A Hundred Small Lessons

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I am drawn to the characters and their situations: being a newish parent, having/being a parent dying, sibling relationships, parent-child relationships, late 20th century Australian life and culture - all these themes are significant to me. Reflecting on your life as you approach death brings out lots of regrets and memories of failures, and in many ways Hay deals with these in a way which encourages thoughtfulness and introspection. On the other hand I really found the contrived plot to be too distracting and detracting from the value of the book. I didn't think much of Hay's very unrealistic use of the child's words to carry the plot along...sure, I haven't lived with a toddler for a long show more time, but they didn't behave like Hay's does when I was younger. Maybe Ashley Hay and I just come from different parts of Australian society, but to my mind she over-romanticises the things that Australians really just take for granted. I wanted to like this book very much, but I was struggling to find enough positive response in me to give it any more than 3 stars. show less

Life transitions are hard. Good ones and sad ones, they are all stressful and loaded with emotion. Having a child is a big life change. So is moving homes. Both disrupt life and force change. Characters in Ashley Hay's new novel, A Hundred Small Lessons, are facing major life changes and taking stock of their lives in this lovely, quiet, character driven, domestic novel.

When elderly Elsie Gormley falls and breaks a hip, her children, in their seventies themselves, decide that after rehab she can't return to the house she's lived alone in for thirty-seven years, instead placing her in a local retirement home. Cut adrift from the house that carried the memories of most of her life, her marriage, her motherhood, and her widowhood, she show more starts to drift between past and present in her mind, losing her place in the present and reality slowly, so slowly. Lucy Kiss, her husband Ben, and their one year old son Tom have moved to Brisbane, the city of Ben's childhood, buying Elsie's home. Although they have lived all over the world, Lucy really struggles with the move to Brisbane, the distance from her family, and motherhood suddenly being her only job. As Lucy tries to settle in and make Elsie's house her own, she conjures up the old woman, whom she has never met, as a sort of touchstone or imagined friend. In fact, Lucy is certain that Elsie has come back to the house to watch her several times, a fixation Ben finds ridiculous and frustrating.

The story moves from Lucy's present to Elsie's remembering of the life she spent in the house with husband Clem and twins Don and Elaine. The switches in narrative focus are often triggered by Lucy finding something of Elsie's or of thinking that Elsie has looked in on the house. There is a slow and mesmerizing feel to the narrative as it focuses on snapshots of ordinary life and the small moments of that life. Both Lucy and Elsie face struggles with motherhood: Lucy with the isolation and vulnerability of raising a child and Elsie with the relationship she never could seem to get right with her daughter Elaine. The intersections and parallels, as well as the divergences, of Elsie and Lucy's lives weave throughout the novel, forming the backbone of the minimal plot. The writing here is lyrical and moody and the setting is beautifully evoked in all of its wet and close glory. A meditation on aging, motherhood, house as home, and the passing of time, this is a deep and nostalgic read. show less

This book called to me with its story of a new mother starting over in a new house while the woman who had lived there for sixty years is learning to let go of the life she had. Having moved so often, settling into a new place and home, I connected to the story right away.

This is a book that delves underneath the surface of a life, past the mundane externals to hopes and dreams and fears, to memories and how they are skewed over time, and to the losses that come with age.

It is a story of mothers and daughters, of expectations and the misunderstandings that drive them apart. And of fathers who, amazed, suddenly realize everything has changed and that a child can turn their life upside down with love. And all the lessons that we learn show more about who we are and who we thought we were.

Author Ashley Hay was pregnant when she and her husband moved from Sydney to Brisbane, Australia. She found herself in a world where the landscape itself was alien as was her new role as mother. This influenced her to explore the theme of motherhood in her new novel, "imagining one woman (Lucy Kiss) arriving in motherhood, as another woman (Elsie Gormley) prepared to leave it."

Lucy, her husband Ben, and their child Tom have moved into Elsie's home of over sixty years. Elsie at age 89 had a fall and her children moved her into a senior home. Ben's work keeps him away, and Lucy becomes overwhelmed with motherhood's fears and concerns. She is curious about Elsie, hyer-aware of her legacy in the house, and she finds mementos left behind that give her a glimpse into Elsie's mysterious life. Lucy is convinced that Elsie, or someone, has been entering the house.

Elsie loved being a mother, putting other's needs first, but her daughter Elaine want a different life. And yet a young Elaine marries and has a child, her life choices chaffing like a manacle. The love of Elsie's life, Clem, never aspired to be more. Neither parent could help Elaine find her wings.

Scenes that allowed me into the character's inner lives stunned me, such as when Ben suddenly understands his wife's obsessive fears about protecting their child and when he thinks he sees an intruder in the house, his worst fears arising. I loved that Hay explored Clem, Ben, and Tom as well as the women.

The title of the novel comes from a poem that Lucy had once read to Ben, and reads to Tom, The Story by Michael Ondaatje:

For his first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives.
Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased.

I think that Hay's novel will be appreciated by readers who enjoy connecting with characters and the slow revelations that come with experience.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. show less

This is an excellent book about love in the past and the present. It's about a house and the way memories seem to be part of the house to be felt by future families who live within its walls.

Elsie has lived in her house for 62 years - she moved there as a young bride, raised her children there and watched her husband die there. She loves her house and plans to live in it the rest of her days. When she falls and has to go into the hospital and then into senior living, her children fix up the house and sell it to a young couple with a child. Lucy and Ben along with their son have lived in many different areas but are ready to settle down. Ben goes off to work every day and Lucy stays at home with their son. Lucy begins to feel Elsie's show more presence in the house - like Elsie is communicating with her and she even begins to talk to Else in her mind. Lucy never really feels that it is her house - she always thinks of it as Elsie's home. While Lucy is thinking about Elsie, Elsie is thinking about her life and her history in the house. The chapters are done in alternating order - first Elsie and then Lucy and the reader is able to learn about the history of the house and Elsie's earlier life.

A Hundred Small Lessons is about the many small decisions - the invisible moments - that come to make a life. These richly intertwined lives spin a warm and intricate story of how to feel - deeply and profoundly - what it is to be human; how to touch the shared experience of being mother or daughter; father or son. It's a story of love, and of life.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own. show less

Lucy and Ben’s marriage seems like a typical modern marriage, both of them adjusting to the tests of new parenthood. But Lucy, marooned in a new city where she has no support network – and without the necessary initiative to form one – soon becomes quite neurotic about safety and security. She is a catastrophist who can’t enjoy a bit of peace while her husband takes the kid for a walk in the pram:

Another thing she hadn’t understood all the years before Tom came along: motherhood’s terror—extremity, catastrophe, terror. The crazy swing from love to dread that could disrupt the most nondescript day. No mother she’d known had talked of it: not her sisters, nor her mother, not the friends she’d left behind in every place

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they’d lived.

[Which might be because some of us never fell captive to it! My mother was a catastrophist, so I know how exasperating it is for the child.]

There were so many things to worry about—Tom himself, and the spiders in the garden; the planet; and everything in between. She couldn’t bear to watch the news. Some twins, she’d heard the edge of a report just this morning, had been starved to death by their own mother in this very city. She’d broken a plate in her hurry to switch off the radio.
Now, she scooped her phone off the counter. Ben was ringing to tell her something dreadful. Something had happened. By the river. Something had happened to Tom. (pp. 34-35)

So when odd things happen, like the disappearance of Lucy’s phone from her kitchen, overnight footmarks in the wet lawn and unexplained noises at night, the reader (like the bemused husband) is never quite sure whether Lucy is just being melodramatic or these oddities have really happened.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/10/24/a-hundred-small-lessons-by-ashley-hay-bookre... show less

I picked up this book, after I heard Ashley Hay interviewed on RN Books & Arts. It wasn't just the story that drew me in, but there is something attractive about how the author interviewed which made me buy the book - like many of my favourite authors, she seems to have great curiousity and insight into our behavour.

And 'A Hundrew Small Lessons' seems to be written for the curious - it opens up a number of the small mysteries that make up every day life, which the reader is invited to explore themselves ... though it will not lessen the story if you leave them behind.

It's a largely gentle journeying tale about a changes that take place over a few months, but draws in events that happen over decades.

Lucy and Ben move into Elsie (and show more Clem's) house, after Elsie has a fall necessitating a move into a nursing home. Lucy is strongly drawn to Elsie's energy that she feels is part of the house's being, which at various times helps and hinders her ability to settle down. Elsie's life is a study against Lucy's seemingly bigger life. Elsie has occasional snatches of awareness of the world of which she's largely ignorant of - but isn't disappointed, because of her general happiness with what she has. Lucy on the other hand is aware of what she feels she is giving up, in settling down.

I loved this book - it's not long, but took a while to read - because of the sprinkling of mysteries which made me put the book down in order to think through. show less

Australian author Ashley Hay's A Hundred Small Lessons tells the story of two woman who lived in the same house at two different times. When elderly Elsie Gormley falls in her house and breaks her hip, she has to move from the home where she and her beloved husband Clem raised their twins, Elaine and Don now 70 years old, to a nursing home.

Elsie lost Clem over thirty years ago and has lived alone since then. She has a good relationship with her son Don and his wife Carol, but she and Elaine have clashed since Elaine was a teenager. Elsie loves Elaine's daughter Gloria and spent a lot of time with Gloria while she was growing up.

Elaine didn't take to mothering as Elsie did. Elaine married young, like her mother, but never reveled in the show more joy of raising her daughter and keeping house. One of the most poignant scenes takes place as Elaine pours her heart out to Clem about how desparately unhappy she is with her life. Clem listens to his daughter, and tells her that it isn't too late to go back to school or find a satisfying job. Clem has a much different, warmer relationship with Elaine than Elsie did.

Lucy, her husband Ben and their toddler son Tom buy Elsie's house when she moves to the nursing home. Lucy loves her husband and son, but she is melancholy. Ben travels frequently for work, and he and Lucy have moved several times across the world, finally settling in Brisbane.

Lucy becomes somewhat obsessed with Elsie. She finds a box of photos in the attic that belonged to Elsie, and when Tom accidentally spills something on them and ruins them, she is upset. Lucy feels Elsie's presence in the house, and even tells Ben that she has seen Elsie in the garden. Ben indulges Lucy at first, but he becomes increasingly exasperated by Lucy's continued behavior.

As a middle-aged woman Elsie poses for a portrait for an artist who lives nearby. This experience changes Elsie in a profound way. She begins to see herself in a different light.

Lucy meanwhile speaks frequently of her vardogers- versions of Lucy Kiss who exist in different times and places, a Sliding Doors effect. She brings up her vardogers when an old boyfreind unexpectedly turns up at her door.

Hay writes very descriptively- her opening paragraph, describing the house as Elsie sees it from the floor where she has fallen is particularly evocative. It makes you want to lie on your own floor to see what you see, things that you miss seeing everyday from your usual perspective.

A Hundred Small Lessons, whose title is taken from a Michael Ondaatje poem that Lucy recited to Ben on one of their first dates, is about the journeys taken by Elsie and Lucy on their way to finding their own identities. It's about growing into your own identity and marriage and motherhood and how they change you.

There is a coincidence that hints at a connection that Lucy's family and Elsie's family have that ties them together in a sweet manner, making for a lovely ending to this story. Of the two stories, I found Elsie's more interesting, maybe because we got more of it as she was older. And Clem was such a sweetheart, he gives husbands a good name. show less