Shell

by Kristina Olsson

  Lars walked slowly around the suspended shape, bending this way and that, looking from all angles. The split ran from end to end, an unstitched wound. He lifted his hand to it, ran his fingers along the edge. Turned his head slowly from side to side. Yes, he said quietly, it can be fixed. The words heavily accented. But it will be up to him. When he is better. When he is himself again. He looked at her. I will take him home until he is. His mother is waiting.

  She walked along the quay towards the ferry. The city quiet, unmarked by the turmoil of the past weeks and her own life. This town! She stopped at a newsstand to buy flowers and cigarettes. Its posters still blared the aftermath of the bombing, the charges against members of some protest group. “BLUDGERS AND COWARDS!” one poster declared. But we all know it was ASIO, she said to the attendant, a small smile on her lips. Don’t we? He handed over her change. Old news now, he said evenly. They’ve just sacked the bloke who did the opera house.

  It took a long time to settle herself. Utzon was gone, and she was glad Axel was home in Sweden and not here to know. But as she stepped aboard the ferry she realized that of course, he had anticipated it. The evidence was hung in the jagged air of the glass shed by the harbor at Woolloomooloo.

  The ferry tacked towards Bennelong Point. She pulled three stems from the bunch she’d carried. The callistemon had already begun to shed its crimson and gold, but the rough bouquet would still please him, she knew. He’d loved these ordinary flowers. As he’d loved Utzon and the unordinary building that soared beside her now. Its shells partly tiled and shining, pearlescent. She went to the rail of the ferry, leaned over glass-blue water, and cast the flowers to the wind.

  Author’s Note

  This book had its genesis in a handful of small incidents, preoccupations, and alignments that gradually coalesced, bringing together two bloodlines, two hemispheres, two landscapes: Scandinavia and Australia. The physical and cultural legacies of my Swedish father and Australian mother, questions and ways of thinking that grew, rather than diminished, through my writing life.

  It might have begun the day when, like Axel, I stood in a rainstorm and watched raindrops smack onto bitumen and form the exact shape of some of my Swedish candleholders. Or the day I drove through the glass province of Småland, north of my father’s country, and found myself on roads that seemed to run over lakes. Or the moment in a newsroom when I realized I could no longer live with my journalistic objectivity.

  But it was truly born, I think, when one of my Norwegian nieces came to Australia and couldn’t leave until she’d seen the opera house. We flew south, her family and me, and crawled over and around the building in a way I never had before. The children ran their hands over white tiles made in Sweden. Their thoughts vaulted with the arc of the shells imagined by a Dane. This, I saw, was their building too, its concept and lines miraculous but not strange to them. It was something to do with the grandeur and humility implicit in its shapes. Scandinavians have no trouble holding two opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. The opera house, with its massive base and steps and soaring shells, encapsulates it.

  Later that morning, on a ferry across the harbor, I watched the opera house recede and knew I was seeing it through their eyes, their Scandinavian way of looking, their sensibility. From that moment I developed a kind of double vision of the building, of this city, of this country. Or realized I’d always had it. That, I knew, was where I wanted to write from: a place where there were no hard certainties, no one way of looking. Only a way of seeing.

  My fixation with glass was, of course, part of that. As a substance it prohibits certainty, prohibits one interpretation. I am magnetized by its Janus face: hard and yet fragile, something created from the minerals of earth and sea. Its expressive and utilitarian potential. It has always been around me: in my parents’ home and the homes of my Swedish relatives, candles burned from glass cups in window alcoves and on tables and sideboards; akvavit is drunk from tiny thimbles of crystal and sweets or jewelry are dropped into transparent bowls on ledges and shelves. Each time I visit them, I leave with one or two pieces wrapped in scarves in my luggage.

  But it wasn’t until a summer some years ago that I became transfixed by the art and meaning of the substance, its metaphorical underpinnings in the country.

  Driving north from Skåne with my cousin through the glass country, I noticed for the first time how the road ribboned between lakes. They were plates of water, glasslike. The whole province was more water than land. Of course glass would be made in such a place, I thought. The vague outline of Axel Lindquist was born. The character shares the name, the gentle persistence and quiet humor of both my Swedish grandfather and my Australian grandson.

  The midsixties were watershed years in Australia. The old was giving way to the new, the young. Our eyes finally jerked away from Britain and glanced elsewhere, mainly to the United States, and the idea of social change, of minority uprisings, began to travel like a rumor. The young began to question the fusty complacency of established orders in politics, gender, sex, race, and art. On other continents and in Asia, the scent of war and revolution was in the air, and by 1965 it had begun to waft towards Australia. For a writer infatuated with the notion of neutrality, the peace movement, and conscription, that year was like a bright beacon.

  It brought together two seemingly disparate events: the Australian government’s decision to send conscripts to the war in Vietnam and the dramatic decline in political and media favor of Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect of the opera house. Another character strode onto my mind’s stage: a spirited journalist named Pearl Keogh, whose own notions of political neutrality and personal objectivity might be challenged by the events of that year. As a journalist struggling with notions of injustice, as a woman fighting her own female preoccupations with guilt and honor, she might share a particular emotional makeup with me.

  I made my first trip to Sweden with my family in my mid-teens. I was named for my Swedish grandmother, and perhaps that contributed to the strong connection I felt for the place long before I saw it. In my childhood the idea of it was all around me: there were frequent visits by friends of my father’s from the ships he’d worked on; Swedish names seemed to dominate those of the companies he dealt with as an electrical engineer, and there were my grandmother’s letters and postcards and the stories my father told. Despite his determination to make a new life away from the old, my own Australian sense of the world was always mediated by the push of my Swedish blood, my growing awareness of Sweden’s otherness. Looking back, I can see I learned early to size one country up against the other.

  The idea that a nation could actively choose not to take part in armed conflict was very attractive to a thin-skinned child sensitive to every hurt and slight. It wasn’t until my own politicization years later that I understood the complexities of it, the enduring resentments against Sweden around the globe. What neutrality gives a country, what it takes away. What people will do within its confines. Its personal nature came home to me as a journalist when I realized that, on some issues like injustice, like racism, I could no longer remain outside, no longer not take a side.

  But these seeds were sown when I was a child. It was my mother who, very early, opened my eyes to these issues with her strong notions of fairness and equality, her compassion for those who suffered. And it was my mother who was responsible for my vehemence around conscription. Not true national service, in which men and women commit to defending their country with the assurance they won’t be sent to overseas wars, a system which Scandinavians have used for years. This was about Australia forcing young men to leave to fight wars which were not theirs. Federal governments tried it in World War I (and failed at two referenda to enforce it) and got away with it partially in World War II, when the concept of “overseas” was dropped for service in New Guinea.

  But Menzies was triumphant in Vietnam. It was after the tragedy of that war that my mother began to talk about conscription and war more often, in language I�
�ve never forgotten and gave to the character of Amy Keogh, Pearl’s mother. One morning my then young son was helping my mother and me clean out my bookshelves, dislodging the sticky nests left in books by wasps in Queensland summers. I don’t recall how the subject came up, but I do remember the look in my son’s eyes when his grandmother said to him: You know, if there’s ever a war like that again, you won’t be going. I’ll hide you in an attic somewhere. Or shoot off one of your toes.

  My gentle mother. She smiled at him then and he smiled back, understanding it for what it was. An expression of love. He would not be lost, under any circumstances.

  It took me years to understand it properly myself. By then, we’d been reunited with my brother, Peter, the child stolen from my mother’s arms when he was just a year old. It accounted for the indecipherable grief that burned in her through all our childhoods, her tight grip on us and our safety. After Peter returned I did the calculation: during the years of Vietnam, this is what my mother knew and we didn’t: she had a son of conscriptable age. In those long years, she had no idea where he was. The knowledge lodged in me like a stone, and it has never left.

  But as with all my books, Shell was not written because I knew something. I write, always, compulsively, because I don’t know something. It is always about a question. Or several. Ideas and notions and doubts coalesce into a long and intricate conversation with myself, or with an invisible other. In this case the conversation lasted five years. At the end of that process I find I have no solid answers, no certainties. Only possibilities, a whole new set of questions. The more I write, and read, and the older I get, the more comfortable I am with uncertainty. With being the humble servant of the questions, the story.

  Kristina Olsson

  2018

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks and gratitude to:

  Bertil Vallien, master glass artist, for the pivotal conversation in Småland, the generosity of time and ideas.

  My sister, Sharon, as ever: for your steadfast love and support, and for getting me on the plane to Sweden.

  The many friends who have held and sustained me through the past five years, have championed this book’s potential and reassured me when I couldn’t. In no particular order: Marg O’Donnell, Jill Rowbotham, Debbie Kilroy and all at Sisters Inside, Cathy Sinclair, Sandra Hogan, Jennifer Batts, Jo Clifford, Emma Felton, Alex and Stephanie Miller, Kaylene Smith, Sally Piper, Charlotte Wood and her Sydney writers’ group, Paula Peeters, and Raymond Carpenter.

  Most especially: Krissy Kneen, Ashley Hay, and Anthony Mullins for support above and beyond. And in Yorkshire, Sarah Moor and Keith Mott, for many things but especially time in The Roost, where the final paragraphs of Shell were (finally) written.

  My friend Raymond Evans for historical facts at odd times of the day and night. Bev Fitzgerald for the precious copy of A Vision Takes Form, by the artist Robert Emerson Curtis. A Vision is one of several books I’ve had at my side for the past five years, including Building a Masterpiece: the Sydney Opera House, edited by Anne Watson, and Vallien, by Gunnar Lindqvist.

  The staff at Kosta Boda-Orrefors in Småland, and those at Sydney Opera House and the Mitchell Library for vital assistance.

  As always, my family, for holding me up along this lengthy path: Tony, Zoe, Justine, Dane and Anita, my sister, Sharon, my brothers Peter, Ashley, Andrew (especially for crucial advice in physics) and their families, and the extended Chambers and de Goey families. And for the light and joy they bring me, the children: Amber, Axel, Oskar, and Charlie.

  And: a thousand thanks to Jane Novak, for your insight and energy and all you’ve given this book, and to Fiona Henderson and Dan Ruffino at Simon & Schuster Australia for the depth of your vision, your boundless enthusiasm and commitment to me and to Shell. Thanks also to the rest of the wonderful S&S family at Cammeray, and to my other S&S publishing families at Atria in New York—with special thanks to Sarah Cantin—and to Ian Chapman and Suzanne Baboneau at Scribner UK in London. I’d also like to thank designer Christa Moffit for her superb cover and photographer jp Bratanoff-Firgoff for allowing us to use his spectacular image.

  This book has been supported by a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, a fellowship from Griffith Review, and residencies at Varuna, the Writers House. An extract of Shell appeared in Griffith Review 58: “Storied Lives.”

  Shell

  Kristina Olsson

  A Reader’s Club Guide

  This reading group guide for Shell includes discussion questions and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  Topics & Questions for Discussion

  1. The title, Shell, most obviously refers to the shell-like shapes of the Sydney Opera House, but we see the image and concept of shells appear with many meanings and contexts at various points in the book. Look at some examples of moments when Axel or Pearl mention shells. What are the main themes that shells evoke for these characters? Do any of these interpretations of shells affect how you see the Sydney Opera House?

  2. Apart from shells, there are other visual motifs that run throughout the novel, such as water and birds. Which other repeated images most struck you as you were reading? What were the thematic effects of these motifs—that is, how did they convey certain themes or affect the tone of the narrative?

  3. Axel describes how the climate of Sweden “made him different”. Do you agree that where you grow up—the weather, natural landscape, architecture—shapes who you are as a person? If so, what are some examples you see in your own life?

  4. How do Axel and Pearl’s story lines parallel each other? How do their scenes together illustrate their different approaches to the similar emotional challenges of their lives? Do you think their connection influences their development over the course of the novel—and if so, how?

  5. How does the Keogh family’s class background and understanding of dignity affect Pearl and her brothers? Where else in the novel do we see these ideas resonate?

  6. Axel and Pearl both experienced the loss of a parent in their childhood. How did these pivotal and traumatic experiences influence their adult lives in similar ways, and in what ways did it affect them differently? To what do you attribute these differences?

  7. Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” How does this quotation relate to Axel’s understanding of Sweden’s neutrality in World War II?

  8. Pearl makes a distinction between the Vietnam War, which she considers “all politics,” and World War II, which she believes was “a moral imperative”. Do you think this is a valid distinction? If a nation’s involvement in a war is not for self-defense, how do you distinguish between unnecessarily going to fight in someone else’s war—a criticism leveled against Australia’s involvement in conflicts in the twentieth century—and getting involved out of a moral duty?

  9. In the final chapter, beginning on page 247, the glasswork piece that Axel has been working on throughout the novel is described for the first time. Were you surprised to learn what he had created? If so, why?

  Enhance Your Book Club

  1. Using some of the poetic turns of phrases in Shell, craft a “found poem” inspired by the novel. A found poem is written by taking words, phrases, or whole passages from an existing text (in this case, Shell) and creating new meaning by combining quotes, shifting the order, adding line breaks, or deleting text. Feel free to get creative with it, shaping the text to write about the characters or your own life, or even something more abstract!

  2. Shell centers on a transitional moment in time, and when the novel ends, much is left unresolved: the Sydney Opera House is unfinished, its status in jeopardy; Axel and Pearl are to be separated as Axel returns home to recover; his glasswork is damaged and may or may
not be fixed; and the Vietnam War rages on. Why do you think Kristina Olsson chose to end her novel on this moment of uncertainty? Regarding Axel and Pearl, what do you envision their futures will hold? With your reading group, consider writing a short story from Axel or Pearl’s perspective (or both!), set either one year or five years after the end of Shell.

  3. As with the Sydney Opera House, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor is a famous landmark designed by someone foreign to the country that the work seeks to represent (the Statue of Liberty was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi). Do you think there is insight that only a native resident can bring to monumental landmarks like these, or, alternatively, is there a benefit to seeing them from an outsider’s perspective? With your group, discuss some of your own favorite landmarks. How well do you think they capture the spirit of their location?

  About the Author

  Kristina Olsson is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir won the 2014 Kibble Literary Award, the 2014 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the 2013 Queensland Literary Award, the 2014 Western Australia Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 Stella Prize, the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and the 2013 Australian Human Rights Commission Literature Award. Her other works include the biography Kilroy Was Here and novels In One Skin and The China Garden, which won the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award and was shortlisted for the Kibble Literary Award. Kristina lives in Brisbane.

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