Springtime

by Michelle de Kretser

A rare, beguiling and brilliant ghost story from the Miles Franklin Award winning author.

Picking up her pace, Frances saw a woman in the leaf-hung depths of the garden. She wore a long pink dress and a wide hat, and her skin was a creamy white. There came upon Frances a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stood still.

When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne he was married with a young son.

Now she and Charlie live in Sydney with her rescue dog Rod and an unshakeable sense that they have tipped the world on its axis. They are still getting their bearings - of each other and of their adopted city. Everything is alien, unfamiliar, exotic: haunting, even.

Worlds of meaning spin out of perfectly chosen words in this rare, beguiling and brilliant ghost story by Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning writer Michelle de Kretser.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Novella, Contemporary, Australia, Horror, Ghosts

92 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 2014

About the author

Michelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka but moved to Australia when she was 14.

She was educated in Melbourne and Paris, and published her first novel, 'The Rose Grower' in 1999. Her second novel, published in 2003, 'The Hamilton Case' was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). 'The Lost Dog' was published in 2007. It was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women's Book Review.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Review originally published on my blog, November 2014) It's a ghost story. It must be, because it says so on the cover. Or is it? Well, it is, but that prominent subtitle is also deliberately misleading.

The protagonist of Springtime is Frances. A writer and academic in her late twenties, she's recently moved from Melbourne to Sydney with her new partner, Charlie, a much older man with a young son. She is disorientated by her new surroundings: in contrast to the ordered grid system of Melbourne, 'in Sydney the streets ran everywhere like something spilled'. She takes walks with her dog, Rod, whose imposing appearance obscures the fact that he's terrified of other animals. It's on one of these walks that Frances spots, in one of the gardens she frequently passes, a woman in distinctive clothes, and experiences 'a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stilled'.

Before this, there is an early glimpse of ghostly happenings to come when Frances remembers Charlie's mother, who, like hers, was French. She was 'a drunk' who stole from Charlie, but in the present day of the story she is dead: 'that meant Charlie was free of her, Frances believed'. The ominous suggestion inherent in this belief is obvious - it seems naive on Frances's part to assume this, and of course, the ghost story subtitle leads the reader to suspect that the continuing presence of Charlie's mother may well turn out to be literal.

The sightings continue, always when Frances is alone: each time she spots the woman, flitting through the garden with her own dog, her feeling is that 'the morning swayed, as duplicitous as déjà vu'. She can't quite pinpoint the house the garden belongs to - 'it merged with the sun in Frances's mind: it was something else that shifted about and wasn't always where she looked'. However, the story makes these experiences as opaque as the sightings themselves. It moves on, to talk about Frances and Charlie's complicated relationship, the menacing presence of his ex-wife, and Frances's difficulties in dealing with his son, Luke. At home, they receive mysterious phone calls which consist of nothing but a computerised female voice saying only 'goodbye'; Frances suspects they are somehow the ex-wife's work, but can't prove it.

The longest single scene, although it's fractured and scattered throughout the narrative, depicts a dinner party which sharply illustrates the tensions between Frances and Charlie, as well as Frances's feelings of not fitting, being conspicuously out of place. Talk turns to ghosts, and here de Kretser puts her cards on the table with a tongue-in-cheek flourish, as one attendee, a writer, theorises: 'ghost stories work up to a shock, but the modern form of the short story is different. When a loose, open kind of story came in, writing about ghosts went out'. Springtime is both that loose, open kind of story this character mentions, and a story about ghosts that works up to a shock, albeit a dulled one. It's at this point, wishing only to provoke another guest, that Frances is compelled to confess her own experience, and in the process, begins to feel frightened herself for the first time. The 'ghost' only becomes a real threat when it is spoken about, having hitherto only hovered around the edges of a story that is more about the difficulties of ordinary life and relationships.

When the secret of the ghost is revealed, it's benign, even mundane, though not without a twist of something macabre. If there is anything frightening here, it's the everyday things like Frances's uncertainty about Charlie, and their inability to talk to one another clearly about the things that matter; and while his mother doesn't hang around the couple as some sort of apparition, Frances sees echoes of her in Charlie, in the same way that she sees echoes of Charlie's ex-wife in Luke. An epilogue set eight years later shows that things - as we might expect - are much changed for Frances, but links with her old life remain. This underlines the spirit of transience that seems to be the book's major theme - the scene of Frances's sightings of the ghost can't be fixed in her mind, and her trust in Charlie fluctuates, as do her feelings for him, her belief in her work, and her certainty of her own place in the world.

While very short - probably too short, really, to have been published as a novella in its own right (although it seems to be available only as an ebook in the UK) - Springtime presents a beautiful, unexpectedly eerie portrait of believable and nuanced characters. 'What people don't pay attention to changes the story', says Charlie at one point (Frances is concerned he won't understand her research - she is writing about 'objects', small details, in eighteenth-century French portraits). And this is why it's so clever, as well as quite daring, that de Kretser's story is explicitly positioned as a ghost story. The reader is given certain expectations which are bound to colour their experience of the tale, what they do and don't take away from it. Personally, I wouldn't categorise this as a ghost story in the traditional sense, but as a self-contained short story and a character study, it is an excellent piece of work, with layers that demand to be unpicked.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two and a half stars?

I feel like I missed something in this short novella. And because of all the glowing reviews on the back of the book I feel like it's my fault and because the structure felt disjointed at times (and left me wondering if the weird layout of putting decorative illustrated pages right in the middle of the text was supposed to mean something, or if it was just a mistake in layout).

This either wasn't that good, or just more proof that I'm getting dumber and more like the people the main character in this book despises. Maybe it's time to finally give Dan Brown a shot (no, not really, that's just in reference to something in the book, I haven't lost my reading attention span that much yet).

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in October because the subtitle makes it sound like a ghost story. And while the character does encounter a mysterious creature, it isn't a ghost story in the traditional sense. It is an interesting tale that includes sometimes funny/biting social observations (but blink and you might miss them), the seeming culture war between Melbourne and Sydney (the clothes Frances wore in Melbourne are ALL WRONG in Sydney), and all the while Frances is noticing things. She notices the flowers and plants, and how different they are. She notices how people interact with one another. And she notices a woman in an old-fashioned dress....

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love traditional ghost stories, but was drawn to Michelle de Kretser's Springtime: A Ghost Story precisely because it sounded unexpected.  I am used to cold, dark, usually Western European settings in ghost stories, where atmosphere is built, and the sinister creeps into the scenes which we expect.  De Kretser's novel, instead, is set during the springtime in Sydney, Australia.  Despite the quite low rating which the book has on Goodreads, I was intrigued by the story in Springtime, and enjoyed her novel The Rose Garden when I read it some years ago.  I therefore ordered a copy immediately.

Springtime is a neat little hardback, and coming in at just 85 pages, it can be read in one sitting.  There are several odd occurrences within it, but it is not a ghost story which harks to conventions of the genre.  Of de Kretser's authorial decisions, Andrew Wilson writes: '... [she] undermines our expectations by refusing to play by the rules...  One reads Springtime not for its shock value - this tale is much more subtle than that - but for the way de Kretser explores the nature of ambiguity and for her deliciously unsettling descriptions.'  It is described in its blurb as 'rare, beguiling and brilliant', three words which would draw me to read almost any novel.

Charlie and Frances, our protagonists, have moved from trendy Melbourne to more traditional Sydney, so that Frances can take up a position as a research fellow.  They make their journey with 'an unshakeable sense that they have tipped the world on its axis.  Everything is alien, unfamiliar, exotic: haunting, even.'  Frances, rather than Charlie, is the focus throughout the story.  At the outset, de Kretser explores how her new surroundings make her feel: 'She was still getting used to the explosive Sydney spring.  It produced hip-high azaleas with blooms as big as fists.  Like the shifty sun, these distortions of scale disturbed.  Frances stared into a green-centred white flower, thinking, "I'm not young any more."  How had that happened?  She was twenty-eight.'  As a character, I liked her immediately.  She is a 'solitary, studious girl, whose life had taken place in books; at least four years of it had passed in the eighteenth century.'

We meet Frances when she is walking through her new neighbourhood.  Almost immediately, de Kretser makes subtle suggestions, planting seeds in the mind of her reader: 'Picking up her pace, Frances saw a woman in the shadowy depths of the garden. She wore a little hat and a trailing pink dress; a white hand emerged from her sleeve.  There came upon Frances a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stilled.'  After she sees this woman for the first time, she does not stop doing so: 'These partial visions, half-encounters, were repeated at intervals over weeks.'  This woman proves to be 'as silent and white as her dog.'

In her story, de Kretser explores the differences, and rivalries, between Melbourne and Sydney.  In Frances' new city, '... the streetscape was so weirdly old-fashioned.  Where were the hip, rusting-steel facades, Melbourne's conjuring of post-industrial decay?  The decrepitude in their western suburb was real: boarded-up shops, cracked pavements, shabby terrace houses sagging behind stupendous trees.'  Some of the scenes which de Kretser sculpts are beautiful, and others stark and provocative: 'Charlie gathered up Frances's hair and balanced the knot on his palm.  At night they slept entwined like bare sheets.'  I loved her quite unusual descriptions: for instance, 'They were thin eyes and surprisingly inky', and 'On the day Charlie left his wife, she had sent Frances an email that could still make Frances want to do unreasonable things: seize the breadknife and saw off her hair, eat stones.'  I also got a real sense of the natural world pushing against urbanisation in the story; de Kretser writes: 'The river had turned into fierce, colourless glass.  It was a tyrant, punishing anyone who dared to look at it.  Small parrots shrieked with self-importance.  Their emerald broke savagely on the brassy sheen.'

I found Springtime rather an atmospheric read, with a strong sense of place.  De Kretser manages to make a setting which many readers would think of as idyllic, into something with dark edges.  It is told using rather short, unnamed chapters, which add to the sense of tension.  I found the story absorbing from the outset, and found myself really caring about Frances, who felt like a realistic character.  The crafting of the plot is tight, and it feels as though not a single sentence has been wasted.  It is a revealing novella, which has a lot of depth to it, and is ultimately quite powerful.  There is such attention to detail here, and I'm certain that Springtime is a story whose nuances I will be thinking about for months to come.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ghost story? Really? There’s very little in the way of suspense, and not too much plot either, in this Australia-set novella. Twenty-eight-year-old Frances, a Bryn Mawr graduate, moves from Melbourne to Sydney in the spring of 2006. She is to take up a research fellowship for a book about objects in eighteenth-century French portraits. Her new place will be shared with Rod, her 66-lb. RSPCA rescue dog, and Charlie, who left his wife and son for her and is 15 years older. That’s the setup. Apart from a dinner party at her friends Joseph and Lola’s, only a couple significant things happen: Frances receives some prank calls, and she thinks she sees a ghost in a garden she passes on her walks, a woman dressed in an old-fashioned pink dress.

In a ghost story I expect tension to linger and questions to remain unanswered. Instead, de Kretser exposes Frances’s ghost as harmless (it’s a mannequin). What I think she is trying to do here is show that ghosts can be people we have known and loved or, alternatively, places we have left behind. There is some nice descriptive writing (e.g. “three staked camellias stood as whitely upright as martyrs”), but not enough story to hold the interest.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this playful little book. Mildly provocatively, it plays up the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry, and it subverts its own genre. It’s cunningly constructed so that the reader finds herself bemused and amused.

It’s very short, only 85 pages, and beautifully presented in hardcover with an elegant dust-jacket. There are exquisite colour plates of ethereal flowers interleaved amongst the pages, the colour scheme contained to the soft brown and black of the dust-jacket. The photographs are by Torkil Gudnason, and the design is by Sandy Cull from gogoGinko.

This gorgeousness is, of course, intended for the Christmas gift market, a slim book easily slipped into Christmas stockings and priced just right for Kris Kringle. But lucky recipients unfamiliar with de Kretser’s writing will find themselves surprised if they expect a conventional ghost story. As one of the guests at a dinner party says:


‘Ghost stories work up to a shock, but the modern form of the short story is different. When a loose, open kind of story came in, writing about ghosts went out’.

But Frances is surrounded by ghosts, not the least of which is the ghost of Melbourne, the city she belongs in and has uprooted herself from.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/12/06/sp...

[Cam (Lana Belova)]

This novella is mainly a mix of feelings and emotions and doesn't feel like a finished story, but I enjoyed it, mainly because of those parts describing a sun-dappled nature - it felt as if the cover art came to life! Also because of its elusiveness, but, all in all, I wish there were more character development and more to the story. Though, maybe such a format fits well to a ghost story type, being vague and not really following any character?..
The story reads easily and I'm grateful for beautiful mental images of the sun playing in the vivid spring leaves I've been able to glimpse thanks to the author's skillful writing, which made me add to my list yet another book by her. Her writing is beautiful.
I think it was the title that initially draw my attention, since spring is my favourite time of year, and then, of course - the cover, such a beautiful art by Oliver Winward!
There actually was a ghost, a real one, but, as I thought, lacking a ghost vibe...

My favourite passages out of the book:

"The houses beside the path faced away from the river. Back gardens, lying open to the eye, hinted at private lives. At that hour of the morning, curtains were shut and decks deserted, but the aura of revelation remained. Flowers yawned, bronze-leaved cannas, lilies striped cream and red. Nasturtiums swarmed over palings. A heavy-headed datura flaunted pale orange trumpets that darkened at the rim."

"Picking up her pace, Frances saw a woman in the shadowy depths of the garden. She wore a wide hat and a trailing pink dress; a white hand emerged from her sleeve. There came upon Frances a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stilled."

"These partial visions, half-encounters, were repeated at intervals over weeks. One day, striding past the woman and her dog, Frances realized that whenever she saw those two she was the only person on the path. The morning swayed, as duplicitous as déjà vu. When a cyclist appeared around a bend, Frances considered hailing him—but what would she say? “Can you see a woman in that garden?” She heard him answer, “There’s no one there.”"

"The moon rose above the trees. It had a chip on its shoulder. The scent of gardenias drifted up from the gardens across the road. There came a sound like tiny bells. Joseph had phoned her one evening at the beginning of spring. “Go outside.” The cold yard was ringing with silver music. “What is it?” asked Frances, enchanted. Joseph didn’t know. “A beetle? A cricket? I have asked so many people, people who have lived here all their lives.”"

"By the time Charlie and Frances set out with Rod the next morning, the sun had set golden hoops in the tops of the trees. The river had turned into fierce, colorless glass."

"Their house merged with the sun in Frances’s mind: it was something else that shifted about and wasn’t always where she looked."

"What people don't pay attention to change the story."
This observation has really left an impression on me. There are many hidden things in our world that change it, and we don't even know about them...
But if specifically in relation to this story - what if there were clues I totally missed?.. That might be it or the story really is the disjointed sketches on life. But I'm grateful for a chance encounter with this story - it, for sure, made me think and improved my mood with those sunny images!



(2) Art by Holly Irwin

[Jonathan Crossfield · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disappointing. When did the art of the ghost story become lost? When did a mildly supernatural or unexplained twist become the easy way for a writer shoehorn in some kind of point to an otherwise unremarkable short story? (There have been a few lately.) It's as if the author doesn't really want to write a ghost story - after all, she doe a good job of avoiding the genre for bout 95% of the word count. But by adding a couple of details and a twist so understated as to be almost soporific, it allows the publisher to put 'A Ghost Story' on the cover, making it a more commercial sale.

This is really not much more than a short story packaged as a novel. It barely qualifies as a novella, padded out with large type and plenty of white space to reach even this meagre 80-something page count. But there's not even enough here to justify the number of words it has - stretched across so many unnecessary scenes and characters as the author attempts to somehow stumble across a plot.

As a result, this is an attempt at literary storytelling that ends up just rambling in a disjointed, virtually stream-of-conscious manner, continually introducing characters and situations that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. (What ever happened to short stories being condensed and tightly written?) Unless there's some odd metaphorical thing going on here that I'm too dim to see. It's basically an overlong essay on moving from Melbourne to Sydney with a partner you probably should have dumped. (I say probably - the book really doesn't even give their relationship a proper arc by which to judge the author's intentions - thereby making their scenes together so much padding). IN fact, there are more pages devoted to the differences between Sydney and Melbourne than there are at any attempt at creepiness or ghosts. And the *cough* twist is flagged so large that there isn't even conventional suspense - never mind any of the supernatural variety.

I think anyone attempting to write ghost stories today should at least go back and steep themselves in the works of M R James,Dickens, Blackwood, even more recent writers such as Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes.Y'know, actually understand the genre before attempting to write it.

There's a very brief discussion of the nature of the ghost story on page 56 (so my attention peaked for a millisecond)."Ghost stories work up to a shock, but the modern form of the short story is different. When a loose, open kind of story came in, writing about ghosts went out." Readers, I give you exhibit A - an example of the latter form that demonstrates ably why it has no place calling itself the former.

[Debbie Robson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been ages since I read a ghost story (except for the overly long The Little Stranger) so I was definitely in the mood for Michelle De Kretser’s little book. What struck me straight away was how old the main character appeared to be. Frances is mentioned as being in her twenties and in a relatively new relationship but somehow she comes across as much older, more the age of the author herself. This doesn’t really matter very much but the world wearyness sort of pervades the book.
Frances has recently moved to Sydney from Melbourne and is very disorientated. I love the way she has to gradually get to to know this new city. “And the streetscape was so weirdly old-fashioned. Where were the hip, rusting-steel facades, Melbourne’s conjuring of post-industrial decay? The decrepitude in their western suburb was real; boarded up shops, cracked pavements, shabby terrace houses sagging behind stupendous trees.”
On one of her walks she comes across a strange woman wearing very old fashioned clothing. She is standing in the depths of an old garden and with her is a bull terrier. On following walks, Frances has trouble locating the exact house where she saw the woman and the dog. “These partial visions, half-encounters, were repeated at intervals over weeks.” At a dinner party Frances is disorientated again and definitely on the outer. There is the awkwardness of visits by her partner’s son Luke. There is the recalcitrant Rod, Frances’s dog and Frances’s unusual job working at home which also isolates her. Kretser handles the subtle but all pervading mood of alienation really well.
“‘Do you like pizza, Luke?’ she asked.
He was watching a documentary about giraffes. ‘Not frozen,’ he said absently. ‘Trans fat gives you cancer.’ His phone rang. He was six years old, and his phone cost twice as much as Frances’s.”
Springtime can appear, at first glance, as a slight, deceptively simple book but the depths are there! So too is the twist. Recommended for those readers looking for something a little different.

[C. (Comment, never msg). · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those unacquainted with me, “books” are the physical article, rewards extending past their words. An electronic copy is like vitamins; versus growing gardens, picking, making, and tasting the food. I like collecting, there is no library, nor adequate internet for downloading anything. There are few freebies or giveaways for Canadians, as if we resided on Mars. Thus, a good synopsis or review is a must, to verify that titles like this are indeed paranormal. This hardly qualified.

I deducted one star because this story merely suggested an ethereal ambiance 99% of the way, closing with one revelation that was too late to savour or weave into an active investigation of the information. Dear authors, fans of paranormal mystery want bonafide content. We are not amused by a play on words, or barely manifested content in our genre.

I subtracted another star for this novel largely featuring a woman’s relationship musings; a topic I would not have bought. The pursuits of what spirit there was comprised the minimum of action and narration. The chosen reflections and drama was disjointed. I do not mind flashbacks, shifting perspective, or timeline. However, no threads were resolved all the way through; only the titular plot a decade later. All observations and events were jagged; an introduction to some people, pages turning to other things, followed by relating why we dislike those people. It is like a record player skipping to certain parts, or light blinking between blinds. Eighty-six pages were enough.

With cohesion, I would sympathize with a tale of disrespecting Frances’ vegetarianism as a supper guest, or Charlie’s Son disturbing her dog. Frances’ dear dog, Rod, is my favourite aspect of “Springtime: A Ghost Story” 2014. The way Michelle De Krester crafts images and visualizes nature is gorgeous and I readily praise it.

[E.D. Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other readers on GR are hating on this book because it's not Poe or something, but I really liked it, A LOT. And, there IS AN ACTUAL GHOST, READ MORE CAREFULLY PEOPLE.

I think that by calling it a ghost story, the author was also suggesting that Frances is haunted in a metaphorical way. She's haunted by Charlie's ex-wife, an enigma she knows only from Facebook and the telephone conversations she overhears Charlie's son, Luke, having with her over the phone. Frances is also haunted by the ghost of her romance with Charlie, a hotblooded whirlwind thing that bore him away from his family and into her arms -- but what has it become? And who is Charlie, anyway? An old man with a bad back, a man who doesn't defend her at dinner parties. Charlie's dead, drunk French mother is another spectre. This is a book about how life can haunt us, how ghosts can be real people walking around in other parts of the world, spooking us by their unknowability, and our inability to forget them.

Objects can also be haunted, the book makes that connection through France's subject of study (the objects in French paintings). Luke's left-behind Legos haunt Frances. The tiger-balm haunts her. Even their neighborhood in Sydney seems shaggy and haunted by lost prosperity.

I could write a whole paper about this book but I won't. Suffice it to say that I thought it was really good, gorgeously written. De Krester is an artist and I'd like to read more of her work. This little book definitely deserves a better rating.

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 2 out of 5]

I requested this for review because though I own de Kretser's award winning Questions of Travel I have yet to read it.

Springtime is an introspective little piece - a short story, (presented in hardcover, smaller than a mass paperback with largish type) rather than a novella.

It is a brief portrait of a woman facing the uncertainty and impermanence of change, time and fate. The tone is ethereal, the language graceful but it didn't really speak to me beyond that.

[Susan Wight · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have read a review of Springtime you have basically read the ghost story already. The novella is so short as to be not much more than a short story and the ghost story is only one aspect of it.

Two dinner guests in the story speculate on why ghost stories have waned. Joseph says, "Do you know this idea that electricity put an end to ghost stories? People stopped seeing ghosts when rooms were properly lit." An author called George responds that he doesn't think it has anything to do with lighting. "The way stories were written changed around that time. Ghost stories work up to a shock, but the modern form of the short story is different. When a loose, open kind of story came in, writing about ghosts went out."

Accordingly, the ghost makes its first appearance early in the story, the 'shock' which is worked up to is expected and certainly the writing is loose and open with the balance between description and plot dipped heavily in favour of description, especially of characters - an effort that seems wasted with so little time for anything to happen to them.

I actually read the book twice because the first reading was so unsatisfactory that I thought I must have missed something. I didn't. As far as story goes, the book is disappointing.

The sense of Sydney is palpable and there are some beautiful images and passages, for example "Walking beside the river pushed ideas around her mind like chairs" and "The river had turned to fierce, colourless glass. It was a tyrant, punishing anyone who dared to look at it."

I thought more development was required.

[Laura (thenerdygnomelife) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I picked this book from the library almost entirely because of its charming diminutive size and fun cover.

Frances and Charlie have recently moved to suburban Sydney, where Frances is trying to find her footing in a new life. While exploring the countryside, she begins to see a ghostly-looking figure and her disquiet in her new surroundings begins to grow. The title itself bills this as a ghost story, but it's not with the shock and creeping horror of a typical ghost story; instead, it's a character story, with a slow sink into the mind and feelings of the protagonist.

I felt this novella held promise, but ultimately delivered too little in the end. It's too short to say that it was time wasted, but I didn't feel I got anything out of it, other than a sense of wanting more.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy Michelle de Kretser’s writing. Just take this passage as a case in point:

‘One of the things that had been said in Melbourne when she announced that she was moving to Sydney was, You’ll miss the parks. Other things included: There are no good bookshops there. And, What will you do for food?’

Classic! She does this so well, in so many different ways, and manages to convey so much about Australian society through this sharply delivered, witty, and observational tone.

‘Frances had reminded Joseph that she didn’t eat meat. Joseph texted back: No problem. He served a platter of oysters and announced marinated duck breasts to follow. Rising to fire the barbeque, he told Frances, ‘Don’t worry, there is plenty of extra salad for you.’ Joseph believed that if you didn’t eat meat you weren’t hungry.
The duck breasts arrived, and a plate of coloured leaves for Frances. “I used to be fussy about food,” remarked Vanessa. She had that penetrating, well-bred voice which, no matter what it says, enters the Australian ear like glass. “But I was in Sri Lanka two Christmases ago. The tsunami? When I saw what people went through, I made up my mind to always eat whatever was on my plate.”’

Springtime is a short little book, a novella by my definition, although it is only about 80 pages. It’s sub-titled as a ghost story. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. This is a new edition, the story was first published in 2014. If you’re looking for an amusing and thought provoking little nibble of a read, then this is the ideal book for you. If you’ve never read Michelle de Kretser and have wondered if her books would be your cup of tea, this is a good way to sample her talent. Highly recommended.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The slightness of this volume does have a drawback and that's simply that the whole thing flashes past and doesn't necessarily land with too much weight. But it's hard to tear your mind away from it and you'll find that, much like a ghost, it lingers long after the corporeal presence is gone. It's a terrific subversion of the ghost story genre and one that I never imagined could work, until I closed the book and smiled purely because it did. A smart, simple story almost like one you might hear from a friend and well worth the short read.

More TK at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2016/03...

[richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's another case where I'm irked by the oddball negative reviews on Goodreads. Yes it's a ghost story. No it's not a conventional ghost story. It's a beautifully observed, wonderfully paced, thoughtful meditation on fear, displacement and imbalance in relationships. What I took to be deliberate obfuscation, where as a reader you occasionally don't quite know if the dialogue is occurring today or in the past, works very effectively to create disquiet in the reader and to communicate the narrator's state of mind. This is the first I've read by this author and I'll be seeking more.

[WndyJW · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella by Michelle de Kretser is a different kind of ghost story. It's not about the ghost, it's about how everything, real or imagined, known and unknown can haunt someone.
The prose is excellent and I look forward to a longer book by de Kretser.

[Mercedes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, quick read. Haunting, but not in a dark way. It was haunting in a creative, ethereal way. It's rare that such a short story is so fulfilling, interesting, and also leaves me wanting more.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read de Kretser's book On Writing: Shirley Hazzard, and having read only one of her novels, I'd like to read more. This was an interesting story that, in its descriptions of gardens and flowers and of people shares much with Hazzard's way of seeing things.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short novel that I enjoyed and that gave me something to think about. It is billed as a ghost story but it is also a story of a woman and her dog and a woman and her new relationship. It also delves into relationships between friends and acquaintances. There is so much in this lovely little book I may read it again! Plus it takes place in Australia, a place I've never been. (Christmas in summer!)

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick read. This isn’t a scary ghost story, perhaps there isn’t really a ghost but works as an exploration of a couples relationship after they change cities.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delicious read! De Kretser has said that she won't be writing any more novels but I'm glad she was tempted to put together this little gem which you can actually read while your husband is preparing the dinner (I did!) I guess her high literary profile gave her publishers the confidence to put out a hardcover short story, beautifully presented.

I'm not a fan of ghost stories and it wasn't the ghost story aspect that drew me into this book although I did appreciate the way she solved one mystery while creating another with her twist at the end.

It's a story about Frances and her dog and what they see (or don't see) when they are walking in Sydney, a city to which they have moved from Melbourne. There was so much I loved about this story - the dog, the way relationships are sketched with such insight and understanding, the contrast between the cities of Melbourne and Sydney and of course the language. For me it's always about the craft - the words, the phrases, the intimations, the revelations.

This reminded me in some ways of Helen Garner's early short works, like The Children's Bach or Honour and Other People's Children. Through deft touches and spare but telling prose, so much is given through so little, with such little apparent effort.

[Zayneea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was attracted to this book by the title, the cover, and then from flicking through the quality of the paper and the 4 photos of the plants inside. It made me curious, and the book was short so I thought I would have a read. Don't think I actually understood the story at all to be honest, not my thing - my rating would be nothing for the story as I felt by the end that reading it had been a complete waste of my time as I didn't understand the story. The 2 stars I have given as a rating in this review is for the quality of the 4 photos in the book by Torkil Gudnason.

[Brona's Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim, stylish short story has got under my skin.

I wasn't really expecting it to - before, during or immediately after reading it. But somehow, two days later, Springtime has subtly tiptoed into my imagination and opened up a whole host of possibilities.

The power of de Krestser's story is in her descriptions and in the very looseness of form that she plays with.

The images are vivid and the form is ripe for individual interpretation.
Full review here -http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/20...

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far too brief, but still enjoyable

[Sarah B · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I saw this short little ghost story on display at my local library and had decided to pick it up, as this is the season for ghost stories. But this short story was not what I was expecting at all. It's actually more of a drama with a bit of mystery added in as an afterthought than an actual ghost story... I mean its not scary or creepy. It's not meant to be..

I suppose in some ways it's more realistic? But that doesn't make it interesting! Most of the tale is the main character, Frances, talking to others and going for walks with her dog. Eating out places. That sort of thing. Maybe some people find this sort of thing fascinating but I actually find it rather dull! I just kept waiting for something to happen and well, it was a tad disappointing. There is a tiny mystery in here and a bit of a twist but I was not impressed...

The descriptions of Australia was nice.

The cover is beautiful as is the black and white floral artwork inside. It actually was the cover that attracted me to this book, as I was thinking "Why is this on the Halloween display?" and was shocked to realize it was a ghost story!

[Nora Suntken · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like I was missing something the whole time I was reading this. Frances was an interesting, if underdeveloped, and complicated character. The ghost story simply… wasn’t, and the actual story was more about Frances grappling with the changes in her life that she created herself and the unintended consequences. The pictures were pretty and the choppy narrative style was both the perfect storytelling method and also way too confusing for such a short piece. The book itself is gorgeous so even though I didn’t love the story, it wasn’t a bad read.

[Amy Gentry]

A short ghost story with a punchline that’s easy to miss, but not particularly clever or satisfying anyway. It reminds me of a much older style of “weird tale” from women’s magazines in the 1900s, which isn’t a bad thing, but seems an odd fit with the spare and often inventive prose. But sure, ghost dog<\spoiler>, ok!

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this little Novella
Easy to read, almost like a stream of consciousness