April 2019

38 MEREDITH and DISTRICT NEWS
Marg’s
Book Review
“The Course of Love” by Alain De Botton
This book could be called “Coming to Grips with
all Modern Love’s Complexities”. A review said
Shakespeare wrote that ‘the course of true love
never ran smooth’. Approximately two centuries
after Shakespeare, Romanticism declared that
‘individual feelings should be allowed to conquer
all and that what we have to do is act under their
force and we can live happily ever after’.
According to Alain de Botton ‘we are still
labouring under the romantic delusion when we
expect to enter a perfect, everlasting union of body
and soul with another person’.
The book tells the story of an ordinary British
middle-class couple living in present day Scotland,
tracing their first meeting, dating, courtship,
marriage, parenthood, infidelity, marital discord
and eventual relationship counselling. It is
described as a novel but it is more in the nature of a
modern secular parable. What propels us through
the novel is not plot, but the characters.
The novel explores not so much the start of love as
its maintenance over time, the way our ideals bend
and reform under the pressures of an average
existence. At dinner parties and over coffee Rabih
and Kirsten’s friends ask them the same question;
how did you meet. The answer is a happy story. But
there is a second part of this story, the question
their friends never ask; what happened next?
Scattered throughout the narrative are italicised
passages of essayistic contemplation on the nature
of love, abstract reflections commenting on each
new development. These musings are described as
clever, their tone a mixture of irony and sincerity. I
found them very academic, for example, “But when
it comes to domestic existence, we tend to make a
fateful presumption of ease, which in turn inspires
in us a tense aversion to protracted negotiation”.
But there are some interesting musings such as
“love is a skill not just an enthusiasm”, “it’s the
institution of marriage that is principally
impossible”, “it’s the sticking around that is the
weird and exotic achievement” and “choosing a
partner to marry is deciding what kind of suffering
we want to endure!”
It is the story of modern relationships and how to
survive them.
The book for discussion in April is “Circe” by Madeline
Miller.
Changing Shire’s Electoral
Structure
From media release
You can have your say on three options proposed for
Golden Plains Shire Council’s 2020 electoral structure.
Golden Plains Shire Council’s existing structure is unsubdivided
with seven councillors. The options outlined in
the preliminary report are:
Option A: Seven councillors elected from an unsubdivided
electoral structure
Option B: Seven councillors elected from three wards
(one three‐councillor ward and two two‐councillor
wards)
Option C: Eight councillors elected from three wards
(two three‐councillor wards and one two‐councillor
ward).
You have one month to consider the options and make
your submission supporting or opposing the options.
Submissions can be made online at vec.vic.gov.au, by
email or by post up to 5.00 pm Wednesday 24 April.
A public hearing will be held at 6.30 pm on Wednesday 1
May at the Rokewood Recreation Reserve, 14 McMillan
Street, Rokewood for anyone who has requested to speak
in support of their submission. If there are no requests to
speak, the hearing will not be held.
The preliminary report is available at vec.vic.gov.au. and
Golden Plains Shire Council offices.