that Ed’s graffiti art is clear as day in the reader’s mind;

There’s one of Shadow’s pieces, a painting on a crumbling wall of a heart cracked by earthquake with the words: Beyond the Richter scale written underneath. It’s not a heart like you see on a Valentine’s Day card. It’s the heart how it really is: fine veins and atriums and arteries. A fist-sized forest in our chest.

Honestly, there were many times while reading ‘Graffiti Moon’ when I felt like putting the book down and simply applauding Cath Crowley. She is a wordsmith goddess, and (if you can believe it) ‘A fist-sized forest in our chest’ is just the tip of her talented iceberg.

Ed and Lucy are two marvellous characters. Lucy is a relatable artistic teenager – she’s a little bit too innocent, preferring her fictional Mr. Darcy to any of the real school boys (and ass-grabbbers) she knows. Lucy has her head happily in the clouds and an idealized love in her heart. For any bookish teen reading ‘Graffiti Moon’, Lucy is a mirror being held up. . . and she’s wonderful for her day-dreamy honesty.

“You’re not like other girls, you know that, right?” Ed asks.

“I've been aware of the problem,” I tell him.

Ed is a little rougher around the edges, but no less sweet for his bitterness. He dropped out of high school in year 10 and his beloved artist mentor has recently passed away. Ed is feeling left behind, stranded and in a chokehold of his own making. Ed is so many teenagers – those who feel helpless and clueless in their future. But Ed is also a sensitive artist, one who expresses himself on the wall with a can of spray paint in his hand. Ed may think he’s a no-diploma no-hoper, but readers (and Lucy) know better. And as if Ed’s sensitive scruff wasn’t endearing enough, he pulled this line out;

I shrug. I don’t want to get into this tonight. “What I'm really disappointed about is that Veronica Mars didn’t go past a third season,” I say. “And that Turkish Delights don’t come in king-size.”

A man after my own heart.

Ed and Lucy are adorable. Too adorable for words. A lot of their relationship is about build-up and deception. All of which is unknowingly building for one final crescendo-ending;

A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for.

I'm so close to meeting him and I want it so bad. Mum says when wanting collides with getting, that’s the moment of truth. I want to collide. I want to run into Shadow and let the force spill our thoughts so we can pick each other up and pass each other back like piles of shiny stones.

The second I finished ‘Graffiti Moon’ I knew this book would be a ‘keeper’ – an instant favourite and one I will happily and frequently re-read. It is glorious and sweet, a tender tale of finding and expressing love.

5/5